Selene and Neeman stood talking to Sinya and Lance. Selene cooed over their new baby. It was still strange to see Lance wearing a baby carrier and Neeman with a smile on his face. Things were changing in the house. Most were for the better.
He caught Selene’s eye and she walked over. “Hey.”
William motioned for Sue to continue into the kitchen. “Evening, Selene.”
She lowered her voice. “We still haven’t found the rift, but we’re getting closer.”
“Good.” If they didn’t find the rift soon, all hell was going to break loose on Chicago. The demon attacks were taking their toll and it was only a matter of time before a vamp saw what was going on and the news spread. They’d been able to maintain the quarantine area surrounding the location of the rift. For now.
“Have there been any demon sightings tonight?” he asked.
She shook her head.
“Let me get Sue back to the barracks and then we can all sit down and debrief before sun up.”
Selene nodded and walked back to Neeman, slipping her hand in his back pocket.
William turned and ushered Sue to the back door. They’d just stepped out into the fresh night air when his stomach clenched.
A strong, blond-haired beauty with peachy skin and eyes like aquamarines strolled out of the barracks. She spotted them and he cleared his throat.
“Well, well, what have we here?” asked Evan.
“Good evening, Evan.” Just looking at her made his throat dry like instant paint. Memories of how moments before he’d been envisioning Sue as her, made his skin prickle.
“Midnight snack at the local concession stand?” asked Evan.
“Shut up. You’re just jealous.” Sue walked past Evan.
“Jealous? That you let a bloodsucker drain you and have his way with you? I think not, bloodwhore.”
“Stuck up redneck. If you hate it here so much, do us all a favor and leave. Nothing’s keeping you here. Lord Danika said any of us that wanted to leave could. So do it. Go.” Sue pointed to the gate.
“That’s enough.” William strode forward. “Sue, you go inside. I need to have a word with Evan.”
Sue rolled her eyes and stormed into the barracks.
Evan put on a falsely jovial smile. “Oh yippee, it is time for my ‘be a good girl’ speech again from the big powerful Vampire? I swear William you’re like a broken record.”
“How many times do I have to tell you I’m not a pureblooded Vampire? I was bitten. That makes me a vampyr. Meaning I used to be a human.” He grabbed her by the arm. “Come on.”
“Dude, let go of me.” She ripped from his grasp. “What? Did you mix me up with Sue? See, I’m the pretty blonde and she’s the plain brunette.”
William clenched his jaw several times. “You shouldn’t talk about her that way.”
“Why, because she’s your lovermuffin? Vampyr.”
“No, because she’s a nice person.”
“Oooooh, right. The world’s just full of nice people now, isn’t it?”
This wasn’t going the way he had planned. He’d rehearsed this. All he’d wanted was to have a nice civil conversation with her about helping them. But talking to Evan was like talking to a whirlwind, all lashing out and blustery, leaving nothing but destruction in her wake. Why had he told everyone that this was a good idea?
He blew out a heavy breath as she raked him up and down.
“I need to speak to you. Can we please go up to your room?”
“Are you joking? No way. I’m not like your blood buddy, Sue.”
“Fine, then we can go to my room?”
“Are you out of your gourd? Dude, I wouldn’t be caught dead being seen walking into your bedroom.”
Her anger was contagious and William took a deep breath to keep from exploding on her. “What’s wrong with you? Why are you so mean all the time?”
Her jaw dropped. “Me? I’m not the one holding people here against their will.”
“No one is a prisoner here. You know that. But if we just let you go, you’d be picked up by slavers for sure.”
She shrugged. “I can handle myself.”
He chuckled. “You think you can, but you have no idea.”
“Oh really? And I bet you’re so tough. How many slavers have you killed in your fine silk sweater and your shiny expensive loafers?”
The memory of plunging a knife deep into the neck of a slaver who’d injured Mason raced through his memory. It had been a recurring nightmare of his over the last year.
“One,” he said quietly. “Just one.”
She snorted and crossed her arms over her chest. “Yeah, I bet.”
Should he tell her? It really wasn’t any of her business, but he did need her to trust him. “The night that we were captured, I killed one because he was going to kill my friends.”
