“Think nothing of it,” said Viggo. “I knew it would please Desta, and I love to see her smile.” He turned to her, rather pointedly.
Desta smiled, but it didn’t look quite genuine.
“Thank you so much,” said my father. “It really is an honor. And we are so pleased to see our girls.”
Dinner went on in this manner. My mother babbled. My father spoke up to back her up. And Viggo was all smooth grace. He asked questions of my parents about Desta as a little girl. He seemed rapt with interest about everything from her fourth birthday to the time we went skiing as a family. Desta was quiet, pale, and worried. She tried to smile and laugh, but she couldn’t quite force it.
Her demeanor made me even more frightened. She knew Viggo better than any of us. She knew what he was capable of. I had seen what he’d done to Octavion, and that had been pretty awful. Viggo was the worst sort of monster, I thought. He was too old to care about anything, and so nothing had value to him.
I had to admit that I was stunned by how happy my parents seemed to be to see me. I wondered if I’d been wrong about them. When I left to go into the woods, I hadn’t called them. I loved my parents and they loved me, but Desta had always been their favorite. I had never felt as if I mattered that much to them. But now, I could see how much they had missed me. I felt awful. I could have called them. Back before being captured by the vampires, I’d had a cell phone.
I should have let them know I was all right.
If we could get through all this, and Viggo didn’t kill us all, I would do my best to keep in touch with them better from now on. Even though we lived in different worlds—them on one side of the fences and me on the other—we were still family.
When dinner was over, we stayed at the table and talked through dessert and coffee, and then eventually someone came to tell my parents that their car was there to take them home, and they were escorted out.
The minute they were out of earshot, Desta was next to Viggo. “Please, let them be,” she said. “Please.”
He turned to look at her. “You didn’t like the dinner? I thought you would. You had mentioned that your family was worried over your sister. I thought they would like to see her again.”
“Once more before you have them drained of blood?” said Desta.
“What are you talking about?”
“You want something from me,” said Desta. She was close to tears. “You won’t tell me what it is. That’s part of it all, I think. You want me to guess it as well. And you’re not above threatening everyone I care about—”
“You have a very low opinion of me, don’t you?” Viggo’s voice was flat.
Desta’s lips parted. She was terrified of saying the wrong thing. The question was a trap. “No. No, of course not.”
“You must, if you think that I did all this to torment you.” Viggo shook his head. “Desta, have I ever done anything besides try to make you happy and comfortable?”
Desta didn’t say anything.
“I am in love with you,” said Viggo.
“You aren’t capable—” And then she broke off, horrified by what she had almost said.
“I’m not capable of love?” Viggo pressed his lips together.
It was quiet. Deadly quiet.
Viggo sighed. He sounded sad. “Nothing I ever do is enough. I have given you everything you even hinted at wanting—”
“My sister. You keep her captive.”
“I have to,” said Viggo. “I told you all about the political climate. You must understand.”
“You don’t have to keep her in a cage in your bedroom,” Desta said.
“Fine,” said Viggo. “Fine, I will move her somewhere else. To her own apartment. Would that please you?”
I spoke up. “I need to go back to the woods.”
“Camber,” said Desta, shaking her head at me.
Well, it was true. I did.
“You know,” said Viggo softly, “when I was human, it was customary for a man to meet a woman’s parents before he tried to woo her.”
Desta let out a disbelieving laugh. “You can’t woo me, Viggo. You… I live in fear of my life. You won’t let me forget that you have all new vampires killed, all except me. You throw it in my face everything you’ve done for me. There can be nothing real between us, because I am not your equal.”
Viggo shook his head.
It was quiet again.
Viggo curled his lip. “I let your bloodhound live tonight. I almost killed him, but I knew you’d never forgive me if I did.”
“Landon? So, that’s why he hasn’t visited. You’ve captured him. I assumed you would. I suppose you’ll put another chip in his neck now.”
“I won’t do anything to him,” said Viggo.
“You’ll let him go?” said Desta.
“Don’t be ridiculous.” Viggo smoothed the lapels of his shirt. “Well, this has all been very disappointing.” He started away from the table. “Come, Camber.”
I hesitated.
But Desta nodded at me, mouthing that I needed to do what he said.
I sighed, and then I followed the vampire king. Back to my cage.
* * *
But Viggo was as good as his word, and he didn’t keep me in the cage that night. He took me to another apartment, two floors down. I had my own bedroom and a master bathroom with a marble soaking tub. There were bloodhound guards at the door, so it wasn’t as if I could leave, but it was much better than the cage.
The next morning, I awoke to two bloods coming into the apartment without my permission. I wasn’t pleased about that, but I was happy to see that they had brought Landon with them. They chained Landon up in my living room. He was on a long, silver chain, fastened to a collar on his neck, that allowed him enough room to go anywhere in the apartment. But he was still chained.
Landon wasn’t in a great mood, and he kept calling the bloods names and they kept saying that if he didn’t shut up, they were going to take his head off his shoulders. This didn’t stop Landon from egging them on.
Finally, I yelled at him.
