The King (Games We Play Book 2)

by Liz Meldon

  “I vividly remember,” Delia remarked humorlessly, a familiar heavy weight settling in her gut. Kain’s jaw clenched and unclenched briefly, those light brown eyes looking everywhere but her.

  “I was worried you went and got drunk afterwards and did something stupid, okay?”

  She scoffed. “Glad to know you think so highly of me.” Then, when Kain fixed her with a half-smile and a raised eyebrow, she scoffed again. “I wouldn’t do that.”

  “You absolutely would do that,” he said, sounding annoyingly sure of himself. To be fair, some of her ‘me time’ had consisted of a bottle of wine or two—at the time she’d rationalized drinking them as a way to dull the pain of her healing.

  “Well, I’m fine,” she told him after a long pause. “No need to be so dramatic.” Delia rubbed again at her wrist, which hummed with a faint ache. “Or rough.”

  “Main takeaway is that I was worried,” he said, then muttered, “though God knows why.”

  “Who else would be your pity date to the bar when everyone else shoots you down?” Delia smirked, then reached up to pat at his cheek. Kain flinched away slightly, then, perhaps trusting she wouldn’t smack him again, leaned in and let her pat him.

  “Can you just answer my calls next time? Jesus.” He pushed forward and steered Delia toward the door. The next words were said in her ear, his breath making the hairs on the back of her neck rise. “Or at least my messages… Let me know you’re still alive.”

  “Aye, aye, sir,” Delia barked, then turned and gave him a mock salute. She flashed a smirk as they parted ways, Kain headed for his boys near the middle of the room and Delia to sit with Devin at the front.

  Getting into her seat at these events was like finding one’s seat in the middle of the row at a crowded movie theater. Delia had to climb over legs and feet, balance precariously on the chairs in the row in front of her, and mutter a string of apologies as she went. Once she finally fell into her seat beside Devin, she exhaled deeply and plopped her purse on her lap.

  “Great seats,” she noted, but her smile faded when he didn’t offer one in return. “Devin…”

  “That guy’s a huge ass, Delia,” he said gruffly, obviously not caring who heard. “I don’t know why you put up with his crap all the time.”

  “He’s not that bad,” she insisted, but Delia knew Kain could be an asshole on even the best of days.

  “He’s a player. He’s favoured by the Council. He was promoted faster than he should have been,” Devin said, using his fingers to list each item. “He talks down to you. He makes you the butt of every joke in front of his dirtbag friends. He jerks you around and has done so for years. Seriously, D, I don’t know why you give that guy the time of day.”

  She looked away with another exasperated sigh. When he said it like that, the rational side of Delia had to wonder why she stayed friends with Kain over the years too. Something about him had always screamed comfort to her. Before she met and grew close to Devin and Ali in her first hunter year, there was just Kain. Sexy, bad boy Kain who knew what he was doing with a stake and in the bedroom. Maybe she just fell back on him these days because he was once an easy habit.

  Regardless, they hadn’t done anything remotely sexual after he had calmed her down during her post-masquerade meltdown. Apparently he didn’t do chicks with vampire bites, which Delia wasn’t exactly heartbroken over.

  “Okay, okay. Point taken.”

  “Seriously.”

  “Okay.”

  Licking her lips, Delia twisted her body around to get a better look at the room, which was steadily filling up. Ali sat a few rows behind with her fiancé, and the blonde waved when she and Delia made eye contact. Delia waved back, grinning when the woman busied herself with fixing Steve’s bushy eyebrows, which he immediately tried to duck out of. Tried and failed. It was like watching a mama lion groom her unwilling cub, but with less tongue.

  Soon people were forced to stand at the back, which Delia pointed out to Devin as she thanked him for saving her seat. He bumped her with his muscular upper arm, then offered a small smile. Apparently whatever weird fight they were in had come to an end.

  “You know,” she said as the last of the hunters filed in, some noticeably out of breath, “one of these days I’m going to harp on you for flirting with some girl you shouldn’t. Mark my words. The tables will turn.”

