by Sierra Dean
He took a step back, and I noticed for the first time he was barefoot. He tilted his head to the side as I spoke, a habit that made me picture him in his furrier form.
“Vampires aren’t the only thing I hunt. I also do private contracts.” I searched his eyes, hoping he understood the meaning of the statement.
“You’ve killed werewolves.”
He was a smart one, at least. It pleased me to know werewolf matchmaking hadn’t saddled me with an idiot for a soul mate. Although I was certain this confession period was going to make him less fond of me.
“Yes.”
“Were they killed because of someone’s hatred towards our kind? Some private vendetta?” His expression shone with rage.
I shook my head solemnly. I didn’t want to tell him the next part. “I’ve killed two werewolves. The first was the pet of a rogue vampire, and he tried to rip my throat out when I came for his master.”
Lucas sat on the edge of his desk. It did not escape my notice that he was now outside my reach. “And the second?”
“The second…” I looked around the room, like I might find the right words floating overhead. “I told you earlier I’d met another werewolf who knew my name. That’s part of what makes the second kill so difficult to explain. I want your word that what I tell you doesn’t leave this room and you won’t retaliate.” I could tell he didn’t like it, but he nodded, his mouth fixed in a grim line. “My second werewolf kill came at the request of an alpha in Albany.”
“Marcus?” Lucas was taken aback at this. I, for my part, was shocked he immediately knew the man who had hired me, though I suppose any good king would know who worked under him.
“Yes. He came to me because a new wolf within his territory wasn’t abiding by the laws. Your laws. This wolf was using his newfound strength in human form to force himself on local women. Marcus was worried it would bring your people to the attention of local authorities. When the boy attacked Marcus’s human daughter, things came to a head.”
“Oh God.” Lucas looked away from me. “Why didn’t he come to me? We have ways to handle these things.”
“Marcus didn’t ask me to kill the boy, I need to make that clear. He asked if I could use my unique abilities to make the boy leave the Albany territory. The boy sealed his own fate by thinking he could best me in a fight.”
The tension in his jaw and the furrow of his brow told me my news had hit him harder than either of us had anticipated. I had been killing my own kind for six years. I’d seen the look of betrayal and grim determination on the faces of the council as they placed death warrants in my hands and sent me to kill their brothers. I was a suitable means to an unhappy end, but everything was handled in a businesslike fashion.
When Marcus asked me to deal with the werewolf in his territory causing such trouble, I didn’t see it as a business arrangement. I had only seen the father of a ruined daughter. Not until now, looking at the despair on Lucas’s face, did I realize the death of one wolf could impact the entire pack. That the king himself would mourn the death of one. Or that Marcus’s vendetta would hurt him as well.
Neither of us said anything for a long time. Muted tones of early sunrise had started to filter in under the blinds, and I was thankful they were closed. The sunlight wouldn’t kill me the way it did a real vampire, but it would be difficult to explain why I had third-degree burns rather than a tan.
In spite of the drawn curtain I felt a familiar sense of panic. I needed to go home. I had to get back to the safety of my basement apartment, with its thick gloomy shades, where daylight never penetrated.
“Lucas…”
He raised a hand to silence me. I could imagine what he was thinking. I had the right smell, the right taste and the right name. For all intents and purposes the only thing keeping me from being his perfect soul mate was my own stubbornness. Then I dropped the bomb—Oh by the way, dear, I kill monsters.
“Do you remember his name?”
“Pardon?”
He fixed a hard glare on me, his sorrow overcome by anger, and his voice quivered with an uneasy mixture of the two emotions. “The boy you killed.” It sounded so filthy the way he said it. “Do you remember his name?”
The way he asked it told me a lot rested on my response, possibly my very life. I might not be human—I was paid to be a killer and I could be more of a monster than those I killed—but I was not without a soul.
“William Reilly. His name was William Reilly.”
