Soren
“Have you seen Calliope?” Lazarus asks, barging into my office like he owns it. He does in a way.
Head resting on the back of the chair I swing around to look at him. He looks flustered.
“No.” I wave my hand up and down his body. “What’s with you?”
“I took a call.” He begins pacing. Which I find interesting. “Left her then got this feeling. I went back to my office and she was gone.”
“Alright. Well let’s walk through it.” He’s really panicked. I’ve never seen him so flustered and it’s making me nervous because I can feel his heart rate picking up and then crashing with his emotions. “What happened.”
“We had sex,” he blurts out still pacing. “On my desk, we had sex.” He tugs at the strands of his hair.
“Why is that a problem?”
He glares at me. “It isn’t.”
Vex crashes through the door. “Oops.” He laughs a little. “I feel great in this body.” He hops around like a rabbit.
“Door.” I spin in my chair embracing the insanity.
Vex kicks it closed. “What’s wrong with you?” he asks Lazarus and when he doesn’t reply fast enough, he asks me, “What’s wrong with him?”
“He had sex with Callie.” I spin again popping a dried blueberry in my mouth.
“Oh was it bad?” Vex asks carefully, leaning against a wall.
Lazarus glares at Vex before he dismisses him and continues his pacing. “Why would she leave?”
“Bad sex then.” Vex tsks under his breath. “You know if you slow the roll, it drives a girl wild.”
“Shut up, Vex,” Lazarus mutters.
“Did you get off?” Vex twists up his face. I cannot hide my chuckle. Lazarus looks like Vex just slapped his ass. “Oh, ED? Damn I did not know we could get that. Hey,” he snaps his fingers and looks at me. “If a guy takes Viagra and we sip him, does that help?”
“Oh yes the lounge has that option.” I chuckle at Lazarus who pauses his lip twitching a bit. “Okay. She was in the office.”
Lazarus is absolutely over our bullshit right now.
“After you two were finished, she just... left?” I ask seriously because Lazarus is wearing his serious face. Also Lazarus is absolutely freaking out.
“No, I took a call from my mother. Fifteen minutes, maybe twenty. When I came back, she was gone.” Lazarus finally stops pacing, his hand frozen mid-air. “It’s right there.”
Vex pushes off the wall. “Oh, Ophie actually saw her. She came by the garage to pick up her car.”
I can’t help my pout. “Damn I loved driving her around.”
Lazarus and I exchange a look. Something feels off. A prickling sensation crawls up my spine. Either that or I’m picking up on Lazarus’s worry. But I’m not so sure about that. I stop spinning and sit up.
“Did she say where she was going?” Lazarus asks, his voice tight.
Vex shrugs. “Nope. Just grabbed her keys and bounced. Seemed kind of... I don’t know, determined? At least that is what Ophie said.”
The three of us fall silent.
“Chocolate.” Lazarus stops, tilts his head, then all the color drains from his face. “Oh gods.”
“Nope I do not like that.” I stand up already heading to the door because if he remembered something it’s not good. “Chocolate?”
“What the fuck did chocolate do to anyone?” Vex follows behind us as we head for the elevators.
“It’s not the chocolate.” He jams his finger on the button repeatedly. “It’s where I hid the chocolate.” He tugs on the strands of his hair. “I’m a fucking fool.”
“As amusing as this is to watch.” I slap his finger when he tries to press the button again. “Where did you hide the chocolates?”
The elevator dings open and Lazarus steps inside with the two of us on his heels. He’s quiet, probably trying to figure out how to word something that is going to piss us off.
“My translation books,” he says waiting until the elevator doors close so we can’t run off.
I stare at him. The words not really registering. Because he couldn’t have been that foolish to hide it there. There is no way. And yet he stands in the corner of the elevator not meeting my gaze and pressing against the corner as tight as he can get.
“You can’t be—”
“I am, serious,” he says. “I just need to confirm.”
“I need the cliff notes.” Vex stands in front of the doors, his arms crossed and his eyes burning holes into Lazarus.
“About a few hundred years ago, when we first found the tablet, Lazarus began to translate it,” I say, my words dull and monotone.
Because I have to shut all of my feelings out right now.
If I feel them, I might kill Lazarus and thus me and I don’t want to die.
Not yet. Not when I’ve just found Callie. “Am I correct?”
“How fucking old are you?” Vex asks.
“He won’t say,” I answer for him which earns me the attention of our sire. Our coven leader. “Will you?”
