Chapter 28 #2
My blanket spun around in the sudsy water, so I left the washing machine to do its work so I could flee to the safety of my bedroom. I was changing. I had already changed. Nico was probably right to worry about me, because alone in the dark, I had no idea how to find my old self again.
* * *
Lazaro Reyes
What else in my life was going to crash down around me?
“Santos, this is Lazaro, your son. Call me back. We need to talk.” I pressed my phone’s screen to end the call, then threw myself back into my office chair to cease my frantic pacing.
My father was no longer talking to me. Any communication came through Ernest now, and the family was starting to talk.
Rumors were already spreading beyond the Reyes name, into the more distant outer circles of the organization.
It was getting harder to hide that I’d been left out in the cold.
While others in the family would be able to seek out all the riches and glory and power they could dream of, I would spend my eternity cleaning up the dead bodies they piled up to reach such heights.
And each year that passed, six vampire bastards in an unmarked building outside of town were learning to control their basest impulses so they could one day fight to be worthy of working at Santos’ side.
But it couldn’t end like this. In two nights, I would be turning Selena into one of us.
I would be responsible for the union between vampires and witches.
And if the nutty Castillo family could just decide on a second auspicious date, I’d be marrying the woman, too.
Santos was still trusting me with this new development in family power.
That had to mean something for my future.
It had been the last hope I was clinging to before I’d gotten the call tonight that sounded like my second death.
Gustavo Narvaez and Alexander Reyes had both gone missing in the course of the same night.
We were doing a full organizational check-in to see if others had gotten caught up in this scheme as well.
And though I didn’t share my theory with anyone, I knew that my two associates were dead and gone, and of course I knew who was responsible.
One night four years ago, cleaning up Peter Fenton’s mess on some worthless farm had earned me an eternity of trouble.
My office phone lit up once more, and I almost ignored it.
My hand hovered over it, frozen by my first thought.
Please don’t be Selena. How long had I been avoiding her, without even realizing it?
I loved her. I would be spending eternity with her.
But if I had to listen to her insipid family drama, her dull literature studies, her stars and tarot cards and spells, I’d drain her dry before her ridiculous ceremony.
She’d sent out invitations, and I’d heard the condescending jokes vampires were whispering — the special little human girl’s invited us to her rebirthday party.
I picked up the phone. “Peter Fenton is here to see you, Mr. Reyes.” It was sobering to prefer his arrival to my own fiancée’s. At least I could get my aggression out on Peter.
“Hey, brother.” He swaggered his way across my office with a bottle of alcohol in his hand, and the chair squeaked against the floor when he slammed his full weight into it. “Holy Hell, you look like shit. Here, you need this more than I do.”
He put the bottle in the middle of my desk, and I glared at it. Hell of a gift. I stood and snatched it up, then threw it against the wall where it dented the drywall and shattered. Peter yelped and brought his legs up in instinctive defense.
“Where the hell have you been, Peter? Alexander and Gustavo are dead.”
“What the fuck!” He was surprisingly quick at the mental math. “You think I did it or something? I haven’t seen them since…”
“I think you told your Hunter bitch, and she went after them,” I yelled, and the echo in the empty, mostly unfurnished office made me cringe. I didn’t yell. I didn’t scream. I was closing in on 200 years of being a vampire. How had my life become so pathetic, like that of a human again?
“You think I’ve got some vampire hunter on the side and I’m feeding them information?”
It dawned on me that those Hunters had stolen Peter’s memories. If he’d told his rotten human the names of the vampires who had helped clean up his accidental kill, he wouldn’t even remember it. The irony was verging on cosmic. I had to laugh as I crumpled back into my chair.
“You’re a fucking idiot.”
“And you’re as screwy as your fucking old man.” He frowned and looked away at the wall.
I was on the other side of the desk with my hand around his throat before I could stop myself. “What do you mean by that?” I held on tight, keeping him in the chair while he thrashed. “What do you know about my father?”
“Everyone fucking knows!” he yelled even through the chokehold. I loosened it, and he stood to get too close to my face. “I’ve seen it myself. He’s losing it, man. Asked me to start turning humans into vampires. As if I’d fucking do that?”
“When?” Suddenly Peter wasn’t close enough. I could practically peer through the black holes of his eyes into his underperforming brain. Santos was avoiding me, but meeting with his worthless bastard?
“A couple weeks ago?” He shrugged and backed down, stepping away for space.
I held myself up with a hand on my desk.
“You’ve known, too. The vampires you showed me, his new kiddies locked in jail?
Come on, Laz. Even the scum of the vampire world is talking about the king losing his crown.
Half of it is fantasy, of course, but even I wonder.
Shit, and if Alex and Gus are gone…” He walked around the empty spaces of my office. “It makes the old man look weak.”
Santos had been a powerful vampire for 400 years, since the beginnings of the new world of vampires in Santa Fe. Bottom feeders who spent their nights in seedy bars could talk all they wanted. But I was a Reyes. I had to do something. The Hunter had made us look weak. Even Peter could see that.
I had to kill her. If I were younger and less powerful, I would have already been out there hunting her down.
I was in a precarious situation, though.
I’d made my promise to Diana Hunter, and I didn’t want to sour that relationship.
Even she had to understand the line her murderous daughter had crossed, though.
I’d lost a cousin. Friends. Associates. Family.
Someone had to pay, and I wanted it to be that infuriating failed Hunter.
Her blood would be so sweet after denying myself for this long.
The night of Selena’s turning. There was something so stunningly romantic about draining one woman who infuriated me, putting her into the ground forever, just as the woman I loved ascended.
And I could make it hurt. She’d killed Alexander and Gustavo in her foolhardy quest for revenge, and I couldn’t begin to comprehend how the two of them, both nearing 100 years of age, managed to die in one night to a half-strength Hunter.
She’d gotten it all wrong, though. It wasn’t the easy, satisfying answer she’d chased and swallowed.
It had been her own friend who had killed her lover, the addled fool thumping about in my office now.
I could whisper that delicious while I dipped her low to expose her neck.
I could watch the deceptively strong woman crumble, and I could taste her tears before her blood.
Ah, but then she’d die so soon, I wouldn’t be able to savor it. What a pity.
“So…”
“Get the fuck out of here, Peter.” I had calls to make. I didn’t care what he did tonight without a body to bury. I ignored whatever sniveling response he came up with, so he got up and left with the same irritating energy he’d brought in with him.
Without his distracting presence, I got to work.
* * *
Lazaro Reyes