Broken Elites (The Vampire Legacy Book 3)

by Rita Stradling

Parker lit another cigarette, filling the vehicle with pungent smoke. “By bus.”

  “Thanks,” I muttered as a feeling of betrayal punched my gut. I pushed open the car door and stepped out into the morning as Henry rushed down the front stoop.

  Parker called, “Always a pleasure, Princess of Blood, or should I just call you PB or maybe just BP for Blood Princess?”

  The words felt more like a life sentence than a nickname, Princess of Blood.

  As I pushed the SUV door closed, my gaze travelled over the claw marks and jagged scars that scraped down the length of the silver vehicle. The backseat window wasn’t just shattered, it was indented in the shape of a fist. The little space where the window was open had four grooves from where the demon’s claws had ripped away.

  Henry strode straight past me, and I ran ahead up the stoop and through the open door while he carried Justin from the trunk of the SUV. Justin—or the strzyga demon who looked just like the boy I loved—no longer had any trace of wings or injuries, but thick crimson liquid smeared across his skin.

  His head lay back, and I could see his eyes shifting back and forth under his lids. I lunged a step, and then froze, wanting to go embrace him, but not knowing if I would be embracing Justin or a strzyga demon.

  A gasp had me spinning toward the sweeping marble stairway in the foyer, and Gina Roberts ran past me, not hesitating to throw herself on Justin’s prone form. As she ran past, the reek of vodka stung my nose.

  “Get out of here,” Henry growled at me as Gina wept over Justin. “Go to your grandmother’s house.”

  I shook my head and widened my stance. “No. You’re giving me answers.”

  “Go right now, or there will be consequences,” the dour butler muttered darkly as he turned away.

  I ignored his vague warning and followed after the group. Instead of heading to the stairway to the living quarters, Gina and Henry rushed into the kitchen and backhouse.

  The butler murmured as we moved, speaking in an unknown language that almost sounded like the resonant tones of Gregorian Chanting.

  We walked through long hallways. The rising sun stained the sheer curtains crimson and violet. At a closed door, Gina Roberts turned and blinked at me with bloodshot eyes. “January…? You need to leave now.”

  Leaning past them, I grabbed the doorknob. “I know what Justin is, and I saw what was hunting him—”

  Gina’s hand whipped out and slammed into my cheek. A stinging pain radiated through my jaw, making my eyes instantly water. I staggered back a step and grabbed my face, in shock at the abrupt violence from the delicate woman.

  Henry’s head lifted, and his eyes widened. “Don’t injure her, Gina.”

  Gina gasped and covered her swollen, surgically enhanced lips. She staggered into the wall, and her words slurred as she said, “January, I am so sorry. I just panicked—you were going to say something entirely inappropriate. We’ll get you blood.”

  “I’m fine.” I touched my stinging cheek. “Well, I’m not going to drink your blood if that’s what you’re worried about. I’m definitely not okay with you assaulting me after I saved your son’s life. Oh—by the way, I probably will die for what I did tonight, so you both owe me big. That’s how this works, right? I did you a colossal favor that made me a target by not one but two groups of demons, so I’m guessing you both owe me the kind of favors that are almost impossible to repay.”

  Gina’s lower lip trembled, and she darted a glance back at Henry before her dark gaze returned to me, warily. “How much do you want? I can only move another hundred thousand or so without George finding out…”

  “I can get more,” Henry said. “I can make it a total of five hundred thousand.”

  I shook my head in disgust. “You and Sebastian have a lot more in common than blood, Gina. Or, maybe just the whole group of you rich assholes are all the same. Do you really think throwing money at me is going to matter at all now? I’m now a target of a horde of strzyga demons.”

  Gina raised her hand to slap me again when Henry moved in the way, blocking Gina with Justin’s sleeping body. “What do you want?”

  The first time I’d met the Roberts’ bruiser of a butler I thought he seemed like a lion that was attempting to dress as a house cat. As Henry glared down at me with his teeth bared, he was all lion.