Lucas nodded. He must have already known the name. I didn’t remember the names of everyone I’d ever killed, but I remembered the ones I felt bad about.
This had gone from precoital intensity to feeling like after-school detention in the span of seconds. I for one was ready to be done with it.
“If there’s nothing else, I mean, if you’re done with me…” I inclined my head towards the door.
“For tonight.” He kept watching me as I rose to leave. “I’m sure this has been more than enough for one evening.” His phrasing implied he hadn’t totally written me off, but I was going to get out of here while I was still in his good graces.
“Secret?” He apparently wasn’t quite done.
I stopped halfway to the door, turning to look at him. He padded towards me, and I admired the flashes of bare stomach his open shirt granted me. As he approached, once more the taste of him filled my mouth. I wondered what I tasted like to him. I sighed in spite of myself when he placed one large hand on each of my shoulders.
His blue eyes were so close to mine I saw a circle of gold around each iris, and I imagined again what he must look like as a wolf. I felt the urge to eliminate the distance between our mouths.
Only in the company of supernatural beings is it normal for moods to shift so suddenly.
“I forgive you,” he said.
It wasn’t forgiveness he was giving me as much as a royal pardon. The proud part of me wanted to tell him to stuff it, but the Secret who was accustomed to the rigid formality of the vampire council nodded with mute acceptance. He’d needed to do it, and as his subordinate I needed to accept.
I turned again to leave, but he held on to me, his hands stronger than I’d anticipated.
“You will have dinner with me. Tomorrow night.” He looked at the watch on his wrist and laughed, then corrected himself. “Tonight.”
“Umm.” It hadn’t sounded like a request, but the look on his face told me he was still expecting a response. “Okay?”
The coming night was shaping up to be as relaxing as the previous one had been. Meet with Holden and the Tribunal. Explain to Keaty about my new puppy fan club. Deflect Mercedes’s questions about Lucas. Have dinner with my billionaire soul mate in his penthouse.
Yup. Sounded like a totally average Thursday.
Chapter Eleven
The sky was dark gray and overcast when I got outside. I still needed to find a cab in a hurry, but at least I didn’t have to hide the smell of my own burning flesh. While the driver shuttled me westward to Hell’s Kitchen, I called Keaty to tell him I was fine and asked him to call Mercedes for me.
Safe in my apartment, I staggered into my bedroom, which was a promising pitch black. Because of the danger posed by even one errant beam of sunlight, I couldn’t trust curtains to protect me during the day, so I’d bricked the small window closed, telling my landlord it was to keep burglars out.
Collapsing onto my bed, overwhelmed by the daytime exhaustion that rendered vampires dead during daylight hours, I fell asleep straight away.
I was back in Central Park.
I knew the moon was full without seeing it, because I had the unsettling sensation something liquid and hot was burning under my skin, looking for a way out.
I heard a low growl but could not pinpoint its location. It came at me from every direction and never from the same place twice. Through the thick fog of trees the growl was coming closer, and I realized it was not one growl but many.
A pack.
My in
stinct was to run, and who was I to ignore my fight-or-flight reaction? My feet moved to escape but became tangled in the long dress I hadn’t noticed I was wearing. The only dresses I owned were short and low cut, designed to titillate vampiric thirst. The garment I now found myself in had layer upon layer of rustling tulle skirts cinched together at my waist in a breathlessly tight corseted top.
A wedding dress.
I tried not to focus on why I was wearing a wedding gown in the woods. Instead I turned my attention back to the pack of growling wolves I could hear but not see. My heart pounded against my sternum as I grabbed armfuls of fabric and started to run through the woods. The smells and surroundings became more and more familiar as I fled. Branches pulled at my hair and dress, and I realized I was following the same path I’d chased Henry Davies down the night before. It meant the Great Lawn couldn’t be far. My dress caught a low exposed root, and I toppled to the ground, cutting my hands on rocks and sticks as I braced my fall. I got to my feet and picked up the hem, where I accidentally smeared blood from my palms on the perfect white.
