by Bella Klaus
Beatrice pulled a face. “I told you how he turned up outside my work, right?”
“Yes,” I said through clenched teeth, remembering how he had also snooped around my apartment and confronted me about the sighting of a large cat. Well, at least I knew why he’d been so persistent. Jonathan had been sent to spy on me, and somehow over the years, his mission had turned into an obsession.
The next time Beatrice’s phone buzzed, she ignored it and took a long swig of wine. “To hell with Christian, the Swiss Wanker.”
“That’s the spirit,” I said with a grin.
My phone buzzed, and I pulled out the handset. “Kain’s ten minutes away.”
Her eyes widened. “Are you going with him?”
“We’re working on something together. It might take all afternoon.”
She exhaled a long sigh. “I wish you could stay longer.”
“Me too.” I reached across the table and squeezed her hand. “As soon as Valentine gets well, you and I will have a girls’ weekend. Just us, several bars of chocolate, and all the gourmet food we can stomach.”
She raised her glass. “And wine.”
I raised mine and clinked. “If you bring the white, I’ll bring the red.”
After we said our goodbyes, I went to the bathroom and checked that the anklet was still suppressing the curse before walking out to the front of the apartment building. Kain’s black BMW was already waiting in the courtyard with its lights off, its polished exterior reflecting the moonlight. Behind the dark car was the dimly lit Causeway, a tree-lined road that cut through Wimbledon Common.
My footsteps crunched over the gravel, and a small, furry figure wound around my legs. I reached down to give Macavity a pat on his head.
An electric window buzzed, followed by the clunk of the door opening and heavy footsteps. I raised my head to find Kain standing in front of the car, dressed in black jeans and a matching leather jacket, looking like a baby James Dean.
He folded his arms across his chest. “They said you’d be half dead by now.”
“They also told me to come with them and they’d take care of me.” I made air quotes with my fingers. “Have they been treating you alright?”
Kain raised a shoulder. “When they’re not fighting with the Supernatural Council, their uncle is trying to groom me for rulership. I told them I wasn’t ready, but their uncle says I’ll just be a figurehead until I reach a hundred.”
“Sorry,” I muttered.
Macavity trotted over to Kain and batted him on the side of his leg. The young vampire tried ignoring him, but the cat rose to his hind legs and placed his front paws on his knees, forcing Kain to tickle his ears. I guessed Macavity had a thing for children.
“How did the research go?” I asked.
Kain shook his head. “Every healer I spoke to said it was impossible to survive with foreign bodies in the blood, and they wouldn’t know how to get it out without killing you with a complete transfusion.”
My shoulders sagged. “If my aunt put it in there, she must know a way to get it out.”
“I had one of Valentine’s clerks check the palace library, but most of the books were in ancient languages…”
“Right,” I said. “They don’t exactly teach Latin in state schools.”
He snorted. “They barely teach English.”
That explained why Valentine hadn’t enrolled Kain in the academy. If he wasn’t even learning languages yet, Kain’s human school had to be pretty bad. I met his blue eyes and wrapped my arms around my middle, hoping he would share something positive.
“Any leads on Valentine’s heart?”
Kain raised a finger, turned on his heel, and walked back to his car. My heart skipped a beat. Surely he wouldn’t have transported an organ out of Logris? I followed after him, breathing hard to contain the nervous fluttering of my stomach. If the heart had been magically preserved, taking it out would make it rot. The article I’d read in Istabelle’s library mentioned something about hearts going putrid…
He opened the door, leaned across the passenger seat, and pulled out a seven-inch-long glass dome with a transparent base. Floating inside was a supernatural heart, complete with a massive fifth chamber in the middle that made the heart wider than the narrow organ of a human.
The heart pulsed, pushing tendrils of magic in and out of the veins and arteries in an endless loop. My throat thickened, and the back of my eyes stung with tears. I had expected a dead organ, not this. It was the rose in Beauty and the Beast, but with a perfectly preserved heart instead of a flower.
