by Lexi Blake
Or would have if Devinshea had made it back to the penthouse the night before. “She’s already on her way.”
Zack stood up. “I need to go meet her. I’ve got to tell her Marcus is missing, too. I’m not sure how she’s going to handle that.”
The vampire Marcus Vorenus and Kelsey had a relationship that went pretty deep. He’d been her trainer and her lover before she’d settled into her power and realized she was deeply in love with Gray and Trent. She still had a place in her heart for Marcus. I did, too. Daniel wouldn’t be alive and king without the support of Marcus.
See, there’s a mentor. I didn’t get why Danny needed Myrddin when he’d had Marcus. Marcus had taught him everything he needed to know about how to navigate vampire politics, and Dev had taught him how to be a king. Myrddin had been needed to fix Danny’s heart at one point, but as far as I could see the old dude should go back into retirement.
Zack went off to greet his niece and hopefully to fully apologize for interrupting what should have been a nice morning.
“When the hell did Marcus go missing?” Neil sat back, obviously shocked by how his day was going. “He seemed fine at the wedding. I didn’t see him at the reception, but I wasn’t surprised. I mean, Kelsey dumped him not so long ago and she’s already married two other dudes.”
“She didn’t dump him.” It was far more complex than that. “She and Marcus are good. I was so busy I didn’t notice he wasn’t at the reception.”
I had been the hostess of that wedding and the reception that followed, and it had been important to me that the whole thing went smoothly. Kelsey was kind of the opposite of a bridezilla, so I filled in. I had to put together an elegant wedding honoring the traditions of half demons, mutant werewolf human hybrids, and werewolves who’d grown up in weird cults and just wanted everything to be normal. It wasn’t easy. And there were vegans there, too.
“I find it interesting that we’re missing those particular two members of the community. The academic and Devinshea have had trouble before, haven’t they?” Myrddin sat back in his chair, his hands coming up and forming a temple in front of his chest. I liked to think of it as his thinking face. His thinking face always brought about my worrying face.
How would he know Dev and Marcus had trouble in the past? Who had he been talking to? He’d only been here with us for a few weeks, but he was already very knowledgeable about my family, and that didn’t sit well with me. “Marcus and Dev get along fine.”
A single brow rose over Myrddin’s eyes. “Oh, really?”
Daniel reached over and slid a hand across mine. “You know they haven’t always gotten along, and that’s mostly Dev’s fault. Come on, baby. We have to consider every possibility. I know Dev wouldn’t go somewhere without telling us.” He turned back to his mentor. “Devinshea has had problems with Marcus in the past.”
“Hey, I was there when Marcus tried to take off Dev’s head,” Neil interjected. “It wasn’t all Dev’s fault. I didn’t like Marcus much that day, either.”
It had been the moment Marcus discovered my relationship with Dev, way back before we married. It was truly in the past and had nothing to do with their current issues.
“There is a prophecy concerning Marcus that Dev isn’t comfortable with.” Daniel summed up the problem succinctly.
Myrddin nodded. “Yes, the one about his eventual companion. I’ve read about it in the Council documents. It’s from the prophet of light, Jacob. I believe he foretold a time when Marcus would take a woman of the queen’s line as his companion.”
I hadn’t read the prophecy. I hadn’t realized it was written down somewhere. It was unnerving that Myrddin knew more than I did. Still, I’d been there when Jacob had faced Marcus and made things clear to him. “Yes, it was why Marcus protected my great-grandmother all those years ago in Ireland. If he hadn’t, she probably would have been taken as a companion and I wouldn’t exist. According to Jacob, this woman will be a relative of mine and will be the companion he’ll walk into death with.”
There are only a few ways to end a vamp’s life. Sunlight works on most classes of vampires. Marcus is an academic and their primary power is in their ability to daywalk. He could die if someone cut his head off or poked him in the heart with something pointy, but other than that, Marcus is pretty much immortal. As far as I knew at the time, he was the oldest vampire walking the plane and it weighed on him. Every now and then, however, a vampire and a companion are so in tune the vampire dies with his companion. It’s called sympathetic transference and Daniel has it. Marcus wanted it, wanted to love so much his very body followed when his wife was gone.
