I glanced around the small waiting area, but he wasn’t there. “Can’t he just come find me?”
Marie gave me a superior look, and I could tell she was making an effort to be nice since I’d saved her job. “Your schedule doesn’t work like that anymore.”
Fuck me.
Olivier left me to get acquainted with my new office. A quick scan of it said I would need some serious redecorating if I was, in fact, going to keep this position, which I very much so hoped not.
Marie led me up to my desk where she placed the blue folder and adjusted it until it was perfectly straight, minus the deep finger marks she’d made on one corner. “Othello left this for his successor, in case someone ever became the leader without him here.”
I eyed the folder with more scrutiny than I’d had when I was staring at the finger marks. “He knew this would happen?”
“No,” she said with a mournful giggle. “He was very thorough. He wanted to make sure everything would be taken care of for any scenario.” She bobbed low to the carpet and twirled around before exiting my office.
I picked up the folder, opening it to find a handwritten note from Othello addressed to me.
Dear Lisbeth,
I am aware that the requirement behind writing this letter is to address it to my successor. I have no way of knowing if that will be you, however, I remain hopeful that you’re the one reading this. Especially since most of what I say will not make sense to anyone else.
Change is coming to our people, whether we want it to or not. In a way, I’m glad you’ll be there to guide them through it, because if any of us can, it’s you. You can expertly navigate through the waters of the masses until they have all sided with you, and trust you to bring them to a safe harbor. They don’t need to know whether or not you know what you’re doing. All they need to know is that you believe you can come out the other side into a better world.
We are an old race. We don’t like to change, even if it means our destruction. Any resistance you find should be met with confidence. If someone tells you ‘we don’t do it like that,’ tell them, ‘we do now.’
The letter was written on old, aged paper with a quill and ink, even though the wording suggested he had written it recently. Othello was nothing if not old fashioned. His words were deep and meaningful, and I didn’t deserve them, but I would try my best to earn them. I opened the top drawer to my left and slipped the letter into it.
Marie burst in unannounced with Arthur right behind her. She sashayed up to me and dropped an envelope on my desk.
“Arthur is here to see you,” she said smartly before turning around and going back out.
“Arthur,” I said with a respectful nod to him, noting he’d gone for a more casual look with a black t-shirt that revealed the top of his Hunter tattoo.
He looked as if meeting me in Othello’s office was completely normal. “I wish to remain at the Order and become your personal bodyguard.”
I blinked and shook my head a few times, making sure my ears hadn’t heard wrong. “You what? You hate it here. And I know you don’t exactly like me either, Miss Rule Breaker and all.”
He folded his hands in front of his toned body in a military business-like manner. I tried not to stare at his massive arms that were exposed with his short sleeves. “Those days are past. Your position is not safe with Othello having been abducted like that under our noses. I know how to guard someone properly, as you’ve seen.”
He certainly did.
“Will I be on house arrest again?” I said, only half serious. The tension inside me gave just a little, knowing he would be here when I needed him. Sure, he was still a total ass, but I would need him in my corner now.
He almost smiled back at me. “No. But I will escort you to and from your office, as well as when you leave the castle. We’ll set up a security pad on your office door so that only authorized people can get in, same with your rooms.”
“I give you permission to do whatever you deem necessary to protect everyone here, not just me. And I accept your request to be my bodyguard.”
He relaxed, as if he’d been afraid I would refuse his offer. “I’ll bring you an itemized report of all the changes I’ll be implementing.”
“Good.” I fiddled with my fingers and glanced down at the envelope Marie had brought. I didn’t recognize the handwriting.
“Marie should be opening your mail from now on,” Arthur commented when he noticed the letter.
“I’m not the president, for fuck’s sake,” I murmured. I picked up the envelope, a plain design like one buys in packs of 100 at the supermarket. I grabbed a fancy knife letter opener and slit it at the top, then pulled out the letter. The letter was nice paper with no letterhead, but embossed edges so it was definitely expensive. I opened it and a 2-dollar bill slid into my lap. The paper had four things written on it.
“Congratulations on your new job.
You’re not seeing things.
Where does that door lead to?
Signed, Sara the Amazing.”
15. Something hidden
At first, I was surprised she hadn’t mentioned my treatment of her, but she’d always seemed the forgiving type. Then I started giggling, going back and forth between the letter and the random 2-dollar bill. I kept laughing, getting louder by the second with tears pouring down my cheeks until I noticed Olivier standing next to Arthur. I’d laughed so loud I didn’t hear her coming in. I set the letter and the 2-dollar bill down on my desk and wiped my cheeks clean.
“Yes?” I asked her calmly, a few giggles trying to escape.
She raised a curved eyebrow at me so I’d know exactly how weird I was acting. “I’ve put out feelers for the nearby rogue vampires, in case anyone has seen the turned or Othello.”
“And?”
Her gaze turned dark with irritation. “And nothing. They haven’t seen anything. No one has seen anything. Not the humans, not the rogues, not anyone. The turned disappeared into thin air.”
I leaned back in the enormous desk chair and thought it over for a few minutes. “What about the packs?”
