Chapter 13 Unusual Guests
thirteen
Unusual Guests
*BENJAMIN*
The comfortable air of Silas is gone, as his eyes turn a dark shade of violet, his teeth elongating. For a moment, it looks like dark mist is surrounding him.
Marcellus grabs me by my arm and pulls me back.
“You almost hit me with that,” a voice complains.
“That was my intention,” Silas hisses. “Come out, Durant.”
“Wait, you know that clown?” Marcellus asks.
“He is one of my useless brothers,” Silas says darkly.
“So, not the good side of the family,” Marcellus concludes.
“He is one of those who decided it better to kiss Aloysius’s ass.”
I know I am not the brightest bulb in the universe, but normally, I don’t have issues catching up on a conversation.
This time, however, I am completely lost. Who are these people they are talking about?
The man called Durant steps out from the shadows, revealing himself.
He resembles Silas with his light hair, but he wears it short, and he is smaller in height and frame.
His features are rather soft, unlike Silas, who looks edgier and more serious.
“Do you always sneak into strangers’ houses?” Marcellus asks.
“Not my fault that you wolves are too dumb to detect a vampire.”
“Silas,” Marcellus says. “Are you going to be mad if I hit him?”
“Please, you’d be doing me a favor!”
Marcellus looks almost a tad too happy at Silas’s approval and steps forward. The vampire raises his hands. “Please, let’s not fight.”
“Durant is good at sneaking around,” Silas says mercilessly. “But he sucks at fighting. He is more for slyly killing from the shadows.”
“You make me look really bad,” Durant mutters.
“Oh, I wonder why?” Silas snarls.
When Durant makes to step forward, the knife Silas threw seems to move too, making the other vampire stop in his tracks.
“How are you doing that?” I whisper, amazed.
Marcellus smiles briefly at me. “Silas has some rare talents,” he says. “He belongs to one of the first vampire families. Pretty cool, huh?”
Silas looks slightly flustered but keeps his eyes on Durant. “Did Aloysius send you?” he asks sharply.
“No, nothing like it!” Durant hurries to explain. “Fact is, I didn’t come alone.”
“There is another sibling around?” Marcellus asks.
Silas’s eyes turn purple again, something seems to swirl around his pupils, then he smiles. “Come in,” he says.
“I thought you would let me wait for hours,” another voice can be heard, and a tall man steps through our entrance door. He has dark hair, an incredibly handsome face, just like Silas and Durant, but he looks more serious and a little arrogant.
“Alexander,” Silas says, before approaching the man and pulling him into a hug.
Alexander’s stance seems to soften. “It’s good to see you, older brother,” he mutters.
Silas turns to Marcellus and me. “Alex is another one of my brothers. He is the third oldest, to be exact.”
“And you?” I ask him curiously.
“I am the second,” he says. “Dear Aloysius is the firstborn. And that traitor there is number thirteen, the youngest.”
Durant looks flustered. “I am here now.”
“Barely enough,” Silas mutters. “If it weren’t for your help, Aloysius wouldn’t have bested me that easily. He can’t kill me, but he definitely made sure to hurt me as much as possible.
Durant looks crestfallen but doesn’t say anything.
“What’s that about the no-killing part?” I ask Marcellus, my curiosity beating my anxiety for once.
“The siblings can’t kill each other,” Marcellus says. “It’s an oath they swore.”
“The oath is binding us to this promise,” Silas adds.
“For better or worse,” Alexander adds. “My actual name is Alexandrius, by the way, but I adapted it. Feel free to call me Alex.”
Silas gestures towards us. “These are Benjamin, whom I am mentoring, and the alpha of the pack, Marcellus.”
“Oh!” Alex’s head perks up, and he eyes Marcellus curiously. “Finally, I see you in person. It was about time. Technically, you are family.”
“Shut up,” Silas huffs, his cheeks flushing lightly.
“Oh, you are a thing?” Durant asks. “Did you finally choose a beloved?”
“That’s none of your business. The last time I was close to choosing one, he conspired with you against me, in case you don’t remember.”
“For what it’s worth, he thought he was protecting you,” Durant mutters.
“For what it’s worth, he helped strip me of my rank and got almost everyone killed who sided with me.”
