by Sage, May
“Didn't see it coming. So fast. It only moved when…the other vampire—"
Ah. So at least Sebastian had done something right tonight, though he wasn’t likely to see it that way. The girl would have been killed like her friends had he not interrupted their murderer.
Cat forced a smile. "Hush now. Save your energy, okay?"
The girl hadn't been bitten by anything close to a vampire, or even a feral werewolf. She'd been torn to shreds. Great big claw marks. It was a miracle that no vital organs had been destroyed. Her two friends were in pieces on the grass. Even Cat had issues breathing in this mess. No wonder Bash had flipped.
"I have to carry you," she said. "And it will hurt."
No way to lie about that. They didn't have a choice, though; if they left the girl here, she’d die in the minutes it took to call for aid.
The girl nodded. She was an Institute student. She understood the implications of wounds like these.
Cat was as gentle as possible, cradling her under the thighs and shoulder blades. Then she rushed forward, heading up the hill as fast as she could. Any other time, she would have brought the patient to Levi's home, but Bash would be there. For his good as well as the poor girl's, she stopped at the third house on the hill, knowing that the others would trail the scent and follow.
Six months in Oldcrest, and Cat had managed to avoid entering the Stormhale home. But here she was.
She winced, forcing herself to focus on the matter at hand. Her fingertips pressed on the two bloodiest wounds, pushing them closed as she waited. If she'd had a spare pair of hands, she might have tried a tourniquet, but then again, she had little skill as a healer.
Vampires seldom suffered wounds like these, and they healed a lot faster, so that was a considerable gap in her education.
Cat breathed out in relief when she felt a blast of air, and then a tall, blond, long-haired poser appeared.
"I got it. Well done, Stormhale."
She'd never liked Alexius Helsing. He had a terrible reputation, and everything she'd seen since entering this territory confirmed it. But tonight, she was grateful to him, and also intrigued.
She'd known he was a healer, among other ridiculous things: alchemist, scientist, philosopher. The sort of things vampires didn't care about. But watching his hands expertly examine, cleanse, and sew up the poor girl, she started to admire his way of life.
It wasn't about vampires at all. He'd chosen all these professions to help mortals, she realized.
"I'm here! Sorry I'm late," said Greer, barging in with a big box.
Blair, another PhD student who often hung out with Greer, walked in right behind her, holding a large bag. Cat took the box and bag from the witches and brought them to the healer; given her strength, the weight was nothing.
“Thanks,” Greer said, before turning to her mentor. “All right, we brought everything I could think of since you didn’t tell me much over the phone. What do you need, Alexius?"
"Anesthesia, first. We'll have to sew up a vein, too."
Greer assisted the vampire. They were a great duo; he barely had to say a word for her to pull out the right flask or instrument. Blair stayed out of the way, handing Greer whatever tool she asked for, holding wounds closed, preparing bandages and threads for stitches. Cat felt like she was watching a surgeon, his intern, and a nurse at work. The only one in the room with no purpose was her.
"Anything I can do?" Cat asked, feeling helpless.
"Fresh water, if you would,” Alexius said. “And the girl will need a bed when we're done. I don't want her to move for a day or two."
She was glad to have been given a task.
The house was still in perfect condition; Cat suspected her aunt paid cleaners from Adairford to maintain the premises regularly, even though no one had used it for a whole century.
She'd never been here, but the place was so similar to Stormhall that she had no issue finding bedding, glasses, and everything else she needed.
When she returned to the dining room table, the makeshift operating station, the vamp and witch were both covered in blood and apparently done. The girl was in one piece.
"That was amazing," Cat admitted.
Greer grinned and winked, while Alexius shrugged indifferently. Blair nodded her agreement.
"What did this to her?" Cat asked.
"Yes, pertinent question."
Levi had slipped inside the house without making a sound. Cat was annoyed at herself for not sensing or smelling his presence, but her mind was elsewhere.
On the poor girl, on the unfortunate newborn who'd found her and unknowingly saved her. Above all, on what it meant.
The girl had been attacked by a demon, that much was clear. It could have been a god, but that wasn’t their style. The massacre had been too barbaric, too unrefined. Nothing from this world could have left wounds like these and fled fast enough for vampires to lose their tracks.
A demon, here in Oldcrest, testing the borders. That was entirely unheard of, as far as she knew. Demons came in all shapes and sizes, some smarter than others. Like any other sentient creature of this world and the next, they'd been shaped by the gods. But unlike humans, their little entertainment; witches, their descendants; and vampires, an accidental creation, demons had been bred for one specific purpose: to serve them as soldiers.
Most demons, like the gods themselves, were gone from this world. Those who lingered in the shadows knew better than to show their faces anywhere near vampires and huntsmen.
So, what sort of demon was it, and what the hell was it doing here?
She couldn’t answer the first question. The second, however…
"These were demon wounds," Greer stated, confirming Cat's suspicions.
She glanced toward her mentor, who nodded.
"Oh, yes. Shadowclaws, perhaps. Maybe something worse. The victim was lucky she got away in one piece."