Olivier and Arthur both gave me shocked looks, that I would even consider involving the Lycans in our problems. You’d think I’d just stripped naked for their horror.
I rolled my eyes at them and sighed. “Fine. Let’s ignore a completely legitimate alternative to finding Othello. Who knows? Maybe one day we’ll find his corpse at the bottom of the Grand Canyon.”
Olivier frowned at me. “With all due respect, Madam Lisbeth, I would rather tear off my own head than side with the Lycans.”
“We mean this with complete reverence for your position, but your opinion on this matter is biased,” Arthur added, though with less venom than Olivier.
And there it was, my new life laid out so finely before me. People would no longer be willing to speak informally to me. It would be ‘with respect’ this, and ‘Madam Lisbeth’ that. I wanted to curse Othello’s name under the burning sun for being kidnapped, and then curse myself for being the next oldest. Damn it.
I slumped further into my giant chair and sighed again. My stomach jumped a few times as if the child inside was checking to make sure I was okay. I rubbed near where the kicking was going on to reassure her, and she calmed down.
“We apologize,” Arthur said with a more even tone, his eyes going to my belly as his expression tightened. “We are causing distress to your child.”
My ironic laugh shook my stomach. “This entire job is causing distress to both of us.” And magically, they both relaxed, the formal tone leaving the room. I rubbed my belly in thanks. “Look,” I started. “I don’t want you two acting like that around me. No ‘Madam Lisbeth’, or ‘with respect.’ Not when we’re alone. You’re both my friends.” I glanced over at Arthur’s stoic iciness. “Sort of,” I added. “Let me pose the question again. The Lycans could help us.”
“Hell no,” Olivier said with a firm shake of her head. “We don’t need them. We’ll never ne
ed them. We can find Othello and the turned on our own.”
“And if you can’t?” I asked her.
Arthur crossed his hands over his chest. “Have faith in our skills.”
“Fine,” I answered in defeat.
The best description of my attitude about their decision was pouting. I was pouting. I couldn’t say why, but I wanted relations between the vampires and Lycans to improve. Okay, fine. I could say why. Because maybe if our two species weren’t so against each other, maybe Knight would still be with me. I couldn’t salvage what I had had with him, but I could fix the animosity between our people in memory of it. In theory, anyway. Asking for it so soon after becoming their leader was probably not a wise choice. I was prepared to wait. I’d wait any amount of time for it to happen. As long as it did.
After a week had passed and the Hunters still hadn’t found Othello. I was beginning to wonder if we ever would, since I doubted his survival was high on the turned’s list of priorities. Still, no matter the odds of him returning, I was unwilling to move into his suite, which would’ve involved evicting Marie, nor was I going to redecorate his office just yet. The only new things in it were two letters I kept in the top drawer of my desk. The one from Othello stayed in the envelope. The one from Sara I took out every day to re-read and try to figure out what she was thinking when she wrote such a cryptic thing.
‘You’re not seeing things.’
Right. Of course I wasn’t. Because everyone sees their dead boyfriend chilling in their room when they get really sad. Why didn’t I think of that? Oh, right, because he only appeared when I wanted him to, which meant I was definitely delusional and needed therapy, or just stiffer alcohol, but that might make me see other things that weren’t there, like can-can dancers, or Thomas Jefferson.
Even so, it wasn’t that line of her letter that was baffling me. It was the third line.
‘Where does that door lead to?’
Door? What door? Unless there was a magic door that leads to Narnia and only opened on the second Tuesday of every month, I had no idea what door she was talking about, but that was Sara for you. Half of what she said made no sense, and the other half was worth paying attention to. I figured the thing about me seeing things was the no sense part, and the door was important. That meant I had to figure it out.
So. Door. Hmm. I glanced around the room, but there was still the same number of doors are there had been the day before. Two. The double door entrance, and the one to the bathroom. No other doors. I had considered it might be a hidden door, but the wording in the note didn’t suggest that. Though, taking it at face value could be a mistake.
I stood up, balanced my heavy belly with a hand over it, and walked over to the wall on my left. My fingers found no hidden switches or buttons. I continued down the wall, stopping at the large marble fireplace to rest.
I rubbed my tummy. “Little one,” I said to it. “You’re making me out of breath. It’s embarrassing.” She kicked my hand in response. I couldn’t tell if she was being sassy or just liked kicking me when I talked to her. I slumped down into one of the fancy chairs by the fireplace and studied everything absently.
Othello had fancy taste, more so than I used to. The trinkets on the fireplace ranged from Hercules to butterflies, but they were all made by very famous artisans. Their appeal was who made them, not what they looked like.
There was one with rough edges in the shape of ‘The Thinker.’ It didn’t look expensive, in fact, it was made quite cheaply. I stood up and walked over to it. While the other trinkets were made from precious metals or stone, ‘The Thinker’ was made from plastic. I picked it up and expected a door to open in the wall or a hidden passage behind the fireplace.
Nothing happened.
