Chapter 8
CHAPTER 8
A nya
Of course I’m no longer left to my own devices ever. I always have a guard with me when Alexei can’t be there. Viktor is one of his oldest and most respected guards in the pack. He is around the same age as Alexei, perhaps a little older, and he is perhaps the only person in the pack who is not impressed with me.
He has a thick beard that is flecked with gray, and gray at his temples. His eyes are dark and his brows are low and heavy. He looks at me under those brows with a stony expression I can only describe as disapproving.
“Why are you looking at me like that?”
“I’m not looking at you like anything,” Viktor says.
He’s lying. He’s definitely looking at me like something.
“It’s ‘cause I ate some people, isn’t it?”
He snorts and ignores me.
“If you don’t answer me, I’ll go shopping,” I threaten. Viktor hates shopping, and if I decide that I want to go, he has to go. “I’m thinking hours and hours of looking for new lingerie. You can follow me around little lacy bras and panties until dinnertime.”
I know very well I am describing his idea of hell, but that’s the point. I want him to answer me. And maybe I want some new underwear. Alexei would like that, I know he would.
“Spoiled brat,” he growls.
“Is that why you’re looking at me like that?”
“It’s because you act like a little innocent, but you might be the most feral alpha female this pack has ever seen. You’re impulsive, and you’re dangerous. But you look like a sweet little thing, and the alpha is mad about you. You are his mate, and you are our alpha female, but you are too young for the role. You are a bad example to the younger females—and some of the older ones as well.”
I think he intends to shame me a little, but the truth is everything he just said thrills me greatly. I’ve never been considered dangerous before. I could kiss him—in an entirely platonic sense.
Instead I smile at him and I snap my teeth. “Maybe you should be careful, I might eat wolves too.”
I like being scary for once. I’ve never been scary before. I’ve always been the cute, nice, sweet one. The wallpaper one. I’ve always been the one who nobody really noticed was there. But I’m being noticed now, and not just for being pretty and mated to the alpha.
“I know you think that’s a funny thing to say, but it isn’t. You don’t know your history. Eating people makes you like the…” He pauses, and his expression turns to one of disgust and I just know before he even says it what he’s going to say.
“Vampires.”
There he goes.
Alexei
Things are beginning to settle down. Aside from the incident in Prague, which was over a month ago, everything has been calm among the pack. Anya is behaving herself, and having her under guard ensures that she has no chance to do anything else. It’s important to make doing the right thing easy, and the wrong thing hard. Basic training concepts for any animal.
So I do not expect trouble to arrive yet again. I am immersed in affairs of business, which are little different from the concerns that beset any leader of any company.
Piotr taps on my door. “Alpha, we have a problem.”
“Yes?”
“There’s a vampire to see you.”
I really never thought I would hear those words arranged in that way. The idea of a vampire walking into the midst of a wolf pack is unheard of. A vampire who pays house calls is such a rarity as to functionally not exist. They hunt and they kill, viciously and sometimes dangerously to themselves. They do not pay house calls.
“A vampire?”
“Yes,” Piotr shudders. “Definitely.”
“Just one?”
“Yes. One. It looks old. Well, it does not look old. It looks ageless. Smooth skin, but old eyes. Face like it was carved out of stone. Also, he said he was a vampire.”
There are no real protocols in place in the event of a visit from a vampire, but that doesn’t mean I’m not ready to defend the pack.
“Double the patrols, and put the pack on defensive alert, move all whelps and females to the center of the hold—but show him into the front drawing room.”
The castle is large and has many rooms. The one I intend to take this guest in is right by the front door, opposite the guard hall. It is a room in which a guest who is not a friend can be welcomed with some measure of security.
Elena is away on assignment. She would lose her mind if she knew that a vampire was here, at the castle. I do not know if she would panic, or be so excited about the prospect of meeting one that she’d rush into the room.
I prepare myself briefly and then proceed to deal with the threat.
My orders have already been carried out. The pack is on alert. The energy can be sensed in the air. I am sure the vampire will be able to sense it too. They have intense senses the same way we do, perhaps even more finely honed. They are predators, as we are, but not in the same way we are.
The truth is we fear them, as they fear us. They are our natural rivals, if not our natural predators. I am used to encountering dangerous people, but this will not be a person. This is a vampire, a creature, a thing.
As I prepare to enter the room, Piotr leaves it. He looks concerned.