"Two others weren't that lucky. I just looked at the mess." Levi wrinkled his nose. "It wasn't pretty."
The alchemist sighed. “Demons have no style, no finesse. It's all gore and blood with them.”
Cat glared at the insensitive prick. She didn't think it could be possible for him to sound any more cavalier about the whole thing.
"Cat, do you know where Jack's dorm room is?" Levi asked.
She nodded. Jack, like Chloe and Cat, stayed in the right wing, along with the other students who were considered either too dangerous or too powerful to live next door to the rest of the flock. Cat was in control, but as a vampire turned only one year ago, she'd automatically qualified.
She hadn't complained. The right-wing rooms were considerably more spacious, given the fact that only a dozen students lived there.
Everyone knew where everyone was. Jack had taken the attic.
"Good. He can examine the body. Demons are his area of expertise."
Alexius snorted. "Really now? The boy calls himself a huntsman."
"That doesn't change the fact that he's nephilim. He can identify, scent, and track that thing better than us. Cat, get him, if you would."
Cat was surprised. She hadn’t realized the man leading the huntsmen here in the United Kingdom was nephilim.
Scions were the fledglings of gods; young, immortal descendants of the known divinities, such as Lucifer, Zeus, and Chronos. Technically, they could have been called gods, but there was a nuance: scions had been raised here, on Earth, or in the other mortal worlds, away from their prestigious parents. That made them a touch less terrifying than the actual divinities.
The nephilim were half immortal, children born of a scion or god and a mortal person. Cat knew one of them better than most. And she understood that they weren’t to be trifled with.
Levi was right. If Jack was one of them, he was the right person to call now.
As she moved to obey, Cat couldn't help but once again notice the difference between Levi and her family. Her parents and aunt ordered her around, no "please" or "if you'd be so kind." A si
mple "do it" that she was expected to obey without protest or question, even if she didn't understand the hows and whys.
No wondered she liked it here.
But the demon attack marked the beginning of the end. The Stormhales would not let her remain in a dangerous place.
Unless they would somehow profit from it.
Cat wasn’t sure what would be worse—going back home, or staying, knowing that she was only here to play a part in their schemes.
In March, right after the attack on Oldcrest, she’d suspected that there were only two options. Either her family would want nothing to do with the conflict or they would be behind it. Each passing day with no letter telling her to pack her things and go home made her feel more uneasy.
She refused to jump to conclusions yet. For now, Cat would just observe and try to understand what was going on.
And when the pieces finally fit together, she would have a decision to make.
Conclave
Bash wanted them all to go, but Chloe, Mikar, and Luke hovered around him, pretending to be "waiting for updates."
He knew that if not for him, they'd be down the hill with the rest of the vampires called to investigate the incident at their borders. They’d be trying to work out what had attacked the three students, doing something useful.
He was just fine. He'd messed up, but no one had been hurt—because of him, anyway. People had warned him it might happen.
Bash refused to let himself crumble. He'd get better. It would get easier. If Luke had gone through this, there was no reason why he wouldn't.
He told himself that over and over. Eventually, it would stick, and start to sound true when he repeated it out loud.
His head snapped up moments before Catherine walked through the doors of Levi's mansion and then headed right to the study, where the small gathering took turns pacing about the room.
"How is she?" Chloe was the first to ask.
“She'll make it.”
Thank God.
Bash knew he wasn’t responsible for what had happened tonight, but if the girl had died from her wounds, her last memory would have been bleeding out on the ground with him towering over her, smirking like a goddamned monster. He couldn’t bear the thought.
She was fine. She’d live, and he could apologize.
Shit. How fucking self-centered was that? Bash had become such a pathetic creature.
“Greer and Alexius were incredible,” Catherine added. “She would have been doomed if not for them.”
To Bash's surprise, the vamp princess lowered her gaze to his. "And for you, too," she added.
Bash frowned. "Me?"
She almost smiled. Almost. Suddenly, Bash was glad Catherine scowled, because her expression lightening up just a little bit was enough to make his heart miss one beat.
Shit, it was unfair how fucking gorgeous that woman was.
"You startled the demon. Whatever it was, it wasn't in the mood to face a vamp, so it left before ripping her up like it did to her friends. I thought you'd like to know."
He certainly hadn't expected that, nor did he know what to make of it. So, what, his wanting to eat the girl was a good thing, now?
"Thanks," he said nonetheless, because as nonsensical as the notion seemed, he was glad to hear that he'd helped, though it had been entirely involuntary.
"Not just for telling me about her. Thanks for stopping me. If I'd killed her…" Words failed him.
Bash doubted he would have been able to recover from that, no matter what his well-meaning friends said.
"If you'd killed her, it would have been an understandable accident." Luke was firm. "And incidents like that might happen again. You have to come to terms with it."
"Why would he?" Cat questioned.
All eyes turned to her. She shrugged, unapologetic.
"Why would he come to terms with the fact that he failed? Why should he be fine with murdering innocents when it's preventable?"
