by Liz Meldon
“Delia, so help me if you’re defending this fucker.” This time he actually managed to pull her away from Claude, but the vampire caught her seconds later as she faltered off to the side. When she looked up at him, his expression was no longer carefully neutral, his emotions concealed—he wore his anger like a mask.
“Stay here,” he said, leaning her up against the car.
Just as he was about to stalk toward Kain, who stood a few feet away goading him on in a voice bordering on slurred, Delia sprung between them again, a hand on each man to steady herself.
“No,” she hissed, her eyes narrowed at Kain before turning to Claude. “No. Stop.”
Two thoughts were about all her brain could focus on right now. One: she really wanted Claude to take her home and fuck her into sweet oblivion. Two: she didn’t want Claude to put her drunk friend through a wall. Unfortunately, the latter of the two finally won out, as nauseous as that made her.
“Go,” she insisted, pointing between Claude and the car. “’S too many hunters.”
His hands flexed in and out of fists. As he started to say her name, she placed a finger over his lips and shook her head.
“’M fine.” Delia nodded, though the motion made her a little dizzy. “Really. S’okay.”
“Get in the car, ya fucking crusty piece of shit.” Kain’s words of encouragement weren’t exactly the helpful push she needed, but one last look from Delia finally sent Claude off. His eyes flickered back to Kain briefly before he unbuttoned his jacket and climbed in, slamming the door behind him. Moments later, the car raced out of the lot, flinging bits of rock and dirt up from its wheels.
She watched him go with a heavy sigh, her head suddenly pounding. This was not what she needed tonight. All Delia had wanted to do was dance. And celebrate her friend’s impending wedding. And laugh. And drink heavily. This was not part of the plan.
“You need to tell me right now what the fuck went on here,” Kain ordered as she stalked back toward him. Before he could get another word out, Delia punched him in the gut as hard as she could. He doubled over, his stomach absorbing most of the hit, and Delia carried on walking back into the bar, steady for the first time all night, as Kain dropped to his knees and groaned.
CHAPTER 10: Nobody Likes a Tattletale
This was what death felt like. It had to be.
Despite having thrown up twice that morning and sleeping a full ten hours, on and off, since the end of Ali and Steve’s party, Delia still felt like she was on the verge of kicking the bucket. Her head pounded and her stomach ached, and her fucking phone wouldn’t stop going off—but it was all the way across the room in her purse and standing up for any reason other than to run to the bathroom just wasn’t happening.
“Ooh my god,” she groaned, elongating each word as she buried her face in her pillow. The only good part about the morning was that she had woken up alone. On the second trip to the bathroom to purge all the alcoholic poison from her system, she caught a fleeting look at herself in the mirror. All her eye makeup had smeared across her face and her once perfectly fluffed hair was a total rat’s nest. She was still wearing the little black dress from the night before, only without her bra and underwear.
This was, by far, the worst hangover she’d had in a long, long time.
“Kill me,” she whimpered at the sound of her phone’s message alert going off again, shrill and piercing even buried inside her purse.
Who the hell could possibly be…
Her eyes shot open as memories slowly started trickling back in. Shots with Kain. Speeches on barstools. Picking out dead hunters in photographs near the bathrooms.
Claude Grimm.
Delia groaned and yanked her covers over her head, only to feel hot and claustrophobic within seconds. Huffing noisily, she rolled onto her back and pushed everything off, squinting up at her bedroom ceiling. It was too fucking bright in there, even with her curtains closed.
Claude had been at the bar last night. And she’d called him a stalker.
“Oh my god.” Both hands covered her face as she emitted something between a groan and a yowl. If her somewhat fuzzy memories served her correctly, she’d been awful to him—and then let him kiss her. And kissed him back. Then invited him back up to her apartment.