  “Doubt it,” he fired back, his voice dropping to a whisper. “I don’t do crazy.”

  Her eyebrows shot up, even as the lights dimmed. “I’m sorry, but what was Lindsey from accounting, then?”

  “Lindsey was drama.” Devin faced forward now, and Delia straightened up at the arrival of Wentworth and the rest of the Council. Softly, she heard Devin murmur, “Kain is batshit crazy.”

  She drew a breath to whisper something back, then thought better of it as the room descended into a terse silence. Wentworth wasn’t happy. In fact, all the faces of the High Council members looked like they’d taken a whiff of something foul before stalking out of their private entrance. The ceiling pod lights cast shadows across their aged faces, making their frowns all the more dramatic. As always, each of the five members wore their black suits, all tailored to perfection. Delia ran a subtle hand over her beige v-neck tee, hoping it was clean. Beiges and whites were dangerous for messy eaters.

  “Good evening, all,” Wentworth began, standing before the crowd with his hands clasped in front of him. “Thank you for coming in on such short notice. Most of you will be here until sunrise tomorrow. Those who have scheduled patrols may leave, but you must return immediately once they are over.”

  “You working tonight?” Devin whispered, and Delia shook her head, gaze fixed on Wentworth as she absentmindedly nibbled on her thumbnail.

  “Tonight we will be casting a vote for an unprecedented development in League and vampire relations,” Wentworth continued. “The decision must be unanimous. If by sunrise it is not, we will not go forward. Every argument for and against will be heard. Pizza and drinks are available at the back and will be restocked for the duration of the meeting. Now, if you’ll please give your full attention to our guest this evening—Johnathon Warwick.”

  Whispers erupted across the hall, heated words exchanged as the private door in the front corner opened, and out stepped a familiar face that, for once, wasn’t Claude fucking Grimm. No, he was only familiar because he was the head of a local clan and had a small photo pinned on the staff room corkboard—dangerous, but still a small fish.

  Johnathon Warwick moved into the room with some caution, followed closely by two vampires Delia assumed were his kids, William and Victoria, rumored to be turned by their father’s bite when they were in their early teens. While the men were thin and gaunt, cheekbones so prominent that it was off-putting, Victoria had enough curve to catch more than a few eyes in the crowd, her bright red lips pursed in a petulant frown. All three dressed like they’d strolled out of a gangster movie.

  The first invited vamps to League headquarters in—well, Delia wasn’t sure a vamp had ever willingly set foot in the Harriswood HQ. She swallowed hard and kept her breathing even. Hearts must have been racing around the room, with hunters shifting and murmuring. At the back, those who were forced to stand had surged forward. Wentworth raised his hands like he was soothing a herd of twitchy cattle.

  “Easy,” he said. Then, in a clearer, much louder voice, he barked, “Order! Johnathon Warwick and his children are guests in headquarters tonight. I’ll have no foolishness in their presence.”

  Devin looked like it physically pained him to stay seated. Glancing back, Delia tried to find Kain to gauge his reaction, but there were too many worried and angered faces between them.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for your patience,” Warwick began, his accent smoothly English and surprisingly soft. “We approached your High Council yesterday with this matter, and they have agreed to bring it before you. The Donovan situation has grown increasingly worrisome these last few months. Vamp
ires and humans alike are dying. As you know, some of our humans, our special friends—” Delia’s eyebrows shot up and a few behind her scoffed. “—were brutally murdered on the night of the most recent trades.

  “The Donovans are, in numbers, the strongest clan in the region. We would have preferred to handle their recent bids for power internally, but I’m afraid my brother clans fear reprisal from a force as powerful as Shane Donovan and his family. So we turn to you to help us put them back in check. We only survive here because we exist harmoniously, clan and human populace as one. We know the laws, the rules. We know we cannot make ourselves known to the human world, and yet the Donovans have flaunted their status too often as of late.”

  “We were asked to remedy the situation,” Wentworth said from his place beside Warwick, easing into the conversation like the two had practiced it beforehand. “The Warwick clan has requested we pool resources with them and the local PD. The Donovans need to be put in check before more people lose their lives. However, no American League has ever partnered with a clan before. As I said, it’s unprecedented.”

