by Sierra Dean
I looked up at him, his blue eyes showing cool compassion. His blond bangs were brushed off his forehead. The honeyed tones of an ancient accent sweetened his every turn of phrase.
Seeing Death himself would have filled me with less fear.
“Sig?” I asked, unable to believe he was here.
He touched my face, and I winced. Pulling his hand away, he looked at the blood on his fingers, then placed each impossibly long digit in his mouth, cleaning my blood from them with a smile.
I shuddered.
“Sleep,” he ordered. “You’re going to need it.”
I don’t know if it was meant to sound so threatening, but as I slipped into the abyss of vampire sleep, I found myself wondering if I’d ever wake up again.
Chapter Five
I awoke hungry, with only a faint recollection of where I was. Someone had moved me off the floor, and I gathered it was the same someone whose chest my head rested on and whose fingers were tangled in my hair.
My mind went blank, and for a moment I let myself enjoy the feeling of being in someone’s arms without worrying about whose they were. Then, bit by bit, the events of the last several days started coming into sharper focus, until I could no longer ignore them. I couldn’t pretend I was safe in my current embrace.
“Why didn’t you kill me while I was sleeping?” I hadn’t opened my eyes yet, so for the time being I could still think of this as a dream. I knew better, of course, because it lacked the surreal, hyperrealistic feeling my usual dreams had.
The motel room smelled stale and musty, and there was a harsh fungal aroma laced in with the decay. The blanket under us reeked of age and stagnation. I was glad to be on top of it rather than underneath.
Sig, on the other hand, smelled clean, like fresh air-dried linen. There was no warmth coming from his body, only the feel of hard, room-temperature flesh. Like a corpse. Sleeping next to a vampire was a strange feeling.
He sighed and stopped playing with my hair. “Now, why would I want to kill you?”
“Why does the Tribunal do anything it does? Why kill Holden?” I opened my eyes and was looking at his stomach, which was covered in a soft, ribbed, gray shirt. I brushed my cheek against it, wondering how it felt. At the same time, putting pressure on my face allowed me to judge how my healing was coming along. A+ on both counts.
“I didn’t bring you here to kill you, Secret. It is time for your sabbatical to come to an end.”
“Sabbatical?” I couldn’t help but make a derisive snort at the word. “That’s a polite way of saying ‘ran away from home’.” I turned my head so my chin was resting on his abs and I could look up to meet his gaze. Without the typical blond bangs obscuring them, his ice-blue irises were alarmingly bright. I’d seen them before, but they looked more serious without the hair to soften their edge.
Sig wasn’t interested in softening any blows tonight. He hadn’t kidnapped me so we could have a polite chitchat in bed. He meant business.
“Sig,” I began, my voice losing its childish sarcasm. “I can’t.”
He closed his eyes and leaned his head against the wall, sighing. You haven’t heard a sigh until you’ve heard one two thousand years in the making. All the frustration and angst of a hundred generations worth of lives was compressed into that escape of air. It did what it meant to, because I felt guilty. Overwhelmingly guilty for telling him I couldn’t kill my best friend.
“Maybe…” As I started again, he opened one eye. “Maybe if you could tell me why?”
I still had no idea what Holden stood accused of. At first I’d believed he was being punished for refusing to abandon me at the brink of death, as a council representative had demanded he do. But his loyalty to me wasn’t the cause for the warrant. I’d learned that much by bombarding my immortal caretaker, Calliope, with ten thousand questions until she confessed what little she knew. Holden had betrayed the council somehow. And it was for something much more serious than being a dutiful friend. With Sig here, I thought I might be able to get real answers.
Now he was fully focused on me with a chilling stare. His hand tightened into a fist in my hair, and the extra pull hurt.
“Why?” He tugged my head back so I couldn’t look away. I found myself both fascinated and terrified. I’d never seen Sig angry. He had a particular gift, which was to make those in his presence feel at ease. Intuitively I knew I should be terrified of what a two-thousand-year-old vampire could do to me, but with him this close I had to fight against the unnatural calm washing over me.
