by Natalie Grey
“So—wait, the informant was the bait?” Jennifer asked him.
“Yes. As you correctly surmised, he has no information. But in arranging this meeting, I thought I might lure out those who did.” Stephen said.
“You used him as bait?” she asked once again, seeking clarification.
“I am not,” Stephen informed her his eyes growing cold, “always a gentleman.”
—
Gerard Cordova stepped out of the taxi and waited as the cab driver hastened to unload his bags. The man hovered for a moment, hoping for a tip, but one look at Gerard’s flat brown eyes convinced him that he should just leave now.
Gerard snapped his fingers at one of the bellmen, pointed to his bags, and went in the door of the hotel. His lip curled at the old building and the less-than-perfect service.
At home, no one would hesitate to grab his bags, and none of them would expect a tip. They knew who Gerard was, and they knew that keeping him happy was important. Here…. Well, this was why he hated traveling.
He would never say such a thing to his boss, as Hugo Marcari was a man you did not cross. There were no complaints from those who served him, and no excuses. What Hugo ordered was done, and those who failed him were rarely heard from again.
Usually, they died in agony.
Usually, Gerard was the one who ensured that happened.
The Cordovas had served the Marcaris for generations. As the rest of the world forgot what nobility meant and tore down the old ways, the Cordovas had continued their work serving one of the oldest families. They still understood the true way of things.
They understood that whatever pathetic notions of equality and democracy the world espoused, there were only two true things in the world: power, and order. The nobility used the former to create the latter, and only with order could the world be saved from fire and blood. Morals were useless, as were “rights.” Kindness and equality only led to chaos and destruction.
Only in power—only in power—could a peaceful world be found.
While the countries of the world bickered and destroyed one another, Hugo Marcari studied the opponent who mattered: the Queen Bitch.
He studied her power, he studied her technology, and he planned carefully to take all of it. He would do what she would not.
Where she left the world to govern itself, he would impose order.
Where she decided to let people make their own choices, he knew they could not. When she was gone, he would bring the world under one rule. And Gerard would help him.
Over the years, he had enforced any number of Hugo’s commands. Now, he was here to see why one of their facilities had failed spectacularly. Those who had been responsible would suffer.
He felt a shiver of anticipation at the thought of ensuring they did so.
Those who had failed Hugo were always desperate to make amends, offering anything. It was Gerard’s only taste of what it might be like to be one of the nobility, himself. More often than not, he let one or two of the pretty ones try to earn his favor before he killed them.
He felt no guilt for this. They should know by now not to expect forgiveness, and Hugo did not care what Gerard did, as long as those who failed him were held to account for it.
He made his way to the desk and looked over the receptionist: pretty, dressed in a too-small blouse and carefully made up. A crude manipulation for the diplomats who stayed here. Gerard had no need of such diversions, and he prided himself on the fact that he was not even tempted to take advantage of this one.
“Your best room,” he said shortly.
“Our Imperial Suite is occupied right now,” the woman said apologetically. “Perhaps the Sun King Suite would suit you, sir? It’s a corner room, it has a king bed and—”
“Yes.” If only she would stop chattering at him. He handed her a black card and watched her eyes widen slightly. Diplomats were rarely so well moneyed. She would be wondering who he was, taking careful note of his name, and she would tell everyone he was here.
His prey would know that he had come for them.
“Have my bags taken to my room,” he instructed. He left for the bar without waiting for an answer, and ordered a vodka. When the waiter was gone, he took out his phone and made a call.
“Yes?” Hugo did not waste time on pleasantries. He never wasted time.
“I’m here.” Gerard never wasted time, either.
“Go to the facility tonight. Make sure you aren’t followed. Asking questions in the city can wait. Call me when you know more.”
“Yes, sir.” Gerard hung up. He looked down into his glass for a moment, then downed the vodka in one gulp. Then he went to study the last, frenzied transmissions from the facility.
They had shut things down quickly as soon as the trouble started, clearly hoping to keep Hugo from knowing how badly they had failed him. The cameras were still off. Clearly, they were trying to restore the facility before turning them back on. Gerard smiled coldly.
Did they really think they could escape the consequences of what they had done? Every one of them had been given a chance to assure their place in the new world order, a chance given to very few. They would know soon just how big a mistake it had been to botch such an opportunity. Before he was done with them, they would envy the ones who were already dead and pray for their own deaths.
He would not allow their prayers to be answered for a long, long time.
—
Arisha crept through the hallways, straining to hear. The house was old and the floorboards creaked. She had to hope the people who were meeting here would confuse the noise she was making with the sounds of the house, itself.
