by Rain Oxford
For twenty damned years, I thought I was poison to everyone I cared about. Even what Astrid did was my fault because I let her in. Lying there, trying desperately to save my friend, I forgave Astrid, loved her for saving Cody, and surrendered the last drop of any and all prejudice I had for vampires.
But I wouldn’t forgive Cody.
“Save Marcus,” I said.
The vampire must have seen something in my eyes that convinced him to give up his vampire traditions and laws, because he nodded and got to work on Marcus. I didn’t look. I let the lethargy that was trying to pull me under have its way. Holding on to consciousness meant listening to Cody save my friend’s life. I didn’t want to forgive him. I didn’t want to be the good guy or use the lessons I learned about water and healing. I didn’t want the confusion. Blaming him for years of self-loathing was a relief.
Chapter 7
I had wonderful dreams of Astrid, but I knew the entire time that they were dreams, because my body hurt no matter how I moved in my sleep. When I finally woke, I realized why they were so vivid; I was in Astrid’s bed. Even after months of her absence, it still smelled like her. I did a very good impression of a creep and sniffed her pillow for about fifteen minutes.
That was when the door opened and Stephen entered. He was about six-five with black hair and dark brown eyes, dressed in a business suit, as usual. “Good evening, Devon. You look better.”
I looked down and realized I was wearing black flannel pajamas and my scorpion was actually pressed to my chest with duct tape. Since my clothes had been soaked with Marcus’s blood, I was glad I didn’t have to wake up in it. I picked at the tape.
“Take that off and your uncle will go on a rampage,” Stephan warned.
I left it alone. “Did Marcus make it?”
“He did. Vampires are nearly indestructible. As it is, a stake to the heart wouldn’t kill us unless the heart is obliterated completely. No wizard or healer could have saved him.”
“Did he… Does someone have to die to become a vampire?”
“Their heart must stop, but we don’t consider it to be death any more than we would say a shifter dies when they go from one form to another.”
“Is he taking it okay? Did you tell him?”
“He knew upon waking, and he is taking it very well.”
“Can I see him?”
He frowned. “He does want to see you, but I wasn’t sure if you would want to see him. For the first few years after they are turned, vampires can be very confused. Most of them don’t understand what they feel or how to control their needs.”
“I know. I’ve seen vampire movies. I still want to make sure he’s okay.”
Stephen nodded and gestured to the door. Only when I sat up and put my feet on the cold wood floor did I notice Darwin in the corner of the room. He was asleep, bundled up in an easy chair with a blanket and a huge book in his lap.
“How did he get here?” I whispered. Darwin hadn’t killed anyone, which meant Vincent risked his life by trying to bring him here.
“He drove himself.”
I got up quietly, not wanting to wake him, and left through the door. My calf was healed, but a bit stiff. When I passed through the doorway, I saw Henry in his jaguar form. Stephen shut the door and started down the hallway. Henry followed us.
A few minutes later, Stephen stopped in front of a door. “Now, he is still the man you know, but his reactions and instincts are going to be different. Don’t startle him.” He opened the door and entered first. Henry pushed his way ahead of me and stopped in the doorway to assess the situation for a moment before stepping aside so I could go in.
The first thing I noticed was the luxurious colors and textures in the room. It was definitely not a cage or cell. Then I noticed the two vampire guards at the door. As if my senses realized that I could no longer hate vampires for what they were, they didn’t bother me. I could feel that they were vampires, but it wasn’t a negative sensation as it had always been before. I wondered what that meant I would feel when I saw Astrid again.
Marcus was sitting on the bed with his arms folded across his chest, which was covered in a bandage. He seemed to be trying hard to stop himself from moving off of the bed. He studied me with caution as if afraid I would attack him.
Marcus had always been in fear of his life because of his father. He shouldn’t be afraid now. “Does it hurt?” I asked.
He shook his head, his lips tightening.
His eyes were darker, but still blue. “I half expected purple eyes,” I said, trying to break the tension. “Or do they only go purple at certain times?”
“It’s a sign of our lineage,” Stephen said. I looked at him and gaped. His eyes had changed from brown to a deep burgundy, and then back to brown right in front of me. “Only the vampires with very pure blood have this color eyes. As such, any person I convert will have burgundy eyes, but if they converted someone, that person wouldn’t have them. Then again, there are some humans with latent vampire genes that get converted and end up with enough purity to have burgundy eyes. It’s pretty interesting and unusual to see a vampire more powerful than his sire.”
“But Astrid’s eyes are---”
“Like mine,” Stephen interrupted. “She learned a long time ago how to disguise them and never showed them to you because she thought you would despise her even more for it.”
“I don’t despise her.” At least, not anymore.
“What about me?” Marcus asked.
“Of course I don’t.”
“Cody told me about you and Astrid. He told me you hated vampires. Why did you bring me here?”
Because I wasn’t John Cross. “Because I wanted you to live.” There were other people I knew better than Marcus, including my roommates, but nobody was more willing to do whatever they could to help someone than Marcus. Despite living his life in fear of being assassinated, Marcus would help a stranger off the street just because he could. He was extremely cautious with his identity, but entirely trusting of people.
