Reeves broke the silence that stretched on between us. “Go home immediately. You were never on that ship.”
“I need to see Grandpa… I might be able to—”
“You’ll go home first, dress in your night clothes, and at least pretend to be sleeping. During my engagement party father fell into some sort of a coma. The doctors say he is thus far stable. It is more important that no one suspects that you were on that boat. Burn any evidence. I will summon you in a couple hours and have a car pick you up. We will see what you can do for Father then. Is there any more information that I need to know immediately?”
I took a deep breath. “At least one of the Princeps would be able to recognize me by sight.”
“Okay. Anything else?”
“When are you going to get Lorelei?” I asked.
“I will give you details when I summon you. Until then, follow orders. Remember Dakota, unlike Father, I do not think your disobedience is endearing.”
As the phone disconnected, a realization hit me like a punch to the face: until my grandfather woke, Reeves was my family’s patriarch.
From: Wyvern Manderson
To: Dakota Kekoa
Message Folder: Inbox
Dakota,
I can’t write a full message as I’m late for an unavoidable dinner party, but I wanted to tell you that the additional members of your security team are en route to you. I approve of the selection. They are the most promising newly graduated soldiers.
I miss you.
From: Dakota Kekoa
To: Wyvern Manderson
Message Folder: Drafts
Wyvern,
I let a vampire bite my neck tonight. It was on an assignment, and I needed to let him bite me to keep my cover. But if I’m being perfectly honest, I had a choice at the last minute, and I let him do it. I think I let him bite me to prove to myself that you don’t own me. With everything else that’s going on right now, it shouldn’t even be important, but it feels important.
(Message sent to Trash)
Chapter Eight
The headlights hit the cement barrier as the sun rose over my grandfather’s fortress home.
The entrance guard peeked into the window. “Hey Dakota, Sophie,” he said.
I looked over to see the middle-aged werewolf in human form smiling at me.
“Hi Richie.” My voice shook with tension as I scratched at my arms.
“Everything okay?” He gave me a big grin, showing his two front crooked teeth, but I could see the concern lurking in his eyes.
“Yes, thanks,” I said.
“Are you—”
“It’s been a long night,” Sophie snapped, “Please, just open the gate.”
Richie’s smile fell off his face as he rushed to his booth. A moment later, the big cement slab that blocked the entrance to my grandfather’s driveway smoothly slid open. The familiar site of the ugly-cement block of a mansion did nothing to calm my racing heart.
“You need to learn to be rude to people,” Sophie snapped at me.
“I think you’re rude enough for the both of us,” I said. I’d have said more to Sophie as I really liked Richie, but I could completely sympathize with her impatience.
I’d done everything Reeves had ordered me to do. I’d snuck back into my house, gotten ready for bed and pretended to sleep until I swore my head would explode from waiting.
Finally, three hours later, we’d gotten the call to come in.
I didn’t even wait for Sophie’s car to fully stop before I jumped out to run up the front steps of the main entrance. The door opened right before I reached it, and I rushed at my grandfather’s housekeeper, Susan.
Susan always greeted me with a warm smile. As always, she was perfectly groomed, her long silky hair twisted up, not a single hair out of place. Also I had thought that wrinkles might have been allergic to her, either that or she was drinking her own witchy-brews. None of that applied today. Her suit looked as if she might have slept in it and her face looked as if she had aged ten years in one night.
“Susan, where’s my grandfather? Is he better?” The moment I got to her, I grabbed her by the arm. Tears were streaming down my face, but I didn’t care.
Susan stepped away, breaking my hold on her, but grabbed my outstretched hand. “I’m supposed to take you to your uncle.”
“Can we please just go see Grandfather first?”
A tear dropped from Susan’s lashes. She sucked her lower lip into her mouth, but then nodded. “Come Dakota, I’ll take you to him, we have to be quick.”
“Dakota!” I heard Sophie yell from behind me, but I knew she’d catch up.
Obviously knowing I needed a little extra help, Susan kept my hand, leading me down the hall and up the staircase that led to my grandfather’s private rooms. After a minute of walking, I heard Sophie catch up and keep pace behind us.
I had always known where my grandfather’s rooms were in the mansion, but I’d never been in them before. Like everything else in his fortress, my grandfather’s room was massive. There was almost nothing in his room; it had no paintings or decorative furnishings, no color whatsoever, aside from the one giant red gem that gleamed behind glass from a cut-out space on his wall.
The room was so very… my grandfather.
He lay on the bed, seemingly asleep. No one else was in the room.
I turned to Susan. “Is Bobby back?”
“I—I don’t know Dakota.” She shook her head. “Go check on him. Then we need to go to your uncle.”
Nodding, I let go of her and crossed the room toward my grandfather’s bed. About ten feet away from him, I felt the impact of the souls. The air squeezed from my lungs as the power rammed through my senses. It was so much more than it should be. My grandfather’s power always overwhelmed me, but now being near him was like standing under an avalanche of power. It was like being near a full dragon, or near Wyvern when he was unleashing his power.
There was no doubt in my mind that Lorelei had delivered another powerful soul into my grandfather’s body.
