“This is the arrangement you were talking about?” My mouth went dry as I turned eyes on Caleb. “She keeps you safe from the Ravens, and you keep feeding her life?”
Soft eyes held me, and I wondered if it was because he pitied my lack of understanding, or wanted sympathy for his. “There’s hardly any of us left, and anyone the Ravens find will either be killed or taken prisoner. Inga used to be one of them, and because of that, she’s one of the only vamps who they fear. She knows they’re weaknesses.”
“You think you have it all figured out, don’t you, Kline? So much like your arrogant mother.” The vampire crossed her arms and leaned against a wall. “I’m more this slayer’s prisoner than he is mine. His blood keeps me alive. Without him, I’d be dead within a few months.”
“And what about after he’s gone?” I asked. If there were any holes I could poke in her justification, I’d do it. “Slayers aren’t immortal. Caleb will die eventually.”
“A fact I’m well aware of. My father gave me no illusions when he brought me into his crèche that I would live forever. I accept that I will eventually depart this mortal coil. But until I can commit to stone knowing my brothers preceded me, I’ll do whatever it takes to stick around. And now that you just had to know...”
Inga clapped thrice, immediately after which the front door opened. If Caleb’s loft was as soundproof as he thought, I wondered how anyone outside had heard. However they picked up on the signal, the three guards dressed in black surrounded me without a direct order. The ease with which they handcuffed me disgusted me. I should be able to fight my way out of this, but now I would pay for trying to have my hood and wear it too.
“Inga, please.” Caleb tried to round one of the guards, but deferred to their deterrence. “Is this really necessary?”
The vampire had stopped listening to the slayer. Instead, her vile glare fell upon me. “Your mother begged for your life, you know? When she brought you to see me all those years ago, I suggested that you be killed. Your mother, however, convinced me that I didn’t have to worry about you interfering. I guess she was wrong.”
“My mom’s been wrong about a lot of things when it comes to me. Pegged you right, though. Said you were a bloodsucking parasite only interested in making money and bullying people beneath you, like all the Dracule.”
Come to think of it, if the Ravens were Dracule, and she thought they’d be after me, that explained much of her hate and fear where they were concerned. Of course, that would be assuming she cared about me enough for it to make a difference.
“Oh, so it’s because I’m a Dracule, is it?” Her powder-white chin balanced on a balled-up fist, the corners of her mouth tugging into sinister grin. “Well, Miss Kline, I think you’re in for a very big surprise.”
Chapter Thirty
Once, as a teenager, while out on a training exercise in Pictured Rocks Park, I slipped on a loose patch of ground and tumbled off a cliff and into the lake. I survived the fall fine, but after hours of treading water and yelling, a gathering storm tiptoed my direction as the icy fingers of Superior curled into my veins. Trapped on an impregnable rock face and knowing I’d drown when my energy finally failed to keep me afloat, reduced me to panic. Luckily, an early morning kayaker heard my last attempt to scream. Somehow, I lived to tell the tale.
The helplessness I felt at this moment, seated beside Caleb in Inga Rosenthorn’s office, knowing that Tobias was walking into a vampire-assisted suicide, took me back to those last moments in the water before I’d been found. This time, however, even if I called out with a megaphone, there’d be no rescue.
My arms had been cuffed to the chair, though what threat Inga thought I might pose anymore, who knew? When finally, the door opened after several silent minutes, Inga beamed, looking at the man who had entered behind me.
“Good evening, Igor.”
As he came even with the chairs, assuming a place between Caleb and myself, I couldn’t lift my eyes to look at him. Igor, however, fixed on me just long enough to deduce my situation and formulate a response.
“I assume you have a good reason for handcuffing my intern, but I can’t wait to hear it.”
“Oh, I do. But first, may I introduce Mr. Caleb Helsing?”
If there was any sort of standard etiquette for the meeting of a slayer and a vampire, it didn’t differ much from Huey interactions. Caleb stood, presenting a hand, wrapping it firmly around Igor’s when he returned the gesture in kind.
