Chapter 26
Ifrowned. “Arizona-Arizona? Like Phoenix?”
“Why don’t you take over from here?” Robert asked Joseph.
They were all smiles now, like old pals. Shocking, as Robert both feared and loathed the VGO. He did once upon a time, at least. Now it seemed as if he was drinking their Kool-Aid.
Then again, perhaps I was being harsh in my assessment. Sure, the VGO had wanted to kill me once upon a time. But. They were reasonable enough to change their minds after I explained myself.
Joseph and I had also gotten friendly, and he’d behaved like a perfect gentleman at the wedding. He’d wasted no time getting to work on finding Robert, too, which I appreciated more than I could ever express. Having the world’s most powerful vampires as allies might not be such a bad thing.
Joseph said, “After you told me about Robert and Serena, Olivia, I went home to Scotland and shared the information with the rest of the VGO. As I mentioned on the night of the wedding, we’d been planning on removing Serena from her position of power for various reasons.”
“Because she’s a psycho bitch?” I spat, unable to stop myself.
Liz laughed. Serena had kidnapped my man and tormented me with her lies. I wasn’t sorry for what I’d said.
Joseph smiled. “Something like that. We were already suspicious of Serena, but we went on high alert when she inexplicably vanished. When you told me about what had happened with Robert, I was sure she was up to her usual scheming. Still, we didn’t know where to look for her.
She keeps a home in France, but she’s far too cunning to hide out there, though it was the first place we looked. ”
“Why did you look in Arizona? It’s so random,” I remarked.
“Well . . .” Joseph paused. He gazed meaningfully at our group. “There’s more to it.”
We looked at him in a go on fashion.
Joseph folded his arms across his chest. “Okay, what I’m going to tell you is strictly confidential. This is never to be repeated, understand?”
We nodded.
“When you mention the VGO to most vampires, they typically think of the few who, like me, officially represent our organization during ceremonies and trials. However, there are hundreds of us the world over—factions of our organization that operate underground, as many of our undertakings are . . .”
“Illegal as hell,” I finished for him since nobody else would.
“I suppose that’s one way to state it,” Joseph said.
“The VGO’s most vital divisions are ones that focus on information technology.
As we all know, vampires value their anonymity.
The VGO work hard to ensure our vampire secret remains as such.
We allocate a great deal of our resources to monitoring what happens online—the emails, websites, and social media accounts of humans, mainly.
We keep an eye out for the repeated use of key word searches such as drinking blood, immortals, and VGO. ”
“The vampire version of the NSA,” Sebastian said.
“Right,” Joseph agreed. “For the most part, humans who reference us online are discussing films or books. Then there are those who are trying to capitalize on our recent trendiness by selling vampire-themed trinkets, clothing, and art. The last group, the crackpots, are most problematic. They’re typically conspiracy theorists who believe vampires are out to get them or individuals who fancy themselves immortal.
They discuss things like human celebrities who are secretly vampires or how they, personally, escaped an attack.
We see a surge in such activity whenever a new vampire film comes out, and it’s almost always in the United States, where society is most susceptible to Hollywood fads. Americans can be so capricious.”
Liz rolled her eyes. “That’s so crazy,” she said, placing a hand on Joseph’s bicep.
“Here’s the thing, Elizabeth,” Joseph began, placing his hand over hers. It lingered longer than a moment. Robert and I exchanged a sly glance. Hm, interesting.
“What’s the thing, Joseph?” Liz purred, her eyes twinkling. I’d known her long enough to tell when she liked something, and she certainly liked Joseph touching her. She flipped her ridiculously shiny, bouncy hair off her shoulder.
Joseph said, “The crackpots we uncover online aren’t all crazy, and they can be dangerous.
I’m not referring to those who drink animal blood because they wish to be immortal.
I quite like those humans. It’s their fanaticism that makes vampirism seem preposterous to the rest of the world.
It’s easy for humans in power to dismiss the notion of vampires existing when purple-haired teenaged girls are wearing t-shirts with vampire film heartthrobs on them.
The day the president starts sporting prosthetic fangs at press conferences, we’ll know we’ve got a problem. ”
“Don’t make fun,” Liz pouted. “I used to wear vampire t-shirts.”
“I’m sure they looked exquisite on you, Elizabeth,” Joseph pouted right back.
“I’ll have to show them to you sometime,” Liz flirted.
Joseph raised an eyebrow and winked. “I shall look forward to it.”
Oh brother.
Joseph, remembering the rest of us were still in the room, continued, “The issue is that a crackpot human will occasionally post information that contains a degree of validity. We especially monitor posts from humans who claim they’ve been attacked by a vampire.
If there’s even a hint of legitimacy to their claim, we’ll send an investigator to that human’s territory to see if there are any vampires misbehaving. ”
I said, “You guys really do have eyes everywhere.”
“You have no idea, Olivia,” Joseph said, like I’d paid him a compliment.
“How do the crackpots relate to you finding Robert?” Sebastian asked.
“A blog written by a man residing on the California-Arizona border was discovered by our IT team. Martin Pike claimed a French vampire had attacked him down in a cave. He described her as beautiful, ethereal, and bloodthirsty.”
“Sounds about right, Serena being bloodthirsty,” I said. The beautiful and ethereal parts were accurate, too, not that I was going to admit it. Screw her.
