by N Gray
Roland made a gruff sound.
“Was it a crisis of conscience?” asked Léon.
Miles nodded. “Yes, master.” He walked over to Léon, bowed, then went onto one knee and asked for Léon’s hand. Léon offered him his hand and Miles kissed it—it looked like he was begging for forgiveness.
Through gritted teeth, Léon said, “As much as I want to make an example out of you,”—he glanced up at Sebastian—“I need to hand you and your brother over to your respective animal groups to maintain the peace treaties I have with them.” Léon stared down at Miles as he knelt in front of him. “That said, it doesn’t mean I have to hand you to them unharmed.”
Léon made a hand gesture as if to strike Miles, but the blow did not connect. Instead, his bladed palms sliced through the air, and Miles and Roland both cried out in pain. Each had received a deep lash across their backs, and blood pooled from their wounds.
All this had happened to me because Roland had a bug up his ass to take over from Léon, for which I was furious. Roland had Miles arrange an assassin—me—to take Léon out, but when Miles changed his mind, probably because he realized that Roland was the bigger asshole, he attacked me instead, to stop me. That attack had damn near killed me.
“Why the hell didn’t you just tell me—our company— that you wanted to cancel the contract? You didn’t have to leave me for dead, Miles.”
I balled my hands into fists and remembered the gun at my back. I pushed myself away from Sebastian and grabbed the gun from under my shirt. I flicked the safety off, aimed and fired. I didn’t think about it; I just did it. It was muscle memory at its best. The first shot hit him in the gut, and the second one struck him in the thigh. I moved the gun from side to side, aiming at anyone who came closer. Everyone stayed away, including the guards.
“You messed me up, Miles. I think it’s only fair I do the same to you.”
Miles crumpled to the floor, blood pooling beneath him.
“Get Mel!” Sebastian yelled to a nearby guard. The were-animal nearest the exit turned and started running.
“Is it loaded with silver bullets?” Sebastian asked.
“Yes,” I said in a low voice; a voice that held no emotion. It was my voice, the one that came from a dark place deep inside me. That was me—the real me. The assassin that went to a place that was iniquitous and quiet.
I was still holding the gun, ready to shoot anyone who came near me.
Sebastian said, “You two”—he pointed to two of the guards— “carry Miles and take him to Mel.” They did as Sebastian ordered and picked him up, carrying him away.
Roland’s voice cut through the tension. “Thank you, my dear,” he said. “You have made it easy for me now. Hearing how he deceived me, I would have killed him myself, but it seems you might have done the hard work for me.”
He was pissing me off. All this had happened because of him.
I fired twice into his neck.
He clutched his wounds with both hands and made gargling sounds as blood started pouring from his neck. I wasn’t worried. I knew that he would heal. He was a vampire. I could rip his throat out, and he would still heal.
What I needed to do was take his heart out and chop off his head.
Roland was on his knees, one hand at his throat and the other flat on the floor in front of him so that he wouldn’t fall over. I heard wheezing and bubbling sounds from him and knew that he was struggling. Good!
Léon laughed, the sound surprisingly pleasant and therefore disturbing in the circumstances. It rolled in the air and surrounded us like a warm hug. His laughter usually felt as though it caressed the soul, and so to hear it as Roland was gushing blood upon the stone floor was chilling, to say the least. He motioned for two guards. “Place him in a coffin and lock it with a cross. He can stay there until the Council are ready for him.”
My arm was burning from holding the gun up, but I kept it aimed at everyone. I wasn’t sure whether I would be the next one to be dragged away and locked up, and so I would protect myself.
While they carried Roland away, Sebastian asked, “Was it you, Roland? Were you the one who stole the mummy and the jewels?”
Through the bubbly gargles, he laughed, and the guards who were dragging him stopped. I struggled to hear him speak, but I understood most of what he said.