I shivered, and my whole body trembled from it.
I couldn’t back down now. He’d already claimed he didn’t want to kill me, so why shouldn’t I ask him what I wanted to know?
“I need to know why you put a warrant out on Holden. I need to know or I can’t kill him.”
“It is not your place to know why,” he said flatly, pulling me into a sitting position so we looked at each other face-to-face. “You’ve never needed or wanted to know why before.”
“This is different and you know it.” I put my hand on his, where he was locked into my curls, and attempted to coax his fingers to relax. I didn’t have any vampire gifts, so I couldn’t force him to do anything. I was simply hoping for a reprieve from the growing ache on my scalp.
“I can’t tell you why.”
“You’re the Tribunal leader, Sig. You control everyone. Don’t tell me you can’t.”
He released my hair but didn’t look away. My heartbeat quickened, and it was so loud he must have been able to hear it, but he did nothing to acknowledge the change.
“There are laws. Laws even I am bound by. Once a warrant is issued, it’s final, and its reasons are for those who issued it to know and for them alone. The Tribunal is signed into silence once we issue a warrant.”
“You can’t tell me anything?”
“I can tell you that if I do not bring you home, Juan Carlos has no qualms about issuing a new warrant. One with your name on it.”
The mention of Juan Carlos brought the reality of the situation into sharper focus. Left in the hands of Daria and Sig, I suspected my lease on life would be a little longer term. But Juan Carlos hated me. Not in the passive way people hate spiders or little kids hate eating vegetables. No, Juan Carlos hated me the way the families of murder victims hate the killers. He hated me the way the people of Europe hated the rats who brought them the bubonic plague.
He hated me the way women in New York City hate finding out about a clearance bridal sale at Kleinfeld the day after it happens.
Not only did he want my lease on life to expire, he wanted to evict me before the final notice. I wasn’t sure if it was because I was alive and Sig had accepted me as one of the fold, or if it was because I never showed the Tribunal the appropriate level of respect, or if it was because I was so willing to execute other vampires, but Juan Carlos didn’t like having me around.
He was also seriously scary. He’d been a Spanish Conquistador in life, which wasn’t a fluffy day job. Before he’d been turned, he’d met the wrong end of someone’s sword, and it had butchered up the side of his face. His lips had healed together wrong, and the mangled side of his mouth gave him a constant sneer. The combination of that sneer with his fangs, and the look of absolute hate in his eyes, made him one of the scariest vampires I’d ever encountered.
I never, ever wanted to be on the wrong side of a fight with Juan Carlos.
“Well gosh.” I lay down again and placed my head back on his stomach. “If Juan Carlos wants me home, I guess that’s all the invitation I need.” I’d rather not let my fear show to Sig. He already knew I was scared, but there was no reason to flaunt my unease.
Sig was the only member of the Tribunal who knew what I really was. It was in my best interest to stay on his good side rather than tempt fate by poking an angry bull.
“I’ll go back,” I said after a long pause.
He remained quiet. The room was filled with a literal dead silence. He didn�
�t move until he began to stroke my hair again. Like before, I let myself enjoy it, even though it reminded me of how Ingrid, his daytime servant, once said Sig thought of me as his pet.
“Sig?” I asked, wondering if his silence meant he hadn’t heard me.
“Shhh,” he replied. “Secret, the last time I slept next to someone with a pulse was the year seven.” I waited for him to finish, but he didn’t, and it dawned on me he meant the year 7 A.D. “That someone was my wife, and it’s been over two thousand years since anything has reminded me so much of her. So shhh.”
I took that in the best way I could and tried to remain silent for as long as possible, but my curiosity reached a boiling point and I could no longer contain it.
“What was her name?”
“Ingaborg.” He was still stroking my hair.
“Is that why you singled out Ingrid? Because of her name?” Vampires had done things for more ridiculous reasons before, so it wasn’t out of the question he would base his choice for a daytime servant on name alone.
