Chapter Ten
Vladimir
Inever should have agreed to allow Grant on this job. It has been a terrible night, my self-control frayed, and I cannot even take a moment to rest once we are safely in our hotel room because we are waiting on two humans, one of whom clearly has the power to devastate my turn.
I want her far away from him. All of this—Jakob, this mysterious fae…
I pace the narrow space between the foot of the bed and the wall and Grant watches me silently.
He is sitting cross-legged on the centre of the bed.
I do not dare to look at him for too long, lest I find myself tracing all the paths Jakob’s fingers touched as though he had the right—
“You’re mad at me,” Grant says.
“No.” I almost spit the word.
He tilts his head and blinks. “You are. I feel it.”
Horrified, I freeze, drawing back on our bond as much as I can. Grant’s expression does not improve. Instead, his shoulders slump and he drops his chin onto his hand. “Apologies. I am not… This situation is spiralling out of control.”
“Out of your control,” Grant says—no, snaps—and I look at him in surprise.
“What do you mean?”
“I handled Jakob well. He wants to impress me, but he wants to punish me, too. He’ll hand me over to his fae when the time comes.”
Fear seizes my insides, its grip icy cold.
I like that even less than everything else I have witnessed tonight.
This is a high fae we are discussing. Of course, only one, but Grant is no werewolf like Quinn, no former witch like Maurice.
His power is strong but uncontrollable. Mine is likely not strong enough.
“You did well,” I say finally, no enthusiasm at all. Truth be told, that is less my concern than these women, who will know where we are staying, who will know when we are at our most vulnerable. Grant’s connection to one of them does not matter. He no longer knows her.
Grant huffs, picking at the duvet cover. He looks younger in the stark lighting here than he ever has at the club. I want him safe. That is all I want, but instead I have placed him at the very heart of all the danger that hunts us.
“I know you said no touching, but I told you—”
I shake my head sharply, and Grant cuts himself off.
I cannot think of that at all. The white-hot rage that curled through me when Jakob moved in for a kiss.
As though he has the right! A growl bubbles up in my chest, even now.
If we did not need him to find his fae, I would have already torn him apart.
I know Grant has left the base more often than I am truly aware of. I do not think of what he does when he is out there. It is not my business and I will never begrudge him his freedom, his own choices. But watching that vampire paw at him—
I turn on my heel again and Grant is there, directly in front of me, not budging even when I square my shoulders.
A restless itch builds under my skin. He studies my face silently, still in a way I have never seen from him before.
Nothing tugs on the bond. Nonetheless, he is looking for something, and I am not certain if he finds it.
“I’m glad you were there,” he says eventually, slowly. “You make me feel safe, Vlad.”
I swallow around a sudden lump in my throat. Of course I do. Of course I should. It means something to him—I am not callous enough to dismiss the significance of what he is saying to me—but it cannot mean to him what it means to me.
“You did do well,” I reply because I need to give him something, and it is true, all the same. “But I do not see wisdom in inviting the hunters here.”
Grant wrinkles his nose and perches on the bed again. “They’re not hunters. Not proper ones, like at home.”
Home. “Still, they took us by surprise.”
“Me. Took me by surprise. Margot didn’t want to kill me. She was telling me to get out of here.”
“You believe they know what is happening in this city?”
“Some of it. It’s not a big place, and Rachel’s been here her entire life. There were four vampires in the club tonight.”
I hum my agreement. Vampires are notoriously territorial, though as time wanders on, we are increasingly forced to co-exist with our brethren.
It happens more often in big cities than in small places like this, but so long as there is enough prey to go around, informal alliances and agreements can work.
Four vampires—myself and Grant not included—in one club on a single night suggests more than that. A loose-knit clan, perhaps? I do not wish to speculate too much.
A knock at the door ends our conversation. I loosened the wards when we arrived, but I feel the energy of the two women from earlier, though a little more restless and uncertain than back in that alley. Grant doesn’t move from where he’s sitting on the bed. He looks unsure.
“They won’t kill us,” he says.
“I know that.”
“She…” He colours and looks down at his knees. “Rachel was like my best friend for a while there. I never told any of them what happened to me.”
“You could not.”
“I still feel bad about it.”
I shift slightly on my feet so I am looming over him. Grant tips his head back, soft lips slightly parted as he looks up at me.
“Blame me,” I say because I will not have him carry this misplaced guilt. “I turned you. I took you. I did this.”
Grant’s face does something complicated. “Vlad…” I am already by the door and he sighs, fingers clenching for a second in the sheets.
There is no time to reassure him. I swing the door open and see Margot standing there, a scowl on her face. The other woman, Rachel, stands a few steps behind her, arms wrapped tightly around her own torso. She looks as though she does not wish to be here.
I clench my teeth. “Please, come in.”
I do not want them here. This is not our home—could not even be close—but still, their combined presence is like a dark cloud as they step firmly through the wards and into the room.
Rachel jumps when I shut the door. She cannot always be this timid, I am certain, but seeing Grant again appears to have very much put her off-kilter.
Grant has retreated to the centre of the bed again, cross-legged and hunched down as he watches them both. His eyes constantly skip back to Rachel. She keeps her own gaze on the carpet. I sigh. I am to take control of this then. Perfect.