It took me what felt like ten minutes to adjust to the power enough to continue stepping toward him. I still had not completely settled into the power level when I made it to his side.
My knees hit the cement floor as I reached across the bed for his hand.
His hand felt warm, alive, as my fingers closed around his palm. Taking a deep breath in, I made my power dive into him.
Diving through my grandfather’s soul felt like coming home. My grandfather’s soul was the first soul I had ever ventured into. Everything I’d learned about draining, adding and manipulating emotions, I’d learned while diving through his emotional layers. I found it all intact. His surface emotions were predictably empty, as I had expected they would be. Breaking into the next layer of his soul, I found basically what I always did. My grandfather’s deeper emotions were a vast and complicated web of all the emotions that made a great and terrible man: pride, love, hate, greed, and so many more. I broke into the next layer of his soul, his emotional memories— there were too many to process, but they didn’t seem in any way different than I’d ever found them before.
I hesitated before breaking into the next layer, so afraid of what I would find. Biting my lip, I forced myself to do it. The tears started flowing down my cheeks again. His true soul was undamaged. I knew his true soul like I knew no other true soul, I had coiled and uncoiled bits of his soul into me so many times.
I exhaled a long breath and pulled my power back through all the layers.
When I had pulled my power all the way through my grandfather’s layers, I skimmed across, searching for Imogen’s soul. It did not take me long to find it. I immediately felt a foreign and wrong feeling when I had passed from my grandfather’s surface emotions to hers.
Her soul was strong, as strong as my grandfather’s—maybe stronger. It had a dark, vast feel. I would not necessarily describe it as evil, but more dark in the way night is dark.
&nbs
p; As I’d never encountered her soul before, I could not check if it had changed when it was removed from her body. I thought it was still alive. I’d never explored a dead soul before, I didn’t even know if such a thing existed, but Imogen’s soul felt sentient.
“What is going on?” My uncle Reeves voice bellowed from somewhere behind me.
I drove through the remaining layers of Imogen’s soul. Her soul was vast, so vast, like flying through an endless starless night, and I knew I had very little time. With all the power in me, I drove down until I encountered the first wisps of what I was searching for, her true soul.
“I told you to bring her to me!” Reeves yelled. “Dakota!”
Carefully, I split apart the tiniest coil of Imogen’s true soul and pulled it into me. It was like holding a sliver of midnight. And, for some reason, some strange bewildering reason, some part of her soul was familiar. Not only was that part familiar, I loved it. A deep well of love and affection surged up in me.
Hands grabbed my shoulders, and I was yanked back. As I refused to release my grandfather’s hand, when I was yanked, I yanked him with me.
“Let go!” Reeves yelled.
Uncoiling the soul back into Imogen’s true soul, I withdrew my power.
“Let go of Father, that’s an order!” Reeves roared down from directly above me.
I released my grandfather’s hand and pulled my hand up, splaying my fingers in the air. “Okay,” I said, hoarsely.
“Get up,” Reeves barked at me.
I exhaled a long breath. My body was telling me it was actually more time to fall down. Using my hand on the bed, I levered myself up. Turning slowly, I looked up into the furious face of my now least favorite uncle.
“What were you doing?” he said, spit flying in my face with his words. His thin frame seemed to bend over me.
Overwhelming exhaustion hit me all at once. I staggered, falling back on the bed.
“Did you push her?” Sophie yelled from across the room. She crossed the distance in quick strides.
“No, I didn’t touch her!” My uncle exclaimed. “She just fell back. Inter-family disputes are not within your authority to interfere with!”
“Get out of her face!” Sophie yelled back.
“Sophie, it’s okay,” I said.
Sophie rocked back on her heels and crossed her arms, but she didn’t walk away.
I looked up at my uncle’s handsome scowling face. “I was checking their souls. Her soul is in there, but they both seem to be intact and undamaged. If we got the Regina here, I think I could—”
“And who gave you the order to go inserting yourself into Father’s soul?” Reeves yelled.
“Grandfather never—”
“Really? Father gave you the authority, in his sleep?”
“I didn’t say that!”
“Don’t you think you’ve done enough damage, Dakota?” Reeves shouted.
“Damage? What is it exactly that I did?”
“First you went to that ship—”
“On Grandfather’s orders.”
“Then you let your sister attack the Regina of Oceania!”
“I wasn’t even there!”
“Exactly.”
“Bobby ordered me to abort, I was following orders. That’s all I did, follow orders all night—”
“Oh, because you’re so good at following orders? All I have is your word on that, on any of this, and I know what that’s worth.”
“You have my word too,” Sophie said.
Reeves didn’t even spare Sophie a glance.
“Where is Robert?” he asked.
“He’s still not back?” I whispered.
“No, he’s not.” Reeves took a step back and exhaled. As if that sudden exhaustion spell was contagious, he seemed to wilt before my eyes. “My belief that he survived the ordeal is growing smaller.”
“What could stop him from teleporting?”
