With the exception of a chorus of gasps and a few startled screams of mortification, all Elaina could make out was the sound of branches cracking as the chilly wind whipped through the forest.
The Superior returned the dagger to the strap inside his coat. “Now, before anyone else makes any sudden moves, I have a message straight from the Master himself.”
Vicq pushed forward through the string of coven members protecting him, only to be cut off by a line of Soldiers. Elaina tried to break through the line after him, but they wouldn’t allow her to pass.
“I knew you were alive, Vicq. You couldn’t fool me. You have mad skills when it comes to escaping death, don’t you? You’re not like your Maker—who went down like a bitch.”
Vicg shifted through the line of protection, tearing off the head of one of the Soldiers. If Vicq’s goal was to leave mere inches between him and the Superior who was taunting him, he had succeeded. The only thing separating them was the rage that igniting between them.
“You can tell Russo he needs to be man enough to deliver his own messages,” Vicq demanded.
He still gripped the severed head, and he dropped it at the Superior’s feet where blood splattered on his boots.
The Superior’s gaze shifted from the Soldier’s head on the ground to Vicq.
“Such unnecessary violence…but that’s expected coming from you. If memory serves me correctly, you were one of our most ruthless Superiors until you turned soft. The way I see it, we did you a favor. You had a traitor in your midst, and all it took was the promise of freedom and ascension within the Court to get him to spill the beans on what you’ve been up to.” He rubbed his chin. “On second thought, I lied. He had about an ounce of loyalty left in him. He refused to give your location until I nearly bled him dry. Have you got anything to say, Superior?”
“I’ve said what I had to say to Russo. His days are numbered. I’ll see to that myself.”
“Threats to the Master are punishable by instant death.”
“What are you waiting for?”
“I wasn’t sent to take your life. I have orders to allow you to make your choice. You’re being given twenty-four hours to do so. You have very few places to hide now that your traitor has revealed some key secrets of your coven.” He opened his hand, palm up, and a Soldier handed him a rolled up slip of paper. He unfolded it and read it aloud. “Under the Dresdan Court, Vicq and his coven of fourteen are ordered to disband, effective immediately. Any followers who disobey will be hunted and put down accordingly. As for you, Vicq, you have twenty-four hours to report to Master Russo. If you don’t report, we’ll dismember your little car-thieving hybrid.”
The Superior stopped to hand him the message.
“Hybrid?”
“Oh, don’t look so confused. Please tell me that you remember those who refer to you as their Maker now.”
“Emory…” Vicq crushed the note in his palm.
“Yes, that’s his name—Emory.”
“He’s not a hybrid.”
“Hybrid. Transitioning. Whatever you call it. He’s not one of us, yet he knows many of our ways and drinks our blood. Don’t you know it’s against code to leave a man in transition? You’ve broken many laws, Vicq. You’re worse than the traitor bleeding out on the ground beside you.”
“What have you done to Emory?”
“Nothing yet. Twenty-four hours, Vicq. Starting now.”
The Superior and his group of Soldiers dissolved with the fog and disappeared.
Chapter 16
All fourteen of Vicq’s coven members huddled in the back of the van. Some were seated on equipment, and others were standing. They were on the road because they had no choice but to abandon their old sanctuary as it stood.
“We’re with you one hundred percent, Vicq. When we had nothing, you took us all in,” Leo said.
Vicq shook his head. “No. If you want to live, you have to leave me.”
“We won’t,” Eli protested. “If we’re going to be hunted, we might as well stay together and fight as one. We’ve planned a very important mission tomorrow—a raid on the very same organization that is trying to annihilate us all. That’s more than Russo has ever done for any of the Dresdan who serve him.”
Brandon pushed off the wall of the van and said, “He’s right, Vicq. We all feel that way. We came to you and joined you, knowing the consequences. You wanted to take down Russo. You told me you still do. So do we. I’m with you.”
With Logan gone, they were down to thirteen of Vicq’s original coven members. One after the other, the coven members recited the phrase ‘I’m with you.’ Elaina didn’t hesitate when it was her turn. She never planned to leave Vicq’s side, even if there wasn’t a mission to complete. She was devoted to loving him.
Vicq rose to a standing position in the van. “Fine, but I have an ultimatum. We have to disband after the raid. By that time, my twenty-four hours to report will have expired, and I don’t want any of you near me when it does. As you probably know, I’ll never report to him. I don’t go running when Russo calls. He’s not my Master.”
“What about your friend, Emory?” Leila asked.
“I have a plan. After we raid the District, my next target will be the Court.”
A wave of silence fell over the van.
“How will this plan work?” Brandon asked.
“I’ll need to gather allies, which means contacting every coven that has denounced ties to the existing Court. That’s where I’ll need your help. In order for this to work within the timeframe I have in mind, I need two of you to start recruiting covens now.”
“What about the District raid?” someone inquired.
“I can spare two of us from that mission to go tackle an equally important one,” Vicq replied. “Besides, we’ll have more weapons soon, and we also have the manpower behind us with the Refuge members joining in. Do I have two volunteers to start the quest for off-the-grid covens?”
