Heir to the Coven

by Melissa Leister

  “He doesn’t know the half of it.”

  “Great. Let’s get moving.”

  Tristan said, “I think we should head south.”

  “Because you think the vampires are migrating south for the winter?”

  “Because there are plenty of humans in those businesses that are ripe for the picking.”

  “Then we are going north,” I said.

  “Because you are being difficult?”

  “No. Because these vampires aren’t going to hunt where Anton’s people can catch them. They are going to hunt the quiet streets where there is less a chance of the competition, or me, finding them.”

  Tristan gave a quiet growl.

  Marcus said, “Neither Natasha nor I need a baby sitter. This is our hunt.”

  I expected Tristan as the second to put Marcus to the ground no matter how much older Marcus was, but Tristan fell in step behind us. Interesting, but not my most pressing issue right now. “Shall we head north then?”

  “I’ll show you north,” Marcus said. Giving a shove off the ground, he hovered a foot in the air. “Can you keep up?”

  “Try me.”

  He grinned and levitated away at a blinding speed.

  “Show off,” I muttered and bounded up onto an overhang, then onto the roof of a neighboring building and jumped from roof to roof following Marcus’ lead. Tristan trailed a roof behind me.

  We kept the game up for a long while before coming to a halt. That had been fun and I was disappointed to have to stop. I hadn’t had a hunting partner since I came back and while going it alone was fun, I liked the competition and a 1000 year old vampire was enough to put me through my paces. I was about to ask why he stopped when Marcus, with a jerk of his head, indicated he spotted something suspicious. He zoomed downward while I sprang to the ground to land on my feet next to a brunette female vampire feeding off a human male.

  I tapped her on her shoulder. “Excuse me miss? Can I see some I.D.?”

  Marcus snickered.

  Tristan scowled. “Must you make a joke of everything?”

  “Lighten up or you’ll go gray Tristan.” The vampire was so intent on her feed that not only didn’t she stop when we arrived, but she kept at it even after I addressed her. Placing my hand on her shoulder, I pried her off her victim and kept a tight grip on her. “Hi, we need to talk.”

  “She’s not ours,” Marcus said. “The human will be dead in a moment. I can smell it.”

  Gee, I thought I had a good nose because I could smell a dead person after only a few minutes, but I could not smell death coming. It was the slowing of his heartbeat that told me death was at hand. No matter how fast I moved there was not enough time to get him to a hospital for a transfusion. His options were to be turned into a vampire or allowed to die. I could not oblige him on the vampire transition front and the ones who could did not seem inclined to. The man was probably better off. I would not want to be a vampire.

  “That was my dinner,” the female vampire snarled.

  “That was most likely your last supper if you don’t tell us what we want to know,” I said.

  She tried to break free, but came face to face with Tristan and froze. I took the opportunity to throw the offending vampire against the wall. The three of us formed a semicircle around her, fencing her in with our bodies. She tried to break through our barricade, but we held strong. Marcus shoved her back hard enough the brick behind her cracked.

  “You must be pretty hungry or pretty stupid to feed where we could find you so easily,” I said. “Which one is it?”

  The female vampire bared her teeth. “I don’t speak to the likes of you half-caste. You should be on your knees when you address me.”

  I glanced over at Marcus. “She did just speak to the likes of me, didn’t she?”

  “That she did.”

  “I guess that makes it the first one then,” I quipped.

  Marcus came closer to the female and ran a nail down her cheek. “Perhaps you’ll talk to me young one? What caste are you?”

  “The hungry kind.”

  “Clever. What are they hungry for?”

  She glanced over at me with red eyes and hissed. “The blood of our enemies.”

  “You put us all at risk with your stupidity!” Tristan roared. He pulled a stake out and slammed it into the female vampire’s chest.

  Dumbfounded I watched the vampire turn to ash. “What the hell was that about?”

  “I eliminated a threat to the city.”

  “You destroyed the one solid lead we had. We could have made her talk, but piles of ash aren’t known for their verbosity.”

  Tristan said, “She was feeding in the open. That was enough to earn her a death sentence by your rules as well as ours. If she was an enemy to the city in addition to that, she is dead now which means she is no longer a threat. I fail to see the problem.”

  I took a step towards him menacingly. “Then maybe you should have your eyes checked. I’d be happy to remove them and give them a thorough once over for you.”

  Marcus glided between us. “Let’s play nice children. No need to start excising parts.”

  “Who said anything about using knife?” I asked. “I was going to yank them out of their sockets.”

  “Perhaps I need to define the word nice for you Natasha.”

  “If you want to define words for people, Marcus, I suggest you define the word incompetent for Anton because that,” I pointed at Tristan, “as his second proves he doesn’t know what it means.”

  I leapt onto a low roof and then onto a higher one, leaving the now bickering vampires to work out whose best interest that kill was really in. Up until Tristan reminded me how self-centered and bullheaded vampires were, I had actually been having a good time. It was nice to not have to hold back on how fast I moved or how high I jumped. Then they had to go and ruin it. I should have known better.