“It wants to see your mate, too. Says it would be honored if you would bring her with you. Something in the way it said it makes me feel like not having her would be a mistake.”
Elena’s words of warning come back to me in a rush. The vampires are going to try to kill Anya, according to her. But if they were, this would be a very bold way of doing it.
“He says he’s not here to kill your mate,” Piotr says, very nearly reading my mind. “But he would say that if he was going to try. I don’t think you should meet him. I think we should stake him.”
“If there is a vampire who has visited us in our home in the middle of the day, we can assume he is of sufficient age to not need to avoid the sun. That also means he was more than capable of tearing every single one of your throats out the moment he saw you. You know they can move faster than us in our human forms.”
“He might just be waiting until we let him in, massacre the entire pack.”
At that moment, the door to the lounge opens.
It is my door.
This is my castle.
My territory.
There should be absolutely no way that anybody else should be able to cut a dominant figure here.
And yet, the vampire manages it.
He is tall, gaunt, and yet somehow powerful. He looks at me with deep, dark eyes that hold just a hint of red that gleams as if it is being lit by a candle that does not exist.
“I have no intention of doing any of you harm,” the vampire says, speaking in an Eastern European accent. I am surprised to hear it, though I should not be.
Piotr tucks in behind me. I feel him bristling, on the verge of a shift. I put a hand back to try to calm him. The last thing I need now is some kind of mass panic and shift. I want everybody thinking and relaxed for the moment. If someone is going to shift and attack, it will be me.
I look at the vampire more closely. He is at least six foot six tall, and very lean. He is wearing a bespoke tailored three-piece suit, largely black but with a deep burgundy lining. His hair is dark, thick, and slicked back, displaying a traditional widow’s peak. He looks every inch what he is—vampire. A walking stereotype.
“Good to hear,” I say.
“Will your mate be joining us? Most of this discussion pertains to her.”
I am about to say no, absolutely not, when Anya simply appears in the hall behind us. Some sixth sense must have let her know she had been summoned by the dead creature.
I am trying not to be visibly disturbed by the vampire. They lack life in such a fundamental way. There is nothing but death on display in front of me, animated absence of life. That is why Piotr calls it ‘it.’ There’s something about the vampire that truly feels as though it has no real life. It has been designed to consume and little else.
“Hello,” Anya says, stepping up next to me. “I’m Anya.”
“What a beauty,” the vampire says, stepping aside and opening the door to the lounge even wider. “Please, let us begin our discussions.”
I am being invited into my own room. Quite the power move. I hear Piotr growl behind me. I was going to have him in the room, but I decide against it. The space is monitored, but if the vampire is going to do something violent, it will do it before any of us have a chance to react. In fact, it already would have.
So I usher Anya into the room, and she and I go in to meet our fate.
The vampire sits down in an armchair, languidly lowering himself with an easy charm and grace. These creatures just barely follow the rules of physics, and they completely ignore all other natural laws.
Anya and I sit on a couch nearby.
“Would you like something to drink?” I make the offer out of habit, before the creature’s quiet smile indicates his amusement.
“I do not think you are offering what would normally be offered when someone says that phrase to me,” he says.
I try not to physically recoil when I consider that he could have entirely misinterpreted this as a chance to feed on myself or Anya, or anyone else in the pack. There are rumors that vampires can feed on wolves if they want to, though they usually prefer normal humans.
“I am not,” I confirm. “How can we help you?”
The vampire smiles at me, and his eyes slide over to Anya, then back to me. I do not like it when he looks at my mate that way. This is about her somehow, I already know it.
“An ancient accord has been broken, and that must be addressed.”
“I do not know what you are talking about.”
His response is another smile, verging on a smirk. He is talking to me as though I am little more than a whelp. I do not like being spoken down to in my ancestral home. I like even less having my home treated as though it is owned by a vampire who thinks his age gives him ownership over all contemporary things.
“Of course you don’t. I was born over a thousand years before you. My memory is therefore significantly longer than yours. Three hundred years ago, vampires and wolves signed a treaty. It was a relatively minor one, but a treaty is still a treaty. And it involves your mate. That is why I asked for her to be here.”
I am uneasy about Anya’s presence here, but I still don’t sense a threat from this vampire. I am sure he is strong, but he is speaking with what I am sure he regards as respect. I feel as though he is trying to avoid a conflict, something I have interest in avoiding too. Elena’s warnings about the vampire awakening have not fallen entirely on deaf ears. This may be the first of many interactions we have in coming years.
