Almost Lovers

by Cassidy Raindance

  "Well, Robert is your mess to clean up," I said, picking up Prussia, "Take care of it,"

  "What about her?" asked Lydia, pointing to Prussia.

  "Don't worry about her," I said, offended by her nosiness, "just clean up your mess and tell your little friend she came very close to dying tonight,"

  I walked off into the park; Prussia cradled in my arms and held close to my chest. I had almost lost her into the night. The same jogging path I had found her on, she had almost died there with Robert, who apparently had thought to run instead of standing to protect her. He wouldn't be a loss, not to Prussia, not to humanity. But at least Lydia had been the one, not me. If Prussia ever found out...it wouldn't be on my hands and I was thankful for that.

  CHAPTER TWENTY THREE - Lydia

  I got rid of Robert's body and met Penelope back at the warehouse. I dreaded going down into that basement knowing that we had fucked up royally but I wouldn't survive the night if I were an enemy of two courts instead of just one. The heavy steel door slide open with ease as I stepped into the basement.

  "How the hell did Sebastian find us?" asked Penelope.

  I could hear the constant drip of a leaking pipe somewhere and the gentle moan of the slaves shacked to the ceiling in the stale walk in freezer. Adrenaline still raced through me.

  "I have no idea," I said, "Sebastian wasn't supposed to be on the guard schedule, I swear. I thought it was just the two guards,"

  "We should have fought him," said Penelope, standing up from the over stuffed chair behind her desk that was littered with papers.

  The basement was dark, damp, and full of trash like the rest of the building. An abandoned warehouse we had taken over for our operation. Any humans that questioned our presence were shackled and kept in the freezer as meals until they wasted away or someone got greedy. A few of our men were loitering just outside of the basement listening. I could hear the gentle whispers back and forth. An untrained ear would hear the wind. I knew better. I walked over and slammed the steel door shut and turned back to Penelope, pacing behind her desk now. She still wanted a fight. Addictive, the rush of the hunt.

  "He's much stronger than he looks," I said, trying not to impart any undue flattery for my ex-lover, "He's got a reputation and he used to captain the Royal Guard for a reason,"

  "I would have underestimated him, then?" asked Penelope, her tone changing from anger to thoughtfulness. She stopped pacing and picked up a dagger off her desk, still thoughtful. She spun it on her finger tip, letting the drops of blood slide down the blade.

  "He subdued the Chancellor," I said, providing an example, "When the Chancellor attacked me Sebastian pulled him off of me like he was nothing,"

  Penelope pursed her lips and the corners of her mouth turned downward.

  "Very good," said Penelope, "I'm glad you intervened. I hadn't planned to die over a human,"

  "Nor I. It all went wrong very fast," I said, defeat in my voice as I put my hands on my head to stretch and keep my head from spinning as my adrenaline continued to spike, "he shouldn't have been there. The Queen will have my head by morning,"

  Penelope nodded, her hand still spinning and playing with the knife she held.

  "That is a problem," she echoed my concern, "We still need you in the Queen's court,"

  "If I go back she'll kill me," I said, "There won't be a trial. She'll just kill me. She's been looking for an excuse for years,"

  "Then make sure there is a trial," said Penelope as though it were common sense.

  "What? Just walk in and demand a trial and refuse to let her stake me in the chest?" I tried to stifle my laugh but the thought was absurd.

  Queen Victoria had always been above the laws, even her own. The only thing a demand would get out of the Queen would be a laugh before she finished me off. I would sooner run than be given the eternal death.

  "Yes," said Penelope, "But if Prussia saw you, you're as good as dead with or without a trial."

  "She can't order me put to death for being with you," I said, "You didn't even kill Prussia. The twat is still alive and I'm sure traumatized by now,"

  Penelope sat on the edge of her desk and held her knife out to me.

  "She can," said Penelope, a serious matter-of-fact look on her face, "You won't give me up and that's an offense against the Queen. She could torture you and then put you to death. The only way to prevent all of this is to make sure you have a trial and to make Prussia disappear,"

  "Disappear? They have her," I snatched the knife from her and threw it at the wall to my right, "There is no way to get to her! And even if we could, what makes you think she hasn't already told them?"

  "Because," said Penelope, pulling several small stakes out of her desk and a gun, "You would have already been summoned,"

  I stopped talking, or ranting for that matter. My Master had made a valid argument. I would be summoned the instant they knew something. If I ran then a bounty would be on my head, assumed guilt. If I came in, I would be handed a verdict and sentence in one swift stab to the chest by the Queen herself, if she felt like getting her hands dirty.

