by Kayleigh Sky
He wiped his sweaty face and pulled off the highway into Bakersfield.
New West Bank was on Ming Avenue in what had once been a Bank of America branch. Uriah wasn’t showing up here without doing a little research. He’d discovered that Thomas had been the president of New West Bank for the past seventeen years. He’d lived in Baggins for fifteen of those years, and he was Uriah’s age—forty-seven. His mother’s family were Sillojas, of no more importance than Mithrinins.
Though the thought went through Uriah’s head that Camiel Nezzarram, a witch who’d studied under Rune’s mother and was the first Nezzarram to show up at a coven meeting in six years—a coven meeting where the king was almost assassinated—was a Mithrinin too. Uriah was suspicious of coincidences.
He turned into a shopping center, found a parking spot in front of the bank, and headed for the shade alongside the building. The bounce of the sun off the pavement stung his eyes, and the coolish haze inside the bank blinded him. He stood at the entrance and blinked the fuzz away. A few customers circled him on their way in and out. It was a bank like any other—maybe it had always looked like this or maybe it had been remodeled, but Uriah faced a long wooden counter and several desks inside cubicles up front. On one side of him was a seating area and a crescent-shaped table on the other side of him.
“May I help you?”
A human smiled at him. She was old, stout, and gray. Many humans hated vampires, but her smile was pleasant, and he forced a smile of his own.
“I have a meeting with your president.”
That seemed to surprise her. Maybe Mithrinin didn’t meet with people very often. Maybe that was her job. “Will you wait for a moment while I see if he’s available?”
He’d better be available. God knows, Uriah had no other reason to be in sunburnt Bakersfield.
She left without waiting for a reply and returned a minute later. “This way, please.”
They circled the end of the main counter, turned a corner in back, and passed a bathroom and kitchen to Mithrinin’s office down a short hall. His door stood open, and the human waved him by. “Go right in. He’s expecting you.”
And probably not planning to murder him because it would be tough to conceal a killing on a weekday in the middle of a bank.
Thomas rose from a chair behind his desk. With his palm pressed to his tie, he extended his hand, which Uriah took. A human custom. Interesting.
“Please take a seat,” said Thomas after sitting back down.
Uriah remained standing. “Why am I here?”
A slight smile crossed Thomas’s face. It was a lean face with tiny lines between the brows and at the corners of the eyes—from sun or laughter? He was taller even than Uriah and thin. The smile vanished a few seconds after its appearance. “I invited you, and for good reason.”
Uriah pulled the chair away from the desk and sat. “You sent a cryptic message.”
“Did you understand it?”
It wasn’t an insult to ask, because Uriah understood what he meant. He’d said your king. Uriah’s true king was Rune. “I’m in the employ of King Zeveriah’s head of security, and I’m taking time away from my job to be here.”
“My best days were in service to the queen. Wasn’t she your cousin?”
“A very distant cousin. What do you want?”
A glow entered Thomas’s eyes, but oddly mixed with relief. “I have waited my entire life to fulfill my sole purpose. I want you to help me. I must see your king. I have something he wants.”
“And what do you think he wants?”
Thomas smiled again. “His throne.”
1
The Lead
Great… After surviving a cave-in, he was doomed to die at the side of a bone-dry swimming pool.
Typical.
Rune didn’t bother to swallow—he had nothing in his mouth to swallow with. As his knees crumpled, he sank without a fight onto the hot cement and hung his legs over the pool’s side. Was this it? He stifled a laugh, because he didn’t dare laugh either. Maybe if he closed his eyes and wished hard enough, he’d end up back home.
With a glass of strawberry lemonade.
Are you really gonna die here? This fucking close to the treasure?
Was Uriah here?
He swung his gaze to the house, a ridiculous construction of orange clay, wood beams, and narrow windows. It wasn’t the architecture that bothered him, though: it was the location. What was it humans said about real estate? Location, location, location. Who would plant a house in an empty desert? Somebody with a private airstrip? Rune hadn’t seen one, but maybe it was buried in sand… the way you’ll be soon. Unless Uriah came back. But maybe he wouldn’t, because Rune had been gone for two days now.