“For,” Myrddin corrected. “The actual prophecy states a woman of the queen’s line is the companion he will walk into death for. Not with.”
I hate prophecy. Seriously loathe it. It’s not that I don’t like Jacob or his demonic counterpart, Grayson Sloane. They’re cool dudes right up to the point when their eyes go weird and they talk in what I like to think of as misheard rap lyric. “For, with? I don’t think it matters. The gist is Marcus is going to get down and dirty with someone related to me and Dev is worried it’s Evangeline.”
My baby girl. Don’t get me wrong. Dev loves all three of our kiddos, but Evangeline is the apple of his eye. He adores his daughter and so does Danny. I often worry that Rhys gets left out. Lee is human so we worry about him constantly. Rhys takes after his Green Man dad and already shows great fertility powers. Seriously, if you don’t want to find yourself pregnant, don’t hang out with my baby boy. He’s not good with controlling it yet, and we’ve had a few incidents with plants around him exploding. Once he turned the household ivy into that creature from Little Shop of Horrors. We don’t worry about Rhys the way we do Lee.
Or Evan. My daughter took after me. She’s a companion, and according to Danny she’s almost as bright as I am. In our world it can be a dangerous thing to be. A companion is yin to a vampire’s yang. Our blood makes a vampire stronger and faster and smarter than one without a companion. Our blood also makes them hopelessly addicted. Vampires can see a companion’s “glow” and they rarely let one go. Before Daniel took over, companions were viewed as commodities. They were bought and sold and sometimes traded.
I did not want that for my daughter. So I worried about that tiny ball of light as much as I did Lee.
“Ah,” Myrddin said, as though he finally understood. “Devinshea is protective of his daughter. She’s a powerful companion, or she will be when she grows up. Even I can see a bit of her light.”
“You can?” Daniel asked. “Is that the demonic part of your DNA?”
Demons can see our light, too. It’s awesome. It’s like someone put a big old “get it here” sign on every single one of us. There’s a reason we’re rare.
“I suppose so. I can’t see the glow as brightly as you or other vampires can, but I can tell who is a companion,” Myrddin explained. “I can certainly understand Devinshea’s worry. A man who once attacked him might be his young daughter’s fated mate. That would bother anyone. Would he attempt to kill the vampire?”
Dev had tried something different. He’d gotten Marcus and Kelsey together, thinking he could stave off any attraction to our daughter. He’d thought if Marcus was involved with Kelsey, he wouldn’t ever leave her and by the time Kelsey was gone, Evangeline would have found a more proper partner and the threat would be avoided. The pull between Hunter and trainer could be as powerful as a vampire and a companion, but it also could be temporary. Kelsey had outgrown the need quickly, and that left Marcus out in the cold.
But Dev wouldn’t…
“No,” Daniel said quickly. “Absolutely not. Look, Dev and I disagree on this. I know Marcus. I understand him. If it works out someday between Marcus and Evan, I’ll be relieved because I can’t stand the thought of some vamp I don’t know having that kind of influence over our daughter. But Dev has other issues with Marcus. Like Neil said, in the beginning Marcus wasn’t exactly friendly to him. He
warmed up, but Dev can hold a mean grudge. Still, he wouldn’t hurt Marcus.”
“But they could have argued,” Myrddin pointed out. “We have to consider it since they both seem to be missing. I’ll go and find Nimue and perhaps we can do a locator spell. I’ll need something of Devinshea’s.”
“Sarah already tried.” The minute I’d realized Dev wasn’t sleeping a bender off down in his office, I’d gone straight to my favorite witch. Sarah Day is a powerful spellcaster, and I’d known something had gone terribly wrong when she couldn’t find Dev. She should have been able to find something…even a body.
“I can get his scent,” Neil offered. “I know the cameras show he made it here, but I’ll start at the hotel and make absolutely sure.”
