My father had finally broken his restraints.
22
I heard the noise before I opened my eyes. It sounded like rusty metal fingernails grating down a chalkboard. But worse. My arms bristled before my brain was fully awake. The first thing I became aware of was my wolf, who was crouched low in my mind, a ferocious growl issuing from her mouth.
Do you know where we are? I asked her before I dared open my eyes.
I could feel the threat. The power pushed down on me, oppressing me with its strength, penetrating my skin like a million sharp needles. The surface I was lying on was hard and rough, cold stone under my fingertips. I tried once more. What’s going on? Do you know where we are?
Then I heard it again.
Scraaape. Scraaaape. Scraaaaaape.
My wolf didn’t have a chance to respond before a feminine voice pierced the quiet. It was smooth and held a faint echo. My blood ticked in warning. “Wake, little wolf girl. We are done playing. I grow tired of waiting.” The voice was moving closer as it spoke.
I opened my eyes. It was no use pretending, because whatever was in the room with me knew I was already awake and pissing it off wasn’t the smart choice. Selene’s spell was gone. I had no idea if my wolf had conquered it or not, but I wasn’t complaining.
My eyes focused on the ceiling above me. It was shaped in a high dome and decorated completely with stained glass. A soft glow of light ran behind it, radiating outward to give it a multidimensional quality. Unfortunately, the images rendered on it were not beautiful flowers or happy unicorns; instead the entire ceiling was covered in a landscape of gruesome, gory scenes—vampires depicted at their very worst, like I’d seen Valdov in that brief but chilling moment. The horde detailed above my head gleefully tore out the necks of their human prey, their faces contorted, blood flowing around them in pools of ecstasy, splashing into the bodies of their unwitting victims.
Wasn’t that heartwarming.
I was clearly in a vampire stronghold of some kind, and seeing the artful ceiling depictions didn’t do anything to make me feel any better about my situation.
There was movement at my feet and I slowly lifted my head.
“You are not nearly as impressive as I had presumed you to be, little wolf girl.” The voice was attached to a vision of flawlessly etched skin. A face so perfectly defined it cast its own shadows. She boasted high, prominent cheekbones and a pair of wide hazel eyes, rimmed in heavy kohl. Her pallor was a true white, making her red lips look garish. A complicated pale mass of curls sat atop her head, giving the illusion of a greater age than her twenty-something looks. She was dressed in a beautiful gray silk gown, so thin it shimmered like liquid silver in the low light. As she approached me, her cape, of the same shimmering fabric, flowed out behind her.
The Vampire Queen.
A lone fingernail traced along the stone altar I was lying on as she paced forward.
Scraaaaaape.
“Um, sorry to disappoint you?” I pushed to my elbows, grateful I hadn’t been physically restrained, but knowing it hadn’t really been necessary in the company of the Vampire Queen and her plentiful power, which bounced around the room in strong currents. Why did she care if I was impressive or not? I wasn’t looking to impress anyone, and to vamps all shifters looked unimpressive. All I cared about was getting the hell out of here in one piece with my skin still attached and all my vital fluids still in my body.
The altar I was lying on was in the middle of an ornate vestibule. The room resembled what I’d envisioned a throne room in a castle to be like, complete with a raised dais and a queenly looking chair perched in the center.
The only other people in the room were the two shrouded shapes flanking either side of the massive, and precisely decorated, door.
A private meeting with the Vampire Queen, it seemed.
She stopped a few feet in front of me and waited, her features unmoving, her head tilted at a slight angle.
I had no idea what I was supposed to do, so I raised myself to a full sitting position, with my hands bracing my weight behind me. When I was done, I met her eyes for a brief second and was rewarded with a bolt of power so strong my nails curled into the stone beneath me, gouging little moon-shaped grooves into the rock.
