Crimson Covenant

by Samantha Whiskey

  “Xavier can handle his own. We’re Assassins, not bounty hunters. Lachlan, check in with him tonight and make sure he’s in control of the situation.” I leaned back in my chair. “What the fuck does Genevieve want with a private audience? Any business she has can be discussed at the monthly gathering of Conclave, like always.”

  “So that’s a no?” Benedict asked, raising his eyebrows.

  “That’s a fuck no. Granting private audiences is what leads to everything going to shit. We’ve worked too hard to keep the Covenant to let it crumble now.” Keeping all five species— humans, lycans, witches, demons, and vampires—living in relative peace took a delicate balance of secrecy and transparency within the Conclave. It made human politics look like child’s play.

  “Okay, then I think all we have is the security detail for Avianna’s arrival tomorrow,” Lachlan said, leaning forward to brace his forearms on the table at my right.

  I slid my phone free of my back pocket with a smile and called my little sister. “I’ll just make sure she’s on track,” I said to the group while it rang.

  It…rang.

  It didn’t beep like it always had, signaling that my sweet, beautiful, kind, honest sister wasn’t overseas, tucked away with our aunt like she was supposed to be until tomorrow night.

  “Alek?” she answered breathlessly.

  “Where the hell are you?” I snapped.

  “Oh, Alek, don’t be mad!” She gave me a little sigh, and I could almost see her soft, pleading little smile. “I just wanted to see what it was like here, you know? I mean, you talk about it all the time, and I knew as soon as you showed up with your armored car and band of merry men—”

  “I’m not Robin Hood, and that armored car is for your safety!” I shouted. “Tell me where you are, Avianna. Right now.” I focused on the sounds coming through the phone. Birds. Crickets. Humans speaking English. My heart pounded and my stomach churned at the danger she was in. The borders between boroughs were clearly drawn, and if she’d stumbled into another territory, I couldn’t guarantee her safety unless she was wearing an “Alek is my brother so don’t fuck with me” T-shirt.

  “I’m in the park father mentioned in his journals. Briarwood. The one across from the—”

  “Slatemark Opera House,” I growled. She was near the heart of the city—where all the territories intersected, but she wasn’t in our sector. “Damn it, Avi, you’re in Demon territory.” I shoved back from the table and stood, my men instantly following.

  “I’ll get the car.” Benedict didn’t wait for me to approve. He ran, disappearing from sight before the door closed. Every man in this room was tasked with protecting the royal family. They knew the multitude of powers in my blood. They also knew that Avi didn’t possess any beyond her considerable beauty and the compulsion ability all vampires shared.

  She couldn’t even wend—couldn’t shift herself through space, and couldn’t stand anyone —even me—controlling her for the moments it took to use our easiest mode of transportation, which meant we needed the car. Too many of Avianna’s choices had been taken away. I’d never force wending on her if I could help it.

  “I’m on my way. Stay exactly where you are.” I pointed at Lachlan and Ransom, who both nodded. Hawke would only scare the shit out of Avianna, so that introduction would have to wait. Besides, there was no one better to leave behind to protect the compound.

  “You’re overreacting, Alek. I’m fine! We’re just enjoying some of this delicious blue fluff the man with the cart sold us—”

  “Us?” Cotton candy cart. I knew exactly where she was.

  “I have Olivia, of course. I’m not completely naïve.”

  She had her bodyguard. At least there was that.

  “Just stay there.” I looked to Hawke. “Call Xavier now. Tell him if a demon puts a finger on my sister, I’ll—”

  “You’re being ridiculous, but I’ll wait right here, as ordered.” She muttered, “jackass,” before the line went dead.

  “Fuck!” I shoved the phone in my back pocket, then reached under my leather jacket and unholstered my Glock as I looked at Lachlan and Ransom. “We go now.”

  I focused on the trees just behind the cotton candy cart in Briarwood Park and wended. My skin embraced the ice of the between in the seconds it took to shift places, and then the scent of sticky sugar and a hundred subtle variations of human blood filled my nose.