Anya
I squirm nervously as the vampire looks at me, then back at Alexei. I’ve never met a person like this before. I suppose he’s not really a person. He’s more like a monster, I guess. But he just looks like a guy. Maybe a kind of intense guy, but a guy.
“Your mate killed two of our thralls, and ate one of my sons.”
Alexei lets out a growl of something more like shock than anger.
The cold creature looks at me. I look back at it with nothing but curiosity. I know what I did. I am not interested in its summation of facts, but I am absolutely intrigued by the creature in front of me.
There is a void inside it. Wolves are passionate. Alexei is pure fire. But the thing in front of me has no soul, no heart, no true feeling. It is designed to do one thing, and one thing only: feed.
I thought it would be more frightening, but it’s not. It’s strange, but alluring in a way, too. It’s like being regarded by the absence of anything.
“You,” he says, clarifying the words, and looking directly at me as he repeats himself, “killed two of our thralls, and ate my son.”
“They deserved it,” I say.
He smirks slightly. “I am sure they did, but the truce is very specific. No wolf will spill the blood of any vampire, or thrall, and in return no vampire will spill the blood of any wolf. You have broken that treaty.”
There’s a long pause, and I realize I am expected to respond. Alexei isn’t saying anything. I can’t read his expression, either. I think he is thoroughly distracted by the vampire, and not by what the vampire was saying.
“…sorry?”
I offer the word in a sort of helpless way.
“Sorry,” he laughs. His amusement seems genuine, but empty. “That is all you have to say?”
“Your thralls tried to assault me. They deserved to die. And your son wanted to drink me, so…”
“Yes,” he says. “I agree. But there’s an additional problem. They’ve been consumed. You ate them.”
Alexei clears his throat. “She didn’t know better.”
“I’m sure she didn’t,” he says, turning his gaze to me. “But that doesn’t change the problem. She consumed the flesh of two thralls, as in men who had been fed on by our kind, willingly. Your mate has ingested the vampire curse. The results could be unpredictable.”
He looks at me and again I feel as though I am falling into his eyes. I never knew how magnetic the absence of conscience or care could be until this moment. I can imagine how his thralls submitted to him, how they tilted their heads back and allowed themselves to be drunk from.
It’s too much. I don’t know what to do with it, or about it. I hear a little whimper escape me as I find myself at the ocular mercy of this beast.
Alexei pulls me into his lap and wraps a protective arm around me. I can feel his care and his concern. It is like being brought back from a brush with the dead. I lean against him and let his life wrap around me.
“She does not seem sick,” he says.
“That’s good, but she may seem… well, something other than ill.”
“What are you trying to tell us?”
“That there are consequences for eating people, and vampires know that better than anybody else.”
Alexei’s arm tightens around me even more. He pulls me back off his lap and to the side a little into a more protected place. It feels as though he is worried for me, as if he thinks the vampire might be intending on some kind of revenge for my actions.
“What do you want? Why are you really here?”
The vampire smiles, one of those cool expressions that does not indicate any real amusement.
“I wanted to see the she-wolf who is able to stomach the flesh of people. I wanted to see who it was who had the capacity to turn our thralls into home decor. It was an almost vampiric scene, you know.”
I press up against Alexei. If it wouldn’t feel embarrassing to do so, I’d hide in his neck. I am starting to understand that what I did was more than wrong. Well, it was right, at least in terms of my instincts, but according to the social codes of these creatures, what I did was the equivalent of… well… eating someone.
“You should be proud,” the vampire purrs to Alexei. “She’s quite impressive. Quite an interesting little specimen.”
“And she’s mine,” Alexei says, his tone rough with possession.
“Of course she is. Your kind pair bonds, and she is the mate fate designed for you. I understand your customs. I am not here to cause trouble, just to observe and discuss. We have our own councils and customs, you understand, and the loss of the thralls, and my son, will have to be atoned for. It might be helpful if I could go back with some kind of compensation.”
“So this is a shakedown,” Alexei laughs. “Why did you not say so? What’s the going rate for a couple of rapist pieces of shit? I’ll tell you what. I’ll give you…”
He rummages in his pocket and pulls out a couple of coins.