  “And stupid,” Devin muttered. Delia shot him a curious look before bringing her gaze back to Wentworth.

  “So tonight we will debate the facts.” Wentworth gestured to the doorway and off the Warwick trio went, escorted out by two other members of the High Council. “We will go over the histories of the clans and decide whether we need a vampire partnership to address this growing threat. If we cannot come to a consensus, then we will not partner with the Warwick clan. Simple as that. But I will need everyone’s opinion. We are a League. We are a family. If we take this leap, we do it together or not at all.”

  As it stood, Delia had very little interest in joining forces with the Warwicks. In the ten seconds that she had seen Johnathon Warwick in person, he struck her as a bit too smooth, like a British used-car salesman made up of too many sharp points and edges and cheekbones. A little voice at the back of her mind whispered for her to use her sole vampire contact and ask Claude to prove or disprove her suspicions.

  No. She’d been trying hard not to think about Claude, despite his nightly appearance in her dreams. There was no way she could ask him for help. She couldn’t legitimize whatever the hell they had floating between them—even if her subconscious wanted her to.

  So Delia put her faith in the League, in her fellow hunters, and hoped that by morning, everything would be sorted.

  *

  If Wentworth was right, and the League was supposed to feel like her family, Delia decided that most hunters were the kind of family she could only take in short doses immediately followed by a weeklong holiday. Hours of listening to them all bicker and argue, hunters pounding their chests and whipping out their dicks to see whose was bigger, had given her a migraine.

  Just as Wentworth had predicted, the debates lasted until the late hours of the following morning. By the time she’d reach home, the sun would be up and another day would be in full swing—another day that Delia planned to sleep away before her patrol that night. Four hours in the suburbs, nothing major, but she felt like she needed two full days of sleep to muster up the desire to go.

  Plus, if she saw one more piece of pizza, she was going to hurl up the twelve slices she’d scarfed down over the course of the last ten hours.

  Even though Wentworth had insisted everyone get a say, it became very clear that there were only about ten or so opinions that mattered. Neither she nor Devin were a part of the chosen ones, no matter how hard they fought to be heard, and in the end they were left to fade into the masses and vote when the time came.

  The League had unanimously decided to confront the Donovan threat with the Warwick clan. That hadn’t been the prevailing opinion at the start of the night, but the naysayers were slowly beaten back until everyone agreed that this was in Harriswood’s best interest. Be a unified front. Alone, neither the League, the police department, nor the individual clans had enough people to counteract the sheer numbers of Donovan-aligned vampires. An alliance seemed necessary, given the circumstances. Show the other clans that the League wasn’t an entity to be trifled with, that they would respond to a threat in kind, if necessary.

  There were conditions, of course. The Donovans would need to prove they were a threat to the general population, not just to the special friends of the Warwick clan. Patrols would be increased. More surveillance would be installed around Shane Donovan’s monstrosity of a mansion on the other side of the lake. All the League informants, Delia’s Hugh included, would be tasked with digging up dirt and acquiring sensitive information about the Donovan family and their subordinates.

  Which meant the rats wouldn’t be trading gigs for cash anymore. Not that Delia cared. Hugh had blown her off over and over again, like he didn’t even want her business these days. She knew she didn’t pay as well as some of the other hunters, but she’d sort of hoped it would be a money-is-money situation. Apparently not.

  All in all, Delia approved of the League’s plan to proceed with caution. That was what had swayed her in the end. Delia had voted negative whenever the question of brute force arose. It wasn’t a smart approach, not when the Donovan clan numbers beat all the other clans by a little over half. They had to be smart about it, and while no one was asking her opinion, she had enough faith in men like Kain and the High Council to come up with an appropriate solution.

  Still, she couldn’t shake the somewhat squirmy feeling in the pit of her stomach that the League was now partnered with a vamp clan. Sure, she had been spending an unnecessary amount of time with Claude Grimm recently, but it wasn’t the same.

