by Joey W. Hill
"Did I ask your opinion?" Cai bared his fangs, ignoring the wolf's startled look. "If you can't follow me like a good dog--the way they like their servants to act--then stay here."
Rand laid back his ears. Cold-hearted bastard. Playing with heads. Hearts.
Cai curled a lip over the steel fang, the rough edges of it a familiar reminder against his callused lip. "Go away, wolf. I don't need you. Take off. This isn't your world or your problem. Stop acting like it is. If you're going to pretend to be something you're not, do it with your own kind. Find yourself a happy little picket fence pack, if you can get another female wolf to be your beard."
If not for the situation with Georg and his daughter, Rand would have taken the vampire down, right then and there. Cai saw it, that derisive sneer crossing his face, another taunt, before he pivoted, walking away.
"Anytime you feel lucky, wolf. You might spill a few drops of my blood on her carpets. She won't think twice about putting you down for something like that."
Cai headed down the hall. Rand stayed in place, trying to contain the red haze of temper. It would feel good to let the animal take over, go after him, wreak havoc. But he was no pup with impulse control issues, no matter that Cai seemed to have a unique ability to trigger them.
No, he hadn't known the vampire long, and Cai didn't act like he cared overly much for anyone or anything, but it didn't seem his style to be deliberately cruel.
As the vampire reached the study door, he did something curious. Putting his hand on the door latch, he paused. A deep breath, then his shoulders squared, and he turned the latch, pushing the door open.
Oh, hell. Rand's anger dissipated. He really had been away from human society too long if he'd fallen for the go away dog, I don't want you routine they did in countless children's movies.
Cai didn't want Rand in that room. Rand just didn't know why.
So Rand followed him. If Cai had closed the door, he'd knock the damn thing down, though the oak looked solid as a brick wall. Fortunately, the door was only pushed closed, not latched. Rand nudged it open and slid into the room.
Cai's head turned just enough to show his profile, then he returned his attention to Lyssa. She was sitting at a desk, Jacob nearby, leaning against a bookcase, arms crossed over his broad chest.
Rand was surprised when the servant nodded to him. He would have been equally surprised if he'd given him that courteous nod while Rand was in human form. Maybe servants cut each other some slack, knowing that an asshole vampire didn't necessarily make for an asshole servant. The servant might even deserve some sympathy for putting up with said asshole. And a stiff drink. Or a raw steak.
"So I am here," Lyssa said. "Speak your words, Cai." Her jade-colored eyes frosted. "If your reason for an audience is simply to wield power you have not earned, and not to give me useful information that will help Lord Georg's daughter, you will sorely regret testing my patience. Be courteous and speak swiftly. I will not warn you to mind your manners again."
"Yeah." Cai sat down in the chair across from her. The one word wasn't spoken as a sarcastic challenge, however. More as an absent-minded acknowledgement as he focused on other things.
"There's only one enclave of Trads in the Appalachians. You're sure they're the ones that have her?"
Jacob nodded.
"How?" Cai asked bluntly. "And how did you know about my connection to them?"
Jacob glanced at Lyssa, and the queen spoke. "We petitioned the help of a sorcerer and his wife, who is a powerful witch with even more powerful friends. One of them performed a divination spell to determine how best to locate Dovia before it was too late. Your name and a few particulars came up. Not too many about you or the Appalachian group, unfortunately. Just that you had been with them, but were no longer, and if we found you, the chances were high you would have information and resources to help our purpose."
"Oh, thanks. That explains everything." Cai nodded sagely. "You went to a fortune teller and she told you a mysterious stranger would put you on the path to success."
Rand winced at the caustic tone. He sincerely hoped the vampire queen wouldn't kill Cai. If anyone was going to kill that annoying son of a bitch, it was going to be him.
Lyssa didn't bat an eye lash. "Thanks to that sorcerer and his wife," she said, "you were found within twenty-four hours. In the middle of thousands of acres of national forest, with the aid of an enchanted necklace."
Cai blinked and a moment of silence reigned. Then he shrugged. "Okay. Fair point."
