by K. M. Shea
I sighed. “What am I supposed to do now?”
“I assume you are referring to the situation with Tutu’s?” Celestina asked.
“Yeah.”
The back door opened. “You’ll open your lockbox of course, one way or another.”
Chapter Six
Hazel
Killian hunched over so he could slide into the car.
I peered around my headrest. “You never ride in the car.”
“If you had gotten into one of the SUVs like I told you to, I wouldn’t have to.” Killian momentarily wrinkled his nose with disgust before he nodded to Celestina. “Home.”
“Yes, Your Eminence.” Celestina turned on her car, which purred like a big cat, and pulled out into the street, joining the rest of the Drake motorcade.
“I didn’t hear you tell me to get into one of the SUVs,” I said. “You should have texted me if you wanted to chat.”
“I’ll remember that next time,” Killian said in a dark voice that didn’t bode well for me.
“Anyway, I don’t know how I’m supposed to get into my lockbox. Re-registering is going to be a major pain. I don’t even know if it’s possible—if you ever have to register again as an adult you’re supposed to have a few wizards from your House come with to vouch for you. That obviously won’t be happening.”
“Forget the paperwork,” Killian ordered. “I’ll make some calls.”
“You have connections with wizard registration? You really do have victims everywhere.”
“I have contacts, not victims.” Killian smirked at me from the back seat. “And no, even I don’t have anyone who owes me favors in wizard registration—not in the Midwest, anyway.”
“That’s shocking,” I said with real honesty.
“I never saw a point in it before. You are—historically speaking—such a weak and pathetic race,” Killian said, as if to explain the oversight. “I do, however, have contacts with a few dragon shifters.”
I was forced to twist around in my seat so my seatbelt uncomfortably dug into my neck—I was starting to regret that I hadn’t sat in the back with him, because this would have been a much easier conversation to hold. “You know Tutu?”
“We’ve been introduced.” Killian stretched his arms across the back seat. “I’ll see what I can do.”
“…Thank you.”
Killian shrugged—a small shift of his shoulders that I almost missed—then looked out the window at the brightening sky.
“Did the Night Court cause any trouble tonight?” I directed my comment to Celestina, this time. “I didn’t notice anything personally, but I also skipped several of the meetings.”
Celestina offered me a smile. “No. Tonight they were silent.”
“Which very likely means they are planning something,” Killian added, his tone bored.
I yawned as I thought of Mason and the other Houses I’d cross in the future if I wanted to get House Medeis back. “Was it worth it?”
Killian’s gaze shifted from the window to me. “What are you referring to?”
“Making the Night Court your enemy to use the chaos amongst the fae to push a law through,” I said. “Was it worth it?”
“At the time it was.” Killian sighed and ran a hand through his artfully mussed hair. “I might have been a little more vicious and pushed to get the Night Queen deposed rather than fined if I had known what a pain Queen Nyte would be. But I thought she’d be a weak link I could press in the future—which she is. She’s just an indescribably annoying weak link.”
A question burned on the tip of my tongue—one that was rude enough it might tug on Killian’s temper.
But besides getting snarly at me for facing off with the serial killer vampire, he hadn’t really ever been mad at me. So I blurted out the question without stopping to reword it. “Why are you so politically pushy?”
Killian had been resting his head on his hand with his elbow propped up on the window. At my question both of his eyebrows rose. “Excuse me?”
“You’re the Eminence. Most regional leaders are occupied with their specific people. But you keep an eye on everyone, and you manipulate and push when everyone else doesn’t actually care what the others are up to as long as they are following all the regional laws. I want to know why.”
The silence stretched out uncomfortably long and was on the cusp of turning oppressive.
Celestina laughed—a surprisingly natural sound even though she was obviously just breaking the tension. “Isn’t it a good thing? He wouldn’t have picked you up if he wasn’t. Speaking of which, perhaps you’d like an update on Hazel’s training, Your Eminence?”
“I push because someone among the vampires must, or we’ll fade away entirely,” he said.
I was shocked he answered me—Celestina was equally surprised given the weird gurgling noise she made.
I was so delirious by the very pronounced win that it took a few seconds for his words to sink in. “Fade away? You’re one of the most powerful races!”
“As I have said before, our procreation rate has slowed dramatically.” Killian shrugged out of his suitcoat and tossed it onto the seat next to him. “Newly turned vampires are rare. We’re not replacing ourselves at a sustainable rate—unlike you wizards who breed like rabbits.”
“Yeah, but you live forever.”
“Perhaps, but the older a vampire gets, the less they care about life,” Killian grimly said. “I have to drive the vampire Elders to do anything because they no longer care about this world—or even their Family. And that is dangerous. Their jaded cynicism makes them less likely to participate in politics, which will allow other races to direct our path. I use every trick in the book to keep our power in place and to try and regain what ground we’ve lost.”
“You could work with the other races, you know,” I said. “It’s not like we have to have an antagonistic relationship.”
Killian laughed—a bitter sound that made me wince. “Because that has worked out so well for you with your own race, has it?” He shook his head. “There is too much bad blood between the races—too many centuries of war and history. It’s a miracle we can function together, and I think it’s only possible because we keep to our own.”