Catherine wasn't one to speak unless she was obliged to. He didn't think he'd heard her say more than a couple of sentences at any time, in the six months since he'd first seen her. She was all about dismissive glances before getting on with what she was doing. But now that she was talking, her opinion seemed very much in character.
A spoiled, egocentric princess who would accept nothing short of excellence and held everyone else to her standard.
Bash laughed. Chloe and Luke watched him like he'd sprouted a second head, and he realized he probably hadn't laughed in a long time.
"You're a bitch, you know that?" He meant to offend her, but she didn’t even bat an eyelash.
"Why, does it sound too much like the truth? I'm not going to baby you and tell you you're fine. You're not. You're a fucking mess. Admit it, then work through it. Simple."
Not one little bit of empathy, sympathy, pity.
And Bash didn’t dislike it. Maybe because he’d turned into some kind of masochist. Or just because he was so very tired of being treated like a porcelain doll.
"Anyway, I'm not here to discuss Sebastian's woes, entertaining as they may be. Levi has called a conclave. Everyone will be here within the hour."
Luke cursed under his breath, pulling out his phone as he walked out of the study. Bash heard him give catering instructions to the person on the other end of the phone in a tone that sounded a little too much like panic.
"What's a conclave?" Chloe asked, just when Bash was about to.
"A meeting. Back in the day, it meant a meeting of the seven families on the hill, but since the Eirikrsons were destroyed—"
"Most of them," Chloe piped in cheerfully.
"Well, yes. Since then, there hasn't been much cause for one. Few vampires live on the hill. Levi, Bash—"
"I live in the dorm."
Catherine snorted, like she knew his bedroom was collecting dust. He spent most of his time in this very study.
It wasn't his fault he couldn't sleep. Or didn't trust himself in the dorm, next to other students.
Moments ago, he would have felt just fine telling himself that. But Catherine's earlier remonstrance made him question it.
Sure, it wasn't his fault. But did that mean he was powerless in the matter?
"Anyway, Levi, Bash, Alexius Helsing, and Anika Beaufort are the only residents on the hill. But Levi includes every vampire of Oldcrest in his conclave—me, and the others in the dorm. He's even called the huntsmen to join us this time. It's big."
That explained why Luke was panicking about petit fours. Crisis or not, the De Villier house was known for its flawless reception.
"Right, I think we’d better move to one of the fancy halls, then," Chloe said confidently, leading the way out of the study and behind the grand staircase to a great open space with a high crystal ceiling. The chairs and tables, set up in groups of two or three, were covered with white sheets.
"Give me a hand," she told them, removing the first cover to reveal a dark cayenne loveseat.
Bash started to work on the armchairs across the room while Catherine found a broom and swept the floor. Humans might have taken hours, but speed was the best advantage of their new forms. They had the place sorted in no time.
The red and silver-gray formal hall uncannily resembled just about every throne room Bash had ever seen.
Most of the time, it was easy to think of Levi as a mentor, a friend of sorts. Not in this place. Here, what he was became only too clear.
Royalty.
"Ah. It's certainly been some time since I've entered the hall," Levi said, entering the hall with his hands in his pockets.
Chloe shrugged. "I thought we'd have more space here for your conclave thing."
"Good call, mate,” Levi replied. “And glad to see you're making yourself at home."
She snorted. “I’m still not moving in.”
"Of course not. That would be far too practical."
The man had a point. When they’d first started dating, Chloe had stayed at the dorm most n
ights, although she often ended up on the hill right after her classes were over, chilling with Bash in Levi’s study. As the weeks passed, she’d started to spend half of her nights here. Now, three months in, Bash didn’t think she spent more than a night per week in her dorm room.
Which was better than him. Since he’d moved his stuff from his old room near the rest of the huntsmen to the right wing, where the freaks slept, he hadn’t been back at all. Levi didn’t seem to mind that he’d claimed his sofa. A chest of drawers where he could keep his clothes had magically appeared, along with a toothbrush for the adjacent bathroom.
“All right," said Luke, stepping in right behind Levi. "The kitchens are bringing refreshments up, and we'll have to open the cellar for wine." He glared at his boss. "You should give me more notice if you want to spare the good stuff. As for the blood, we should have quite enough, but we'll need to place another order of synthetic for—" He cleared his throat. "Our guests."
By that he meant Bash, who was draining their stock.
The older vampire didn't need much blood, a glass every other day; Luke had told Bash that Levi could go an entire week without a drop, quite comfortably. But the newer vampires drank considerably more—perhaps two, three bags a day.
Bash was at ten bags. On good days.
Still, that beat the alternative: taking a bite out of someone.
"Thank you, Luke. Efficient as usual."
"I'll remind you at the end of the year so you can give me a pay raise."
Bash's shoulders stiffened. His attention was pulled away from the easy banter and redirected toward the entrance of the hall.
A minute later, Jack Hunter stepped inside.
Bash's closest friend. Or, at least, he used to be. They hadn't talked in three months. Not once.
Jack abhorred vampires. And unlike everyone else, Bash knew why.
Scent of Blood
Seven years ago
* * *
Bash usually partnered up with Bat on his missions, but tonight, Jack Hunter had asked for him.