My wolf was issuing fairly erratic sounds in my mind, ones I hadn’t heard her make before. Easy there. We don’t want to freak the Freak too soon. Instead of answering, she responded with a small flow of adrenaline. It ran through my veins, calming me, but it wasn’t enough to trigger anything. Perfect. Just relax. We’ll get out of this. We aren’t tied up, and nobody else is here. Specifically the horrid Valdov. If she wanted us for breakfast, we’d be shackled in her dungeon or sucked dry by now. This place so had a dungeon.
“Valdov was a fool to bring you here,” the Vampire Queen snapped. She was still examining me, her eyes measuring. I felt like I was under a vampire microscope.
Huh? “From what he implied to us,” I retorted, “he was only following your direct orders.”
“Fool,” she grated. Then she turned abruptly, ascending the steps of her dais toward her gilded chair. She whipped around with a flourish and sat, her gorgeous face set in a frown, her cape flowing gracefully around her.
Hmm. Instead of watching her brood, I brought my legs around and perched myself on the edge of the altar. I wiggled my bare toes and looked down at my filthy, torn clothing, still reeking heavily of sulfur and sweat.
The perfect picture of badass.
I had no idea what she wanted from me, but other than sensing her incredible power, I wasn’t feeling the threat of imminent danger. Having her irked at Valdov worked in my favor. I just didn’t know why. Someone like Valdov did what he was told. Always. I decided to venture a question. “If Valdov was disobeying you, then why am I here?” I asked.
The Queen narrowed her eyes at me like a hawk. A fleck of mercury sparked in their depths so brightly it seared like a white flame. She stood abruptly and strode forward, stopping at the edge of the steps to look down on me. I instinctively leaned back.
“Do not push me, little wolf girl. I am not something to be trifled with so easily. If you provoke me, I promise I will punish you. You are here because I wished it and nothing more.” She waved her hand in a sweeping dismissal. The vamps liked their hand gestures.
You just said Valdov was a fool for bringing me here. I said instead, “I’m not trying to trifle with you, um … Queen.” What in the hell was I supposed to call her? “I’m just trying to figure out why a newborn wolf would warrant such an interest from you. By all rights, I should be beneath your notice. If what I know of our races are true, I shouldn’t even be a blip on your radar. Our separate Sects haven’t made it a habit to be involved in each other’s business at any point in time.”
Her voice rang out in a cold laugh. “You, little wolf girl, are very much my business.” She floated down the steps. “My trusted servants have been keeping tabs on you since your very untimely birth.” The vamps had been tailing me for that long? She laughed. “What? You think your father could hide you from us? The birth of a female? Never!”
Her eyes flickered dangerously between the purest silver to black, and back again. She came to a halt a few paces in front of me, clasping her hands in front of her torso like a demure schoolgirl. She might look the part if I wasn’t hyper aware she could snap my neck between her two index fingers in the space of a sneeze.
“What exactly do you mean by ‘untimely’?” I asked. “I wasn’t aware there was a good time for a female werewolf to be born.”
She inclined her head, peering at me closely. I shifted uncomfortably, hating the feel of her weighted stare—it made my skin crawl. Then she tilted her head to the side, like a bird listening for a worm, just like Valdov had. Vamps were totally creepy. Every movement they made was unnatural. There was no way the Queen went out in public. Very little about her resembled anything human.
She abruptly straightened her neck and a wicked smile
crept over her unsightly red lips. “You do not know what you are, do you, little wolf girl?”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” I answered. “What do you mean, ‘what I am’? I’m a lone female in an all-male race—a freak, an anomaly, something to fight about.” I was leaving out the violet eyes, the Lycan abilities, and communication via brain waves with my sibling, but she shouldn’t know any of that. She couldn’t possibly know about that.
Her canines were retracted, because when she opened her mouth in a macabre kind of glee all I saw were rows of straight, neat teeth. “I had not thought it was possible for you to be—how shall I say?—unaware of your … situation.” She put her hands together in a pseudo clap and paced away from me, toward a mural of torture painted along one huge wall. Lovely. “This is very interesting indeed. It puts us in a decidedly different position.”