Her heart was beating very fast, and she fought the urge, every step of the way, to turn back. She had followed the stories ever since she was ten, but she had never done something like this.
This was insane.
She had never smelled a wolf before, but the musty scent lingering in the hallways told the animal part of her brain to run like hell.
There was something here that her brain understood was a threat. She had no claws or pointed teeth to fight with. She couldn’t even run if she came face to face with a changer. She needed to leave, her mind yelled, this was crazy.
But she had to know the truth. She had tried telling people, over the years, what she had seen, but no one believed her. Even her cousins had stopped believing what they had seen with their own eyes.
It was infuriating, and deep down, Arisha was even beginning to doubt herself. But it was true. She had seen it! And now she was going to find out the rest of the truth, no matter what it cost.
“So,” she heard. The voice spoke in almost-perfect Bulgarian. “Thank you for coming to meet me.”
—
“So.” Stephen settled back in his chair and cast a look at the man tied up in the chair before looking back to the Wechselbalg. He did not spare a glance for the body. “Thank you for coming to meet me.”
He believed in starting negotiations politely. The people here had shown themselves to a human, a serious breach of the rules of their world, but that alone did not necessarily mean that they were his enemies.
Once, he had lived his life by Michael’s inflexible rules of honor.
Now, he followed his Queen’s rules: to give those he met a chance to explain themselves, then do the right thing. Of course, if they did not take that chance, he would deal with them appropriately.
The wolf growled low in its throat. Not a promising start.
“Watch your mouth,” Jennifer said flatly. She locked eyes with the Wechselbalg. “This is the Queen’s emissary you’re speaking to. He means you no harm. We did not come looking for a fight.” There was a pause. The guards at the door looked at the wolf, and back to Jennifer. She was only one fighter, but they could smell what she was, and what Stephen was, and they knew it wouldn’t be an easy fight if things went wrong.
“We can’t talk to you unless you change back,” Stephen pointed out. “And my col
league is correct.”
Colleague?
I didn’t realize you were listening, my Queen.
I want to know what they’re up to, Bethany Anne explained. And now I want to know what Jennifer thinks about you calling her a colleague.
Stephen resisted the urge to sink his face into his hands, and continued explaining his case to the wolf. “We came here to investigate reports of experiments being done on Wechselbalg—and on whole families that were disappearing. We wish to protect your community, not harm it.”
The wolf transformed back to a man, tall and lean. Jennifer looked away as he dressed, Stephen obviously didn’t even notice his nakedness. The bound man nearby was hyperventilating. He’d been terrified of the wolf, but apparently, the lack of a wolf wasn’t much better from his perspective.
His sniveling was beginning to annoy Stephen. Some emotions, he decided, were hard to overcome in old age.
The Wechselbalg took a seat across from Stephen and Jennifer and gave a nod. “If what you say is correct, our purposes are aligned. I am Stoyan. I am from a small town nearby. My cousin, Irina, came to Sofia a few months ago, then disappeared. I have been searching for her since.”
“You believe she has been taken by the ones who are doing experiments?” Stephen questioned.
“Yes.” Stoyan struggled to keep his emotions in check. He had been searching for Irina for months, terrified that his cousin was being tortured. She had always been more like a sister to him than a cousin, and the idea of her locked in a cage, with experiments being run on her, terrified him.
He could think of no other reason she would have disappeared. Irina had never disliked the pack structure, as some did, and she was a strong fighter even in her human body, so no muggers or rapists could have harmed her.
It had taken Stoyan valuable time even to find the whispers of the facility nearby, and it was too heavily guarded for him to get into it on his own. These people were his last hope.
“What is he doing here?” Jennifer jerked her head at the human. “And the dead one?”
Stoyan smiled humorlessly. “He served the same purpose to me that he served to you—bait. He already knew people were searching for Wechselbalg. It seemed he already knew that such rumors were true. I did not want him to learn my identity at an unexpected time. Toma … Toma was given a chance to go before he could see anything.” His voice was flat. “He did not take that chance.”
Stephen nodded. It was an answer that Michael might have accepted, but it was one that Bethany Anne certainly would have.
“And Filip is good at finding out information,” Stoyan added. “He can help us learn more about the facility.”
Stephen was not sure what to think. There were many ways to obtain information, and revealing the UnknownWorld to a human was forbidden for a reason.
Then he looked at Jennifer, and he felt any anger melt away. He could see the pain and fear in her eyes. The only ones who hunted vampires were other vampires, but Wechselbalg had been used in many ways over the years, mistreated by Forsaken, often held in servitude and treated as no more than beasts by those in the past.
