“Please don’t hurt my daughters!” he pleaded. “I don’t care what happens to me. The three of them are my heart, my life. Please—Father Joshua—”
“I won’t hurt your daughters,” Johannes said. “You were the one who encouraged Alissa to escape, weren’t you?”
“Yes, it was all me.”
“I see.”
I knew what the face of a sadistic man looked like. They were often smooth, clean-cut, able to maintain a veneer of pleasantness that tricked many people around them.
Killing an innocent wouldn’t bother their conscience at all. There were more than a few vampires out there who fit this description. My clan and I scorned these men. We fought for love.
With that said, killing didn’t bother my conscience, either, when the person deserved it.
This was tricky.
I could tell Johannes would kill Tulip’s father without a second thought. But he wanted her, and I had her. This was a negotiation, of sorts, but we both wanted Lisbeth. The difference was that I loved her, so I needed to protect anyone she loved. Johannes had no such rule to follow.
He’s going to kill this man.
I saw it in his eyes.
He knew that he would win either way. If I couldn’t protect Tulip’s father, she would be heartbroken and I would be less of a man. Even if I had her, it would cast a shadow on me.
Johannes was watching me calculate this out, and I knew he was well aware of his upper hand, even though I had bruised and broken him.
Silvus swallowed. His wand hand twitched and as soon as Johannes saw it, he said. “It doesn’t really matter.” Johannes pushed the chair out the window. Alissa’s father managed to shove his feet out wide to catch framework as he spit out a spell in an attempt to save himself, hanging there precariously for a second.
“Ethereals help me!” The man screamed in fear.
My own scream was guttural as I sprang to grab him before he hit the pavement head first, using my own vampire speed to its fullest advantage. Unfortunately, we weren’t like some of the movie vampires who could move faster than eyes could see.
Johannes used my motion toward Alissa’s father against me, shoving me toward the man.
He would win either way.
I had no good choice. If I pulled back to fight Johannes, I would lose the father.
The chair slipped just as my hand caught Tulip’s father’s shirt. The entire weight of him fell, caught only by my hand, but I had him. I was dragged half off the ledge. I could pull him up—if Silvus could cover me.
I suppose my thoughts went something like this. But it was all happening too fast. All my mind could really do was try and save the father Alissa loved. If her father was cruel to her, I would have let him die without a thought. How much easier it would have been, if he was cruel! But, no—she loved this man, and he loved her.
“You are a soft heart, in the end,” Johannes sneered after me, in my native Dutch, as he forced me out the window. I had my arms around the chair and I twisted as I fell four stories, trying to break his fall.
The last thing I was aware of was the sound of my own body striking the pavement, the horrible sound of splintering wood and my bones crunching inside me, pain barely having a chance to get ahold of me before everything went blank.
Chapter Thirty-Three
Jie
I have to keep these girls calm. Thom, too, for that matter.
The cowboy could be more trouble than anyone, hotheaded as he was.
I was all too certain that we were in for a rough night, one way or another. We were up against a man who was willing to kill Alissa’s family to get to her. I had no idea if we could keep all three of her family members alive. I had to steel myself against the possibility. Thom would see the faces of his own beloved sisters and widowed father in the faces of Alissa’s family. He might crack. My family was loving but hardened; they taught me to be the same. Where I came from, disease and famine always threatened, death always breathing just outside the door. In the end, I had to survive, and I had to make sure Alissa survived.
I glanced at her face, always tired and worried, despite her exquisite beauty. With her thick red hair and lush pink lips, she should have been a princess. She shouldn’t have to worry about anything brutal. If I let anything happen to her family, would she ever forgive me?
Besides that, I had to drop a truth bomb on Dee, and this was really something her aunt should have done. It was like giving the sex talk to your neighbor’s kid, but how could I avoid it? She had seen too much.
“Your aunt is a witch,” I said. “I mean, a serious black witch who can conjure fire and talk to demons and travel to other realms. So is Mimi.”
“A witch.” Dee arched a brow. “A magical witch.”
“Come on,” I said. “You know she’s a witch.”
“And what are you?”
“Take a guess.”
She snorted. “Crazy, that’s what I think you are.”
I crossed my arms and looked at her until she squirmed. If I looked at her long enough, she was going to admit she knew more than she let on. Alissa was studying her carefully, almost the way she used to watch the hedgehog that lived in her garden in England, like she had never seen another girl her age before and it was an alien species.
“A black witch? So she’s evil?” Dee threw up a hand. “And what about Carly? Did I just leave my baby with a wicked witch?”
“Black doesn’t mean evil,” I said. “The word they use is Sinistral. It means left handed. Breaking the rules. Disorder. Chaos. Not the most favorable concepts, but sometimes very necessary.”
“So you’re witches too…?” Dee frowned at us and focused in on Alissa.
“If that’s what you need to tell yourself, darlin’,” Thom said. “Just know—we’re not here to make any trouble with you and we won’t let anything happen to your little girl.”
I snapped my fingers. “You don’t need to keep your mind on this kind of trouble. That’s our job and we can handle it. How about we just relax.”
