“You should count yourself lucky there aren’t any mirrors littered around,” she said. “That robe doesn’t exactly scream Vamp GQ.”
“Wouldn’t know it by the way you’re staring at me.”
“I’m not—” She pushed ahead of him, “staring.”
He laughed, following directly behind her.
They wound through the long wood-paneled corridor leading to the Primus’s quarters. Her Primus would have a ton of questions, and Ariana didn’t have the answers. She didn’t know how to explain what had happened. Why she’d projected into the city only to come back empty handed once more. And why, despite her insisting Watchers could be trusted, they’d lost their mind and attacked her.
She hated to burst her Primus’s bubble, but she didn’t know the answers herself. And why, when she had more on her plate than ever before, was she letting herself be distracted by a vamp like Dante? He was trouble wrapped in a Greek god’s body with lips that knew how to kiss and a gaze that was softer than she could’ve ever imagined.
“You ready?” he asked, jarring her.
“Of course.” She forced her heart to slow. Any louder and he’d hear it. “Are you?”
“As I’ll ever be.”
“Whatever you do, don’t lie,” she said as they stood in front of the Primus’s closed door. “His maware is truth-setting. He can suck the truth out of you if he feels you’re being deceitful.”
“Great.” Dante checked the hall behind them as she dropped the lion head knocker on the Primus’s door. “How long have you been a member here?”
Now he wanted to make small talk? His timing was epic. “I was born here.”
“Really?”
He faced her, and even though she refused to meet his gaze, she could feel the heat from his stare burning into her cheek.
“Yes.” She knocked. “Really. Usually when elders have children they’re required to leave Black Moon, but I guess the Primus took a liking to me soon after I was born. I grew up alongside many of the elders here. I left for a year before my transition, but I came back as soon as the major changes hit.”
“Fascinating,” he whispered as the Primus’s door swung open of its own accord.
“Why is that so fascinating? There are some people who remain in havens for hundreds of years.”
Shaking his head, he stepped into the Primus’s chamber. “It’s just that I’ve never had a place to call home. I can’t imagine staying somewhere more than a decade, yet you’ve spent lifetimes over in Black Moon.”
“You shall enlighten us,” a voice boomed from deep within the chamber. “Where do you seek shelter?”
Ariana’s Primus spun away from the grand fireplace on the back wall and faced them, assuming his position in the largest chair in the chamber.
Even though their timing was horribly off, Ariana wished the Primus would’ve taken a second longer to address Dante. She hated to admit it, but she was intrigued. He could teleport, fight like something out of a martial arts movie, create a massive wind vortex out of nothing—not to mention he could evaporate the air in her lungs with a single kiss—yet he’d never been inducted into a haven?
The more she knew about Dante, the more questions popped up. She hated not knowing who she was dealing with. She hated the way he made her stomach coil and her fangs ache, the way he rejected her after their kiss. She hated all of it yet had the burning desire to know more.
“I haven’t needed to seek shelter anywhere.” Dante’s boots echoed loudly as they pounded across the cherry hardwood floor. “Cheap apartments in Crimson Bay suit my taste just fine.”
“Fascinating,” the Primus parroted, then gestured to the two very formal seats opposite him. “Sit.”
The Primus’s chamber was dark and warm, with mocha-colored walls and robust Italian furnishings. Candles slept on the walls, snuffed out and solemn. Open windows drew in gusts of winter wind, ballooning beige chiffon curtains far into the room. The place was charming, yet simple. Everything the Primus was not.
He looked like an old, stuffy aristocrat with shaggy gray hair and a matching beard that almost touched his chest. He was huge. Intimidating. Sucking all the air from the room. A mountain man in a brown tweed jacket and black tie. He had to be a whopping seven feet tall. If she ever stood face to face with him, she’d probably stare directly into his enormous chest.
They strode across the room and took the two black seats facing his gold-trimmed desk. Ariana perched on the edge of the leather, careful not to get too comfortable. They weren’t here for blood-sipping time. Dante was an intruder, someone who didn’t belong, and Ariana had some explaining to do.
“Care for a smoke?” the Primus asked. He lifted the lid of a small box on the edge of the desk, exposing a neat little row of plasma-laced Cubans.
“No, thank you,” Ariana said quietly. “I don’t smoke.”
“You?” he offered Dante.
“No, I prefer something not injected with truth serum.”
As Ariana stiffened, her Primus laughed.