I felt guilty for ruining the fabric.
The wolves drew nearer as I began to run again. This time I made it to the lawn, where I could see someone who looked human standing alone on the empty field. I tore across the grass with all the speed I could muster. I didn’t think anyone could save me from the monsters at my heels, but just seeing another living person felt like finding salvation. As I got closer I saw that my mysterious savior was Lucas.
He wore a tuxedo cut so well James Bond would be jealous, and smiled when he looked at me.
I reached him in a panic, out of breath, collapsing in a foamy white pile at his feet with my arms covering my head, braced for the gnarling teeth of wolves to rip me apart.
But there were no teeth. The growls, too, were gone. The only sound in the night was a soft chuckle from above. I looked over my shoulder and confirmed that there were no wolves in the field.
I felt a strong hand on my shoulder and was soothed by it.
“Lucas, you must think I’m an idiot.”
The hand squeezed and the chuckle became a low, menacing laugh.
“Secret McQueen, mon chéri, I believe you are no man’s fool.”
The voice didn’t belong to Lucas, but I knew it all the same. It was pure Cajun loathing. A bone-jarring shudder rolled over me, and my head was slow to respond to my body’s fearful commands, but I finally looked up.
Just in time to see Alexandre Peyton, vampire in my wolf’s clothing, lunge for my throat.
Chapter Twelve
Waking up wasn’t as dramatic as the dream. I didn’t scream or sit bolt upright; I merely awoke with my breath stuck in my throat and a layer of icy sweat on my skin.
It was dusk again and my senses were at their prime. It didn’t take long for my eyes to adjust to the gloom, and it took less time still for me to recognize someone else was in the room with me. He was sitting in the plush armchair next to my bedroom door.
My pulse leaped a little, which made me feel stupid because once I recognized who it was I knew he’d heard the change in my heart rate.
Though neither of us needed the light to see, I turned on the lamp next to my bed and propped myself up on a pillow.
“You’re out awfully early, aren’t you?”
Holden frowned, which was not all that unusual since he rarely smiled. “As you must have anticipated, the Tribunal would like to have a word with you.”
“Oh, Holden. I think you and I both know they will have a lot more than a word for me.”
I noticed he wasn’t looking directly at me, and when I looked down I understood why. During my fitful sleep I had stripped off all my clothing, and the only thing covering me was a thin floral sheet.
“Oh.” With the sheet still pulled close, I grabbed my silk robe from the foot of my bed and slipped it on, cinching it around the waist. “Better?”
The wolf part of me wasn’t shy about nudity. But I respected that Holden came from another time. An era in which having a conversation with a lady who was naked would be unheard of.
I also knew well enough that he wasn’t always this shy when it came to being up close and personal with women. It made me wonder if me putting on the robe protected his sensibilities or subdued his desires.
“Thank you.” He turned to face me.
I wanted to point out that while he’d been watching me sleep the sheet hadn’t been pulled up at all, but I let him have the illusion of his modesty.
“They want to see me right away?” The clock on my nightstand told me it was seven thirty. The growl in my belly told me I needed to eat before I went.
He must have heard it because he gave me a slight nod.
“They requested I bring you at nightfall. Do you have food or will I need to take you to the Oracle?”
I looked at the clock. I had enough food in my fridge, but given the events of the last twenty-four hours I wouldn’t mind a visit with Calliope.
Calliope, better known among the paranormal community as the Oracle, was the fourth and final person who knew what I was. She owned a large mansion in the middle of the city, which existed on a plain outside human reality. Only those of the supernatural persuasion walking into the Starbucks on West 52nd and 8th in genuine need of help would find their way into Calliope’s home. She insisted the location was arbitrary, but I knew she had a sweet tooth for caramel macchiatos.
And the blood of male virgins.
