Chapter 7
CHAPTER 7
The planning session had gone well, but the Wrights and Josefina needed until dusk the next night to enact their portions of preparations. The impending time felt like Roger would have to wait for eternity, but he couldn’t rush into the raid. Getting stuck in the same trap that Zack and Takashi were currently held in wouldn’t help any of them.
Kit and Vincent would need something more than greasy bar food and takeout to keep them fed, so Roger made a stop at a grocery store on his way back. Dawn was less than an hour away, and his arms were full of bags when he knocked on the back door of the Last Deal. He tapped out a rhythm from a 1960s punk song, one both he and Nathaniel thought was ridiculous.
“About damn time,” Nathaniel grumbled as he opened the door. He started taking the bags from him.
“I’ve got it,” Roger said.
“Just give them over.” Nathaniel continued grabbing the bags. “The she-devil kept pounding on the front door until I let her in. Was about to text you, but they haven’t been talking long.”
“They?”
“Better see for yourself.”
Before Roger could ask for answers, Nathaniel was halfway up the stairs the stairs toward his apartment. Roger locked the back door and then made his way into the bar.
Somehow, without the patrons, the bar remained cozy. The faux fireplace still had a crackling blaze, but the digital flames provided little illumination. The sconce lighting would have been considered dim for mortals, but it was bright enough for Roger to see plainly. All but one of the tables had their chairs on top.
Candide sat at a table in the center of the room. She had her hair down, something she never did, and it had a deep honey glow. Typically, she prided herself on her immaculate fashion, but she’d dressed in jeans and a T-shirt. A T-shirt .
In doing so, she reminded him of the nights centuries ago when she was newly immortal and lonely and hoping he would be more than a friend. He had disappointed her on those nights. Women held no romantic or sexual attraction for him. But he and Candide had formed a friendship rather than give way to animosity, an enduring relationship they both treasured.
Across from her was Kit. They were in better shape, though they held a hand to their stomach and were still pale from blood loss. The softness of their youthful features had melted a fraction. In their other hand, they had a red collar with a crest tag. The round steel piece had Candide’s crest on it, a stag with a magnificent set of antlers.
Roger lacked the energy to bring any of his social masks to the forefront. The multitude of tiny psychic cuts he’d lived with for so long were unbearable. He’d played his part for so long. Now that he was free, he couldn’t stomach slipping into an old habit with her.
“What’s happening here?” Roger asked.
Candide put her hand on top of Kit’s knee and squeezed. In a gentle voice, she said, “I can handle this if you want.”
“I’ve got it,” Kit whispered. They stood slowly and approached Roger.
Watching them move between the tables, every movement ginger and careful, ripped open Roger’s heart further. They were in pain because he had put them in harm’s way. Had they remained in Taliville, they would’ve been safe. Unhappy, but safe.
Roger had once prided himself on being a terrific master, but he’d never given Kit or Carver the attention he had his pets in the past. He’d paid them, flirted with them, and did more than flirt with Carver on occasion. But he hadn’t been their master.
Kit stared at the collar in their hands before drawing in a deep breath, exhaling, and then speaking in a clear voice. “I’ve always wanted more from you, and I’ve known that you didn’t really want to give it to me, but I thought maybe with time, you would. But you don’t, so I started looking for a real master. And I know the timing is shitty, and we only talked about this last night, but I’ve been feeling this way for a few weeks now.”
“You’ve already been searching for a real master,” Roger murmured. He put his hand to his lips, then shook his head.
“Yeah.” A serious weight landed on Roger’s shoulders as Kit met his gaze. “Roger … you’ve been planning this dangerous stuff since Taliville, and you didn’t share that with Carver or me. But Zack was in on it. And now Carver’s dead. And I almost died. And you ran off tonight without a freaking word.”
Pushing away the disappointment in himself, Roger gently put his hands on Kit’s shoulders. “I don’t blame you for wanting to leave, and I release you without condition. I’m sorry that I failed you, Kit. If you ever need sanctuary and I can provide it, I will. I promise you that.”