  The park was in the center of Edgemont City, and of the three million humans that lived here, there were less than a few hundred that knew of our existence, all of whom were compelled to keep their mouths shut. The Opera House was at the center of it all, and she was on the wrong side of it.

  I took a deep breath, sorting through the scents in an instant. Citrus, iron, cannabis, and apples. Vanilla and cinnamon hit me especially hard. My fangs descended despite having fed only a few hours ago. I pushed past that tantalizing warmth I knew had to be a human and caught the light hint of freesia that was Avianna.

  “There.” I started down the path at a normal walking pace. The Covenant’s first commandment was to never expose the world of immortals that dwelled alongside the humans. Besides, it would have taken precious time to compel any human to forget they’d seen us if we did anything that brought undue attention.

  “Son of a bitch.” There was a demon just ahead, moving in the same direction as Avi’s scent, passing an oblivious human jogger.

  I wasn’t surprised the jogger looked unbothered by the set of horns that had just blown by. Demons wore permanent glamours. Their supernatural features were invisible to the human eye.

  My pulse galloped at the thought of Avi in demon hands, and I increased my pace. We came around the corner of the curved path to see the blue-horned demon shove a human woman out of his path, revealing a dagger in the moonlight.

  My heart fucking stopped, as if the scent of vanilla and cinnamon was a physical fist around the blood-pumping organ. The blonde hit the pavement with a sharp cry, a stack of books skittering around her.

  Avianna was only a hundred feet away, just beyond the next curve. I could smell her from here, and yet I was powerless against the overwhelming, unbreakable urge to make sure the demon hadn’t killed the human. The cleanup was a pain in the ass.

  I didn’t have time to stop, and in the seconds it took to reach her, I battled the primal, base instinct that called me to the human…and I lost.

  I fucking lost.

  “Go,” I ordered Ransom and Lachlan, pointing to the path ahead.

  They didn’t question the command—they valued their lives more than that. Lachlan would grumble at me privately, but never in front of anyone else.

  I stopped suddenly in front of the human woman, dropping to my haunches and running my gaze over her frame in less time than it took my heart to beat. The scent of her blood made my mouth water, and I gritted my teeth against the craving. I ordered my fangs and my cock to stand down. Damn, I hadn’t even seen the woman yet, and I was hard—she smelled that good.

  “Asshole!” she shouted down the path where the demon had run.

  Obviously, it hadn’t been a death blow.

  “Are you okay?” I growled, annoyed as fuck at myself for checking on a human when my sister was in danger.

  She shoved her mass of blonde hair out of her face and looked up at me with widening green eyes.

  Fucking beautiful. I took in a breath reflexively, then wished I hadn’t, because all I could smell was her.

  Oh shit, I was fixating, which was as good as draining the woman right here. A fixated vampire hunted his prey no matter the consequences. The craving was too strong to deny, and it would drive us mad if we didn’t satiate it.

  Fixation, that’s all this was…right? Her blood called to me.

  “I’m fine,” she said, her gaze flickering down the path again. “He barely got my forearm. But that asshole was chasing two other girls.”

  Avianna.

  I blinked, trying to free myself of the fixatio
n, the craving, but I didn’t lunge or pounce on her as fixated vampires did. Instead, I took her wrist, testing her pulse. Quick, but strong, and given the change in her scent, flooded with adrenaline. Fuck, her skin was warm and soft. Perfect in every way.

  Gravity shifted.

  My chest tightened like a damned vise.

  Electricity coursed through my veins.

  Every cell in my body screamed one word—mine.

  Wait. What the actual fuck?

  “See? It’s not bad.” She lifted her arm, showing me the cut, and I bit back a growl. That demon had sliced into her delicate skin and—what if it was laced with poison?

  A scream pierced the silence, and we both snapped our heads toward the sound.

  Avianna. My heart lurched, worry quickly replaced with icy rage.

  “Get out of the park,” I ordered the human as I took off. “It’s not safe.” My sister’s cry must have broken the fixation because my body was my own to command again.

  “He was wearing a black hoodie and a Halloween mask with blue horns!” she called after me.