She laughed again and then stared at him for a minute. He held his breath, anticipating her next verbal assault. “You’re serious.”
He nodded. “Look it’s not something I’m proud of and it’s harder than you think. So that’s why you’re better here. Even if you don’t want to be.”
“You’re damn right I don’t want to be here. You bloodsuckers think you know everything and that you’re so much better than us humans.”
“No they don’t.”
“They?” Her eyebrows knit together. “You’re one of them. Or haven’t you noticed?”
Yes, technically he was a member of the vampire society, but he still saw himself as human in some ways. It wasn’t easy to identify as something for over twenty years and then overnight be told you are no longer that person.
“Please, Evan. I need to speak to you. And we need to go somewhere that no one will overhear. The bedrooms in the barracks are cement blocks. They’re practically soundproof.”
She stared at him for a moment and then her posture relaxed. “Fine. But you better not try anything.”
“I would never think of it.” Well, he might think of it, but he certainly wouldn’t act on it. At least not without her full and total surrender.
He followed Evan toward the front door of the barracks.
When he was human, she was the kind of girl who wouldn’t have given him a second glance. The hot ones never wanted the geeks, no matter what the movies used to portray.
She threw open the door while looking straight ahead. A group of guys were in the kitchen making popcorn. They stopped when she walked in, but she ignored them and headed up the stairs. The humans stared a William and nodded but didn’t speak.
It was one of the things William actually appreciated about being a vampyr. The respect.
He strolled after her when whispers from the kitchen pricked his ears.
“Lord Danika really turned that guy?” asked one.
“Do you think he wanted to be turned?” asked another.
“I heard he saved her life and in return she made him a vampyr as some sort of honor,” said another.
“What a traitor to humankind, to want to sell out and be one of them.”
“Shut up. You’d do it too if someone offered, Matthew.”
He stopped, his jaw clenched so tight that his fangs cut into his bottom lip. A traitor to his kind? He gripped the banister so tightly it groaned under his palm. Part of him wanted to spin around and yell at them exactly what had happened.
His being made into a vampyr was an accident. All he’d done was try to save Danika’s life by taking a bullet for her. In return all she’d done was try to heal him with her blood.
Instead he took a deep breath and continued up. He wasn’t that geeky camp gopher anymore, he was a vampyr in a royal society. Danika would be most displeased if he acted in such an undignified manner.
He reached the upstairs hallway and walked down to the open door. Evan waited on her bed.
He closed the door quietly.
“I need your help,” he said without pretense.
“What?” Suspicion clouded her voice. Her eyes narrowed. “What kind of help?”
“Can I trust you to keep something quiet?”
She put on a pageant-queen smile. “Of course you can because we’re besties.”
The sarcasm that dripped in her tone was a punch to the solar plexus, worse even than the whispers from downstairs. “I’m serious.”
“So am I. Can we braid each other’s hair and paint nails too while we—”
“Will you shut up?” William slammed his own lips together.
She pursed her lips making the poutiness of them even more seductive.
William pinched the bridge of his nose and blew out a breath. Why did he think this would be easy? In the past six months that he’d known her, she’d not made one single thing easy.
“Okay, what?” Her voice no longer held the mocking tone it had a moment before.
Their gazes met. After he told her, there was no going back. If he brought her into the circle of trust…
“Seriously, either tell me or let me get something to eat. I’m starving.”
Every time he ran into her she seemed to be starving. “You know Mason, Lord Danika’s mate?”
She sat forward. “Dude, is it just me or is that guy enormous?”
“He seriously is the biggest guy I’ve ever met.”
They laughed together for a moment and in that instant her face lit up and her smile radiated. In a nanosecond it was gone and her familiar disdain etched back into her features.
“Okay, so what about him?” She leaned back and crossed her arms over her breasts.
“You know he’s not human, right?”
“He’s a Vampire? Man that explains a lot.”
“No, no. He’s not a Vampire or a vampyr. He’s something else.”
Her eyebrows drew together. “Something else?”
“He’s a demon.”