I didn’t like the eerie glint coming from her voice and neither did my wolf. What’s going on? Do you know what she means by my “situation”? My wolf paced agitatedly. She raised her hackles and continued to emit a low growl, essentially telling me this wasn’t exactly the right time for a heart-to-heart. I took the hint.
That the Vampire Queen knew more about me than I did was less than optimal. It was actually sucky, and put me at a huge disadvantage. “It seems I’m at a bit of a loss here. If you could—” I started.
“They come.” Her head snapped to the doorway and the two shrouded figures simultaneously drifted toward her.
“Who’s coming?” How long had I been out anyway? I looked around, but there were no clues to what time it was.
“I have little interest in starting a war with your … kind.” She curled her lips. “But I am very certain we will meet again, little wolf girl, and that time may be very soon indeed.”
My kind? There was some faint commotion coming from outside the room now. My heart sped up. It took me a second, but the final puzzle pieces of my kidnapping snapped clearly into place. Valdov hadn’t mistaken his Queen’s request. His plan had simply been foiled by a rather large and furious Alpha werewolf. If my father hadn’t arrived on the scene, I’d probably be cuffed in a dungeon right now being snacked on like a canapé.
I was tired and pissed off. So far my Pack had gone to war, I’d been hunted down and taken by the vampires, a splinter werewolf group was highly organized with a detailed plot to kill me, Selene the Evil had struck down my new mate, whom my body ached for right this minute, and to top it off, it all pointed to me being exactly what everyone had always feared I’d be: The End of Things as We Knew It.
I wanted no part of it anymore.
Shouts echoed along the corridor, coming closer every second. I glanced at the Queen, who seemed to be entranced by the commotion, apparently gearing up for the werewolves to bang her door down. She’d forgotten me, or I was beneath her notice, either one worked.
My voice came out in a snarl, surprising us both. “Hey, Queen.” Her head shot to me in a snap. “I take it when my father arrived in the woods it put quite a crimp in your plans to blame my unfortunate ‘disappearance’ on the New Order wolves—or whatever the traitors are calling themselves?”
Her eyes narrowed to slits.
“Isn’t that how all this was supposed to shake out? I bet it took some patience on your part to incite fear over the years to a few well-placed wolves to form your precious ‘alliance.’ But it’s not an alliance at all, is it? You’ve been running the show the whole time, orchestrating your puppets along the way.”
“The witch has taken your lover,” she hissed, completely surprising me once again. Then I watched in horror as her features changed ever so slightly as they began to slide down her face, and then, without warning, her power hit me fully in the chest like a bolt. I doubled over instantly, gasping for breath, clutching my front.
Holy shit she’s powerful.
“You pathetic little girl,” she spat. “You tarry where you do not belong. You do not question me. I only allow you to sit here—a weakling of a shifter— with the air still in your lungs because I deem it to be so. You should be prostrate on your knees in homage to my kindness. I will not tolerate your insolence, and I certainly do not answer to you for my actions.”
I had no time to do anything other than hold my chest and try to breathe again when the doors burst open and my father bounded into the room, followed by, to my relief, James and Tyler, and about fifteen other wolves who were unfamiliar to me. All of them in their human form.
“Eudoxia,” my father snarled as he strode forward. His wolves fanned behind him, all of them growling.
Crowding into the room just behind the wolves were a large number of vamps, many of whom wore corset-style gowns and tailored jackets with big, shiny buttons. But others were decked out in skinny jeans and hipster shirts. As a group, the vamps ran a serious gamut of style. If Marcy were here, she’d have a field day with the bevy of fashion choices in the room. My best guess was each style choice denoted a rough age of the vamp, because putting an eighteenth-century vamp into a pair of jeggings would take a leap of faith most vampires were likely uninterested in taking. If these vamps were as arrogant as their beloved Queen, each thought their style choice was the right one.
But this wasn’t a happy day at court. The vamps bared their fangs, their faces twisted at the intrusion into their lair.
There was also no Rourke. My heart clenched. Our bond had already manifested into something beyond me, beyond my wolf. The physical distance from him was taking a toll already. I craved him in a way I hadn’t known could exist in this world.
