Cara MIA - By Book One of the Immortyl Revolution - By Denise Verrico Page 0,55

old Neptune waking up, threatening to capsize us.

I closed my eyes. “Ethan, something is troubling you. Spit it out.”

He reclined next to me, fingers tangling in the waves of my hair spread out on the chair. “When I first saw you onstage my world changed.”

My eyes opened on him. “I’m not that girl anymore. Don’t be hoodwinked by an illusion you’ve created.”

He wrapped his arms about his knees. “Brovik sent a message through Gaius.”

I sat up, surprised that he uttered the name of his maker voluntarily. His eyes veiled as he spoke. “He sends felicitations on the anniversary of your birth. This year is the centennial of my own birth in the blood, come December. Our presence is expected. I can’t put him off any longer.”

My power to veil myself had become highly developed, but inside of me a battle raged, and I feared Brovik’s power to strip away the illusion. My rival, the one who had stolen Ethan from his wife and children, who Ethan pined for, though never admitted it. Could he reach inside and pluck the soul from me as Ethan had once cautioned, with the most serene of smiles on his beautiful countenance? The demon haunting my dreams was fair as the sun with eyes like the sky I could walk under again. Who will go with him? Those words echoed through the dark corners. What did they mean?

Besides the heavy duty, gothic dreams, I spent a good deal of my waking hours wondering about how the antagonist’s entrance into our little play would affect the action. Or was I actually the antagonist? Oh yes, that made much more sense. Their story had been in progress for a century. I was the latecomer. And Kurt, where would he fit in? From his letters, I believed I knew him better than I could ever hope to know Ethan. We shared cautious views about this endeavor our house was embarked on, but he had complete confidence in Brovik’s motives, while I had deep misgivings about Ethan’s.

Early that December, Kurt called on us again. The weather was unusually brisk for this warm climate. Did Brovik exercise power over the north wind? Ridiculous, I chided myself, only fairy tale vampires held power over the elements, but Brovik by this time had achieved mythic proportions in my imagination.

Ethan was already on the terrace when I arrived. Strong wind blew my hair over my face. I scraped it back with my hand. Kurt stood there with a wooden box of some kind in his hands. He smiled his bittersweet smile, bowing according to form, averting his eyes. I wouldn’t have this from my dear friend.

I laid my hand on his arm. “How are you?”

“As well as can be expected.” He looked up to meet my eyes head on. All we knew of one another, and wanted to know, passed through that brief glance.

Ethan snapped, “Mercy’s sake, stop goggling like two teenagers! Spit out your message, boy, and go.”

Kurt moved briskly forward, presenting Ethan with the small beautifully carved chest. “Brovik sends gifts in commemoration of your centennial, and orders you attend him.”

Kurt stole another glance at me.

Ethan took this in and smiled smugly. “Oh, we’ll come— but on one condition. You’ll make yourself scarce insect, understand?”

Despite his eternally youthful looks, Kurt was thirty-five now, hardly a boy anymore. He replied, firm and unwavering, “If you insist. My regrets, Mia.”

“How dare you address her?”

Kurt bowed and walked deliberately past Ethan, with a look matching the icy wind off the bay. But Ethan just stared out over the terrace for a long time. Then he did something I had never seen before.

Men’s tears are difficult to watch, and I was unprepared for the naked despair scrawled in huge letters across his face. I approached warily. He motioned me away, turning his back on me. Another gust of cold came off the water. I drew my robe tighter about me as I stood there awkwardly. Ethan was in a place I’d never be welcome.

Frightening yet wonderful, to see the tightly wrapped bits of this tidy parcel unravel before my eyes, to finally glimpse the man beneath the vampiric trappings. All the way to Norway he spoke little. Ethan was terrified of airplanes, and Brovik had sent one to fetch us that bounced alarmingly, buffeted by high winds over the North Sea. Maybe the old Northman had some control over the elements after all.

Before morning we dropped down over a frozen expanse of water to a