by B N Miles
Her ruined face grinned at him. “If it’s any consolation, your whore girlfriend has no clue.”
Then another needle slid into his neck, and the world went fuzzy at the edges, flipped and twirled, and turned black.
10
Jared came to slowly and with some struggle. He felt the ropes at his wrist and ankles first, then felt the chair beneath his body. He sat up straight and struggled—but he was tied to the back, the roped wrapped around his chest. The chair teetered to one side and nearly fell.
He took a few deep breaths and scanned the room. A single bare overhead bulb lit a space with a concrete floor, cinderblock walls, and no windows. The door was large and blue, the paint chipping in places.
Otherwise, it was barren. He could’ve been in Philly still or anywhere else in the world. He had no clue what time it was, how long he’d been out—or if Lumi was okay.
He struggled against the ropes again, anger flaring. Those Vampires ambushed them and took Lumi away from him, probably shoved hypodermic needles into her throat before she had a chance to use her overwhelming power, all because they both trusted Vampires. He cursed and struggled, but only managed to nearly knock the chair over again.
He took deep, calming breaths. He steadied himself and squeezed his eyes shut. He reached for his power and felt it there, on the edges of his awareness. The Need pushed at him, but it was a dull, gentle roar, barely loud enough to bother him. He wanted to draw more priori into his body but every time he tried it was like the power was out of his reach. He let out a frustrated growl when he realized he still couldn’t use his magic.
He’d never been blocked before. The Bechtel family didn’t use blocking as punishment often, only for the worst of all crimes, or when someone began to go too insane to be trusted. Typically, blocking was done through magic, but he knew there were chemical blocks that worked as well, and that was what they must’ve injected him with. He felt sick, like someone had cut off a part of his body, and the idea that Lumi was somewhere suffering through the same thing drove him wild with rage.
“Where the fuck are you?” he shouted, rocking side to side and stamping the chair’s feet on the ground. “Hey, I’m awake, you blood sucking bastards.”
He yelled for a few more minutes until he heard footsteps outside of his door. The lock clanked and the door drifted open.
A woman stepped into the room. He didn’t recognize her—it wasn’t the blond from the street or any other Vampire he’d seen. She had dark hair pulled up into a severe bun, the hair tight around her skull. She wore a sensible pant suit, dark gray, white, and black, and held a file in her hands. She looked like a secretary or some middling bureaucrat, and he wondered if they were going to kill him with paperwork.
“Mr. Bechtel,” she said. “How are you feeling?”
“Like shit. You blocked me.”
She nodded. “That was for your own protection.”
He showed her his teeth. “I have a feeling it was for yours.”
She didn’t smile back. “My name is Mathilde d’Orleans, secretary to the great Lord Roth. My Lord would like to speak with you.”
He snorted out a breath. “You’re joking, right?”
“Not at all.” She looked at him over her glasses. “Lord Roth has been watching you and your group with great interest, Mr. Bechtel, and there are things he wishes to discuss with you. However, I’d like to ascertain certain… promises from you first.”
“I’m not in a position to negotiate, am I?”
She shook her head. “No, you are not.” She opened the file. “From what I understand, you have many Meta women under your protection at the moment, that is correct?”
“Yes, they were test subjects for Medlar scum. You remember the Medlar, don’t you? The family your people have been fighting for hundreds of years?”
She ignored that. “I want you to pledge to release them from your services when this is all over.”
Jared let out a laugh. “They’re not in my service and they’re all free to go whenever they wish.”
“Disband your houses, stop financially supporting them.”
“Why the hell would I do that?”
She gazed at him. “Because I’m telling you to.”
Jared got the feeling she was used to people doing what she wanted. She had the power of the American Vampire Lord behind her, and there weren’t many organizations with as much power as the Vampire hierarchy. Lord Roth was one of two full Lords in North America, which meant he was one of the most powerful men in the entire world. His little secretary probably felt like she was nearly as powerful.
“Go to hell then. Your little Lord wants to talk to me, right? I have no reason to give concessions.”
“Lord Roth will speak with you regardless of whether you give us what we want, but offering something in good faith will make the conversation less… painful.” She grimaced slightly, almost like she hated what was going to come next.
Jared clenched his jaw. “I will not stop supporting those women and I will not disband my homes.”
She nodded, wrote something in the file, then looked up. “Where is Nikita?”
Jared’s eyes narrowed. “I don’t know what you mean.’
“Nikki. Underlord of the city. Where is she?”
“I don’t know.”
“You have a relationship with her, do you not?”
“I don’t keep tabs on her.” He felt a surge of hope rush through him. If these Vampires didn’t know where Nikki was—then there was hope. Maybe she’d gotten away somehow.
“And yet you must have a way of contacting her.”
“You have her cell number, right?”
She gave him a harsh look and he smiled back sweetly.
“Mr. Bechtel, if you’re not going to be helpful, we aren’t going to help you, either.”
“Get something straight, you paper pushing psycho. I have no interest in helping you, not after you kidnapped me and blocked my power. Now go tell your Lord I’m ready to talk.”
She hesitated, staring at him, then snapped her folder shut. “Very well then, Mr. Bechtel.” She turned and left the room without another word.