  Trying to keep my breaths even, I glared up into his blazing gaze. “You owe me answers. I need to know what you got me into if I’m going to have a chance in hell of surviving this…” I trailed off as I looked at Justin’s waxen features. “Is that even Justin? I saw what he became.”

  Gina and Henry locked gazes, and she let out a small whimper and covered her mouth.

  Henry nodded to the door. “Go on in, January.”

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Gina slapped her hand on the closed door and clutched a hand to her chest. For one uncanny moment, I could swear I saw my mother standing there. Gina had a glaring similarity to my mother in their shared addiction, but Gina was too rich to let her addiction to the bottle ravage her face as my mother had. Their looks were nothing alike, but I could see a fire in Gina’s eyes that burned in my mother’s, a fervor to protect her young. “Henry, what happens when the strzyga demons catch her and make her tell them where Justin is?”

  Gina just basically said that she anticipated that I was going to be caught and tortured by these winged demons.

  “The strzyga demons are here for Justin—and you know it. You’ve been hiding it from the Hawthorn Group as those creatures tear through Brightside, murdering all types of Supernaturals,” I realized. My gaze fell down to Justin, and the pieces connected. “You’re even hiding it from your husband…” I paused to look between them, “You really think this won’t get out? Parker knows and so do all of those demons in the Pitchfork Clubhouse. They’re all going to be coming after you guys, aren’t they?”

  “Only you and Parker know about the strzyga demons… and only because I told Parker what they were,” Gina’s voice quivered as her bloodshot eyes darted around the hallway. “I could tell her they were something else.”

  I shook my head. “The Blackburn Academy teachers already know they’re strzyga demons.” I didn’t know for certain that they did, but why else would Professor Abbot teach about them directly after the attack. She was teaching us their weaknesses, but I was pulled out of class and missed it.

  “We shouldn’t talk about any of this out here,” Henry growled. “Both of you need to get inside.” Even though he was supposed to be her butler, Gina hopped into motion.

  She grabbed my hand and turned the knob. The thick door opened up into a gleaming wood staircase that swept down into a large wine cellar. The room looked like a wooden honeycomb with bottles lined up from floor to ceiling. Several open bottles littered the floor. One was tipped on its side and another had smashed against the wall.

  Incongruous to the gleaming wooden room was a long steel chain fastened at one end to the wall and ending with a manacle. The room reeked of old, astringent wine and sweat. A narrow bed with a dresser piled high with books sat at one end of the cellar turned cell. A television sat on the floor with several video game consoles sitting beside it.

  “You’ve been keeping Justin chained up here?”

  They ignored me and headed down the stairs.

  Even though I had been fighting for them to let me into the room a minute ago, I suddenly felt very cautious about taking the staircase down. Everything about this room and this situation made me feel uneasy. It reminded me of the room Sebastian was keeping Justin imprisoned in, but Sebastian hadn’t filled the room with things meant to distract Justin and make him happy. Regardless, it was clear that Justin was being imprisoned by his family again.

  Henry set Justin on the bed and immediately locked his leg in the manacle.

  Gina paced across the room, picked up a video game controller and set it on top of the books. She didn’t quite seem to know what to do with herself. “Maybe you can help him set up the v
ideo games,” Gina said as she motioned for me to come in. “He throws bottles when we try to come down to help, and he’s read through most of the books in the house. Now that you know, you can visit him, January, and maybe he’ll be happier if you’re here.”

  I took the stairs slowly, but decided to stay on the steps, ready to bolt back up them at any moment. “Professor Abbot said that strzyga demons are born with two souls.” I looked at Justin’s waxen features, still wondering if I was looking at someone else. “She said that when a strzyga demon reaches adulthood, one of the souls die—the good human soul, and then they’re just a demon.” The thought made me feel sick to my stomach, but I had to know, so I forced out the words, “Did that happen? Is Justin gone?”

  “No!” Gina’s breath caught, and the game controller fell from her hand, sending the topmost book to topple onto the floor. She didn’t even seem to notice as she pointed a fanatical smile at me. “That’s a myth.”