If the hangover didn’t kill her, the embarrassment would. What the hell had she been thinking? She should have let him go. Her now-sober mind could deduce that he was there for business, given the company he kept at the time. Maybe they got a kick out of holding some super secret meeting in a bar full of oblivious hunters—belligerently drunk oblivious hunters, at that. Either way, he clearly hadn’t been there for her, but she had accused him of it anyway.
And then he had called her out on it. His face went in and out of focus, but Delia recalled the anger in his eyes, the irritation in his voice. He’d never spoken to her like that before.
They had been seeing each other twice a week for all of September, and each visit had coaxed her into lowering her guard a little bit more. It was easy around Claude. He was both sweet and seductive, charming but kind. Sometimes she would forget he was technically the enemy and enjoy her time with him. Then she would remember, usually when he started flirting back, and Delia would slam the brakes so hard it made her head spin.
She did it because she knew she had to. Claude had a number of traits that made him dating material. He was also infinitely patient with her slow uptake on his lessons. Unlike League trainers, there were no under-the-breath comments or eye rolls behind her back, no jokes made at her expense that weren’t good-natured and innocent. It was a whole different learning environment.
But she should have stopped going to him. It shouldn’t have continued after the first lesson, yet Delia kept coming back for more. For more flirting, for more muddled feelings. While her fighting skills may have improved slightly, it was still painfully apparent that her decision making skills could use some work.
After lying in bed for another half-hour, mentally berating herself for everything that had happened since the stupid masquerade garden party fiasco, Delia finally dragged herself out of bed to upchuck whatever was left in her stomach. This time, as she washed her face and brushed her teeth vigorously afterward, she felt less like death was upon her. All the physical agonies had been downgraded to a regular hangover, leaving Delia craving something greasy and fried with plans to eat it in bed.
Why not, right? She wasn’t working for the next few days, despite signing up to help patrol on a volunteer basis in the staff lounge basically every day in September and October. One night she’d tried to just go on an unscheduled patrol by herself in an effort to help—only to run into the hunter who’d actually been assigned that sector. At the time he’d thought she was trying to undermine his authority or something equally absurd, and she’d woken up the following morning with a terse, succinct reminder in her inbox not to infringe on other hunters’ patrols. So fuck it. She was going to ride this thing out in style.
Her slow trudge to the kitchen—where Delia planned to eat Nutella out of the jar until she had enough energy to get dressed and go down to the burger place around the corner—was interrupted by the bleating of her phone. Sighing, she crouched down and grabbed the damn thing with every intention of turning it off.
However, the million missed calls and texts from Kain made her pause, as did the one text from Claude. The texts from Devin asking where she’d gone around the time she was probably drunkenly berating Claude in the parking lot last night could be ignored. Ali’s incoherent text made up of random letters that might be words also went unanswered, which left her with Claude and Kain—the two men who had tipped her night from taking a few shots to taking a lot of shots. Hesitantly, she checked Claude’s first.
Hope you’re feeling better this morning. I think we should talk about things. I can bring food if you wish.
Thoughtful bastard definitely knew how to get to her. She had to bite the inside of her cheek to keep from smiling, the
n flinched when yet another text alert shrieked at her. Kain again. Exhaling deeply, she opened their conversation thread with the expectation of seeing a lot of half-assed apology texts mingled with lectures about her and Claude. Instead, she found something much more urgent.
Im sure ur hungover as fuck. Can u just put some pants on? U have 15 min and counting before they make me go pick u up. Wentworth is pissed enough as it is.
“What?” She scrolled up frantically to find the start of his most recent string of texts. Apparently the High Council wanted to see her at three that afternoon—which was, in fact, less than fifteen minutes from now. Tossing her phone aside, Delia raced to her closet and pulled out the most professional outfit she owned: fitted black dress pants and a white button-up blouse. Once dressed, she attempted to run a brush through her hair, then gave up and tried to do one of those trendy ballerina buns on the top of her head. It was sloppier than they made it look on the online tutorials, but there was no time for much else. Lip gloss. Mascara. Some tissues to wipe off last night’s eye shadow.
