by Rye Brewer
I could use him at the meeting, and he hadn’t said a word to me since that night on the roof. He was staking out the new shifters. I didn’t like imagining what might’ve happened to keep him silent.
“I’m sure he’s okay,” Anissa said from her spot in the back. Allonic was too tall to fit comfortably back there, so she had to sit next to Genevieve as we made the ten-minute ride.
“I don’t know. It’s been days. The only time he went off-radar like this, it was when he went off on his own.”
“You know he wouldn’t do that again, not when he knows how serious it is.”
“That’s my point. He knows how serious it is to drop off like that. He has to know I would jump to the worst possible conclusion. But he’s still MIA. It bothers me.” A lot of things bothered me.
Now that we were on our way to the meeting, it bothered me that we were walking into an assassination. I wished Anissa wouldn’t be there. I wanted to keep her as far away from as much as possible, not that she would ever let me leave her behind.
“How’s she doing?” I asked Allonic, jerking my head back in Genevieve’s direction.
“Just fine.”
“You’re okay with doing this?”
“As I said, I don’t know what will happen as a result, but I see why it’s important that I try.”
It was the most I could ask for, and I let the subject drop.
There were several vampires milling around in front of the tall, imposing door which led inside the old cathedral. I pulled up in front and waited for them to go inside before letting Genevieve out of the car—it wouldn’t look right if they saw her with us.
“Let her go in first,” I said.
We hung back while she disappeared into the building, then followed behind. She walked to one end of the long table, taking a seat with her men.
They asked questions.
She held up a hand to silence them without saying a word. It was the best method of attack.
Meanwhile, I walked in with Anissa by my side and scanned the Great Hall. The atmosphere was far different than it was before the last meeting. There was a high, tense energy.
The clans who had managed to make it—probably around ten or so—likely knew it was I who had called the meeting. Their eyes followed every move I made as we went to our section of the table. When they noticed Allonic trailing behind us, a buzzing of whispers rose up.
“We’re famous,” Anissa whispered through gritted teeth.
“Or infamous,” I muttered back as I held out her chair.
Lucian watched as we sat, with Anissa on my right and Allonic on my left. He didn’t bother to hide the contempt he felt for us. The same went for me, but double.
I flashed a confident smile, and the heat of his stare almost burned my skin—but he managed to return a tight smile and a nod in our direction, trying to give the impression that he was the same old fatherly Lucian, looking over his flock.
Genevieve, meanwhile, didn’t move an inch.
Vance sat to Lucian’s left. There was a deep well of knowing in his eyes, in the way he smiled. He knew we knew who he was and I’m sure he wondered why we didn’t give him up. It would be a huge mistake to do any such thing, and I knew it. So did he. He would call me crazy, and everybody would believe him.
Anissa leaned in when she noticed where I was looking. “I wonder if Vance is in there anymore,” she whispered behind her hand. “Or is it both of them? I don’t understand how it works.”
“Neither do I,” I whispered back.
I couldn’t help but think of Mom. If Vance was still in there, was Mom still in her body? Sharing space with Nivia? Maybe she had never died at all. One thing at a time, I thought with a shake of my head. Like I didn’t have enough to worry about.
The tables looked a little sparse compared to the crowd at the last meeting. I guessed the others couldn’t make it on short notice. Not that I needed a huge audience. Those in attendance were more than enough.
There was one clan missing. Anissa noticed, too. Marcus wasn’t there.
“Damn it, where is he?” I whispered.
The whole plan would fall apart without him. I did my best to keep Lucian from reading my anxiety.
“He’ll be here,” Anissa muttered under her breath.
“You’re so sure?”
“I know him,” she muttered. “He wouldn’t miss something like this, especially when you’re the one who wanted the meeting. And you did tell Lucian he was the reason for calling it—Lucian would demand he show up.”
“I hope you’re right.” I was more of the mind that he would go far, far away if he knew there was a chance he’d get into trouble.
A minute later, there he was.
He strode into the hall with his head high and looked down his nose at the rest of us. Including me.
I watched him reach his seat and take it with a big flourish, like he knew everybody was watching and dared them to.
“That’s his son, Will. Do you know him?” Anissa whispered, referring to the tall, blonde man next to Marcus.
I shook my head. He didn’t matter to me. Raze mattered, standing to Marcus’s other side.
The way Raze looked at Anissa made my blood boil. I wished he would start a fight just for the satisfaction of tearing him apart. If I started one, Anissa would never forgive me.
I got Allonic’s attention and nodded toward Marcus.
Allonic nodded back. He knew best what to do at that point.
I told myself to trust him.
Lucian rose to his feet.
We all turned to watch him.
His smile as he looked over the room nauseated me.
“Now that those of us able to attend have arrived, it’s best to get the meeting underway.” His eyes fell on me. “We’ve all gone out of our way to assemble, Jonah, perhaps it would best if you told us why you called us together.”
My heart was in my throat as I stood.
It was time to get things underway.
36
Anissa
Jonah stood.