Leaning forward, he laced his fingers between spread knees. Rand noticed a sudden tension in the way his hands were locked together, in the set of his shoulders.
"The ones who took her are a hardcore purist Trad sect," Cai said. "Originally all born vamps. But Trads go through cycles when their numbers decrease and they realize they have to dirty their purist beliefs with a certain amount of made ones. They have a lot of protocol and ritual to it, both the choosing and the indoctrination process, which makes them feel better. They've had more applicants to choose from in recent years. Made vamps coming into their ranks from the outside, the ones who are disillusioned with your way of doing things."
Lyssa's expression remained flat. "We are aware of that trend."
"They've only added to the existing hard-on that run-of-the-mill Trads possess to snag a born female vampire. That's the ultimate prize for all of them. But for this Appalachian group, it's the holy fucking grail. Doesn't matter how slim the chances of conception are; to have a Trad born from that union would prop up their purist manifesto for centuries. They've got a whole chosen ones' thing, about being the only ones smart enough to make it happen, and elevate the Trad race. Psycho and stupid, but that's their crazy-assed MO."
He took a breath. "They won't waste time. They want her to conceive as soon as possible, and they'll set aside hierarchy. Normally, it's might is right and the strongest can take and keep what he wants, even more so than in your society. However, in the interest of having her conceive as quickly as possible, the guy in charge will share her with the rest of his select group of hangers-on."
His voice became wooden. "They won't be gentle about it, but they won't be physically brutal, either. They don't want the vessel or the potential conception to be at risk. They'll feed her, see to her basic needs. Far better than they do for the human women they've taken and tried to breed with. They're not as careful with them, because human women can be replaced more quickly and easily."
Rand felt ill. Jacob's face had hardened with unmistakable anger. Lyssa's countenance still revealed nothing, but the room temperature was a different matter. Rand wouldn't have been surprised to see icicles form a border on the front of the large desk. When she leaned forward, her gaze fixed on Cai like it could spear him. His wolf wanted to start backing up. "So, they have likely already begun this...process," she said.
"Yeah. Kind of what I meant by 'they won't waste any time,'" Cai confirmed.
Those jade eyes sharpened in warning. "You know where this sect is."
"Approximately, yeah. They like a particular stomping ground, but it covers a wide area. One of the most human-remote parts of West Virginia, deep-assed mountains, not much human activity. I can draw you a map."
As Cai described some of the landmarks, Rand sat up taller, ears twitching. Cai glanced toward him. Rand hadn't meant to draw attention, but if the location Cai was describing was where Rand thought it was, there might be at least one shifter pack nearby. Additional eyes and ears.
Not that he'd want that shared with the vampires. Hell, he kept forgetting about the mind reading thing.
Cai cocked his head, his firm lips quirking, but the worry Rand felt was quickly alleviated. Cai finished his explanation without revealing Rand's thoughts. A cue they'd discuss it later, just the two of them.
Lyssa templed her fingers. "You're a made vampire, Cai. A Trad."
His lips tightened. "Yes to the first. No to the second."
"How are you not? To v
alidate your information and use that to help us retrieve Dovia, I need to establish your history with them."
"Trust is your problem. You don't need shit. I tell you what I want to tell you and--"
Cai stopped abruptly. Lyssa hadn't moved, but something had changed about the energy around her. Rand felt a note of distress strangled from Cai's mind, which was suddenly eerily open to Rand, yet obscured in a fog.
"Stop," Cai managed in a choked snarl.
Rand didn't think. Simply surged forward, gathering himself to leap, ready to land all four feet on her desk, his snapping jaws inches from her face. Why, he didn't know, because he'd been ready to tear Cai apart himself. Maybe this second mark shit made his pack instinct override everything else.
Jacob met him halfway. Rand was startled that the servant could move that fast, but they came toe to toe and Jacob risked his fingers by throwing up an admonishing hand.
"Wait and watch," he murmured. "She knows what she's doing. Your Master will come to no harm unless he deserves it."