She snorted and then laughed. “A demon. Like, angels and demons and heaven and hell? That’s a good one.”
“I’m not joking.”
Her smile fell and she leapt to her feet. “You’re serious?”
“Yes. And Selene is his half sister.”
“So she’s a demon as well?”
“Half demon, half fae.”
She grabbed her hair with both hands and pulled on it. “There’s fairies as well?”
The tension in the air thickened like a wool blanket wrapping around them. He was going about this all wrong. The worry and horror that now marred her face was bound to explode.
“Okay, why don’t you sit down?” he offered.
“I’m fine. I can handle it. Just tell me. Are there tortoise ninjas too?”
“A month or so back, before you returned to us, there was an explosion.” William shoved his hands in his pockets and twirled a small coin with his fingers.
“At the tracker compound, yeah I heard.”
“It was caused by a group of demons.”
She closed her eyes and rubbed at them for a moment. He observed her, gauging her reaction.
“Where did they come from?” she asked. “Have they always been here?”
At least she didn’t explode. “No. The point is, and this is the point that I need you to promise to keep to yourself. There are more coming, and we can’t fend them off alone. We need help. We want you to take us to the humans.”
“No. No way. Are you out of your friggin’ mind?” She stared at him like he’d sprouted a set of horns.
“Look we’re out of options here. We’re sending emissaries out to all the covens to try and get them to side with us, but who knows if they will. And I overheard you saying to Selene that you knew of an enclave that had weapons—”
“Nope.” She shook her head. “I’m not taking you anywhere. For all I know you’re just trying to get in there so you can get more slaves.”
“Humans aren’t slaves here anymore, as you know.”
“Come on, William, I’m not an idiot. You bloodsuckers are going to run out of humans to drink unless you allow us to have families. But if you do that, then you won’t have a free-for-all blood buffet at your beck and call. Do you really think Sue would come running back to you every time you snapped your fingers after she drives carpool and picks up her husband’s dry cleaning?”
“This isn’t about blood.”
“Yeah, you say that but how do I know?”
“I’m not lying.”
“All bloodsuckers lie. It’s what you’re good at.”
He moved to her in a blur of speed. “I don’t.” Anger and frustration mixed his insides in a violent concoction. “You can accuse me of many things, but being a liar isn’t one of them.”
She blinked rapidly several times and for a moment, in their close proximity he saw her eyes change. Heat wafted off her skin as did the scent of lust. For as much as she protested to hate him, she was attracted to him.
She laid her hand on his chest and the warmth of her fingers spread through his sweater. His gut tightened as for a moment he thought she might kiss him. To feel her sweet lips on his was a feeling he’d fantasized about too often in the past weeks. But she didn’t kiss him. Instead, she pushed him away and stepped back herself.
“You say you don’t lie, but you told me outside that you wouldn’t try anything. Yet here you are inches from me. I see the way you look at me. Watch me. You think I’m naïve? I know what you really want. You’ll never get it. And that, William, is not a lie.”
He licked his lips and calmed his vibrating body. “You know what? Forget it. We’ll find another way. But believe me when I say, if you utter a word of this to anyone, Danika will kill you.” He left without another word.
As much as he wanted to believe there was good in her, she wasn’t the one.
William jogged down to the first floor.
The human men had gathered around a television to watch a movie. They eyed him as he passed. His entire life he’d wanted to be included in a group the way they sat around watching a movie, verbally sparring. He’d never known that kind of camaraderie as a human. But now, because of Danika, he’d found a place he belonged. In the Vampire society.
“Did you get her to put out?” asked Matthew. “That one is a ball buster.”
William stopped. He turned to the group where Matthew stared at him a smirk on his face.
“If I were you, Matthew, I’d keep my comments to myself. I know for a fact that there are two males in Coven House who’d like any excuse to rip you limb from limb because of what you’ve done with their mates.”
Matthew’s smirk fell as did his gaze. The other men snickered and as William pushed out into the yard, the men burst into laughter, jibing at Matthew.
It was obvious to William now more than ever; he was no longer human. And he was just fine with that.
Rise of the Fae Page 29