He was right. Maybe. Those of us with magic were united because magic was dying, and we needed to stay united to keep from blowing it with humanity, or we would all suffer. It still didn’t seem right, though.
“You’re helping me.” I spoke slowly, trying to measure my words so Killian couldn’t use them against me in the future. “And it’s had a positive impact on me. Celestina and the others have challenged my mindset about fighting.”
“That’s more a reflection on you than the ability of wizards and vampires to get along.” Killian’s gaze was smoldering, and it was a little uncomfortable to hold his dark eyes, so I sat back in the seat to chew on what he’d told me.
That he even admitted that vampires were in a dangerous spot was huge. He had to trust me—or trust in my virtues, as he kept calling my deep moral code—or he wouldn’t have revealed the potential weakness.
The truth was, it didn’t matter much. Every race had its own struggles—wizards included. Though ours was a lot more obvious, there was something about Killian’s explanation that urged me to show in some way that I trusted him, too.
“We wizards might be more plentiful, but there’s been a pretty steady power decline for the last few generations,” I abruptly volunteered. “My grandparents’ generation as a whole was almost twice as powerful as my age group. It used to be slower, but at the rate it’s plummeting, wizards are going to barely be capable of more than simple magic tricks in a century.”
“Magic is dying,” Killian stated. “Given that it’s wild and not predictable or easily manipulated, no one can forcibly revive it. Perhaps it’s a sign of the times, or our punishment for the awful things we’ve done with it.”
I twisted in my chair again to look back at him, but he was staring outside—
where the horizon was now a pale shade of golden-blue.
There was something profoundly depressing about the moment—which was kind of ironic. I’d been through a lot these past few months, but it was strangely crushing to be sitting with Killian Drake and together openly acknowledge that there were some problems that were too big to be fixed. It made my unusual living situation that much more bittersweet.
My relationship with the Drake Family was an anomaly.
It was sad, because deep inside of me, I had to wonder—if we weren’t the exception…how would that change our world?
Two days later, I limped into the massive dining room in Drake Hall. Several times a week, all the Drake vampires—excluding the few on guard duty, and Killian—ate dinner together at a table that felt about as long as a hallway.
They didn’t have to eat human food—usually they picked at it a bit and had a wine glass or two of blood with the snack. But I, however, was expected to eat a full meal—and attend every meal possible.
It had been super awkward the first few weeks to sit with approximately thirty strange vampires, but now I knew everyone by face and name, and it was mostly fun to see everyone. Mostly.
I winced as my ankle protested when I put too much weight on it as I plopped in a graceless heap on my chair.
Gavino—seated on my left, glanced at me. “Julianne got you good, did she?” He made a clicking noise that could have been mistaken for sympathy if you didn’t know better—but I did. “That will teach you to be faster next time.”
“I can’t be faster than a vampire.” I smiled at the kitchen staff member who set the last tray of food and a wine bottle of blood on the table before fleeing the room.
“You don’t have to be.” Julianne claimed the open seat next to me—looking irritatingly fresh and perfect. “You still beat me—Miss.”
I groaned. “Don’t you start, Julianne!”
“You defeated me—very resoundingly. It is a vampire practice to show the respect due to you.” Julianne sounded both logical and sincere, but I’d seen her wrap a few of the other vampires around her little finger with ease, so that wasn’t reassuring.
“If I beat you, why do I look like a train hit me, and you are perfectly fine?” I asked.
“Vampire healing,” Julianne said. “Or do you not remember hitting me with so much electricity you made my hair start on fire?”
“You do favor lightning.” Josh stood in the doorway, unloading his sai, katana, sidearm, throwing daggers, secondary sidearm, and what looked like a blowdart onto a sideboard placed near the room entrance. “Though I cannot blame you. It is a good match for you, and you are quite deft at using it.”
“Very deft,” Julianne said a little wryly. “Though I must compliment you on your shield.”
“Ahh—yes!” Gavino swirled his wine glass, sniffing the blood when he finished. “It has improved a lot!”
I’d been practicing the magic shield with a diligence that comes with knowing it could save my life. Using pure magic was the right trick—there was something about its properties that could repel anything—including a vampire.
It was still pretty volatile, so it was difficult to keep it up and steady for any lengthy period of time. And as much as I tried, I couldn’t seem to get the shield to completely encircle me. (That would have been dead useful!)
Even so, it gave me an edge up—and a way to keep my matches with the Drake vampires from being melee only so I could attack at a range, which was a lot easier since I could change the direction of my magic mid-attack.
Julianne raised her glass and winked at me. “To Miss Hazel—may you continue your way up our ranks.”
“I don’t know how much higher I can go,” I admitted. “I seem to win each match by the skin of my teeth.”
“A win is a win,” Julianne said.
“Unless you are dead—then it doesn’t matter if you won or not.” Josh—having finally finished disarming himself—claimed the chair across from mine. “Though I suppose death on the battlefield is an honorable way to achieve the embrace of the void.”