  *****

  My return home was announced with a slam of the door. Was it that they were vampires or that they were men that made them so damn frustrating? This had been a waste of hours I could have spent doing better things like scrubbing mildew off the shower wall.

  “Natasha!” Fitch shouted my name as he forwent the stairs and jumped over the banister to reach me faster.

  “They sent you to verify that I made it back? I don’t know if I should be insulted that they doubted my ability to survive a night with two vampires or insulted they hated my plan so much they sent you here to get proof that I didn’t come back unscathed so they don’t have to do it.”

  Fitch got so close he stepped on my foot. Such a lack of grace meant he was truly nervous and upset. “Sorry. This isn’t about sharing the hunt with vampires. It’s about that project you gave me. Wait, there were two vampires?”

  “Never mind that,” I said. “What were you saying about the project?”

  “You know, how I’m supposed to check into the account…uh…accounting issues we could have with the new club?”

  I felt even the muscles in my face go tense. “You found a problem?”

  “I did. Money is missing. Like someone was paying for services rendered.”

  “Which account was it with?” His eyes shifted to a distant point. I followed the line of his gaze and saw he was looking right at Kain who was tickling Mercy as she carried a tray of food from the kitchen to the living room where they were about to watch a movie. She shrieked and warned him not to make her drop their snack. “Are you sure Fitch?”

  “There was nothing for awhile, but cash at hand is an old habit from the wars, most of them pay for every day stuff with it and don’t touch what’s in the bank. Today my alert system detected a large sum removed.”

  “How much?”

  Fitch made a G using his index finger and thumb to indicate the amount he was about to give me was in the thousands. He held up ten fingers, closed them into fists and then held up all five fingers on one hand. $15,000 had been taken out of Kain’s bank account. It wasn’t much a
s far as payoffs went, but if you were paying in installments and the first few had been in the form of gifts purchased with cash, like an expensive car that had been purchased without a check being written or a credit card transaction, handing someone $15,000 to relocate or shut up fit.

  Chapter 18

  After the evening I had had with Marcus and Tristan I planned to go upstairs and tell Rainor it was useless to think we could work together with the vampires and go to bed; it had been my plan since I took my first step away from them tonight. However, I found myself taking very different news to him. Rainor listened to me in stony silence as I laid it all out for him. His trusted enforcer, my trusted friend, was most likely behind the creation of Megan McCoy’s half-caste baby and a treaty violation that could get everyone in our home executed thanks to a guilty by association mentality. If it were true, we would have to execute Kain.

  When Rainor failed to say anything after several minutes had gone by, I prompted him by saying, “I await your orders sir.”

  Rainor rubbed his eyes, reminding that he was very sick and that I had woken him up. “Do not confront him. There could still be an explanation and we don’t want to tip off any possible accomplices before we have all the facts.”

  “You think Mercy may be involved.”

  “They have been together for a very long time.”

  “Yes they have.” I was relieved he didn’t ask if my personal feelings would interfere with anything I might have to do. It proved he did have faith in me in spite of his taking me to task over Anton.

  “Go to see the mother even if you have to abduct her to do it. I want to know if she was really forced into this and I want a description of the man she said held her prisoner and brought her the vampire blood.”

  “I assume you want Kain watched? There’s no point in trying to keep this totally off the radar if we’re going to have to put him on trial.”

  “Yes, put Fitch and Ben on it. Tell them nothing except that if they see him do anything out of the norm they should react accordingly.”

  “Fitch already knows something big is up.”

  “That’s why he’s part of the team, to keep those in the know to a minimum. If he were part of this disaster he would have covered for Kain, but I still wouldn’t fill in any of the blanks for him Natasha.”

  I gave him a nod and moved out. I found Ben first and told him to tail Kain if he left the house. I added the part about suspicious behavior and he started to question it, but a snarled, “because I said so” took care of his concerns. Fitch had no reason to question a thing since he knew Kain was in hot water of some sort; he merely looked ill when I told him and added an additional request that he trace all of Kain’s incoming or outgoing calls until further notice. I think he had hoped Rainor would explain the evidence of the unnamed crime away. No such luck, Fitch my friend, I thought and went out to the garage to grab a car.

  On the drive to Megan’s house, I went over every scrap of evidence I had against Kain. The most damning was the money withdrawn from his account with no record of where it went to, but without the rest of the circumstantial evidence: Dawn saying she saw him with a redheaded waitress, being at Megan’s old apartment, being in the vampire quarter undeclared and all those disappearing acts; it was not really incriminating on its own. There was no direct, proven link between Kain and the half-caste baby or any stray vampires. This puzzle was missing a very important piece, the one with the man twirling his moustache. That was why my orders were to gather more evidence for a trial and not to kill Kain outright. Incontrovertible proof of betrayal was an immediate death sentence where the rest of the coven found out after the fact. A hazy case would be laid out for all to hear so that they could speak against Rainor’s decision if they truly felt the wrong verdict had been reached.