Oh, he deserves it. That's not the point. And not my Master, Rand added for good measure, though pointless since he was only talking to himself.
"You demanded this meeting out of courtesy," Lyssa said quietly. "I demand the same from you, Mordecai."
She did something that released him, for abruptly Cai's body slumped as if cut from a gallows arm. He sprang up just as quickly, moving behind the chair and taking a defensive stance, fists up and face laced with fury. She didn't move. Jacob stepped back, though he stayed close, in Rand's peripheral vision.
"Don't do that," Cai gritted. "Ever again."
"An improvement. You didn't curse, though you didn't say please." Lyssa gestured to the chair. "Shall we try again? Explain to me why you're not Trad, but you know so much of them."
Cai stared at her. The vampire seemed conflicted about what to do next, but it surprised Rand when he returned to the chair. He sat on the edge of the seat, though, his body reflecting his tension.
If I throw that rock now, will you go?
No.
Cai coughed over a harsh half-chuckle that had no humor in it. Stubborn-ass shifter.
Lyssa had given him a curious look at the laugh. Cai subsided, falling silent and staring a hole in the side of the desk. The vampire queen clasped her hands in a loose knot on the desk.
"You are correct," she said abruptly. "You were brought here against your will, Mordecai. While that isn't always an inappropriate thing in the vampire world, I'll offer you something for your total honesty. Whatever things you wish protected about yourself will not leave this room. I won't tell the others how you come by the knowledge you have, unless it is pertinent to finding her."
Now Cai looked surprised. Lyssa's expression didn't change. Rand thought she must practice being a statue, but whatever Cai read from her face seemed to work. Rand tended to use senses other than vision to pick up what was really happening. Even as human, his sense of smell was far more developed. What he detected from Lyssa, after exercising whatever power had allowed her to manacle Cai's mind that brief moment, was a sliver of sympathy. She'd seen something in Cai's reaction that had made her realize a different tactic was needed, a different type of sincerity. Rand had no idea what it was until Cai spoke.
"I was taken by a Trad from that Appalachian group when I was fifteen. And human."
Rand's gaze snapped to Cai. He was standing where he could see the male's profile, and Cai's expression looked brittle as glass.
"Why would the Trads take a young male?" Jacob asked.
Cai's voice took on a bitter edge. "I met the choosing guidelines. I had some abilities they thought would be useful."
"Which would be?" Lyssa asked.
Cai said nothing for a long moment. Then he reached toward the desk and the potted plant there, which had a variety of purple blooms. Plucking one off its stem, he closed it in his hand. After another pause, he lifted his gaze and met Lyssa's eyes.
Magic warmed the air around Cai. Different from what he'd used to reinforce the chains or heal Rand, but similar. Closer to this.
Perhaps twenty seconds had ticked by when Cai opened his hand. Rand and Jacob pressed forward to see what he had revealed to Lyssa.
A newborn flower was breaking through the seed that had been fertilized inside the cup of the blossom. Before their eyes, it kept growing until it bloomed, a newer, vibrant version of the mature flower. The threadlike roots overlapped the split sides of the seed and spread out over the lines of Cai's palm.
Creation magic. That was why it hadn't felt exactly like healing energy to Rand. Creation magic could be used to heal, though in a different way from healing magic itself. Creation magic could not only spawn life, but it could change the nature of things, accelerate their process, like healing a wound, or making chain far stronger than expected.
Rand hadn't expected a vampire like Cai to possess the talent for it, or the head of the Vampire Council to recognize it. But the flicker in Lyssa's eyes said she did. Cai had said she was part-Fae, after all.
Sorcerers, the Fae, shifters. While all of those knew of creation magic, few could use it as Cai had just done. And he was implying he'd had the ability as a young human, perhaps even since birth. But to what extent?
The exercise or presence of such magic would leave a detectable signature to a shifter, and possibly even other vampires. Though Rand had detected those traces of power from the vampire, when not in use, their presence was so faint as to be overlooked or mistaken for the latent power Cai had as a vampire. Was that natural or practiced? Had Cai intentionally learned to mask it so completely? If so, why?