“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” she hissed, grabbing her purse and her discarded pleather jacket on her way to the front door. Boots and sunglasses completed the somewhat grown-up outfit, and she was out the door and down the stairs in a flurry, not bothering to wait for the elevator. While outside was cool and overcast, sweat had already started to gather on her neck and face—and she missed the bus by a good ten seconds. “Fuck!”
So she ran as fast as her hungover body could manage. Somehow she arrived at the library in ten minutes, having cut across traffic and pushed by too many people to count. As she climbed the front steps, the same front steps where Hugh and the others had been found swinging weeks earlier, she was forced to stop by one of the pillars to catch her breath. Each gulp of air burned her throat, and the longer she stood, the more she wanted to vomit again.
No time for sickness. The High Council had requested her. Kain had texted her hours ago to let her know, and she was determined to show them that she wasn’t a total screw-up.
No. Delia could be punctual and mediocre, damn it.
It took her another ten minutes to reach the Council chambers, new punch-in door codes and busy elevators not working in her favour. Kain was waiting for her in the reception area, the plush carpeting just the right shade of puke green to bring her nausea back full-force.
“Where the hell have you been?” he demanded, voice low as he pulled her close. “I’ve been trying to reach you all day.”
“I just got out of bed,” she snapped as she smoothed a hand over her hair. Kain’s eyes swept up and down her body.
“You look like shit.”
“And your breath smells like shit,” she fired back, still upset with his behaviour in front of Claude. But they’d deal with that another time. Delia had to focus on the present. At least her blouse was clean. “Seriously though… Do I look presentable?”
“Considering I know how drunk you were last night?” Kain said, smirking. “Yeah, you’re okay.”
Behind them, the Council secretary Candace Sweetman glanced up from the computer, her eyes like lasers honing onto all of Delia’s faults.
Delia went for her hair again, but Kain batted her hands away.
“Stop. You’re making it worse.”
“Kain—”
“The Council will see you now,” Candace drawled, pushing a button on her mahogany desk. The sound of the huge door unlocking made Delia’s stomach turn, but she followed Kain toward it with all the dignity she could muster.
Said dignity dissolved into a puddle on the floor at the sight of all five Council members. Wentworth was seated behind an even grander desk than his secretary, while the others stood behind him, stern as ever. This wasn’t the first time she had been in the chambers of the High Council, and Delia knew for a fact that the small room with cobblestone flooring was merely for disciplinary matters. The near invisible doorway behind the desk, padlocked and fingerprint reliant, led to a secret room, probably quite ostentatious, where the five members of the High Council held their actual meetings.
When the door behind her shut, bolting noisily, Delia clasped her hands in front of her and tried to concentrate on not crumbling to the floor. Kain, meanwhile, took a seat on the small two-seater couch to her left.
“Miss Roberts,” Wentworth began after the twenty most intense seconds of her life. “Do you know why you’ve been called by the High Council this afternoon?”
“Because…” She swallowed hard, but her mouth was so dry it was like swallowing sandpaper. “Because you’re commending me for all the volunteer opportunities I’ve signed up for?”
It was a long shot, but in her current state she couldn’t think of anything she had done wrong recently. Well, anything League-related, anyway.
Wentworth’s eyes narrowed.
She cleared her throat.
“Sorry. I didn’t mean to be disrespectful.” Her voice was getting softer and softer. Delia lowered her eyes to the ground, bracing for the worst.
“Miss Roberts,” Wentworth said again, leaning forward in his chair so that it squeaked, “it has been brought to our attention that you have started up a relationship with a vampire.” Delia’s head snapped up, her world suddenly spinning. “A one… Claude Grimm, head of the Grimm clan. Is that true?”
“I…” She could feel her blood pumping through her body, her heartbeat throbbing in her ears. She was going to pass out. She was going to faint in front of the High Council. Her arm shot out to brace herself, but there was nothing to hold in to. Instead she swayed ever so slightly, then regained her balance, her previously very sickly complexion taking on a dull pink. “I, uh…”
“There’s no sense in lying.” Wentworth nodded to Kain, whom Delia looked at with wide eyes. “Kain has given us a very thorough report on the situation.”
