Damn. There wasn’t much choice. If they took her to Bracken there’d be far more shifters to deal with than just five. Slade released his flux, turning visible once more. “You made your point. Let her go.”
Ty turned, his tail twitching, the hair forming a bristled edge along his back. “What makes you think we won’t just take you, too?”
Slade gave a harsh bark of laughter. “Because you couldn’t do it the first time you tried. And the odds aren’t any better. Besides, this is a diplomatic mission. We’re just here to get some answers.”
“You’re trespassing.”
“Didn’t think you’d reply to an engraved invitation to meet.”
Ty bent his head, hunching his shoulders. Slade knew from the last time he was shifting into his human form. “You might want to shut your eyes for a moment, Raina,” he called out.
She trusted him enough to do as he told her, but the wet pop and crunch as Ty shifted forms made her flinch. “What’s going on?” she asked.
“I’ve shifted into my human form,” Ty answered.
Raina opened her eyes, gasped and shut them again, a blush coloring her skin. Ty chuckled. “Obviously she’s yet to see what a real man looks like, vampire.”
The insult was obvious, but Slade had bigger matters on his mind than meaningless posturing. “This meeting is just between us. Tell the pups to go home.”
Ty’s shoulder and chest muscles flexed, and he gritted his teeth. He locked gazes with Slade, the tension stretching out between them. For a moment Slade thought he’d do just the opposite and order an attack, but Ty barked at his followers to return to their den. They slowly moved away, casting uncertain backward glances as they slunk off into the woods, their tails tucked down.
“Is it safe for me to look yet?” Raina asked.
Slade phased a pair of jeans onto Ty, who glared at him and growled in response. “If I wanted to wear clothes, vampire, I’m perfectly capable of doing so myself.”
“This isn’t for you, it’s for the lady,” Slade shot back. “Good to go, Raina.”
She cracked open one eye and then the other, then turned around in a small circle on the spot as if she were still expecting the wolves to be surrounding her. “Where’d they all go?”
Neither of the men answered her, their gazes locked on one another.
“You got what you wanted, vampire. Ask your questions and get out of our territory.”
“Not yet.”
Still focused on the Were, he nodded once and Raina let a loop of thin silver chain fly lassolike around Ty’s chest, binding his arms to his sides. He growled and gnashed his teeth, straining against the metal bonds. “What are you doing?”
“Just a little insurance policy to make sure you cooperate. Silver is just as disruptive to you as it is to me, so your Whisperer is the only one here who can remove it without being harmed.”
Under the influence of the silver Ty began to sway slightly, falling to one knee. He cursed. Apparently the silver was far more potent on Weres than vampires, but she had no way to be sure. She’d never seen a vampire bound by silver. Hell, until this last week she hadn’t even realized her own ancestor spirits were werewolves.
Raina moved quickly, bending down on one knee to get eye to eye with the shifter. Slade had briefed her on the specific questions they needed answers to most. They both figured Ty would answer her before he’d answer Slade. “Is Bracken in league with Eris?”
Ty lifted his brown eyes, now glassy with pain, to stare at her. A pang of guilt tugged at her gut. He’d cooperated with them fully and was now suffering for it. Somehow, deep down, part of her felt the vampire’s logic was deeply flawed. Part animal or not, the Weres, like the vampires, were basically human at the core. Cords of muscle stood out along either side of Ty’s neck as he struggled against the toxicity of the silver.
“The goddess calls down the moon and we must listen.” He groaned.
Slade stepped forward. “Calls down the moon, what the h—”
Raina held up a hand, stopping Slade. “What’s her plan?”
Ty hung his head, shaking it back and forth, his heavy dark hair swinging with the motion. “The goddess commands us to take the vampire territory. To subdue them. They have risen up against her. They must be made to respect her.”
Raina’s gaze connected with Slade’s. It was obvious to her that the Were was fading fast. “Does Bracken know who Kaycee’s child is?”