In Jennifer’s face, he could see the pain and fear for this man’s cousin—a woman who may have been captured. If she had been being experimented on for months, Stoyan would believe there was no time to be careful. He needed to act now to save her life.
Bethany Anne would accept this. Stephen could feel her silent nod, millions of miles away in the QBS ArchAngel. Stoyan had just gotten way more backup than he knew.
Stephen nodded decisively.
“We are here to track down those same people and hold them accountable. If your cousin is in that facility, we will make sure she is rescued, and we will not stop until every one of their facilities are in ruins.”
Stoyan let out his breath in relief, and Stephen could see the man’s fear fade. He had been terrified that he would find no help.
“One other thing.” Stephen frowned.
“Yes?” Stoyan hardly seemed to be paying attention, but his head jerked around at Stephen’s next words:
Stephen slowly nodded towards the door, “Who is creeping around in the hallway outside? Is it one of your guards?”
CHAPTER THREE
The guards wrenched the blindfold off Arisha’s eyes and sent her stumbling forward in the sudden, piercing light. She fell to her knees with a whimper. There had been no time to defend herself when she heard James Dillon’s question—the guards had come for her, and she had only gotten two steps before she was captured and dragged downstairs to be shoved into a car. Now she did not know where she was. Underground somewhere, with bare bulbs making spears of light into her eyes.
She looked up to see a tall, well-muscled man staring down at her. For one stupid moment, all she could think was that he was the most handsome man she had ever seen. Then she saw the look in his eyes.
She should never have gone into that house. But….
“Well?” The man crossed his arms. Arisha bowed her head and said a silent prayer. She had practiced what she would say to a Wechselbalg if the time came, but the words seemed inadequate now. She did not dare look up as she began to speak.
“When I was ten years old, my cousins said they saw a wolf in the forest. A wolf bigger than any wolf should be. I made them tell me where, because it sounded like the old stories Babulya used to tell us. It was … a foolish choice.”
“Yes,” James Dillon observed. “It was.” There was a pause. “Go on.”
“I didn’t find the wolf. I found a man who looked young, but had old eyes.” She waited for the mockery that always came after she said this, and then realized why none of them were mocking her. They knew it was real, too. She took a deep breath, “He told me the forest wasn’t safe for children. I knew he was something more than human. I knew from that day the stories were true. I have been searching for the rest of the truth since my tenth year.”
“Why?” The tall man—Stoyan, if her eavesdropping was correct—crouched down to look her in the eyes. “Why would you want to know?”
She had never expected anyone to ask such a thing. Arisha blinked, staring at his fierce gaze in confusion. “Just to know it.”
The man did not seem to know what to do with that. He stared back.
Arisha tried to think of a new way to say it, and shook her head in frustration at the inadequacy of words.
How could he understand what it was like to be told that you were crazy, your whole life, because of something you knew you had seen? How could he understand the fire that had awoken in her to find the truth, always, no matter how strange?
She listened to the stories of those who claimed they had seen crazy things, because she felt they deserved to have someone believe them, at least once.
“Because it’s the truth,” she said finally. “The truth is important. I know a lot of people don’t care about it, but I do. I want,” her eyes narrowed in anger, “no, I need to know the truth!”
“You’re wrong,” Stoyan told her bluntly. He stood up, looking away so that he would not see those beautiful eyes looking up at him. She looked so earnest, like she was telling the truth, and he would have to be a fool to miss how attractive she was. None of that mattered, though. She was just someone who knew too much. “The truth isn’t important. The truth gets people killed.”
People like Irina.
“No.” Arisha shook her head. “The truth will tell you what’s going on in that facility. It will tell you who’s responsible and what else is going on. It will lead you to the people who are trying to hurt your cousin.”
She took a breath, “I can help.”
Stoyan froze. His heart was pounding, and he told himself not to be stupid. He’d brought Filip into this, and that was enough. What could this woman find that Filip could not?
“I know people like the ones who run that facility.” She was so fixated on Stoyan that she didn’t notice James Dillon crouch down beside her. She jerked aside when she caught
sight of him.
“I mean you no harm,” he said pleasantly. He held out a hand. “My name is Stephen.”
So James Dillon was a fake name. She should have guessed. Wary that this might be a trap, Arisha reached out to shake his hand. “Arisha.”
“You say you know people like the ones who run the facility.” Stephen’s eyes were clear, commanding. “Tell me what that means. How do you know anything about the people running that facility? Even we haven’t been able to trace the owners yet.”
Arisha smiled bitterly. “I don’t have to know who they are to know how they operate. The rumors are enough.” She saw disappointment flash in Stephen’s face.