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The King (Games We Play Book 2)

Page 29

by Liz Meldon


  Delia swallowed hard. Kain left no messages, voice or otherwise.

  The smoke seemed to be spiraling on the side of town that housed the library and government buildings. And which local organization of the whole lot was bound to have the powerful enemies?

  “Delia, I really should get back and make an appearance. We’ve been gone a little too long.”

  She held up a finger to silence him as she tapped Devin’s number and pressed call. Straight to voicemail. Shaking her head, Delia tried again—three times more. Then she tried Ali’s number. Then Kain’s. Arthur’s rang but eventually went to voicemail too. Frustrated, she called every hunter number she had stored in her contacts list, not caring if they’d even spoken in the last year. Nothing. Nothing from anyone.

  Delia went back to the start, calling everyone again. Nobody’s phone rang besides Arthur’s. Her breath came in short, panicked gasps. “Claude, I don’t—”

  Suddenly he was crouched in front of her, gathering her hands in his and holding her gaze. “Relax. You’ve had a bit to drink, and this has understandably startled you. I’m sure everything’s fine. Let’s go back to the party.”

  Her brow creased as she stared into those beautiful blue eyes, eyes she had come to trust implicitly, and then slowly freed her hands from his. A sick feeling had taken root in her gut and was working its way up her throat, leaving a scorched trail behind.

  “Why don’t you care about this?” she asked, the gears slowly turning as she worked through the sudden turn of events. “Why are you…?”

  “Delia, please, now isn’t—”

  She stood abruptly and stepped around him, heart pounding. “I want to know what happened. I… I should go back to town, or something. Devin isn’t answering his phone. Ali isn’t either and that thing is glued to her hand. I should check on things.”

  “Why? Is it really so crucial at this moment in time?”

  He’d snapped at her. Claude Grimm had never snapped at her. Frown deepening, Delia went for her shoes, jamming them onto her slightly swollen, sore feet. When she tried to open the door, Claude closed it before she got very far, his hand lingering on the dark wood, gaze cast down. “Delia…”

  Her grip tightened on the doorknob. “Why don’t you want me to go?”

  “Why don’t I want you to rush blindly toward a natural disaster?” His eyebrows shot up when their eyes met. “Is that a serious question?”

  “Stop it.” She tried to open the door again, but he continued to hold it shut. “Stop. Whatever this is that’s happening right now, stop it.”

  She glared up at him, not entirely sure how to navigate the choppy seas of this Claude, but she wanted to check on her friends. They all lived with their phones. Some even took them in the shower. Reception could be hit or miss at HQ, but it wasn’t that bad. Someone should have answered.

  Over his shoulder, the smoke had started to spread across the cityscape. There was quite a stretch of land between Harriswood and the Grimm estate, but she’d always been able to see the tops of the tallest skyscrapers over the trees outside his bedroom. Now it was just smoke. Smoke, and if she looked hard, the flicker of fire.

  “No one is answering their phones,” Delia snapped. “And now something’s happening downtown where all my friends live and work. I want to—”

  A third quake cut her off, less powerful than the second but stronger than the first, and Claude steadied her when she wobbled in her heels. She clutched at him until the vibrations stopped, until the windows ceased their rattling and the books stopped inching toward the edge of their shelves.

  “Delia,” Claude said, taking her head in his hands firmly, “it is not a good idea to go back to town tonight. It’s safer here.”

  Carefully, she peeled his hands from her face and held them by her sides, struggling to draw even breaths. “Do you… Do you know what happened?”

  “I didn’t know this was the way. I…” Claude gave a slight shake of his head. “But I know now. At least, I can guess what’s happened.”

  “Is it about the clans? The Donovans?” She let go of his hands when he nodded. Her voice caught in her throat as she asked, “Does that smoke have something to do with the League?”

  The answer was obvious from the look on his face. There it was again. The regret. The self-doubt. It practically doused him, clear as anything, and Delia stepped away with a shaky gasp, tears stinging her eyes.

  “Oh my god.”