Eudoxia raised one finger and the mass stilled instantly.
I slid off the altar so I could stand in front of my Pack, my back resting against the rough stone as I fought to shake off the last of the Queen’s blast. My wolf had been feeding me power and was still snapping continually at the cloud of residual white mist lingering in my system, which I guessed was the manifestation of the Queen’s magic. When my wolf bit down on the cloud, it evaporated into nothing. As the power disappeared, I began to get my strength back. The same thing had happened with Selene’s freaky red lines. I had no idea how my wolf was doing it, but I was glad she knew how, because being beholden to magic made me vulnerable.
The Queen, flanked by her guards, marched confidently toward my father, stopping right in front him. “Callummmm,” she purred. “What a wonderful surprise to see you here. Welcome to my home.” She gestured grandly at her room of decorated macabre, the walls and ceiling were accompanied by ornate vases on priceless lacquered sideboards, all of the furnishings ominous in their stark harshness. “Are you not impressed by what you see before you? It’s only taken me a few short centuries to get it to my exact liking. Though I’m lately rethinking the color of the velvet drapes. Blood red would go so much better with the furnishings than gold. Don’t you agree?”
My father growled in response. “My daughter is coming with me immediately or I will kill you where you stand, Eudoxia. Make no mistake.”
“But of course she is,” Eudoxia purred again. For the first time, a bit of her Russian accent strayed into her voice. “That was quite understood, was it not? Otherwise, Callum Sèitheach McClain, leader of Wolves, you would have not made it so far into my sanctuary. You must not mistake my leniency at your intrusion for passivity.” Her voice became steely, her eyes flashed dangerously as power cloyed the room, filling it with a sticky repulsive sweetness. “You see, very few individuals pass through these doors uninvited and remain … alive.”
Before my father could answer, she turned on a dime, marching toward me with an air of nonchalance. She reached for my cheek, almost touching me, but pulled short when fifteen wolves ramped up their snarl. It took everything I had not to flinch back.
“Your little wolf daughter”—she angled her head at my father—“and I were just having a chat about a few precious things before she bids us a fond farewell. And you know what? I’ve just discovered that it’s of the gravest inter
est for her to find out where that bad, bad kitty has gone. Is he here with you by chance?” She mocked standing on her tiptoes and looking over the shoulders of the wolves to the back of the room. “Hmm. I don’t seem to see him,” she said, turning with pouted lips to me. “Poor, poor little wolf girl. What are you to do?”
“The cat is of no use to us,” my father said slowly, reading her mood carefully.
Pressure pushed into my mind, but nothing came through. My father was trying to communicate, but the room must be spelled in some way. The Queen wouldn’t want any communication she couldn’t hear among her disciples, and odds were several of the vamps had mind-reading talents. They weren’t uncommon among supes. I tried to concentrate on opening up, but it didn’t work; all I came up with was dead space.
My father continued out loud, “The cat was taken by the witch soon after my daughter was kidnapped by your drone. Once they left, the remaining wolves scattered like thieves.”
“Kidnapped is such a strong word, don’t you agree?” the Queen replied airily. She positioned herself at the end of the altar, running her hands along it in what could only be considered a loving caress. “I prefer to think of it as merely borrowing her for short while. No harm has come to her, as you can plainly see. I blame my curiosity for coveting new things, of course, and a female wolf is such a unique thing, don’t you agree … Callum?” She met my father’s full gaze for the first time. The direct collision of contact between the two put a cringe-worthy burst of energy in the room. Nobody could stare at my father for long, and clearly the Queen had a crazy powerful stare of her own.
The Queen broke contact first. I smiled inwardly.
Not so tough now.
My father continued to stare without answering. She acted unfazed by her misstep, and said instead, “She’s a diamond among plain stones, one should think.” She waved her hand behind her, dismissing her next thought as she twirled around, floating her way up the dais. “Valdov overreacted, you see. He took my need to gather curiosities quite literally, but I promise you he will be soundly punished for it. In fact, his torture commences as we speak.”
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