  As she and Devin made their way out of the meeting room, both of them heavy-lidded and sluggish in the sea of equally exhausted hunters, she stopped at the sound of both their names being called. Seconds later Ali popped into view, her blonde hair tucked up in a messy bun and her eyes bloodshot. She was taller and skinnier than Delia, even in flats, and, as always, had her cell phone glued to her hand.

  “I just wanted to remind you guys about me and Steve’s stag and doe at Jimmie’s next month,” she said. Ali might have been talking normally, but her voice felt a little too shrill for Delia. She tried not to wince. Apparently not everyone was as tired as they looked.

  “I already RSVP’d online,” Devin told her with a weary grin. Ali’s sharp gaze fixed on Delia, who nodded when cued.

  “Of course I’ll be there.” An opportunity to drink for a cause and watch her friend get totally shit-faced before the wedding? Obviously Delia would be in attendance. Ali had been in full militant mode ever since Steve proposed last year, and Delia was desperate to have her friend back, even for one night. There was only so much wedding prep talk she could take before it all started to sound like white noise.

  Apparently the bride-and groom-to-be had rented out the bottom floor of Jimmie’s Place, a hunter favourite downtown. Of all the drinks purchased, sixty percent would go toward the wedding. Delia had always thought hunters getting married seemed a little pointless, given, well, everyone’s potentially limited lifespan, but Ali and Steve were determined to make it work.

  And Delia had never seen Ali go more hardcore about anything, vamp hunting included, than she had over the wedding.

  “Okay, that’s awesome,” Ali chirped. She brought her phone up and swiped at the screen, then tapped around for a few seconds. “I really need you to RSVP online too so we can get more exact numbers. Okay? Okay. Awesome.”

  She blew them both kisses before pushing between them and cornering another small group down the hall. Delia’s face screwed as she tried to force the higher-than-normal pitch of Ali’s voice out of her head.

  “Good God was that shrill,” Devin said as they rejoined the flow of people headed for the elevators. “Was she shrill? Why do I feel like I’m hungover?”

  Delia patted his arm, the ache starting to throb behind her eyes now. “I feel the same.”

  “So you actually going?”

  “Yeah, why
not? Should be fun. I like to drink and dance. Ali and Steve are about as broke as the rest of us and yet apparently they decided to drag this huge expense into their lives for no reason at all, so I may as well support them a bit.” She felt Devin staring at her when she finished, and it was only then that she realized she was glaring at no one in particular. “Sorry, was that mean? It felt a bit mean.”

  “Wow.”

  “I’m just tired,” she said, running her hand through her hair. It frizzed, obviously unimpressed with being underground in a mildly humid room for so many hours. At least Devin had had a chance to leave and come back for his quick patrol shift at midnight.

  “Yeah, well, try to rein that in at the party,” Devin chided as they stopped behind the crowd at the elevators. “You know she’s really excited for it. Like, way too excited.” Delia noticed him blink heavily, slowly. Poor guy needed a bed as bad as she did. “I’m actually scared to go to the wedding. She seems like she’ll shank me if I clap at the wrong time or something.”

  Delia nodded. “Yeah, I can see that.”

  Given how tightly-wound Ali was about things, Delia would be surprised if the woman didn’t go full bridal meltdown on the day of.

  Speaking of full meltdown. As soon as the elevators dinged, she grabbed Devin’s arm and shoved her way to the front. No way were they waiting for the next one. Because if she didn’t get home and into bed in the next half hour, she was going to go full meltdown right there in the depths of League HQ. And for once, she wouldn’t care.

  CHAPTER 7: Dead Rats

  Hugh was dead. He and six other informants had been found hanging from the Harriswood Library entrance, ropes around their necks and the Donovan insignia carved into their chests. Delia had found out that morning as she was eating breakfast, lazily scooping spoonfuls of soggy cereal into her mouth while perusing her League emails. Pictures were attached as proof, and her heart dropped to her stomach when she recognized Hugh’s smarmy face, all purplish red and bloated, amongst the seven.