Chapter 29
CHAPTER 29
This chapter contains depictions of domestic abuse. My intent in the telling of these events was not gratuitous, but neither is it vague. You are the best keeper of your mind and deserve the opportunity to avoid content that may disrupt your health and enjoyment.
Errand time with Seamus alternated between killing pockets of “poachers” and taking notes in the back of the room while he did business with other leaders around town. The end of the year was apparently a big time for supernaturals. Seelie fey were at their weakest, while Unseelie fey were at their strongest—leading both to ask the master vampire to meet with them. There were assurances and gifts and discussions of the schedule for lavish social parties and who was going to be responsible for what when it came to dealing with the mundane authorities.
The most surprising meeting was the one with a ghoul patriarch. Zack’s family had always taught him that ghouls were the vulture version of humans and just as wild. But the family had gotten that wrong, too. Mr. Bander had a waxy skin tone, but he could’ve passed for human. A creepy human, but he was polite and seemed decent enough. The ghouls were how the coven disposed of bodies. Zack wasn’t sure if he was more disturbed about that or the fact that his first realization was how that was practical ecology. No part of a human went to waste, apparently, and there was less lingering evidence for police or hunters. It wasn’t the worst idea Zack had ever heard of. Yup. I’m definitely a vampire now .
They had just finished with a gathering of the Chicago-based lieutenants at a private club downtown. On the outside, it looked almost like a town house, but the inside was lush furnishings, fey and shifter servants, and willing humans. It was an exclusive donor house, only open to the elites that Seamus named. While everyone else at the meeting had had their pick of donors, two of the staff had brought Zack bound captives. He’d tried to keep from killing them, but he hadn’t pulled back in time.
Eating had been the last bit of the meeting, and Zack wiped at the corner of his mouth with his thumb as he followed Seamus down the steps to the street level. There was a spot of blood, and he felt more of it on his lips.
Seamus held out his hand for the key from the valet and handed Zack his handkerchief with the other. “I know you have these in a drawer at home.”
“I’ve never used them.” Zack took it and wiped at his mouth. He was almost sorry to let the blood dirty the cloth rather than find some way to consume it. A part of him tried to flinch at the thought, but he quelled it. “So I forget they exist.”
Seamus sighed. “Time was, a man didn’t go anywhere without them.”
“Wasn’t there a time before that where a man didn’t bother with them at all?” Zack asked. “You’re frigging ancient. You can’t tell me you’ve always had a handkerchief.”
“All right, I haven’t,” Seamus admitted. “However, I have gotten into the habit.”
“I’m sure you find them handy ,” Zack said.
Seamus grinned at him. “Did you just make a joke, Zackery?”
“I, uh, guess I did.” Zack finished cleaning off the blood and offered the handkerchief back to Seamus, but Seamus shook his head. Zack tucked it into his pocket instead.
The valet returned with their car, quickly stepping out of their way to hand it off to them. Zack slid into the passenger seat while Seamus rounded the front and took the driver’s seat.
As Seamus began to pull away from the curb, his phone vibrated. When he answered, the car’s Bluetooth took over and fed it through the speakers. A tight soprano voice said, “Master, I have troubling news to report.”
“Troubling news is never good from my financial advisor, Ingrid,” Seamus said. He told Zack, “Ingrid has stepped into the acting managerial role at XV Investments.”
That had been Dmitri’s firm. Zack nodded once since Seamus was acting like he was teaching him new information.
“Master, I … you have to know that I have been doing all I can here tonight,” Ingrid said.
“What happened?” Seamus demanded.
“Master, there was a break-in. We have some limited footage of who the intruders are, and we have greater evidence to their identity based on what was done, but honestly, we don’t know who all of the intruders were. We think it may have been a mix of humans and vampires, but we’re fairly certain who two of them were.”
“What did these intruders do?”
“Master, please, you have to remember that he was in charge here for a very long time, and we thought?—”
“Ingrid!”