“There, two kopeks, more than equivalent to the value of their lives,” he says, tossing them onto the coffee table between us. “Take that as compensation, and deliver it to your coven.”
The vampire casts a very brief glance at the coins, then, to my surprise, he reaches out and picks them up very deliberately with cold and elegant fingers. I shiver as I involuntarily imagine what it would be liked to be touched by him.
“Your temper is flaring,” he notes, speaking to Alexei.
“You’re right,” Alexei says. “We were prepared to let the matter lie, but you have come here demanding some kind of compensation. The truth is we should be sending a contingent to you for allowing your slaves and such to touch one of our own, the alpha’s mate, no less.”
The vampire smiles. I don’t think he’s angry at Alexei’s temper. I think he actually enjoys the display. I think he likes the reaction. I think it feeds him.
“No need to be so dramatic, though I do enjoy your fire,” he says. “I am here to broker peace. This matter does not need to get out of hand. Your offer is accepted.”
Now Alexei is confused. I am also confused. The coins were clearly intended to be an insult, a sign of how little Alexei cared about the veiled threats coming our way. He was throwing down a gauntlet, and the vampire has not only picked it up, he has thanked him for it.
“I will take my leave,” he says, rising to his feet, ending the meeting without warning. “And my kopeks, and we will see what comes of all of this in due course.”
“What’s your name?” I blurt the question. He never introduced himself to me when I introduced myself to him, and Alexei doesn’t seem to care what he’s called.
“My name was lost to time long ago, lady whelp,” the vampire says. “But you may call me Dom.”
“Dom,” I repeat. “Is that short for Dominic, or Dom… icile?”
“Just Dom,” he says, standing up. He is incredibly tall and imposing. I feel a cool chill, as if someone left an industrial freezer door open, as he walks toward the door.
Alexei doesn’t get up, doesn’t see him out. Just holds me close and watches him go.
I can quite literally feel the tension in the room subside as the vampire departs. It is as though a collective breath we didn’t know we were holding is let out.
I am glad we have had this meeting.
“I did not like that,” Alexei says. “I did not like that at all. Come with me. Now. I don’t want you out of my sight, Anya, do you understand me? I want you with me at all times from here on out.”
He is bristling with barely contained rage. I nod swiftly. Now is not the time to argue.
Alexei summons Elena back from her US visit immediately, getting her on video chat to debrief.
“A vampire! In the castle!” I’ve never seen anybody actually speak in exclamation marks before. Elena is shocked and incensed and worried, I can see that, even though she is trying to maintain something like a professional veneer.
“Apparently, Anya ate a couple of their thralls, and a vampire,” Alexei explains. “The vampire indicated that could have consequences in their coven, and maybe physically for Anya.”
“She ate a vampire ?” Elena practically loses her mind at that statement. “Did we know they were thralls and vampires?”
“Not until today, no.”
“Thralls carry a small amount of their feeder’s DNA for want of a better term. To have consumed them means having consumed the vampire curse. That’s bad enough. But to have consumed the flesh of a vampire itself—it’s possible your mate is infected. Or if not entirely rife with the curse, that she is now at least linked to one… or maybe several of them.”
“Linked?”
“Vampires always know where their progeny are. She might very well be on their radar; almost certainly she is on the radar of the vampire you just met. That’s probably how he found you. It’s likely that he didn’t have directions to the castle. He has directions to her, always, no matter where she is.”
Alexei curses so violently I feel a rush of pure fear run through me. I now understand how badly I fucked up. It wasn’t just about doing something dark and messy and weird. I put myself in danger in more ways than one.
I cower away from him, afraid of what will happen when he gets off the phone. He wants me to be his, and only his, and that is what I want too—but I felt the pull when I looked into Dom’s eyes. I know it’s wrong. It was an accident. I never meant to become vulnerable to anybody else, but Elena is right. He found me. He knows where I am. And if what she is saying is correct, he will always be able to find me.
“What do you think will happen?”
“I don’t know. This is unprecedented,” Elena says. “But I think it might be wise to move your mate away from fragile targets. There’s a possibility they might use her to locate things and launch attacks. If I were you, I’d take her to a very populated city with a lot of surveillance…”
I don’t hear the rest of what is said. Or at least, I don’t pay attention. My ears are pounding with blood as I process how deeply I have fucked up. I’ve not just put myself at risk. I’ve not only fucked with Alexei, but I might have put the entire pack in danger.