Lyssa and Jacob had their gazes locked on the vampire, and Rand could only imagine the ricochet of thoughts passing between them. With an odd self-consciousness, Cai worked the new flower into the plant's soil, tamping it down around the roots with gentle fingers before he sat back. "I expect you understand why the Trads would be interested in a guy who could make a seed germinate."
"Any seed." Lyssa said it as a statement.
"Yeah, that's what they thought." Cai's lips twisted. "I'd be king of the world if we ever get hit by famine, because it only works on plants. Fortunately, I have the survival skills of a cockroach, so when they realized I couldn't make a human woman fertile from their seed, those skills helped me figure out how to stay alive. They never caught a female vampire while I was with them, but eventually they believed I couldn't do it with any type of female mammal. By that time, I was making my mark as a useful member of their fucked-up little society. Another vampire in the group turned me. Not the one who took me from my family."
He lifted a shoulder. "A made vamp can leave if he kills at least one other member of the clan, proving he's no longer the bottom of the totem pole. It took a hundred years, but I did it."
"That's an extraordinary amount of determination," Lyssa said.
"I don't like anyone to take choices out of my hands." He met her gaze. "Don't do what you just did to me, ever again."
Her lips curved. "Can you stop me?"
"No. Not right now. But I figured out how to kill a Trad after a hundred years. I'm willing to put in the time to figure out how to set you back on your heels if you fuck with me."
Jacob shifted and Lyssa's gaze slid to him. He stilled, a muscle flexing in his jaw. Rand had moved with him, though, and the midnight blue eyes cut to him. "Going to take us both on?" the servant asked the wolf, with deceptive mildness.
"He gets stupidly protective in that form," Cai advised. "Logic won't have anything to do with it."
"Hard to figure out how to stop me if you're dead," Lyssa pointed out to Cai, ignoring Rand and Jacob as if the servants' exchange hadn't happened.
"Trads tried their best to kill me. If you succeed where they failed, then that's that. But otherwise...just don't."
Rand's gaze slid back to Cai. The note in his voice was unclassifiable, but it came out close to a proper petition to a vampire queen. Well, as close as
someone like Cai could manage. But the emotion behind it was one soul speaking to another.
Cai liked this queen, Rand realized. Respected her, as much as the vampire could respect anyone. He had obviously picked up in a short time what Rand had drawn from her, too. She wasn't set against him, against anyone. She would act in the best interest of the vampire girl, and of the vampires as a whole.
Before Rand could get used to Cai's shift in attitude, he went right back to being confrontational.
"Some years after I was taken, I found out my human mother went above and beyond to try to find me. When she started babbling crazy shit about vampires, my father was afraid for the rest of my siblings and had her put in an asylum." Cai stared at Lyssa. "You know how awful most of those were in the early 1800s? But before that happened, she discovered who the local vampire in charge was and went, a lowly human, to seek an audience. Graham. Think he's an overlord in California now. Not that I give a flying fuck about your attempt at a government, but I've tried to keep track of him."
Cai's jaw tightened. "He told her that the fate of humans fallen into vampire hands, particularly Trads, was not their concern. Unless she had something to trade worth having, she wouldn't leave an audience with him alive. So she was shared with him and several other visiting vampires for a couple days. She would have died there, but his servant risked Graham's wrath, and dropped her off at a city hospital during daylight hours. That was when the babbling about vampires landed her in an institution. Her mind was probably broken from those few days with them, so she couldn't pretend not to know about vampires. She died a few years later."
He rose. Jacob drew closer, but Lyssa lifted a hand, stilling him. "Let him say his peace," she said quietly.
"Yeah, let me say my peace." Cai's lip curled. "So, when you want me to care about fucking vampires, you are barking up the wrong fucking tree. I owe no one my allegiance, and any one of you can do your best to kill me, but it won't change that. I'll be dead and gone before I'll pay a tithe, bow down, suck the dick or follow whatever the hell protocols that overlords, Region Masters or the head of the goddamn Vampire Council lay out."