  “Delia, I’m so sorry. I didn’t know this was to be the outcome of all—”

  But she was gone before she could hear the rest of his apology, blitzing out the door and down the hall. The burning feeling had made it to her mouth now, tasting like sickness, like death. She was halfway down an unfamiliar corridor when she realized her feet had been moving, but not in the right direction. Her fingertips ghosted over the wall as she stopped, and when she turned around, trying to get her bearings and find the front door, she spotted Claude jogging toward her.

  With her coat and purse in hand, his dinner jacket back on those beautifully broad shoulders.

  “Come on then,” he said, feeding her arms through her jacket’s sleeves. “You’re in no mood to wait for a cab, nor would I ever let you drive anywhere tonight.”

  “You don’t have to—”

  “No, I want to see it for myself,” he insisted gruffly as he guided her down the hall. “I want to see the carnage with my own eyes…”

  *

  Because he wanted the images to haunt him. Johnathon Warwick owed him three more days to respond to his offer. Tonight was supposed to be one last hurrah for the Grimm clan. Tomorrow he’d tell Delia. The following day the manor would be abandoned, all his nearest and dearest safely aboard private planes destined for Switzerland. He had friends there. Friends who would keep him safe.

  He hadn’t known something would happen tonight—not for certain, anyway. Elov had heard whispers that the new order of vampire clan leaders intended to slot the League into their plans for the future—Claude thought it best Delia was with him when that happened. But after what sounded like a bombing, he could only guess that Johnathon hadn’t offered the hunters the same chance to join him as he’d given Claude.

  So he’d go into town with her and keep her safe, leaving the warm glow of his decorated home behind. Because Claude wanted to know, wanted to see and remember forever, the flames of hellfire he had fanned with his inaction.

  With his… boredom.

  CHAPTER 22: BRB Emotionally Shattered

  Red and blue lights washed over the crowd at the police barricade like waves lapping at the surf. Officials had closed off the street, blocking pedestrians from the usual path Delia took to get to League HQ from her apartment. Flames engulfed the historic building. The old town library, a Harriswood monument—victim of some sort of terrorist attack. That’s what the news would say, anyway. They’d find human culprits and plaster their faces across television screens and online news articles.

  But Delia knew they weren’t human and they weren’t targeting the library—not really. The curt whoop-whoop of an incoming ambulance forced her and other onlookers to shift aside, the boxy vehicle easing headed for the wounded. The crowd was pushed back to the end of the street, a good hundred feet from the wreck, but the heat was palpable. Sometimes her breath caught in her throat and she’d cough out the smoky air with a wince.

  Firefighters were doing their best to contain the blaze, battling it back so it wouldn’t spread to other nearby historical buildings and apartment complexes. Scores of people had been evacuated, many waiting in their slippers and winter jackets, demanding to know what had happened. On the other side of Claude, an elderly man held a fluffy Persian cat to his chest, paunchy cheeks slack and jaw hanging open.

  Hands shaking, Delia watched the flames as she tried to reach the people who’d been partying beneath the building. No response.

  Devin. Ali. Arthur. Kain. All the HQ staffers, from the hunters to the human resource folks,
had been invited to celebrate the Donovan capture. There were at least a dozen emails in her inbox encouraging her to attend, to bring a bottle of wine, to dress festively—the High Council was planning to merge it with their annual Christmas Party, so prepare for karaoke and eggnog.

  Claude hadn’t said a word since they arrived on the scene. He’d been unusually silent on the drive into town too, not a word said about Delia flipping through local radio channels frantically. Silent and stoic, he’d nudged people aside to help her get to the front of the steadily growing crowd.

  And now he just watched. She cast her watery gaze toward him. A tight fist gripped her chest, crushing her. It was no longer her racing heart she felt, but the high-pitched whine in her ears, accompanied by some invisible fluff that muffled the chaos unfurling around her.

  “What is this?” She sounded like she had something in her throat. Claude continued to stare ahead, watching. Not even the soft hand she placed on his arm roused him. “Why did this happen?”

  “There has been a coup,” her vampire king remarked stiffly, eyes sweeping across the paramedics wheeling a gurney toward the scene. “A rising up against the established order.”