  "What are you saying?" I asked, head spinning at how things had gone completely sideways on us.

  "We," said Penelope, "Are going to pay a visit to the Queen,"

  I pulled the knife out of the wall where I had thrown it, bits of drywall falling and revealing even more of the underlying brick. There were only a handful of us at our satellite location. We weren't enough to go into the Queen's own castle, her court, and just dictate how things would be.

  "This is suicide," I mumbled, looking at the blood that caked with drywall on the edges of the blade.

  "Honey," said Penelope, grabbing my face and squishing my cheeks together with her one hand so my lips puckered up, "You're dead if we do and dead if we don't. Get your ass in gear and call all the Lords and Ladies to the court immediately. If I know the gossips of the court, they wouldn't miss this for anything in the world. And if they're not there, you're an extra dead vamp walking,"

  She smiled at me. It wasn’t a request; it was an order as my Master. Do what you're told or I'll make you wish you had was what that smile meant. And I did what I was told. She stowed all her weapons on her person and we headed for the car as I typed up a message on my phone.

  "What's that?" asked Penelope.

  "A mass text. To the Lords and Ladies of the Queen's Court, I do humbly request your immediate audience in the presence of the Queen and absence of my late husband, the Right Honorable Chancellor," I read the message aloud as I typed it.

  "That will do it," said Penelope, smiling at me as we both opened our car doors and got in.

  We didn't take any of the others with us. We were the only ones going in case we didn't make it back. If we didn't they would inform our own court. And then they would know that war had begun. The tires spit rocks as we spun out and sped onto the road. We weren't far from the Queen's castle, as close to my apartment as we were. At this speed, we would be there in only a few minutes.

  I felt my adrenaline spike again. The fear hit me first but the euphoria and realization kept me from losing my mind. We were going in. After years of waiting, the time had come.

  "What's the plan?" I asked, getting myself pumped up for the possibility that I could die the eternal death tonight and okay with it so long as I inflicted as much damage as possible.

  "I go in, you wait in the car," said Penelope.

  I thought I had heard her wrong. Penelope wanted to go in alone?

  "You're just going to walk in, alone, all by yourself?" I asked, "This is your suicide mission and I'm just going to be a bystander?"

  "No," she gave me an annoyed look and shifted the car into another gear and sped up even more, "I'm going to go in alone and if I'm caught I'll say that I'm there to pay fealty to the Queen and ask forgiveness for attacking Prussia. The minute I find her I'll grab her and get out of there. We'll meet back at the warehouse,"

  "If we're separated," I said.
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br />   "You sent that text?" asked Penelope.

  "Yes," I said, "Mass text, just the press of a button. I turned my phone off so it won't give away our position,"

  "Turn it back on," said Penelope, giving me a stern look, "You're not coming in. You have a trial. I need you to be there. I need you to make sure everyone knows what the Queen has been up to and most importantly I need you to tell me what is going on. Be my eyes and ears. She won't kill you with witnesses watching, all over a human,"

  "Okay but what are you going to do with Prussia?" I asked, not sure where this was all going, "Why not just kill her?"

  "Because the Queen and the Prince both have gone to great lengths to keep this human alive," said Penelope, focusing on the road, "No vampire goes to that much trouble to keep a human alive if she's not important for some reason. I want to know what that reason is. And I'm going to find out one way...or another,"

  CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR - Sebastian

  I put Prussia in her car. I hardly broke a sweat running with her in my arms to get to her car in front of her apartment. Her apartment wasn't safe. We had to go to the Queen immediately. The family doctor could see her and know exactly what to do given our special...situation. I didn't see any bite marks but if there were any, the doctor would know what to do and if there were any risks.

  As we drove to the castle I kept going over and over what had happened. If I had skipped tonight and just stayed in, Prussia would be dead. If I had been there later, she would be dead. If I had been there earlier, maybe I could have prevented all of this. What had Prussia seen? Did she know about me? About what I am?

  She lay unconscious in the seat next to me and I prayed she would stay that way until I got her to the castle. The gods must have listened because when I pulled in, gravel spitting everywhere in the drive, Prussia hadn't budged an inch, still out cold.

  It wasn't until I had picked her up in my arms again to get her in the house that she started to wake up. Charlie wasn't at the front door and I had to juggle with Prussia waking up in my arms to get the door open. At least it wasn't locked. I kicked at the door and it swung open. I yelled for a guard that had just come out of the corridor leading to the Queen's chambers.