  I sprinted faster than I should have and turned the corner in time to see four demons— including the one who’d attacked the human woman—advancing on my sister and her bodyguard.

  Lachlan shot the first.

  Ransom took out the second.

  The remaining two stared at me with horror, but not surprise. They knew exactly who Avianna was and one of them had her under his knife.

  I saw red, disappearing and wending, materializing in front of a yellow-eyed demon. “You attacked what is mine, and the sentence is death.” I wrapped my hands around his neck and twisted, breaking his spine. “Justice served.”

  The last demon, the blue-horned one who had attacked the human, wended, leaving the three bodies behind.

  I was going to fucking kill Xavier for this.

  “Alek!” Avi cried, her slim figure racing toward me.

  “Avi.” I swept her into my arms and clutched her to my chest, cradling the back of her head. I’d lecture this one later. Right now, I just wanted to feel her breathing.

  Guilt was heavy and sour in my mouth. How the fuck had I let myself get distracted with that human while Avi was in danger? I’d almost let my parents down. Let our entire species down. The loss of one female was tragic, but the loss of the princess? Unforgivable.

  “Are you okay?” I asked her, cupping her cheeks and looking into her eyes. They were pale blue, just like mine. Just like our mother’s.

  “I’m fine, I promise.” She gave me a shaky smile.

  “Benedict is almost here with the car,” Lachlan told me quietly as Ransom argued with Avi’s bodyguard about the safety of the park.

  “We need to get out of here before someone reports the gunshot,” I told Avi. Humans were a nuisance, not that they could even tell the difference between demons—

  The breath froze in my lungs.

  She had. Cinnamon and vanilla. Blonde. Green eyes. Impossible. But she’d seen him. Even told me what he’d looked like.

  A human had seen the demon’s horns. Horns that by demonic nature, were hidden from human eyes by glamour.

  I took a deep breath.

  “Fuck.” The distance of her scent told me she was long gone.

  But I also knew I’d be able to track that scent anywhere in this city.

  And I would.

  2

  Lyric

  “How many times have I told you not to walk home through the park at night?” Valor’s tone was anything but library approved.

  A few aggressive shushes were thrown toward the mahogany desk we occupied—the one tucked into the farthest corner of the massive campus library. Red and blue and brown books filled the row of shelves to our right, reaching all the way to the high, arched ceilings. The campus library had become my second home since I’d started my collegiate career, and now I was only a few months away from scoring my doctorate.

  “Oh, bite me,” Valor hissed over her shoulder at the other students who’d shushed her.

  I pressed my lips together, shutting the old text I’d been pouring through. “I knew I shouldn’t have told you,” I teased, shaking my head. In reality, I told her everything. She’d been my best friend since freshman year.

  Valor glared at me, her pale green eyes as hard as gemstones.

  “I’m joking,” I hurried to say. “Obviously. But you’re a tad overprotective, don’t you think? I am a grown woman, fully capable of walking myself home at night—”

  “Who gets mugged by some creep in a demon costume?” She cut me off, crossing her arms over her chest. Her long red hair fell in a braid that swept over her shoulder.

  I swallowed hard, chills racing over my skin. “I wasn’t mugged,” I said, my voice a few degrees softer, and not because we were in the library. Something had been off about the jerk who’d plowed me over.

  I glanced down at the tiny slash on my forearm—nothing more than a scratch, really. The screams of the girls he’d been chasing had haunted my mind since last night, but not as much as the image of…well, whoever he’d been. Not the creep, but the man who’d knelt to check on me.

  My fingers absentmindedly massaged my wrist, a soft tingling itch I hadn’t been able to rid myself of since yesterday.

  Those eyes, blue-gray and emanating a glow so real it could’ve been starlight.

  I couldn’t get those eyes out of my head, or the dark hair, strong jaw, and spectacular build either. He’d been so brutally beautiful and just this side of terrifying. But he’d tried to help me before he’d chased after the girls.