“You aren’t giving yourself enough credit, Miss Hazel.” Gavino said, ignoring Josh’s death poetry. “You are getting better with your sword, too. I was telling Ling about your skill, and we were wondering if perhaps you had some vampire slayer blood in your family?”
While wizards were the most common kind of supernatural humans, there were tiny subsets of humans with special powers and abilities. One of those were vampire slayers—who possessed supernatural speed and skill with weapons, making them the only kind of humans who could fight toe-to-toe with a vampire.
Because of that skill, they used to be hired out as mercenaries, or sometimes even paid to eliminate rogue, Unclaimed vampires.
Legend had it vampire slayers got their powers because there was some vampire blood in their lineage, but races hadn’t intermixed like that in centuries, and the vampire slayer families in America were down to the double digits. Magic’s slow death seemed to hit the rarer humans—like vampire slayers and werewolf hunters—harder, so they were dying out fast.
“No slayers. Just wizards.” I made a face. “Or I wouldn’t be so slow.”
Before anyone could respond, Rupert slunk into the room.
Rupert was a tall, handsome, red-haired vampire I had previously crossed paths with. He wasn’t my biggest fan, and had actually knocked me unconscious before I unsealed my magic.
Killian, in return, had almost killed Rupert, and the vampire had been in disgrace since then—though at least the other vampires had started talking to him again after I stole his car.
A few of the vampires nodded to Rupert as he made his way to the opposite end of the table—as far away from me as he could get.
Gavino thoughtfully rubbed his jaw. “A few more matches, and you’ll be up to face Rupert again.”
“Great,” I said, my voice lacking any trace of enthusiasm. “I can hardly wait.”
“I should get you a handgun for the occasion,” Josh said. “It seems unlikely you’d be able to hit him—even though you are a fair enough shot—Rupert is far too fast for your human eyes. But it might cheer you to have certain death at your hip.”
Julianne rubbed her temple. “Sir, I thought Celestina gave you a talk about appropriate ways to encourage someone.”
“Was that not an encouraging thought?”
“Not even close.”
“I see.” Josh turned his garnet red eyes back to me. “Then please allow me to try again. If Rupert dared to seriously injure you a second time, he wouldn’t survive the experience, so you can at least be comforted that he won’t be attempting to inflict the maximum amount of pain.”
Julianne sighed. “Has anyone seen Celestina?”
Sigmund—a lean vampire I’d faced previously, slightly bowed his head to me, then furrowed his forehead at Julianne. “She must not be back from her appointment. She was visiting a mankist, I think?”
Julianne blinked. “What’s a mankist?”
“He means a manicurist—or a nail salon.” Celestina strode into the room with long, sure strides despite her stiletto heels. “I got my first pedicure!” She stuck a foot out for us, so we could look at her pink toe nails through the peep-toe shoes.
“How pretty!” Julianne cooed.
Gavino bit into a roll as he inspected Celestina’s feet. “Is the color supposed to help you in some way?”
“No—it’s purely fashion.” She glanced at the dining table—which was full—and closed the door shut behind her.
“Then what’s the point?”
“I said fashion.” Celestina beamed when she saw me. “There’s my favorite wizard! Have you been off to see Killian today?”
“Nope,” I said. “I was too busy getting beat up by Julianne and frying her in return.”
Celestina nodded. “Understandable. You ought to be the one to bring him his evening blood pouch, then.”
“Feeling generous tonight, are you?” Gavi
no asked.
“I’ve gotten more afternoons off since Hazel arrived than I have in the previous decade. If our wizard’s presence encourages that behavior, I’m going to make certain His Eminence sees her as much as he wishes.”
“I also was given time off.” Josh tapped the rim of his empty wine glass—he’d already downed the first glass of blood. “I believe it might have been the first occasion I’ve ever managed to clean my entire weapon arsenal in a month.”
Manjeet—one of the vampires sitting farther down the table—laughed and raised his wine glass. “To our wizard—life has gotten so much more interesting since you arrived.”
At least a dozen of the vampires seated around the table chorused, “To our wizard!”
I grinned at the laughing Family. “Hopefully this makes my smelly blood forgivable?”
“Honey.” A male vampire with a thick southern accent chuckled. “You stopped smelling bad to most of us weeks ago.”
I blinked in surprise. “I did?”
Celestina daintily seated herself in the free chair next to Josh. “You’ve smelled neutral to the majority of us for quite some time.”
I stabbed a roll—cutting a hole in the side, which I filled with soft honey butter. “Neutral—that means you don’t necessarily trust me, but you don’t distrust me, right?”
“Indeed,” Josh said.
“Aww, you guys! I’m going to tear up.” I played at fanning my face before I took a huge bite out of my butter-stuffed roll.
This roused another round of chuckles from the vampires—except for Rupert, who stared at his blood drink.
I started to dig into the main course that night—carbonara, one of my favorites since the head chef always added extra bacon and cheese—when a flicker of shadows caught my eye.
I glanced up, freezing when I saw Killian leaning against the frame of the doorway—which was open just wide enough to admit him.
He looked amused—or perhaps bemused—with our dinner party, and perhaps a little disheveled. His necktie was gone, and the top two buttons of his dress shirt were open. When he caught me looking, his smirk grew.