Ingrid spoke in a soft whisper, but the words were brilliantly loud inside the sports car. “The servers were destroyed, and as far as we can tell, your investment accounts and the coven’s are now at a balance of six dollars and sixty-six cents. Combined.”
Seamus slammed on the brakes, and Zack was glad for his seat belt and supernatural healing. He would’ve had a massive bruise for days otherwise.
The temperature in the car dropped. Ice formed along the dashboard and inner side of the windshield. The desire to scream and punch flooded Zack’s mental mind frame so hard and fast that he went numb. That’s not my emotion. It’s his .
“What?” Seamus said slowly, drawing it out to two dagger-like syllables.
“Master, please understand, I have been going through the systems with a fine-tooth comb. I have been searching and repairing and seeking to block any such exploits. I have hired the bes?—”
“How. Did. This. Happen?” Seamus demanded.
“Dmitri was one of the intruders. He established these systems, master. He spent more time with them than anyone. I’ve been working to create an entirely new system rather than rely on his, but such development takes time and—” Ingrid paused. “Forgive me, master. Dmitri broke into our server room, used an exploit I had not yet uncovered, and sent your funds in a thousand different directions. He must have had this programmed from the beginning to have it happen so fast. And the destruction of our servers means we will have to rebuild our hardware as well as our software. We won’t be able to do business reliably until we have our digital security restored.”
“And the other vampire?” Seamus tightened his hands on the steering wheel.
“One of the attackers was able to walk through shadows and manipulate them. He bound several security guards in shadows to allow his team to escape,” Ingrid replied.
Seamus snarled and moved his foot from the break to the gas pedal. When Ingrid continued to sputter, he punched a button that ended the call. His rage poured through his bond to Zack, and Zack struggled to push it down. He didn’t care about the money. Didn’t care about the disrespect. His heart hurt with betrayal and a desire for vengeance. Not my heart. His .
Seamus gave no regard for stoplights or speed limits and swore in an ancient tongue at every car that was minutely in his way. Soon they were hurtling on the interstate and headed for the suburb where the mansion was.
A strange pitch was rising and falling in Zack’s ears. That’s not my heart racing in my ears. That’s … that’s language . The realization helped him break apart the sounds, though he had to reach for his vampiric power in order to understand the speed at which the words were moving. He struggled to figure out the individual words until he noticed that they weren’t in English. Zack only knew a little German and Latin from studying his family’s texts, and his understanding was of the written form, not the spoken. But he was pretty sure this didn’t sound like either of them.
Vampires didn’t suddenly learn new languages upon their rebirth. Zack put a hand to his temple. The rage and the sounds were threatening to overwhelm him, and fighting them began to give him a headache. He glanced at Seamus, but as far as he could tell, his lips weren’t moving. He wasn’t speaking the words. What the fuck?
The drive should have taken them almost an hour, even in the dead of night’s slower traffic, but Seamus made it to the mansion in less than twenty minutes. He screeched to a halt in front of the mansion’s front doors, threw the car into park, and then stormed out of the vehicle, leaving the car on and the door open.
An electric tang was on Zack’s tongue, and he staggered out of the car and up the stairs to the front door behind Seamus. Already, his sire was inside and screaming at the top of his voice, “ Anton !”
“That sounds like a problem,” Anton said in the distance.
Zack stopped just inside the door and held on to a side table with a vase of roses. The compounding pressure was building. He ached with the need to smash. To break. To rend. With a snarl, he shoved the vase off the side table. The crack of glass against the ground was satisfying but not nearly enough to sate the foreign desire.
“The traitorous piece of shit,” Seamus snarled under his breath, in an almost quiet echo in Zack’s ear. Then he raised his voice, “You traitorous piece of shit!”
“Love, I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Anton arrived in the front foyer with a zip of speed. His eyes glowed faintly red with his power.
Seamus stalked forward, grabbed Anton by the throat, and threw him through a door with enough force to break the wood and send him into the room beyond. He said with echoey softness, “How long have you been planning it?”
But then he repeated himself again. “How long have you been planning it?”
