Chapter 2 #2
She reached out to touch my hair, and I grabbed her hand.
Determined intrigue washed over her expression.
My thick, coarse small curls had always been an object of fascination to her.
She fawned over the unique texture and always had an odd need to touch it.
Denying her that seemed to stoke her curiosity.
I had no plans of her ever satisfying it.
After another failed attempt, where I blocked her hand in a less polite manner, she retreated.
“Do you ever think about how powerful my house would be with us at the helm?” Corrine’s lips drew back to expose her fangs. “You know the House of Knight’s weaknesses.”
I knew the House of Hollows’s as well.
“It would be best if the houses joined as one and maintained order,” she said.
“Killing Belham wouldn’t lead to that happening. You’d just acquire another enemy. Has your list decreased so substantially that you’re aching to add more to it?” I hedged.
Her brow arched. “Enemies.” She scoffed. “You mean little prickles of annoyances that I encounter occasionally?”
“William would not be any easier to deal with than Belham. If you intervene on William’s behalf, are you confident he won’t extend the same offer to someone in your house?”
I considered pointing out that she was woefully underestimating William in the same manner others had done with her.
And always to their detriment. William had successfully positioned himself as the reasonable and merciful one of the pair.
He was neither but expertly displayed a veneer that disguised it.
His urbane gentle appearance only added more wool to the lamb clothing that the wolf wore.
My first encounter with William’s cloak of deception was when the house had to deal with one of their roguish vampires who was known for their deviance and charm—qualities that seemed to simultaneously impress and annoy Belham—who claimed he’d been driven by bloodlust and had killed a human.
He staged her death as a car accident as a cover for his mistake.
The investigation had shown she’d died in a vehicular accident.
William and Belham were the only ones who remained suspicious and conducted their own investigation.
At Belham’s request, the cunning vampire came to his office before I had the good sense to know that, during situations like that, unless I wanted recurring nightmares, it was best to run out of the room like I was being chased by an axe-wielding psycho.
I didn’t. Curiosity had gotten the best of me, and I’d stayed to learn how they handled reprobate vampires.
In many cases they would have been disavowed, losing the comfort, prestige, protection, and wealth that came with being connected to the most powerful house in the country.
During the meeting, the vampire became increasingly confident as Belham offered a smile of approval.
Encouragingly nodding as the vampire described the woman and his inability to “help himself.” So caught up in his retelling was he that he missed the subtle signs that Belham’s urging wasn’t admiration but to ease him into giving an unabridged account.
The vampire bragged about his successful cleanup that hadn’t required the help of the house.
“Aren’t you a clever one? Cleverness is the root of a long life of a vampire and the makings of an Elite,” Belham assured him in a low, bright voice.
It was an attribute he seemed to admire the most. He’d praised my cleverness many times.
I wasn’t clever, just perceptive and skilled at reading people and responding accordingly.
They were survival skills, and it seemed unreasonable to get accolades for them, although I graciously accepted the compliment.
The cleverer he considered me, the less he micromanaged.
“It is an intriguing quality,” William’s calming, kind voice cosigned.
Then William shook his head. I mistook it as him encouraging Belham to show mercy.
I quickly discovered it meant the opposite.
William made an unsuccessful attempt to shield me from seeing Belham punch his fist through the vampire’s chest and rip out his heart before beheading him in such a swift succession of movements, I was sure my mind had played tricks on me.
But the body, the blood on Belham’s hand and face, and the pools of it on the floor confirmed everything. William’s face was a mask of apathy.
William had the audacity to ask me to lunch afterward. Lunch? I had been pretty close to losing breakfast and damn sure I didn’t want lunch. Belham was the monster people knew. William was the one lying in wait if he failed. They were beautiful monsters. It was information I’d never forget.
And here I was interacting with another.
“Things are as they should be.”
She leaned into me. “Immortality would look good on you,” she said.
“So does humanity.”
I disliked the way her perceptive eyes stayed pinned on me.