That got a reaction. Ty snapped his head up, his eyes narrowing in fierce concentration. “The last Whisperer was Bracken’s mate. The child was his. She betrayed us all, taking the child with her and going to the bloodsuckers. They contaminated both her and the child.” He flicked a disgusted glance in Slade’s direction, then turned his attention back to her. Pain shimmered in the depths of his brown eyes.
Slade shifted uncomfortably beside her. Raina could sense his tension. “But did Bracken ever find the child?”
“The elders found Kaycee and brought her back to fulfill her duty. She’d already borne and raised the child among the vampires. He was marked on his heel, bitten by Bracken himself to insure the child would grow to be one of us regardless of his impurity. But after Kaycee was tried by the elders, the child disappeared.”
Ty’s glassy gaze shifted to Slade as he swayed. “Bracken’s given strict orders. If we find his son we should kill him.” His eyes rolled to white and the Were passed out, falling over onto the leaf-littered ground.
Raina moved to slip the silver chain off the shifter, but Slade grabbed her hand. “Give it a minute. We need him out long enough to transport him.”
“You’re not seriously still thinking of taking him back with us?”
“Hell, yeah, I am. Achilles can get specifics out of him. The numbers in the pack. Their strategies. He’s one hell of an interrogator. Learned a few tricks back when he was a Spartan that don’t exactly fall under the Geneva Convention.”
Raina stared hard at him. “You are not going to torture him. He cooperated with us. We’re the ones who are acting out of line.”
“Look, this isn’t some card game where fairness counts. They’ve already tried to kill you once. You heard him, Eris is commanding them to whip the vampires back to her side or wipe them out. You can’t expect me to stand by and do nothing. A war is coming.”
She shook her head. “I’m not asking you to do nothing, I’m asking you to just stop and think about this. If we take him, and he’s harmed, then any chance we have at a diplomatic solution is screwed.”
Slade’s jaw worked back and forth. “Achilles knows what he’s doing, and I have my orders. We’re bringing the shifter in.”
With that Slade hefted Ty like a sack of grain over one shoulder, grabbed her about the waist and transported them back to Seattle.
They arrived in the security room in a swirl of dark particles. Other than the humming computers, no one was on duty. Raina had trouble regaining her balance and leaned against the long conference table at the center of the room for support. She wasn’t sure if she’d ever get used to Slade’s unusual means of transportation.
“So now what?” she asked, perching herself on the edge of the desk while Slade propped an unconscious Ty up in a chair. “You can’t just drop him off, and you can’t truss him up with silver. It might kill him.”
“It did seem to weaken him a hell of a lot faster than it does a vampire.”
“Maybe their chemistry is different, just like their virus being more virulent that the vampire strain.”
Slade closed his eyes, ignoring her, and for a moment Raina was peeved by his apparent rudeness. Beside him, a shape formed out of a smokelike substance into Achilles. She realized he must have been calling to Achilles and felt sheepish about her attitude.
Achilles eyed Ty in his human form. “So this is what they look like when they aren’t wearing fur, huh?”
“You’ve never seen them in human form?”
Both vampires turned and stared at her. Sla
de shrugged. “Why would we? They’ve never come onto our territory and we’ve always stayed out of theirs until now.”
Achilles laid a hand on Slade’s shoulder. “Good work, solider. I’ll take things from here. Why don’t you return Officer Ravenwing to your quarters where she can get cleaned up and rested while you report to the council.”
A flicker of dread crossed Slade’s face, but he silently nodded. “Come on, Raina. I’ll take you to my apartment.”
Raina wasn’t going to have any of it. Knowing how the vampires felt about the Weres, she wasn’t about to abandon Ty, who was still technically part of her tribe by distant mythical relation, to Achilles without at least some supervision. “You go on ahead. I’m staying here.”
Slade cursed under his breath and looked to his commander. “You want me to take her anyway?”
Raina bristled. She might not be a vampire, but she certainly wasn’t going to let them tell her what she could and couldn’t do and where she would or wouldn’t go. “I said, I’m staying here,” she said firmly.