Zack scowled and started to take a step behind Seamus, but then he caught the scent of spilled mortal blood, and his stomach yearned for it. Sinking his fangs into tender flesh would be fantastic and might further satisfy the burning need in his bones that came from the rage. He followed the scent to a sitting room not terribly far down the north hallway.
Takashi leaned against a doorframe. His tawny skin was paler than usual, and his worried blue eyes had deep bags under them.
Beyond him, in the room, were two teenagers bound to chairs. One girl was crying; one was frantically attempting to yank her wrists upward. A third girl was on the floor and wasn’t breathing. There was blood on her mouth. All three were dressed in school uniforms for Versinal Academy.
Zack frowned.
I can’t believe he would betray me like this , the echoey Seamus voice in his head said.
Zack put a hand to his temple. He hasn’t. I … I don’t think anyway .
And there was that strange language again. In his ears. In his head.
“Zack?” Takashi asked.
“What the fuck have I come home to?” Zack demanded, his tone sharper than he meant it, but it vented a tiny fraction of the pressure in his skull. He started to push past Takashi.
Takashi put his arm across the doorway and blocked the entrance. Zack could have forced his way through, but there was a surface tension in his mind. The desire in him wanted to shred and rip. Giving in to it would be like slipping into that place he’d found when he’d dominated Takashi.
But this wasn’t the same at all. This didn’t feel like the calm he’d found when topping his lover. This was violent. Angry. Not something he would be in command of, but impulses that would ruin everything around him.
So he stayed outside in the hallway.
The pressure had to ease, though. He had to find a way to release more before it exploded and forced him into that malicious place. He shouted at the girl, “For fuck’s sake, you’re a fucking mage. Stop making the knots tighter, and use a thread of kinetic energy to undo them. If you can’t manage that, try burning or freezing the damn thing. Fucking idiot!”
Takashi glared at him. “What is wrong with you?”
“ Nothing ,” Zack snarled. He hissed.
Takashi straightened, and a pulse of cold anger came from him.
The coolness doused a minute fraction of the burning rage within him. Zack took a few steps backward and put his palms to his eyes. “Seamus. It’s Seamus. I can hear …”
“The fucking, no good, useless piece of shit! Eight hundred years! Eight hundred fucking years and he does this to me!” Seamus shouted with that echo quality.
But at the exact same time, Zack heard him snarling and growling. Seamus snapped, “I have loved you eight hundred years, and you do this to me? To us ?”
Confusion was better than the rage, and Zack clung to it because it was a life buoy of his own emotions in a tidal wave of desire that had nothing to do with him. He tried to focus on what he was hearing, but Seamus continued to have two voices at once.
Doesn’t make sense . Zack frowned and blinked, bringing his hands away.
“I will figure out his fucking game,” Seamus said while also saying, “How long have the two of you been planning to stab me in the back?”
“What did you just hear Seamus say?” Zack asked Takashi.
The pinch in Takashi’s brow shifted, anger morphing into concern. “He’s accusing Anton of betraying him.”
“My love, I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Anton said, the plea in his voice obvious even at a distance.
“He’s always been good at playing a part,” Seamus said in echo, and more loudly, at the same instant, “You have always sought greater immortality, and now that you’ve found it, you don’t need me anymore. Is that it?”
“What did Seamus exactly say?” Zack demanded of Takashi.
“‘You have always sought greater immortality, and now that you’ve found it, you don’t need me anymore. Is that it?’” Takashi repeated.
“And that’s all you heard?”
Takashi frowned more and stepped, reaching for Zack’s shoulder. “What’s wrong?”
“Love, please, explain what I’ve done. I’ve many skills, but I’m not a mind reader,” Anton said.
Mind reader. Am I one? Zack thought. Not possible .
“Zackery, this is not the time ,” the echoey Seamus voice said. But he was also diving into his argument with Anton, accusing him without explaining anything.
Zack glanced down the hall. Cold dread tempered the rage more. “Takashi, did you hear Seamus say my name?”
“No,” Takashi said.
