Rans sighed. “Zorah Elaine Bright, this is Albigard of the Unseelie Court. Alby, Zorah. And may I just add that both of you are currently serious pains in my lily-white arse.”
Albigard and I remained silent, still watching each other warily.
“Give me strength,” Rans muttered, barely audible.
“Am I to understand,” Albigard began, “That this demonkin has no control over her powers?”
“I’m still standing right here, Tinkerbell!” I snapped.
His face darkened, but he smoothed the expression an instant later. “My apologies, demonkin. You don’t have control of your powers?”
I swallowed, just now realizing that by pressing the point, it meant I’d have to deal with this Fae directly. I thought I caught a twitch of Rans’ lips, and silently vowed bitter retribution on him if he was in any way amused by this situation.
“I didn’t realize I had any ‘powers’ until just now,” I said cautiously.
Green eyes held mine for a long beat before Albigard gave a small nod, as if to himself. “Then I extend forgiveness for your violation of my person. Endeavor not to repeat it, or I may grow to be less forgiving.”
A smart-ass remark was on the tip of my tongue, but I swallowed it back upon realizing that I’d apparently just sexually assaulted a faerie so I could feed from him. “I honestly didn’t intend to do it,” I said instead. “Now, if we could just address the part where we’re still locked in a cell in your creepy dungeon-basement, everything’ll be peachy.”
I felt jittery… almost itchy, like I’d taken a hit of bad drugs. If this was my brain on faerie animus, I was never straying from vampire juice again. My eyes flicked sideways to Rans, and I looked away quickly.
“Seriously, Alby,” Rans was saying, “there’d better be a good excuse for this farce. When I suggested meeting at the airport, I didn’t expect us to be joined by a full squad of Chicago’s boys in blue.”
Albigard exhaled sharply and took a step away, running a hand through his fine, straight hair. The movement drained some of the tension from the atmosphere, as well.
“Something big is going on in this city,” the Fae said. “Big, and secretive.”
He waved a careless hand at me, and tingles rushed along my skin. When I looked down, my appearance had returned to normal.
“And whatever this big, secretive thing is, it’s tied up with the human man I told you about?” Rans pressed.
“Apparently,” Albigard said, sounding suddenly tired. “Of course, once the higher-ups realize you’re tied up in it somehow, they’ll be after you in force—assuming they aren’t after you already. You’ll be safe here for a bit, but I had to glamour you to make you seem like random prisoners. The human law enforcement officers I used at the airport don’t know enough to be a problem, but only one of the two guards here is trustworthy.”
Rans nodded. “I figured it was something like that. Though a bit of warning wouldn’t have gone amiss, you know.”
Albigard waved the words away as though they were a mere annoyance. “There may well have been listening charms attached to the automobile. You’re here; no one is aware of your presence for the moment. I fail to see the issue.”
“And my father?” I asked, ready to move past the bullshit even if Albigard’s proximity did still make me want to crawl out of my skin.
The Fae’s lips pressed into a thin, bloodless line. “I will take you both to the residence that Darryl Bright is listed as owning, though we should not linger there.”
“Wait,” I said. “How are we going to sneak past your guards and get out of the house? I thought you didn’t want anyone knowing we were here.”
Albigard gave me a look that implied I was mentally deficient. “I will transport you there magically, of course. Though I suppose I should still refresh your glamours, first.”
I stared at him. “I have no idea what that means. But if it gets me to Dad’s condo, then let’s stop standing around and fucking do it.”
“You heard the lady,” Rans said, in the tone of someone who was about ready to be done with the day’s bullshit. I could sympathize.
Albigard summoned his glowy magic again, and moments later Rans and I were once again disguised. Presumably, this was the glamour he’d mentioned. I twisted my newly pale hand back and forth, fascinated.
My attention was wrenched away when the Fae described a large oval shape with a smooth movement of his hand. A blazing gateway formed in thin air, tall and wide enough for a person to slip through.