Achilles jerked his head at Slade. “Go on, it’s not smart to keep the council waiting.”
Slade gave her a last glance, filled with a mixture of trepidation and sadness, and then turned from solid muscle and bone to insubstantial black mist and finally vanished altogether.
“So what does the council need to see Slade about? He didn’t look too happy.”
Achilles kept his focus on Ty as he replied. “Vampire business. And he looks that way because the only time we get called before the clan council is when it’s something critical. Otherwise Laird Petrov or Dmitri call the shots.” He glanced at her. “How long did you have him chained up?”
“Less than fifteen minutes.”
Achilles inspected the dark red, blistered skin that formed a ring around Ty’s torso. He shook his head, rubbing his finger over his mouth. “I might need to have the doc take a look at him.”
Raina bit back a gasp of surprise. It didn’t seem that Achilles planned to hurt Ty at all. “Are you going to question him?”
The large vampire glanced at her. “Yeah. But not until he’s conscious and gotten medical care.”
“What if he doesn’t feel like talking to you?”
Achilles gave her a thousand-watt smile. “Well, since you volunteered to stay behind, I was hoping he’d talk to you instead. I’ll just flux and stay here in the room with you two.”
“How am I going to know what you want answered?”
Achilles pointed to the laptop behind her on the conference table. “I’ll send it to you in text. That way he won’t hear me, either.”
Slade materialized in front of the enormous, intricately carved black double doors, bracketed on either side by uniformed men all in black—the council’s personal guard. Emblazoned on the outside of the doors was the red insignia of the clan, three interlocked circles that formed an inverted triangle, like a fang. Achilles had explained to the Shyelds that the circles stood for life, death and vampire—each interdependent with the other, but none the same.
For a moment, Slade wondered how it would change if the Weres won. With Eris on their side, it was a strong possibility, but one he didn’t want to think about too much. His stomach was already an oily mess of fear, anger and worry. The council didn’t just call up a vampire for a friendly chat. Whatever was going down was serious.
The doors cracked open, swinging inward, their movement making the light from the ornately scrolled candelabras within the council chamber flicker ominously. Dmitri glanced at Slade and waved him inside.
Slade had only been in the room twice before. Once during his initiation as a full Shyeld and again during his petition for transitioning into a full-blooded vampire.
A crimson velvet curtain lined large portions of the dark rock walls. Nine occupied, carved cherrywood chairs sat in a semicircle around a black-tiled dais with the clan’s symbol marked in a contrasting red rock against the surrounding smooth black stone. The largest and grandest of the chairs sat at the center and was occupied by the clan’s laird, Roman Petrov. His dark cloak fell about him in folds.
Dmitri stood off to the side of the dais, hands clasped behind him at the center of his back. Slade climbed to the center of the dais, where he’d been twice before and, like Dmitri, he stood at attention, waiting for the laird’s words.
Slade sensed Roman’s dark eyes peeling him apart, searching for imperfections, but Slade remained impassive, stuffing down the insecure emotions wreaking havoc on his mind.
“It has come to our attention, Mr. Donovan, that you have an unusual condition that makes you a potential danger to our clan.”
Slade held his tongue and stared resolutely ahead. Better he didn’t say anything than speak out too soon and be out of turn. He knew whatever they were going to tell him had already been deliberated behind closed doors.
“Dr. Chamberlin believes that your condition can be stabilized to render you safe. We have decided to allow you to remain within the protection of our clan, as is your right, unless you happen to transition fully into a shape-shifter. Should that occur, your clearance and your position in this clan would be revoked. We cannot risk that your mixed blood might taint the others in this clan, spreading the shifter’s virus within our own clan.”
The words hit like a sucker punch to the gut, taking the wind out of him. Slade remained upright and kept from coughing out of sheer willpower and determination—the same things that had kept him alive out on the streets. Mixed blood. So the truth was out. He could just imagine what kind of reaction he’d get from the others once they found out the truth.