He gripped the gritty pool edge and gazed at the sandy bottom and a… weed? It couldn’t be what it looked like. The scrappy plant wriggling from the hard-packed soil tugged at his heartstrings. Not a drop of water anywhere, but it bloomed. Homesickness stabbed at him, and he hated that, because he didn’t have time for it. It was one tiny flower, and it was yellow, but it wasn’t a Gold Star, for fuck’s sake. He squeezed his eyes shut against the image of his brother’s face.
“I found it again! I think it blooms twice. Do you really think I discovered it?”
“Why not?” he said. “New things come to light all the time now. The world’s changed, blossom.”
But it hadn’t changed in every way. Some things never changed.
Pain swelled inside him. Big enough to crack his bones. Heavy enough to be a heart attack. Maybe it was. But the thought brought a weak laugh to his lips. Vampires don’t have heart attacks. Though the knife inside him poked with a nagging insistence.
Who was holding it? Twisting it?
Eyes stinging, Rune blinked them back open and leaned on shaky arms over the pool. No, it wasn’t Jessa’s flower. The vine was beige and bristly with little spines, and the sandy-yellow petals were rounded not star-like. Not Jessa’s.
Home was far away.
He’d come here because too many arrows had pointed him in this direction. The first had come from Carl, one of Solomon Frenn’s humans in Opal Lake. Rune suspected Solomon had been behind the attempt to kill Zev. When Solomon had disappeared, he’d left many of his people behind. The one named Carl had been eager to spill his guts when Rune let his fangs drop and had told him that Solomon’s second-in-command, a vampire named Jaan, who’d lived in New Seaside, had also disappeared, leaving his business for his employees to board up. The pair could have run anywhere, but somebody still led them, and whoever that was, they’d returned to him.
Swaying, Rune clutched the tile rim. It chafed at his ego that Solomon had gotten away. He was after the treasure, and he’d been willing to kill Zev to get it. Rune was hampered by having to stay out of sight. He was wanted for murder, but even more, he wanted people to believe he was on the run. Let them think he was no one to worry about anymore. Without Uriah he’d have to come out into the open.
But Solomon was hiding too. The safest place was underground, but he hadn’t taken the portal by Zev’s cabin, and Rune had bet he wouldn’t take any of the ones near Comity. He’d lived in the area too long for somebody not to recognize and possibly report him, which meant he’d come to the next closest portal: Cameo or Sagara. But before Rune had had a chance to leave Opal Lake, Uriah had arrived with a message he’d received from a bank president in Bakersfield, a few hours from the portals.
Too coincidental to be a coincidence.
So Rune had come to the house Uriah had found for him, but he’d sensed nothing here. Not a whiff of Solomon. Only… only a strange compulsion to stay.
And now you’re dead.
He blinked. The pasty-yellow flower wavered in and out as shadows fell and crept up the pool’s tile walls. He gazed at the mountains where the sun dipped below the snowy tips. Fucking ridiculous. He gritted his teeth against a spiral of fear uncurling in his belly. You can make it.
He’d craw
led from a cave-in at the Sagara portal. It was stupid to venture in there at all, let alone by himself. It wasn’t as if Solomon was going to walk up with a smile and confess to Wen’s and Mateo’s murders and Zev’s near-assassination. All Rune had done was put himself in danger. After the cave-in, his energy had gone to healing his wounds, leaving him none to dim or whatever it was he did when he faded into a fog. Transmutation, he guessed, but he couldn’t ask anybody about it because he didn’t know anybody else who had the same power. Not his father or his mother, and he had no idea how he did it, but he dimmed until he disappeared into thin air, and now he was stuck in his body with no strength to get out of it. Going into that portal alone was the dumbest thing he’d ever done. You got out though. You made it.
Now he only had to get into the house and hope Uriah had brought water. Unless he left you…
How long would Uriah wait before he counted Rune gone? Maybe he was searching for him somewhere else.
Get up.
No lights came on in the house, and no headlights wove on the twisty road into Baggins. Chilled now, he dragged a leg from the pool and got onto his knees. The house swelled and shrank. Shit. He swallowed, the raspy pain in his throat dragging a shudder from him.