“I’ve never seen anything like this,” Kain said, his voice breathy. “Are all supernatural hearts shaped like beefsteak tomatoes?”
“At the academy, we thought human hearts were like the cartoonish shapes on playing cards,” I murmured.
Kain placed the jar in the driver’s seat and turned to me with a half-smile. “And they said I would never amount to anything if I continued shoplifting.”
“Thank you.” I flung my arms around Kain’s neck. “We’re one step closer to—”
A growl tore through the air, making every fine hair on the back of my neck stand on end. I jumped back and spun toward Beatrice’s building, where a cloaked figure stood on top of the roof.
Valentine.
He swept out an arm, creating a whirlwind that sent twigs and fallen leaves lashing through the air. Macavity yowled and skittered beneath the BMW for shelter, and I pulled back my shoulders and clenched my teeth.
“Kain, get in the car,” I said, still glaring up at the dark figure on the roof.
“What’s wrong?” he said from behind.
“Just do it.”
Kain gasped. I turned to find the young vampire rising through the air, clutching at invisible bonds around his throat. Kain thrashed like a man hanging from a rope, spluttering and struggling for breath.
Fury rushed through my insides, making the pulse between my ears pound like a war drum. How dare he attack an innocent boy? Balling my hands into fists, I rushed to the front of the building.
“Valentine,” I hissed. “Come down here and stop that right now. He’s your bloody heir, not your rival.”
Valentine floated down, holding out his clenched fist like he was trying to crush the boy’s throat. As soon as he was within grabbing distance, I slapped at his outstretched arm, but he snatched my wrist.
“You belong to me,” he snarled.
“Stop it.” I kicked at his shin, trying to knock some sense into him. I would have kneed him in the balls if he wasn’t already holding me at arm’s length. “Kain just found your heart, and this is how you repay him?”
Valentine unclenched his fist, making Kain drop to the ground with a pained grunt. I turned to find Kain scrambling backward across the gravel with a hand over his throat, and breathing hard.
“What the hell?” Kain said through gasping breaths.
My chest tightened. I had hoped Kain wouldn’t see his guardian like this, but I hadn’t expected Valentine to arrive so soon. “I’m sorry. Since Valentine died, he’s been—”
“Mera belongs to me.” Valentine stepped forward with a snarl.
Placing both hands on Valentine’s chest, I pushed my weight against his body to shove him back, but the stubborn vampire wouldn’t take the hint. He continued toward Kain, pushing me across the gravel courtyard.
“He gets feral if he hasn't fed.” I glanced over my shoulder, wishing Kain would get inside the car instead of standing next to it with his hand on the driver’s door.
“Fed?” Kain’s eyes bulged. “When you said he was eighty percent himself, I thought you meant he had a few quirks.”
I grimaced and dug my fingers into Valentine’s reverberating chest, feeling like Hagrid trying to downplay a ferocious beast. “He turns into a corpse if he doesn’t eat. Could you get into the car for a little bit while I try to talk him down?”
Kain opened the door, picked up the glass dome, and scooted inside.
I turned back to Valentine and placed both hands on his cool cheeks. It turned my stomach to ask the question, but I had to know. “When did you last feed?”
“Not since before you were taken,” he said, still glowering at Kain.
“Did you cut down on how many humans you ate because of me?”
His eyes met mine, and his brows furrowed into a frown. “You left because of the men in the basement.”
I exhaled a long breath. Of course I didn’t want Valentine draining humans of their blood, but I also didn’t want him to regress to the snarling creature that had risen from the dead. “Is there a way you can drink a few mouthfuls of a person’s blood and leave them alive?”
He stared down at me with red eyes. “Humans are weak. It takes the blood of two to sustain my body.”
“And what about the blood of a Neutral?” I cupped the side of his face.
Valentine stepped back. “Never.”
Kain started the engine of his car, and his headlights lit up the courtyard. I exhaled a weary breath and slid my hands down to Valentine’s chest. We were so close to restoring him to life—all we needed was a healer. “Stay here while I fetch your heart, okay?”
