by Kaia Bennett
I raised an eyebrow. If she mistrusted me, what did she have planned after the last rite to safeguard her life?
“Trust me or don’t. I’m not concerned. Not with you or some fake mother you conjured in my dream. That’s the last fucking time you dig around in my head and have me waking up like a spooked human.”
Her lips formed a straight line.
“Make sure you’re packed when I return. I’ll want to leave as soon as I can after I’m done with this meeting. If Vaughn or Stark get back before I do, pass my intentions along.”
I spun and strode out the door.
“Jesse.”
Something’s wrong. Something’s going to happen.
I ignored the tremor in her voice, dropped my shit on my bed and then headed for the bathroom to shower off the stench of empathy.
I had a date with Daddy Dearest to worry about, and I wasn’t going into his house smelling like weakness.
22
I’d meant for the forty-minute walk to Father’s SoHo penthouse to clear my head. The cool morning air, mixed with exhaust fumes, slush, and the rush of mindless prey did nothing to mute my haunted mind.
Evie’s powers were sharp as a blade, but the blade cut both ways. She didn’t have the juice to make up an entire human being to hurt me, and even if she did, she wouldn’t.
Am I talking about the same girl who trapped me in a vision of her drowning?
Maybe I gave her too much credit. She only quailed at hurting humans and innocents. I’d been on her shit list since the moment we met and she had plans to make me pay.
What were the odds my father had fallen for a witch, too, and just neglected to mention that for two and a half centuries? No, this had to be a bond witch exploiting an opening.
That doesn’t explain the vision we shared in the first rite. I saw my father’s brother. I saw my father take his brother’s life so he could take his place as ruler.
Had I been naïve to trust Masilda’s vision? My father wasn’t above killing family to stake a claim, but why would he hide the deed from me? A show of strength wouldn’t be something to hide or lie about. Only cowards had to lie and Metis Oldman wasn’t a coward.
I tromped through three inches of packed snow, my boots kicking up clumps with each step. The storm had dwindled to flurries, fat flakes melting in my hair and against my legs, where shredded denim bared my skin. Dad, a suit and tie guy, probably wouldn’t approve, but I gave zero fucks. I still had a month left of my free run and a lifetime to don cufflinks and loafers.
I entered my father’s building and strode across the glass lobby toward my reflection in the elevator doors. Stepping inside, I pressed ‘P’ and leaned against the railing. The numbers dinged from one, to eight, to penthouse, apprehension making the ride feel far too short. I took a deep breath, blew the air out of my lungs, and rolled the tension out of my shoulders before the doors opened and I stepped into my father’s ‘cozy’ safehouse. The ceilings stretched twenty-five feet into the air, while the floor-to-ceiling windows soaked in the dim light of the overcast morning.
Let’s get this shit over with.
I rounded the corner of the sleek industrial style first floor to find Cai pacing the sprawling dining area. The room was camouflage of course, the sort of form over function my kind had grown accustomed to since working with humans. Father might have meetings here, but I’d only ever seen him use the massive wooden table to lay out whimpering humans and paperwork.
He spoke on his phone to a booking agent. Sounded like he’d been tasked with making plans for my father’s to visit Asylum.
“Reservation for Oldman. Mm. A ten-course meal to start. He’ll want to visit the seventh level.”
Cai held up a finger. When I didn’t stop, he slid into my path and put a hand over the speaker. “He’s wrapping up a disciplinary matter. Just wait here a second.”
In the living room, an auburn-haired man stood in front of my seated father. The man had height and heft, like a Viking in jeans and a cream cashmere sweater. Only the subtle clenching of his trench coat gave away the strange vamp’s nervousness.
“You have a problem, Eamon, and your problem has become my problem. There’re sanctions on turning humans now, for a reason. Yes?”
“Yes, sir.”
“If word got out that you turned a prominent politician’s son because you can’t get over your fetish for pretty blond boys, it would reflect badly on me. Yes?”