“I know,” Durant says quietly. “Listen, I know I am not your favorite person. Once you left, Aloysius went crazy in his rush for power.”
“Took you long enough to notice,” Alex mutters before looking at Silas. “But Durant is right, we are here for a reason. Actually, he did help me a lot; I have to give him that.”
“How about something to drink?” Marcellus offers. “Let’s sit down and have a talk.”
“It’s midnight,” Alex points out.
“Well, we are all awake anyway.”
The three vampires exchange some gazes and nod. While Marcellus and I go to fetch some wine and glasses, Marcellus rests his hand on my shoulder. “Are you sure you are feeling well?” he asks me.
“I am better now,” I say, for once not lying through my teeth.
The pain has subsided, and I feel more like myself again.
The two visitors managed to chase my demons away for a moment, making me able to put my issues with my mate aside.
“I am not sure if I completely followed what just happened,” I add.
“You are not the only one,” he mutters. “Silas’s family story is complicated.”
“He had a fallout with his older brother?”
“Yes, they led one of the most prestigious covens together. As the two oldest of their family, they had the most power. From what I know, Aloysius-”
“That’s the older brother?”
“Yes. Aloysius always had a short fuse, while Silas was more the voice of reason. Over the centuries, Aloysius’s views turned more extreme.
Well, you caught all that bullshit about his bloodline and only wanting a worthy heir.
That’s when he went as far as to hunt down his previous affairs.
He wanted to kill any child of his that he didn’t deem worthy.
Silas couldn’t stand by him anymore and summoned some of his allies around him to take Aloysius down. ”
“But he was betrayed,” I add quietly.
“Yes. Back then, he had a partner, someone he wanted to make his beloved, but he betrayed him and told Aloysius about Silas’s plans. Aloysius killed everyone who conspired against him. This led to Silas and the remainder of his allies fleeing.”
“Goddess,” I exclaim. “That’s insane. And Durant?”
“Durant is the youngest and always looked up to Alyosius. He was easy to manipulate, from what I understand.”
“What about the other siblings?”
“I don’t know,” Marcellus says. “Silas doesn’t talk much about his family. I know he is close with Alexander, but I think the brothers overall aren’t really close. They all live their own lives. They aren’t really family the way we understand it.”
I nod thoughtfully. “Alpha…” I start.
“I swear,” he says. “I will not answer if you keep calling me by my rank when we talk in private.”
I take a deep breath. “Marcellus?”
“Yes?”
“I want to learn more about our allied packs,” I hurry to explain, before my courage leaves me again.
“I don’t know much about pack politics or about our pack in general, not to mention the vampires.
When Micah and I went shopping, I met some college kids around my age, and they said they were from an allied pack.
It made me realize I don’t know anything. ”
Marcellus stares at me, and my heart sinks to the pit of my stomach again. When Dad looked at me like that, it was never a good sign.
“You have matured quite a bit,” Marcellus says to my surprise.
“You show interest in the pack and are thinking about how to contribute. That’s really great, Benj.
Yes, I will teach you about pack politics.
” He smiles at me and grabs one bottle of wine.
“Come, now let’s see what our unexpected visitors have to say. ”
The unusual visitors don’t beat around the bush. “I faced a couple of issues in Paris,” Alex says while Silas pours some wine for him.
“Issues of which nature?” Silas wants to know.
“The lycan princess of Silverlake Pack was on a visit,” he explains. With that, he seems to have caught Marcellus’s full interest, too.
“She is Alpha Elden’s daughter and Alpha Liam’s sister,” he explains to me.
I know those two men. They were the two alphas who decided I deserved a second chance and arranged for me to stay here.
“She will become the alpha of Silverlake,” Marcellus adds.
“Well, she was in Paris for a visit with the council, and to investigate the disappearance of omegas of a specific blood group, throughout the last couple of years. We talked about it briefly, Silas.”
“We did, but something tells me you have found out much more by now,” Silas mutters.
“What happened?” I ask quietly.
“There was a psychopath - a werewolf - who organized the kidnappings of low-ranking wolves and auctioned his victims, or served them on demand,” Alex says.
“And when I say serve, I mean literally.” He turns to Silas again.
“Silas, some of them had rare genetic illnesses, and one of them had lupus. And the blood group was AB positive.”