“No. By the time I met Ingrid, Ingaborg was the shadow of a memory to me. I was an angrier man in Germany during the Middle Ages.”
“Did you have any children?”
“Yes.”
“How many?”
“Ingaborg gave birth to eleven children. Seven lived past their infancy. While at war, I fathered another. I know nothing of what became of her.” He said these things like they were footnotes in a history text. To him, they must have been. Could someone still love a child who had died before Western civilization was a reality? Sig’s children might have died before Jesus.
Sig’s children might have killed Jesus.
I reminded myself Sig was Finnish, and it was pretty unlikely any of his spawn would have traveled across Europe to kill a trouble-making Jewish carpenter. I was also putting way too much thought in to this. I had to admit, though, it would be cool if one of his children had played a famous part in history. Asking him about this seemed frivolous, so I didn’t.
“What happened to your family after you were turned?”
“I do not know.”
“Why?”
“I was turned in 9 A.D., during the Battle of Teutoburg Forest, in what is now Germany, but was then simply Roman land in need of leadership. I had come from the North two years earlier to help prevent my brother’s settlement from being overtaken by the Romans. This, ultimately, proved unsuccessful, but we did manage to hold them off at the time. It was a special kind of day to be turned. September ninth, in the year nine. A lot of nines. Of course, the modern system of dating didn’t exist then. I only learned that date later when the history books wrote about our war, and I liked the symmetry of it. All I knew then was that I was seized one night from the camp, and the next night I had to dig myself out of a shallow grave.”
I was starting to be sorry I asked.
“The reason I don’t know what happened to my family was because I didn’t go back to Finland for almost forty years. It took me a long time to learn how to control myself and not be the killer who emerged from the woods that night.”
“I’m sorry.”
“You needn’t be.”
“Do I remind you of her?”
“Of Ingaborg?”
“Yes.”
“No, my sweet. Only in your breathing and your pulse. The nearness of someone alive feels marvelous. It makes me feel almost human, and I haven’t felt that since I died,” he admitted. I raised my face to look at him, and he smiled down at me even though his eyes were closed. “Ingaborg was very…womanly. Not all bones and angles like you girls today. She was unbreakable.”
I found it hard to imagine Sig married to any woman, especially a curvy, motherly type with a brood of babies all around. But the way he smiled when he talked about her made me shut my mouth fast. Love is love, and though she was nothing but history now, Sig had obviously loved his wife.
We lay like that for another hour, and then it was time to leave.
Chapter Six
I knew Sig could wake before sunset, but I’d never known before that being near him would make it easier for me to do the same. It had still been light out when we’d had our chat in the motel room, and now the final minutes of sunset were upon us.
When Sig pulled his navy blue Lexus out onto the old highway with me in the passenger seat, I didn’t look back at the motel. The sun had dipped below the horizon, and the whole sky was glowing a deep peach-pink. I was too busy enjoying the briefest glimpse of day to spoil it with remembrances of how I’d gotten here.
When we arrived at the main highway and began driving east, the last traces of twilight vanished in the rearview mirror. We drove in silence, and I didn’t attempt to make small talk. What could a twenty-two-year-old say to a two-thousand-year-old vampire that wouldn’t sound completely vacuous?
I pressed my temple to the cool glass of the passenger window and watched the darkness set in while the scenery whipped by in a nauseating blur. Vampires always drove too fast.
Before I had time to think too much about my return home, we were in New York State. I hadn’t yet let myself think about what I would do when we got back to the city. Foolishly, I’d assumed we must have been several hours away from home. Worry yielded to reality as the road signs began to read shorter and shorter distances to New York City. The pretty, wooded spaces of upstate New York became more populated and urban, and at last the glow of the city skyline came into view.
“Where am I to take you, pet?”