Move. Qudim’s voice pounded in his head. You are a king’s son.
He got a foot under him, pushed up, and tumbled into nothingness. Minutes, or maybe hours later, he woke under the bright stars. Somebody hooked their arms under his. He thrashed away.
“Sire!”
“Fuck.”
His thumping heart slowed. Uriah gripped his shoulders and sat him up. “Where have you been?”
“Swimming.” What an absurd thing to say. But Uriah didn’t comment, and Rune laughed. “Get me up.”
In the house, Uriah dropped him onto a ratty couch and thrust a cup of water into his hand. He gulped it and drank four refills before swiping his mouth and heaving a sigh. “That was good.”
Uriah frowned, not looking convinced. “Can you stand?”
“Why?”
“So I can take you to my motel. It has air conditioning and running water.”
“Why did you come back?”
“To look for you.”
“You didn’t think I ran off.”
Uriah laughed now. “It never occurred to me.”
Rune had abandoned Uriah once before when he’d gone to get the royal necklace he’d given Jessa. But he didn’t mention that now. He set his empty cup on the floor and let Uriah drag him to his feet and walk him to the jeep on the driveway. An hour later they drove into a dusty town that sprawled along a main strip. Rune had stayed out of Baggins since he’d gotten here. Not that he worried anybody would know who he was, but he took no chances.
Glowing signs lit the diners and bars on either side of the street Uriah turned onto. Mid-block, a motel with a tall, narrow sign bled its name into the dark. The Desert Sands.
Uriah pulled into the bumpy lot. “The power’s spotty here, worse than most places, but it doesn’t stay off long.”
The fracking accident that had set off the Upheaval’s earthquakes and destroyed the vampire cities had taken out power and communication systems all over the world. Recovery was slower in some places than in others. Three TV channels worked in one town, two in another. Hot water flowed from the faucets on some blocks and trickled in cool threads from others. But the lights shone here, and when Rune got out of the car, the air thrummed with the sound of air conditioners.
When Uriah started over, Rune waved him off and headed across the lot. A few lights seeped around closed drapes in the two buildings that faced each other across a stubby palm-dotted courtyard.
Midway down the nearest corridor, Uriah opened a door with an old-fashioned key, and Rune stepped in. His wobbly legs crumbled, and he sprawled across a bed.
Sleep skulked at the edges of his consciousness, but he fought it. Sleep brought dreams of Isaac and tore holes in Rune’s defenses. Such a suspicious-looking human.
Long ago, when Zev had confessed to having a fated love, though he’d had no clue who it was, Rune had dismissed the idea… until he’d heard him. A small voice in the days after the Upheaval, pulling at a heart already bloodied by the misery of the starving and homeless humans and vampires all around him.
Hello?
He didn’t know what had possessed him to call out. In all the fairytales about fated loves only a rare few could speak in each other’s heads, and Dawn and Qudim never had. But it was just a fairytale. And then, as if to prove it, the voice went silent.
Years later, it had seemed right to Rune that he’d have no one. He’d betrayed his father and brought his family low. After ruling for thousands of years, the Seneras had fallen second to the Wrythins. But the loss of rank had been Rune’s idea to show he was a threat to no one. A lowly prince who kept to himself until…
Isaac had come to live with them. The human was a blood donor from Comity House who fed drainers like Jessa. Unlike the other vampires allergic to Synelix, Jessa had never gotten so hungry he attacked humans. He’d gotten sick and wasted away. Even when he’d been diagnosed as a drainer, drinking real blood hadn’t helped him much. Not until Isaac. After Wen’s murder, Otto had brought Jessa’s donor to the castle, and Rune had followed them, but he was supposed to be on a job site, not in Comity, so he hadn’t let anybody know he was there. Maybe that had been why Isaac had risked sneaking into Rune’s studio. Curious at the sight of him, Rune had dimmed and watched as Isaac circled the tables, brushed the sheets of glass with his fingertips, and riffled through the pile of maps until he stopped at the red and gold statue Rune had made of him after scenting him on Jessa’s skin. Fate—in her wisdom or colossally wicked sense of humor—had chosen Rune’s love for Jessa’s donor.
