the silver glow in his eyes darkened back to their natural color while that otherworldly swath vanished, all without the schizophrenic battle I would have had to wage first.
“How do you lock that half of you away without a fight?”
His brows went up. “You’ve kept your other nature locked away?” At my nod, Ashael began to laugh. “No wonder I felt it the two times you finally used your full powers! They must have had to explode out of whatever cage you’ve put them in.”
I opened my mouth to reply—and Ian teleported into me, knocking me over because I hadn’t braced for a large male body suddenly occupying the same space. He caught me using his right arm. His left arm was extended out and away from his body.
“Here’s your sodding horn,” Ian snapped at Ashael.
His head and clothes had gotten bloody since I last saw him. His shirt was also torn from shoulder to wrist, revealing that the formerly stiff horn had now curled itself multiple times around Ian’s left forearm. How? Kudu horn didn’t bend!
Ashael stared at the relic as if he, too, couldn’t believe what he was seeing. Then he laughed, a sharp, grating sound.
“I fail to see anything funny,” Ian said coldly.
“I do,” Ashael said, still chuckling. “And the joke is on me. Clearly, the horn agrees with Veritas about you.”
“I have nothing to do with this,” I protested.
“You and the horn both think Ian is special.” Ashael stopped laughing to give Ian a hard look. “I disagree, but magic as old as that horn chooses its wielder, and only rare, raw power plus the potential for more draws it.”
Chooses its wielder . . . I’d heard of such objects, but had never seen one before. “Are you saying this horn was made?”
Ian looked at me as if I’d recently been hit hard in the head. “It’s a ram’s horn; a bloody ram made it.”
“That’s not what she means.” Ashael’s gaze held mine, confirming my suspicion. Then he turned to Ian. “Most weapons were forged by man, but a select few were made by the gods. You’ll have heard of famous ones like Thor’s hammer, Arthur’s Excalibur, Poseidon’s trident, and Apollo’s bow, but there are lesser-known ones, like Hang Tuah’s dagger, Ninurta’s mace, Huitzilopochtli’s ray . . . and Cain’s horn.”
Ian grunted. “Don’t tell me you believe that dried-up corpse is Cain, too? Can’t fathom how Timothy was deluded into joining a crazed Cain cult, but then he always was a dreamer—”
“The skeleton on the altar is Cain?” I interrupted, astonished.
“So my mate claims,” Ian replied, derision coating his tone. “But even if that was the fabled first vampire cursed to forever drink blood as punishment for slaying his brother, Abel, he’s now as dead as my virginity. Still, Timothy wouldn’t leave him even after I took this”—another shake indicated the horn wrapped around Ian’s forearm—“and this apparently has value.”
Ashael arched a brow. “His acolytes think Cain will rise again, given the right mixture of blood. I’ve seen vampires regenerate from a skeletal state, so I suppose it’s possible.”
I stayed silent. Ashael didn’t need to know that Ian was one of those rare vampires who could degenerate to bones and then regenerate. He knew too much already, family or no family.
Ian’s eyes narrowed. “What do you mean, the right mixture of blood?”
A shrug. “His acolytes have tried many varieties. Blood of a virgin, blood of the slain, blood of the damned, blood of a vampire, blood of a ghoul, blood of a demon, blood of a demigod—I sold them that one—and countless combinations of all the above. Nothing worked. Some believe only the blood of a tri-bred will raise him since Cain also created the first ghoul.”
I stiffened, then forced myself to relax. Good thing Ashael hadn’t been looking my way. Ian hadn’t moved so much as a muscle though he had to be thinking the same thing I was.
“A tri-bred?” Ian’s voice was smoother than water. “You mean part human, part vampire, and part ghoul, like the little girl the vampire council executed recently?”
Ashael gave us a knowing look. “They were quick with that, weren’t they? Almost like some on the council knew the rumor that Cain could rise if given that child’s blood.”
“Why wouldn’t the council want a vampire with supposedly unrivaled powers like Cain back among them?” I countered.
Ashael snorted. “The same reason most people don’t want their god among them, all protestations aside. Gods tend to point out their followers’ hypocrisy, and