Chapter Three #2
I look at Knox before I can stop myself. “You didn’t?”
His jaw tightens. “Not much.”
“Because of your hand?”
“No.”
The answer is too honest. Too heavy. It sits between us, and my skin warms beneath my sweater.
Ari clears her throat loudly. “As much as I love watching unresolved tension ruin breakfast, Aldron is waiting.”
“I hate you,” I mutter.
She beams. “Everyone does before coffee.”
Aldron’s upstairs office is all dark wood, velvet chairs, shelves of liquor old enough to have opinions, and windows that look out over Brooklyn like the city belongs to him. Maybe parts of it do.
Aldron stands behind his desk when we enter. He is dressed immaculately, as always, in a black shirt, black trousers, and silver cufflinks. His dark hair is tied back. His pale face gives away nothing, but the room feels colder around him.
On his desk sits a glass dish. Inside it is black wax stamped with a symbol.
A circle.
A slash.
Three drops beneath.
My body forgets how to be mine, and the room tilts.
For half a second, I am not in Aldron’s office. I am on marble. My wrists ache. Someone laughs behind red velvet. Black wax melts beneath a flame, dripping onto folded paper while a woman’s voice says, “This one will fetch more if she lives.”
My lungs lock, and all sound disappears. A hand reaches for my elbow, and I jerk back so fast I nearly slam into the bookshelf. Knox stands a foot away, both hands lifted, palms out. Not touching me.
“I’m sorry,” he says. His voice is low. Rough. Careful in a way that makes my chest hurt. He tried to steady me. That’s all.
My knife is in my hand, but I don’t remember drawing it. Everyone in the room has gone still. Not afraid but waiting. That might be worse.
Heat crawls up my neck. Shame follows, cruel and fast. “I’m fine.”
Ari steps in front of me. “No one here believes that word anymore.”
I hate her a little for the gentleness in her voice. I hate myself more for needing it. I lower the knife, and my hand shakes, but I make it stop through pure spite.
Aldron doesn’t move from behind his desk. “Would you like the seal covered?”
The question surprises me. Not should I cover it. Would you like? A choice. Small, but mine.
I stare at the wax until the edges blur. “No,” I say. “I want to look at it.”
Knox makes a sound so quiet I almost miss it. Ari doesn’t. Her mismatched eyes flick to him, then back to me. She says nothing, but her mouth curves like she sees too much.
Aldron nods. “Then we begin.”
I move to the chair farthest from the door, then change my mind and take the one with its back to the wall.
No one comments. Knox remains standing near the door.
Cruz leans against the wall beside him. Akasha sits to my left.
Korvin takes the space behind her chair like a bear-shaped threat. Malichai stays beside Ari.
Every monster in the room arranges itself around the exits without discussing it. Protection. Strategy. Prison? I sometimes can’t tell the difference.
Aldron touches the glass dish with one finger. “This mark belongs to a blood-ring that has operated under various names for decades. The current name is uncertain. The old one was the Sable Vein.”
The name moves through me like cold water. Sable Vein. I know it. Not from before. Not from normal life. From whispers.
My fingers dig into the arms of the chair. Aldron notices. “You heard that name?”
I nod slowly. “Once. Maybe twice. They didn’t say it around me much.”
“Who said it?”
“A man with silver hair. A vampire. He is really old, I think. Everyone listened when he spoke.”
Aldron’s expression doesn’t change, but the air tightens.
Malichai curses under his breath, and Knox pushes off the wall. “Who?”
Aldron’s gaze remains on me. “Did anyone use his name?”
I close my eyes. Bad idea.
That room returns too quickly. Candle smoke. Cold hands. The woman behind the curtain. A silver-haired man saying, “Lucius won’t tolerate another dead donor. Feed from the wrist if you can’t control your teeth.”
My eyes snap open. “Lucius,” I whisper.
The temperature in the room drops dramatically.
Ari slides off the desk fully. “Oh, that’s bad.”
“Who is Lucius?” I ask.
No one answers fast enough. My fear turns to anger, because anger has always been more useful.
“Who is Lucius?” I repeat.
Aldron’s mouth flattens. “My brother.”
I stare at him. Of all the answers, that’s not the one I expect.
“Your brother,” I say.
“Yes.”
“The vampire connected to the people who chained me up and used me like a wine bottle is your brother.”
Aldron flinches. It’s tiny, nearly invisible, but it’s there. Good. I want that to hurt.
Akasha says my name softly. “Bri...”
“No.” I stand, cutting her off. The chair scrapes against the floor. “No gentle voices. Not right now.”
Knox moves one step, then stops himself. I feel the effort it takes him. He wants to come closer. Wants to do something. Fix something. Break something.
There’s nothing to fix, but there’s plenty to break.