“Me. I’ll go,” Brandon said.
Another coven member agreed to work with Brandon.
“The rest of us will move forward as planned. After the District raid, we’ll disband temporarily. Then, I’ll join Brandon and Luke’s efforts to round up all the other covens.”
“You’re implying that we overthrow the existing Court. What if this doesn’t work?” Leila exclaimed. Her voice trembled. “I can’t see this working.”
“Don’t worry, Leila. It will,” Vicq reassured her. “Your assignment is to find us another sanctuary. If your predictions are correct—and I hope they aren’t—we’ll need someplace where we can go. If the mission does fail, we’ll regroup and try again. If it takes years…decades…to take back our Court, we’ll do whatever we have to for however long it takes.”
Resolved with Vicq’s plan and reassured by his intentions to take back the Court, everyone fell silent in the van, meditating on the swift change of events.
Elaina rose next to Vicq and placed her hand on his shoulder. “Are you okay?” she asked.
“Come with me,” he said.
They shifted out of the van and joined each other next to a junkyard surrounded by a chain-link fence.
“You have a sound plan,” Elaina said, settling next to the fence beside him.
“Yes.”
“But you’re worried. You do want your Court back, don’t you?”
“I do. I promised Zaket that I’d lead it one day.”
She moved to face him and closed the distance between them. He immediately wrapped his arms around her.
“Tell me what happened to Zaket. Why would he ask you to lead if vampires live forever? Didn’t he plan to survive?”
“It’s true that Masters rule as long as they live unless the Court is overthrown…or if the Master himself ceases to exist or disappears from the face of the Earth. Zaket wished to end his own life.”
“Why?”
“His wife died.”
“Vampire’s take wives?”
“She wa
s human, and she didn’t want to become a vampire,” he said. “She wanted a traditional marriage and a normal life, and he gave that to her. For once in his existence, he had the one woman he would’ve done anything for, and she died. His will to live faded from there. My commitment and loyalty couldn’t even bring him back. He became disinterested in the politics of the Court, and soon, we had Superiors running their own units as they saw fit, which led to conflicts within the ranks. Even less concentration was given to reducing our rogue population. Finally, after seeing the damage of his neglect, Russo admitted that Zaket was defeated and not fit to rule us. He wanted to end it himself. I was supposed to rule. I didn’t want to, but of course, I couldn’t tell him that.”
“And that’s when Russo beheaded him while he slept.”
Vicq nodded. “He told everyone that he put our Maker out of his misery, but he also rose to Master at the same time.”
“Then he wanted to rule all along.”
“Yes. When you kill a Master, you absorb all of his powers, his knowledge…everything.”
“But it belonged to you. Zaket chose you.”
“Russo and I were both Superiors, and he was just as entitled as I was, but I don’t agree with how he ended up in possession of the Court.”
“I’ll help you get your Court back,” Elaina said.
He took both of her hands in his. “I won’t let any harm come to you. Not over this. This isn’t your fight, it’s mine. That’s why I want you, along with Leila and Melrose, to disband like the others and leave me after the raid. When Leila secures another sanctuary, you go with her.”
“No.” Her throat tightened. “I’m not leaving you behind.”
“Don’t.” He spoke firmly in a low, authoritative tone. “Don’t make this any more difficult than it already is.”
Her frustration turned to anger. “You can’t…”
“I’ll come back to you, Elaina. I always do. Remember?”
“But this time, I want to be with you.” She pounded his chest. “You left me before…”
He stroked the left side of her face. “You will be with me. You have my blood. A part of me. My life force. I’ll always be with you.”
Elaina swallowed and blinked away her tears, adamant about not letting one drop fall. He couldn’t see her this way, pitying herself because she couldn’t have her way.
She tore away from his grip and stormed off.
“Elaina…”
Ignoring his call, she retreated to a dark corner of the junkyard, seeking time to herself.
Chapter 17
“A candle making store, really?” Brandon exclaimed as they filed out of the van.
Elaina jumped down, and loose dirt lifted up with the wind and flew across her face. She pinned her hair back with her hand and looked at the quaint little store sitting in the middle of nowhere. The sign read: Gisselle’s Candle Making Shop. There was a gas station off to the right with moderate activity, so the place couldn’t have been as isolated as her first impressions told her.
But still…
Vicq checked his cell phone and flipped through some screens. “Yup, this is the place.”
The majority of the coven members stayed with the van as Vicq, Elaina, Brandon, and Melrose moved forward to the entrance of the store. As they approached, Elaina noticed that there was an innocent old woman sitting in a rocking chair with one hand on a walking cane. Once close up, she came to realize the candle making store resembled a home.
“Hello,” the woman greeted them but didn’t get up from her seat.
“We’re here to—”
“—I know what you’re here for. The door’s open.” She pointed the bottom end of the cane at the door.
Without another word, she picked up a pair of long needles from her lap and ignored them as she continued her knitting. A handgun was in her lap, along with the ball of yarn. Elaina realized that she wasn’t as innocent as she appeared.
