Chapter Twenty-One #2
Reyna’s jaw hit the ground. Beckham looked as shaken.
How the hell could Graves know that they were blood matched?
No one outside of their group at Elle knew that much.
It was an incredibly small number of people they would trust with their lives.
It wasn’t possible unless…he hadn’t taken it from her.
Now, she was seeing things in the shadows. He couldn’t read her mind.
“How?” she murmured.
Graves waved his gloved hand in the air dismissively. “I suspected. But wasn’t certain until I saw you together. It’s been a while since I’ve seen one. They’re always so temperamental.”
“You’ve met another match?”
Reyna couldn’t believe it. He might know more about what they could do or what they were capable of.
“Here and there. They don’t normally last very long.”
“Why?” Her eagerness overrode all logic.
“One usually kills the other,” Graves said as a matter-of-fact. “Very Romeo and Juliet without all the family interference.”
“Oh,” Reyna whispered.
“Are they always vampire and human?” Beckham asked, clenching his jaw.
“The ones I’ve met. If they were two humans, they probably wouldn’t have the sensory ability for it. It’s something with the virus that triggers it.”
“Have any of the humans ever been turned?” Reyna whispered as if it were some deep, dark secret.
“Reyna,” Beckham snapped, drawing her back to reality.
Graves leaned back against his table and eyed them as if he suddenly understood everything. “You’d like to be a vampire?”
“It’s out of the question,” Beckham said. “That’s not why we’re here.”
Reyna’s mind filled with the ferocity of Brian and how he may never come back from that. With Beckham’s help, she didn’t think that it would happen to her. But the brutal truth of being turned had very recently been thrown in her face. It made her hesitate.
“Maybe,” she finally said.
“This is not why we’re here,” Beckham repeated to deaf ears.
“Interesting,” Graves mused. He tilted his head as he looked between them. “Do you think your abilities would follow with the change?”
Reyna nearly doubled over in shock at the words. It was one thing to feel like Graves had used some sort of unseen magic on her. It was another thing entirely for him to know that she and Beckham shared a sort of blood magic.
“What abilities?” Beckham asked.
“Magic,” Graves said, waving his fingers at them.
“It’s science,” Reyna interjected.
“Blood science,” Beckham added.
“Science and magic are only separated by a degree,” Graves said dryly. “Monsters and men exist at the same time, but science hasn’t yet made explanations for us all.”
“Monsters?” Reyna asked skeptically.
Graves shot her an amused look. “Vampires, of course.”
“Of course,” Beckham said.
“So, did other blood matches have abilities?” Reyna asked.
“Oh yes. I can think of all sorts of things you two could accomplish together.”
For a price.
Reyna could read it all over him. For more information about that, he’d need more payment. And as much as she wanted to know—she was dying to know—it made her nervous for what else he would ask.
She took a step back and reined in her eagerness.
She and Beckham could figure this out together.
They could discover the rest of their blood match as a pair.
They’d come this far. It was enough to know there were others.
That people had gone through before what they were experiencing now.
That there was someone else out there who had answers to this.
Even if she’d have to pay the price later.
“We want to know about William Harrington,” she managed to get out.
“Ah,” Graves said. He almost seemed put out that they’d shut the inquiry down. Like he’d wanted to discuss magic and monsters, rather than speak of this one vampire currently attempting to destroy the world. “What about Mr. Harrington?”
“We want to kill him,” Beckham said tersely.
“He’s high on many lists.”
“He’s at the top of ours.”
“What will killing Mr. Harrington do exactly?”
“He’s up to something. Something big,” Reyna said. “Surely you know about the feeding camps that he’s calling housing. He’s killing people and ruining lives, and he’ll take over the world if he can.”
“People go to those camps willingly. In fact, they go to Visage willingly.” Graves’s eyes bored into hers. “Surely you of all people know this.”
“They go willingly because he has created a world in which people need him.”
Graves nodded once. “Very smart of him.”
“Smart,” Reyna deadpanned.
“The strong will always lead the weak,” Graves drawled.
“He is the weak one,” Reyna snapped.
“You mean, you are his weakness.” Graves arched an eyebrow. “Correct?”
She stumbled over her words. “I…”
“Enough,” Beckham said. “Harrington is a very intelligent man. He knows what he’s doing and how to spin things to his advantage. There’s no dispute. I was at his right hand doing these exact things for years.”
“And now you are no longer,” Graves said.
“Correct,” Beckham bit out. “However, we know that Harrington is working on something else big. Do you know what it is?”
“I do.”
Reyna sucked in a breath. “You know what he’s working on?”
Graves turned his gaze back to hers, his irises swirling dangerously.
“I know much about William Harrington. He’s a man that I keep tabs on for business purposes.
I’ve never much cared if vampires spread like parasites on the surface of the earth,” Graves said.
“They can lay claim to the world they believe they own. It matters not to me. As petty as human wars.”
Reyna saw then the machinations behind that beautiful face. Humans and vampires were ants to him. Moving around and waiting for someone to stomp on their ant hill. He wheedled away his time lording over it all and accomplishing his own obscure goals with none the wiser. A true master.
“Will you help us?” Reyna whispered.
Graves snapped his finger and moved away from the table. “Yes. I think I will.”
Reyna breathed a sigh of relief.
“But there’s a cost.”
“We already paid,” Beckham reminded him.
“That gaudy necklace covered as much as I’ve told you about your blood match anyway.” Graves turned from the bookshelf he was inspecting. “We both know it really meant nothing to you.”
Beckham balked at the accusation, but there was some sincerity to it. Material possessions mattered little to Beckham. He enjoyed living in luxury, but the objects were always replaceable. The only thing that truly mattered, that he fought for, was her.
“What’s the price?” Reyna whispered, fear pricking her.
Graves looked at her from under long black lashes with his devious, wicked, trickster mind at work. For that moment, she wondered if he had read her mind and that the thing that was going to come out of his mouth was the one thing she could not give.
“A bite, if you please.”