“I appreciate that,” Kit said quietly.
Roger smiled at them with every ounce of genuine warmth he could muster. “One of the bags upstairs is still yours. If you need help bringing it down, ask Vincent.”
“Thanks.”
Candide coaxed Kit toward her with her finger. “Come here, petit renard.”
Kit went back to her, and she took the collar from their hands. Instead of making Kit kneel, she stood and smoothly buckled the collar onto their neck. A flush brightened Kit’s cheeks, and a warm desire rolled out from them. That warmth grew when Candide kissed their cheek.
Roger had never brought that emotion out of them. Never tried to either. I’m an ass for risking their life without being what they needed .
“I’ll be back in a minute, mistress,” Kit said.
“Don’t rush. A wound like yours is still healing, and I need a moment to speak with your old master.”
Kit nodded.
Candide became as motionless as a statue while Kit to walked out of the room. Cold and professional was her default nature, but there was a glint of anger in her eyes.
Roger mimicked her stillness and waited until he heard the click of the door at the top of the stairs. Exhausted, he dropped all pretense of holding himself apart from his emotions and crossed the room to the bar. He found a bottle of rum and two glasses and began to pour. “I swear to God, if you’re going to throw a shit fit about what happened at the party, I will drive a semitruck through the Chateau.”
Candide strode over, each step purposeful and silent. “Oh, you will?”
When she went to take one of the glasses, Roger caught her gaze and said warningly, “Don’t start.”
“It has taken me seven years to host the Winter’s Grand Ball. Do you know how many times I hosted it before that? Three times in over a hundred years. How often were you hosting it before you disappeared?”
“Every five,” Roger muttered.
“Every five years. And how much work did you really put into the event?” Candide asked sharply.
Roger put both hands on the bar. “You used my name to get what you wanted because the asshole misogynistic mages wouldn’t respect you. You benefited. After all, you took my money and built your glorious donor house in my absence.”
“That isn’t the point, Roger.” Candide swiped one of the glasses of rum and clutched it tightly. “One night, you’re promising to become a leader, and weeks later, you’re jeopardizing my long-standing relationship with the fey courts by causing not one but two scenes with our wretched sire. In addition to appeasing the Chicago Court of Shadows, I have Seamus watching my every move!”
She threw the glass at him.
Roger caught it. The force and speed of her throw had sloshed the rum, but most remained in the glass. As a point of pride for catching the damn thing, he drank the remnants. “Finished? Or are we going to have a proper fight?”
“Nathaniel has built a darling, if rustic, establishment.” Candide crossed her arms. “I would rather not ruin such a wonderful place by kicking your ass.”
“I wasn’t going to let Seamus ruin your party by infecting it with his mystical manipulation. I believed showing off that I could inspire more lust than he could exude fear would serve me in the long run,” Roger replied.
“That one, I understood. But you stole his head pet.”
“Vincent relinquished Seamus’s collar of his own free will,” Roger said.
Candide scoffed. “We both know that Seamus’s pets never think to give those things up.”
The rumble of anger surged upward. Roger wasn’t the only one who had been at Seamus’s side for centuries. Candide had been there, too. The realization unlocked all kinds of chests at the bottom of his mental sea, and the emotional contents of each were rushing toward the surface. He couldn’t slam the lot of it back down where it belonged.
And he didn’t want to.
“You’re right,” he rasped. As he spoke, his voice grew louder. “We have stood by and witnessed what he has done to mortals over and over. I don’t mean the ones that he murders in a night or a week. We know about those, too. But we have watched him tear beauty from one after another of his ‘pets.’ They aren’t cared for, Candide. They aren’t submissives with a quirky name. Not his. His are victims .”
“We have had to safeguard our own survival,” Candide countered.
“We have,” Roger said. “But when is his villainy too much to bear? When is our survival nothing but a coward’s excuse to do nothing and pretend we don’t mind what’s happening?”