  Henry trailed off in his low, resonant chant, and he stood from the bed. “The Hawthorn Group’s knowledge about strzyga demons was gathered in the seventeenth century. They’re a reclusive and solitary species, only living in Arctic and subarctic territories and rarely feeding on, or interacting with humans. They only have one soul. Their demon side emerges slowly through their childhood, but once they hit puberty, they grow wings and abandon their families to live with their kind and claim territory and hunting grounds in environments that suit their needs. They prefer the Arctic because they are nocturnal hunters. The myths emerged in a superstitious time when demon babies were hunted and killed just on vague suspicions.”

  “Justin was a different person— and he couldn’t remember the party where he punched Mitch.” The two-souls explanation had made so much sense in my mind.

  “Memory loss during the nighttime hours is common during a transition for any nocturnal Supernatural. He’s battling demonic urges, and when he gives into his natural inclinations to hunt, protect, or establish dominance, repressed magic will flood his system and overtake his will. It happens with shifters and vampires as well. It may happen to you too if you give in to the repressed vampire urges within you—to hunt and feed.”

  Gina waved her hands through the air, “We have demonic and magical experts working on this—the finest minds are fixing this problem. Justin will be absolutely fine, honey. This is just a hiccup, and you two will be so happy together. I know I’ve been so… back and forth about your relationship, but he loves you, and he needs you now more than ever. He needs your protection.”

  Gina Roberts’ reassurances made me feel the opposite of comfort. I rubbed the gooseflesh on my arms but somehow felt even colder. “You said that he would change into a demon at puberty—he’s eighteen. A month ago, Justin was normal. I mean—he was cold and distant sometimes—but nothing like this. Now he’s… what? Evil?”

  “Demons aren’t evil,” Henry snapped his teeth at me and punctuated his words with a glare so furious that I was pretty sure that I’d just personally insulted him. “Evil isn’t something that is inherent to any creature, and Justin has always been a demon—but we suppressed his demonic urges—to hunt, protect, wage war, and establish territory. As opposed to you dhampirs whose urges are only to kill and feed.”

  “And who are you in all this, Henry? From what I’ve learned about you, you guarded Gina through her pregnancy. Clearly, you’re some sort of demon expert…”

  “Henry is an expert on demons—the leading one in the United States of America, along with someone who devised a method to let Justin have a normal life. You have to understand that everything I have done in the past eighteen years has been for my son. Everything I will do is for my son. Justin hasn’t really even changed… the spells we gave him never touched the complicated and beautiful being he is. All the spells did was keep my son from flying away to the Arctic. They allow him to live a normal, human life.”

  I looked between Gina and Henry, and then down to the heavy metal links chaining Justin to the floor. Normal life… not from my perspective. “So, you and Mr. Roberts aren’t Justin’s biological parents?”

  “I am Justin’s biological mother... but...” Gina paced across the room and pulled a bottle of wine out of the rack. Taking a bottle opener from its hanger, she waved it in the air. “Henry, I…”

  The strange butler took the bottle and opener and somehow pulled a glass out from a hidden cubby. In less than a minute, Gina Roberts was holding a glass full of pungent Merlot in one hand, and she gulped it down like water in the desert. When she’d drained the glass, and the butler poured her another, the matriarch of the Roberts’ Mansion said in a rush, “Justin’s father was a fallen angel.” Gina held her hand up in the air and downed another glass. “Dimitri was my forbidden Summer lover,” she said on an exhale. “He wasn’t a demon—but our love made a child that was destined to be demonic—I suppose you could say. And, no, George does not know that he’s not Justin’s true father, so I would appreciate your discretion. He’s a good Gemini man who was hungry for a place in my brother’s company. I let him use me, and I used him back.” She downed another glass of wine. “You should be thanking me that Justin isn’t George’s son, honestly, January. George and my lovemaking has never been inspired, and not for lack of me trying. Whereas Justin’s true father—”

  I held up a hand, hoping to God I could stop her from finishing her sentence. “Ms. Roberts, I still don’t understand. Why did the magic that was keeping Justin human stop working?” Even before I finished saying the words, I knew exactly why the spells failed. “Sebastian did something when he abducted Justin and kept him imprisoned in a lab, didn’t he?”