Joseph nodded in agreement. “The area where Martin lives, Quartzite, is popular for quartz mining. He’d frequently hunt for gems underground, and he gave cave tours as part of his business. Martin was alone on the day he was attacked, or else we would have had a real problem to deal with.”
“And what about the problem you did take care of?” I made a swiping motion across my throat, then raised my eyebrows questioningly. Poor Martin.
Joseph shook his head. “We don’t resort to murder by default, Olivia.”
Could have fooled me, I thought.
“Thankfully, Martin was no problem at all because he seems so insane. He lives in a trailer right off the highway, which he often features on his blog. In some of the videos he’s posted, he demonstrates how he’s government-proofed his home by taping tinfoil over the windows.
The tinfoil blocks out the radio waves, you see. ”
“Of course it does,” Liz said, rolling her eyes.
Joseph chuckled at her sarcasm. “That’s not all. There’s a section on Martin’s blog dedicated to the health benefits of drinking one’s own urine. There’s also a video where he discusses how he cured his prostate cancer by drinking apple cider vinegar.”
“Wow,” Robert and I said in unison.
“Yes, wow. It’s still up on his blog, should you ever want to see it,” Joseph joked.
“I’m good, thanks,” I said.
“You can see how nobody would believe Martin even if he did post concrete proof of Serena’s attack.”
I asked, “So, it actually was Serena who attacked Martin?”
Joseph nodded. “The IT team might have dismissed Martin completely had I not, thanks to you, told them to look out for anything that might pertain to Serena or Robert.”
“So, Serena kidnapped Robert and then held him captive in a cave? Weird,” I said.
“Serena has never been good at planning or fully reflecting on her ideas before acting upon them. She’s impulsive, which is part of the reason why the VGO want to be rid of her,” Joseph said.
“It appears she wants to be rid of us, too. From what we uncovered in the cave, and based on what Robert has confirmed, Serena has been plotting against our organization for some time.”
“Which is why she kidnapped me,” Robert said. “She was planning to ambush the VGO headquarters, and she was going to do it by controlling me with my fangs. She knew I’d fight to the death because I wouldn’t be able to rebel against her influence.”
“Crazy bitch,” I muttered.
Robert continued, “Her flirting with me when we were at the VGO headquarters was only for show. She was going to use me to murder the most influential VGO members. Then, she was going to explain away the massacre by telling everyone that I, her scorned lover, had gone insane after she ended things with me.”
“Serena had much of the attack outlined in the cave,” Joseph added.
“She had blueprints of our headquarters she was making Robert memorize. She also had photos of the members she wanted assassinated—those who were her biggest opponents and had campaigned most for her dismissal from the VGO. I was on the wall, of course, along with seven others.”
“How did she expect Robert to take out so many members? One against eight seems ambitious.” I kissed Robert on the cheek. “Not that Robert isn’t a big, strong vampire.”
Robert and the rest of our group rolled their eyes at me.
“This is where Serena’s horrible preparation skills come into play,” Joseph said. “Her initial plan was to only take out two members. Once she started plotting, though, she decided to throw in a few more for good measure.”
“Still, eight against one,” I commented.
“It wasn’t only going to be me,” Robert said.
“She was building an army of killers. I was only her first soldier. Her plan was to turn humans in Arizona into vampires and then pull out their fangs immediately after they changed, when they were at their weakest. Then, once she amassed a large enough group of henchmen, she was going to order us to execute the ambush. Joseph and the other seven members were just the tip of the iceberg. If she succeeded in her massacre, her plan was to then fan out and kill other VGO members across the globe.”
“She may have even succeeded, had you not been brave enough to confide in me about Robert vanishing,” Joseph said to me. “For that, the VGO are indebted to you. So, we’re releasing you from your blood obligation to us.”
“I don’t have to give you my blood anymore?” I was so happy I nearly did a cartwheel.
“No more needles for you, Ms. Taylor,” Joseph smiled. “It’s the least we could do.”
After a pause in conversation, I asked, “How did crackpot Martin come into play in all this? Why did she attack him?”
“Martin was to be Serena’s first human-turned-vampire soldier,” Robert said. “She would have managed to turn him, too, had he not been carrying a quartz point in his pocket. That, Serena had not expected.”
Joseph added, “Serena tends to underestimate humans. She’s far too arrogant to acknowledge the threat they pose to vampires when they have the right tools or intel. It’s one of her major faults.”
“She was certainly careless with Martin,” Robert said. “After she bit into his neck, he jabbed her in the chest with the quartz. She let go of him and he ran screaming out of the cave. It was daytime, so she couldn’t chase after him.”
“I’m surprised she didn’t find him once the sun went down,” Sebastian commented.
“She was far too injured. She had to go out and feed to heal herself,” Joseph said. “She was still gone when we found Robert in the cave.”
Liz asked, “Where do you think she is now?”
Joseph shook his head. “No idea. She could be anywhere, but we’ll find her.”
Robert reached into his pocket and pulled something out. To me, he said, “Hold out your hand.”
“I can’t believe it,” I gasped. “Your fangs.”
“Serena left them behind when she went out to feed. Even if she’s never found, she can’t control me.”
Joseph turned to me, his face serious. “Now, why don’t you tell us what your great-grandparents are planning?”