He leaned his head back and let out a breath. He hoped he hadn’t made a mistake. They still had Lumi and they could be doing anything to her. Without her power, she was a small girl, vulnerable and fragile. Jared imagined them hurting her, torturing her, doing any number of things to her, and he wasn’t sure what he’d do if they force him to watch it. He imagined he’d tell them anything they wanted to know, offer to give them anything they wanted to have, so long as they stopped.
He didn’t have to wait long. A man swept into the room moments later. He was tall, with a thin face, a long hooked nose, and short black hair. His suit looked expensive and sleek, but simple and dark, almost understated. He wasn’t handsome exactly, but he wasn’t ugly, either—Jared thought he looked fairly nondescript.
It surprised him. He expected a Vampire Lord to be extraordinary, like a Greek god or a movie star. Instead, this man looked like any other average guy on the street, and it took Jared a moment to come to grips with the truth of the man’s position.
He smiled and shut the door behind him. “I do apologize for my secretary,” he said, his voice even and almost kind. “She has a mind of her own sometimes.”
“What do you want from me?”
“Oh my, Mr. Bechtel, no need to skip the pleasantries. My name is Byron Roth, but you can call me Ron if you wish, everyone else does.” He paced along and Jared thought he detected a slight lisp in the man’s voice. “I’m sure this has been a difficult situation for you, I can certainly see that. I do apologize for the, ah, brutality of it all.” He seemed to grimace a bit.
Jared refused to fall for this simpering act. This was a Vampire Lord. Even if the man pretended to be weak and polite, he knew that before him stood an ancient and horrifying creature, one that had been around for thousands of years, since back when the gods roamed the world
s—or at least that’s what the rumors said.
“You could’ve called if you wanted to talk,” Jared said.
Roth’s eyes lit up. “I suppose so, but isn’t this more interesting? No, I thought a demonstration was in order, you see.”
“Where’s Lumi?”
“She’s safe. Lumi Medlar is an interesting specimen. I was quite surprise to learn that you’d flipped her, but you’ve turned out to be very resourceful, Mr. Bechtel.”
“I want to see her.”
“Maybe later.” He waved a hand. “First, I need to speak with you.”
Jared stared at him for a few long seconds, his heart beating a steady, rough rhythm, before he nodded.
“Then speak,” he said.
“You’ve been very busy, building your little halfway houses for all those poor, sad, lonely Meta girls. How many do you have now? Hundreds?”
Jared tried to shrug, but the ropes made it hard. “I don’t keep count. They come and go as they please.”
“Sure, of course. So noble. Very impressive.” Roth flashed him a happy grin. “Tell me, has it been a strain, having all those women around?” He stepped forward, leaning in conspiratorially. “Have you been tempted?”
Jared clenched his jaw. “Don’t be sick.”
“Oh, come now, Jared. All those beautiful women, I’m sure they all feel as though they owe you a debt. You haven’t been tempted to taste the spoils of your victories, so to speak? You have a veritable feast of pretty young women waiting to please you.”
He tried to keep his anger under control. “I’m not their master and they aren’t slaves.”
“Of course not.” He chuckled. “Even still, I’m sure they’d be willing. Haven’t you thought about it?”
“I have more than enough. I’m not about to take advantage of a bunch of scarred and broken girls that need my help.”
“Ah, yes, you do have a lot, don’t you?” Roth clapped his hands with glee. “Your little family. How many girlfriends do you have now? I hear you proposed to one of them, the Shifter girl, the redhead. Very pretty, she is. I suppose congratulations are in order.”
Jared gaped at him, trying to figure out how the hell he knew that he’d proposed. He was having difficulty wrapping his head around the entire conversation, and he was beginning to get the feeling that the Vampires had been watching him for a long time—which called in to question a lot of things about Nikki he didn’t want to examine. He didn’t know which way this was going to go, but since he’d been blocked and tied to a chair, he had a feeling Lord Roth wasn’t exactly friendly.
“What do you want?” Jared asked.
His face never faltered, almost like he’d expected Jared to change the subject, and maybe he had—maybe mentioning Cassie was his way of saying he had more power than even Jared realized. The idea pissed him off and made him reach for his power again, only to find it out of reach.
“I know you’ve been attacking Medlar facilities all over this fine nation,” Lord Roth said, tilting his head. “You’ve been killing their men and taking their test subjects.”
“I’ve been freeing enslaved women,” Jared said
Lord Roth waved a hand at that. “It’s been causing quite a stir, you know. Some of the Magi families are very unhappy, you see, and others are—well, gleeful. There are many within the magic community that love to see the Medlar get a black eye, so to speak.”
“Forgive me if I’m not too interested in what the magical community wants.” Jared tilted his head. “And I’m not sure why you’d know any of this.”
Lord Roth laughed. “The Vampire Hierarchy and the Magi Families have been close for thousands of years. Oh yes, sure, we’ve also been at war, but we’re also well aware that we can’t survive without each other. It’s made for a very fun relationship.” He grinned and ran a hand through his hair.
“I don’t know what this has to do with me.”