Unfortunately, we’d already tried that, and with a more powerful wolf. Zack was Danny’s personal servant. He was blood oathed to my husband, and that meant taking his blood on a regular basis. Daniel’s blood—a king’s blood—had transformed Zack from a normal wolf to one as powerful as any alpha. “Zack tried.”
Neil shook his head as though trying to clear it. “Then he should try again. And so should Sarah.”
“You’ll excuse me if I put a bit more faith in the Lady of the Lake than I do a young housewife.” Myrddin pushed his seat back and stood. “I’ll contact you when we have everything ready, if that’s all right, Your Highness. It will take a few hours while Nimue and I discuss what spell to use and prepare ourselves.”
He walked out of the room and I could breathe again.
Asshole. “Sarah works her ass off. He acts like taking care of a kid, a house, and a whole coven means nothing.”
Neil stood, too, shaking his head as he stared at the door Myrddin had walked through. “I don’t care what he says. I’m going to talk to Sarah. Maybe the coven can do something. Call me if you need me, Z.”
Neil left and I was alone with Daniel.
Daniel squeezed my hand. “I know you’re worried, but you should go easier on Myrddin. He’s a man of his time. He doesn’t fully understand this world.”
“He’s been exploring it for a decade.” When he’d left Daniel, the wizard had explained he needed time to get a feel for how the world had changed since he’d been trapped in his crystal prison by the woman formerly known as the Lady of the Lake. Nim, as we knew her now, had offered to show him around as a way of apology. Apparently they’d gotten along pretty well because when he’d walked into the Council headquarters, she’d been with him still. She’d moved right into the apartments Daniel had given Myrddin. I suppose when you’re an immortal being, a decade doesn’t seem like a long time, but I worried that Nim was still with the man she’d once feared. She didn’t seem to be the same woman I’d met all those years ago in Faery. It was as though the last decade had made her darker, had put out that bright light that had been in her soul.
Daniel tugged on my hand. “I don’t want to argue right now. Come here. I need you close to me.”
I found myself sitting on his lap, his arms wrapped around me and his face pressed to the crook of my neck. He breathed in my scent. This was what he needed when he was anxious. Had Dev been here, Daniel would have brought him close, too.
“He’s not dead.” I needed to say the words, needed to believe them because things didn’t look good. Zack had tried to track him and the trail had stopped in Daniel’s office. It was like he’d walked in there and disappeared.
“No, he’s not,” Daniel said like he could simply command it to be so. “We would feel it. Something’s going on.”
And wasn’t it odd that it started happening after Myrddin showed up? “I want Kelsey to look into anyone new to the Council. You know, anyone who’s shown up in the last few weeks.”
Daniel’s head came up. “You think someone’s come in to hurt us?”
I thought Myrddin was here to cause trouble, but I couldn’t say that to Daniel for fear he would go straight to the wizard. In almost all cases, my vampire husband plays things super smart, but Myrddin was his weak spot. From the moment they’d met, Daniel standing over the crystal coffin that had housed the wizard for centuries, Myrddin had a hold over Daniel that I couldn’t understand. It was precisely why I hadn’t talked to him about what Kelsey had told me weeks before—that Myrddin would come after our son, Lee, if he ever found out he held the old Lee’s soul in his body.
Most people don’t get to meet their kiddos before they’re born, but I might have done the Heaven plane a couple of favors. That was how I knew my beloved bodyguard had come back to Earth as my son.
It was my turn to protect him with everything I had, and unfortunately that meant leaving Daniel out of the loop. It was hard because I’d gotten used to telling Daniel everything. We’d left behind the times when I would work in secret, sometimes in direct opposition to my husband. I’d settled down, but it looked like the old Z would have to make an appearance if we were going to survive the wizard.
“You know someone’s always plotting against us.” In this case, I could hide behind the truth and make Kelsey’s job a bit easier. If Daniel found out she was looking into Myrddin, she would simply say she’d been ordered to look into everyone new at the Council. I took a deep breath and tightened my hold around Daniel. “Where is he?”
