by K. R. Willis
My fingers skimmed over mostly blue jeans and tank tops, a few sweaters for winter, before coming to rest on a black and white, V-neck blouse and skirt combo I’d bought for a date several years ago. It was attractive and dressy, yet free moving enough I could maneuver in a fight if need be. It would have to do.
I slipped it on, styled my hair into a messy up-do, and finished just as my phone rang. “I’ll be right down,” I told Leo when I answered. His car of choice tonight was the same black Mercedes he’d picked me up in yesterday, and I had to admit that as nice as it was, I’d kind of hoped to ride in the Morgan again. But then again, he probably didn’t want to risk it being damaged if things went south with the Council.
He opened the door for me, and held my hand as I sank into the seat. I watched as he walked around the front of the car, admiring how his black suit pants and crisp white shirt looked on him. He slid into the driver’s seat and I blushed when he smiled at me, as though he knew I’d been ogling him. Leo belted in, and we took off.
A mile into the drive, I pulled out my cell phone. Leo quirked a questioning brow at me, and I mouthed “Sam” as I punched in his speed dial number. He answered on the first ring.
“Well?”
“We have an audience with the Council tonight. We’re on our way there now.”
He grumbled something I didn’t quite catch, then said, “I won’t give you a big long lecture—we’re past that I think. But I will tell you to not take any chances you don’t have to, and to be careful. Let Leo take the lead; he’s nearly immortal, you’re not. In fact, let me talk to him.”
Apparently, Leo had been listening to our conversation, intentional or not, I wasn’t certain, because he held out his hand for the phone without me saying anything. I handed it to him and watched as he listened to whatever Sam said. His face remained passive, with no emotion visible that I could discern, but his grip on the steering wheel tightened just a fraction. After a moment, he hung up and handed my phone back.
“What was that all about?” I asked, wishing I could have eavesdropped the way Leo had.
“He had a few things he wanted me to know,” he said, eyes glued to the road. A muscle ticked in his jaw, belying his calm voice.
“What kind of things?” Knowing Sam, they probably weren’t nice things.
“Let us just say that if he was not your family and worried about your well-being, I would speak to him about his manners.”
I smiled a little and sank back into the seat. It was nice to know Sam had my back, even when he couldn’t be with me himself.
As we sped through the darkness toward Helena where the Council held court, I sent up a prayer that everything would go well tonight. Because I had a feeling if it didn’t, vampire or not, Leo would have hell to pay when he faced Sam’s wrath.
Chapter 13
We stepped through the iron gates of Resurrection Cemetery a little over an hour later, and goose bumps broke out all over my arms. It had only been a couple of weeks since I’d been here, but at least this time it was of my own free will.
The full moon reflected off the stone pillars and mausoleums, lighting our path through the gravestones toward our destination: a behemoth of stone in the center of the cemetery where the Council held court below. I stumbled over a stray rock and caught myself on a cross-topped monolith with the name James Dillon engraved on it, and wondered briefly what he thought of his final resting place being surrounded by creatures of legend.
A few moments later, we stood before the mahogany door that dominated the front of the largest mausoleum I’d ever seen. The square structure stood nearly two stories high with a dome on the top and a cross set toward the front edge. Leo stepped up to the door, and instead of knocking with some specific combination of raps on the solid wood as I’d expected, he pulled his gold chain from around his neck and placed the symbol into a slot on the left wall that had been shaped to accept only the infinity symbol carried by vampires. A sort of key. After a few seconds of gears grinding, the door cracked open, allowing us entrance. Leo looped the chain back around his neck, then motioned me to enter as he pushed open the door.
As soon as I stepped inside, the smell of dirt and decay assaulted my senses. Bones lined the walls on every side, set into alcoves created just for them. I wrinkled my nose, resisting the urge to sneeze. Several lit sconces flickered every few feet along the walls, illuminating the otherwise pitch-black room, and drawing my attention to the stone sarcophagus in the middle with a flight of stairs leading down into its dark depths.