Lazarus just grinds his jaw.
“What is in the translation booklet?” Vex asks.
“Yeah, what’s in there, Lazarus?”
“The full transcription.” He swallows still not meeting my gaze. “The full story my mother gave me as a bedtime story. I wrote it all down.”
“Dear gods.” I can’t help myself as I thud against the back of the elevator. My legs threatening to give out.
All I can think about is Calliope and everyone who let her down and we are about to be just another let down in her life.
“So you believe Callie found this?” Vex says, his voice barely controlled. The edge of who he is sitting just under the surface. His eyes glow, his fangs pierce his lips.
“Vex.” I stand up. “Control.”
“This is control.” His eyes never waver from glaring at Lazarus. “Isn’t it, Lazarus? You can feel that.”
“I feel your anger and Soren’s.” Lazarus licks his lips as the elevator doors open.
I ignore them both and step out my mind only focused on whether or not Callie actually found that book. Whether she read it. Until I have confirmation then I won’t try to kill him.
“You think she found it?” Vex catches up to me. I look back finding Lazarus gone.
“Yeah. I do.” I push through the office door and look around. Seeing everything in its place. And I know Lazarus’s office like the back of my hand. At least I did. Once upon a time.
I thought I knew Lazarus well. And that Lazarus never would have made a mistake like this.
And yet as the world pools into slow motion and the closer I get to that hiding place I just know. I know with every fiber of my soul that the booklet is gone. I tug out the book in front and find the bag of bite-sized candy.
No book.
I toss the other book on the floor. My world crushing down around me.
No.
I toss another. Then another. And another. Until they lay around me.
“It’s gone.” Lazarus stands at the doorway, his eyes rimmed with a red he doesn’t deserve to feel.
I attack. I’ve never in all my years hit my maker.
I do now.
My fist connects with his jaw, the crack echoing through the office. Lazarus doesn’t block it. Doesn’t even try. He just takes it, his head snapping sideways with the impact.
“YOU IDIOT!” I scream, landing another blow. “YOU FUCKING IDIOT!”
Vex grabs me from behind, arms locking around my chest. “Soren! Stop! You’ll kill yourself if you kill him!”
I struggle against him, my vision blurring with rage. “You don’t understand what he’s done!”
Lazarus straightens up, a thin line of blood trickling from the corner of his mouth. “Let him go, Vex.”
“You sure about that?” Vex asks, his grip loosening slightly.
“He’s right to be angry.” Lazarus wipes the blood away with his thumb. “I was careless. Stupid.”
I shove Vex away and stalk toward Lazarus, stopping just inches from his face. “She’s going to read it. She’s going to know everything. The truth about what we are. What you did.”
“I know.” His voice is barely a whisper.
“Do you?” I hiss. “Do you really understand what this means? She’ll hate us. She’ll hate you. And if she tells anyone—”
“She won’t.” Lazarus’s eyes meet mine, finally. “She’ll come to me first.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I do.” Something shifts in his expression. Something I haven’t seen in centuries. Fear. Not the fear of death or pain, but the fear of losing someone he loves.
He loves her.
“She’s going to know,” I repeat.
“Isn’t that what we want?” Vex questions. “We want her to know, wanted her to find out.”
“I set her up, Vex.” Lazarus runs his hands through his hair, anger threading through his voice.
At him. Us. The situation. I don’t know.
“I gave her a shit job because she was too close to the truth. I then promoted her under the guise of translating a tablet I translated decades ago. I hid a book with that translation and she found it.”
“Did you leave it for her to find on purpose?” Some small vicious part of me wonders if he hid it behind the chocolate because he wanted her to find it. Leaving the truth where her curiosity lives?
That is just Lazarus playing god with deniability.
“Maybe. I don’t know.” He hangs his head but I feel nothing for him in this moment. “I don’t know and that is the crux of it.”
“It’s deeper than that.” I fall into the chair feeling the weight of everything pressing down on my shoulders at how we failed so spectacularly. “Hadley knows. Calypso knows. Everyone around her knows and she saw one of us once. Saw us and then everyone gaslit her.”
“It was me,” Lazarus says, his eyes closing, his chest rising and falling in short bursts. “It was me she saw that night. I drove an Asmodeus clan out of my territory. And I’ve remembered her ever since.”
She will never forgive us for this.
“We need to find her,” Vex says, his fangs pushing against his lips and his eyes going hazy. “We need to. We need to get her and make her see us see reason.”