“Yes, but I couldn’t touch the jewels.” He laughed, and more bloody bubbles leaked from the holes in his neck. “No vampire can hold the jewels. They are meant only for humans to use against us.” His laughter spilled through the large hall, and he coughed some more. He lifted his hands up for us all to see the burn marks on the palms of his hands.
He had not burnt them by catching a bottle of holy water, like he had claimed. He had tried to use the jewels, and they had scarred him. Good.
Léon motioned for the guards to continue escorting Roland out. He combed his fingers through his hair to remove the few loose strands from his face. His blue eyes were now pale, icy as opposed to their usual inkiness, and reminded me of husky’s eyes. As the color seemed to change with his mood, was this the color they were when he was happy?
He walked over to me, placed a hand on the gun and lowered it.
“We will not harm you, Blaire. I promise you that. But please lower the gun before you hurt someone else. This is not something I had ever thought a vampire would say—but I think that there has been enough bloodshed for one evening.” His eyes sparkled with humor.
I did as he asked, but I kept the gun in my hand, just in case.
From behind us came a loud, “No!” and Galina floated toward me.
My reaction was painfully slow because all I saw was a blurred vision of her as she knocked me to the ground. Her shrill cry piercing my ears, she straddled my waist and pinned my hands to the floor above my head. The gun had been knocked out of my hand as her body collided with mine, and the drawstring bag had flown across the floor with the gun. The force of the assault stunned me for a moment as I tried to focus on the angry vampire baring her fangs beneath wild green eyes. Her white hair covered both of us, and I smelt peppermint—she must have taken my criticism to heart when I said she had smelled of old blood in my dream.
“Get off me!”
I struggled to get out of her arms, but she was much stronger than I was. She could throw a small car over her shoulder without breaking a sweat. She gripped my wrists tighter, and pain shot through my outstretched arms down to my shoulder blades. I wanted to cry out, but I also didn’t want to give her the satisfaction. I stopped writhing beneath her and leered at her—her pale skin, her black eyebrows, her piercing green eyes, and her pursed thin lips.
“You took him away from me!” she yelled, and spit landed on my face.
“Who? What are you talking about?” I said between shallow breaths.
Although she was thin, she sat heavily on my ribs, and it felt like a rock was crushing me.
I had to stay focused.
“Sebastian! I am talking about Sebastian,” she shouted at me. “He was mine. All mine! Then you had to come and take him away!”
So, Sebastian, and not Léon, had been the subject of Galina’s jealousy.
Her green eyes bled to something darker, a mixture of seaweed and maroon. Her eyes were growing in her anger, and she shoved that anger into me. It tore through me, causing my skin to feel as though it was burning and for my blood to feel as though it was on fire, eating its way through both muscle and flesh.
“I did not!” I yelled back at her.
“Get off her, Galina,” Léon said.
I heard footsteps walk toward us from my left, dress shoes clicking on the marble floor. I heard other footsteps come closer from my right, and I hoped they would remove her soon—my breath was shallow, and my lungs were burning.
As my lungs filled with her power, I could feel my life draining away. I took my last shallow breath and stared into those dark green eyes, wanting to tell her that she could have him. It was so not worth it. I wo
uldn’t fight over a man, no matter who it was. But I couldn’t speak. I couldn’t do anything. I simply watched as her death grip rendered me immobile.
As someone pried her fingers away from my wrists, someone else carried her, kicking and screaming, away from me. As the two men removed her from me, Ralph came to kneel beside me. He had the drawstring bag in his hands, and he opened it.
With Galina no longer weighing me down, my lungs filled with air. My body was coming back to life, one limb at a time.
Ralph helped me to sit up and gave me one jewel while he held the others. We pressed the jewels together until their bright light shone upon the roof in a blaze of vermillion and the air cleared. All power evaporated, the vampires fell to the floor.
They didn’t scream; they didn’t make a sound. They weren’t in any pain that I could tell. They were just … quiet.
Sebastian was only half a vampire, but it still affected him just as much as the others. He was lying on the floor with Galina next to him and Léon on the other side. All three of them turned their wide eyes on me.