Zack clenched his fist. Am I hearing your fucking thoughts?
I’ve been talking to you since you rose, you stupid little shit , Seamus replied.
“The bastard’s in my head,” Zack whispered.
Takashi’s eyes went wide, and Zack didn’t need his vampiric ability to understand the fear in his eyes. There was no safety, no place to hide, if Seamus could slip into his mind and read whatever he liked.
With Seamus’s rage filling him, Zack was filled with a burning fire of desire for violence. Seamus was providing the fuel and the flame already, but Zack’s anger was a burst of fresh oxygen, bringing even more life to the emotion roiling inside. He clenched his fists so hard that his fingernails cut into his palms, and blood dripped.
The scent of his blood was so different than the mortal girl’s. His smelled of earth, of a tang of ozone, like his scent of the grave did.
And suddenly aware of what he could smell, he picked out two other blood scents nearby. The mortal girl’s coppery blood. And Takashi’s grave scent. His blood was exposed nearby.
His blood is on the girl’s lips . Zack whirled his attention to Takashi. “Did you fucking turn her ?”
“We can talk about that later. What do you mean, Seamus is in your head?” Takashi asked.
“I can fucking hear his thoughts.” Zack shoved Takashi into the room.
The mortal teenage girl who had been yanking on her bonds had finally figured out how to use her magic and undone the rope on her right wrist. She was hurriedly trying to untie her other wrist. When Zack stalked through the door after Takashi, she fumbled with the knot, scrambling to get free.
She reeked of fear, less so than the girl who was still sobbing, but she was full of juicy blood and tangy fear, and she would taste so fucking good. But he’d killed already that night. And he didn’t want to keep killing. He didn’t want to hurt the world the way he was hurting inside. Carver had held up a mirror to him and told him to stop being a shithead like that. He was better than this.
Kill. Feed. I don’t fucking care , the Seamus voice—no, Seamus , said in his head.
I can hear you. You can hear me. You can feel my rage. My desires. Just as much as I feel yours . Zack ripped a painting from the wall and threw it at the corner. The frame shattered, and the canvas tore. And the destruction felt good. He hoped the damn thing cost a small fortune because he was going to find some measure of control in this. He was not going to be like Seamus. Not this part of him. Never this part .
“Get them free,” Zack growled.
Takashi said, “Zack?—”
“I don’t give a shit what was going on earlier. We’ll talk. But those two, they’re fucking leaving, and they’re doing it before Seamus gets done with whatever the fuck he’s doing.”
“The guards?—”
“I would love an excuse to break bones into pieces, and the guards are at least supernatural enough to heal,” Zack said. “There’s a car, right outside the front door. All they have to do is get in it. Help them get free. I can’t do it. I’ll … fuck, it’s taking everything I have, Takashi. All I want to do is break the world around me. Break anything.”
Takashi started to move toward him, but Zack used his superior agility to zip back out into the hall. He took another vase off another side table. All the fucking endless roses in the house would never cover up the rot that was Seamus’s soul. And yet he kept trying. Bastard . Zack threw the vase as hard as he could. Hardly a flicker of satisfaction passed through him as it sailed down the long hall and smashed into the wall at the end. What was that distance, a hundred and fifty feet? Two hundred?
Movement caught his attention, but the smell and press of the girls’ fear was too much like an echo of his own that he’d once seen before. It’d been forever ago. That first mission he’d been on, in Detroit. The girl he’d saved.
I wish strangling him would do something , Seamus thought.
Who?
Him .
Zack ran his hand through his hair, dimly aware of the smattering of his own blood going across his cheek. The girls were running down the hall, feet and hearts racing as they made their way toward the front door. The predatorial urge in Zack longed to catch one. To rip open a throat and drink deeply.
He started to stalk down the hallway. One of the girls saw him, and she let out a terrified yelp before turning forward and rushing to get ahead of her friend.
But as he followed them, as he sought to shove his mind to a place of control rather than the endless screaming rage that Seamus pumped into him, he brushed across a new psychic disturbance. Something deeper. Something just as primal as the killer in his skin and yet completely different.