He looked me over and said he might rather be dead than chained up here.
“That’s an awful thing to say,” I said.
“It’s only a matter of time until I’ve got another chip in my head, and I’m back to doing whatever they want me to do,” he said. “I’d rather die than lose my freedom again.”
“Viggo isn’t going to do that,” I said. “He knows it’ll piss off Desta. He wants to get on her good side.”
Landon only shrugged.
After making sure that Landon was secure, the bloods left. They didn’t say anything to either me or Landon.
Once we were alone, I went to a window. We were pretty high up, but we were indestructible beings. Only fire or decapitation could kill me if I was in wolf form, and Landon was always impervious to most death.
“We could jump,” I said.
“What?” Landon said.
“The fall wouldn’t kill either of us, not if I shift,” I said. “We could get away. Well… I still need to find Aston Waterfield, but—”
“Look, I’ve been thinking about that,” said Landon. “What you need is a spell to cloak your village so that the bloods can never find you.”
“If I don’t deliver on the deal—”
“You can’t deliver on the deal,” said Landon. “But if they can’t find you, it doesn’t matter, right?”
I sighed. “Maybe. But we don’t know any witches, and they’re all on high alert after the vampires killed Geneva.”
“We know Vivia,” said Landon.
“We can’t trust her,” I said.
“Right,” he said. “But we’ll just force her to help us. I can be pretty convincing if I need to be.”
“Well, that’s going to be hard if you’re dead,” I said. “So stop mouthing off to the bloods, huh?”
He picked up the silver chain that attached him to the wall and passed the links through his hands. “S
orry. I guess I wasn’t thinking we’d ever get out of here. It’s easy to feel hopeless in the city. This place just makes me feel…” He didn’t answer.
“Okay, well, it’s not ideal,” I said. “But maybe we could get a spell from Vivia. I still want Aston Waterfield, though. We’ll have to come back at some point.”
“No,” he said.
“Don’t argue with me,” I said. “Have you ever been able to convince me not to do something once my mind is made up?”
He rolled his eyes.
“Good,” I said. “Now, let’s figure out how to get you free of those chains.”
He went over to one of the easy chairs in my living room and sat down heavily. “We’re not going to be able to do that.”
“I don’t think it’s impossible to cut silver,” I said. “I’m pretty sure bolt cutters would work.”
“Right, and there are bolt cutters lying around.” He gestured with both hands. “I bet Viggo wanted us to go free and put some in the bathroom closet.”
“You never know,” I said and went to go look in the closet. No bolt cutters. I found some scissors in a drawer in the kitchen though, and I came back with those and a serrated knife.
Landon raised his eyebrows when he saw what I had. “Look, Camber, I know how I can break the chains. I just don’t want to do it.”
“How?” I said.
He studied the inside of his palms. I noticed there was no fur growing there. “When I, uh… when Viggo made me rage out in his room? You know when you were in that cage?”
“Yeah?” I said. “You couldn’t get free. Your hands were stuck behind your back.”
“But when I woke back up after the rage mode was over, the chains were weakened so much that I was able to snap them. But Viggo had a bunch of bloods there to subdue me, so it didn’t matter.”
I pressed my hands together. “So, this is great news. Can you just rage out on your own, or you do you need, uh, stimuli?”
He let out an embarrassed laugh. He didn’t answer.
My voice dropped. “I didn’t think it would be that easy for it to take you over. You’ve seen me shift back and forth before. I know you’ve seen—Wait.” I sat up straight. “Damn it, what am I thinking? We can’t leave.”
He raised his gaze to mine. “Um? We can’t?”
“No, I can’t leave Desta here with Viggo.”
“I thought he was trying to stay on her good side. That means he won’t hurt her, right?”
“We can’t know that. Besides, he could get bored with her at any second. He’s very unstable and terrifying.”
He sighed.
“Look, I know you hate my sister or whatever, but she didn’t understand that drinking her blood was going to make you devoted to her. She wouldn’t have hurt you on purpose.”
Landon got up out of his chair. “I don’t care one way another about your sister,” he said, heading into the kitchen. “I’m fine. I’m totally fine.” His voice was getting further away.
I went after him. “You blame her for being turned into a bloodhound. It makes sense that you’d hate her. But for my sake, if you could put that aside, I would be really grateful.”
Landon was at the refrigerator. “He could have given us some beer or something. Being drunk definitely makes it easier to take being a prisoner, you know?”
“Desta’s a prisoner, too. She’s terrified of Viggo.”
“What is in here?” He bent over to rummage through the crisper drawers. “Doesn’t he know that vegetables are an important part of a healthy diet?”
“And I know what it’s like. I was a blood slave too. I know how much I adored both Petal and Hadrian. So, I know how you feel. But the thing is, I felt sorry for both of them, too, in a way. It just seems like they have very petty lives with nothing real in them.”
Landon straightened. He was quiet.
“So?” I said.
“I should have asked if you were okay,” he said softly into the refrigerator. “That should have been the first thing I asked.”
“I’m fine.”
