Edie Spence (Book 5): Bloodshifted by Cassie Alexander Page A

toga. He was a little shorter than I was, though far more muscular, and his skin was dark tan where it showed.
    “What’s your name?”
    “It’s not safe to tell you that. Right now, I could merely be a bad dream.”
    I grunted. In case Raven interrogated me. Even if I thought my dreams were real, there was currently no proof, and I supposed it was safer for both of us. “Can you really kill him?”
    “Do you really want me to?”
    Now that I was out of Raven’s presence I had my right mind. “The sooner the better.” Before he could trick me again, or me myself.
    “Then yes, I can.”
    “How?”
    “Because I am his Sire. If I command, he must obey. I could even command him to kill himself, and he would.”
    “I take it that’s why you’re a prisoner here?”
    “Indeed.”
    This was sounding too easy. “Are you’re sure you’re not a dream?”
    He raised his hand, and our surroundings changed. The desert scrub folded away, replaced by sharp mountain peaks and drifts of snow. Then we were near a river, bridged by stone, and on an ocean shore, standing on rough rocks—“Okay, okay.” I held my hands up. “You can stop shaking the snow globe now.”
    The world around us resolved into a pavilion in front of a temple, lined with columns, a statue standing between each pair. Roman—original. The statues were painted, not worn white by time. Each had a face not unlike my mysterious friend’s.
    “I have lived for very long and traveled well. These are my dreams, not yours.”
    “Agreed.” My dreams would have had a lot more traffic in them, or involved me being back at school and having forgotten my locker combination. “But why are all of them in daylight?”
    He looked taken aback, but quickly recovered. “Because you wouldn’t want to see me in the dark.”
    Probably true—or even vampires missed the sun. It wasn’t worth calling him on, though. I walked down the steps of the temple to the road outside and started smoothing sand for him to draw on. “Make a map and show me where you are.”
    He followed me, more slowly. “I … cannot. I was incapacitated when I was brought here. I do not know where I am.”
    Here at last was the much more familiar difficult part. “You’re kidding me, right?” I dusted my hands off on my legs and stood. “You’re aware that there’s an apparently endless system of tunnels where you could be? Do you know anything about where you are?”
    “In a hole. In the dark. My walls are stone, and my cell is grated with silver.”
    I’d finally found someone who could help me, and I didn’t even know where to begin. I started pacing in a circle.
    “But if you find me and free me—” he began.
    “You’ll kill him. I get it.” I looked back at the temple behind us. He was like it, in a way. Hugely powerful, currently completely useless. “Why me? Why haven’t you asked someone else for help?”
    The temple shimmered like a mirage and we were in the hilly desert again, forcing me to look back at him. His face was serious and drawn. “You’ve already been a servant long enough to know that admitting weakness among our kind is halfway to defeat.” I nodded, and he went on. “When I woke you from your last dream to save your life—did you kill the one who tried to take it?”
    I closed my eyes. “No. Which was probably a mistake.”
    “Probably,” he agreed. “But it shows that you are ruthless enough to contemplate your Master’s death for freedom, but not ruthless enough to kill without thought.”
    So he was willing to help me because I seemed unlikely to kill him. Damned with faint praise, once again. “There are others here who want out. Why not one of them?”
    “Because they’re not also with a child they want to keep.”
    My baby was just a little extra assurance that I wouldn’t kill him for his blood once I found him. I hugged myself. “Why’re you so weak?”
    “I’ve been starved for the better part of three centuries. A servant