“My lady?” A tall, thin man greeted her on the bottom steps. He looked rushed. In fact, he was more worried than rushed, he was afraid. “Where were you? We’ve been trying to find you. You know you shouldn’t go out alone like this.”
She passed him on the steps and continued up them as she answered him. “My business was my own. You know better than to question me like this.” She kept her voice calm. She wasn’t at all.
Although it took her only about ten minutes to get back to her territory, it still gave her a ton of time to think about everything. She thought hard about what happened between the filth that attacked her and her. How could they betray the peace? How could they try to force her hand like that? Those would have been enough, but now there was more to well— everything. To top it off, the black wolf has returned. Now, with everything else going on, she had to include him in the debate. It meant so much. It also meant a world of hurt with it.
“I am sorry my lady, but I have sworn to protect you. I do what I have sworn to do.” He followed her up the steps. The staircase was massive, nearly one story in height, and it led to a platform at the front of the house. The front of the house was likewise huge, with a long angled porch and balcony that wrapped around the entire front of the building. The building, her home for a century now, looked like a palace of brick and white marble. It would have done justice to the wealthiest person in the world. In fact, they were one of the wealthiest families left alive.
“I know, my boy I know.” She stopped halfway up the steps and turned back to him. She smiled to her child. She forgot hot young he really was when she made him. “What has been done is done. Now I need you to gather the heads of the groups. I need to speak to them as soon as I reach the hall.” She even gave him a smile.
He nodded, and kept his head down to bow. “I will my lady.” He looked up again, looked her in the eyes only briefly, and then turned to a blur as he ran up the steps and disappeared to the right of the front doors.
She watched him leave, as she retook the steps. She walked to the porch like balcony and headed straight to a set of double doors at the center of the main building. She walked through them never breaking her stride.
Inside, a palatial entranceway greeted her with a massive, easily ten foot diameter crystal chandelier, hanging between two large half circle staircases that went up to the second floor. Near the steps on the right, she turned right, and headed down a long hallway lining the front of the building. She even watched herself in the first window of the row of windows that lined the hallway to her right as she moved. She passed two closed doors on her left, and turned left into the third one that was left opened. She continued into the room and only stopped when she was in the center of it.
The room was circular. Ten people already lined it around her. The boy did well in gathering the heads of the groups like he did.
“My family.” She turned to each of them in turn, matching their curious eyes with her own. “Thank you for coming when called so quickly.” She looked straight ahead to Maxwell, her oldest and closest friend and brother. “We have much to discus.”
“You have returned from your meeting with the Gorhan then?” Maxwell looked eager to get down to business. He felt ready to begin with everything they had discussed. They planned their meeting with the family that gave them the most troubles well. Now was the time to hear what they agreed to.
“I have not.” She looked left. She watched all of their faces. She needed to know who among them might be the problem within her own family. “I never made it to the meeting.”
All in the room audibly gasped. Some, she could tell, did it more than the others did.
“I was intercepted by wolves. Gloria and some of her disgusting pack were the ones who attacked me.”
Again, the room gasped.
“How is this possible? I thought the Gorhans wanted to have peaceful transactions between us?” Maxwell stepped from his perch like standing place in front of her. He walked down the two steps that made him look like he was on one in the first place and stopped in front of her. As he stepped to Sharlia, he could see a small streak of blood on her right cheek. It was dried, but nonetheless blood. He looked from the streak and back to her face. “How did you escape them?” he had to ask. He knew she was strong, the most powerful among their family obviously, but against a pack—that was something he just had trouble believing. Even for her.
“The black wolf.” She refused to blink.
Now the entire room did collectively gasp with a much louder and unforgiving sound.
Maxwell did blink. “What?” He absolutely couldn’t believe her. His dearest sister, or not, what she said just didn’t sound right to him at all.
“You heard me.” She walked past him and towards Augusta, who had been standing on his left before he left his perch. “He is a black wolf. He turned and saved me from Gloria. I couldn’t believe it myself when I first saw what he was.” She of course could feel their distrust with such words. For most of them, the black wolf was nothing more than a story told to them when they were first born into this world. A nightmare to scare the young for the story it told to educate them about everything that happened and more.
“So the bastard passed on his bite.” Maxwell turned to Sharlia, but all he saw was her back. “Who is the one he gave such a dastardly gift to?”
Sharlia turned back to face him. “According to him, he gave more than a bite.” She looked past him to the others nearest the door to the hallway.
“I don’t understand my lady.” Maxwell began to circle the room, walking first between her and Augusta, and then continuing along it in front of everyone. “Why would he come out like this? Where has he been hiding after all of this time? Why now would he show himself? What is his purpose?”