I’d been so angry the last time I’d been here, wanting nothing more than to escape as quickly as possible to get away from Loukas and the Council, that I hadn’t really noticed any of the details.
Leo tugged a candle free of its metal holder, and handed it to me. He didn’t need the light to see by, but I did, and I appreciated his consideration. He led the way down the stone steps, and I quickly followed. One thing I did remember about this place from last time was how hard it had been to navigate. Without a guide who knew their way around, it would be way too easy to get turned around and lost, so I stayed close to Leo. The last thing I needed was to get lost down here, and found alone by Khalid or Dorian. I shivered from that thought, and hurried to keep up the pace Leo had set.
He expertly maneuvered us down damp corridors covered in moss, around bends and turns, through doorways, until finally we arrived at a massive oak door that I knew would lead us into the Council’s main chamber. Leo paused before the door, and turned to me. “Are you ready?” he asked. No emotion flickered on his face or sounded in his voice, just cold determination.
Rya? I questioned. She’d been pretty quiet since draining so much of her magic, and I longed for her voice in my mind, the comfort and reassurance her presence provided.
I am with you, she said. If the need arises, I will be there for you.
Her words allowed me to relax a little, and provided the push I needed to nod at Leo. His eyes, which were darker than normal, met mine for a moment, then he opened the doors.
The large chamber appeared as I remembered it, the exception being the lack of the two blood fountains that had greeted me the last time. The basins remained in place, but the two men that hung above and had their blood draining into them last time were gone. I thanked the stars for that, and tried not to wince when Leo closed the doors behind us. I placed the candle I held on a small shelf set into the wall to my right, and turned to face the room.
Unlike last time, only a handful of vampires milled about. I guessed these were the select few who ranked high enough in the vampire hierarchy to know about the Aqua Vitae. As we approached the dais, every pair of eyes turned to us, and silence fell as we took center stage. Dorian now sat in the center largest chair where Loukas had been before, but the other chairs were occupied by the same two women and one thin man I’d met the last time.
Dorian stopped his conversation with the dark-skinned woman beside him, and turned those same cold, heartless eyes on us. Hatred filled their depths as he glared at Leo, but Leo ignored him.
“Dorian,” Leo acknowledged, bowing slightly, but with nowhere near the respect he had given to Loukas.
Dorian’s lip curled, and a low growl started, but the dark-skinned woman—Zarrina if I remembered correctly—laid her hand on his arm and whispered something to him. He listened, then turned to face me, dismissing Leo. What I saw in his eyes worried me more than the malice he’d directed at Leo just seconds before, and I shivered, dread crawling up my spine.
The look he gave me was calculating, and I knew without a doubt he did, indeed, want something from me. I didn’t have to wait long to learn what that something was.
“I have allowed you to come before us today,” he announced, sitting up straight in the chair, making his presence more commanding, “because there is something we want in return if we allow you to take a sample of the Aqua Vitae.” Goose flesh broke out all over at his words. Leo started to say something, but Dorian hel
d up his hand, silencing him. “I am speaking to the human; you are here merely as her escort.” He kept his eyes on me, never once looking in Leo’s direction.
Leo’s jaw twitched as Dorian’s words hit him like a slap in the face, no doubt the reaction he had intended.
I gritted my teeth to keep from saying something smart about his “human” remark, knowing it would only get us into trouble—or more trouble, as the case may be. Instead, I took a deep breath, then blew it out slowly, and said the next words with as much confidence as I could muster.
“And what, may I ask, Lord Dorian, do you require of me as payment for a small sample of the Water of Life?” My voice had come out steadier than I thought it would, and I raised my chin a fraction. No way would I beg or cower before these guys.
Dorian grinned, as though he had me exactly where he wanted me. He snapped his fingers, and a door behind and slightly to the side opened, drawing my attention. As soon as I saw who came through, it was all I could do not to turn and run as fast as my legs would allow.