  "Fetch that kid, what's his name…Tommy," I ordered him, "NOW!" I yelled as the blank faced guard gaped at me, an unconscious girl in my arms.

  I tried to walk steady so as not to jostle Prussia completely awake. I had no idea how she would react. I had no idea what she had seen. I just knew that Robert had died and a vampire had been standing right on top of her when I had found her unconscious. The fact that Prussia hadn't died had been a miracle in and of itself.

  I got to the Queen's chambers and the guard opened the door without hesitation. He reacted so fast that I didn't stutter a single step. I walked right into the Queen's chambers and after a quick scan of the room found her sitting on the chaise lounge reading a book.

  "What happened?" she asked, not a second thought given to my barging-in, "Is she alive?"

  Victoria stood up and pointed with the book she had been reading to where she had been sitting.

  "I didn't have time to check on the guards," I said, looking at the guard that had opened the door for me, "I want 100% accountability on all on-duty and off-duty guards. I don't care if they are in their beds, wake them up. Eyes on every single body,"

  "For the love of the Gods," said an impatient Victoria, "What happened?"

  "Prussia was attacked in the park," I said.

  Victoria's face reflected that she understood the gravity of the attack.

  "Alive?" she asked, looking at Prussia where I set her on the chaise lounge.

  "Yes," I said, huffing from the worry and less from being winded, "Robert was with her."

  Victoria's eyebrow went up and she looked at me, waiting for an answer to the question I knew she held in her mind.

  "He didn't make it," I answered.

  The Queen nodded her head.

  "Someone did us a favor," said the Queen.

  I had to agree. The last words Robert and I had spoken had made our situation clear. Robert had told me to back off from Prussia. He had made it clear that while he didn't love Prussia, he wasn't going to let anyone else have her either. I had told him she deserved better. Now here we were. Prussia unconscious and Robert dead. That cleared up any worry about competition.

  "Who attacked her?" asked the Queen.

  I had no idea what to tell the Queen. I had wanted to keep Prussia in a safe place, to make sure she hadn't been bitten and to have a doctor take a look at her. I hadn't planned on how to explain any of this to the Queen. The door opened then, giving me a moment to pause and think. Tommy came in.

  "I called for him," I told the Queen who looked at Tommy as if waiting for an explanation as to his presence.

  The Queen nodded and motioned Tommy to Prussia still lying on the chaise. He rushed to her side.

  "I'm not a doctor," said Tommy, looking confused.

  "Fetch the doctor," the Queen told her second guard that had been standing outside the room, "And close that door,"

  The guard closed the door and Tommy looked to me, expectantly.

  "I need to know if they bit her or drugged her or anything like that," I said.

  "They?" asked the Queen, "As in, more than one attacker?"

  Tommy looked from me to the Queen as I tried to finish giving Tommy instructions before I delved into the details.

  "Do a full blood work up," I said, "Blood's your thing?"

  Tommy nodded his head.

  "If ever I had a thing I suppose blood would be it," he said, opening the black leather bag he had brought with him and prepared to draw blood.

  "We should talk," I said to the Queen, trying to maintain a tone of respect but urgency, "in private,"

  I looked at Tommy and Tommy looked at me. A bit more awkward than it should have been but there it had been.

  "Tommy, you're an asset to our family," said the Queen, "But with knowledge comes liability. We'll be in the other room. Let me know if you need anything and make sure you sedate her,"

  Tommy nodded and I followed the Queen into her office next door. As soon as we were in the confines of her office, with Prussia next door being attended to by Tommy, the Queen turned to me with her arms crossed.

  "Spill it," she said, "Whatever happened, everything that happened, all of it," She was angry. This meant I still had a bad poker face.

  "Lydia attacked Robert," I blurted out, kneeling to the ground.

  "Stand up," she said, pure annoyance in her voice, "I knew she would be nothing but trouble. She hasn't even been in this court for, what, a month?"

  "She didn't attack Prussia," I said, standing up and hopeful that what little I had just tried to help Lydia wouldn't backfire on me, "Someone else did, someone that had been with her,"

  "Bullshit," said the Queen, her face twisted in disgust, "You tell her off but you're still blinded by that girl."

  The Queen was pacing now, angry and full of rage. I tried not to move. But the more she paced the angrier she got.

  "Let me hear the rest of it," she said, still pacing and fuming, "Don't leave anything out, I don't want to miss anything by you running through the highlights,"