“Unconsciousness, perhaps. If he’s alive, he’ll report back soon, I’m sure of it.” Reeves rubbed his face, and it seemed like he rubbed away that moment of vulnerability and humanity. His usual impassive expression settled back onto his features. “I need to know exactly what happened, Dakota.”
Sophie stepped forward. “I should be the one to tell you what happened. I saw it all.”
Reeves glared at Sophie, but after a minute, he nodded. “Proceed.”
Sophie told the story exactly as she had told it to me. She relayed the conversation between Bobby and Imogen with exact wording. I had memorized important pieces, as I had been trained to do, but Sophie must have memorized every word spoken.
The only glaring difference in the telling was there was no mention of Harrison. In Sophie’s version, I had been standing next to her when Bobby gave the signal to abort. She said I had left the dining room first, impersonating a server in the VIP section where a vampire snuck up on me and bit me.
Reeves’s eyes widened at that part of the story. He lifted my hair from my neck to see the two puncture wounds there. His eyelids managed to widen even further, and he dropped my hair as if it was getting him dirty.
“What type of consequence will this have with the Rex? This isn’t a—it wouldn’t be considered a breach of contract, would it?”
“That’s up to him,” Sophie said.
The look my uncle leveled on me said perfectly clear, ‘you better hope it’s not’. I wasn’t surprised. Unlike my grandfather, Bobby and Glacier, Reeves made it very clear how happy my contract with the Rex made him. Actually pretty much all of my aunts and uncles seemed to think that my contract was not just my lucky break, but theirs as well.
“Look on the bright side, uncle Reeves. If Wyvern doesn’t want me anymore, you can still sell me off to the Oceanians,” I whispered.
Obviously, my sarcasm was lost on him because he said, “Don’t get your hopes up, Dakota, that deal seems to be closed.” He gestured with one hand to my grandfather lying on the bed. “You’ll have that bite healed and then you’ll spend your energy on mending your relationship with the Rex.”
“When are we getting Lorelei out?”
He blinked at me. “Do you not remember our phone call just yesterday? I believe I made myself perfectly clear: you are suspended, indefinitely. Others will have the task of retrieving your sister.”
“But—”
“You’ll have no future involvement! You need to wake up and focus on your duties, Dakota. I am sending you to New Anglo, tomorrow. I will email the Rex later today.”
I grabbed his arm, desperately. “No. I can fix this—I’m the only one who can fix Grandfather!”
“No, you’re not,” he said, shaking off my hand. He turned away from me. “You have proven yourself completely incapable of fixing anything.”
“How convenient, Reeves. The moment you’re in power you send away the only person who can save your patriarch!”
Reeves turned around with a look of absolute fury on his face. He came at me in a move too fast for my eyes to see. Pain exploded in my face and I flew sideways, hitting and tumbling off the bed. My face smacked the cement and blood filled my mouth, dribbling down in long strings of spit onto the floor.
“Don’t touch me, you disgusting animal!” Reeves shouted from somewhere behind me. There was a loud, heavy thud of a body hitting something solid. “Do I really have to tell you again that inter-family disputes are not within your authority to interfere with? Attack me again and I will tell the Rex she needs a different security guard, that is within my authority. Susan!” Reeves snapped.
“Yes?” the housekeeper said, her tone cold.
“Show my niece to the door. After she’s gone, call a witch doctor and have her meet Dakota at her house. Dakota will need something to heal her face and neck. Dakota!” Reeves called to me.
Pushing my body off the floor, I spat blood from my mouth and whispered, “Yes?”
“You will take that medicine, that is an order.”
“Okay,” I said.
“Oh and Susan, send someone in to clean this mess,” Reeves said. Reeves footsteps echoed across the floor and then I heard the sound of the door slamming.
“Yes, sir,” Susan said darkly.
My grandfather had frequently said that you could the see the true character of a dracon by how he treated the people who worked for him. I’d always though this a little ironic coming from a dracon who ruled an entire island chain with a very real threat of violence. But I had never heard my grandfather say a harsh word to any member of his staff, ever.
This was most likely also why even my most self-important aunts, uncles and cousins were always careful to treat my grandfather’s staff with the utmost courtesy. I had never heard Reeves use a harsh tone with a servant in my life. More than his reaction to me, more than him not allowing me access to my grandfather, more than anything, the harsh dismissive tone he used with Susan told me that he considered my grandfather gone.
Chapter Nine
I stared at the sandwich in front of me as my youngest sister and mother chatted happily around me. I hadn’t eaten anything for more than sixteen hours, but somehow just the look and smell of the turkey, Swiss cheese and mustard sandwich made my stomach twist.
“Dakota.”
I looked up, glancing around to see who had said my name.
“Dakota, sweetheart,” my mother said from across the table. “Did your grandfather give you any idea of how long Lorelei’s assignment is going to be?”
Clearing my throat, I whispered, “No. What did uncle Reeves say?”
“He said he wasn’t privy to the details but she might be on Waibibi for a while.” She took a big drink of the thick green concoction our dictator of a cook forced on my mother. What Andrew, our cook, didn’t know, is that the moment he headed back into the kitchen, my mother took her health drink over to her liquor cabinet.
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