by Cege Smith
“Monroe’s here?” The news of his sire’s whereabouts gave him chills.
“Monroe, Barron, and Viktor,” Elvry said. “Gang’s all here.”
The Master had sent the Death Bringers to Brebackerin. Of all the possibilities that Connor had considered, he had never guessed that the Master would be so bold. It could only mean that Alron was about to completely break the treaty that he had agreed to with Alair Robart three hundred years before.
“For what purpose?” Connor said stiffly.
Elvry stepped closer to him. She ran her finger along his jaw line and then her lips brushed his ear. “To wreak havoc and mayhem while sending a message to the young queen.” Connor pushed Elvry away from him and she hissed. “There is also some question of what exactly happened with your mission since dear sweet little Angeline Robart is currently sitting comfy in her palace and not at the Master’s side as he expected,” she said.
Things were happening too quickly. Connor knew these questions were inevitable when he finally went back to the coven. He never thought he’d have to answer them here in Brebackerin now. “If Monroe’s here, then take me to him. You’re wasting my time.” He purposely rolled his eyes and feigned indifference.
Elvry’s eyes narrowed and Connor knew that he was taking a risk by being so brusque with her. Elvry sat on the Master’s council and was almost as old as Monroe. She was one of the few vampires who had lived through the Great War with Alair Robart and was known within the coven for being ruthless and almost without any moral compass. Little was known about her human life before she was turned and she liked it that way. At the time when she was turned, there had been much more prestige in being a pureblood vampire over being a human who had been turned. It was a stigma that she still carried like a chip on her shoulder even though now the coven was almost entirely made up of the latter kind.
Elvry had shown great interest in Connor when Monroe brought him into the coven to serve as a personal guard for the Master. Completely lost and angry at the world, Connor had been easy prey for her advances. It was only after he found the motivation to begin searching for a cure and left the personal guard that he was able to completely break free from her grasp. It had caused a scandal in the coven that Elvry had never forgotten. Men didn’t leave Elvry; she left them.
“Fine,” she said. “Follow me.”
They were silent as Connor followed her outside of what was known as the nicer part of the city and into the poorer area of town. He was surprised; it wasn’t like Monroe to give up his creature comforts. They had almost reached the west gate when Elvry stopped in front of an old storefront that had clearly seen better days. Connor looked at her with a raised eyebrow.
She gestured for him to enter. “After you.”
Connor steeled himself and stepped inside. The front room was deserted. The old counter was dusty and the shelving units on the wall were askew. Old papers were scattered around on the floor. No one had been inside the store for a long time. Connor heard low voices coming through the doorway behind the counter. Before he lost his nerve, he strode through the door.
A table sat in the middle of the room with three men around it. Connor heard soft weeping and saw a woman curled up in a ball in the corner of the room. He could smell her blood and knew that the men in front of him had been feeding on her. There was nothing he could do help her and he had to put her out of his mind. Requiring that level of disconnectedness was part of what made him a monster, and it was something that he reluctantly accepted as being useful.
Monroe stood as Connor entered the room. Connor’s sire was one of the last purebloods remaining in the coven, and as such the Master granted him latitude in handling affairs of the coven, including the enforcement of the coven’s laws. Monroe was the coven’s chief deputy.
All purebloods stopped aging at a certain point in their maturity after reaching adulthood. Monroe appeared to be a human age of about thirty-five, but he was well over three hundred years old. He was taller than Connor and broad shouldered. Connor knew from experience that Monroe didn’t hesitate to fight dirty if he needed to. That made him a formidable opponent. Connor was going to need to play the next couple of minutes very carefully.
Monroe looked him up and down and then looked over his shoulder at Elvry. He cocked an eyebrow. “Well?”
Elvry pushed around Connor, digging her hand down the front of her dress. All three of the other vampires ogled, which Connor figured suited Elvry just fine. Then she slammed a small pile of gold down on the table at Monroe’s spot. Monroe threw back his head and laughed. “I told you. I know those I’ve sired like the back of my hand.”