Calliope was a true immortal. Vampires used the phrase immortal because they could not be killed by age, disease or random accidents the way humans could. But a stake to the heart, exposure to sunlight or, as I often demonstrated, a bullet to the brain could all kill them beyond revival.
Not Calliope. She was the daughter of a fairy queen and a god.
I had laughed in her face when she’d told me that the first time. She had politely reminded me most people would scoff at my parentage as well. Gods, she’d explained, at least in the Greek, Roman and Norse tradition, were not as divine as they’d have mortals believe.
There was a level of truth to most of the popular myths that came out of the polytheist religions. She told me that in the ancient years of Earth’s history, true immortals were not as publicity shy as they became in later centuries. They used their power and influence to achieve a godlike status and began to believe they truly were as divine as humans believed them to be. This delusion of divinity led true immortals to use the word god to describe themselves long after polytheistic religions fell out of popularity.
Fairies, on the other hand, prized their privacy. They existed in a separate reality, only deigning to cross over when something caught their curiosity or they found babies or women to steal.
Fairies never stole men.
Calliope’s mansion was a border station between human reality and the realms of fairies and immortals. It was a fascinating and terrifying place to visit. Calliope herself was part of the appeal. She had once lived among the mortals, using her particular gift for being the center of attention to its full advantage.
She had taken over the life of a small-town girl who had died without anyone’s notice, and reinvented herself as the ultimate blonde-bombshell glamour icon. When she’d had her fill, she left the body without further explanation. It remains one of the greatest mysterious Hollywood deaths.
To see Calliope now, she looked exactly like the icon once painted by Andy Warhol, only her hair was no longer short and blonde but restored to a long, smoky black. Her figure was bodacious, her pout still as alluring. I did a double take whenever I saw her.
Looking the way she did it was strange to hear her tell me what my future held. True to her title, Calliope was an oracle and could see the future of those around her. Her visions were often vague, but she was always right.
She also dealt in blood. Food for vampires without fangs or those still too young to hunt without being dangerous. The council sent all sanctioned newborns to live in Cal
liope’s care until they could be trained to behave.
I went to her because although I had fangs, I could not bring myself to feed off humans, willing or otherwise. It would cross too many lines for me. I could eat human food and enjoyed coffee and the occasional alcoholic beverage, but they did nothing for me nutritionally. I liked caffeine and booze because the acceleration of my metabolism meant I felt their effects almost instantly, and they burned off too fast for any lingering unpleasantness afterward. The downside was, going on a bender after a bad week was pretty much impossible because I was never drunk longer than an hour, and I couldn’t blame my bad judgment on impaired sensibilities. And while I could eat, I still needed blood. In a pinch I could eat blue-rare steak, or even raw meat, as they appeased the hunger of my wolf. But both monsters craved blood, so that was the only thing that really satisfied me.
I had my fridge well stocked, which meant we didn’t need to see Calliope tonight no matter how badly I wanted to.
“I’ve got some O neg in the fridge. You want?”
Holden grimaced. He’d attempted, and failed, to understand my aversion to drinking from the source.
“No, thank you.” He rose from the chair and straightened his blazer. He tried hard to look as if he belonged in this century, and for the most part he succeeded. He was tall and slim with a narrow waist and a well-built upper body. From what he’d told me of his youth, he’d come from a poor farming community. His build came from hours of hard labor with little to eat, making him strong and lean.
His face was chiseled with a strong jaw and lips suited for pouting. His hair and eyes were both dark brown, and depending on the mood of the evening often passed for black. The eyes defined classic vampire—deep, focused and brooding. His mouth usually set itself in a pensive angelic frown with his brow furrowed. Holden’s hair tended to be a bit too long, owing to the uncut look favored by farmhands two hundred years earlier, which he had opted to maintain. He liked to be consistent about that rather than trying to keep with the changing styles of the decades. Tonight he had pushed it behind his ears and gelled it enough to keep it there. It stopped just shy of the collar of his jacket.
