by Aya DeAniege
“Fair enough,” I grumbled. “Why is there only one, then?”
“No one else has earned it,” Quin said with a frown and a shake of his head as the light turned.
He walked across the street, leaving me staring at him for a moment.
The city was in complete darkness beside street lamps. It was late enough that there would be few people on the streets and the few that did pass, wouldn’t be looking at the back of the man who passed them.
Quin’s back must have been hit by the brunt of the explosion. Yet he hadn’t asked for blood from me, which would have healed him a great deal faster.
We crossed the road, reaching the other side just as a police vehicle passed through the intersection. In their defense, we were facing away from the intersection, walking down the street and away.
“How far is this place?” I asked.
“Not far,” Quin said. “Here, give me that. She’s more likely to hit you than me.”
“What, why?”
“Because you’re new and untried. She’ll try to make you submit to her. She and I have a standing deal. She’s not allowed to attack me unless I’m arrogant or undermine her authority. Give it here. Unless you want this one broken too.”
The Den is a bar in the downtown area that goes by another name for humans. It is rarely closed down, but when it is, typically they make a good excuse.
In all my time in the area, it had only been shut down twice, three times now. Those other two times, I had been brought in to make certain it wasn’t a vampire looking to munch on a werewolf. I’m not allowed to really talk about what happened, because it involves wolves and it’s not my place to share their dirty laundry. What I can say is that they shut down and then called me in. I helped deal with the problem.
The wolves were highly animalistic. That predatory nature of theirs was in their blood. Some vampires hunted down werewolves as blood bags to get a special high, or if they were about to go hunting with the Devils. Turned us into a type of berserker.
However, the Council had a deal with the wolves, and they meant to keep it. No vampire was allowed to go hunting wolves for the purpose of bleeding them. Revenge, territory wars, sure. But not for their blood.
Typically speaking, there could be as many as four packs in the Den at any given time. For the wolves, the Den was neutral ground. The place you went to end a feud, to trade, or to arrange a union. The place was run by the wolf elders who had left their packs, given up pack loyalty for the sake of peace.
And if someone did something stupid, if an Alpha messed with the Den?
They called in a Bitch and had her hunt the territory with her boys and their packs.
Daisy didn’t need the help of her boys, but somehow I doubted she was in the area to hunt down an Alpha. Almost six months previous, I had visited her in her hometown. She had made no mention then of heading to the city.
Just inside the door, two big security guards stood. They watched us enter, then stepped outside for a smoke. The security guards were mortals, likely humans who had seen behind the veneer.
It happened sometimes. Depending on the human, they were eaten, turned, used for fodder, or took on one of those special roles that we needed a human for.
Werewolves were the only other race which could turn a mortal. Their rules for turning were just as strict as ours, but due to the need to give birth, to breed to continue on their race, they accepted new members on a regular basis. The new blood had kept them from inbreeding.
Perhaps as the only predatory races, werewolves and vampires were able to turn others. A witch could not make another witch except by giving birth to one. The same might be said of the fae, though they could prevent a human from aging for a time.
The Den had been completely emptied, not even the bartender or an older fellow sitting in the corner to make certain everything was all right. Which meant that the Elders had been removed, or had chosen to leave the safety of the Den.
Just Daisy sitting in a booth with a pup half sprawled in her lap, being pet gently.
Daisy was of an age with Helen. She had started young and lived a hard, fast life. Wolves had a slightly longer lifespan than humans, which meant that Daisy looked to be Helen’s age, but for a wolf, she looked older than she was. She had long blonde hair and hazel eyes. Her face was still, always a careful mask that hid what she was thinking. Her muscle was lean in a deceptive way. She was fast but also strong, and had the sort of intelligence that I had always wanted and yet feared in a woman.
If a wolf was a predator, she was the apex predator. Daisy had hunted both wolf and vampire before. Her prowess on the battlefield had earned her a reputation the likes of which no other before her could claim. Even though the others of the rank had died before she had come to maturity, the Alphas had given over the rank of Bitch to her.
But only after sending me after her. I knew what was up, I had only been told to break her. She had ripped me to shreds. After I had healed, she had praised me on my attempt and asked me to help her train her boys.
Her eyes had taken on an icy quality since last I had seen her.
“Quintillus Lu DiLucrecia,” she sighed out. “To what do I owe this debt?”
“Quintillus,” I said, tapping my chest twice.
Daisy arched an eyebrow just slightly. That was the nearest to surprise she would show me. Her eyes shifted to Helen, then narrowed.
“Rosalyn said that would make you Helen Quintillus, the Siren,” Daisy said before she turned to Balor and Troy. “Balor.”
“This is Troy Balor,” he said with a small motion to Troy.
“The Council breaks its own rules?” Daisy asked. “Two Progeny, and in such a short span?”
“If that’s why you’re here, let me put your mind at ease,” I said, stepping up to the table of the booth. “Lu infected Helen with his sickness. She accidentally spread it to Troy. We turned them to kill the illness before it spread further. I bartered for Helen’s immortal life, and you know how maternal Balor is. They should have had someone else turn the boy.”