Sharlia bowed her head slightly. “I will discover his purpose in time, but for right now, I have other concerns to me. Concerns like, who told of my meeting with the Gorhans? Who told of my way to that meeting? Who’s working with that dirty filth that tried to force me to accept the Devish cult?” As she spoke, her voice went from smooth and controlled to something much more angrier and intense. She truly hated what happened. She truly hated just the idea of one of her own betraying the trust she gave them.
“You doubt one of us my lady?” Maxwell truly sounded shocked. It seemed to be yet another thing that he didn’t understand.
“Only this room, only the very people within it, knew of the meeting. Only this eleven, these brothers and sisters around me, knew of the direction I would follow. Knowing this, I fear something that I never believed possible until now. One of you, have betrayed this family. You have betrayed me and I will discover who that is.”
Again, the room gasped with a shallow sound that almost sounded like a moan. They then looked at each other, back and forth, over, and over again.
She didn’t wait to hear anything else. She turned fast and headed back to the door. She left it and turned back to the entranceway. She headed to the stairs, took the right one and made it up them to the second floor.
Maxwell watched her leave. When she was gone, he turned back to the others, and looked at each of them in turn. But, he said nothing. He had nothing else left to say. He just walked back over to his perch. He had to think about everything he heard first before he questioned any of them. And by the looks on all of their faces, they were all about to do the same thing.
9
“How long do we wait? How long does this continue?” Arthur stood in the center of the room. He didn’t want to move any closer to the chair. He didn’t feel secure too close to him. He never felt content, standing there in the center of that hall. It always felt bland, in a dark type of way. It always felt cold. So, he stayed right where he was, surrounded by the emptiness of that room. Around him, the statues of his ancestors surrounded him, watching him, almost protecting him with just being there, standing there with their glorious faces guarding him.
“We wait until we know. We wait a
s long as we must wait.” Vincent loved this hall. He remembered it well when he built it, back when the city was small, back in the time, when the world felt bigger. As for what Arthur wanted to know, he had nothing. He felt just about as confused in not knowing what happened as he did. He felt just as afraid. He felt as unsure as he cared to admit it. He too wanted to know.
“What do we do if he is there?” Arthur tried not to breathe. He didn’t even want to disturb the air of that magnificent hall.
“He will or he will not.” Vincent left his chair at the top of the stairs at the end of the giant square room and walked to the bottom floor to where Arthur was standing. The hall was circular at the top of the walls, two stories up, and was capped with a large oval dome. At the floor, he kept the room square. He never liked circular halls. Some did, but he didn’t. “You must have faith my friend. Faith in this—faith in him.”
Arthur was about to continue his doubts, but hearing the door opening behind him, and seeing the light flow over his back, casting his front into shadow, caused him to stop. He turned, just as Vincent reached his left side.
Gloria stepped through the door and approached them subtly.
“Ah, Gloria my dear, you bring news?” Vincent greeted her, moving between Arthur and her.
She kept her head down and her eyes to the floor. Delivering bad news was never easy to do. Let alone having to do it to the head of the family.
Seeing her like this, Vincent didn’t like what she did. It told him the truth without actually having to hear anything at all. “She denied us then.” It had to be it. There was no other reason to feel ashamed about such news.
She shook her head. Her straggly hair circled around her shoulders. “No…” she paused, thinking, wandering how to speak the news with as little harm as possible. Finally, she figured she just had to say it and let the chips fall as they may. “Yes, she did deny you my lord, but there is more.”
Vincent understood the denial, hell he expected it. Sharlia would never submit. He knew her better than that. “Yes, of course.” He nodded, and turned.
Gloria lifted her head. “My lord, the…” She started, but she was cut off by the sounds of someone speaking behind her. She turned and watched Samantha, naked and smelling shaken, as she walked through the doorway behind her.
“Vincent?” Samantha walked into the room and came to Gloria’s left.
Hearing his beloved child speak always sparked his cold lifeless heart back to life. “Ah my dear Samantha.” He walked to her with a swift stride and took her shoulders within both hands. “You have made it back.” He smiled.
She took a deep breath. “I have news master.”
This was what he wanted. She was the one who had his answers. She was the one that he needed to see. “You found the young one then?” He took his right hand and placed it under her chin.
“The black wolf is here. He interrupted us with the new blood. He killed Curtis.” She swallowed as she spoke. She tried hard to keep her anger at bay.
Hearing her answer, he nodded. “You have done well my child. Thank you for your courage.” Vincent turned and looked back to Arthur.
Gloria listened, and after hearing what she had, she didn’t believe it. “I too saw the black wolf. He attacked us when we tried to give Sharlia your words. He too killed one of us.”
Vincent spun around. “What?” He looked to Gloria, and then to Samantha. “You both could not have seen him.” He felt somewhat shocked. “You saw him? You saw this Jimmy too?” He stepped between the two of them. He kept his eyes moving back and forth between them as well.
“I saw the man. I watched him turn.” Gloria looked to Sam, and then back again to Vincent.