It held a fear he recognized. One he’d felt long, long ago.
Rescue the damsel had been a stupid game. Children pretending to be their parents, pretending to hunt the monsters. But in order to hunt, there had to be the villains and the heroes, and for the heroes to have any meaning, they had to rescue someone. That was the point of the game. Save the helpless victim. Cal and Cousin Denny had always campaigned that the gender of the damsel shouldn’t matter. Damsel was just more fun to say than victim. Made it more of a game, they claimed. And if Cal or Denny got to pick, or were just loud enough to annoy their other cousins into agreeing, they’d choose Zack.
Zack had wanted so desperately to be one of the big kids, be like everyone else, to play with them, that he’d go along with it. He’d complain about getting tied up. Complain about getting chosen for the role of victim again. They’d still choose him when they could, and he’d still go along with it.
So he’d gotten good at sliding out of ropes.
So the “monsters” started leaving a “guard” with him.
The last time the game had been played, Denny had been the “guard.” Zack had been thirteen. And he had recently realized that he had a crush on a boy in his class, recently figured out that the reason he really liked Twilight so much was that he liked looking at everyone in the movie. That if they were all his age, the butterflies in his stomach would make more sense. In trying to understand, he’d talked to his family. Even to Cal. And Cal had told Denny.
And Denny. Well. Roger wasn’t wrong in thinking there were bigots in Zack’s family. Denny’s bigotry wasn’t limited to human versus supernaturals. While Zack was tied up, Denny started to hit him.
The way Seamus had killed him hadn’t been as terrifying as that afternoon. Zack had shoved that memory into the furthest corner of his mind so he didn’t have to think about it the next time he saw Denny at his grandparents’ house. When he saw him posting on the HIN. When he had to deal with him being always at the edge of his fucking life.
But he still knew the curve and taste of that fear he’d felt from the inside. The worst was that it wasn’t pure fear. In his mind’s eye, with fears and desires existing like ink on pages, the shape of the words was terror, but the color and touch of the ink was desire. Terror at what was happening, and yet, deep down, the longing for another’s faith. To be loved. To be forgiven.
Zack had been there. Had lived with his older cousins and brother mocking him and being upset with him because he’d “ruined” the game. Had them feel justified when he’d “screwed up” in Detroit and let a teenage vampire girl run. They had called him weak and a monster lover. And through all that pain, he had only wished his family to see him. To be accepted by them in the way he was accepting them.
Roger had once said that he hated what Zack’s family had done to him.
And here, in the last place he’d ever thought he’d be, Zack traced Anton’s mental page and felt the familiar shapes and inks, and God, no wonder Roger hates the Wrights and Gladwells for my sake . They weren’t this level of wrong, his fears of them not nearly so sharp, but fuck, it was too close. Too real. They had fucked him up in so many ways beyond teaching him to hate supernaturals.
And Seamus had fucked up Anton.
Rather than letting it break his heart, touching Anton’s fear pushed the fires of Seamus’s rage from Zack’s mind. His own fierce impulse to protect became a wall, then a fortress with an abyssal moat. The firestorm could rage outside. He would not cave to it.
The sound of flesh striking flesh, of a low grunt before a devastating kick, of the snap of bones and the sharp, stifled moan of pain was a song too familiar. As Zack drew closer to the room where Seamus and Anton were, he had to find the strength in his walls to keep from tumbling into the memory of his death. He teetered on the edge, and his panic was on the tip of his tongue.
Then he reached the broken door, and the world outside his mind took his full attention.
Seamus was bent over Anton, and he drove his fist downward into him. Over and over. Each strike was followed by a crunch. The smell of Anton’s blood overpowered the roses in the room and the hallway. Though he had supernatural healing, the seriousness and consistency of his wounds was hard for his body to heal. Zack had never seen a vampire bruise, but Anton had two black eyes. A broken nose. Worse.
Zack eased his way through the broken door and strode into the room.