“I understand, my laird.” Slade said nothing more because there was nothing he could say. It had already been decided, just like Achilles thought it might be. If he turned Were, for any reason, even to save one of the other vampires in battle, he’d be kicked to the curb. He saluted Roman and the rest of the council members respectfully with his fisted hand across his chest and a bowed head, then stepped down of the dais and quickly exited the chamber before his legs went wobbly.
Dmitri’s arm around his shoulder stabilized him as the council chamber doors shut behind them. “That went a lot better than I thought it would,” Dmitri said.
Slade glanced at him. Right now he just wanted to keep the bile rising up at the back of his throat where it belonged. “What happens if I can’t control it? What happens if in the middle of a battle with the Weres I go dog?”
“That’s not going to happen. And even if it did, if you were on our side to start with, you’d still be on our side, fur, fangs and all.”
Slade grunted. It wasn’t much reassurance. Achilles and Dmitri were humoring him, but he knew the council would have the final say. “Let’s just hope it works that way.” But even as he said the words, deep down, he doubted it. He was caught in between, at risk of belonging nowhere and to no one. And the second full moon in a month, a blue moon—more powerful than a regular full moon—was two days away. The clock was ticking.
Chapter 15
Slade returned to the security center as soon as he could tear himself away from Dmitri’s well-intentioned pep talk. He’d heard enough. The proof would be in how the others acted toward him when they found out he was mixed blood, a half-breed.
He transported into the room and found Raina alone sitting in a chair, her feet propped up on the conference table. “Where’d everybody go? I thought you’d have had all kinds of information out of Ty by now.”
She stood and crossed her arms, her eyes dark with disapproval. “So now the Were has a name?”
Slade winced. He had been just as bad as the other vampires when it came to prejudice against the shifters. He stepped toward her, placing a hand on her waist and raising her chin with the crook of his finger to gaze into her eyes. “You’re right. But this is war for us and we weren’t the ones who declared it.”
She nodded, placing her cheek against his chest. The moldy, musty odor of sorrow tinged the air around
her. “I feel like I’m stuck in the middle and I don’t like it.”
He got that. Boy, did he ever. But he was still just as stuck as she was, perhaps more so. He wrapped his arms around her, holding her. “What happened to him?”
“He never woke up. Achilles took him to see Dr. Chamberlin.”
Slade ran his fingers in a gentle up-and-down pattern on her back, trying to soothe her. Somehow, making Raina calm helped him relax, as well. “How are you doing?”
“Okay.” Raina lifted her head, her gaze connecting with his. “What about you? How did it go with the council?”
Slade shifted his weight from foot to foot, uncomfortable even talking about it. “They let me off with a warning.”
“It’s about your Were heritage, isn’t it?”
His throat seemed to swell shut, refusing to let the words form, so he nodded.
She nibbled at her bottom lip between small, white, even teeth, making it stain a darker rose as her blood rose to the surface. His fangs began to throb as he thought of kissing her, of touching her bare skin. “Looks like we’re both in no-man’s land even among our own people,” she said softly.
Her gentle words seeped into him, a warm, soothing balm that he craved like sunshine after he’d first transitioned. He wanted to fill himself up with her warmth, her steady surety. If he’d been certain they’d be alone in the security center he would have gladly made use of the conference table, but as unstable as things were, he planned to play things safe from here on out.
He brushed his lips against hers and she softened, leaning into him, her hands sliding up his chest to curve around his neck and tangle in the hair at his nape. Deep in her eyes Slade glimpsed something that humbled him completely—a sympathetic soul. Without a word he knew she understood him.
The air in the room shifted, changing with static electric charge as three columns of dark swirling particles formed into the remainder of the security team. James with his blue, piercing eyes and sharp features was flanked on either side by Mikhail, built like a Russian tank, and Titus, whose dark eyes sparked with curiosity.
The Half-Breed Vampire Page 15
