“What in all the realms was Felix up to here?” She examined the pedestals, the metal plates bolted to the floor.
“Sales.” I left it there, choosing to continue into the next room. The heady scent of fresh blood called to me. Sang to me. Promised bliss.
The sight before me was a different matter.
“Shit.” Jessabelle pushed past me, stepping into the blood-soaked space. It was nearly impossible to take a step without landing in a puddle. “It was a frenzy.”
“An accurate word for it.” I counted at least twenty bodies and countless stray limbs. “The council will have a frenzy of their own once they get word of this. I’m surprised they haven’t already sent a representative or two.”
“With the Summit, they’re likely spread thin.” She shook her head in wonder. “You know it takes a lot to surprise me. This is almost enough to turn my stomach.”
“I’ve heard legends of the frenzied orgies which took place back in the early years. This brings that to mind.” I shot her a look, stepping over a headless torso along the way. “At least there was no internet back then. Less risk of word spreading.”
“How can word spread when all the humans were massacred?” Jessa sniffed the air. “I smell her, too. She was here. Why would he bring her here?”
“Why not? He’s always been more at home with lowlifes such as—”
We both came to a stop before the open office door. “Such as Felix,” I finished, astounded at the sight of the massive corpse splayed out on the floor.
“Would he do this?” Jessabelle clutched my arm.
“Do you doubt it?” I scowled down at what was left of Felix, the human-demon hybrid who’d run the place. “Not that he didn’t deserve it, I’m sure. I’d always heard the rumors of him selling humans as pets. Just one of the many crimes he’s committed. He had it coming.”
“From Gabriel, though?” Her head was on a swivel as she looked around the room.
“He must have threatened Sophie.”
We exchanged a look.
Her eyes dropped to the corpse. “Yes. He would have. The pig.”
“Gabriel took a risk bringing her into this club.” My mind pored over what his motivation might’ve been. “There had to be something he wanted. Something only Felix could give him.”
Jessabelle saw nothing wrong with rifling through the desk drawers, rolling her eyes when I gaped in surprise. “I hardly think he’ll mind.”
Then, with a jerk of her pointed chin, “He emptied the drawers, or did as good as.”
She held up a small bottle, mostly empty. Wafted a hand over top. “Wolfsbane. It’s all that’s left.”
“Lycans?”
“It makes sense that he would want this, along with anything else Felix sold on the side.” She slipped the bottle into her jeans and gave me a withering look when I lifted my brows. “What? We might need it at some point. When was the last time you witnessed a wolf willing to fight fair? Any little advantage we can use.”
A tiny, dark-skinned, fuschia-haired vampire stormed about the blood-soaked dance floor outside. “I’ll say we need bleach! What am I supposed to do with this? I swear to all he gods, if he had anything to do with this—”
“Who?” I called out, surprising her. We were the only other living creatures in the place, the now sated vampires having slinked off to find further entertainment.
She whirled on me after jumping. “You! What are you doing here?”
Jessa stepped forward. “We were looking for our cousin, Gabriel.”
“Him! He’s the one who was likely behind this. Running off with that blonde piece of—”
“He wasn’t alone?” Jessa glanced my way.
“No, of course not. I can never catch him between the pretty blood bags he carts around.” She ran a hand over her hair, looking around in despair. “And now he leaves me with this.”
“I doubt my cousin caused… this.” I waved an arm over the room. “That unfortunate mess in the office, perhaps. But not this.”
So Gabriel knew of what took place here this evening. And he’d left in a great hurry, accompanied by Sophie.
“What am I supposed to do now?” She wasn’t asking us, in particular. “No club owner. No employment.”
Jessa shrugged. “Take over for yourself. You’re probably far better suited for it than Felix ever was. You might even manage to run the place without running afoul of the council, unlike your predecessor.”
Hope sparked in the vampire’s amber eyes. “I could, couldn’t I?”
“My job here is done.” Jessa stepped carefully over what was left of the massacred humans on her way out of the club before calling back over her shoulder. “Hurry. We have work to do.”
As I’d said out in the courtyard, my sister hid keen intelligence behind a cold, imperious mask. Once Sophie came into power, Jessabelle would make a fine advisor.
If the two of them could keep from killing each other, of course.
Ten
SOPHIE
The penthouse wasn’t a very comforting place.
Comfortable? Oh, yes. Extremely. I would use the word luxurious.
But was it the sort of place I wanted to retreat to after witnessing the results of a bloodbath? No, probably not.
It was better than going home, at least if I could believe Gabriel. There was no reason for me not to.
And I might’ve been stubborn—okay, I was definitely stubborn—but I wasn’t willing to take the risk of running into lycans.
Had I ever even seen any? Maybe I had and didn’t know at the time, just like I might’ve run into vampires a hundred times in the past.
If Gabriel was telling the truth about always being up in my life, I had been around vampires for a long time and never knew it.
I caught my reflection in the bathroom mirror. Had it only been a few days since I’d looked at myself in the mirror at the cabin? That glaring bulb, the way it made me look like something out of a zombie movie.
I wasn’t a zombie. I was a vampire, at least according to my blood. Close enough.