  Henry glared over as he refilled Gina’s glass again. “That’s the only explanation we’ve been able to come up with. Justin claims he doesn’t remember his time in captivity.”

  “Is this reversible? That demon tore off his wings—maybe that was permanent?” I took another step down on the staircase, before remembering that I didn’t trust Henry or Gina right now, and, if I was honest, I didn’t trust Justin, either.

  “We’re working on that—but…” Gina glanced back at the bed, “He’s been difficult.” Gina’s lower lip trembled, and she set down her wine glass on the floor only to immediately kick it over. “Oh… Henry. Could you get that?” Gina Roberts rushed toward me and reached for my hands, but I wasn’t about to give them to her. “Maybe you can get through to Justin and… convince him not to escape. The cure could come at any time, but all he cares about is protecting us. If he’s out there, the strzyga demons will find him. They think we’re at war… they think we’re hiding a strzyga demon in their territory.”

  “Brightside is their territory?” I pointed at the ground. “I thought you said they live in the Arctic.”

  “They do, but they’re apex demons. Strzyga demons claim every city in North America except Phoenix,” Henry said. “They just don’t have any interest in demons that aren’t other strzyga.”

  “Wait. Why Phoenix?” I asked.

  “It’s a neutral city which can’t be claimed by any demons as per infernal law,” he said.

  “What?” I looked between their solemn expressions. “Then why don’t you take him there?”

  “Don’t you understand, sweetheart…?” Gina sighed, “Justin is protected in here. Henry is protecting him with spells. Every time Justin leaves this house at night, those demons find him within minutes.”

  “Did Justin know that when he escaped?” I asked.

  Their gazes met for a moment of joined understanding, and everything clicked into place in my mind. Blaze said that Justin showed up at that demon clubhouse with a death wish, and he wasn’t exaggerating.

  “That’s why Justin escaped, isn’t it? Because Justin knows that if he stays in here within your spells, the strzyga demons will keep killing people. And, the Justin I know wouldn’t let that happen—”

  Gina shook her head. “Justin doesn’t know what he wants. He can’t face those demons�
�they would tear him apart and eat him alive.” She made a sound that was halfway between a laugh and sob. “He’s dealing with five years of demon magic all at once— and, that’s my fault. I know that. You don’t even understand the guilt I’m feeling. It was never supposed to happen like this. But Justin is an innocent boy.”

  “If the strzyga demons catch Justin, he will either have to join them and go live as a demon in the Arctic Circle, or they’ll eat him alive and ingest the magic in his bone marrow,” Henry said.

  Gina sobbed. “I need your help, January. If the Hawthorn Group finds out—they’ll hand him over to the demons. My horrible nephew Sebastian is probably already their leader again, and he’s the one who did this to my son.”

  I examined Justin slowly, taking in his familiar features. “I’ll talk to Justin, but you’re not locking me in here with him or anything.”

  Gina reached out, grabbed my arm, and clamped on like a steel vice. “Oh, thank you, January. Thank you so much. I knew you were an old soul with a beautiful heart. I love you. I think you’re going to be my daughter in law one day. I really do.”

  It was a bunch of bullshit that would last as long as I served her purposes, but I still nodded. “I want to talk to him alone, though, and I’m not going to tell you what he says.”

  “That’s fine.” Gina waved Henry up the stairs, and I pushed up against the wood wall as the glowering butler and the wobbling mistress of the house rushed to leave me alone with the demon.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  I sat on the last step into the cellar prison and watched Justin’s chest rise and fall. In the two hours I sat there, I went through the full spectrum of emotions. Relief, remorse, guilt, happiness, they all flowed through me in a confusing mess.

  The night’s events were coming into clearer focus, and I despised the picture they painted.

  Across the room, Justin groaned, and his arms rose above his head. His muscles stretched as he yawned slowly. Dried blood flaked off his skin as he moved.