Connor hoped that part wasn’t true. He seethed that he had been as transparent as he already had been. He needed to always be prepared for the unexpected, and Monroe in Brebackerin was only one step away from the Master himself making an appearance.
Monroe held up his hands and frowned. “I would have thought you’d look happier to see me, Connor.”
“That fact that you are here is unexpected,” Connor said slowly. “I didn’t know that you were coming.”
“Altera is crowning its first blood-born queen in history. It is quite a momentous occasion. Obviously, the occasion has great interest for everyone in Altera,” Monroe said. He gestured to the other chair at the table. “Come, sit. We have much to discuss.”
Connor made his way to the chair and sat down. Barron and Viktor glared at him. The Master sired the two hulking vampires right after the Great War in an effort to replenish the species. Connor personally thought that the Master could have chosen better; the brothers weren’t that smart. Of course, their purpose didn’t really involve their thinking abilities. They were strictly brawn.
The three men resumed their card game. Out of the corner of his eye, Connor saw Elvry approaching the woman in the corner. He forced his mind to go blank. He couldn’t even bat an eye in that direction. The Master kept a stable of humans for the coven, but the limited supply of blood was carefully rationed. Vampires were no longer supposed to exist, so finding humans along the boundary was becoming more and more difficult as rumors of the dreaded Forgotten Lands persisted all these years later.
It had been a relief for Connor to discontinue drinking human blood; as a hunter of field and forest animals, he had a steady supply of blood whenever he wanted it, as opposed to having to slowly starve waiting for his next ration like the rest of the coven. He was more surprised that after being in the city, the vampires had only taken one resident hostage. He was sure he would have heard if they had been on any kind of rampage. Still, he knew that he should have sensed their presence earlier. He had been distracted.
“So, Connor, I heard that you successfully kidnapped the fair princess on her way back here to Brebackerin. The Master expected you to present her weeks ago. Instead, here we sit, and that same princess has just been crowned queen,” Monroe said.
Connor cursed in his mind. He had no idea how Monroe had discovered that Angeline had been in his company at all, but Monroe’s network of spies was extensive. He had anticipated it, but was still dismayed to be right. There were only two different possibilities of where he had been seen with the princess, and he hoped that he made the right guess on where Monroe had gotten his information.
“No,” he lied. “I arrived at the camp right after the princess was taken. I tracked the kidnappers, intending to take her from them. But by the time I found them, she had somehow managed to escape.”
Monroe didn’t look up from his cards. “And who, pray tell, did you discover had outsmarted you?”
“Searon,” Connor said without hesitation. “He intended to take the princess to his father and ask to be reinstated in the coven.”
Monroe paused and played a card. Then he set his cards down and looked Connor directly in the eye. “That is interesting. Searon did arrive at the coven walls asking to be reinstated, but he didn’t make any mention of the princess.”
Connor shrugged. He was almos
t sure that Monroe’s spy was a member of the royal guard escorting Angeline home. He knew that the Clan had wiped Searon’s memory of Connor and Angeline, and he could only hope that the spell had held. “Perhaps he didn’t want to admit that he had her in his grasp and lost her. That would be quite embarrassing and would not have curried any favor with his father.”
“So if that’s true, what’s brought you to Brebackerin?” Monroe said.
“I don’t like admitting defeat,” Connor said. “You know that better than anyone. I have been watching the palace and trying to identify weaknesses. I want the Master’s prize, and I thought that if he was content having an audience with a princess, he would be even more delighted to have it with the queen.”
Monroe said nothing, and Connor knew that his sire’s mind was dissecting every word he said and trying to fit it into the puzzle pieces that he already had. As long as everything fit, even if it wasn’t perfect, Monroe would let it go.
Then Monroe leaned forward with his forearms on the table. “That knowledge is going to come in very handy, my friend. But there are some other things that the Master requires of us before we take the queen to him.”