“Look at what has happened to you! Your name in ruin, your position revoked, your lovers kidnapped, and your pets murdered or nearly so!”
“And I will pull him into the ashes with me,” Roger growled. “I will bury Seamus if it is the last thing I do on this Earth.”
Bloody tears welled in Candide’s eyes, but she spun away from him before a single one could fall. She held her arms tight, a hand going to her face, and smothered her tears.
“I can’t continue like it was,” Roger said as he approached her. Gently, he put his hands on her shoulders. “Something has to change. You agreed with that.”
“It was easier to pretend without you here. You have always made me wonder what joy might feel like.” Candide tilted her head back. “I wish you hadn’t woken.”
Roger froze colder than blood in an arctic wind. In the months since he’d woken from his enchanted coma, he had told very few about what had truly happened to him. Anton had known on his own, but he had made it clear that he hadn’t told anyone either.
Candide was not someone that Roger had told. “You know about the curse?”
“I do.”
The shock clouded the rage. Numb, he spun her to face him. “Was it you?”
“That put you to sleep? No.” Candide slipped out of his grasp and walked over to the table with its chairs down. She put her hands on the back of one as if to steady herself. For once, all her masks dropped away. The innermost version of Candide was a tough core made from a long-conditioned endurance, but he spotted a weariness in her expression. “But I did ensure that Seamus could not find you.”
“ What ?” Roger demanded.
“Do you remember what June 1989 was like? Truly? Or do you remember it the way you like to remember everything else? With a million filters and only the pleasant bits of reality?”
“Candide, I am struggling to control my temper. Don’t test me.”
Candide narrowed her eyes at him. “Heaven forbid I call you out on your own bullshit. Up until recently, you might have believed you were only playing the part of a vapid playboy, but we both know that con came from a place of truth. You wanted that ignorant life to numb your own pain. I always enabled it because your attitude allowed me to ignore my own agony.”
Roger stalked over to the other chair and put his hands on the back of it to mirror hers. “That version of me is dead.”
“That remains to be seen,” Candide replied.
She didn’t have confidence that he would stick to his guns this time. He wasn’t sure he could blame her. From her perspective, he had been this way and that, thrown about like a kite without a string.
He needed to remain grounded. To gather information instead of dismissing it.
“What did you do?” Roger said.
“I was expecting you the night of June nineteenth, do you remember that? You had asked me to put you in contact with someone who sold enchanted weapons. It didn’t take a clever person to put together that you, Ezra, and Dmitri had had enough. After Anton’s little farce of killing Ezra’s love onstage—I know that he and Seamus had killed the poor boy long before their public display—the whole coven was on edge. Ezra was furious, and Dmitri was grumbling about how our kind are the worst devils. And you were changing, mon cher. You were different. You were secretive, and then you asked for weapons.
“Then you were simply gone. I feared that Anton had finally devoured your soul. Don’t give me that look. I have known since before I was made. I thought the vampires they ate were the ones that disappointed them, so I made it my mission to remain eternally useful. And I have, but we both know that they eat who they want. I was terrified you had been one.
“I looked everywhere for you. I finally heard rumor of you leaving a blood club with a beautiful fey boy. I tracked the boy down, who was no mere boy but a fucking lord . I couldn’t convince him to tell me more than that you were safe in slumber.” Candide pulled the chair farther out and then plopped into it. She buried her face in her hands. After a long moment, she composed herself. “He was willing to tell me what the ‘scheme’ was if I could strike the right deal, which made him a threat. Anton and Seamus would have never bargained for you to disappear like that, but they were already tearing the world apart looking for you. I saw opportunities opening for me, and you were safer than any of us. If they were distracted, I could cement my own power out of sight of their inspection.”
“Is that why you were eager to help me? Place me on the throne, and you would rule from behind the seat?” Roger said.
“As much as Seamus acts like he is the sole authority of the coven, operations on this scale require more than one leader,” Candide said firmly.
