Chapter 16
As we were finishing our food, Davin grabbed his phone off the nightstand and then pressed a few buttons before holding it to his ear. A moment later, there was a tinny greeting.
Oh heck, how could I have forgotten?
Clearly, though, Davin had not, and he was smiling as he said, “Olive. How’re the daughter-in-law and grandbaby?” She gushed about her healthy adorable new granddaughter for a moment while Davin listened, looking like this was his favorite conversation ever.
After she wound down, she promised that while she was running late, she was definitely going to be in after all.
“It’s fine if you want to take the day and spend it with your family,” he assured her. “I can call Arthur and ask him to put a note on the door saying we’re going to be closed. Flynn and I have had an emergency come up, and I’m afraid we’re going to be out for . . . not just today, but a few days.”
They spent a few minutes talking about whether there was a point in her staying in the office if we weren’t working, and whether she should call and reschedule any installations, but my attention drifted back to the room.
My childhood bedroom. It was a weird place to be in my thirties.
It was also too bad I’d taken all my clothes with me when I’d moved out. We didn’t have any clothes to change into, because we hadn’t been expecting this drama and hadn’t thought to bring bags. Oh well. One re-wear without washing wasn’t going to kill anyone.
The vamps probably wouldn’t even notice the difference.
When he got off the phone with Olive, Davin didn’t even hesitate to put his dirty clothes back on, so apparently he’d thought it through himself and come to the same conclusion as I had.
By the time we got downstairs after eating, I was almost ready to walk away from the whole mess.
My mother had kept me away from vamps for the most part, after all, so when they were everywhere, I was instilled with the urge to go back to my room.
Just, the room we’d slept in the night before? That wasn’t really my room anymore.
When I saw Caspian in the dining room, though, I changed my mind.
Caspian was . . . well, if there had been boy bands in Bronze Age Mesopotamia, I figured Caspian had been in one.
He was under five and a half feet tall, slender, and had that slinky movement of ancient vampires and dancers the world over.
His skin was naturally golden brown, convenient for him since vampires couldn’t tan, and his hair was that shade of black that was almost blue.
All in all, the man was ridiculously good looking, but also, it was in the most non-threatening way a person could be, small and slender and lithe rather than hulking or brooding.
He smiled when he saw me, and stood immediately, his voice rising above everyone else in the room. “Flynn! How good to see you.”
I went into the room of dangerous predators, smiling at him, and when he came over and hugged me, I didn’t hesitate to return the gesture. He was tiny and cold, but well, he was a regular vampire, not like Davin.
Though maybe “regular” was the wrong word, since if there was a vampire in the world older than my mother, it was him.
I wondered how many names he’d been through over the years.
He didn’t pay any mind to the other vamps sitting around the dining room watching him with avid eyes, and led me out into the hallway.
“How have you been?” His accent was smooth and perfectly Broadcast American, in that way that said it was learned, practiced.
No doubt his English was better than mine.
I wasn’t especially embarrassed about it in this case; I suspected Caspian had forgotten more languages in his lifetime than most linguists ever knew.
“I’m okay. I mean, weird summer, you know?”
He laughed at that. “You are the only man I’ve ever met who could learn he was a dragon and flippantly refer to it as a ‘weird summer.’ But good. I am pleased this isn’t bothering you.”
“It’s better to know than wonder forever.” While I didn’t want to say my mother had made a mistake in not telling me, in some ways I wished she had. It had been sensible of her to keep quiet, and it had likely protected me. But not knowing had made other things harder, too.
Caspian nodded at that as he led me up the stairs toward the bedrooms. Odd that he would go there. What was he planning? “I understand you’re in a difficult situation here,” he said, and looked at me as though . . . as though I would have some compelling response.
“I’m not, though. I think you’re in a more difficult situation than I am. These dragons are a threat to me. I have to stop them. But you . . .”
A slow smile spread across his face, and he turned to knock on . . . on my mother’s bedroom door. Yikes.
My mother’s voice was crisp and authoritative as it answered. “Come in, Caspian. Flynn. Davin.”
Of course. The three of us and only the three of us.
Caspian didn’t hesitate, simply opened the door and flowed his way inside like he was made of water and not skin and bones. “Fiona,” he said to her. “It’s quite the posse you’ve gathered down there.”
“I mean to protect what’s mine,” was her surprisingly terse answer.
“And I have no doubt your people will be happy to help protect and fortify your position. It’s an excellent idea, and I’ve been telling you for years that you should improve security around your home.
” He paused, and they locked gazes, in some kind of silent discussion I couldn’t begin to understand.
For the first time I’d ever witnessed, my mother looked away first.
Caspian, without any kind of crowing—of course—turned to my father. “Tell me, where were you being held?”
My father, who was sitting up in Mother’s bed, his back supported by what seemed to be a hundred pillows, seemed chagrined, somehow. Did he not remember? “It’s . . . in the North Sea. I couldn’t give you coordinates, but I’m sure of that much. Flew over the North Pole to get here.”
Caspian nodded, not seeming the least bit surprised or bothered.