They knew only parts of what happened the night I’d become a person of interest to them, and not just the peculiar woman who could walk through wards as if they never existed.
Before that night, it was the extent of what they knew of my magic.
It was the extent of what I knew of my magic.
I’d never been placed in a position to trigger my protection spell and wasn’t sure whether Vina was correct about it having been removed.
My immunity to wards had served me well on some occasions, but I rarely used it.
Wards were erected for a reason, and finding out the purpose usually led to disastrous situations.
Situations I’d prefer to avoid. If that made me a coward, I didn’t care.
I liked to think I had a healthy appreciation for self-preservation.
“Do you fear being a cautionary tale like me?” she asked.
I feared I already was. Stumbling into favor with the most powerful vampire houses in the world had earned me influence—at the cost of my anonymity. I was viewed as an obstacle by those hungry for a war between the Houses of Hollows and Knight. They didn’t mind telling me.
My closing duties at Cloak and Dagger included checking inventory, replenishing garnishes, cutting limes and lemons, and ensuring we had a good blood supply for the vamps.
If we ever ran out, there were always humans willing to step in.
The humans that frequented Cloak and Dagger seemed unable to accept the unspoken rule that our worlds operated in parallel to theirs.
Never to really interact. Their fascination with supernaturals had them latching on to everything they did.
They gawked and swooned. Some were bold enough to offer their services.
“It’s better directly from the source,” was a less than witty flirt I’d heard used often.
How clever, Mr. and Ms. Pedantic.
The trajectory of my life would have been different if that night I had used my usual exit out the front instead of the back.
But the back was closer to where I’d parked, and I was exhausted.
The area was poorly lit, but a scan of the security camera monitors in the office where we kept them hadn’t given me any reason to be concerned.
I was wrong. So wrong. I had missed the staked vampire slumped against the wall near the dumpster.
Once closer, the heavy scents of ingredients used for sleep spells wafted toward me.
Vampires didn’t have a pulse to determine their well-being.
He was unresponsive and ashen. Contrary to lore, their skin maintained its human hue; it only paled when they were about to die from injury or starvation.
I dragged him into the club. My coworker took one look, let me know in no uncertain terms he wasn’t getting involved, and left me alone with a dying or possibly truly dead vampire with a stake in his heart.
Which put me in the perilous position of saving him or reporting to his house that he was dead.
After seeing the House of Knight ring, my heart sank.
There were a dozen hazardous things I would rather do, including wrestling a Komodo dragon, than dealing with the infamous House of Knight.
Staking a vampire wasn’t really enough to kill them. It put them into reversion, a slow death. If they could feed, they’d heal and survive. Killing a vampire required a swift and vicious attack with the sole purpose of placing them in a position where they couldn’t save themselves.
Not having any idea how to handle a stake wound, I treated it like a knife stabbing and left it there. Older vampires were stronger and able to go longer without feeding, which made them harder to kill.
The vampire appeared to be in his early twenties, but I had no idea what his vampire age was. He could be a millennium for all I knew. The darkening, necrotic appearance of his hands suggested to me the beginning of a vampire’s true death.
Goose pebbles formed over my arms at the sight of a crudely carved crest on the side of the stake: the House of Hollows. I had met Corrine a few times, and nothing about this scene seemed like it would have been sanctioned by her or her house. There was something very wrong going on.
“I refuse to get in the middle of this,” I whispered to myself. But it was too late. I was already entwined in it, and the only option I had was to save the vampire.
“Don’t die,” I urged him.
Finding a funnel, I pushed the contents of a blood pack into his mouth. And waited several moments.
Nothing.
Desperation made me rethink handling the stake injury like a blade, so I pulled it out and funneled more nutrients into the vampire. And waited.
Nothing.
He wasn’t healing and remained unresponsive.
“It’s better directly from the source.” I groaned at the bromide statement repeated in the club to lure vampires. Sometimes it was even used by the vamps themselves.
With a sigh, I opened his mouth enough to puncture my forearm.