She wasn’t wrong, but Roger hadn’t seen that her support had been self-motivated. He should have noticed it. Should have known that nothing she ever did came without its price.
Everyone plays me. Uses me. Wants something from me. The anger was rising too quickly. It was bringing a storm with it. He would be caught in a thunderous downpour with a cyclone on the waves if he could not manage his emotions.
Part of him wanted to release it all. To finally unload this stored treasure.
But Candide was a friend. He loved her, and at the very least, she cared for him. Though she had used his absence for her own gain, his long years away had been spent peacefully. Had he woken earlier, he wouldn’t have met Zack. Or their meeting would have been dramatically different. Without him and without Takashi, Roger would have caved and abandoned his plan to overthrow Seamus. He would have come back to Chicago and fooled himself into believing that he was too weak or that no one wanted him.
No, the only pieces of fate he wanted to change were Carver’s death and that Zack and Takashi were taken from him.
“You failed to strike a deal for the information? Or was my disappearance a greater asset than having me back?” Roger asked.
Candide glared at him and stood. “The former. I wanted you home, but the prick’s price was too high. Since he seemed willing to bargain that secret away, I figured it would only be a matter of time before he offered it to Seamus. I had a mage curse him into another form. Then I killed the mage. No one knows where that fey lord is.” She half grinned. “The Seelie and Unseelie have been on edge with each other since that happened.”
“You could’ve started a war,” Roger said.
“They won’t war without proof, and there is none but my word to find.”
And mine. I could let loose this fragment of a secret . But that wouldn’t start a war between the fey courts, but one between the vampires and the Unseelie. That was a nuclear option if Roger was willing to risk innocents in Seamus’s destruction.
With long, careful strides, Roger approached her. “I do not want anger or misconception between us. I intend to rescue my loves and then ruin him. When I am done, there may not be a Great Lakes Coven.”
Candide met him in a staring contest. Her youth had long ago become a stone fa?ade. She was old inside her soul, and with that strength, she did not waver. “There will be something. There always is. Spare me and mine and we have no quarrel.”
“He may suspect you’d aid me,” Roger replied.
“He won’t want to cross me, not if you become a thorn in his side,” Candide said. She tilted her head to the side. “I hear my new pet coming. You’re honestly all right with my taking them, mon cher?”
“I have always said that my pets truly belong to themselves. And I have failed Kit miserably.” Roger kissed her cheek. “Pamper them.”
Candide laughed lightly. “I always spoil the good ones.”
Kit came into the room with Vincent behind them. They sheepishly gave Roger a hug, which he returned.
“Be safe,” Roger whispered in their ear. “Be happy.”
“Get them back,” Kit murmured. They squeezed tighter, then released him.
Surprisingly, Candide stole a quick, sincere hug from Roger. “You better not die.”
“I don’t plan to.”
“Perhaps not, but you are terrible at planning.” She kissed his cheek, took Kit’s bag from Vincent, and left the bar with Kit a half step behind her.
Roger locked the door behind them. By the time he turned around, Vincent was putting the chairs on top of the table. After that, he headed for the bar and put away the bottle of rum Roger had grabbed.
“You don’t have to clean up after me,” Roger said. “That’s not something I expect from you.”
“You don’t expect anything from me,” Vincent muttered. He motioned to the glass with rum in it. “Can I?”
“You don’t need my permission either,” Roger replied.
Vincent nabbed the glass and tossed back the rum in one swallow. He took the other glass and began to wash them.
Clearly, telling the boy that he didn’t need to do anything wasn’t the way to release the tension between them. Was he expecting a relationship like the one he’d had with Seamus? Did he crave that sort of contact in a healthy way rather than the abusive situation he’d been in? Roger made his way over to the bar, keeping the wooden structure between them in order to give him space.
I’m already failing him. “You don’t have to stay with me if you don’t want to.”
“I don’t have anywhere to go.”
“What about your parents?”