Connor allowed himself to relax just a bit. He nodded. “As long as I am still able to claim my prize, I will help you.”
Monroe’s smile was dark. “You will help us anyway, Connor. The Master has felt for quite some time that I have been too indulgent with you. He questions your loyalty.”
The fact that the Master continued to notice him at all was bad for Connor. Monroe had been upset when the Master removed Connor from his personal guard, but it had been obvious to everyone that Connor wasn’t cut out for the job. Monroe felt it reflected badly on him, even though the Master had assigned Connor to another duty. Connor knew that he was treading on very dangerous ground. “What do you need me to do?”
Monroe picked his cards back up. “Right now, I require only a display of your commitment to our cause. We can discuss what happened when you tried to kidnap the queen later.”
Connor felt ill. “What is this display that you require?”
Monroe gestured toward Elvry. Suddenly she was at Connor’s side, shoving the human woman’s neck in his face. “Let’s drink on it, shall we?” Elvry purred.
Connor looked into the faces of the four vampires. He was no use to Angeline dead, and he had no doubt that any one of them wouldn’t hesitate to kill him if they had any doubt of his loyalty.
Wiping any thought of Angeline from his mind, Connor felt his incisors elongate. The woman was whimpering, but he tuned it out. Over the top of the woman’s head, his eyes met Elvry’s. She was smiling at him with a hunger that he knew went beyond the lust for blood. As he sank his teeth into the woman’s soft skin, he watched Elvry do the same on the other side. Elvry’s hand slipped under the woman’s chin and grasped the back of his head. He closed his eyes and let his inner demon take over.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Angeline felt her stomach clench at Rhone’s declaration. She caught Malin’s stare out of the corner of her eye. She had to watch her words carefully around the general. “What do you mean, Rhone? The vampires were killed off by Alair Robart three hundred years ago.”
Rhone had been in charge of the party that retrieved Angeline from the Sisters of St. Abath. He and his men had fought the phantoms that Connor created in order to steal her out of her tent from under their noses. But Malin assured her that the Clan’s magic wiped those memories away from the entire party. Whatever Rhone was talking about had to do with a recent event.
The old, grizzled soldier slammed his palm down on the table. “We must have become complacent, Majesty. They are using your father’s death to their advantage. The people must be protected.”
“Slow down, Rhone. Please tell me what happened,” she said in her most commanding tone.
Angeline didn’t think she had ever seen Rhone so rattled. With a shuddering breath, Rhone began. “I was patrolling the west guard walk. As you know, Majesty, the majority of the people coming to Brebackerin for the Ascension festivities have set up camp on the west side of the city. I can see all the way to the city walls from there and then I have my best men stationed on that wall to ensure that those coming in and out of the city keep the peace.”
Angeline nodded. She wanted him to hurry to the point, but she could see that Rhone was working his way to it. Her father always told her to listen for even the most mundane details, because sometimes that’s where the truth can be found.
“There’s a lot of activity tonight with the feast and all. I’ve had to send patrols into the tent encampment several times to break up brawls that we’ve seen from the walls. There is a lot of drunk and disorderly conduct going on,” Rhone said.
“That doesn’t seem unusual, Rhone,” Malin said. “The queen’s Ascension is going to have the kingdom buzzing for months. Perhaps you should get to the point of why you’ve called the queen away from her Ascension feast.”
Angeline studied Malin. Her Chief Advisor looked uncertain. Malin was certain about everything, and she wondered what he had to do with what was going on. In her mind, it had Clan work written all over it.
“I was getting to that,” Rhone said with a sneer. Angeline would have laughed if the situation weren’t so ominous. Her father had mentioned once that Rhone and Malin got along like oil and vinegar. But they didn’t have time for rivalries. “The last patrol that I sent out was returning to the wall when they found a boy leaning against the archway asking for the queen.”
