76
“Falcon.”
“Jaguar, I hadn’t heard from you for so long I began to wonder if you were enjoying yourself.”
“No chance of that,” I snap. “Look, I won’t waste your time, I know you have important matters of your own to deal with.”
“I always have time for you,” he says quietly.
“I’m calling to find out about the blood sample I sent you.”
“Is something wrong?”
“Yes. A great deal is wrong, but I won’t weary you with the details. The sample?”
“Mmm, I was going to get onto you about that at some point. I sent the sample for analysis, as you asked, but they lost it.”
“Lost it? The royal physicians lost a sample?”
“I didn’t send it to them,” he mutters, “I don’t want that cunt queen anywhere near my business or my house. I sent it to the premier human laboratory in Rome.”
“The one that facilitates the supply of donated blood?”
“Yes. I apologise, Jag. I was sure they’d be professional and discreet. Apparently not. They put my butler through half a dozen people before he finally got to the bottom of the story.”
“And?”
“And they lost it.”
“Fuck!”
I shake my head and consider my next move.
“And the other task?”
“Destroying the Italians?”
“Yes.”
“I’ve got someone working on it. You have to understand, you’ve supplied me with very little information — it’s like hunting for a needle in a haystack. Tracking is your expertise, not mine.”
“I have more clues,” I growl, pulling the bullets from my jacket pocket and studying them as I speak. “Two bullets. You should be able to trace them to their owner.”
“How did you come by them?”
“I had them sucked out of my chest by the Italian,” I mutter. “She claims her people wouldn’t dare assault one of us, but the proof is in the pudding.”
“They shot you?” His tone is incredulous.
“With silver bullets, no less,” I snort, rubbing the dried blood off one of the bullets and frowning as I see the words carved into it.
“Fuckers!” Falcon snarls, “brother I’ve let you down. I apologise. I’ll get right onto it. No mafia prick shoots my best man and gets away with it.”
“Speaking of best men,” I murmur, the words on the first bullet now coming into focus: ‘No Other.’ The other simply says; ‘Asumpta.’
“CUNT!”
“I said I was sorry,” Falcon grunts.
“Not you,” I shake my head, chuckling despite myself. “The bullet. It’s not from the Italians.”
‘And I owe my own an apology.’
“How do you know?”
“It’s a message from Asumpta.”
“Christ, is she still haunting you?”
“Haunting, hunting,” I sigh, self-consciously placing my hand to my chest where there’s no evidence at all that I was ever shot.
‘No evidence because the moment I drank Cat’s blood, I healed.’
“Look, Asumpta aside. Have you ever tasted blood that healed you from a wound instantly? Have you heard of something like that?”
“Is this why you sent the blood sample?”
“Yes.”
“Whose is it?”
For some reason, I decide against telling him.
“Just a woman. I think there’s something not quite human about her.”
“Well, if she’s Fae you’d feel a warning every time you tried to sip. Do you feel that?”
“No. I feel an urge to suck the fucking life out of her.”
“I see. That must be difficult. For you, I mean, given your vow.”
“It’s nigh-on impossible. I’ve tasted her twice now and each time it makes me want it all the more.”
“I don’t know about anything like that,” Falcon says quietly, thinking through his answer. “I’ll get Attracta to look through the royal records.”
“No. I don’t want your bastard sister anywhere near my house.”
“Jag, you can trust her.”
“I trust her as far as I trust her twin. The one who just shot me in the chest — twice.”
“You’ve been away a long time, brother,” he sighs. “My half-sister is part of my family now, a big part. She’s been very helpful in helping Suzume accept her role.”
“Be that as it may,” I snort at the idea of Falcon welcoming his bastard half-sister into his hearth and home, one who’d grown up in the kitchens of his castle as a second-class citizen, “I don’t want her help. As for Suzume, Wolf tells me you’re all about keeping her a virgin for life.”
“Ha, I wish,” he chuckles. “No, it’s not that. She’s been dating some low-life vampire boy, Ant, for a few years now, and no good has come from it. I want him out of her life.”
“She’s thirty, Falcon. She’s a grown woman, which means he’s hardly a boy.”
“She may be an adult, Jag, a young adult. But you won’t understand until you have children of your own. She’ll always be a baby to Angie and I — our baby bastard daughter.”
I scowl at the phone and consider a way to end the call without seeming too abrupt.
We both know that at one stage I did think I had a bastard child, and so did he.
In fact, he’d named the boy Tiger as a way of permanently shaming the child and I.
Only it had turned out the kid was his, not mine.
Not only had it been a lie that the baby was mine, but the whole basis of my relationship with his wife had also been a fabrication.
I say nothing as a wave of fury and regret washes over me.
“Anyway,” Falcon clears his throat, “I’ll get onto killing that Valentino whoever. If you want to send another blood sample I’ll be sure to keep better track of it this time.”
“No,” I turn the bullet over and over as I speak. “No, that won’t be necessary. There are only two challenges left, and then all this bullshit will go away.”
“Very well,” he says quietly, “and Jag, before you go.”
“Yes.”
“I’d be honoured to be your best man.”