Vincent scowled, and his face twisted in disgust. “You mean the woman who was so caught up with her vampire boyfriend that she didn’t give a shit what he did to me? Or the man who took me in after she got herself killed, only to kick me around whenever he got pissed—and he was always pissed. At least I could make Seamus happy.”
The anger in Vincent’s voice left behind an ache that reverberated through Roger. Slowly, Roger walked around the bar and found a clean dish towel. He took one of the freshly cleaned glasses and began to dry it.
Perhaps he had already opened too many of the chests at the bottom of his sea. Perhaps the agony had already been floating to the surface, and now that the storm was settled, he could more easily spot the detritus of old terrors. Either way, the pains weren’t forgotten. They were scraping his hull, threatening to tear it.
“I know your pain,” Roger said quietly.
“Sure you do.”
We cannot heal wounds we do not tend. I’ve let this one fester too long. Not wanting to see Vincent’s reaction, he focused on drying every drop from the two glasses. “Father and mother are words I’ve never understood. I ran away when I was twelve. I did anything I could to find a warm bed to sleep in. Anything.”
Vincent remained quiet.
That silent respect and patience helped Roger continue. “I made my way to the coast and found work on a ship. There is nothing in the world like sailing across the sea. I learned how to be part of a crew. Found a ship where my worth wasn’t based on the shape of me. I worked. I drank, I fought, I fucked, I loved. It was pure freedom.
“A storm struck, as they do, and our ship was damaged. We found the nearest port and thanked God it had a settlement large enough to do the repairs.” Roger put the glasses back where they belonged. “The island was called Devil’s Cove. By the end of the first night, I was dead. Three nights later, I rose as Seamus’s sireling.”
“Did he give you a choice?” Vincent asked.
“No.” Roger leaned against the counter. “I woke with incredibly powerful senses and a bloodlust, but other than that, I felt the same. Only I had a master. I kept him happy because it kept me alive, and I’d wager you’ve done the same. I lived in terror of him for three hundred years, at times convincing myself that my life wasn’t a wretched waste because you have to in order to keep from going mad.
“I know you tormented Zack with that online video, but I doubt that you were trying to bully him into submission. You were trying to make him unappealing because you were afraid to lose Seamus’s admiration.”
Vincent’s lip quivered. “Did … did Zack talk to you?”
“Not about you.”
“Then how did you know?”
“Because I’ve done the same,” Roger replied. “I was young, and I made another pirate a sireling. Seamus liked him, seemed to like him more than me. I was only ten years a vampire, but I’d seen his habits. I convinced my sireling to do something that humiliated Seamus in front of the crew. When he disappeared, I told myself that he ran away and joined another ship.”
“But he didn’t.”
“I have no proof, but I doubt he did.” Roger drew his shoulders straight. He had to face his past and refuse to allow it to drag him under its riptide. “His death was my fault, and it’s a sin I don’t feel guilt for. I can’t stop to think of all the wrong I’ve done to survive. The guilt would grind me into dust. Whatever you’ve done, I won’t judge you. I don’t have the right, and I too keenly understand the need.”
A bubble of a sob was lodged in Vincent, and he held it in. He had his clenched fists on the counter in front of him and bit his lip. Tears began to fall. Once started, they became rivers, and the sob broke out of him. “You’re not supposed to get it. You’re supposed to be a bastard and use me like the rest of them.”
Roger put a hand on Vincent’s shoulder. At first, the boy moved to shake him off, and Roger planned on allowing that, but then Vincent plunged toward him and locked his arms around him. As tenderly as he could, Roger returned the hug. Each of Vincent’s sobs rocked through Roger, shaking something loose deep in his soul.
The boy he’d been had never had a hug like this. Had never spoken once of what he’d endured. The man—the vampire he was—had barely mentioned the surface of his wounds from Seamus to his loved ones.
And because he couldn’t hug that long-lost boy, he hugged Vincent with everything he wished he could have had himself.