“This hardly seems worth the time we’ve invested here, Rhone,” Malin scoffed. “Did this boy proclaim to have seen vampires?”
Rhone’s face turned to stone. He walked to the side door and flung it open, barking an order to the guard standing outside. Moments later, another soldier entered with a young man in his arms. Angeline could see by the boy’s face that he was likely just a year or so younger than herself. But as his head rolled to the side she gasped. There were circular bloody bite marks all up and down his neck.
“What is the meaning of this?” Malin said. The outrage was evident in his voice. “You dare to bring a wounded commoner into a private audience with the queen?”
She ignored Malin’s outburst. The only thing that Angeline could see was the boy’s haunted eyes. “Set him down. We must tend to him.” She shoved all the books and documents on the table onto the floor and gestured for the soldier to put the boy on the table.
As his body settled onto the tabletop, the boy convulsed and his eyes rolled back in his head. “Call for a healer!” Angeline commanded as she touched his shoulder.
“He’s lost too much blood, Majesty,” Rhone said as he stepped to her side. “He will die. But he had a message that he said he could give only to you.”
Angeline’s mind was spinning. Close up, the wounds on the boy’s neck were gaping and it looked like someone had attempted to rip his throat out. His injuries continued onto his chest; his shirt was in tatters. She felt something else stir within her, and her eyes shot to Malin’s in a panic. She stood up and stepped back from the table. “That could easily be an animal attack, Rhone. Why do you suspect vampires?”
Rhone pointed to one of the bites. “I can see the individual teeth marks, Majesty. I’ve been hunting animals my whole life. There is nothing in Altera that would attack an almost grown man and make a mark like that. I’ve seen the histories. I’ve studied the sketches. This is a vampire bite.”
Angeline glanced down at her hand. She was relieved to see that the skin of her palm was fully healed. It appeared she was still able to draw some benefits from her wraith. She rubbed at it anyway. Rhone was right. If vampires had attacked the boy, it meant that either Connor had done it and lied to her about it, or that he was not alone, as he had told her. Either way, she felt an anger growing inside of her.
“The message, Majesty?” Rhone said. “He won’t last much longer.”
The smell of the boy’s blood was in her nostrils no
w and she took a deep breath. It smelled fresh and intoxicating. Malin was beside her and whispered in her ear, “Deep breaths, Majesty. There is nothing to fear here.” Underneath his words she heard the unspoken message. Her wraith was bound in Craven. She was in control. But that didn’t stop the rolling waves of desire from washing over her as she stared at the blood pooling beneath the boy’s head.
Then the boy’s eyes fluttered open. “Where am I?”
Rhone leaned over him. “You are in the palace. You said you have a message for the queen. What say you?”
“The palace?” The boy’s voice was faint. “The queen. Where is she?”
Angeline went back to the table to stand beside Rhone. “I am here. What is your name?”
The boy’s eyes widened at he looked at her. “You are just as pretty as everyone said.”
She forced herself to smile. “Thank you. Your name?”
“Joseph,” the boy said as he winced. His body shuddered as he started to cough and Angeline saw a small thread of bright red blood escape his lips.
“What happened to you, Joseph?” Angeline asked quietly. She put her hand on his shoulder again to draw his attention back to her. Once the coughing subsided, his grey eyes met hers.
“A couple of friends and I came up from Drahaven hoping to get picked to go to the Ascension feast,” he said.
Angeline nodded. Drahaven was a town in province six. Joseph and his friends had traveled far. “I take it you were not selected.”
Joseph shook his head. “So we tried to find the closest tavern to the palace. There were so many people in the streets. We were on our way back to our camp when we got separated.” He started to cough again. This time he turned his head to the side and a bright splotch of red hit the table.
Angeline’s throat clenched. “How long before the healer gets here?” she hissed. “This boy has internal damage.”
“I’ll die a happy man for having been able to meet you in person,” Joseph said. There was clear adoration in his eyes.