“What the fuck, man?” she blurted, swallowing down the clichéd I thought we were friends. He met her eye fleetingly, then looked back to the High Council members. At least he had the decency to look mildly ashamed of what he’d done.
“You should have come to us after the masquerade gathering earlier this year,” Wentworth stated. “We could have stopped this dalliance from carrying on as long as it has.”
“There is no dalliance,” she said quickly, mind reeling. “We’re not… There’s no crime in being on sort of friendly terms with a vamp. Isn’t it a good thing, in this case? I mean, I can ask him whatever I want—”
“You let him bite you,” Wentworth remarked. It suddenly felt like someone had kicked her straight in the gut. She couldn’t breathe. “You’re infected, Delia Roberts, with his disease.”
“I didn’t know… at the time,” she protested weakly. Tears were starting to gather in her eyes, and she looked to the ceiling in an effort to push them back down. Her lip quivered anyway, and when she faced the five men who had the power over her very life, two fat trails of liquid streamed down her cheeks. “He was warm. I went to the masquerade to get Claudia because my informant said she’d be there.”
“You wanted to take down the purported mistress of all Harriswood vamps… alone?” Wentworth seemed to be trying hard not to smile, what with the way his lips twitched, and the council members behind him all shared a similar expression. “Delia, what a foolish thing to do.”
“I realized that there, and I met a guy in a mask who I…” She shook her head, her voice catching. “I thought he was a regular guy, and then he bit me.” Her noisy sniffle made George Heston grimace. “I’m sorry. I didn’t want it to happen, and I thought I’d be banished, or worse if I said something and—”
“Under the usual circumstances, yes, you would be banished,” Wentworth said gruffly. Delia’s hands had started to shake. In her peripherals, Kain had settled back on the couch and crossed his arms. He still wasn’t looking at her. Delia took the deepest breath she could and squared her shoulders, doing whatever she could to ward off a full-blown weeping meltdown.
“Us
ual circumstances?”
“The tide is changing amongst the clans,” Wentworth told her. “I’m sure you realized this back when we permitted that vamp scum Johnathon Warwick to attend a meeting. Tensions are escalating, mostly between the smaller clans and the Donovans. We on the Council anticipate there will be more bloodshed, even with our increased security measures. I hope not, for the sake of the people of Harriswood, but there is no telling what is to come. The Donovans have made… unprecedented moves. To our knowledge, the local clans have lived in harmony for years.”
As he spoke, Delia continued to take deep breaths. It almost seemed that Wentworth was implying that her punishment for fraternizing with the enemy would be less severe than she feared.
But then again, she had been wrong about these sorts of things before.
“I want to help, sir,” she insisted, fiddling with the hem of her blouse. “I keep signing up for patrol duty, but—”
“We have another assignment in mind, Miss Roberts.” Wentworth stood, then slowly made his way around the desk. While the others of the High Council wore their traditional black robes, Wentworth was in his casuals: a brown v-neck sweater with a white collar poking over the top, worn with a pair of what Delia could only describe as dad jeans. Plus a pair of tan loafers. It was like seeing a teacher outside of school—mildly unsettling. Still, the thought of an assignment given to her directly by Wentworth made her brighten.
“Yes, sir?”
“You’re going to tell us everything,” Wentworth remarked as he closed in on her, and for the first time, she felt very much like she was being encroached on by a predator. Not even vamps made her feel like this. She shifted, averting her eyes when he stopped no less than a foot from her. “Then you’re going to make reports on him and his clan, and anything he tells you about the other clans.”
Delia swallowed thickly. This time it was easy to gulp—what with her mouth steadily filling with saliva. She was going to be sick. She was going to be sick all over High Council leader Don Wentworth.