“I don’t get it,” Marcellus says. “What is so special about that?”
“Vampires can get high from certain blood,” Silas explains. “We can’t get sick, but experiencing the blood of a dying creature can give us the feeling we are. Some vampires chase that adrenaline rush.”
“And vampires were that psycho’s main customers,” Alex says. “High-ranking vampires.”
“You are kidding?” Silas exclaims.
“No, I have found them. They were all of high rank and had the money to pay, whatever.” Alex shakes his head. “Some of the victims were underage.”
“What happened to them?” I ask quietly.
Neither Alex nor Durant answers, which tells me what I need to know. Marcellus looks shocked, too, rubbing the bridge of his nose.
“It’s not just an issue in Europe,” Alex says. “Needless to say, the States were involved as well.” He looks at Silas grimly. “Guess who placed an order for some of his diligent guards and lieutenants?”
“No way! He sank that low?” Silas exclaims.
“Why are you surprised? He killed an infant,” Alex mutters.
“What?” I ask, shocked. Marcellus briefly mentioned it, but I couldn’t imagine he would truly go that far. “Like, a baby?”
“Yes, his child,” Silas explains quietly. “He didn’t like his bloodline to be tarnished and hunted down all the women he’d bedded to see if they had a child, until he found one who was pregnant by him. Once she gave birth, he killed her and her child. His own child.”
I gasp. “Who would do something like that?” Technically, I think my father would have been able to do that, too. He did try to kill me after all, but at least not as a baby. When the bar is so low that it’s in the basement, it’s truly something to worry about.
“A monster,” Silas says. “Who was once our brother.”
Durant looks sad. “I still can’t believe Aloysius would do something so awful. How could this happen?” When no one says anything, he sighs. “Can I use your restroom?” he asks.
“Sure,” Marcellus gestures at the door leading to the corridor. “Just go through there, and then it’s the last door on the left.”
“Thank you.”
Silas waits for Durant to leave before he looks at Alex thoughtfully. “I trust you, Alexandrius,” he says all of a sudden. “Don’t disappoint me.”
“You don’t need to worry,” Alex says shortly.
“What about Durant, do you trust him?”
“I don’t know. He did help me a lot while I tracked down the vampires who fed on those abducted wolves.”
“And what did you do to them?” Silas asks.
Alex shrugs. “Kill some of them. Kept a few of the higher-ranked alive to spy on them.”
“How come Durant suddenly helped you?” Silas asks. “When I fled, he was still in cahoots with Aloysius.”
“From what I know, things really turned for the worse when you left the place,” Alex says.
“You know Aloysius. He is a tyrant. Without you as the voice of reason, things obviously spiraled downwards. Then your ex-boyfriend - almost beloved - Julianus, had a change of heart and left too. But you know that already.”
Silas taps his lips. “I talked to Julianus. He is trying to make amends by helping the lycans.”
“Do you trust him?” Alex asks.
“No, not anymore,” Silas admits. “But I believe him. He never was blindly loyal to Aloysius, like Durant was. He never even liked him much. I can see him finally growing a backbone and leaving. As for Durant, I am skeptical.”
“He claims that when Julianus left, it opened his eyes. They were friends after all,” Alex says. “To answer your question: That doesn’t mean I trust him.”
Silas frowns. “You don’t trust him, yet you brought him here.”
“Get off my back,” Alex says shortly. “I had limited options, and I will need his help. Aloysius doesn’t know he’s changed sides. He is his closest and most trusted ally.”
Silas raises his brows. “Alright,” he says. “That could prove useful.”
He and Alex start discussing more family issues, and when Durant returns and joins them, it gets even more complicated. Just how old are they? I didn’t even know that Silas was one of the original vampires. This means he isn’t just any prince; he is of the highest royalty.
My head starts spinning while I listen. Eventually, Marcellus links me. How about the both of us retreat and let Silas discuss this with his brothers? I think it’s a good time to leave them alone.
I am so relieved by his suggestion that I just nod. We both excuse ourselves, and fortunately, Silas voices his understanding. When I drop into my bed, it’s already 3 a.m., and I can barely stand because I am so exhausted. This whole day has knocked me off my feet completely.