“You are a bright one with heightened senses, that’s a fact.” He closed the box and leaned back, studying Dante with black pits for eyes. “But if you plan on staying alive until your friends get here at midnight, you’re going to answer a few questions for me.”
“And if I don’t?”
“You don’t seem to understand.” The Primus’s fangs dropped, brushing against his lower lip. “When you’re in my presence, I own the very air you breathe. I control the beat of your heart and the gravity pulling at your heels. If you do not respect my will, I will remove those privileges I’ve so kindly granted you, along with everyone else you’ve come to care about during your measly existence on this planet.”
Dante glanced at Ariana, who had gone bone-still. “Someone’s got anger issues.”
Ariana dared not move a muscle. She’d seen her Primus stake khissmates for disrespecting direct orders. She wasn’t about to say something that’d earn her undesired attention.
“Before you step another foot on my property,” her Primus hissed, leaning far over the table, “you will answer my questions. Is your vampire lineage on record at any vampire historical center?”
Thick, soul-deadening silence.
“In which haven did your parents belong?” he asked again, jaw tight.
Ariana knew exactly where her Primus was going with the questions. From their discussion earlier, he realized Dante was unlike any vampire they’d come into contact with before. Her Primus had probably researched him by now and come up blank.
Ariana hated to admit it, but she was on pins and needles waiting to get her own answers about Dante.
“I never knew my vampire parents,” Dante said nonchalantly. “I was abandoned in an orphanage until a family of mundanes adopted me at age six. My vampire traits didn’t show until puberty. They got the shock of their lives when they realized what I was.” He spoke of his past coolly, calmly, as if it was separate from him somehow.
“What were you doing at the elder black market?” the Primus asked.
“Trying to get my paws on an elder.” Dante shrugged. Relaxed into the seat. Like he couldn’t feel the tension in the room mounting to uncontrollable heights.
“And now that you’ve found a haven full of elders, what is your course of action?”
Two beats.
“It’s not the haven full of elders that stabbed me when I wasn’t looking,” Dante said finally. “I’m going to figure out what the Watchers want with me. And then I’m going to rip their world apart.” He leaned forward, setting his elbows on his knees. “Pike isn’t going to know what hit him. For your sake, I hope you two aren’t chummy.”
Her Primus smiled, nodding slowly. Silence stretched between them, as if they’d come to some kind of stalemate.
Ariana wondered if her Primus had determine
d Dante to be telling the truth. If he’d been lying about his intentions with the elders in the haven, if he really was trying to buy an elder for some twisted means, her Primus would have dug it out of him by now.
“You,” he said, setting his sights on Ariana. “You put us at risk. Again. If you failed the first time because of this . . . distraction, I can understand, especially after meeting him. But this time when you went back you said it’d be foolproof.”
She didn’t expect to run into Dante. He was a big-ass wrench thrown in her gears.
“I know,” Ariana said, feeling Dante’s eyes bore into her. “I won’t let it happen again. When I go back next time I’ll make sure to—”
“There’s not going to be a next time.”
“What?” Her gaze snapped up as her lungs flattened out. “What about our protective barrier? If it gets much weaker, won’t our location become transparent?”
“There’s no reason for you to go back. Not now, when things are growing more dangerous on the streets. We can’t afford to have something happen to you out there. If our barrier continues to weaken, Black Moon will be unprotected in a few days’ time, that’s true. But if we wait until midnight, an elder will fall on our doorstep. We can use that elder’s maware to strengthen the barrier again.”
Ruan. Dante’s friend. He’d mentioned in the compound that he’d newly transitioned.
“So you’re just going to grant them access into our haven?” She couldn’t believe it. “After all these years of solidifying this as an elder-only facility?”
Black Moon had always been elder-only. Ariana had worked hard to keep newborn elders rotating through, priding herself on providing a safe environment where elders could master the use of their mawares. If the vamps from ReVamp flooded their halls, the elders’ every move would be watched and analyzed. . . .
“I don’t need all of them. I—we,” he corrected, “only need one.” The Primus evaluated her for a long moment, his hands pressed together, his fingertips tapping. “I’m granting that newborn elder access, along with the last standing Crimson Council member, who’s tagging along, at least for the time being. The elder can work for us, fleshing out his maware within our walls to keep us safe. After I hear what the council member has to say once in the privacy of my chamber, I will determine his fate.”
“And if they don’t want to leave the others behind?” Dante asked. It was as if he already knew what their response would be.
