Chapter 15 #2
The third, a female, was better dressed. She watched them warily. “I suppose you’re here for what I know.” When he didn’t respond, she continued with, “How about I tell you what I know, and you let me walk?”
Marco’s laugh was low. “She tried that with me, too.”
“You do realize I can get whatever I want from your blood,” Laurent said.
“Yes, but, I also could offer you more than that.”
“Hope you don’t mean your cunt,” Marco snipped.
The female demon ignored Marco, eyes on Laurent. “They don’t know I was captured. I can go back, feed you information from the inside—“
He struck, ripping into her neck. The day he worked with a demon was the day hell froze over. He sank into her mind, her memories, trying to ignore the fetid taste of her life-force. When he came away, he was all but choking.
“Fuck,” he nearly roared. “I need something to wash that down with.” His stomach roiled. He spun on his heel and vomited everything back up. Black, vile blood. It tasted of garbage and rancid meat. He hadn’t expected it to stay down, but that didn’t matter.
“I got what I needed. Get them out of here. I don’t want the stench of them spilling into the manor.”
“Yes, sire.”
“Return to my study when you’ve finished.”
It didn’t take long before Marco found him again.
Most of his study was in order by then. Laurent went to the wall.
An invisible latch opened a small panel.
He’d never shown Marco this—never shown anyone.
As the panel slid away, a small alcove of shelves appeared.
“I had these moved when I took up permanent residence here.”
Marco stepped forward, hovering just behind him.
He ran his fingers along the spines, checking the dates stamped in gold foil, looking for one in particular, some three thousand years prior.
He stopped, began again, then frowned. He pulled the entire stack out and dropped it onto the coffee table near the sofa.
“Look for the one dated 900BC,” he instructed.
They began searching anew.
“These were your father’s journals,” Marco said, surprised. “He kept journals?”
“Yes, as do I. As will you when you become head of this family.” He looked up, caught Marco gaping at him. They hadn’t discussed it often. But when it was time, Marco would become head of House Sarkas, taking up its namesake. Until then, he simply remained heir to House Sarkas.
“I’m not exactly the diary type,” Marco drawled.
“Too fucking bad,” he muttered. “Damn it,” he hissed, tossing the last journal back onto the table. “It’s not here.”
A cold dread settled in his stomach. If someone had taken it deliberately, they’d know exactly what they were looking for—and why. He scrubbed his hands over his face, feeling the rough stubble of his jaw.
“You’re sure?”
“Yes. I had them all stamped with the correct dates when I moved them here.”
“Could you have forgotten one?”
“No. That journal, in particular, was of great importance.”
His mind raced back in time, reconsidering the events that brought him here to Braxton.
Lio had been young at the time, his newest and last creation.
That’s why he’d come—because Lio loved Braxton, loved the city, the bay filled with yachts, the eclectic nightlife.
He’d cared for Lio in a way his father had failed to care for him.
Somehow, he too had come to appreciate the city, the change, the opportunity to get out of Italy, to leave his father’s monstrous fortress to the care of other family members and lay down new roots.
They’d discovered this manor—Lio, actually—and revived it. To this day, he considered it more Lio’s than his. But they’d made a home here, with his closest family and their children. House Sarkas had grown over the decades, thrived.
And then Lio had died.
He ripped his mind from those thoughts. “It should be here,” he said again. Frustrated, he checked the dates once more. “I know for certain when I updated the dates, stamped the spines, it was here. Afterward, they went into that fucking safe.”
“Who else knew about them? You think someone…took it? You didn’t misplace it?”
“I’m old, Marco, but my memory is sharp enough, especially with something I did only fifty years ago.”
“And…what exactly was in this journal?”
“Information on my father’s artifact—one of them, anyway.”
Marco froze, a journal open in his hand. “The ruby?”
“So…you know of it then?”
“Rumors, mostly. You think it has something to do with all this?”
“I’m not entirely certain. I caught a brief flash of it in the blood memory, or something that looked similar.”
“Shit,” Marco breathed, dropping the journal and leaning back against the sofa. He ran his fingers through his short hair. “But that cannot be possible. Right? It’s in the vault, with your father’s other things.”
“It’s not,” he said. Marco shot upright. “It should have been. I looked for it when my father died. It wasn’t there.”
“Someone has it?” Marco breathed.
Laurent’s stomach hardened. It was only a hunch, that the ruby could be related to all of this.
Hence, his desire to read his father’s journal.
His father had commissioned the ruby’s creation during a dark time in vampiric history.
A time when artificers were slaves, more than anything.
His father had captured a few, forced them into making things that would help the Sarkas family.
Supposedly, the ruby had been retired long before Laurent’s time. All he knew of it were rumors and stories. When he’d inherited his father’s journals, he’d only skimmed them. Even as cold as he’d become, he hadn’t had the stomach to read his father’s twisted words.
“I should have paid better attention,” he murmured.
“You think someone in our house took it?”
Laurent’s skin prickled. “None of them would betray me.”
“Are you so certain of that?” Marco held his gaze. “You, yourself, betrayed your father and killed him.”
“My father was a raving lunatic. Bloodthirsty. A danger to his own family.” He sighed.
“But yes, I suppose anything is possible. The last thing this family can afford is mistrust. I don’t want to look at my children, my brothers, sisters, cousins, and question their trustworthiness. That would destroy us.”
“This ruby—what was it called? Ivano’s Ruby? What did it do?”
“I cannot be certain. I know only that my father used it as a weapon.”
Marco hummed. “I can ask around—into the ruby. Surely there are some artifact aficionados out there who might know a thing or two.”
Laurent snorted. “Marco, that ruby was used before I was sired. How many people are alive today that would remember it? If I don’t know, I doubt anyone else will.”
“It wouldn’t hurt.”
“It would, if it draws unwanted attention.”
“I’ll be discreet.”
Laurent sighed. “Fine. See what you can do. I’m more concerned about this missing journal.”
“Perhaps it’s all connected.”
Perhaps. The word echoed in his mind. He didn’t want to consider it. But Marco was right. If there was a connection, it could mean only one thing. Someone in his family had betrayed him. And that left him the unfortunate job of discovering who.