Salvador had remained where he was, only now he was sitting on the floor with his legs crossed. A smile reached his eyes, as though our actions had impressed him. He tilted his head in my direction, in recognition. He was an odd vampire; we had removed their powers, and yet Salvador seemed delighted.
Ian and Esther had crumpled to the floor and had crawled into a fetal position. They definitely weren’t as powerful as the others, as the effect of the jewels seemed to affect them the most.
Ralph and I kept the jewels pressed together. We kept that light shining toward the ceiling and allowed to reflect around the hall.
“P-l-e-a-s-e!” Sebastian said through gritted teeth. “Please, stop.” He started to hunch over, as though he was holding his stomach in place.
When we had first pressed the jewels together at Léon’s warehouse, it had been for a mere few seconds, and as soon as Sebastian had said that he couldn’t use any of his powers, we had stopped. But now, we kept the jewels pressed together, and the longer we did this, the harder it was on the vampires. I felt the smile on my face reach my eyes as Ralph and I shared a knowing look. His smile matched mine.
“Cool,” Ralph said to me. “What are we going to do now?”
“I don’t know.”
We couldn’t keep our hands like this forever. Also, because their power had never been documented, I didn’t know if there was a threshold for how long the jewels could be pressed together. Would their power cause the vampires discomfort, pain and then death, or would they only remain powerless?
“Let me kill her,” Galina yelled through clenched teeth. She lifted her head from the floor and started a slow crawl toward me. If she had been angry with me before, now she seemed livid.
“Stay away from me, Galina, or I will chop your fucking head off!” I pulled the pocketknife from my pocket, flicked it open and pointed it at her. “Don’t fucking move. I have had enough of your shit for one day.”
Galina stopped mid-crawl, then rested her forehead on the floor on top of her hands. “Please stop!” she cried, and, this time, I heard a quiver of pain in those words.
“Give me your word that you will leave me alone, Galina.”
“Yes! Yes, you have my word! Now please stop. Please—please stop it!” Those wounded words, filled with hurt, echoed throughout the hall.
“Please, Blaire, no one will hurt you,” Léon said. “The tie that binds you to my brother is like a double-edged sword; if they hurt you, they hurt him.” He made a slow turn to look at Sebastian, and his eyes showed sorrow, not just in pain from what was happening to them now, but from years filled with a hurt that they had both shared.
I was an assassin, but I wouldn’t do it. The person I was now wouldn’t torture them.
I wanted to take that hurt away.
It made little sense to me, but that’s how I felt. I was tired, I was sore, and I had had enough.
I turned to Ralph, and he knew the look in my eyes. He withdrew the two jewels that he held against mine just enough for the light to instantly dissolve.
Nobody rushed to grab us because nobody wanted us to press the jewels together again. They knew that we would if they did.
The vampires stayed where they were. Salvador rose from the floor in one swift motion, as though he had been pulled up by strings. I lifted the jewel I held so that he could see I would use it again if he came any closer.
He held his hands up. “I just want to talk, if I may?” He stepped closer, both hands still raised in the air.
I lowered the jewel back into my lap, but Ralph kept the two in his hands relatively close to mine, just in case.
Salvador straightened his dark suit by brushing down over his body, and, to me, it looked like a nervous gesture. “I think we all need to take a step back and breathe—metaphorically speaking for us vampires. We need to appreciate the severity of those jewels and to respect the new owners of them. I don’t know about you, Galina, but I do not want to piss off this woman any more than you already have. Agreed?”
“Yes,” Galina nodded furiously. “Yes, I won’t anger her, especially if she can wield those jewels to such extremes.”
“Good. So, do we have an arrangement?” Salvador looked down at me, the silver patterns on his suit snaking over and around his body.
I stared into his light blue eyes, then looked at his nose because I was not sure if he would use his vampiric wiles on me. Vampires have the ability to mess with you and make you do all sorts of crazy things you would never otherwise do—sober, at least. He smiled. I think he understood why I wasn’t looking him in the eyes.