“Yes, sir.” Defiant blue eyes rose to meet my father’s. “It’s just….”
The Viking paused. I imagined my father lifting one dark brow.
“I have to ask, sir. Why do we care what humans think? There was a time when we did what we liked and the status of a human was of no consequence. Now they want to tell us when to feed, who to turn? They’re ours to toy with, not the other way around. Sir.”
I closed my eyes and shook my head. The movement drew Eamon’s gaze, but Father commanded his attention again.
“Take a step back, Eamon.” The true born did so. “Another.”
Eamon stood several feet from the coffee table and off the rug.
“Take out your knife.”
“Sir?”
“I don’t like repeating myself.”
Eamon shut his eyes, then pulled the knife from his jeans pocket.
“Slice off your tongue.” My father tilted his head back and stared at the ceiling while Eamon’s face turned ruddy with frustration. A subtle moan escaped my father’s throat. I lifted an eyebrow. Now that I listened carefully, I heard the soft suction of a mouth obstructed by flesh. The flat screen TV behind Eamon’s red face had been paused on vampire porn. Dad had appreciated a good snuff film ever since motion pictures picked up steam. This one featured a dark-haired girl scrambling through the woods, her pale face a frozen streak of terror.
“Don’t insult me by cutting off the tip, either. Get a good grip and cut the whole thing out. Then hold it up so I can see.”
I leaned my ass on the dining room table and crossed my arms over my chest. Leave it to my father to drag this fucking meeting out by fitting in some light torture. The ornamental clock on the wall said nine thirty-five. Cai shrugged when I rolled my eyes toward him.
The stranger flicked his knife open, held the slippery muscle in one massive hand, and sliced from one end to the other. He didn’t shout, but a long wail and shallow breaths accompanied the bloody mess he left on the floor.
“Put your tongue in your mouth and wipe up the blood.”
Eamon looked thoroughly chastened as he swallowed enough blood to throw back his head and fit his severed tongue in his mouth. He peeled off his sweater and kneeled to soak up his mess. Only a choked sputter escaped his lips, which he sopped up, along with the rest of the blood.
When my father spoke again, the tenor of his voice didn’t change, and yet I shook out my shoulders. I could see the intensity of his stare in my mind, like a million spider legs tapping over my skin.
“The next time I give an edict, you will follow it to the letter. If you question my authority again, I’ll question why I’ve let you live. After I’ve reserved a room for you in my basement. Do you understand?”
The punished party nodded vigorously while I forced a breath through my teeth. No one from any species wanted to do time in a basement overseen by my father.
“I was nice today, because we have history, Eamon. I’m not unsympathetic to your hungers, but turning humans until further notice is forbidden, whether you understand the reason or not. You’ll just have to get your kicks by fucking and feeding like the rest of us. This was your warning.”
The redhead mumbled a tongue-less, “Yes, sir.” He gagged on the dead muscle in his mouth while the new one grew in.
“Leave. You’ve already eaten into my next meeting.”
Eamon the Tongueless skulked away from my father with his bundle of clothing in tow. He didn’t tug his bloody sweater on until he retreated into the elevator. His wild blue eyes stared
a hole through me when he turned and punched the button for the ground floor.
“You gotta problem, motherfucker? Speak up?”
I winked. He wiped his dribbling chin with more menace than a stranger should’ve toward his next ruler. I narrowed my eyes, wondering if I knew him from somewhere. He disappeared behind the steel doors, still a mystery.
Cai typed on his phone and tilted his head in the direction of my father, who’d pressed play on his film again. Of all the depressing ways I could imagine spending my days in the future, viewing curated hunts like porn between business meetings had to be at the top.
I peeled off my jacket and slung the fabric over the arm of a leather couch before plopping into my seat.
My father sprawled on the largest couch, a raging fire flickering over the living room for effect, instead of heat. The light cast a warm glow over his bronze skin where he’d rolled up the sleeves of his dress shirt. The shirtfront lay unbuttoned and spread away from his torso. He still wore powder gray dress slacks with perfect creases, dress socks, and tan dress shoes I could see my face in.