“I’ll make some drinks,” Thom said, slouching off to the kitchen, while I led the girls into the rec room. The curtains were already drawn. Maybe I could keep them hidden away and out of trouble. I slid a video game off the shelf and dusted the Playstation with my elbow. This was basically “Jie’s room”. The other guys never played video games and it was like pulling teeth to get them to watch TV. Occasionally Silvus would turn on a documentary and there was the time I caught Thom plastered drunk watching Brokeback Mountain at three in the morning. We all have a dark night of the soul now and then, I guess.
But usually, I had the place to myself, and it wasn’t that clean. I did notice that our renter had rearranged some things and left Fallout just sitting there outside of its case. “Adam is losing his fucking security deposit,” I muttered.
“Well, we did kick him out without notice and he left the place neat as a pin otherwise,” Thom said. “Don’t be too hard on the kid.”
The only problem with renting to fellow vampires and the occasional demon was that the pool of renters was small and you couldn’t get too picky, but young vampires were usually assholes, the blood lust robbing them of any sense for at least the first fifty years, especially if they didn’t have a strong sire to keep them in line. The place was probably ‘neat as a pin’ because Adam was usually too busy prowling around for thralls.
“Are these video games?” Alissa stared. “You play video games?”
“I can’t say I’m that up to date,” I said. “But unlike these other guys, I don’t need to be stuck in the past. The past wasn’t that great. I don’t know if it’s a white guy thing or what. When we came to California, Chinese men were considered foreign and expendable.” This was a theory. I wouldn’t say it at a vampire party. Vampires were very hot headed about the past, because, you know, they were there. A lot of them only seemed to remember the best of their human lives.
Dee grinned, but she said, “I’m not goi
ng to ask about any of this.”
“I don’t know much about California. Or China. Or anything.” Alissa flushed, and I think she was very ashamed of her own ignorance. It made me pray that Father Joshua would suffer badly, because it wasn’t her fault that she never got an education and never got to travel.
“Maybe it’s just my job,” I said. “Somebody has to take one for the team. Someone has to suffer through going to see Star Wars on opening night, play Xbox, and tell the other guys what a meme is.”
“A meme?” Alissa was still flushed.
Dee clutched her hand. “I don’t know where you came from, but you are not okay, are you? Here, it’s like…” She took out her phone and pulled up some pictures while I got the game loaded. “This cat one is cute.”
When I heard my Plum Blossom giggle she sounded more like Li Mei than I would have thought. It stole my breath for a second.
“I think I get it. Where do you find ‘memes’?”
Dee just patted her shoulder. “I think you need the basics of life before you even get to memes.”
I tossed them both controllers. “Okay, girls. Just have some fun tonight.” I gave Dee a warning look, fearing that Alissa wouldn’t want to talk about her past. Even when I didn’t use compel magic, just being me was enough to shut her up.
Thom brought a round of something with a warm, brandy smell. “Ladies…”
The opening screens of Dynasty Warriors fired up and Alissa was staring.
“This game will teach you some Chinese history too,” I said. “It’s based on the Romance of the Three Kingdoms. But—it’s just fun. You’re basically just battling hoards of dudes and riding around on a horse. We’ll do a free board, something easy.” I tried to find one that didn’t have boats on fire, tornadoes, a maze, or siege weapons you had to protect… “So…you pick a character you want to play…”
Alissa’s hands fumbled with every button on the controller. I could tell just by the way she was holding it that she had never used a TV remote or a computer mouse or basically anything with buttons and clicks. I could hardly believe just how sheltered she was. Witches did tend to shy away from technology, but they also knew they needed to understand how it worked. She’d never even eaten ice cream.
Out of all the cute little girl fighters and beautiful young men to choose from in this game, while Dee picked pretty boy Zhou Yu to play, I expected Alissa might take a different turn. If my girl’s soul was still in there.
Li Mei might have looked like the most delicate flower in the most beautiful garden, but she had a stubborn, fiery side that she had spent her life trying to hide and push away. She preferred stories about monsters to romances, some part of her identifying with the misunderstood beasts of the world more than the good-hearted, swooning heroines. Near the end of her life, she struggled through Frankenstein. I helped her with the difficult words, and she fell in love with the story.
It made sense to me. She had spent her life with monsters who drank her blood and pulled her to the fringes of society. And more than anything, she wished to join us, but she was always alone. Not one of us.
When she selected Wei Yan, a big guy who wore a mask so he looked more monster than man, and spoke mostly in growls and grunts, I knew Li Mei would have chosen the same.
“This button is an attack…this is a jump…” I sat next to her and walked her through the battle, until she knew how to get on a horse, kill an officer, use her special attack… Pretty soon she was getting the hang of it and I moved them over to Story Mode. Dee had obviously played plenty of other video games before so she could take the lead. They were both laughing and dividing up the strategy, having a good time while we gave them enough to drink that they were not drunk but definitely a little loopy. Finally, my Plum was laughing the way she used to, in frequent outbursts of giggles.
The doorbell rang. Thom flicked a hand at me. I’ll get it.
Nah, I didn’t trust him. The girls perked up.
“I ordered a pizza,” I said. “Be right back.”