“Do you have any idea what you’ve done to the plans I’ve been making?” Seamus demanded. “Answer me!”
“What plans?” Anton asked desperately. “You haven’t shared in so long. My love?—”
“Don’t call me that when you’ve betrayed everything we’ve been!” Seamus screamed as he hoisted Anton up and then tossed him like a rag doll across the room.
In that split second when they were separated, Zack filtered through data at an inhuman speed. Anton was known for being capricious. Out of all the vampires Zack had met, he had perhaps the most masks. He was violent and bloodthirsty, and he could wield the power of shadows and arcane forces. Yet there he remained crumpled on the floor without a hint that he was going to raise any of that formidable power against Seamus.
Memory combined with the information he’d gathered. Roger had killed a hunter on the stage at Devil’s Cove because violence was the only way to convince Seamus that he was a loyal vampire. He’d let Seamus kiss him there. He’d repeatedly said that he’d adopted the carefree persona because it was how he survived.
Roger had only been with Seamus for three hundred years.
Anton had been surviving him for eight hundred .
That didn’t excuse his evil. Zack was certain Anton had harmed Dmitri in worse ways than Seamus was visiting upon Anton now, and he definitely had something to do with the teenage girls in the other room.
But Anton suddenly made sense.
No wonder Roger had focused on his want to kill Seamus. He truly was the rot at the center of everything. Anton was likely past any point—or desire—for redemption, but Zack couldn’t help wondering what he would be without Seamus in his life.
Those thoughts passed in quick succession in a fraction of a second. As Seamus began to stalk toward Anton, Zack raced ahead of him, turned to face him, and stood directly in his path. Seamus snarled at him. His face was twisted with so much anger that he finally looked like the monster he was. He swung at Zack.
Seamus had been burning through the energy he’d taken that night.
Zack hadn’t. He saw the punch coming in almost slow motion and easily slid out of the way. The next was simple to dodge as well. On Seamus’s third attempt, Zack grabbed his wrist tightly and then slammed his hand against his chest. Seamus groaned as Zack dislocated his arm. But the monster’s pain didn’t matter. Zack spun him by his injured arm and then threw him to the opposite of the room.
The desire to rend was turning toward him.
I don’t know why you’re suddenly pissed off, Carver had said after Zack had been cruel to him, but I know it’s not because I tried to help you get up from a fall. And if it is, you’re the one who can fuck off . Had Seamus seen Zack’s desire to lash out at others when he was pissed? Had he assumed that was the same as what he did to others? Was that why he thought Zack would make a good son? I wish Carver was alive so I could thank him for stopping me from turning into a bigger asshole .
Seamus stood and shoved his arm back into place. “You have one opportunity to step out of my way, Zackery.”
“Oh, grow the fuck up,” Zack snapped. He gestured at Anton on the floor behind him. “I’m a newbie, and I can tell that the only desire he’s feeling right now is one to please you. He wasn’t the one who stole your money.”
“Money?” Anton asked. He was dazed, slowly sitting up while holding on to the wall behind him.
“The vampire who helped Dmitri walked through shadows.” Seamus pointed at Anton. “That is the only bastard in North America who can do it.”
“Not the only one, technically,” Takashi said dryly. He was standing on the other side of the ruined door, remaining in the hallway. “I can think of a half dozen others. A charming five-hundred-year-old vampire in Mexico City can cross a hundred miles in minutes.”
Seamus hissed at him.
Zack watched Seamus for any hint he might move toward Takashi. “He has a point. Others are capable.”
“ Others didn’t release Dmitri from his cell.”
“It was a bargain, my love,” Anton said. “Roger had come for Zack and Takashi, but I wanted to see what he would choose. He chose Dmitri. And my love, remember, he has manipulated shadows before.”
“So you want me to believe that Roger, of all the pathetic fledglings in the world, has somehow gained this power?” Seamus snapped.
Takashi straightened, all of his concern going too quickly to an expressionless mask.
“What was that?” Seamus took one step toward him.
Zack darted to stand in front of Takashi.