Gabriel was on the floor in front of the fireplace. He had emptied his pockets and was bent over the bottle and vials from Felix’s office. His posture brought to mind a kid poring over Halloween candy right after getting home.
“How much did you get from that desk?”
“Plenty.” He uncapped one bottle and wafted a hand over top of the opening. “Wolfsbane. Oh, this will come in handy.” He placed that to the side along with four matching bottles.
“What’s that do?”
“It renders a lycan powerless for a length of time correlating to the amount used. A drop in a glass of water will mean they’re unable to shift for six hours, perhaps longer.”
“Wow. Pretty potent stuff.”
“Indeed. Considering the creatures after you, it might prove itself useful.”
“Sure. I’ll offer them a drink while they’re shifting and slobbering and licking their chops. That’ll go so well.”
His head dropped a little as he sighed. “Do you have an alternative?”
“Sure. Put some in a spray bottle and spray them the way you spray a dog’s face to train it to stop doing certain things.”
He lifted his head. Looked up at me. This was the first time I had ever seen him looking puzzled. “That… is a much better idea. Where did that come from?”
“We had dogs when I was a kid. I figured it couldn’t be all that different. And, you know. The whole listening to my instincts thing.”
He cocked an eyebrow. “What do you mean?”
Right. Would he want to hear about Dominic? “I’ve always had strong instincts. Poppy always laughs about my bullshit meter.” Just mentioning her name made my heart hurt a little. She was completely unaware of this entire world, and I couldn’t pretend I didn’t envy her that.
He waited for more, hitting me with those probing eyes of his. “Now, it’s like those instincts have deepened. I know things when there’
s no reason to know them.” I balled up my fists and pressed them to my stomach. “Here. In my gut. Sometimes they come out without me meaning to say anything. Like back in Felix’s office. I didn’t mean to say all that. I didn’t even think about it. Somebody told me to tune in to my instincts, since I share blood with your kind, and now I can’t stop myself.”
Probably the most diplomatic way I could think to say it, without a single mention of Dominic’s name. Frankly, I was proud of myself.
His mouth twitched at the corners. “You’re not the only one with a bullshit meter. Stop being nice about it. What really happened?”
I rolled my eyes. “Dominic told me to listen to myself more. So I’ve started doing that and it’s working pretty okay.”
He snorted. “That sounds like him.”
I sat in front of him with the bottles and stuff between us. “What happened with you two?”
“You don’t have the time.”
“Try me.”
“Neither of us has the time.” He held up one of the brown bottles I recognized from Felix’s office. “We have to get you to safety. Where no one will hunt you. I’m sure Lucian has sent countless sycophants to search for you by now.”
He drew a long breath. “And word might get out about the blonde blood bag I wore on my arm at Felix’s. Not that I doubt Dominic would immediately blame me for this—saying Graziella hasn’t already confessed everything.”
“I shouldn’t have attracted attention. I should’ve stayed quiet in Felix’s office.”
He shook his head with a frown. “Let me guess. You were following your instincts then, weren’t you?”
“Yeah. Great idea, right? Maybe Dominic was wrong about that.”
A tiny smile tugged at one corner of his mouth. “I have to give this one to him. He was right to encourage you to do that.”
“Oh, really? Cuz there’s a dude in the back office of a vampire club who might disagree if he wasn’t dead.”
“He was going to do his damndest to take you from me. I knew it the moment we ran into him on the dance floor. I smelled it on him. The desire for you. He knew how valuable you were without knowing why you were so valuable. Felix was never anybody’s idea of a genius, but he knew that much.”
“So why did we go back to his office if you knew what he was after?”
“I was after something, too. We both were.” He lifted a shoulder when I shot him a look. “Besides, the moment I sensed his intent, I knew what I had to do. I was always going to end his miserable life. You merely sped things up with that flash of insight you couldn’t seem to hold back.”
“Sorry.”
“Don’t be.” He winked. “It was hot.”
A flush crept up my neck, threatening to cover my cheeks. “Oh, shut up.”
“It was. Watching you trust yourself got me nearly as heated as you were on the dance floor.”
I had to look away from him in embarrassment. When that wasn’t enough, I had to get up. I walked over to the window and looked down on the city.
How long had that kind of thing been happening? The auctions, the orgies, the massive bloodbaths? And it was all going on right under my nose, back when I was convinced there was no such thing as vampires.
Naïve. Precious, naïve little me.
“I said the wrong thing, didn’t I?”
I caught sight of his reflection in the window. He was still on the floor. Smart enough to give me a little distance.
“Those people might’ve had families and friends. That girl, the one close to us. She couldn’t have been more than eighteen. She should be getting ready for college in the fall and throwing up in trashcans outside bars. Not dead in some vampire club.”
“These things have happened countless times. Memories will be erased. The police will never be alerted. We have centuries of experience with covering our tracks.”
“That doesn’t make it okay. Those poor, stupid people had no idea what they were getting themselves into. It’s wrong.”
“I can’t disagree. I might have a century ago, but time has changed me. Along with other things.”
“Like what?”