“You could have dealt with it, even later,” Daisy said. “We’re not happy, Quin. Vampires are making more vampires. Vampires killing vampires? What is going on?”
The first part rankled me. The wolves were usually a bit more traditional than other races, set in their ways. Especially when it came to the pecking order of things. Of course, they wouldn’t want to share the prey with more vampires, but that didn’t mean they could just talk to me like that. If I wanted to make a hundred baby vampires, I would.
“I was advised to allow Troy to continue, as a baby vampire needs someone to talk to who is going through the same thing.”
“Who could advise you, that you’d listen to them?”
“The Great Maker,” Helen said.
I almost swore but kept the curse from tumbling from my lips. It was my fault for not telling Helen to keep her mouth shut. The wolves weren’t about pomp and ceremony when it came to other races, but Daisy was. She had rules that you followed if you didn’t want to…
What’s Helen’s term for it?
Be used as a squeak toy for a pack of wolves?
Daisy focused on Helen, then turned her attention back to me. She would hold me responsible for Helen’s behaviour because as her Maker, as new as she was, I was to control her. I would gladly accept that, because I’d rather I was the one to suffer under Daisy than Helen.
“And now she’s back,” Daisy said slowly.
“She never left,” I said.
“Oh, I know. We knew her on sight, but any wolf who dared point out the difference found themselves at the bottom of a pit and buried alive,” Daisy leaned forward, plucking the pup from her lap and depositing him to the side as he whined and tried to climb back to his previous position. “But the Great Maker is back, and I’m sitting across from Quintillus, not Wraith. That there is Helen the Siren, not Banshee. So: what is going on in my territory, Quin? Because you being you and her not being a
shadow of her former self means that Lu wasn’t killed with the tool, that Death isn’t riding one of you.”
The edge of her voice was enough to cut me to my core. I glanced around us, slowly and without sudden movement.
Her boys were suddenly behind the bar, cleaning glasses as they watched us idly. The two security guards at the door had been replaced with a beta of a local pack.
I should be clear though. Daisy’s boys had been adopted at various stages of life. They accepted their title with great humility considering the fact that at least one was twice her age. Her boys were all Alphas, except for the pup that had just been in her lap, and those boys would fall on their swords or rip the throat out of the Great Maker herself to protect Daisy. Not only would they do those insane, suicidal and obscenely difficult things for her, but they could as well.
They weren’t just Alphas of small packs either. Each boy had a pack that was near to brimming. I’m sure the wolves had a term for it, they understood that not every Alpha was equal and somehow conveyed the rank of each Alpha with tone or pheromone.
Turning slowly back to Daisy, I tried to relax.
They wouldn’t attack without provocation. Though it wasn’t me that I was worried about. It was Helen and Troy. I had taken on the wolves before, I had taken on those wolves before and had ample opportunity to end them but hadn’t.
Didn’t the Oracle say something about not using the tool?
I frowned and met Daisy’s eyes. While her eyes were on me, locked with mine, there wasn’t a doubt in my mind that she saw the shuffling of Troy’s feet and the way Helen shifted ever so slightly behind me.
Balor remained still because he knew better.
“You’ve spoken with her,” was all I said.
“Why do you think I’m here?” she asked, turning her head slightly to the side. “Why do you think I’ve let you have the run of me in exchange for certain privileges?”
“She’s been the Younger for three years,” I said.
“They’re chosen because they can do that before they are taken,” Daisy said. “Rosalyn sought me out when we were both still children. You think that I’m this bloodthirsty on my own? That I’d prepare for war against the vampires if it weren’t necessary?”
“You’ve been preparing to take down a vampire, that’s what you—” I swore and looked away in frustration.
“If you had used the tool to kill Lu, I would have done it too,” Daisy said. “Or if Banshee had been created.”
“Who was meant to kill Lu, Quin, the Great Maker, and Bau,” Helen said weakly. “She told me a split would happen, but not what would happen after that.”
“My boys would take you down, and I’d use the tool to kill you,” Daisy said pointedly. “It would consume me in the process, but also destroy the magic in the tool.”
“So, then, why are we here?” Helen asked.
“Helen, I love you, but shut up,” I snapped.
“She was ready to kill us,” Helen snapped back. “You don’t get to be all Maker on me when she was about to kill us.”
“Mind reader?” Daisy asked.
Instead of lunging over the table and going for Helen’s throat as I had witnessed her doing on numerous occasions when someone else broke her rules. Helen should have been on the floor screaming, wolf teeth sunk into her neck.
“Something like that,” Helen snarled.
“Sit there,” Daisy said, pointing to the edge of the booth.
Helen pouted, glared at me, but did as Daisy told her to do. At least something was retained, some obedience. Helen knew she had to try to do what Daisy said, because I had delivered the warning. It was the most that I could do for her, it was impossible really sum Daisy up.
“Here, hold him,” Daisy said, pushing her pup into Helen’s lap.
The pup made a little sound and then curled right up against Helen, whimpering out when she stiffened.
Ever so slowly, Helen looked up at me with terrified, wide eyes.
“What?” I asked.
“Why is there a preteen boy in my lap?” she squeaked out, hands in the air and away from herself like she was afraid she’d be arrested for being near the pup.
