Chapter 106
Ghoul
A few nights ago
“Iwas wondering when you four good-for-nothings would show up.” I’m sitting in a back room of Club Viper, enjoying a joint and my own company when four dark creatures slink into the room like thieves on a heist.
“It’s long past time that we spoke,” Scythe says in that magnificent rasp, his silver hair reflecting the low downlights of the room.
“I’m pouring a drink.” Xander says it like he hates the idea, but he’s quick to stride to the well-stocked alcohol cabinet in the corner, those eyes lighting it up on high beam. “Anyone want one?”
“Are you going to poison it, dragon?” I drawl, scanning the four of them.
“That’s your job, I believe.”
I smirk. “Touché.”
“We know what our regina knows,” Lyle says, in his usual king-of-the-jungle style, straightening his tie. “We know Mace wishes to massacre the beast population.”
“We are also looking for a way to stop him,” Xander says, offering me a whiskey glass dangling between his fingers. I don’t waste time, taking it from him and downing the golden liquid in one go. “You, him, it’s hard to fucking know these days.”
The four of them stare at me like they’re waiting for something. But I would know my regina’s venom in any life. Her basilisk venom has finally matured in full force. It burns as it absorbs into my system, proud and fierce. I crack my neck.
Finally. I nod to the others.
“I believe,” Scythe begins. “That you tried to save Sabrina at Drakos House. You locked her into the cadaver drawers for her own safety didn’t you? No one else could get to her once she was there.”
I let the question hang in time and space.
“Many choices were taken from me,” I drawl. “Yet I maintained the upper hand at each turn. Mace hated me for it but he also had no choice. I am his only hope.”
“That’s hardly an answer,” Lyle mutters.
Scythe pins me with those shark eyes. “You maintained a watch over Sabrina at Clawson House. You made sure to follow her there so the Clawsons wouldn’t do what they wanted to her. You knew how important she is to your regina.”
“And before that,” Savage growls. “You fed our regina when she had no food. You did that over and over again.”
“And at Drakos House,” Xander says. “You stayed close the entire time to make sure nothing terrible did actually happen to her. You led the entire thing, simultaneously keeping her as safe as was possible while under the blood oath.”
“And then there’s Raquel,” Savage says. “You took them when you found them at the medical centre and somehow…you knew the Silver Tails were missing a regus.”
“We don’t have time for this,” I say, bored. “I don’t need my own genius repeated to me. Or my failures, as it were. I couldn’t stop Flores Drakos from doing what he did, that could have been stopped by you.” I allow my power to gather behind my eyes as I stare down the dragon.
“Xander’s mark has turned black,” Lyle says, trying to assess me for my sanity. “He thinks he needs to die for what he did.”
I glare at the dragon where he leans against the wall. “Perhaps he does. But perhaps you all do for your transgressions against our regina.”
“We’ve made up for it!” Savage exclaims from where he’s been squatting by the door like a puppy guarding a stick.
“Are you so sure about that, wolf?” I snarl. “Are you so sure that anything could make up for you trying to kill her? Or should I recount the time you took her to Mace Naga for execution?”
“Funnily enough, Savage wasn’t there,” Lyle says. “But since we’re talking freely, you were.”
“I’ve been here,” I say smugly. “I’ve watched over her before you even knew of her existence, lion. While you were being paid handsomely for a farce of a job and she suffered in poverty.” Lyle’s growl expands through the room.
“Enough,” Xander says. “We are here to talk about the future.”
I don’t miss a beat. “The one without you in it?”
“Without you either, by the looks of it,” Xander says. “Will your little shadow twister kill you too? You don’t even know your limits. Or was that first incompetence planned?”
I scoff. “You know nothing.”
“I know your shadow vortex needs a counter-power of equivalent force to reverse it.”
So they’d figured it out. I try not to show my surprise, baring my fangs at him instead. “And you figure that you’ll be the one to do it?”
“How would a person even do this?” Lyle asks. “An exchange of power.”
Xander catches my eye. “I asked…someone about that. There would need to be an outward push of my power. All of it. At once.”
“All of it?” Lyle says aghast. That would—”
“Kill me, yes,” Xander says. The black mark on his neck seems to suck in the light from all around it.
I tilt my head back and laugh.