Danny held on to me. “I don’t know, but I promise you, we’ll find him and soon. I’m not going to rest until Dev’s back here.” He cursed under his breath. “What the hell are we going to tell the kids? How long can we put them off?”
I had no idea what to say, but I knew we would have to say something if we didn’t find him quickly. Evan was so young she might be put off with an excuse and a cookie, but Lee and Rhys would quickly figure out something was wrong, and goddess help us all if Lee decided to fix things. “Let’s hope Kelsey works fast.”
We sat there for a moment, both of us praying to anyone who would listen to give him back to us.
Chapter Two
Summer
I would love to tell you my life has been awesome. I grew up on a Faery plane, but I use words like “awesome” because I’ve traveled a lot. When I talk about travel, I don’t mean getting on a train or in a carriage and going to some nice lake or beach for a vacay. I’m talking about going to whole other planes of existence. I’ve been to a bunch of them in my time. That’s what happens when you spend the majority of your adult life on the run. You get to see a lot of the universe. Sure, mostly I was hiding and praying no one would find me, but I got in some touristy stuff, too.
There’s this supercool plane full of vampires—not like the ones on the Earth plane where I was “born.” Yes, I use air quotes because my birth was quite odd. Mom didn’t have hours of labor after which she pushed me out of her body while breaking the hand of the man who’d put me up there. No, my birth was totally different. Basically Mom got all the fun stuff and none of the hard work. If you ask me, it’s the only way to do the childbirth thing.
But I digress. Vampires. So on the Vampire plane, they’re kind of like humans except with fangs and they survive off blood and copious amounts of liquor. They’re also super into profits. Business is a big thing on that plane. The scholars I’ve talked to say the Vampire plane is what’s known as a mirror plane. It mirrors the legendary Earth plane, so it’s a lot like Earth only way more vampy.
Sometimes you can meet yourself in mirror worlds. That’s why I went to the Vampire plane after the whole incident that basically ruined my life. I wanted to see if there was a version of my parents there. I was seeking solace from the only being who might be able to forgive me. I was looking for home.
But if you ever go to the Vampire plane, you won’t find Daniel Donovan or Zoey Wharton. They don’t exist.
And I can’t get to the Earth plane.
When you really think about it, I’m an orphan. My parents are so far from me, it’s kind of like they’re dead.
I was thinking about them as I ran from the army chasing me. I wish I could say that was an oddball thing to happ
en, but I get chased by armies far too often.
Most of them are led by a male named Turi.
I was running from him that day when the woman from the Earth plane landed in the middle of the field. She landed right in the path I needed to take, right before I got to the forest I’d planned to hide in until I could find a way to get back home without bringing an army down on my small, cobbled-together family. I could hear Turi’s elite force coming after me. Luckily it wasn’t his full army. That might have raised questions the barbarian didn’t want to answer. Even that massive ass had some political savvy.
I was moving toward the hill that would lead me to the edge of the forest when the sky seemed to open up and a woman fell to the ground with a resounding thud.
I hadn’t been aware there was a doorway here. I knew this plane pretty well because I’d taken refuge here from time to time. I stayed on the move for the most part, but I had a small brugh here that I felt comfortable using, and more importantly I felt comfortable leaving my companions in. This particular plane had no real name. It was one of the forgotten planes, one where faery creatures roamed but no real civilization had taken root. It was easy to access, but I hadn’t seen a doorway open like that before.
I thought briefly about avoiding the woman because I don’t have the best of luck with new people. They often turn out to be assassins or bounty hunters. I gave real consideration to blowing right past her, but she stood and looked around, confusion plain on her face. She had long brown hair and dark eyes that took in the field around her. She wasn’t Fae. That was easy to see since she was wearing pants that hadn’t at one point in time had a face. The Fae are big on making their own clothes, and usually women wore flowy dresses and braided flowers in their hair. Not this one. She wore a pair of pants I immediately identified as jeans—thank you Vampire plane. There was panic in those eyes as she looked up, trying to see the doorway, but it had already closed.