Khalid entered the room, his imposing, deeply tanned body as fit and deadly as ever.
And he had my sword and dagger strapped to his waist and shoulder like prizes he’d won in battle. Which I guess technically, he had.
I stiffened, my emotions fighting between the urge to snatch them back from him and to turn tail like a frightened deer. Somehow, I managed to do neither, and stood my ground as Khalid walked over to the dais. He stopped behind Dorian’s chair, and smiled at me.
Dorian cleared his throat, bringing my attention back to him. “Khalid told us about your cat that helped in your fight against him in the diner.” I suddenly broke into a cold sweat at the mention of Rya. She came forward in my mind, listening. “As the Council, we are among the oldest of our kind. As the centuries have passed, we have seen almost everything there is to see on this wretched Earth.” His words were cold, as though he’d never seen anything good in the world. “We have money, we have power. The things we deal in now is information.”
He pushed to his feet, stepped off the dais, and stopped about two feet in front of me. Leo stiffened beside me, but kept quiet. “We wish to know more about your cat. Where it comes from, how you acquired it, what its purpose is. This is the price we require for what you ask.” He crossed his arms over his chest, and waited.
Holy shit. Rya had emerged so recently, after I’d almost died trying to save Leo, most supernaturals either didn’t know she existed at all, or knew very little about her. These guys, the baddest of the bad, wanted to know pretty much everything there was to know. My gut reaction told me to tell Dorian to stick his questions up his ass, but I couldn’t. I needed what he had. This was too big of a decision to make on the fly. I needed some time to think. To weigh my options.
“You ask a very large price, Lord Dorian,” I gritted out. “I request time to think about it.” George didn’t have much time, but I couldn’t make this big a decision without talking to Rya and Leo in private. George would just have to hold on a little longer.
Dorian watched me intently for a few seconds, then said, “Very well. You have half an hour. After that, the offer is off the table.” He turned his back on me and resumed his spot on the dais.
Half an hour. My heart kicked into overdrive, and I tried not to panic. Leo gently grabbed me by the elbow and guided me past the whispering crowd. Lost in my thoughts, wherever he took me blurred by until we stopped in a secluded room that was bare aside from several deep freezers lined along the back wall. I had too many other things to process to even worry about what might be in them.
“What do you think his angle is?” I asked Leo, voice shaking. He paced back and forth in front of me, adding to my tension, his movements mimicking Rya pacing in my head. Between the two of them, my nerves were tight as a violin string about to break.
“I do not know what game he plays. While it is true we deal frequently in information rather than money, this somehow feels like more than that. Like there is a deeper reason he wants to know. Whatever it is, I can assure you it is not a good reason.”
Rya, what do you think? Is there any harm in him knowing the information he seeks? Could he hurt you if he knew these things? I knew he could physically hurt her if she was her puma self, but I wanted to know if he could hurt her metaphysically or magically somehow if he had the answers he wanted.
Rya stopped pacing. I’m not sure, she said. While Spirit Warriors aren’t common knowledge outside the tribe, I’ve never known it as a secret either. We are a gift from the Great Spirit, what could he possibly hope to gain from knowing about me? It isn’t like he could create one of us on his own. She started pacing again.
I sighed and rubbed my temples. “If I don’t give Dorian the information he seeks, are you sure there is no other way to save George?” I asked Leo.
He came to a stop before me, and the serious look on his face answered my question.
“So he’ll die if I don’t do this.”
Leo nodded, and my stomach coiled into a tight ball.
“Can you give me a reason not to give him what he wants, besides the obvious ‘it’s not a good idea’? We already know that.” Now it was my turn to pace.
