12. Alexander
12
ALEXANDER
“ Y ou have nothing?” Haldren paced back and forth behind his desk in his office, his jaw clenched. He wore the black uniform of the U.C. At this point, I was certain the man slept in it. His loyalty was unshakeable, partly because the U.C. had saved him, just like they had me. “Nothing. You have nothing.”
I lifted a large garnet off the end of Haldren’s desk—he used it as a paperweight—and held it in my hand, considering its crimson depths. I didn’t want to lie to him, but it was necessary.
The kiss with Emily had clarified things for me.
First, I had to find a way to protect her. Second, fulfilling my mission was paramount. If I let the U.C. know that I was attached to her in any way, she would become an issue for them. While the U.C. was about protecting humanity, they were willing to “crack a few eggs to make an omelet”.
My infatuation with her had to remain a secret until I could find a way to rid myself of it. Even standing here was a trial. I had made sure Emily had returned to the safety of her warded apartment, then had come here, hating that I had to be away from her .
The attachment to her had me by the throat. If I wasn’t careful, it would ruin everything, and that was exactly why I had to be rid of it.
And in order to do that, I had to remove the book from her without killing her. Then I could disappear. Wait out the pain of losing her.
Haldren continued pacing while I stood before him, unspeaking, perhaps because he was weighed down with disappointment.
He halted in front of his bookshelf and took a book down then slid it back into place, pressing his finger along the spine. A small compartment opened in the wall revealing two tumblers and a crystal decanter, stoppered and filled with blood.
“Haldren?”
He poured blood into a tumbler and handed it to me. “Here,” he said. “Take it. Drink.”
“What is it?” I asked.
“From a princess in Monaco,” he replied. “Kept temperature controlled. It will spoil if I don’t drink it, and since you’re about to throw away our lives, I thought now would be a good time for a toast.”
“For a military man,” I said, “you always had a flair for the dramatic.” I took a sip of the blood. It was delicious, but it didn’t sate me the way it should have. Because I wanted her blood. Only hers. The thought was alarming.
“And you have changed, Alexander,” he said. “What have you been up to these past weeks? I gave you a task, told you it was time sensitive, and you have yet to deliver results. The only reason I haven’t taken you off the mission is because no one else has captured the book either.”
“How can you possibly know that?” I asked.
“We have informants in the right places,” Haldren replied. “Even telling you that could land me in trouble. I’m under an immense amount of pressure from the higher-ups in our organization, Alexander. If you don’t deliver, it’s my head. All of our heads. You know this. ”
“I know that,” I said, setting the glass aside. “But if you would tell me more about the book, it would help me find it.”
“Find it? She has it.”
“I know she has it, but I’ve yet to confirm that.” The lie tasted bland on my tongue. Effortless.
Haldren finished off his drink but held onto the empty tumbler. “So what have you been doing for the past few weeks?”
“Ensuring no one else gets the book,” I said. “And there have been some complications, Haldren. For instance, the apartment the target lives in is warded.”
“Warded.”
“By a Hunter,” I said. “I’m currently tracking down the one who is responsible.”
Haldren nodded.
One of the two ways to remove a ward was to kill the creator. But why kill the Hunter when I could have Emily remove it for me? And have easy access to her apartment. And to her.
Haldren set the glass down beside the decanter and tapped the crystal side with one finger. “I have always believed in your abilities,” he said. “It’s the reason I specifically chose you for this task, but I can’t keep the commanders at bay for much longer.”
The mention of the commanders brought a chill to the room.
Haldren and I stared at each other through that coldness. The commanders were the three vampires who ran the U.C., elected above all those who were in it, above the lieutenants like Haldren and the enforcers like me.
The ultimate goal for many enforcers and soldiers was to end up as one of the three—to climb to the top. I had no such lofty aspirations. I wanted … I wanted death. The death of the vampire who had started it all, and if working for the U.C. would bring me to my goal, I would serve them.
“Alex,” Haldren said slowly. “If there is something keeping you from fulfilling your duty, I need to hear it.”
“If I could have more information about this book, I might?— ”
“I can’t give you anything else, and you are going to have to stop asking unless you want to be replaced.”
“Fine.”
“One week.”
“What?”
Haldren raised a finger. “One week. You have seven days until I put Cassia on the mission.”
I clenched my jaw, my fangs threatening to sprout. “Haldren.”
“I’m serious. I have to do what’s good for the U.C. There are thousands of vampires relying on us, millions of humans,” he said. “This is bigger than our personal relationships.”
I didn’t particularly enjoy the insinuation from him. “Fine.” And then I turned and strode out of the office. I let the door slam shut behind me and walked down the long hall toward the elevator.
The view of the city was lost on me. Usually, that beauty would be the single pleasure I enjoyed on the way to my apartment in the U.C. headquarters. Lately, there was only one view I enjoyed, and it was of the side of Emily’s apartment building. The view through her window of her sleeping peacefully in her bed.