He turned to look at me over one shoulder. “Yeah. Okay.”
“Why wouldn’t I be fine?”
He shut the door to the refrigerator. “I don’t know. I don’t know what happened to you. You’re the one who rushed in here and got yourself turned into a blood slave. You got yourself compelled and your emotions and your free will messed with, and fangs know what they made you do.”
I swallowed. “Well… there were parts that weren’t so great.”
He was quiet. He leaned back against the refrigerator door. “And if I begged you to let me free one of them? You’d be okay with it?”
I squared my shoulders. “Well…”
We were quiet.
He was the one to break the silence, and his voice was soft. “Look, I get it. She’s your sister. And she didn’t mean to do what she did. I get all of it. We’ll take her with us.” He nodded, as if he was trying to convince himself. “We’ll take her with us.” He walked out of the room, looking defeated.
I trailed after him. “Landon, you were meeting with her alone every day—”
“Yeah, because of you,” he said, rounding on me, and there was heat in his voice now. “Because there seems to be no limit to the things I will do for you, not that it even makes any damned sense. If I had half a brain, I never would have followed you back here.”
I twisted my hands together. “I’m sorry. It’s my fault you’re here. It’s my fault you got recaptured.”
“No, look, I’m not angry with you.” He threw himself back down in the easy chair. “Just… can we not talk about Desta?”
“Okay,” I said. I sat down opposite him, on the couch. “But, um, we need to make a plan to get to her. So…”
He ran a hand over the fur on the top of his head, smoothing it down. “Fine. But give me a little bit, okay?”
“Okay,” I said.
Neither of us spoke.
CHAPTER SEVEN
We ended up watching TV instead of making a plan.
Viggo used to leave the TV on in his bedroom for me, but he never asked me what I wanted to watch, so I’d been stuck with whatever he happened to land on when he was channel surfing, which was pretty much all that Viggo did. He was too restless to commit to any show, so he’d watch a bit of this and a bit of that and waste hours that way.
Anyway, it was nice to have control over the TV.
The sun went down.
The freezer of our refrigerator had frozen dinners in it. I microwaved two for us, and we ate and watched TV in the darkness. We talked about the food and whether we wanted the other to change the channel, but nothing else.
And I was starting to decide that this was ridiculous, because we could get out of there. We needed Landon to rage out and to work out the logistics of keeping me safe while he did that, and then we needed to figure out how to jump and get to Desta and get out of this place.
After that, I’d have to work out some way to come back for Aston Waterfield, but one thing at a time. For now, escape was enough. We needed to make it happen. I didn’t care if Landon was traumatized over being a blood slave. I needed to work through this, now.
Landon suddenly turned off the TV. “I saw Judah.”
“You did?” I said. “When?”
“Right after you got him out,” said Landon. “He was trying to go back into the city after you.”
“What? He didn’t, did he?”
“No, I convinced him to go to the pack. I told him I would look out for you. I told him I’d get you out.”
“Well, thank you for that. If he’d gotten captured again—or worse, killed—all of this would have been for nothing.”
“Sure,” said Landon. “He cares about you.”
“I care about him too,” I said. “He’s my mate, after all. And the pack, they need him.”
“Yeah.” Landon nodded.
“But… I mean… you know that Judah and I care about each ot
her like siblings, don’t you? I mean, you’re not still jealous of him.”
“I was never jealous of the dog.” Landon huffed.
“There you go, calling him the dog again.”
“There’s no reason to be jealous of… of Judah,” said Landon, but his voice sounded sulky. “I don’t have any claim on you.”
“Well… we did kiss,” I said. I sat up straight. “We could do that again? Do you want to—”
“We can’t,” he said. “That kiss was dangerous. I could have killed you if I’d lost control.”
“But you didn’t,” I said. “Which… look, I know you don’t want to talk about Desta, but we do need to make a plan. So, how do we get you into rage mode?”
He sighed. “You’re really not going to let this go, are you?”
“It was your idea. You’re the one who said you could get free of the chain if you did it.”
“If I rage out in this apartment, then I’ll kill you.”
“I guess I’d need to be somewhere safe,” I said. “I could jump out the window first and wait for you.”
“No, you’d be running around in the city on your own for hours,” he said. “Last time, I wasn’t able to break the chains until after I was myself again.” Then he lifted his chin. “Of course, you could just go without me.”
“No,” I said. “I could not do that. Besides, I might need your help for Desta.”
“Right,” he said. “Desta.”
“Landon, I know that you don’t like to be near her—”
“It’s not like I can’t handle being in her presence or whatever. I’m not scared of her. I just want to, you know, kill her.”
“What?” I said. “She’s my sister.”
“She couldn’t have been that stupid,” he said. “She saw the other vamps and the other blood slaves. She knew that drinking my blood was going to affect me. She knew.”
“She says she didn’t.”
“Well, she’s lying,” said Landon. “She’s just trying to make herself feel better, but she forced me to do things I didn’t want to do, over and over, and I woke up every morning wishing there was some way I could get her to take too much of my blood and kill me.”
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