“Well, you see, the Medlar haven’t been happy lately, and in particular they haven’t been happy with me. Nikki has been acting on her own without prior approval, and in most instances, that’s completely fine. But in this case, well…” He trailed off, clucking his tongue.
A hole opened in Jared’s chest. He took a deep breath to steady himself. “Where is she?”
“We don’t know, actually. Nikki’s smart and resourceful. I have a feeling that the moment she heard I was in town, she vanished. She knows the score and she knows what she’s been doing.”
Nikki had been disobeying her hierarchy this whole time. The thought hit him like a truck as he stared at Lord Roth, trying to understand. He hadn’t known she needed permission to carry out their missions, but clearly something had gone wrong, some order was disobeyed—and now she was in trouble and on the run. All because of Jared and his quest.
“You want us to stop attacking the Medlar.” The words came out in a rush and he could barely believe them.
“That’s right. Stop attacking the Medlar. Leave them alone and let them do their work.” He laughed again, but it had an undertone of malicious intent. “Does that surprise you?”
“I was under the impression that the hierarchy didn’t get along with the Medlar.”
“We don’t, not normally. But in this instance, we’re very much aligned.”
Jared’s toes went numb with shock. “You know what they’re doing.”
Lord Roth’s grin got bigger. “Of course I do. You think the Medlar could build a ritual of that scale and magnitude without help?”
He rocked back in the chair and nearly tipped it over. Vampires helping the Medlar destroy the Accords made no sense. He felt dizzy with confusion as he leaned forward again, straining against his bonds.
“How? You don’t have magic.”
“No, that’s true, but we are also thousands of years old.” Lord Roth shrugged. “We’ve known many, many powerful Magi over the years and have managed to gather some very interesting knowledge. There are some great benefits to immortality.”
“Why would you want to help them? Without the Accords, the whole world will change.”
Lord Roth paced across the tiny room, hands clasped behind his back. “You have to understand something about Vampire nature. We’re predators, Jared. We hunt Humans, kill them, drink their blood. It’s what we were built to do, what we were born to do, and each day that slips past without the hunt is another day I feel as though I’ve lost another intrinsic piece of myself.” He stopped and looked at Jared. “We’ve been tamed, placed in a neat little box, and treated like cute house cats. But we are lions, and when the Accords are no longer in place we’ll be able to kill and hunt as we damn well please.”
Jared let out a soft grunt. It all made sense in some sick way: Vampires had always been the most vocal about hating the Accords and were always walking the fine line between breaking them and upholding them. Of course the Vampires wanted the Accords gone—that way they could kill and drink blood with impunity and not have to answer to Magi control at all.
With the Accords gone, the Vampires would be the most powerful creatures on earth.
The thought was chilling. He couldn’t picture a world where Vampires ran amok, where Humans had to fear the night again. Even the youngest, weakest Vampire could tear apart a fully grown Human with ease—and take a few gunshots in the process. It would be a massacre as the Vampires, freed from millennia of control, rampaged across the world, killing and drinking as much blood as they wanted.
“You’re insane. You’re going to destroy the world.”
“I’m going to destroy the world Humans built,” Lord Roth said, flashing his teeth. “You think this is the real world? I remember a time before Humans had this power, before the Accords were in place. Back when the gods walked the earth, back before they made that stupid, foolish decision—back when our goddess loved us enough to let us hunt and run and roam as free as we wanted. Now she’s nothing but a withered husk of herself, and all because of the Accords.”
Jared s
aw the truth then, saw it in Lord Roth’s eyes: the man was old, too old, and madness had taken root and drilled itself deep into his skull.
“You’re making a mistake,” Jared said. “You’ll ruin everyone. The world’s in balance now. Humans are free, Vampires are free, and—”
“Vampires are not free,” he hissed. “But they will be, when this is all over.”
Jared watched him compose himself for a few breaths. “What do you want from me?”
“Nothing,” Lord Roth said. “If you don’t know where Nikki is, then you’re less than useless to me. For now, we’ll keep you contained and out of the way, and when the Accords are broken then I’ll return, and I’ll drain you myself.”
A chill crept down his spine. “You’re making a mistake.”
“Only from your perspective, Human.” He turned to the door. “It’s nothing personal, you know. In many ways, I admire what you’ve done, but it ends now. Nikita will be found, and you will remain blocked until the end of your days.”
He opened the door and stepped into the hall. Jared stared then struggled weakly against his bonds. He knew it was useless: he couldn’t break the ropes without his magic, and he couldn’t use his magic with whatever drug they’d injected into him coursing through his veins.
As Lord Roth turned and shut the door, Jared had a sickening realization: if they planned on keeping him captive until the ritual was complete, that must mean they were close to performing it. They couldn’t keep him drugged and tied to a chair forever.
He was running out of time, and he was trapped in a cell, his powers taken from him, his world in shambles. He worried about Lumi, about Izzy, about Jessalene and all the others. The Vampires could’ve swarmed them already and destroyed it all, murdered everyone he loved, and there was nothing he could do.
A black, hopeless feeling washed over him, and he leaned his head against the back of the chair and shut his eyes, willing his power to come back to him, trying to break through the block.
And failing every time.