His eyes were closed, his head resting on the back of the couch. If not for the naked girl kneeling between his legs with his cock buried down her throat, I’d have thought him sleeping.
The slave’s hands were clasped behind her. Neither of them moved. On the screen the muted sounds of a woman screaming as she ran through the woods mingled with the crackle of a fire.
When you’re as old as Metis Oldman, you don’t simply get a blowjob while you watch the big game. You use humans as a cock warmer and doze before the fire while daydreaming about massacres gone by. I wouldn’t doubt this slave had been there since breakfast, dutifully kneeling with his dick in her mouth, as if she’d never existed for another purpose.
My unease at the sight bothered me. This wasn’t my first time walking in on my father ruining a pretty young thing with aristocratic ennui. I knew inside of that girl might be a mind, a sliver of hope.
Fucking. Empaths.
“Son.”
I blinked and lifted my gaze to my father’s face. His eyes were still closed.
“Dad.”
I gave the screen a passing glance, then the coffee table strewn, with several black portfolios. Curiosity made me frown, but I didn’t bother asking questions. I reclined in my seat and folded my hands between my legs, waiting.
To the slave he murmured, “Swallow.” Only the slight jut of his hips and his slow exhalation let me know he’d emptied his load. Trained to perfection, she swallowed every drop, even as he pumped away the aftershocks in a steady rhythm against the back of her throat.
When he’d finished, she lifted her mouth off him and grabbed a handkerchief beside his thigh. She sopped up the drool pooling around his balls and blotted the curls at the base of his shaft. Her fingers trembled lightly as she buttoned his shirt before tucking the fabric and his limp cock into his dress slacks. She zipped him, buttoned him up.
I tracked the paradox of her graceful scuttle to a prescribed corner, and for the first time, I wondered where a slave had come from before capture. She kneeled like a good pet at the side of the couch, out of the way, but still visible in case someone needed to fuck. Sometimes dad liked to watch. Watching me feed became a test under the guise of generosity. Once upon a time, I wouldn’t have cared. I’d have passed the test, but today, my stomach twisted. I looked away from the girl, who should’ve had as much consequence as a piece of furniture.
I couldn’t tell if his sigh was one of contentment or boredom. Might’ve been both, but at least the girl had taken some of the edge off. He seemed distracted, when I’d feared he’d be focused like a laser of disapproval on me.
“You redecorated.”
“Yes. When I retire, I plan to make this building one of my permanent residences. I’m rather fond of the industrial look and this neighborhood.”
My father opened his eyes then, straightened his head and pinned me with a stare that made me feel like a boy again. This wasn’t difficult for him to pull off, as one of the oldest true born vampires in North America. Even I didn’t know his exact age, but between the rumors and Masilda’s vision, he had to be around six hundred, give or take a few decades in either direction. We don’t often live beyond eight or nine centuries, with the females outlasting us males.
He took the name Metis, though I don’t know why, since the Metis people began as a mix of natives and settlers, and then became their own nation. Must be some ancient vampire inside joke, like our surname. Oldman River in Alberta had been named after the Peigan’s people’s creator, and my line were just vain enough to style themselves after a god.
Like Sundara, he didn’t look old to the untrained eye. He looked like a human man in his late thirties or early forties. He’d long since cut his espresso hair short, and his skin had gone paler than mine, due to a life spent traveling and living at night, a privilege of elite vampires the world over. Yet, for the first time I realized, this man would be gone one day. A few centuries, if that, and death would come for him. Long before then I’d be sitting in his seat.
And where will Evie be?
That’s what this meeting had been about. Putting Evie and my youthful mistakes in the grave. I just needed to convince him of that.
“Before you make me carve out my tongue, I apologize for the messiness with the witch.” I had to tread carefully so I didn’t lie. I willed my heartbeat to steady. “I ask that you don’t cut my run short. I’ll be ready to start my transition in the new year.”