“Mr. Helsing,” Igor said, as though he were greeting the chair of the Chemistry Department. “Prof. Igor Karmarov. An honor. I have known and barely escaped persecution by many of your ancestors.”
One of Caleb’s eyebrows rose. “Can’t say I’m familiar with a Karmarov bloodline.”
“Taking our bloodlines as a surname hasn’t caught on in the vampire community the way it did with slayers,” Igor answered matter-of-factly, offering no further clarification than that. Instead, he turned to Inga as Caleb sank down into his seat. “If you wanted to shock me by revealing there’s a slayer in the building, you’ve failed, Inga. I’ve known about him for a while, though I only was able to confirm his status with a genetic workup a few weeks ago. The question I have, however, is why did you’ve been attempting to hide him, while simultaneously providing support for my research?”
“Your research?” Caleb asked.
I reiterated what I knew, both to remind them all that I was still here, and that I wasn’t some malleable Huey they could expect to melt away. “Igor is the one cataloging slayer DNA.”
“And therein, we have the explanation of why I have been aiding your research,” Inga resumed. “One slayer is little good to anyone, if he cannot renew the species. We will be able to renew the species, won’t we, Igor?”
“The trials are producing promising results. In the meantime, you may want to capture his sperm so it can be used when the time comes. In case, for some reason, he doesn’t survive that long, and assuming that you haven’t already... captured it. Now,” Igor pointed back over his shoulder at me. “If we can return to the fact that you have my intern handcuffed to a chair?”
“Ah, yes. Well, you see, the funniest topic came up just a few minutes ago when Geri, Caleb, and I were having a talk up in his flat. Oh, by the way, something I’m able to get away with because all those slayer samples you keep in your lab create just enough buzz for my v-staffers in residence to not suspect a living, breathing slayer is actually living here. Thank you for that.”
Igor remained silent at the sarcastic jab. Finally, after several moments waiting for her mark to find its target, and realizing it hadn’t, Inga continued.
“The Seven Ravens,” she said. “I’d like Geri to hear it from you why they’re such a threat.”
Grimacing, Igor turned toward the door. “I would prefer not to be a part of this.”
No sooner had he taken a step than Caleb was on his feet, a solarium burning at the end of his outstretched hand, little flares kissing the tip of Igor’s chin.
“Please, Professor. My parents were killed by the Ravens. If you know something I don’t, I’d consider it a personal favor if you’d share it with me.”
Igor’s eyes stayed fixed on the solarium, neither frightened nor indifferent. “Are you sure? Sometimes, knowledge is its own price.”
“I’ll take my chances.”
With a flick of his wrist, Caleb encouraged Igor to move back from the door. Only when Igor pulled up a third chair, moving one from a conference table at the side of the room to the space between Caleb and myself, did the slayer draw the power back into himself.
“So be it,” Igor grumbled, before composing himself and adopting a straight-forward academic monotone. “You probably think that the Ravens were the sons of Dracula, but as I said, vampires have not taken to the human habit of branding each child with their father’s surname. Any vampire of the Dracule crèche is a Dracula, including Inga. Including the Ravens. In fact, the human often referred to as Dra
cula, Vlad the Impaler, Prince of Wallachia, is one of the Ravens, not the patron of the bloodline. He became a menace to his maker. An embarrassment. A mistake. But a maker cannot kill his child.”
“Wait,” I interjected. “Do you mean it’s impossible, or it’s just not socially acceptable among your kind?”
“It’s fatal,” Caleb explained. “Anyone else can kill them, and it’s just fine. But for whatever reason, if a vampire destroys another made in his bloodline, whether a predecessor or successor, they share the death. It also means makers tend to be very careful about who they bring into their crèche. It takes a vampire with wisdom and gravitas to be able to command baby vamps.”
“Both of which Vlad’s maker thought he had. He was...” Igor’s head dropped, “...sorely mistaken. Not all vampires can be makers, but for some reason, that’s not true in the Dracule line. Every Dracula is cursed with the gift, including Vlad. In a short time, he had managed to turn ten of his most trusted soldiers. They raged over the land, drinking Ottomans and Transylvanians dry.”