Mine.
But Isaac wasn’t and couldn’t be. The time for fated love and happiness had died with Qudim. Rune had nothing to give him, but he’d watched him draw a finger down the statue’s arm before he’d turned in Rune’s direction. Pretty. But worn out too.
Rune had blocked Isaac’s voice for a long time, but sometimes it had broken through. More sound than words, the way it usually was with fated loves. Now it whispered to him, and he didn’t block it anymore, not after coming within seconds of losing him when Solomon had broken into Comity House after Wen Wrythin. Solomon had killed Wen and a human before Rune had descended in a fog and attacked him. But Isaac’s terror had distracted him, and Solomon had gotten away. Rune had followed with only a glimpse of his fated.
What color were the human’s eyes?
The sound of Isaac’s voice flirted with baritone and carried the husky softness of somebody afraid nobody wanted to listen to him.
I do.
But being with Isaac was a fleeting wish as durable as his dreams.
His thoughts scattered as Uriah closed the door, flipped on a light, and a sudden gust of cold air blew from the vent above him. He clenched his fists and rolled over. A moment later, Uriah tugged him up and pressed a glass into his hand. “Drink.”
He nodded.
Water ran in the bathroom while he sipped and cooled the burn in his throat. He took bigger swallows.
“Lucky you’re Ellowyn,” Uriah growled at him and draped a wet towel over Rune’s head. A cold trickle ran down his neck.
True, vampires were harder to kill than humans, but it wasn’t impossible. They seldom got the flu, but it happened. They healed faster, but not always.
Rune pulled the towel off his head. “Trust me. Killing myself isn’t my game plan.”
“What happened?”
“Cave-in. I couldn’t get past it to the water.”
“Cave-in? You were in one of the portals? Why?”
“Looking for Solomon.” The look Uriah gave him told him what an idiot he’d been. “That’s what we came here for.”
Uriah grunted. They’d come for more than that. Thomas Mithrinin for one, and compulsion for another. Baggins had dragged Rune to it like a
siren’s song. But now, with the water in him, the song changed. A melancholy thread ran through it. Strange.
He swallowed and cleared his throat.
“Better?” Uriah asked.
He nodded and drank the rest of his glass. Uriah took it back to the bathroom. By the time he returned, Rune had wrapped the towel around his neck.
“This place doesn’t have ice,” Uriah said.
He handed Rune another glass of water. Rune drank half, wincing against a dull throb that pounded in his temples. “I don’t need ice.”
“You shouldn’t be trying to find Solomon by yourself. You’re too valuable.”
“I’m not by myself. You’re with me.”
“I was with Otto until this morning.”
Uriah never complained about where Rune sent him or what he asked him to do, though his tone was disgruntled at the moment.
“Working with Otto found you your fated.”
Uriah jerked his face away. “Moss found his fated.” He moved to the door. “Rest while I get us food.”
He slipped out, and Rune didn’t try to stop him. Had Uriah said that about his fated because that was what Rune wanted to hear? Lucky Qudim wasn’t alive. Yair would have spent days dying for raising his hand to a king. Rune was surprised Uriah tolerated him, and a part of him was annoyed at that. But Uriah spent little time with Yair, though that might have been because Rune didn’t encourage it. Why should he? He wasn’t with his fated either.
The thread of misery inside him twisted like smoke into his throat. His fangs ached. He wanted to sink them into somebody’s flesh. Into Isaac’s. Pain pierced his brain like a cry or a… sob.
Isaac?
He didn’t understand his preoccupation. He’d fought against Isaac’s pull for years, and he’d won. His goal was clear, and it didn’t matter how tired and empty and hopeless he was. He’d committed patricide. He didn’t get to fall in love like everybody else. There was no coming back from murder, but if he could get the necklaces and the treasure, he could claim his rightful place with Zev. No one would question their rule because the treasure belonged to the one who found it. It didn’t matter that he didn’t deserve it. As long as the Ellowyn thought he did, he could keep the Adi from enslaving humans.