He grinned, displaying small vampire fangs. “My father can’t find me here.”
“Damn,” one of the guards grumbled.
“Hide your girlfriends,” the second agreed.
They were right; a black-haired, blue-eyed vampire with dimples was pretty unusual.
Marcus’s smile widened. “Hey, am I going to have a scar? If I am, I want to get a Celtic cross tattoo over it. That would be cool. No, wait, tats can be tracked. You don’t happen to know a vampire tattoo artist, do you?”
Henry’s shoulders sagged slightly as he visibly relaxed his guard.
“Yes, he’s completely unrecognizable,” I said sarcastically.
“I can still drink soda, right?” Marcus asked Stephen, no longer listening to me. “Oh, do I have to mix it with blood? Or if a human drinks a lot of soda, would I taste that? Ewe, what if they have a disease? Or what if they eat anchovies? Is blood fatty? Is there blood-light? Are fit people lower calorie than heavy people?”
Stephen’s expression was worried, but he continued politely pretending to listen to Marcus.
Henry shifted. “We should go,” he said.
“You’re naked!” Marcus pointed out.
“You knew he was a shifter,” I told him before turning to Stephen. “Is my uncle still here?”
“He was up until an hour before you woke, when Kale Lucos showed up to harass us about the duties of our peace treaty. I reminded him that the treaty was void inside my home and he decided to leave, but Vincent hasn’t returned.”
“We need to get back to Henry’s truck.” Scott’s teddy bear and the sword were there.
“I drove it here, but we can’t leave yet,” Darwin said, entering the room. He looked like a kid with the blanket wrapped around him.
“Where’s your hoodie?” I asked.
“Covered in blood. One of the vamps was kind enough to go get me a new one and he should be back any minute. We have a debt to repay. A member of Stephen�
�s coven saved your friend and so we owe him.”
That didn’t make any sense to me, since Stephen had gained a new member, which I thought was a good thing for him. However, Darwin’s father was recognized for his numerous treaties, so I trusted Darwin to know what he was talking about. Besides, Stephen didn’t look like he was about to argue with him.
“What is it you want?” I asked.
“That depends. Are you as good an investigator as they say?”
“Well, I used to be all about discretion, but that doesn’t seem to be the case in the paranormal world. I’m not going to kidnap or kill anyone for you.”
“I can handle that stuff myself. My daughter came to you a month ago and asked you to look into the wizard council’s activities.”
I sighed. “Sure. Why not. I’m going to fail all of my classes anyway.”
“I will have a word with Logan,” he said.
“No, no. I don’t want any more favors.” Marcus looked miserable. “I mean, except for saving my friends, obviously. That’s worth a debt. I’ll look into the wizard council. What is it you think they’re doing?”
“I think they’re planning on making everyone basically pets for the wizards. From some friends in Canada and Europe, I’ve heard that the council is designing techniques to torture paranormals. They’re making collars for shifters that cannot be broken and can emit electrical charges that can force them to shift or prevent them from shifting. They’re designing cells to isolate fae from their tribes and the elements.”
“And for the vampires?”
“Poisons that are harmless to humans and fatal to us.”
“I can plant some bugs,” Marcus offered.
“Wizard magic can fry electronics,” I told him. “How close do you think they are to achieving these weapons?”
“I have no idea. The main circle of the council is designed for thirteen men who are supposed to be the most powerful in the country. They are not, however, the entirety of the council. They are supposed to have representatives for each of the paranormal factions, but they had a little trouble with the fae members because a fae from one tribe is not welcome in another tribe without a trade through marriage or children.”
“They marry children?” Marcus asked.
“A leader from one tribe can have a child with another and they often have a powerful outsider come in to make the mother have twins,” Darwin explained. “Then each tribe gets one of the babies and an unbreakable treaty is formed for as long as both of the twins are alive. If the pregnant mother cannot be made to have twins, then the baby goes to the parent who has a higher ranking in their tribe. As long as the child lives, that tribe is safe from the other’s tribe, but the same can’t be said vice versa.”
“When the council ran into such problems,” Stephen said, “they did away with any paranormals other than wizards in their ranks. That was when they decided they could pick and choose the laws they liked. The inner circle was supposed to be governed by laws that other, wiser members of the council created. Instead, the inner circle decided that was their right as well. There were originally inventors who created innovative ways for paranormals to live in harmony together and with humans, as well as punishments for law-breakers that didn’t require bloodshed or torture.”
“The original founders created the council to keep the population of wizards at peace with everyone else,” Darwin said. “The council today only wants more power for itself. Dad doesn’t want you getting involved, but he would understand in this case. Dad says the fastest way to ruin an alliance is to break your word, which includes an unpaid debt. When you deal with paranormals, you have to understand their traditions so that you know what you’re getting into when you ask a vampire to help you.”
“Well, I would have done it even if I had known.”