I entered my apartment and moved toward the kitchen, leaning against the marble countertop and bringing out my phone.
It was almost time.
The phone rang in my hand.
“Hello,” I answered it, irritably.
“What’s eating your shorts?” The vampire on the other end was an interminably annoying little creature. A rogue vampire who I’d kept in contact with for … purposes.
“I can’t talk for long,” I said.
“Need I remind you that you were the one who asked me to call you, Boss? It’s not like I’ve got all the time in the world.” He guffawed at his joke. “Y’know, apart from eternity and all of that.”
“Julius,” I growled.
“Yeah, yeah, yeah. What’s up, Boss? What do you need? ”
“Information,” I said. “I want you to tell me everything you know about cursed objects.”
“Hmm.”
I tapped my fingers on the countertop.
“Hmm.”
“Spit it out, Julius.”
“Easy, Boss, I’m considering,” he replied. “Well, what type of cursed object are we talking here?”
“A book,” I said.
“Oh, well that changes things.”
“Changes things how?”
“Okay, so here’s the deal,” Julius said, smacking his lips on the other end of the line. “Basically, you got three types of standard cursed items. You’ve got your regular-degular, run-of-the-mill cursed item. Think, like, cursed necklaces or rings or that kinda shit. Where you have them and then bad stuff starts happening to you.”
“All right.”
“Then you get your violent curses. Like dolls that you can stick pins in, and the person you cursed feels the pain.”
“And the final type?”
“Curses that sap the life out of you because they’re feeding off your actual lifeblood,” Julius said. “The nastiest kind of ‘em all. And books are usually the objects that have those types of curses.”
My hand balled into a fist. “Tell me more about the last type. Give me symptoms.”
“You’ll get real sick, like, nauseated, fever, pale. You won’t be able to sleep properly, and you’ll start having visions. Usually, they’re visions from the person who put the curse on the book in the first place,” Julius said, matter-of-factly. “Thing is, those types of curses are pretty much impossible to break.”
“There must be a way.”
“I don’t know,” Julius said. “You see, once the curse takes hold, you’re pretty much bound to the cursed object. It’s going to suck the life blood right outta you. And once it does, well, you die. And you make the curse stronger. Of course, that’s not a problem for vampires. We’re immune to that particular type of curse, given the fact that we’re the living dead and all.”
“But humans?”
“Oh yeah, they’ll die from it.”
“How long?”
“Couple of weeks,” Julius said. “A month tops.”
Fuck. I wasn’t one for vulgar language, but it seemed like the appropriate time. “There must be a way to break a curse like that.”
“Depends on the scenario, I guess.”
“You just told me it’s impossible. Now you’re saying it depends on the scenario?”
“Well, jeez, I had some time to think about it, all right?” Julius sighed. “What’s the situation?”
“A human is curse-bound to a book. What will it take to save them?” I asked.
“Let me think for a second.”
I paced back and forth in front of my countertop. The longer this conversation went on, the less time Emily had. If what he was saying was true then she was dying. “What if the book was removed?”
“That would make the human feel better, sure,” Julius said. “But the curse would just eat away at ‘em over time from a distance. It would take longer for them to die.”
“And if the book was destroyed?” I asked, even though that was out of the question.
“Nope. The minute the book is destroyed, the human goes with it. Poof. Just like that.”
“Try not to be so jovial about it, will you?” I snapped.
“All right, all right, don’t get your panties in a bunch.”
I ignored him, continued my pacing. “So, you can’t remove the book?”
“I mean, you could, but it would still end the same way for a human. And it could make it way worse, removing the book. It’s a pretty gruesome death. Like hemorrhagic fever. They’d bleed out of every orifice, throw up blood, that kind of guess. I guess … Huh.”
“What?” I asked.
“I guess you could turn them.”
No. “That’s out of the question.” No. I will not turn her. After what I had been through, after being made a vampire against my will, I would not do it. Could not.
“The only way to save the human would be to turn them into something that can’t be killed by curses. Vampires. Werewolves. That kind of thing,” Julius said. “I mean, I don’t know what to tell you, Boss. It is what it is.”
“Julius, I need you to research this for me. I’ll pay you for it. Whatever you want,” I said. “Just figure out another way, all right? And don’t let anyone find out what you’re doing or why.”
“That’s how I roll,” Julius said. “Nobody knows what I’m doing or where I am. I’m very mysterious.”
“There’s nothing less mysterious than saying you’re mysterious,” I replied.
“Good luck with the human, Boss.”
“Text me when you have an answer.” And then I hung up, breathing hard. Emily was cursed. The book was actually making her sick. Even taking it away from her would only marginally prolong her life.
I bowed my head and grabbed fistfuls of my hair, a primal roar rising up my throat. I bit it back before it was free. I couldn’t afford to lose control now, but I had never been so torn in all the centuries of my life.