“Stop.” I grab his shoulder. “Control.”
“You’re losing control,” Lazarus says almost surprising himself. Me too.
Not once since his turning has Vex lost control.
He is losing it now.
“Control?” Vex laughs and it holds a strange echo to it that sounds otherworldly. “We leave now.”
He’s gone in the next instant. Just, gone.
“Where is he?” I shoot up from the chair, trying to trace where Vex went. “What the hell was that.”
Lazarus just stands there at the door, no color on his face.
“Levi,” he whispers. “He was the only one of us that knew how to phase.”
“What does that mean?” I want to strangle him. Murder him. Lock him in a tower until the world ends. That’s how mad at him I am. And yet I fucking need him. I need him to help me find Callie. I need him to help me find Vex.
I need him to live.
“I. I don’t know.” He shakes his head.
“Where is he?” I repeat because as his maker Lazarus should know exactly where he went. He should be able to sense him. Feel him.
“I don’t.” He looks right at me. “I don’t know.”
“We need to leave.” I grab his arms and tug him out of the office and back to the ground floor. “Right now.”
Lazarus follows like a broken puppy. It’s as though his mind just went dormant and all that’s left is a shell of who he once was.
We get to the garage. “I’m driving.”
Still he says nothing as I shove him into the passenger seat.
He looks so lost, so broken and I can’t be bothered to give a fuck right now. I just can’t.
I bring up Calypso’s number and call her first.
“What did you do to her?” She yells at me over the line. “I just saw her code black and now her phone is off.”
“Have you seen Calliope?” I ask pulling out into a sheet of downpouring rain.
Calypso scoffs. “No, but our mother did.”
“What does that mean?”
I have no idea where I’m going, what I’m doing. Just that I’m driving toward where my heart says. I don’t know if that’ll help, I don’t know what change that will make. But I’m trusting that my intuition is guiding me appropriately. At least I fucking hope so.
“It means she showed up at our mother’s about an hour ago.” She loses some of her sass. “She never shows up there. What happened?”
I look at Lazarus who is worthless. Just sitting there. Grief rolling off of him in waves.
“She knows,” I tell Calypso because she always knows according to Vex.
There is a long pause over the line. Before Calypso gets back on. “She turned her location off.” Calypso’s voice drops to a whisper. “Calliope never turns her location off. Not for anyone.”
“What do you mean she turned her location off?” I grip the steering wheel tighter, my knuckles turning white.
“Mom’s place. She showed up, they talked. Mom said she went to her room to read and then after a little while Callie left in a hurry. Mom said she looked... different. Shaken.”
“Different how?” I take a sharp turn, the tires screeching against wet pavement. Lazarus still hasn’t moved, hasn’t spoken. Just stares blankly ahead.
“Like someone who just found out their whole life is a lie.” Calypso pauses. “What exactly does she know, Soren?”
“Everything.” The word tastes like ash. “Lazarus kept a full translation of the tablet that tells our origin story. She found it.”
There’s a sharp intake of breath on the other end. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”
“I wish.” I check my mirrors, instincts pulling me toward the coast. “Vex just... disappeared. Like actually vanished. Lazarus can’t sense him and is catatonic. And Callie’s out there alone with knowledge that could destroy her.”
“Or save her,” Calypso says quietly. “Maybe that’s what she needs.”
“Not like this.” I slam my hand against the steering wheel. “Not finding out like this.”
“Where are you going?” Calypso asks.
“I don’t know. Just following my gut.”
“Your gut?” There’s a hint of amusement in her voice. “Since when do vampires have guts?”
“Since I fell for your sister.” The words slip out before I can stop them. Because it’s true, I love her. “I should have told her.”
“You couldn’t tell her,” Calypso says distantly. “You couldn’t have told her. I could have.”
“Calypso.” I feel defeated, dejected, broken. “How. How do you know?”
“Chicago,” she answers. “Find her.”
“I don’t know where she is.” I snap back at her.
“Oh gods,” Calypso says, her voice full of horror. “I know where she is.”
“Where.” Lazarus all but growls.
“She’s gone back to where she first saw something. She’s gone back to the heart of where this all started.” She pauses and then rattles off the address. “I’ve got to go.” Then she hangs up. No goodbye, just the line going dead.
He looks at me. “Why would she do that?”
I laugh, just a little because I don’t know. I don’t know why Calliope Cantemir does anything that she does. But I do know one thing. She does it for a damn good reason. For a purpose.
I just hope it includes us.