I reminded myself to breathe. It would be soon. It would have to be soon. Would Allonic be able to go through with it? What kind of side effects would he have to deal with? I didn’t want him to hurt himself—nothing was worth that.
I glanced at Genevieve. She was a beautiful dummy; he still had her under control. How long would it take for somebody to notice that she wasn’t moving?
I looked over at Allonic. Had he sent the second spiritwalker yet?
His color was off—enough to scare me a little. He looked as gray as his cloak. His eyes normally glowed bright, but they were hardly glowing at all anymore.
Yes, he had sent it.
And it was draining his life force.
My stomach felt like it had large rocks in it.
Jonah cleared his throat—the sound echoed in the massive chamber—then opened his mouth to speak.
That was when all hell broke loose.
Instead of Jonah’s voice, we all heard Marcus roar.
Marcus jumped up from his chair and lunged for Lucian as we watched, dumbfounded.
Even I didn’t know it was going to be that dramatic.
Gasps and cries of shock filled the chamber.
Before Marcus reached Lucian, Vance stood and got between them.
It looked for a second like he would protect his father.
Instead, Vance pulled a bone dagger from the pocket of his jacket.
I wanted to call out, but that would only give him away.
I didn’t know what to do.
Allonic collapsed in his chair with his eyes closed.
I reached for him—then realized what his unconsciousness meant.
Genevieve’s scream rose above all the other shouts and cries. I looked across the table to where she shrieked and raved, pointing at us, babbling incoherently.
Her men tried to help her, quiet her down, something, anything, but there was nothing they could do.
She broke free of them and rushed to the end of the table, toward Marcus and Vance.
What she thought she was going to do, I couldn’t tell—she probably didn’t know, either, since it seemed like she wasn’t in her right mind.
Vance still stood near Marcus, who wasn’t roaring any longer, and in fact looked like he had no idea what just got into him. He might have been a man coming out of a deep sleep.
In all the melee, nobody but me noticed when Vance turned to Lucian with a wicked smile.
For a split second, no longer than a blink, the two of them locked eyes.
Did Lucian know who he really looked at?
Vance plunged the dagger into Lucian’s chest.
Lucian gasped—disbelief crossed his face, and then suddenly, in the blink of an eye, he crumbled into dust.
Just like that.
One second he was there, staring at someone who looked like his son, and the next he was no more.
I shook free of the shock and rushed to the end of the table, where Genevieve was trying to insert herself between Marcus and Vance.
She was still babbling and screaming.
Everyone was shouting.
It was chaos, vampires running everywhere, yelling and losing their minds, fangs bared, claws extended.
They didn’t notice when I picked the dagger up from the floor and slid it into my boot.
The security team rushed into the room to break up the chaos.
A lot of good that did Lucian, waiting until after he was nothing but dust to come to the rescue.
They took hold of Vance, Marcus, even Genevieve. Her guards leaped to her rescue.
“Silence!” Jonah’s voice rang through the room like a gong.
It was loud and forceful enough to bring everything to a halt. He looked as breathless as I felt, but he dealt with it a lot better.
He glanced to where Lucian had stood only moments earlier. “As the senior most clan member present, I take interim leadership of the League.”
He looked to the guards, still holding Vance, Marcus, and Genevieve. “Take the three of them under arrest and place them in separate cells, far from each other. I’ll deal with them later.”
Vance didn’t even try to fight back. Of course he didn’t. The look on his face was triumphant.
Jonah pounded his fist on the table to turn the focus back to himself. “I call a full meeting of the League. I want every member here in order to elect a new leader. Within a week.”
Marcus must have gotten his senses back, because he raged. “You have no right to assume leadership! I’m the senior-most clan leader!”
“You are. You’re also involved in a plot to murder Lucian.”
Marcus gaped, then roared again—this time, he lunged for Jonah. “That wasn’t me! You have to know that wasn’t me! I couldn’t control myself!” He sounded like a raving lunatic.
The guards pulled him back in time and led him out of the room with Genevieve and Vance.
“I want a full guard on their cells at all times!” Jonah called out as they left.
He looked around the chamber at the shaken, stunned clan members. “The meeting will take place one week from today. Please go now—I’m sorry you had to come all this way to see what just took place.”
He remained standing as we watched the attendees file from the Great Hall, murmuring to each other, shaking their heads.
Every once in a while, one of them would look back to where Lucian had disintegrated.
37
Jonah
I couldn’t believe it. I knew something was coming but couldn’t have predicted the way it would all play out.
Valerius was just that determined to kill Lucian.
I hoped it made him happy.
Anissa flew to Allonic’s side. “Allonic? Wake up!” She shook him gently and patted his cheeks, but he was out cold. She looked up at me with wide, anxious eyes. “What can we do?”
“I don’t know.” I leaned over him.
He was still breathing, at least. His color was all off. He wasn’t kidding about there being side effects to controlling two spiritwalkers at once.
The whole plan fell apart.
“We have to get him out of here,” she said.