He looked at her as she spoke, and finished, he turned back to Samantha. “You saw him human too?” He needed to know. If Gloria did see him, and so did Samantha, then he knew, he was still there in the city. That meant that it would be safe to head north. If neither saw him, or one did and one didn’t, then that meant that there had to be two of them. He needed to know which was which.
Samantha shook her head. “I only saw the beast.” She bowed it after finishing her answer.
He nodded. He could only assume that at least he was still there, in the city. It meant that the woman was unprotected. Looking from his two ladies, he turned back to Arthur, who stood there, listening to everything with a benign intention. “You must move now. Make your way there, find her, and secure her.”
Arthur watched Vincent, nodded with a deep bow of his neck, and then looked up again. “I will move tonight. We will have her by tomorrow.”
“Good. See to it Arthur.” He left the women and moved ever so slowly to his other subordinate until they were again face-to-face. “Be cautious, be quiet, but do not fail.”
Arthur again bowed his head. After a slight hesitation, he lifted it again. “Will you be joining us, my lord? Will he be?” His voice cracked some, speaking the words. He did feel fear. He did feel his heart clench. He always did, when he thought of him.
“Not for a few days. He is in need of strength. We will not move until we are ready.” Vincent turned, looked back to his two women, nodded to them both, and then left the three of them, heading across the huge floor back to his chair. Once there, he sat back down.
The others watched him only briefly, and each left as well. They had work to do, and it was high time to get to doing it.
10
Making it back to Jimmy’s took about an hour. Both Sasha and Brandon said nothing to each other as they walked. Sasha brooded, while Brandon still felt speechless. Too much, it seemed happened. Too much seemed to be coming, and both of them had no idea what that might be. However, they both did know one thing. They both needed to talk. Both of them had no idea how to start that talk.
Making it to the front door, Sasha walked up the steps first. The bright red of the door sparkled into her eyes. Seeing it again suddenly made her feel comfortable. It felt like coming home.
Brandon stayed on the sidewalk at the bottom of the steps. “It doesn’t look like he’s home.” The bay window just to the right of the door looked dark. What he said seemed obvious.
“He has been here.” She took a deep breath, smelling his familiar must heavy on the air. It came heavily from behind the door. “Recently too.” She looked back to Brandon.
He watched her turn. Her red hair sparkled, almost blending into the color of the door behind her. Both the door and her hair made her pale smooth skin stand out almost as bright as the full moon on a clear and wondrous night. Seeing her, his heart skipped a beat. She looked so beautiful it made him sigh.
She heard him. “What?” She turned fully towards him, facing him. She put both of her hands on her hips. She suddenly hoped that this was the start of the talk. During her entire time coming here, she thought of nothing else. The trip seemed overly short, but at the same time, wondrously long. In that moment, walking with him saying nothing, it told her everything. He likes me too. His silence, so unusual for him, told me exactly what I wanted to know.
Seeing her—her subtle curves—the peaceful cream of her skin, he finally found his words. “What did you mean about me not asking you for the second thing?” He didn’t intend for this to start with a question, but it came out that way all by itself. He did what he always did, when he had no idea what to say. He just went with whatever came out first.
Hearing the question, the smoothness of his voice, caused her heart to flutter and her mind incredibly to go blank. “I like you Brandon.”
He felt wonder emanate from her. It felt like a cool breeze on a hot summer day. “You like me?” He stepped up one-step.
“I let you drink my blood Brandon. Do you honestly think I would let you do that, if I didn’t?”
He shrugged some. “I thought you just felt sorry for me.” He laughed some under his breath. He was also still thinking. That too seemed surprising. Thinking just didn’t seem to work for him some times, he knew that, but at the same time, i
t now seemed best not to do it. “You care about me then, don’t you?”
She shrugged some herself. “You’re very thick sometimes, you know that. We’ve been through a lot together. We’ve spent time together over this last month. Other than Jimmy, you’re the only family I have.” She moved her arms over her chest, feeling defensive all of a sudden.
He saw her actions, and oddly, admired her even more because of them. “You think I’m a part of your family? What like some type of brother or something?” He now bowed his eyes, and looked to the top of his shoes. He now felt defensive too, and again, he felt himself slip back into having to think. He felt speechless again because of it too. I don’t want to be a brother. I want more than that. I need more than this.
She watched his eyes move down. She could almost feel his heart close and his mind fade to nothing. “No.” She hated seeing that. She felt that this was now the time to set everything right. “You’re my friend Brandon. You’re so much more to me that even a friend.”
“You think that?”
“Of course! Look at you. You’re attractive. You’re funny. You’re so much more to me than a brother.” She shook her head. She uncrossed her arms. She stepped down one-step, just above the one he was standing on. “I want you in ways that being a brother to me couldn’t ever give me.” She smiled hard and soft at the same time. It made the creaminess of her face light up a room on an overly dark and precarious night.
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