“You should know that anything a coven member does, it’s the same as if the coven master did it,” Darwin said, not finished. “Thus, if Cody shot you, it would be Stephen who is responsible. Although he would probably rip out Cody’s teeth or hang him outside for a tan, he would deal with you directly to atone for the damage.”
Although I would absolutely never have considered being an ally with a vampire before, I learned a lot more at Quintessence than manipulating the elements. I was able to sleep in a dorm with vampires running around. Moreover, I trusted Astrid enough to sleep with her in my bed.
I turned to Stephen and studied the calmness in him. I didn’t have to read his mind; after letting go of my issue with his fangs and blood-drinking, I could see him as a person. Not a human, of course, but a person as much as I was. And if I were to trust any vampire, Stephen seemed like one of the best. “Thank you for letting Cody save Marcus.”
He smiled slightly. “Of course.” He studied Marcus. “You seem to be adapting well.”
Marcus stood up, putting him just a couple of feet away from me. Henry started to pull me away, but I waved him off.
“I thought I was going to be all nuts-oid and try to kill the first person who smelled like good blood,” Marcus said with a shrug. “But when I imagined biting Devon, it just seemed weird.” He grinned brightly. “Does this mean I can go to your school now? There was a really cute ginger woman I would love to get to know better. You think she’d be into---”
“No way, fangs!” Darwin barked and pointed threateningly at the vampire. “You touch my fiancé and I’ll be pickin’ your entrails out of my teeth with your bones.”
Marcus feigned fear. “Wh-which bones? These ones?” he asked, flipping Darwin off.
Stephen sighed, a shred of his calmness fading. “Are children not taught any manners these days?”
* * *
Stephen explained to Marcus that he needed to stay at the coven until Stephen was certain he could control himself. Another vampire arrived then with a sparkly blue hoodie for Darwin as well as a black sweatshirt and jeans for me. Henry’s clothes hadn’t been ruined and my leather jacket had only needed to be washed. After Henry, Darwin, and I got dressed, we left. The truck was sitting right outside the front door.
“Now that we’re alone, Vincent told me to tell you something,” Darwin said as Henry pulled out of the driveway. “We’re going to the council already, but there’s a bit of a rush now…”
“What’s wrong? What happened?” I asked.
“Misty wasn’t the only one to disappear. Two students from the children’s school and one baby from the orphanage have been… taken.”
He was trying not to assume they were dead. “You’re right; it doesn’t change much. The fact that Felicity is involved with Grayson worries me. I know she’s up to no good, and I expect the council is right there with her. We need to find out which ones if not all of them are involved and how to stop it. On the unlikely chance they’re not actually involved, Felicity will know who is, so we can threaten her. If those kids are dead, I will personally fuck up every person responsible.”
Henry drove for about ten minutes before pulling over to the side of the road. We were in the middle of the woods with a half-full moon as the only light. Perfect location for a massacre. I held Scott’s teddy and slipped on the ring.
My vision came easily, as if waiting for me. I saw Scott as a little jaguar creeping into an abandoned house in the forest. After a few minutes of sniffing things, he hopped up on a small bed and curled around the pillow.
I pulled off my ring and dropped it back into the pouch around my neck. “He’s safe, but I don’t know where he is.”
“Good. If you cannot find him, maybe Sinclair can’t either,” Henry said. It sounded more like hope than confidence to me. Instead of waiting for me to say anything else, he fired the truck back up and started driving to the council. “Until we find out who is taking people and what the council is planning, we can’t bring him home. In fact, I was thinking you should call your familiar before we go after him again.”
“You know why I don’t want to do that.”
He nodded and focused on drivi
ng for a moment while he thought over his argument. “He nearly died because of me. If I am your familiar, then I would be able to use your power. If I am not, then at least we have someone else to help us.”
“I almost died trying to save Marcus. If you were my familiar, I would have had to choose between you or him.”
“Right now, I’m only asking you to help me save Scott. He is all that is left of Zoe. He’s worth the risk.”
The ball was in my court. Henry was used to being the best, so seeing a building blown up right before his eyes and believing his son was killed in it must have shaken his world. How he was even able to drive was beyond me. I didn’t have a child and probably never would, which was fine with me. If I did have one, though, I would probably be more overprotective than Hunt was.
I sensed Darwin trying to open the link between us and allowed it. “What’s wrong?” I asked.
“You are, if you’re trying to help Henry by protecting him. Have you learned nothing in our psychology class?”
“You mean you were listening?”
“Cat minds are not like human minds, so there’s not a lot of common ground between Henry’s person mind and cat mind. Male jaguars don’t raise their young, but it’s obviously very important to Henry’s person mind. Henry wants to follow your lead and trust you, but all the jaguar is going to care about is that you’re trying to stop him from doing what he wants. The jaguar doesn’t want to be protected. You’re not his alpha or his friend, so the jaguar is probably fighting Henry right now to attack you. By trying to protect him, you’re not helping him; you’re just making him fight against himself. If your magic can protect him, great. Otherwise, leave it for the battlefield.”