With a growl, Seamus demanded around Zack to Takashi, “What did you think of?”
“Halloween,” Takashi murmured. “For a split second, I could have sworn Roger wasn’t on the balcony with you. But I took it for a flicker of movement. Something minute that I couldn’t see from across the room.”
“I thought that I had blinked,” Seamus muttered. He was stunned, the desire for violent vengeance fading to a dull blaze rather than an inferno. “He slipped my grasp through calling on darkness.”
So Roger could have been the one helping Dmitri . Zack bit his bottom lip as soon as the thought came to mind.
Seamus nodded once, though he seemed lost in distraction. “Dmitri and Roger. Three hundred years, and now they choose to defy me. Why now ?”
“Maybe they finally got tired of your abusive bullshit,” Zack replied hotly.
“Do not test me, boy.” Seamus pointed his finger at Zack. “I can end you as easily as I brought you into your new life.”
“So much for never throwing me away,” Zack said.
Seamus took an angry step toward Zack.
Zack shifted his weight, subtly sliding into a better stance and narrowing the area Seamus could attack.
“My love,” Anton called. Though he was only across the room, he seemed to be miles away from the tension growing between Zack and Seamus. A sweet brush of calming desire took over the page in Zack’s mind. Judging from how Seamus startled, he felt it, too. Gingerly, Anton moved toward them, his eyes glowing brighter from the use of his power. “I know they took our money, but so what if they ruined a few short-term plans?”
With a groan, Seamus closed his eyes and rolled his shoulders. Zack could feel the way the desire was coating Seamus’s anger, like a blanket over a flame. Was that how Anton had survived? He’d become a master at taming Seamus’s desires for violence?
While Anton was focusing on manipulating Seamus’s emotions, Zack had an easier time reading his connection to his sire. Seamus was resisting. But through their bond, Zack soaked the soothing desire Anton emanated and then redoubled it back toward Seamus.
Seamus opened his eyes and glared at Zack, but he had only a flicker of heat. The burning inferno was snuffed out. “Clever, but if the two of you don’t stop, I will introduce your hearts to silver blades.”
The glow in Anton’s gaze dimmed to his normal red irises. He folded his emotions out of Zack’s easy view, effectively closing the book of his mind. But Zack glanced one last fear in huge letters. Will he kill me?
That might become useful information, but Zack couldn’t linger on any thought or scheme. If he did, Seamus could hear him. There has to be some way to block him . Zack winced.
“Yes, I heard that,” Seamus replied. “I spend most of my time blocking you, Zackery. I would appreciate it if you put in a little effort on your side.”
“You’re that closely bonded?” Anton asked.
“Yes.” Seamus picked up a chair that had been overturned during his rampage. Apparently, it had taken too much damage because one of the legs fell off as he attempted to return it to its place. He sighed with disappointment. “I had high hopes for what Zackery and I might accomplish, but all of that will burn.”
“I don’t understand why you’re filled with such dread, my love,” Anton said.
Zack could feel the zing of Seamus’s fear, though he didn’t understand the specifics of it. But the general understanding he could pick up on. “You’re afraid of something big. Powerful. Who have you pissed off?”
“No one. Recently.” Seamus moved over to a high-back chair and sat down. He ran his hand through his light brown hair, but he didn’t speak until he dropped his hand back into his lap. “Zackery has the correct idea in his notes. I do want to declare a kingdom, but not out of greed. A war is on the horizon, and our kind must unite. We need one leader. One cause. All of this bickering over territory is merely a distraction to keep us from our real enemy. I will put an end to the divisive squabbles for our species’ protection.”
“You were planning on bankrolling a war,” Zack said. “Humanity will never?—”
“Humanity is food and hardly a challenge. Do you think their petty concerns and inability to perceive the threat we are to them is an accident? Myself and other elder supernaturals have spent centuries guiding them to the state they’re in now. It wasn’t even hard to use mankind’s greed against itself,” Seamus said. He met Zack’s gaze. “Our true enemies are the dragons.”