I frowned at her, looking down at the pup, then back up at her.
“Quin,” Helen barked out. “This is an obvious thing, Mr. Fedora.”
I frowned down once more and took in a small, startled breath.
A wolf pup was a werewolf that preferred to be a wolf but was being restricted to human form to keep them from aging their wolf self too quickly. Pups were cared for and treated as wolf pups. They could curl into anyone’s lap or be scratched, fed, do whatever they wanted and come and go as they pleased.
The one in Helen’s lap was only wearing boxers. He wasn’t cold because of the temperature of the room. His backside was to me, curled around Helen, his face near her stomach. I could see how a human would have a problem with that.
I had been around werewolves so long, that I had simply ignored the pups and young ones. They were not my business, and it was not my place to question their role in the werewolf life.
“Pet him,” Daisy said.
Helen looked at Daisy like she was crazy. Troy whispered something to Balor, which made Daisy twitch in the booth.
“He was just pointing out that Helen was human before being turned,” Balor said, frowning at Helen. “Uh, that in your lap is called a pup. He’s more wolf than human. You will not be bitten for petting him, and he’d greatly appreciate it. Just treat him like a hairless dog.”
“He’s a pup,” Helen said slowly, as if she didn’t believe Balor.
Her hands did lower, though. She patted the pup’s shoulder gently.
“Why is he almost naked?” she asked.
“Because I’m weaning him into clothing,” Daisy said, focusing her attention on Helen. “If you had visited just two days ago, he would have been completely naked.”
Helen’s eyes went wide. Her hand hesitated above the pup’s hair. I saw a thousand questions pass over her face. But she didn’t ask them, no, she turned to me very stiffly and seemed to plead for help.
“Helen here—”
“I saw the news,” Daisy said dismissively, her eyes on Helen. “Vampires do not need consent. At that point, I would venture it is murder. Tell me, kitten, did you consent?”
“Hm?” Helen seemed caught up in the pup suddenly, stroking his hair.
I bit back another curse.
He was a bit old to be draping himself over his matriarch in public. That should have given it away, but I still had those damned blinders on. Anything that wasn’t my business was put out of my mind immediately.
Daisy letting Helen touch her pup after being so lippy should have been another.
Daisy’s attention swung to me, her head cocking to the side as her hazel eyes slipped down my neck, to the tablet. Her eyes narrowed and I wondered for the briefest moment if there would be a giant empty spot of time.
But then, Daisy didn’t give a good goddamn if the wolves were outed. She’d take it as a challenge, would revel in the destruction she could then cause.
“The screen is lit up,” she said, her lips curling up ever so slightly. “Dear Quin, are you using your power in my den?”
She was showing teeth, which made me reach up and turn the tablet around. Possibly muffling sound, but allowing me to continue to use my power to input information without being bitten.
Helen had figured out how to type two days in. She seemed obsessed with it, and while she had the tablet, it did light up a time or two, it was a habit I would have to break her of before it dragged her too far down.
But I wasn’t about to point it out just then, not when she believed her powers were out of reach while she relearned how to harness them. I wanted to get through the night first before I let my little sweetheart know that she could glamour humans, read minds, move objects with her mind.
Oh yes, and kill vampires.
Along with whatever p
owers she had picked up before I had quarantined her from other vampires. Too many capabilities would be a bad thing, not a good thing.
“I suppose I could allow it,” Daisy said, flashing her teeth at me.
Meaning, she would allow it, but it would cost me. Just not right then, not in front of Helen. Despite the fact that I knew Daisy wouldn’t care if the werewolves were outed, it would still cost me.
Daisy looked over my shoulder to Troy.
“He’s so well behaved for a baby vampire,” Daisy groaned, slipping out of the booth. “Not a single thing I could use to sink my teeth in. Is it true then?”
“Is what true?” I asked.
“He’s stock,” Daisy snarled, her teeth gritted as her lips drew upward.
“Yes, he was my IT guy, that was how he became infected,” I said. “That was why I was going to kill him. He was mine, not Balor’s. If he was just a man off the street, what would I care if he was turned?”
“Your stock?” Daisy asked, her annoyance suddenly gone. “Well, that explains why the self-proclaimed King of Vampires is so subdued. He allowed you to play alpha in this, hm?
“What have you come to ask, Quintillus of no family?”
“I have a family,” I said. “Just because you have a berserker wrapped around her, doesn’t mean that she’ll be dead.”
“Unless the werewolves know the ways of the moons,” Daisy said, her smile grew wide and toothy once more. “What do you want, Quintillus or my pup is going to eat her guts and see how loudly a baby vampire can scream.”
The pup nuzzled closer to Helen’s stomach, which made her giggle.
She had no idea what danger lay in her lap because the pup had learned to hide his nature before he had learned anything else, even how to speak.
Oh, he could hear quite well and understand others. Even understand vampires who were capable of hiding their minds from all other races.
Among wolves, the berserker was a title saved for halfbreeds. Half-wolf, half-witch, they were the only males to carry any magic. They had once been hunted down and murdered, which explained both their ingrained nature to hide behind a cloud of an adorable puppy and their hatred of everything supernatural.