If he heard me, he ignored me. “It would be helpful if we had a leader who would take a strong stance on such abuses.”
“It would.” My shoulders sank when I realized what he was getting at. “Oh. You’re talking about me.”
“Again with the instincts.”
I wrapped my arms around my weary body. “You realize I never accepted the whole you’re meant to be our queen thing. I don’t want to be. Not ever.”
“We don’t always have a choice in these matters.”
“And how the hell would you know?” I was through being nice. Tired of being told what I had to do.
“Because I do. Nobody asks to be born when and where they are. Royalty doesn’t decide to be royalty.”
“This isn’t the same thing.”
“To us, it is. And you could make a difference. The sort of difference you just spoke of.”
“Oh, stop it. You’re playing me.” I went to the sofa and flopped down. I had never known this kind of bone-crushing exhaustion. Dismay. The feeling like my life was over.
It hadn’t been the best life. It had made me harder in a lot of ways than I wanted to be—tougher, coarser. But it had been mine, and I was in the middle of rebuilding it when everything fell apart. Maybe I’d need a little time to get over it.
Thing was, I didn’t have time. Everybody kept telling me so.
Gabriel turned in place, facing me with a serious expression. “I would never play you, as you put it. What do I have to do to convince you how serious I am about this? We’re talking about life-and-death situations. The future of not only all vampires but all supernatural creatures. One ruler to unite all of us. To assemble a true council, one of supernaturals committed to putting an end to what you witnessed tonight—merely one example of the atrocities which can occur when bullies are allowed free reign.”
I looked him up and down with a smirk I couldn’t hide. “I would never peg you for an activist.”
“I wouldn’t use that word.”
“What would you use?”
He took the question seriously, lowering his brow and pursing his lips. The intensity of his gaze threatened to melt me. “Experienced. I’ve seen too much to undervalue solid leaders. We’re desperately in need of you. Otherwise…”
“Otherwise?” I choked out.
“Otherwise our entire world—all of the supernatural universe—will collapse upon itself in time. We’ll fall apart without our queen in place. Frankly, it’s a wonder we haven’t done so long before now, going so long without a Blood Queen or King. And once we implode, we’ll wipe out a wide swath of humanity in the process.”
No pressure.
The direction of his gaze shifted until he was looking past me, out the window. “It’s late. You should get some rest. We have more work to do.”
“Tell me it has nothing to do with visiting a vampire club.”
“Would you want me to lie?”
I gasped. “You’re shitting me.”
His lips twitched. The bastard. “We’re visiting an old friend of mine. An ally who dropped out of sight decades ago. Only I am aware of their presence here in the city. Bringing you into my confidence speaks to the regard I hold you in. Don’t let me down.”
“Shouldn’t I be the one talking to you that way?” I lifted my chin when he shot me a look. “I’m the queen and all that.”
He snickered, turning his attention back to his treasure trove. “Not yet, you aren’t.”
Eleven
DOMINIC
“So this is where she lived?”
I had expected the disdain in my cousin’s voice, and as such didn’t react to it. “You sound underwhelmed.”
“Oh, do I?” Jessabelle held a hand to her chest. “Because I meant to sound disgusted. I’ll have to try harder.”
“All right. Enough.” Kristoff, ever the
peacemaker. He turned to her. “Do you need to feed? Because you’re roughly as cranky as a toddler.”
Jessa threw her hands into the air. She managed to make even exasperation appear graceful. “What do you want from me? I hate this world. I hate wearing their idea of clothing. I hate bugs, and there are so many in the air at this time of year. I hate the stench. How do they live with the stench? Are they so accustomed to being filthy that they know no better?”
I chose to hold my tongue rather than remind her of where she’d come from. The gutter in which my uncle Augustine had found her. Dressed in rags, hunting rats for supper. I’d heard the tale of how he’d considered feeding from her or keeping her as a pet—her beauty had been a thing of wonder even then, malnourished and covered in filth—and how he’d decided to turn her, to foster her as a daughter.
He’d held her up and treasured her as one would a sparkling jewel for two hundred years. In that time, she’d forgotten just how far she’d come. How low she’d once been.
Was that it?
Or was being here in the city a reminder of how she’d suffered? For while passing a homeless man huddled in the doorway to a boarded-up building, she averted her eyes with what I knew was more than disgust or pity. It was memory. A kinship she couldn’t forget, no matter how many years passed.
We were a block away from Sophie’s building, where she’d lived two floors above a sandwich shop. Yes, it was rundown, the paint peeling away from the exterior walls, a rusted fire escape along the side that looked as if it was long past the point of bearing weight.
I stopped, holding out an arm on either side to stop my cousins.
Kristoff picked up the scent as easily as I had. “Lycans.”
“They’ve been near recently,” I murmured, scanning the area. It was quiet, the streets empty except for the occasional passing car or straggler making their way home from a night out. Morning would come soon enough.
“They want her, and you know how determined Justin can be when he wants something.” The disgust in Kristoff’s voice was plain.
“The idiot,” Jessabelle spat. “Believing Augustine’s lies. What is there to be done with one as stupid as that?”
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