  Teeth starting to chatter, Delia slipped her hand into her coat pocket, only then noticing how the cold affected her. Her bare legs had gone numb—but so had the rest of her, physically and emotionally. Before she could say anything, Claude wrapped his thick jacket over her shoulders. Her body wanted to sag under its weight.

  “Are you the established order?” she asked thickly.

  In the distance, firefighters shouted at one another, the blaze stronger than ever. A little closer, uniformed officers barked at the encroaching crowd to get back, to go home, to get out of the way. Beside her, Claude merely nodded, his jaw noticeably clenched.

  Delia hesitated, unsure if she wanted an answer, then cleared her throat. “Is this why you insisted I come to the gala at your place? Did you know this was going to happen?”

  Her stomach did a few somersaults in the silence that followed. She shouldn’t have asked. Sometimes not knowing was better. But he had been so adamant on her being there tonight…

  “I’d heard whispers that the new powers that be had plans for tonight,” Claude told her at long last, each word sounding forced, pained even. “I didn’t know what, so I wanted to keep my clan close. Keep them out of the blast radius… metaphorically speaking, of course. I’d no idea they were going to do this.” Delia looked away when he glanced down at her, tears clinging to her lashes. In her peripherals, she saw him shake his head, his huff of air fogging in front of him. “It was my understanding that they were using the League for their own purposes, not that they were going to destroy it.”

  “And butcher all the people inside it.” Her voice sounded far away, even to her own ears, and she tried not to blink, tried not to let the tears fall. “There was a huge party in there tonight. Was supposed to go well into the morning. Devin said in a text they went all out… Oysters, champagne probably.” Her face screwed suddenly as the true gravity of the situation hit her—like running face-first into a brick wall. This time she let the fat wet streaks roll down her cheeks and drip onto Claude’s coat. “You couldn’t have given me a heads up?”

  “Telling you something before I knew the whole story would have been like throwing you into the fire.” Claude touched her shoulder, but she shrugged his hand away, arms folded beneath his huge jacket. He sighed. “I was trying to keep you from getting burned.”

  Life hadn’t prepared her for this. As she stood there, openly weeping, Delia wasn’t sure how she was supposed to feel. Sad? Angry? Horrified? All of the above? Hunters liked to tell themselves, and anyone who would listen, that this life was a gruelling one: that at one point or another, all your friends would die before their time. That was the nature of the business. Fighting vamps. Protecting the free human world. It was supposed to be this very rock and roll, live-hard-die-young lifestyle. Delia had told herself time and time again that this job came with hardships, that the possibility of no tomorrow was a very real one for her and anyone she cared about.

  But, in a single night, they had all been snuffed out.

  Just because she wanted to quit or apply for a desk job didn’t mean she wanted to see it all go up in flames. She’d never hear Devin call her D again. There’d be no early morning pancakes at the diner watching the sunrise together. In that moment, she’d kill to hear Ali talk about wedding plans—Delia would happily look at every fucking inspiration board on the woman’s phone. You never know when it will be the last time you hug someone, smile at them, tell them you’ll see them tomorrow…

  When she brought her hand up to muffle her sobs, Claude pulled her to him, and this time she let him. Tears mixed with eyeliner and mascara peppered the front of his white shirt, but he let her cry, a hand rubbing up and down her back while the other cradled her head.

  For a time, the rest of the world faded away save the pounding in her head and the sounds of her smothered sobs. When the tears finally dried up, she wiped at her cheeks, eyes swollen and nostrils red from the cold and the misery.

  “We should go,” Claude murmured, brushing her hair back before steering her away from the wreckage. “You’ll catch your death out here.”

  The cold. The smoke. The possible lurking vamps. Delia would catch her death from a few different sources if she stayed for long, but her feet were heavy as she shuffled along, toes cramped and aching in her heels, her thoughts everywhere and nowhere. The people around her, faces illuminated by streetlights and distant flames, looked understandably distraught. Many had their phones out, filming the breakdown of a public treasure to post it online later—maybe hoping the news would buy the footage.