I saw how right she was—we were alone, but we wouldn’t be alone forever. There were guards who would wonder why a shade was still on the property. He wasn’t welcome there, even if he was half-vampire.
I thought fast. “The high-rise is out. It’s too risky. Too many eyes.”
“What about your safe house? The one we were just staying in?”
I shook my head. “We can’t hang around there with him, though. We have things to take care of. I wouldn’t want to leave him alone like this.”
“Oh, Allonic. Please, wake up.” She touched her forehead to his shoulder and sounded so pitiful.
I wished I could wake him up for her.
She raised her head. “I know where he might be able to go.”
“Where?”
“Avellane.” She stood. “Felicity might be willing to help us.”
“Felicity?”
“I think she’s a senior member of the fae. I still don’t know the complete hierarchy, but I know she’s a big deal. And she has a good heart. She likes me. She’ll want to help us.”
“You think they would accept a shade there? She likes you that much?” I couldn’t help feeling a little skeptical.
“I have to try, don’t I? The entrance to Avellane isn’t far from here.”
“We can’t bring him with us if we don’t know they’ll accept him,” I argued.
“I don’t plan on bringing him with me.”
I blinked as her idea dawned on me. “You want me to wait here with him?”
“It’s the only option—you can’t make it through the barrier, either. Only I can unaccompanied, because I have fae blood. So? Will you wait?”
I didn’t have a choice. There were roughly a hundred million things I would rather do than sit in the chamber where Lucian was murdered—his dust was still on the floor—but there was nothing else I could do. I couldn’t come up with a better option.
She ran out, leaving me alone with an unconscious Allonic.
I watched his chest rise and fall in time with his breath. Where was he? How long would he be out for?
Lucian was gone. It all felt so anticlimactic.
After centuries of him making life hell for people I loved, he was gone for good. His dust still sat on the floor to prove that he wasn’t alive. And we weren’t the only ones he inflicted his evil upon, of course—otherwise, Valerius wouldn’t have wanted to kill him.
Who else had suffered because of Lucian’s evil?
And where did that evil come from? He couldn’t have been the way he was back in his human days.
My father was smart enough to see through even the best lies—I couldn’t imagine that was a skill that had only shown up once he turned into a vampire. Lucian must have changed.
Did my parents really change his heart? Or was the evil so deep down inside, it had only shown up when his heart was broken?
The thought of Lucian having a heart didn’t work for me, but I didn’t know him back then.
An hour passed before Anissa came back—I was ready to jump out of my skin by the time she hurried back through the door and across the Great Hall.
“Well?”
She nodded, breathless. “Yes. Felicity and two others—men—are outside the property.” She leaned on a chair to catch her breath. “I coursed the whole way there, didn’t have enough in me to course again, so had to run back. I was afraid of what might be happening while I was gone.”
“Everything’s fine. So is he. Except he’s still out.”
She nodded. “Good. But not good. Okay, so they won’t cross the divide into vampire territory. That’s why they’re waiting.”
“What divide?”
She shrugged. “No idea. I guess it’s invisible—I didn’t see anythin
g. They only walked up to a certain point but wouldn’t go any further.”
She helped me haul Allonic out of the chair. I bent at the knees and let his limp body fall over my shoulder and across my back. He was even heavier than I had expected.
As we walked across the hall and out the door, I asked, “Do they know who he is to you?”
“No. I didn’t want to tell them. I felt like it wouldn’t be right.”
“Why not?”
She frowned. “I want my dad to find out that my mother’s alive—and has a son—from my mother. Or me. Not from Felicity.”
I understood the sense of honor in that. “So why are they accepting him, if they don’t know how important he is to you?”
“It’s a favor. That’s what Felicity said. I mean, I’m the daughter of a fae king. I guess that earns me some points.” She led me through a field beside Headquarters.
I remembered the way, somewhat, from before, when I was following Anissa out the door as Gregor tried to lead her back to Avellane.
The moon hid behind clouds giving the area a surreal feel, and darkening the environment. Not that the dark meant anything to our vampire vision.
“What about him finding out? Or any of them?”
She shook her head. “I trust Felicity. She said she would keep it a secret, and she will.”
We approached the big, gnarled tree where I had the feeling the portal to Avellane was located.
Sure enough, three figures stood there. The woman had long, white hair which she wore wound in a braid that hung to her hips. The men were white-haired, too.
All three of them were on the smallish side, which made me wonder how they would manage to move Allonic.
“Here he is,” Anissa whispered.
Felicity nodded and motioned for her men to take the body from me.
I hesitated—they would collapse, for sure.
Except they didn’t. They carried him between them like he was a feather.
“We’ll take good care of him,” Felicity promised as she took Anissa’s hands. Her voice was low, musical. Her eyes burned with intensity—and sincerity.
I could already understand why Anissa trusted her.
“Thank you so much. I’ll be back soon to check on him. I promise.” They hugged briefly before Felicity turned to follow the man carrying Allonic. I hoped I’d see him again soon—he had gone through so much for us.