I gaped at the hole in reality. “Oh, my god. You can make portals? I had a friend in high school who freaking loved that game.”
“Come,” Albigard said, ignoring my words even though irritation practically rolled off of him in waves.
I couldn’t help casting a glance at Rans, trying to telegraph ‘Is this safe?’ without actually having to say it aloud. I had a sneaking suspicion that doing anything else to piss off the portalmaster right now would be ill advised.
“It’s fine, luv,” Rans said, taking my oddly unfamiliar hand in his.
He led me into the gap in the air. I squeezed my eyes shut as I stepped through, a wave of disorientation passing over me. When I opened my eyes, I was… someplace else. Someplace that should have been familiar, except that a tornado had torn through the familiarity.
Albigard stepped through after us, and the portal shrank to a point before disappearing completely. I looked around the room, a sinking feeling taking root in my stomach.
“Is this the place?” Rans asked.
“Yes,” I whispered, not wanting it to be true.
My father’s home had been torn apart—furnishings upended and broken, personal belongings shattered and torn to pieces. It wasn’t immediately obvious to my untrained eye whether the wholesale destruction was the result of a struggle, or whether it was the result of a thorough—and callous—search for something hidden.
Either way, it was clear from the unnatural stillness of the place that my father wasn’t here.
In eight years, I’d only been here five times… maybe six. Each visit had been tense and uncomfortable, punctuated by low-pitched arguments and hurtful comments. I walked forward in a daze, my eyes trying to reassemble the broken objects around me into a picture of normalcy. My gaze caught on a corner of colorful cloth, faded from its original vibrancy by the passage of time. I leaned down to grab it, tugging it out from behind the overturned table where it had been largely hidden.
Shaking, I clutched the torn quilt—a crazy patchwork of pink, blue, and lavender that had always decorated my parents’ bed when I was a child. My knees went wobbly, and I sank to the ground.
My dad was the only family I had left. And now he was gone. Was this destruction my fault? It seemed likely. Why on earth had I ever thought it would be a good idea to call him for help?
Family members make excellent leverage, Rans had said. And, hey, what do you know? It turned out he was right.
“I’m going after him,” I said, looking up at the vampire from my pathetic hunched position on the floor. “With or without you, I’m going to find him and get him back.”
Rans drew breath to speak, but Albigard beat him to it.
“Until I can figure out a way to better disguise your presence in the city, you’re not going anywhere except back to the basement cell,” the Fae stated, clearly unimpressed by my incipient emotional breakdown.
“The fuck I am,” I snarled at him, my anger swirling dangerously.
Rans stepped between us, cutting off my view of Albigard. He crouched in front of me, sitting on his heels, covering my hands with his where they twisted in the fabric of the old quilt.
He was wearing a calm, rational expression that only pissed me off more. I figured I wasn’t going to like what he said next, and—surprise, surprise—I was right.
“We have no way of knowing the circumstances of your father’s disappearance, Zorah, and the moment you start poking around and asking the wr
ong kinds of questions to the wrong kinds of people, the Fae will know you’re here.” His low voice was not without empathy, but I didn’t care.
I jerked my hands away, not letting go of the quilt. “The Fae already know I’m here!” I snapped, glaring at Albigard.
“One Fae knows you’re here,” Rans corrected, his tone hardening. “And he’s the one who put himself at risk to bring us to this flat so we could investigate. Now, are you going to do something suicidal in pursuit of your internal script that says you can only rely on yourself? Or are you going to accept help when it’s fucking offered to you?”
I stared at the vampire who’d done nothing but try to keep me safe, and beyond him, to the Fae who made my skin crawl. I let my gaze wander around the destroyed condo, the fear that my father had been taken against his will warring with the fear that he hadn’t been taken against his will.
Rans’ observation that only my dad and I had known I was getting a bus ticket in St. Louis pricked at me like a thorn embedded in skin. But either way, I needed answers and I was damned well going to get them.