“If you are asking me to formulate a hypothetical reason why he wants this knowledge, I fear I cannot. There is no obvious, or rational reason I can think of that he would need to know this.” He gently grabbed my shoulder to stop my pacing. He looked me square in the eye. “Perhaps it is merely for information as he said. Whatever the reason, you must understand: Dorian is a depraved individual, the depths of his wickedness endless. What you have to ask yourself is this: Is saving George’s life worth whatever comes of this?” He slid his hand from my shoulder to my cheek. His thumb caressed me as he said, “Rya is yours. This is your decision to make.”
Great, no pressure there. I blew out a breath, closed my eyes, and let everything sink in. George ended up fighting for his life because he spoke to me, offering me answers against his Alpha’s orders. I’d already risked my life to rescue him, only to have him injured and dying of silver poisoning, for which I knew how to obtain the only cure. Did Dorian have an ulterior motive? Of that I had no doubt. But it was one I couldn’t pinpoint, or guess the outcome of.
I knew what outcome not having the cure would give George.
Resigned, I opened my eyes and said, “Since none of us can come up with a logical reason why he wants to know, but we know what will happen to George, I think it’s worth the risk. If she stays my tattoo, she should be pretty safe.” I sent a prayer to the Great Spirit that those words were true.
Leo stared at me for a moment, then nodded. “Since Dorian is partly my problem, I will help with whatever arises from your decision.” He kissed me on the forehead and I inhaled his scent for a brief second, letting it calm my nerves.
Rya, are you okay with my decision? If you tell me no, I will respect it. Even though it would mean George would die. Rya came first.
Rya stepped to the forefront of my mind. Part of a Spirit Warrior’s purpose is to help, not harm. I would have come to the same conclusion you did, if a little more slowly. I support your decision.
Exhaling, I leaned away from Leo, happy that I had Rya’s support as well as his. I had a feeling I would need both, I just didn’t know how yet.
“Come,” Leo said. “Our time runs short.” He opened the door and led me from the room, back through a couple corridors to the main Council chamber. As soon as we stepped inside, the low murmur of voices quieted.
“What decision have you made?” Dorian sat back in the chair, relaxed, leg swung over the arm, drinking blood from a goblet. Khalid had taken the empty chair next to him, making himself equally comfortable. The nasty smile he gave me made my skin crawl, and I forced myself to concentrate on Dorian and why I was here.
Here we go. “I agree to provide you with limited information about my Spirit Warrior in exchange for a vial of Aqua Vitae large enough to cure silver poisoning in a
werewolf. I also want my sword and dagger returned to me,” I added. The thought of asking for them as part of the deal had occurred to me as soon as I saw Khalid sitting there with them propped up against his chair, acting as a proud display of his dominance over me. I gritted my teeth and strained not to look at him. I knew without a doubt he wouldn’t give them up without a fight, unless Dorian, acting as their interim leader, ordered him to.
Khalid pushed to his feet. “You’re in no position to make demands, little girl,” he growled.
The hairs on my arms stood at attention, and Leo stiffened beside me. I had to stay calm and keep it together, or I’d lose any hope of bargaining for the two things I really wanted. Ignoring Khalid completely, I stared straight ahead at Dorian. He watched me for a moment, then motioned for Khalid to sit back down.
“Clever,” he said.
He didn’t say anything for quite some time, and I got the feeling he weighed his options, as I had. The longer I stood there, and the harder I tried, the harder it became not to look at Khalid. I could almost feel the anger rolling off of him. Just as I was about to crack, Dorian spoke.
“If I am to give you what you ask, I want something more in return. I wish to meet your cat in the flesh, not just hear how it was created.”
Rya hissed in my mind, and bile rose in my throat. As long as she was my tattoo, he couldn’t hurt her physically. But now he wanted to see her in the flesh, where he could definitely hurt her.
Rya? I knew she would understand what I was asking without me finishing that thought.
If he doesn’t stop calling me an ‘it,’ I’m going to bite his head off. She growled, punctuating her statement. Despite the seriousness of the situation, I fought the urge to laugh.
So you’re okay with it? I asked. I needed to hear her say it.