“But there are only seven ravens,” Caleb said.
Inga rounded her desk. “Vlad was so bloodthirsty and arrogant, he didn’t think a slayer was a threat. Until a few of his own children was picked off, that was, and then, he swore to destroy them all. One by one, his Ravens hunted them down, burning them alive or impaling them on poles. At last, my father vowed to end the Ravens’ reign of terror. Killing them, however, wasn’t an option. Luckily, the wolves were equally upset by a vampire who’d already proven he had no respect for the lives of other supes. The House of Dracule and the wolves of Wallachia managed to drive the Ravens back into my father’s fortress, where the trap was sprung.”
Igor pointed at the dominating woman lording over all of us. “It was Inga’s plan. The Ravens were hosted to a brilliant feast, and trusting their father, they took to their daybeds thinking they were safe. The wolves worked from sunrise to sunset, sealing them in the room where they slumbered brick by brick until finally, they were trapped.”
“So fine was the mortar made by lupine hands that even as smoke, they could not escape,” Inga continued. “So they stayed, trapped, for centuries.”
I sat up, grasping at the truths hidden in the old fairytale. “But how did they get out, and how did they even know that slayer blood could push them beyond their unnatural life spans?”
Inga straightened her back, eyeing Igor. “Someone found out where they were imprisoned and took it upon himself to destroy them for good. When the slayer opened the wall, the creatures inside, driven mad with bloodlust, likely took his life in moments. Slayer blood is the closest thing vampires have to a drug. It feels different in our veins, fuels us like no other creature.”
Igor shifted in the chair, becoming suddenly focused on a Klimt painting hanging on the opposite wall. “The Ravens are ravenous and power hungry, but they are not stupid. They must have put together quickly the power slayer blood held. In less than a century, they’ve managed to decimate the population.”
“Caleb is the first slayer I’ve seen this millennium,” Inga said. “It was a miracle when we crossed paths four years ago. Since, I have made it my duty to protect him.”
Something about that still didn’t add up, however. “If everything you said is true, you have to be older than the five hundred years Caleb told me you guys last. If you didn’t have access to his blood before four years ago, how are you still alive?”
Inga and Igor exchanged a look laden with secrets. When Igor gave a slight bow, their unspoken truth began to reveal itself. She was asking him for permission to answer the question. Inga deferred to Igor. I’d seen the pattern in wolf families for years. Only two relationships demanded such obeisance, that of any member of the pack to the alpha, and likewise, any younger wolf to an elder one. In a vampire clan, that relationship could be instilled in the same individual.
I looked to the man beside me, my heart racing. Igor’s head snapped my way, no doubt picking up in the spike in my pulse.
With a dry mouth, the words cracked as I said them. “How is it possible, Igor?”
A smile spread across his face. “You figured it out.”
Caleb, however, had not. “What? Figured out what?”
Before any of us could say anything more, the door behind us busted open. Within a heartbeat the two vampires had moved with speed my eyes couldn’t follow. Inga shielded Caleb, her arms spread wide and her teeth bared. I found myself suddenly free of my manacles, but caged by Igor, who held me under his wing like a mother bird.
Inga eased when she saw the intruders were her own WWL security detail.
“I said that we were not to be disturbed.”
Four guards dressed in the black gear typical of their kind stood with guns at the ready, wearing goggles tinted the suspicious pink color of the vampire-aware human staffers.
The one closest the door rotated his weapon, taking his aim to the ceiling. “Apologies, Miss Rosenthal, but there’s a 1335 situation on the ground floor. You need to evacuate immediately.”
The vampiress scowled. “A breach of the lobby? By who?”
I didn’t have to wonder. I knew.
Tobias.
Chapter Thirty-One
In the back of my mind, I’d still been expecting to sense him when he was close. Perhaps at some level, I’d even hoped he’d be able to sense me as he had so many times before when I was in danger. But in my new normal, neither of those things were possible.