“My only goal is to find my father,” I said, meeting Rans’ gaze again. “From this moment, that’s the one thing I care about. As long as it’s your goal, too, we’re good. If I get a hint that it’s not, then we have a serious problem.”
“Agreed,” Rans said after the barest hesitation, “on the condition that you listen when someone tells you you’re about to do something foolish.”
I turned my burning gaze to Albigard, who gave me a look that said he didn’t consider any ‘problem’ I might pose to be a serious one. When I continued to glare at him, he looked like he wanted to roll his eyes. I didn’t back down from that look, crawling skin or no, and eventually he gave me a careless nod of agreement.
“Good,” I said, my eyes falling on a broken picture frame on the floor near me. My mother and father gazed out at me from behind shards of shattered glass, smiling and happy. “So… where do we start?”
End of Book One
The Last Vampire: Book Two
By R. A. Steffan & Jaelynn Woolf
ONE
“WHOA. I FEEL REALLY, really drunk all of the sudden.”
I stared at the blank concrete walls of the cell I was sharing with my unsmiling Fae captor. My unfocused eyes moved to the half-empty cup I was holding, and then to Albigard himself, regarding me from across the room. I blinked rapidly, trying to clear my blurry double vision. “Why do I feel drunk all of the sudden?”
Rans had sent me back to the creepy basement dungeon with Albigard when it became clear there weren’t any useful clues to my father’s disappearance to be found in his ransacked condo. After less than an hour in Albigard’s company, I was already wishing that I’d kicked up more of a fuss about returning here with him alone.
“You are drunk because you can’t hold your drink, presumably,” the Fae suggested, raising an eyebrow at me.
Albigard waved a graceful hand, and the cup disappeared from my grip, leaving my fingers grasping nothing. I stared at them stupidly for a moment.
“What was in that stuff, anyway?” I asked, readjusting my feet until the ground stopped tilting to the left. For some reason, it was becoming hard to get the words to come out right unless I spoke very slowly and clearly. My eyes narrowed. “Rans is gonna be pished… I mean, pissed… if you slipped me a faerie roofie when he wasn’t looking.” I cocked my head, thinking about that for a moment before adding, “And I’m gonna be pished, too.”
“It was mead,” my not-really-a-captor said, “and you’re already pissed, it appears. I gave it to you because you said you were thirsty. Perhaps you could return your focus to what we were discussing before?”
I pondered that for a few seconds, frowning. Perhaps I could… if I could remember what we’d been discussing before. I tried to shake some brain cells loose after what had legitimately been a day from hell. We’d been at my dad’s place, looking through the destruction for any hint as to what had happened to him or where he’d been taken. There weren’t any obvious clues to speak of, which didn’t seem to surprise either Rans or Albigard.
One thing I was quickly coming to understand about supernatural creatures was that they were a bunch of arrogant, high-handed assholes. The Fae had insisted we leave before our presence drew unwanted attention from anyone else who might be watching the apartment. Rans said something about talking to some people he knew who might be able to help.
“Take her back to the house,” he’d told Albigard. “I’ll join you there shortly.”
At which point his body had swirled away into a cloud of vapor, leaving me on my own with a hotter—and much more disturbing—version of Legolas from Lord of the Rings. The Fae had opened the same kind of magical portal he’d used to transport us to my father’s home in the first place, and when I’d stepped through, I was back in the basement cell we’d left earlier.
Alone.
With a member of a species that apparently wanted me dead.
“I’m not having sex with that vampire bastard again until he apologizes for this,” I stated, scowling.
Albigard stared at me with flat green eyes. “This is the sort of information that I’d really prefer not to have,” he said, “if it’s all the same to you.”
I stared back, confused, since I hadn’t been talking to him. “Huh?” I asked, only to cut him off as another thought surfaced from the murky depths. “Oh! Right, I remember now. You were saying about the demons…?”