“Good. I have no problem with you finishing out the month. It’ll be your last free one for a long while.” He yawned and rubbed his hands through his hair. I saw the faintest threads of gray, like a trick of the light. “Now that our distractions are out of the way, let’s talk business.”
Distraction.
I clenched my teeth at how he compared Evie to some wet mouth wrapped around his dick. I shouldn’t have been surprised. I couldn’t remember a single man or woman who’d been anything more to my father than a set of holes. He didn’t keep pets long enough to grow attached and the queen who bore me could be dead for all I knew.
The witch in my dream didn’t seem like a distraction. She seemed like someone you wanted to love, Father.
I blinked, drawn out of a memory of her smile, and studied the coffee table between us, lest he see some flicker in my eyes.
He opened one of the portfolios and sifted through a stack of papers, as if checking to make sure they were all there, then slid them toward me. He relaxed into the couch once more and waited.
“What’s this?”
He said nothing. I bit my bottom lip to keep from sighing and picked up the stack.
Names. Addresses. Pictures. Detailed schedules, and in some cases, a list of abilities. Psychic abilities.
Telekinesis. Clairvoyance. Clairaudience.
Witches. A whole stack of dossiers on witches. If I’d been human, my father would’ve just dropped a pile of precious gemstones in my lap.
“How the fuck did you find them? There’s gotta be—” I sifted through to the end. “There’s at least a hundred names in here.”
My father grinned and rested an ankle on his knee.
“The humans have been busy while you’ve been away. We finally cracked the code.”
I swallowed.
“You can isolate the gene that reveals witch blood now? Every time?”
He nodded.
“You should be more relieved. I’ve been thoroughly put out over the merchandise you lost because of some little fling. An empath would’ve earned a pretty penny after I’d taken my cut.”
Evie kneeling in front of my father flashed before my mind and I had to force my hand to remain steady. I wanted to wring his fucking neck for even daring to imagine her as his slave.
“Cai said she was a pretty little thing, too.”
“Yes.” The errand boy called from the dining room, still typing on his phone. “I still say it wa
s a waste to kill her.”
“Had to be done. Every second she lived she dug her hooks in deeper.” I didn’t see my father’s face. I couldn’t look at him. I looked at the TV instead. The vampire on the screen caught his prey. The sound of a woman choking on cock stirred my blood and made my temple throb, all at once.
Change the subject. Change the subject now.
“How did the humans manage it?”
“Flu shots. They were killing two dirty birds with one stone.”
I frowned and shook my head. “I don’t understand what one has to do with the other.”
“The humans figured out a way to strengthen vampire sepsis and distribute it through the vaccine. In the midst of doing so, they found certain individuals were having stronger reactions to the shot. They reported flu-like symptoms, itching and swelling at the sight of injection, and so forth. Seems their immune systems were rejecting the live virus while humans became dormant carriers. Wiping out those turned mutts helped us track down the strand in lost witches.”
I looked up at him, doing my best to hide my shock and my fury.
“Two birds. One stone.”
V-Sep had killed Liam. My father didn’t give a damn about the turned. He liked the money they spent in the motels, the hunting grounds, and in the upper levels of clubs like Asylum, but if they all died out today, he wouldn’t bat an eyelash. Most true borns don’t give a shit about turned vampires. They do humans a favor by wiping out the undesirables, the diseased, addicted, and homeless. They have their uses on our staffs. We can form bonds with them. Still, men like my father think they’re vermin because they can become sick, because they’re born human and weak.
“The best part is that their blood is doing most of the work for us. They seem to be drawn to certain areas, pockets of ancestral lands perhaps. It’s possible they’re not all lost witches either. They’re a sneaky race. They could’ve been hiding like roaches in the dark.”
I suppressed a shudder. Hadn’t I been willing to reveal covens a week ago? An imaginary noose tightened around my neck.