Valentine’s eyes narrowed.
As Kain revved the engine, I released my hold on Valentine and jogged to his car. He wound down the window, staring at a point behind my shoulder.
“Will you be alright with him?” Kain’s eyes darted from side to side.
I nodded. “He’s just a little possessive when he’s hungry.”
“Sorry I couldn’t find someone to filter your blood.” He grimaced and dipped his gaze to the heart. “I was about to tell you something when…”
Valentine’s hard body pressed against mine. I twisted around and shot him a filthy glare, but he was too busy glowering down at Kain with those red eyes to notice.
“Go on,” I said.
“There was another trial earlier today.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “The Supernatural Council found you guilty of raising a preternatural vampire and condemned you to Hell.”
My eyes bulged. I choked on air, imagining invisible hands pulling me into a fiery pit. “What does that mean?”
“Nothing unless they catch you,” Valentine growled.
I reached over my shoulder, giving him what I hoped would be a reassuring pat. “Valentine will keep us both safe until I can unlock my magic.”
Kain shook his head. “But they also found your coven guilty of harboring a fire wielder. Tomorrow morning will be their execution.”
Chapter Nineteen
A sword of grief sliced through my defenses and pierced my heart. With a choked sob, I reeled forward, nearly falling onto Kain’s car. Every muscle in my body turned slack with the shock of his words.
Valentine wrapped an arm around my back and held me steady. He turned toward Kain, his eyes glowing with red fury. “Are you sure about this?”
Kain stared up at us and gulped. “I overheard your uncle making an announcement to your brothers. If I told Mera about her aunt before telling her everything else—”
“Nothing else would have sunk in,” I said with a moan.
“Sorry.”
I shook my head. “We’ve got to do something.”
“Leave us,” Valentine said, his voice clipped.
Kain’s eyes widened. “What about the heart?”
I placed both hands on Valentine’s chest. “You need to feed, but first, you’re going to take your heart. And you’ll thank Kain for putting himself at risk to save you.”
Valentine’s eyes narrowed. I glowered at the space between his eyes, not wanting to risk being mesmerized when he was in this strange, half-feral state. With a snarl, he walked around the front of the car to the front-passenger side, and opened the door.
Kain flinched, and something deep in my heart shattered. The boy was frightened of Valentine, and I couldn’t blame him. I exhaled a long breath. Loving a preternatural vampire was difficult, especially one still trying to find an equilibrium between mass murder and keeping his sanity intact.
Valentine emerged from the car, clutching the glass dome to his chest. At the same time, Macavity crept out from beneath the car and trotted to my side.
“Thank you,” I said to Kain. “I’ll try to get him back to normal as soon as I can.”
The young vampire gave me a sharp nod before reversing out of the courtyard and back onto The Causeway and through Wimbledon Common.
After slipping the dome into a pocket of his cloak, Valentine slid a cool hand around the back of my neck and met my gaze. “Are you alright?”
I shook my head and clutched at the rough fibers of Valentine’s borrowed cloak. “I thought the Council was waiting to capture you first before trying to execute my aunt.”
Valentine closed his eyes. “The Council sometimes uses this ploy with difficult outlaws. Someone must have told them that hurting your aunt was the key to capturing you and me.”
“What do they want?” I asked.
“They expect us to negotiate for your coven’s freedom, or…” Valentine clenched his jaw and growled. “Or they are setting up a trap.”
“Because if I broke out of their prison once—”
“Then you can break in to rescue your coven.” He scooped me up into his arms, lowered himself for Macavity to climb up his cloak, and rose into the sky.
Valentine took his time, perhaps because of Macavity’s precarious position of being draped over one of Valentine’s shoulders with his claws digging into the cloak.