  Embarrassment flushed my skin, and I rolled my eyes at myself. It wasn’t unusual for me to stumble over my own two feet, especially while hauling a load of rare texts from the library, but this? Why’d it have to happen in front of easily the most gorgeous man I’d ever seen in my life? And the most terrifying? Another chill danced along my spine. The timbre of his voice had been enough to freeze my blood and heat my core. The primal demand in it, as if I’d owed him an explanation of my well-being.

  I blew out a breath, scanning the library behind Valor. I straightened in my seat when I caught sight of a pair of glowing blue eyes. My lips parted open as I craned my neck around Valor to see—

  Nothing.

  Nothing but rows upon rows of beautiful books, and a few scattered students rocking midnight hours for finals.

  “What?” Valor asked, spinning in her seat to follow my line of sight.

  “Nothing,” I said, hating the disappointment in my tone. God, I’d seen the man all of thirteen seconds, and I couldn’t get him out of my head. So much so that I was manifesting him in the campus library.

  “Is your wrist okay?” Valor asked once I’d settled back in my seat.

  I furrowed my brow. “It wasn’t my wrist the guy cut, it was my forearm.”

  Valor arched a brow, her eyes falling to where I rubbed the delicate skin of my wrist.

  I immediately tucked my hands beneath the desk and shrugged. “It itches. Probably something from one of these books I’ve been practically sleeping with.” I laid my palm flat over one of said texts, and Valor’s concerned gaze softened.

  “Sleeping is right,” she teased. “I wouldn’t be able to keep my eyes open if I had to read…” She eyed the spine. “Histories of Secret Sects and Societies, 1776-1889.”

  I bit back a smile and wagged a finger at her. “Don’t knock the history,” I chided. “Besides, I can think of nothing more boring than business books. I mean, who wants to run a fortune-five-hundred company anyway?”

  Valor pursed her lips at my deliberate jab. “I never said I wanted to run it,” she said. “But with my family?” She shook her head, releasing a long-winded sigh that tugged at the center of my chest.

  I’d never met any members of the prestigious Moorehouse family—the same of Moorehouse Industries, one of the oldest and most successful pharmaceutical corporations in the nation—but she’d told me enough about them t
o know she was trapped in her ambitions. A centuries-old family business meant she didn’t have a choice but to take over with her brother when her father retired.

  “You think I’m overprotective,” she continued. “I step one toe out of line, and my father sends an entire team of his brethren to set me straight.”

  In the past, I might’ve said something like, “At least you have a family,” but I’d learned long ago that wasn’t always the case. Sometimes, no family was better than a bad one. Not that Valor’s was terrible, but she certainly hadn’t recounted tales of a Norman Rockwell type of childhood.

  It certainly wasn’t a barrage of group homes and foster care like mine had been, but everyone had a different path. I was just happy our paths had crossed. She was the first real friend I’d held on to after a life of moving from home to home.

  College had offered me the freedom and independence I’d always longed for. I couldn’t believe six years of hard work were about to come to an end. With my doctorate and my years of research, I’d finally have the credibility I needed to start my nonfiction book. A historical theory regarding the ripple effects powerful secret societies had on today’s national agenda.

  A loud chirping sound cheeped from Valor’s pocket, the high-pitched note practically bouncing off the near-silent walls of the library. More than a few hisses followed the sound, followed by even more glares. Valor flipped off the glaring students, then checked her phone and sighed. “I’m being summoned,” she said, her tone laced with suffering.

  I scooped up my books, tucking them carefully into my over-the-shoulder bag. “No worries,” I said. “I’m finished anyway. My brain is fried today for some reason.”

  “Being attacked in the park can do that to a girl,” Valor chided as we walked out of the library and into the crisp night air.

  “I wasn’t attacked,” I said, breathing in the fresh air. I’d always loved the smell of the city at night—so different from the warm smells of the day. The earthy tones were sharper, the city’s food trucks more savory, and tonight a hint of cocoa-citrusy-cedar beckoned me like warm cookies straight from the oven. Something about the pinpricks of light in the inky sky, the glowing silver moon, and the chilled breeze gave the atmosphere a revitalized energy that my tired soul gobbled down like oxygen.