“What are you both doing here?” Margot asks before I can speak. Ah. Perhaps not.
Grant looks at me, eyes beseeching. I do not offer the women a place to sit, instead perching on the single uncomfortable stool.
“What I tell you depends on what you are doing with the vampires in this city,” I reply.
Margot scowls and takes a step forward, but Rachel grabs her wrist and pulls her back. Once Margot is by her side, she doesn’t let go.
“We’re not killing them,” Rachel says. “We just want them all gone.”
Grant sits up a little straighter. “All? What do you mean all?”
She still will not look at him and I swallow down the growl building in my chest. That will not help.
“There’ve been vampires here for decades.
Just a few. But then, when you—” Her gaze flicks to him, then away again.
“A couple of years after you left, we got more of them. Too many. They’ve taken over everything.
I mean, it’s subtle, but plenty of people know. ”
“Around thirteen years ago?” I ask.
Margot nods. “It was… This isn’t a big place. There were some fights, some deaths. We all knew not to go out at night, or at least, not in certain places. After a while, it settled down. But then, recently…”
“Vampires have been dying,” Grant says, and both women look at him in surprise.
“Yes,” Rachel says.
I study them both for a moment, weighing up our options. I know why there are vampires here now. The mage wars were devastating for many of us, despite their name. Any other supernatural creatures nearby were caught in the crossfire of mage families warring with one another.
I know Maurice asked the Huntsman if we could intervene at the time. He was summarily shut down, and a few years later, all was done. A fae prince dead. As it turned out, perhaps we should have been involved all along.
But here? The original vampires perhaps came as refugees, but the fight for territory…
Those who were first here may well have been killed or displaced, and all of that would take some time to settle, too.
I am surprised the reach of the Hunters’ Council does not extend this far, or at least that Moreau did not hear of this and attempt to intervene, but if they did not know who to tell, then how would he uncover it at all?
“We believe the vampire Jakob has been luring in young vampires to kill on behalf of a high fae,” I say, and Margot shakes her head.
“Why would he do that? That doesn’t make sense.”
“Fae are seductive,” I reply. “She will have offered him whatever he desires in order to have him do her bidding.”
“Fae?” Rachel repeats. She is pale when she looks at Grant again. “You’re bait.”
Grant shrugs, cheeks reddening. “Yeah.”
“But you—You haven’t been a vampire long either.” Rachel turns her ire on me. “You’d let him put himself in danger? You took him away from us and then you—”
“Enough,” Grant snaps. I open my mouth, but he shakes his head. “No. It’s not Vlad’s fault, none of it. He saved me. And I volunteered to do this. Jakob isn’t going to kill me how he killed the others.”
“Do you know how he did it?” Margot asks flatly. Tension tightens her shoulders and Rachel’s hand slips from her wrist to thread their fingers together.
“No,” I reply. “We know the fledglings walked into the sun. We do not know why.”
“One of them was my friend’s little brother,” she replies. “He vanished three months ago. His friends knew he’d met Jakob, spent time with him. But we couldn’t get the police to investigate or anything like that. They said… They said he self-immolated. That was last month.”
Two months. The fae must have come straight here, more or less. There is something she wants from vampires in particular, but I cannot see how having these young vampires—especially one so freshly turned—walk out in public and burn is what she is trying to achieve.
“Why didn’t you come back?” Rachel asks.
Grant shifts uncomfortably on the bed. “I… I didn’t—”
“I did not allow it,” I say, and he snaps his mouth shut.
“What do you mean, allow it?” Rachel replies.
“Grant is my turn. My fledgling. And I was of the impression that it would be unsafe for him to be around humans for the first few decades of his new condition. Cutting off all contact makes things easier. He is not tempted to leave and put anyone in danger.”
“You just—” Rachel goes red now too, and it is Margot’s turn to tighten her grip. “You did take him away.”
“I did.”
It is no lie. I did. I took Grant far from his home—not that I knew where it was at the time—and kept him close. Will keep him close, for as long as he allows it.
“We found the car,” she says to Grant, and now anger drowns out the sadness and grief, clipped words making Grant flinch. “We had a funeral. Nothing in there, of course. We could never work out why. The car was all smashed up, so what, did you crawl into the woods to die?”
“Rachel,” Margot murmurs, not quite an admonishment but not far off. Grant blinks back tears and I get to my feet.
“That is quite enough. I would ask you both to leave now. We have no need of your assistance.”
“You’re going to stop him?” Margot asks.
I do not answer, and she sighs, but in contrast to Rachel, she now seems less angry than she did when she first entered the room.
She tugs Rachel from the room and once the door has closed behind them and I can sense that they are outside of the wards, I feed power into them again.
Only once they flare and settle do I turn back to Grant.
He stares at nothing, eyes wet, and I do not know how to approach him, so I do it slowly, hands slightly raised.
“Grant.”
His name, a murmur, startles him into alertness again. He swipes at his eyes and reaches back to grab a pillow before he leaps from the bed. “I-I can’t… I’m gonna sleep in the bathroom.”
He is gone before I can stop him, the door closing and then locking with a finality that hurts my heart.
I should have never brought him here. I should have never put him in such danger.