“Yes, we all leave each other alone so we can all live tomorrow.” I stood and kept looking at his nose—just in case.
“Léon, are we eventually going to dine in this fine banquet hall, or do I need to source my own food for tonight?”
“No, Father, there is food—even for the humans,” Léon said, standing up from the floor. He managed one leg at a time and then stretched his spine backwards until there was a crackling sound. He held his hand out for Sebastian, who hesitated at first, but took it and stood up.
“Are we talking ‘willing’ food?” I asked as I met Léon’s gaze.
He nodded. “There are still plenty who will even pay us for taking their blood, but I do not need their money. We will reward them with our pleasurable desires, Blaire.” A mischievous smile stretched across his face like a lazy cat out in the sun. “My chefs will bring out your food soon. I believe it’s roast beef and vegetables.”
I wasn’t up to eating, but as I thought about it, I realized that I’d only eaten once today.
Léon and Sebastian left Galina where she had fallen, and they joined Salvador at the large dining table.
I stayed a little back with Ralph and waited for all the vampires to reach the table before we joined them. Ian and Esther went to their master and sat on his side. Galina sat next to Salvador on the far right. Jean-René and Charlotte entered the hall, just in time for dinner, and sat with the rest of the vampires.
Ralph and I were the only humans who were technically invited to sit at the table; Elena and the other were-animals were still littered across the room as guards.
I picked up the bag of jewels and swung it onto my shoulder, picked up the gun, and placed it once more at the small of my back, tucked into my jeans. I had to shift it around until I was comfortable with it being there.
All the vampires occupied one side of the table, so Ralph and I sat on the other. I faced Sebastian while Ralph sat on my left and faced Léon.
A row of humans entered the hall, all led by a male guard I’d never seen before. There was one person for each of the vampires; they stood behind their respective vampire’s chair and waited.
Two guards entered with trolleys of food in silver dishes and set the dishes in front of myself and Ralph. The largest dish contained roast beef and chicken while two smaller dishes were filled with
roast potatoes and an assortment of vegetables. From the other trolley, a guard removed a bowl of rice and a brown sauce and set them upon the table. The food smelled downright delicious now that it was in front of my nose. My mouth began to water, and a slurpy sound escaped my lips as I breathed in the aroma.
“Please begin, Blaire, Ralph.” Léon gestured for us to start. He looked at the vampires and gave a curt nod, and they all stood together to embrace their meals.
Sebastian, however, stayed in his seat. Since he was half-vampire and half-were-leopard, what meal would he dine on this evening? He watched me with his hawk-like eyes. Léon touched his shoulder, and he stared up at his brother as Léon said something to him in French.
Sebastian shook his head glanced back to me, and said, “No, brother. Tonight, I will eat real food.”
He came to my side of the table, plated some food and sat beside me.
Ralph and I followed soon after him. We ate, and it was every bit as scrumptious as it smelled. Another guard poured red wine, which we drank, and we ate while the vampires sank their teeth into their willing human offerings. Loud gasps slipped from human lips as the vampires rolled their minds to help them enjoy the feeding as much as they were. The dark-haired woman in Léon’s arms opened her mouth wide as her eyes rolled back into her head. She looked positively orgasmic as Léon held her, one arm around her waist and the other resting on the side of her face to give him extra room to bite down.
As I watched Léon, I wondered what his bite would feel like, and as I thought it, my eyes drifted to Sebastian and I began to wonder the same.
EPILOGUE
RALPH AND I were well fed—and, thankfully, still alive—by the time we left Léon’s residence. We offered our goodbyes to Léon, Sebastian and their guests and then returned to Ralph’s car, where both of us agreed that we were in no hurry whatsoever to return.
Ralph bunked with me for a few nights in the basement at my house, where we kept ourselves safely locked away to recover.
Nightmares plagued my slumber, but Ralph was there to comfort me through all my screams and tears, holding me while I fought not to go back to sleep.