The senior guard did a visual sweep of the room. “V-staff have been alerted and have smoked away. We suggest you and Dr. Karmarov do the same immediately.”
Inga shook her head. “Caleb is only safe with me.”
The guard didn’t try to argue. Inga was the boss, after all. “Then you need to come with us ASAP so we can get you to the roof. What about the woman?”
“Lock her in the room as soon as Caleb and I are clear. Igor will stay here and see to her defense if it becomes necessary.”
“What? No!”
The attempt I made to rush forward fell flat when Igor pulled me back. I could no more fight against his power than I could run full speed into a hurricane.
“Stay,” he said as he pulled me back. “This is the safest place in the building there is, and I won’t let anything happen to you.”
Inga rounded her desk, pulling Caleb along with her. “Hurry.”
“Are you kidding?” Caleb bellowed, yanking back on the insistent pull of the vampire who had him by the wrist. “No way I’m leaving Geri behind, especially not after what she’s been through.”
My rising panic over what lay behind the melee distracted me from going all weak-kneed over his concern. “Inga, please. I know what’s going on. This security breach is all because of a single werewolf, one I can probably talk down if you give me half a chance.”
“There’s no such thing as a single werewolf. Not unless he’s a lone wolf, in which case he’s as likely to be moon mad as not,” Inga said. “You picked a great time to be relinquished of all your power, hood.”
“He doesn’t have lunacity,” I assured, trying to put myself in front of her. She continued to plow forward despite my pleas, with Igor shuffling along behind us. “But he’s not in his right mind either. He lost his mate a few months ago and he’s convinced WWL had something to do with it.”
She threw back her head and cackled. “Why would my company have anything to do with that?”
Throwing on speed, Igor placed himself in his progeny’s path.
“Because we did, Inga.”
The move brought the whole party to a stop. Inga blinked in confusion. Perhaps she’d grown accustomed to her maker’s passive manner and forgotten that by age and by lineage, Daddy Dracula was the superlative creature.
She squinted at him, as though trying to crush him with her eyelids. “We, or you?”
Igor rolled his head to the side. “His mate was being held prisoner in my facilities at the university by Xin.”<
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The female vampire bared her teeth, including a set of characteristic fangs that had snapped into place out of nowhere. “How could you? You know she sides with them.”
“She was no less my daughter than you are.”
“What the–?” Caleb lifted his free hand to pull his dark locks. “Inga, this guy is your... This scrawny little pen-pusher is Dracula?”
The vampires, however, were stuck in their own family drama, no interlopers allowed.
“Cynthia was vile,” Inga said. “If she hadn’t had such a large crèche under her full of loonies she barely controlled, I’d have found a way to get rid of her years ago. Why didn’t you just tell me that’s what she was doing? I would have intervened.”
“I didn’t know if you could be trusted. You were a Raven at one point, after all. I still hadn’t ascertained which side you were on. But now–” His eyes flashed to Caleb before again falling on his daughter. “I see you are on the side of right. Continue to be. Let Geri do as she asks. This wolf is acting out of vengeance, not malice.”
Mentally pacing with her eyes fidgeting in their sockets, the hard resolve of Inga’s features began to melt. “She’s not a hood anymore. I’d be sending her against an enraged wolf to be slaughtered.”
Igor placed a hand on his daughter’s arm. “No, you’d be sending her to save a friend.”
Inga chewed on the notion for a moment, her face screwing up before she relaxed into her decision. She nodded once, then turned to one of the junior officers. “Give her your side piece.”
“Why?” Anxiety coiled in my gut. “I’m not going to shoot him.”
“You may feel differently when a two-hundred-pound, enraged dog is charging at you at full speed.” Inga wrapped her hands around the handle of the revolver before transferring it to me, shoving it into my grip. “I’m not saying to kill him, Kline. Shoot him in the foot, get him to back off.”
The gun couldn’t absorb any of my body heat before I shoved it back into the guard’s grip. “Everything I need to resolve this is in your office, except your word that you’ll give me the time and the chance to talk to him.”
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