  Her stare moved from face to face, seeing but not registering, until finally it stopped on a face she knew better than the rest.

  “Arthur?”

  He looked toward her, his expression mirroring hers—lost, confused, broken. It took a moment, but before Delia threw her arms around his neck, she caught a flash of recognition across his features.

  “I-I didn’t go to the party,” he croaked in her ear, and she nodded, pulling him to her tightly. “You said y-you weren’t going, so I did the m-marathon…”

  She pulled back and sniffled. Blood oozed out of slits on his face, and he twitched back when Delia reached out for them. “What happened to you?”

  “I live in the blast radius,” he told her. She noticed the way he glanced warily at Claude hovering behind her. “My windows shattered when it….”

  “Oh my god.” It was like something in her brain clicked back into place—like seeing Arthur all scratched up, shredded but familiar, snapped her into reacting. “Okay. We need to get you to a paramedic. We should flag one down and—”

  “No.” He pulled her arm down when she tried to catch the attention of a nearby officer. “No, Delia, we can’t.”

  “But—”

  “I’m a League employee,” he argued. A shivering, twitchy, teeth-chattering employee. She shrugged off Claude’s coat and threw it around him.

  “I’m a League employee,” she said, noting that Claude’s jacket swallowed Arthur just as it did her. “We can’t—”

  “League employees don’t seem to be the most popular kids on the block tonight,” Arthur pressed, lowering his voice and leaning in. “Obviously we’re being targeted.”

  “He’s right,” Claude said, easing an arm around Delia’s waist. “It isn’t safe for you here should anyone recognize you.”

  She frowned. “But—”

  “You can both stay with me,” he continued, “but we should leave now.”

  “And who are you?” Arthur’s studied Claude’s face with a frown, as if trying to place him. The vampire king—if he could even be called that anymore—dipped his head with a little half-smile.

  “Claude Grimm,” he said, and Delia grabbed Arthur’s hand when he blanched. “Head of the Grimm clan. Former regional king, and in a
few days… Wanted traitor to the new regime.”

  His words hit her hard, willing her knees to buckle again. Arthur looked between them as he halfheartedly tried to tug his hand from her grip, but moments later he was trudging alongside them. Before long, Claude was marching sandwiched between Delia and Arthur, holding them both up as they pushed through the crowd.

  With the car in sight and Arthur babbling about the heat, about the hunters turned to ash, Delia stole one last look over her shoulder. It was meant for her to take a mental picture so that later, when she was more together, more functional, she would remember what had happened—and it would fuel her personal fire.

  Instead of looking at the crowd, at the roaring flames and the billowing black smoke, she saw a vaguely familiar vamp grinning at her from the edge of the crowd. William Warwick, thin and gaunt and vile like his father.

  As Claude ushered Arthur into the backseat of his car, that vile Warwick son offered her a sneer of a smile and a wave, then drifted back into the sea of gathering humans.

  And Delia suddenly knew that when she thought back to this moment, all she would remember was that smile. Not the carnage, not the fire, not the mixed storm of emotion raging within her—but that awful, awful smile.

  *

  “So the Warwick clan was just using us to get at the Donovans?” Delia slumped in one of Claude’s bedroom armchairs by the huge windows overlooking the forest. A few candles burned low on the windowsills, and the lamps on either side of the bed provided a soft, calming yellow light, but otherwise the rest of the room was dark. Claude stood before her, his hands clasped behind his back, his expression harder and graver than she had ever seen before.

  “So it would appear. My best guess is that Johnathon Warwick needed the League manpower and resources, and to get that, he needed a just cause to unite all the hunters, to make you all agree to ally with his clan.” His gaze lifted to the windows behind her. “It has taken me a few days to connect all the pieces and ensure this isn’t some elaborate hoax to oust me. But it seems clans have banded together nationwide for this foolishness. The Donovans were the most powerful clan in the region, given their size and flagrant disregard for our rules. I have only been able to control Shane Donovan over the years because of my title and the backing of the other clans. If he disapproved of something going on behind my back, he could have crushed any of the smaller clans on their own in a second.”

 

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