I rested my head against his other shoulder, breathing in his woodsmoke scent and staring out at the acres of trees and shrubs that made up Wimbledon Common. There was no way in Heaven, Hell, or Logris that I could muster up enough magic to break into the prison and then break out with Aunt Arianna and the rest of the coven. That first time I had gotten out of my cell, I hadn’t even made it to the door before enforcers arrived.
My throat thickened, and I wrapped my arms around Valentine’s neck, clinging to his strength. “Do you have any ideas?”
“You will not venture anywhere near Logris,” he said over the wind.
“But they’ll get executed if we do nothing.”
“Use the fire mages,” he said with a bite in his voice.
I drew back, meeting his red eyes set within a face twisted with disgust. He was probably thinking about how the fire mages burned down the garden to smoke us out of the house. “You think they’d help us?”
“Our choices are limited,” he said. “The Council likely allowed Kain to leave Logris to pass on that information and lure us into a trap of their own making.”
As we continued through the air, my gaze dropped down to the cars racing down the long stretch of road that led to Wimbledon High Street, where Beatrice had wanted us to go out for dinner. Valentine’s theory didn’t explain why they would also allow Kain to escape Logris with his heart or why they hadn’t attempted to capture either of us. I put that thought away and decided to ask Valentine the question after he had fed and was back to his usual state of mind.
“Where did you go today?” I asked.
“To negotiate accommodation from some demons I trust even less than that Jonathan fellow.”
I suppressed a fresh bout of anxiety and focussed on the streets below. Valentine was right about us not having many choices. Everyone we knew either had no magic or was too young to help us deal with the Council, and I would sooner put my faith in a mother that I hadn’t met than the subjects of a demon who collected the souls of fire wielders.
“Let’s go back to the mansion, and get back that thing the ifrit gave me in the garden,” I asked.
“No need.” Valentine shifted a little before pressing something warm and heavy into my hand.
It was a matchbox-sized stone that glowed and pulsed with amber light. “You saved it?”
“I meant to destroy it, but if these people can use fire to transport themselves across long distances,
they may also be able to retrieve your coven. If we don’t like their price, I can compel them to do our bidding.”
My tongue darted out to lick my dry lips. My mother had to know that Aunt Arianna was in trouble. Even if the woman was heartless, she still owed her sister for taking care of me my entire life. I swallowed hard, hoping it wouldn’t have to come to violating their minds as it wasn’t something I would wish even on Jonathan.
“Let’s do it,” I murmured.
Valentine flew over Wimbledon toward Putney and the Thames, but just when I thought he would cross the river to reach Fulham, he landed straight in the middle of Putney High Street, just before the bridge. A double-decker bus whizzed past on our left, and a black cab trundled past on our right. A jolt of terror struck my heart, making me suck in a breath through my teeth, but nobody slowed or honked their horns.
I caught glimpses of a Medieval church through the streams of evening traffic, and I wondered if we had stopped because its presence had bothered Valentine. If he was vulnerable to sunlight and didn’t cast a reflection, some of the other vampire myths might also be true.
Macavity climbed down from Valentine’s shoulder and draped his warm body over my chest, peering out at the traffic passing over my shoulder.
“How does this cloak work again?” I asked, hoping I wasn’t appearing like a woman hovering in midair with a cat.
A smile curved his lips, and he reached down. “Anything I touch becomes invisible to humans.”
“And why did we stop in the middle of the road?” I asked.
“So as not to break through Koffie’s wards.” Valentine set me on my feet.
“Koffie?”
He reached down and grabbed my hand. “Logris is the largest supernatural community in Great Britain, but there are lots of small fiefdoms run by powerful beings who don’t recognize the authority of the Supernatural Council.”
“And it’s named after a drink?” I pictured a huge demon sitting on a throne, surrounded by worshippers.
The traffic lights turned red, and a single-decker bus stopped at the crossing with a Volkswagen Polo at its side carrying a small family of pale blonds. As we crossed to the sidewalk, I peered into the vehicles, checking that nobody could see us, but the passengers’ heads didn’t swivel to track our movements.