Brandon opened the door and held it open. The sign outside wasn’t a lie. Hundreds of scented candles and other related decor lined the shelves. A guy came out from behind the counter.
“We’re here to see Ghost,” Vicq said.
“I’m Fred,” the guy said. “Come this way. Ghost has been expecting you.”
They were led into a back room where Fred lifted a door up from the floor. The quaint little candle making store had another purpose. They descended down into the basement and spilled out into an underground facility.
When they entered the room, three men were waiting for them. Shelves lined with handguns and other combat weapons surrounded them.
Vicq and Ghost—who Elaina recognized from Vicq’s blood memories—exchanged handshakes and a few sentences before everyone else was introduced. Then Ghost returned to his post behind a counter made of glass and swept his hand across the contents.
“My process is simple. I don’t ask questions. All the goods are untraceable. There are no refunds,” he said. He pointed to the left and right of the room where more combat gear and hunting rifles were on display. “You can have your choice of anything in here. Just don’t plan on cleaning me out. I have another appointment in a few hours.”
Elaina took a quick look at the inventory and almost wished she had robbed a couple of District facilities. Everything resembled common civilian weapons. If they raided District headquarters armed with the simple handguns lying around here, they’d end up massacred before they got past the front gates.
She glanced behind her at Vicq and shot him a questioning look. From the expression on his face, she could tell that he already knew what she was thinking.
His eyebrow raised in amused contempt.
“Is there a problem?” Ghost asked.
Before turning around to face him, Elaina attempted to wipe the disappointment from her expression.
“You see…” She rubbed the back of her neck and pulled her bottom lip between her teeth. “I know you said you wouldn’t ask questions, but maybe if we explained to you a little about why we need these weapons you’d understand.”
“Trust me when I say, I really don’t want to know. The fewer memories in my blood, the better.” Ghost winked. “So, pretty lady, let’s be straightforward with each other. What seems to be the problem?”
Elaina walked up to the counter.
“We need more guns,” she said.
She dumped a suitcase full of money on the counter and popped the latch. The lid flipped open, revealing rows of cash.
“Big guns,” she added.
Ghost grinned widely. “Now you’re talking.” With a sweep of his hand to the left of him, he made a gesture to one of the men standing in the room. “Carlos…?”
Carlos activated a mechanism that raised a panel on the wall behind them. Less than a minute later, the entire wall slid open completely to reveal another hidden room of nothing but heavy artillery.
“Are these big enough for you?” Ghost asked.
She nodded. “I like what I see.”
“Careful. Everything in here is loaded,” Carlos said.
It took them under an hour to complete the entire transaction and then they were on the road again.
Chapter 18
“You can stay here as long as you need to,” Elaina’s dad exclaimed as he ushered them into a suite. “This is a double suite, as well…adjoining room to the left. Hopefully your other men have gotten settled in by now. No one will bother you. You’’ll have the entire right wing of the hotel to yourselves.”
“Thank you,” Vicq said.
“No, thank you for bringing my daughter to me.” He handed them the key. “Our Refuge isn’t far from here. My men and I will return early tonight and then we’ll meet up again to plan out the first attack.”
As Elaina began to sort through her bags near the queen-sized bed, her dad took Vicq aside and they spoke in low tones with each other. She caught wind of her name and turned around.
“Are you two really going to discuss me while I’m
standing not even two feet away?” she asked.
“It’s about the mission,” her dad replied.
“What about it?”
“Are you planning to be there?”
She frowned. “Yeah. Why wouldn’t I?”
Vicq opened the door to the suite and motioned for her dad to step outside. “Let’s have a word in private about a few things.”
“Sure. I’ll be back, Elaina,” her dad said.
She wasn’t surprised that Vicq and her dad had developed a quick relationship. After all, they had more than her in common. As far as she knew, almost everyone here had a vested interest in taking down and exposing District 5. They had their goals to achieve and she had hers.
Once they were gone, Elaina closed the door to the adjoining suite, grabbed some fresh clothes from her bag, and headed to the shower.
Chapter 19
Mr. Smith went behind the bar of the hotel, which was currently unmanned, and poured himself a glass of brandy before joining Vicq at the far side of the lounge.
“I usually offer drinks and meals to my guests, but we’ve never had any vampires stay here,” Mr. Smith said.
“We’ll make do with what we can find,” Vicq replied. “When did you learn that not all of us were out to kill?”
Mr. Smith sighed, slouched his shoulders, and settled back in his chair. “My suspicions have always been in favor of vampires, but just like us humans, you have good guys and bad buys. It just so happens that bad vampires can do really bad things to really good people. And they have.”
“Truth.”
“My turn.” Mr. Smith took a swig of his drink. “How long have you been trying to take down the District, Vicq?”
“Since before my Maker and Master perished. I was a Superior who worked in the field, warning the Master of outside threats to the Court and to our people. Our focus was reducing the rogue population until it was the rogues themselves who led us to District 5 and what was going on. While we were herding our rogues up, District 5 began capturing us…any vampire, not just the rogues.”
The Dresdan Coven Trilogy Page 26