Lucy
Once the screen goes off, the lights come back on. Because my uncle has always had a sense of the dramatic but also terrible execution of the same. I pace for a while, alternating between holding back sobs of anguish and sobs of extreme rage.
If he thinks doing what he just did to Dominik will bring me back into the bosom of the family, he is so wrong. But as clarity begins to seep into what I’ve seen, I know more than ever he doesn’t want me back. He wants to take everything from me, as I was on the day I was dropped on his doorstep.
The day my parents died and the day my life became a living hell.
I pop open the zip tie handcuffs as a police officer friend of mine once showed me and continue my forward and back movement.
I have to get out of here somehow. Until I pull down my uncle’s empire, no vampire will be safe, and neither will I or my child.
And I need to get to Dominik. I have to see him for one last time.
My eyes fill with tears, but I brush them away.
Revenge is what I want. Revenge and freedom. I am done with being pushed around by my dysfunctional family, with a life I didn’t want chosen for me.
This ends right now.
Well, providing I can get out of here, raise an army, and expose the Van Helsings for what they are…Which might be easier said than done.
I continue to walk around the room. I try the door.
It doesn’t budge. I feel like screaming, but my uncle has this place under surveillance, great black balls filled with lenses bristling in every corner, their camera eyes focussed on me, and I don’t want to give him the satisfaction.
Instead I ball my fists and continue to move.
After all that time in the back of the vehicle, I’m walking off the pain in my tailbone.
“I would have thought a female like you in your condition should stay seated,” a voice growls in my ear.
I swing around, knife at the ready. But there’s nothing there, and I quickly put the knife away.
“Don’t worry, they can’t see you. I cut the feed,” the voice says.
“Then they’ll be here in less than thirty seconds to find out why.”
“I doubt it,” the voice says.
“I’m too tired and too damn pregnant for games.” I sigh. “Show yourself.”
In one corner of the room, a mist appears, slowly reconstituting itself into a tall, black-clad figure. For a brief moment, I have a flicker of recognition, but then I realize it isn’t Dominik.
The vampire in front of me was once as handsome as his brother. But half of his face is simply a white skull, as if fate wanted him to show how dead he was inside.
“Forgive me.” He pulls something out of his pocket and holds his hand over his face.
When he removes it, the mask is a good likeness for what he probably looked like in life and in undeath.
“I never quite mastered deconstituting with this on,” he says.
“It’s Damek, isn’t it?” I let the knife fall back into my hand from my sleeve, even though I know it will have little effect on a vampire like this one.
“Yes, I am Dominik’s brother. The rogue.” He tuts.
“You’ve been giving everyone, including me, the run around. And you dropped a building on the head of the werewolf clan, which wasn’t very nice.”
“He got over it. Werewolves are exceptional healers,” Damek says with a grin so similar to Dominik’s I feel tears prick at the back of my eyes. “Anyway, I wasn’t quite myself when I did that.”
“And you’re fine now. In the very middle of a vampire hunter’s lair, with me, a traitor to their cause?” I raise my eyebrows.
“I’m not sure I’m ever going to be fine,” Damek says with a show of fang. “Once you’ve seen the inside of the vault, it never leaves you.”
“But you wanted to open it. You wanted to undo all the good work done by Dominik and the others,” I say, my teeth gritted. “And all the monsters around the world who were and are carving a life for themselves out in the open.”
“I did, which is why I set my brother a challenge. One involving you,” Damek says, taking a step closer to me.
“Oh, no.” I flash the knife. “I’m not going down without a fight, and no, I’m not the vampire you said I had to become.”
“I know.” Damek stays where he is, his eyes on the knife. “I know you are not a vampire. It was a test I set my brother.”
“A test? Seriously, what the fuck is wrong with vampires? Couldn’t you two have a wrestling match or whatever it is males do to prove who has the biggest dick?”
“I can see why he chose you.” Damek laughs. “Feisty.”
“Misogynistic, much?”
He gives me a deep bow. “My apologies. I have been in the vault a long time. But I appreciate a consort who has her own mind.”
“If Dominik was around, you would lose your head for saying something like that.”
“I would.” Damek grins. “I probably will.”
I stare at him, a lump in my throat which means when I say the words, it doesn’t sound like my voice.
“You can’t. My uncle ended him.”
“Unlikely.”
“I saw it.”
“Was he staked?”
“Yes.”
“Then he hasn’t been ended. The Király are immune to stakes,” Damek says, as if this was common knowledge.
“Wait. What?” I feel my heart flip over in my chest.
“It’s part of how we were turned and some other reason I’ve long forgotten. But if someone staked my brother, all they’ve done is ruin his suit and piss him off.”
“Why…why the hell didn’t he tell me?” I blurt out.
“He thinks it’s funny if no one knows. He likes to surprise them.”
I cannot believe it. I feel my jaw slacken as I take in what Damek has said. Dominik isn’t dead.
But my uncle thinks he is.
And now I have my army.
Providing Damek doesn’t kill me first.