I didn’t have much time before we’d be in the heart of Manhattan, and my gut was a clenched fist of nerves. Did I want to go to the office and see Keaty? Or perhaps have Sig drop me at the 52nd Street Starbucks? It was a short walk from my apartment but also a gateway to the unique reality inhabited by the Oracle, Calliope. Certainly the half-god/half-fairy would have a thing or two to tell me about what my arrival home meant. Did I maybe, instead, want delivery to Rain Hotel, where my coveted black keycard would give me direct access to the three-story penthouse?
Unless my access had been cut off.
I swallowed hard.
“Take me home.”
For a moment I swore he smiled, but just as fast, it was gone.
“Of course.”
Without time for further thought, we were on the four hundred block of West 52nd Street and stopped in front of my slender yellow apartment building. The lights in my basement suite were dark, and I let out a breath I hadn’t realized I was holding.
Who had I expected to be there?
Neither Desmond nor Lucas would be there like obedient dogs, awaiting my return. Nor could I expect Holden to be inside, inviting me to capture him for his mysterious crimes.
Behind our idling car, an impatient driver honked.
“You may need these.” He handed me a familiar-looking bundle. It was my gun and the small wallet I’d had with me at the Elm Tree. The only keys I needed for anything were inside the zippered change compartment. I took them tentatively. I’d never noticed the wallet was gone. The car honked again.
“Thanks, Sig.”
“Do not be so quick to thank me, Miss McQueen.” His smile was unmistakable, but before I could make sense of it, I was standing in the street, smothered by the humidity of the July night. I eyed my building with suspicion as several cars sped by.
“Home, sweet home,” I sighed.
Inside, things went from odd to completely insane.
I unlocked my front door and didn’t give my eyes a chance to adjust when I stepped over the threshold, taking for granted my familiarity with my own apartment.
Once I put my gun and wallet on the table beside the door, I tripped over a pair of Steve Madden peep-toe pumps. I caught my balance before falling but was rewarded by snagging my flip-flops on the pointy heel of my strappy gold Jimmy Choo cage sandals.
My shoe collection was like other people’s art collections—a demented passion that had almost no use in the real world. My chosen career re
quired a lot of running, and though I could run in Manolos if need be, flats or running shoes were much less risky.
When my eyes adjusted, I could see the contents of my hallway shoe closet strewn across the entranceway and spilling over into the living room. T-straps, Mary Janes, cage sandals and wedges, the shiny, expensive debris of a fashion hurricane. I plucked my glossy black Louboutins from where they’d been hurled and clutched them to my chest.
On the living-room table I noted several empty blood-donor bags. In the hall I reached for the light switch, but turning it on yielded nothing.
My power had been shut off.
Something small and fluffy passed in between my legs, and I resisted the urge to assume it was of demonic origin. The furry thing introduced itself with a “Brrr-eow?”
The tiny white kitten looked up at me, and I hugged my shoes tighter. Cats. Close enough to demons. As if it had read my mind, it began purring and rubbed itself against my ankles. Until that instant I had forgotten about who I should have expected in my apartment all along.
“Brigit,” I screamed, startling the fur-demon so badly it shot off like a bolt and hid under the armchair.
My bathroom door opened and steam spilled into the hall. At least she’d paid the water bill.
“Oh. My. Gawd!” Wrapped in one of my towels, with her blonde hair sticking to her slick, wet skin, Brigit Stewart looked surprised to see me.
The baby vampire had been assigned to me as a ward by Sig before I left. The decision had given me a pretty impressive promotion within the council, and also made the ditsy ex-beauty queen a giant, and permanent, pain in my ass.
The kitten came out from under the chair, and I kept it at bay with one foot while continuing to cradle my shoes, all while I avoided tripping over the explosion of footwear on the floor. I fixed Brigit with a deadly serious glare.
“I wasn’t expecting you!” she said, half-smiling and shrugging as if to say what can you do? I understood how, in life, Brigit had managed to get everything she wanted. I was not about to play games with her, however. If she was my charge, maybe it was time for her to start respecting my position as a warden.