Aldron comes around the desk slowly. “I didn’t know Lucius was involved when we found you. I suspected the ring, not him directly. If I had known...”
“What? You would have killed him sooner?”
His eyes darken. “Yes.”
The simplicity of the answer knocks some of the fire out of me, but not enough.
“Is he alive?”
“Yes.”
“Where is he?”
“We don’t know.”
I laugh, but it sounds wrong. “Convenient.” Knox’s growl scrapes through the room.
Aldron looks at him. “Careful.”
“No,” I snap before Knox can speak. “Don’t careful him because of me.”
Both men look at me. Good. I am suddenly sick of being the thing everyone talks around. The delicate center of a room full of predators pretending they have table manners.
I turn to Aldron. “What do you know?”
His face shifts into something colder. Businesslike. Maybe he understands that this is better. Facts have edges. I can hold them.
“The Sable Vein traffics in blood,” he says.
“Human and supernatural. Willing donors when they can get them. Coerced when they can’t.
Rare bloodlines fetch higher prices. Psychics, witches, fae-touched humans, shifters with unusual traits.
Humans who survive repeated feedings without turning feral or dying are also valuable. ”
My stomach rolls. Valuable. I grip the back of the chair to stay upright.
“Briana,” Akasha says.
“I’m listening.”
Knox is too, still by the door.
Aldron continues. “The cell that held you was destroyed.”
“Good.”
“But the seal you remembered suggests it was not isolated.”
“Meaning there are others.”
“Yes.”
“How many?”
“We don’t know.”
“How many are missing?”
Aldron glances at Malichai. I hate the glance. I hate the pause more.
“How many?” I demand.
Malichai answers. “Three confirmed in the last month who fit the pattern. Possibly more.”
Three. The number sits in my stomach like a stone. Three people in rooms like mine. Three people are waiting for rescue that might not come. Three people are becoming valuable.
My hands stop shaking, and everything in me goes very quiet. “I want to help.”
Knox speaks first. “No.” The word cracks across the room.
My head turns slowly, and he knows it immediately. I see it in the way his jaw tightens, in the flash of regret behind his eyes. But it’s too late.
“No?” I ask.
His shoulders square. “You aren’t going near them.”
The room goes silent, as rooms do right before violence makes an entrance.
Ari whispers, “Oh, Knox.”
Cruz closes his eyes like he is already tired.
I walk toward Knox. He doesn’t retreat, but he looks like each step costs him. Good. It should. I stop close enough to see the pulse beat in his throat. Not close enough to touch unless I choose it.
“You don’t get to tell me where I go.”
His eyes burn. “They are hunting people like you.”
“They already caught me once.”
His face twists. Pain. Fury. Horror. I use his reaction.
“They caught me. They fed from me. They hurt me. They talked around me like I was meat with a pulse. I heard things. Saw things. Remember things none of you know. So if there are others, if anything in my head can help find them, you don’t get to lock me up in my apartment and call it protection.”
“I am trying to keep you alive.”
“I did that part already.”
His nostrils flare, and a muscle jumps in his cheek.
The air between us grows heavy. Hot. The scent of smoke and leather curls around me, and my body, traitorous creature, notices him too much. His size. His hands. The bandage that now replaces the one I put there. The way his chest rises and falls, as if he is holding back something massive.
I should step away, but I don’t.
His voice drops. “You don’t know what they’ll do if they get their hands on you again.”
I smile, and it feels like showing teeth. “Yes, Knox. I do.”
The black floods his eyes. For one heartbeat, the room changes around him. His shadow deepens. Something presses beneath his skin. The beast so close the air seems to bow.
Fear flickers in my mind, desire following close behind. That makes me angrier. Not at him. At myself. At my body. At the world for twisting survival and want into the same set of nerves until I don’t know which one is burning.
Knox turns his face slightly, breaking eye contact first.
“Don’t,” I say. His gaze snaps back. “Don’t look away from me because you think I can’t handle what you are.”
His breath leaves him hard.
Cruz mutters, “Well, shit.” Ari elbows him.
I ignore them.
Knox’s voice is rough when he speaks. “I am not the danger you need to prove yourself against.”
“No.” I step closer without meaning to. “You’re the danger, trying to decide for me.”
I see my words hit him. Deep. Beneath muscle and bone and beast. Good, maybe cruel, but still good.
Aldron clears his throat. “Briana will be involved.”
Knox’s head turns. “No.”
Aldron’s eyes go cold. “That was not a question.”
The two of them stare at each other, and the room seems to shrink beneath the weight of all that male violence. I am so tired of male violence, even when it’s on my side. Especially then.
“I don’t need permission from either of you,” I say.
Aldron inclines his head. “No, you don’t.”