“I’ll arrange for satellite photos. I’m sure someone got clear pictures, and we’ll be able to locate it.
” He glanced at my mother, but in the end, turned to me instead of her.
What the hell was happening? “I would be happy to accompany you to handle this situation, but that is a personal matter, my help. The senate itself will do nothing.”
From across the room, I could hear my mother grinding her teeth.
Shit.
“I’ll go,” my father announced, like that was remotely an option. He hadn’t even been able to walk from the car into the house yesterday.
I just rolled my eyes at that, turning to Caspian. “I appreciate the offer. I really do. I think . . . Sexton will want to go. He’s not much of a fighter, but his father might be alive out there, and he cares about that.”
For the first time ever, Davin had my back when it came to Sexton’s rehabilitation. “He will. It’s one of the only things I’ve ever seen him have unguarded feelings about.”
“So that makes four of us,” Caspian said, and then once again turned to my mother as she opened her mouth. “Fiona.”
“Qazvin,” she responded, eyes narrowed, glaring at him as I’d rarely seen her do.
He sighed, and it was weirdly . . . paternal? Caspian was not related to my mother. They could hardly have looked less alike.
Unless . . . holy shit, wait, had Caspian . . . was he her sire?
“You know that in almost every situation, I will support a person looking for justice on behalf of their family.” Then he reached out and put a hand on my shoulder.
“But you aren’t alone anymore. Your family has their own voice, and their own ability to seek justice for themselves.
And you have made a promise. You are here.
You protect Los Angeles. You asked for this, and we were grateful you did.
You are the best senator any city in the world has.
But it also means that this time, you cannot be a part of something. ”
Oh. Oh shit.
It was part of the senate’s rules; rules that Mother had agreed to follow with her election to the position.
She wasn’t allowed to leave Los Angeles except for reasons the senate deemed acceptable.
Apparently, hunting and killing some dragons who had kidnapped your man wasn’t an acceptable reason to go halfway around the world.
“But I can,” my father reiterated.
I sighed and looked down at him. “You can barely sit up in bed.”
At the same time, my mother said, “You almost choked on soup this morning.”
He . . . pouted.
Fuck me, did I look like that when people didn’t give me my way?
The way Davin started laughing implied that the answer was yes.
I turned to look at Caspian, and he was valiantly keeping a straight face, but his eyes were practically glowing with amusement.
“Never have I met another person who was more clearly a blend of his parents than you, Flynn Knight. Or will it be Flynn Devlin-Knight now?” Then he glanced behind me, and lifted a brow.
“Or perhaps we’ll wait and it will be Flynn Byrne. ”
I blinked, then frowned. “That sounds awful.”
“You can get married without changing your name,” Davin was quick to point out, wrapping an arm around me. “It can just stay Knight and Byrne.”
“I would never take anything from Fiona,” my father promised. “It should just be Knight. She did all the hard work of raising a son.”
She rolled her eyes, but then she sat down next to him and started fussing with his pillows and blankets, making sure everything was just so. I remembered it well from whenever I’d been sick as a kid.
“Since neither of you will be going to any facility in the North Sea,” Caspian started, and my mother whipped around to glare at him.
“My son—”
“Whom you’ve raised to be a capable adult who makes his own decisions,” he continued, then stopped and looked at her, as though waiting for her to finish the sentence.
They stared at each other for another moment, before she huffed and looked away. To me. “Don’t you go anywhere right now.”
“Sure,” I agreed, because well, at the very least I needed a shower and a change of clothes before I went traipsing off to the North Sea.
Good thing I had a passport, even if I’d never needed it before.
My mother turned back to Caspian and narrowed her eyes.
“If anything happens to him, I will abandon my post. I will go to the fucking North Sea or anywhere else I find they are, and I will burn it to the ground. I will kill every dragon ever born.” My father cleared his throat, and without looking at him, she reached over and ran her fingernails through his hair.
“Except you, dear. And Sexton, I suppose. Maybe.”
“Well, Sexton’s coming with us, I think,” I hedged. “So I guess you’d be avenging him too, if we go get killed. Also, that means we need to give him a little time to recover.” I glanced over at Caspian, wincing. “I hope that’s okay.”
He waved me off. “There’s no rush on my part.
I have a bit of research to do beforehand anyway, but I’ll be here in town for a few days if you’re ready soon, and we’ll head to Scotland when you’re ready.
I do think faster would be better, given this notion of completing a machine by fueling it with dragons.
If they’re alive now, I doubt they will be once this is done.
No offense to your cousin, but maybe he can’t make it in time. ”
It was an excellent point, and one I would have to discuss with Sexton. He wasn’t ready to go rushing off to a fight, but also, time was definitely of the essence.
Still, these people had been stealing the energy of dragons for who knew how long. We couldn’t go in at anything but full strength, if we wanted to beat them. Two vampires and a dragon could beat two dragons, right?
My raven friend’s words about the rock paper scissors of the supernatural world came back to me, and I worried for Davin and Caspian.
But . . . one was Davin, so I’d protect him, and the other was Caspian. No one could kill him. Could they?