I glared at the cheap statue in disappointment and shook my finger at it as punishment. How dare you get my hopes up, you hunk of plastic? I took it with me back to my desk and set it on the wooden surface before leaning back into my chair with a huff. Stupid statue pretending to be a clue. Now I’d never find the door.
I stood up and pushed at the desk hard enough to move it, but it didn’t budge. That was weird. Why would Othello bolt down his desk? There was no reason to. I studied it for a clue and noticed there were two squares on the top of the desk. They looked like decorations, just part of the desk design, but one was sunken in with a lamp on top of it.
The squares were the same size as the statue.
I picked up the model and swiped away the pile of papers blocking the square. When I placed the statue onto the square, it sunk in and made a heavy clicking sound.
This was so fucking awesome!!
A panel on the left wall I’d just examined clicked and popped out. The seam was hidden with a line of wooden trim, and would never have been noticed since the rest of the room had the trim. Very clever, Othello.
So. The big question.
Where does that door lead to?
16. History lessons
As soon as the panel popped out, I ran over and locked my office door. It’d probably be better to not be disturbed if I was dealing with secrets. Safe for now, I went back and opened the panel wider, finding behind it an actual door. And it was locked. Like, even if you found the hidden door in the first place, you still couldn’t get in.
Astounding logic, Othello. Not.
I fingered the lock and considered picking it, but since Othello had gone to this much trouble, I figured it wouldn’t be that simple. With that in mind, I went back to the desk and examined the statue and then the lamp in turn, which produced no key.
If I were a key, where would I be?
It would have to be a place no one would look, but easily accessible to Othello. I thought back to every time someone other than me had been in this room since my appointment as head of the Order.
The one place no one dared touch was my chair.
I found the key in between the top part and the seat cushion, and I had to applaud Othello for his thinking skills. No one would ever look in the chair for a secret key.
I put the key in the lock and stopped. What was Othello hiding in here? Was it a slave? Was it his secret dirty magazine collection? Was it even important? Well, time to find out.
The key was turned and the door opened before me. I stepped inside, waiting for a few seconds for my eyes to adjust before closing the door behind me. I could see the room well enough to see a cord hanging from the ceiling, so I pulled it. The secret room was a very tiny space with volumes of books on the narrow walls, a lamp table with no lamp, and a dusty armchair
Books.
He was hiding books.
I had to pee, and I seriously was not digging this secret room of books. There were no books worth hiding like this. So why had he? Othello wasn’t secretive. He was open about everything he did. This made zero sense.
Once again, I slumped down into a chair and stared around in confusion. There was a book on the lamp table, and I picked it up, flipping it over in my hands. What had Othello been reading? The book was very old and the writing smudged in several places where water had stained it.
‘Herein lies the account of the destruction wrought by the Born vampire, Anastasia Bathory.
There was a time when the children of the Bicus lived in harmony with one another. Lycan and vampire considered ourselves brothers. We did not fight amongst each other, or with our brothers the Lycans. There was peace, one that was not won by war. It simply was.
That all changed when Anastasia came to power.
She was merely a fledgling, but she possessed a maturity that one would normally develop with age. She was a first-generation Born vampire, a rarity among us as the Bicus had been less and less involved in the lives of humans. Because of her heritage, her powers were beyond that of a normal Born vampire. She was empathic, and knew what you were feeling before you knew yourself. Her strength was unparalleled, and her beauty a poison that she wielded like a weapon.
Before she was even thirty years old, something
occurred in her life that twisted her mind. Whatever happened to her was known to the Council, but not to he that writes this account. I know not what changed inside her, but from that moment on, she became different. Terrifying.
Eventually, she amassed an army of Lycans and overtook the vampire Orders. They slaughtered everyone they found, turned and Born alike. And when the vampires were dealt with, she turned on the Lycans and destroyed them as well.
After that, she disappeared.
We gathered together, Lycan and vampire alike, our alliance shattered by one insane female. Their numbers were down to maybe fifty, and ours even less. We tried to repair the peace, but Lycans had been betrayed by one of our kind, and because of this, they declared they would execute any vampire caught within their territory. We threatened the same, and almost started another war then and there.
The Bicus appeared beside us before any more damage could be done. They announced that because of what had happened, they were finished with humans. Creating new vampires or werewolves would be banned among their kind. After the Bicus left us, we separated. The Lycans went one way, and we went another. We would never again share a home in brotherhood, and our lives were darker for it.
Every vampire that survived Anastasia’s wrath was sworn to secrecy, on pain of death, about what had occurred. If another vampire ever had the inkling to do what she had done, the knowledge that it had been done before and sent us running with our tails between our legs would be enough to seal our coffin again. It was too risky.
Not only that, anyone and everyone that had ever been on her side, friends and allies alike, were executed so that they couldn’t continue her reign of blood in her stead. Suffice it to say that many who had even a small inkling of feeling toward her, myself included, turned on her without blinking an eye in order to spare ourselves the pain of execution. It was not enough for some, and our numbers were reduced once more to eliminate traitors.
The Born Vampire series: A Reverse Harem Paranormal Romance (The Complete Series, NSFW Edition) Page 30