That was kind of important, wasn’t it? I should try not to forget about it again. Albigard had remained here in the basement under the guise that he was still interrogating Rans and me. I’d been asking him about the treaty between his people and the demons. That was right before I mentioned I was thirsty, and he’d conjured the magical cup of roofie-mead out of thin air for me to drink.
More fool him. Didn’t he know that if he tried to take advantage of me, I could pull his life force out through his dick?
Succubus, baby. Suck it!
I laughed, surprised when it emerged as a stupid sounding, high-pitched giggle. Oh, yeah… drunk. I’d forgotten about that part for a second as well.
“Wow, this really blows,” I said, as the walls started moving again. After a moment, I steadied my shoulder against the nearest one so I wouldn’t accidentally fall over if the floor decided to get in on the action.
Albigard’s expression said he didn’t intend to argue with my assessment.
“If you’ve quite regained control of yourself,” he began in that snooty Fae tone that I was growing to hate, “then I’ll continue.”
It was the kind of tone that said anyone who wasn’t Fae must clearly be an idiot. But I could choose to be the bigger person here. I waved a careless hand. “Whatever. Do go on.”
He sighed, long-suffering. “I was saying that the reason you and your father have become such sought-after targets is two-fold. You already know about the treaty provision forbidding demonic interference in the human realm.”
“Uh-huh.” I nodded sagely, trying to keep my serious business face in place. Nigellus had told me about that part when we were in Atlantic City, after all.
“There is a larger concern among the Fae, however,” Albigard continued. “The entire point of the treaty is to limit demonkind’s ability to grow in strength. They must not be allowed to gain so much power that they once again threaten us.”
But that was stupid.
“Look, Tinkerbell,” I said, jabbing a finger at him. “My dad’s just a normal guy, right? He’s a fucking accountant, for god’s sake. And look at me!” I gestured up and down the length of my body, gaining steam. “I’m a waitress! Not even that—I’m an ex-waitress! Because you and your creepy blond faerie friends lost me my job!”
My righteous anger seemed to be entirely wasted on my current audience. Which kind of sucked, to be honest. I settled for frowning at him severely, since if I tried to go over and kick him in the kneecap, I was afraid I
might fall down. Or, y’know, die a horrible, agonizing death at the hands of faerie magic.
One or the other.
Albigard sighed again. He seemed to be doing that a lot. “You’re a second-generation succubus-human hybrid. You are aware that until now, demons have never been able to sustainably reproduce?”
I picked my way through the words, most of which seemed to have too many syllables. “Kind of?” The brief conversation with Nigellus ran through my head again. “I know they can’t die, and that subbucusses… succubuses…”
“Succubi,” Albigard offered, long-suffering.
“Succ-u-bi,” I echoed carefully, “have to hijack humans to make babies.”
“Offspring which should be completely sterile,” Albigard continued, “not that such behavior is permitted anymore, since the treaty came into force.”
“Didn’t stop my grandad, did it?” I muttered.
“Clearly not.” The Fae sounded like he’d tasted something sour. “If the demons discover that they can… breed… generationally, they may decide to make a grab for power, and damn the treaty provisions. It would mean war again.”
He’d looked positively green when he was talking about demons breeding, but at the mention of war, something about his face changed. If I wasn’t so busy trying to keep my knees locked so I stayed upright, I might’ve wondered at it.
“This whole thing is really, really stupid,” I decided.
His expression changed again. That one was easier to decipher. It was anger.
“You’re talking about my race’s survival,” Albigard ground out, something dangerous and alien peeking out from behind the paper-thin facade of that pretty-boy face.
I tried to push away from the wall, only to decide that standing unaided was overrated. Instead, I settled on jabbing a pointed finger toward him again. “Yeah?” I asked combatively. “Well, your buddies don’t sheem all that worried about my shurvival, now do they?”
Was I slurring again? Damn it…
“You are one person,” Albigard said in an icy tone. “There are countless thousands of Fae lives in the balance—”
The Last Vampire Box Set Page 17