It might be nothing. One of the neighbors checking on us. But I fully expected Father Joshua to pull some devious tricks to get his girl back.
A warlock from the Order stood on the stoop, his clean cut and somewhat old-fashioned clothes and that weird brainwashed look in his eye making his origin clear. I saw a car parked on the curb past our fence.
“I got this,” Thom repeated, pulling a pistol out from under his jacket and swinging open the door with the weapon plain to see and ready to fire. “What d’y’all want?” he said, his tone both friendly and deeply menacing at once.
“Good day, sir. I think you know what we want, and we came prepared to negotiate.” The man smiled blandly. He was probably around seventy—warlocks tending to age ten to twenty years more slowly than other humans—graying and blue eyed, kinda doughy. “I’m sure Alissa misses her sister Carrie. She’s in the car with my wife. She can be reunited with her right away.”
I saw a young girl’s face plastered to the car window glass. She looked frightened.
Thom drew in a sharp little breath to speak. He was already getting rattled by the sight of the girl.
I glanced around, giving the air a little sniff. I was pretty sure there were more unfamiliar warlocks around, hiding somewhere.
Alissa said they had bullets that could hurt us. If I was working out the strategy, and I was these guys, it would be working as planned. Silvus was the only one capable of stopping those bullets; the rest of us could try to dodge them, but there was no guarantee we would succeed. We were just ordinary men with additional strength and speed, and honed senses. So if they drew Silvus away, then they could take us out. However, if we stayed behind the doors of our extremely protected house, they were going to have a hard time.
I dug my fingers into Thom’s arm. Rayner told us not to leave the house no matter what.
“Bring her here,” I said. “Her sister. Bring her to the doorstep.”
“No way am I bringing that sweet girl to the doorstep of bloodsuckers,” he retorted. “They say you care about Alissa. If that’s true, you don’t think she belongs with her family?”
“Not at the cost of her own life,” Thom said. “Anyway, just cut the crap. You know we’re not giving her up.”
“All right. Then, we will punish her sister.”
“You’re not hurting those girls under my watch,” Thom said.
“The girl isn’t going to be hurt,” I said. “You’re bluffing. You’re going to cast an illusion to trick our eyes.”
“It is a great shame, but this girl comes from corrupted parents. They will not survive the end times. If we purify and sacrifice them now, at least they will go to the Ethereals now, while they are too young to make the mistakes of their father.”
Damn it all. He sounded a little too sincere for my liking.
“Bring Carrie here so we can see that she’s real,” I said. “Otherwise, I have no reason to think she’s not just an illusion.”
“You bring Alissa here first.”
I grit my teeth as Thom looked at me, and he was wavering. I gave my head a slight shake. Rayner told us to stay in the house, and he was correct. We had to call their bluff. They wouldn’t really kill a little girl. They wouldn’t need to, because they were fully capable of creating the illusion of killing her, and that would have the same effect.
I mean, they didn’t actually believe this shit…did they?
Would they?
I was very good at reading people—we all were—but the blank looks in the faces of the Order made me pause.
“Nice try,” I said, and I swung the door shut in his face.
Thom looked at me.
“If we take one step outside this house, we’re targets—her especially. We have to protect her. No matter what the cost is. There isn’t a soul alive we wouldn’t trade for her.”
Alissa crept down the stairs, trying to walk softly so we wouldn’t hear her, but we both turned immediately. “For me?�
� Alissa asked. “What’s going on? What is the cost?”
I bounded up the stairs three at a time and caught her wrist. “Get back in the room.”
I scared her. I was too on edge, revealing my emotions to her. She wilted as soon as I grabbed her, and I felt a pang of guilt.
But then, just as quickly, my girl found a spine. “You said you wouldn’t control my life,” she said. “But you’re telling me to get back in my room. You’re hiding something from me. Who was at the door? It’s…him, isn’t it? Jie…please don’t lie to me.”
I released her hand and let her slip past me. She ran to the front windows and peered out. Then she shrieked.
“Carrie! It’s Carrie! Let me go! Let me out!”
Chapter Thirty-Four
Alissa
As soon as the vampires left us alone, Dee’s head whipped toward me and she whispered, “Are you okay? Are they hurting you?”
I only hesitated a moment before I said, “No.”
“Are you sure? Have they ever hit you?”
“No. Never.”
“Or tried to control your life?”
Well, that was a little more complicated.
Dee’s expression softened a little when she saw my confusion. “Are you truly Rayner’s wife?”
“Not really. They’re—helping me. I was in a bad situation.”
“You’re not dating any of them?” Now I felt like she was thinking about Silvus. The questioning was giving me whiplash. I was so tense trying to talk to another girl. Girls in the Order didn’t just start asking a bunch of questions. If we thought another girl was in trouble, we stepped around it gently, knowing it was probably impossible to help her anyway.
Most of the troubles were caused by the men telling us what to do. Some marriages were happy, and others were not. It seemed pure luck who the Ethereals chose for our husbands.
“I don’t think any of them are interested in dating,” I said, trying to answer as honestly as I could.
Take Me Slowly (Forever in Their Thrall Book 1) Page 21