  I pulled up out front of Megan McCoy’s house and parked in her driveway. This visit was not going to be a secret and the closer I was to the house the less time any lurking vampire had to ambush me. Not that I minded a fight, but my mission was information and I didn’t want to give anyone time to ferret Megan out of the house. From the right upper window I could hear a baby whimper and then scream. Thank God I was never going to have one, I couldn’t take that howling. Even hearing it from the street was going to make my ears bleed. I saw the light in one room flip on and a few moments later the light in Screech’s room went on. That’s it; glaring light should quiet the kid right down. Everyone loved being blinded in the middle of the night. Maybe I should give mom a midnight surprise too?

  I jumped up onto the garage roof and then onto the piece of roof in front of Megan’s bedroom window. I forced the window open and let myself in. Taking a seat in the chair cattycorner to her bed, I waited for her to return. It was a long wait because the kid continued to shriek. I expected to hear Megan trying to comfort it, but she never said a word. I did hear the tape pulling off something that must have been from a diaper given the smell that reached my nose. There was another reason I was not mom material if all that screaming didn’t cause my sensitive hearing agony, the smells would overwhelm my nose. How did anyone stand it?

  The crying continued and I heard Megan go downstairs and start rattling around in the kitchen. After awhile she came back up and I soon heard a small sucking sound. That shut junior up. One thing all this time spent waiting did was give me the opportunity to sense that the baby was not Hadi. That answered one question. I heard a door shut down the hall and then approaching footsteps. Megan trudged into the room and tossed her robe on the floor. She slid into her bed and turned to switch off the bedside lamp when she spotted me and squawked.

  She sprang out of bed and stood shaking as she stared at me. “Are-are you here to collect the baby?”

  “Why would I want to take your baby?”

  “I was told a vampire would come to take it off my hands.”

  Ah, a mother’s love for her child. I got to my feet and walked towards her. “You think I’m a vampire and you would hand a defenseless baby, your baby, over to me, a creature that was most likely going to have it for an appetizer?”

  “They wanted it made bad enough to buy me all this, why would they kill it now?”

  “Because it didn’t produce the desired effect. I know a little about being born for a purpose you don’t fulfill and I wouldn’t wish it on anyone. However that doesn’t mean I think being a disappointment should cost anyone their life especially when they didn’t have a choice in the matter.”

  Megan’s face turned red. Her tone of voice said it was due to anger, but I wondered if it wasn’t embarrassment that I was faulting her. “You want to talk to me about not having a choice? I was held hostage in tiny dingy room for months and wasn’t given anything to eat unless I drank blood first. Let me tell you honey, you may like that crap but it is nasty.”

  “But you’ve been rewarded handsomely for your pain, haven’t you? New house, new car, diamond tennis bracelet that looks to be at least six carats out on your dresser; quite the set up for a woman held against her will. Waitress turned Ms. Got-Rocks. No gold digger could do better.”

  Megan laughed. “Do you think I got pregnant on the off chance this would happen?”

  “No. I think you got pregnant by accident. Since you like to hang out at groupie clubs you were in a position to receive an offer made because everything about you screams desperate and money hungry.”

  “How do you know I go to those clubs?”

  “You just told me.”

  “No I didn’t.”

  “Oh, yes you did. Now I want to know about the strong man that brought you the blood. The one you told the police ripped a door off its hinges in a fit of anger.”

  “What do you want to know about the bastard that kept me locked up?”

  She was not letting go of her cover story any time soon. Her heart was already speeding up thanks to the adrenaline my presence was causing to rush through her system, but I could hear it go a beat faster when she spoke about not having a choice an
d being held hostage. Liar liar. “I want to know what he looked like.”

  “Brown hair, blue eyes and tall; almost a giant. I’ve never see anyone that tall in my life. He could have been a basketball player if he wasn’t a kidnapping mental patient,” she said.

  “Really? That sounds to me like you had more interaction with him than a couple visits a day to give you blood and food.”

  “Well, I don’t know what you vampires consider normal, but to me anyone who would keep a person locked up is a mental patient.”

  “He was a vampire? How did he feed you during the day?”

  Megan shook her head. “He wasn’t a vampire, but he was strong.”

  Oh, that’s right, she thought I was a vampire, I forgot. “Have you seen him since then?”

  “Once a few nights ago. He gave me more money. Took him long enough to get to it too, I have bills to pay and a baby to feed.”

  I cocked my head to get a clear read on her heart rate. Very interesting. “Thank you for your time.”

  “Wait, don’t go. What about the baby?”

  “If you have the slightest bit of concern for it you will take it out of this house tonight and give it to an adoption agency. You obviously don’t want it and the vampires will kill it.” I left her standing there staring at the wall that had been behind me as I whirled away and jumped out the window. As my feet hit the ground I took a deep breath of fresh air. The night had given me one thing to be grateful for about my childhood; I was not saddled with a nincompoop like her deciding my fate. It had also given me one thing to not be grateful for; she had described Kain to perfection.

  I thought back to the day I had taken out Gideon. Afterward as we were all leaving to go back home, Kain had clapped his hand on my shoulder and said, “I am proud and relieved to be on your side Little One.”

  “Little One?”

  “Spoon Killer?”

  “I will take Little One,” I had said. “You are going to tell everyone about this aren’t you?”

  “It will create a legend and no one will want to cross you.” He gave me the type of grin a big brother would have.