“Oh, they’ll leave the others.” Her Primus flicked the tip of his fang with his tongue mindlessly, like the conversation had bored him to the point of picking food out of his teeth. “From what I understand, havens are disappearing off the map. That is the reason a hoard of vamps will be breathing down my neck come midnight, no? They’d be fools not to save their own necks. I can offer them protection while the rest of the world is falling away.”
“Sounds to me like you’re jumping the gun,” Dante said. “If the only vampires left are the ones behind these walls, there’ll be no vampires beyond them to transition to elders. By refusing those vamps entrance, you’re sealing your own fate. No vampires means no elders. No elders means no mawares to keep this place off the grid. Once this place finally bleeps on the radar, Savage will set his sights right here and you’ll be the havenless one.”
“What do you know about Savage?” Her Primus leaned forward as he spoke, the pulse on his neck beating hard. “Do you know for certain his course of action? How he’s moving as fast as he is?”
Ariana had wondered the same thing. Although they were protected by Black Moon’s barrier and had perhaps the greatest army of maware-wielding elders living within their walls, they were secluded from the outside world. It was the only way they could keep Black Moon hidden. The price, however, was limited information flow.
“I don’t know a thing other than what I’ve been told, and that’s bare minimum.”
Her Primus slid a cigar from his case, lit it, and took a hearty puff. “Something tells me you know more than you’re letting on.”
“You’ve already decided your fate,” Dante said. “If you’re finished with your questions, I can find my way out.”
Dante stood and Ariana followed suit, though she didn’t know why. It wasn’t like she’d planned on leaving with him or anything . . . maybe she’d just see him to the front gate. She stood where she was, feet planted, fighting with what she wanted to do and what she should do, and watched him walk away.
“I do have one last question,” the Primus said as Dante reached for the handle. “Ariana tells me that the Watchers believe you’re the one they’ve been waiting for. What do you think that means?”
“I don’t know,” Dante said, as if he really didn’t care about the answer. “You’ve been living with them right outside your haven gate for hundreds of years. Why don’t you tell me?”
“I don’t think they know what you are, only that you aren’t a vampire like the rest of us.” The Primus paused, letting the accusation hang mid-air. “Maybe by letting you seek shelter here, they get to keep you close. To study you. You seem to have piqued their interest.”
Dante stopped, turned back. “And what about your interest? Is that why you wanted a meeting with me? To determine if I was worth keeping around in your precious haven?”
“No, I wanted to meet with you to look inside your soul.” The Primus snuffed out his cigar, smashing the tip to smithereens. “I wanted to dig the truth out of you, to figure out what you really are.”
Dante’s chin hitched. His shoulders pulled back. “And?”
“You don’t even know.”
Ariana couldn’t help but catch the gleam in Dante’s eye. It was hard and angry, but there was a glistening spark of truth. Her Primus had been right. How could Dante not know who—or what—he was?
Beneath the curiosity burning inside her to know how Dante was able to do some of the things he could, there was pity—the stomach-souring emotion that reached inside her and shook.
Dante truly was lost, wasn’t he?
TO HELL WITH this.
Dante didn’t need to stand here and take this shit from anyone. He was over the Primus’s holier-than-thou attitude. He didn’t know why his voices hadn’t surfaced, or what he’d fed on that kept them at bay for two long days while he was knocked out, but it wasn’t going to last much longer. Spending his last few minutes, hours, whatever, playing verbal tit-for-tat with Black Moon’s Primus wasn’t his cup of AB.
He swung the door open. “Thank you for allowing me to heal within your walls.”
“You cannot leave,” her Primus said simply.
Dante glared over his shoulder. “Hell I can’t.”
He could zap out of this chamber so fast it’d make the Primus’s head spin. But he didn’t. One glance at Ariana—the innocent purse of her lips, the softness of her eyes—and he stayed. Damn it, he stayed.
“There is a reason the Watchers let you leave their compound. There is also a reason you piggybacked on Ariana’s last astral-projection.” The Primus lumbered to Dante’s side, leaving Ariana standing in the center of his chamber. “You have fangs but do not thirst for blood. You have nails that elongate like a demon’s, yet you clearly have a soul and an aura that reveals it. If what you say is true, that you’ve never met your parents and have never sought shelter in a haven, you are closer to finding out who you are here, with us, than you are out there on your own. Tell me I’m wrong.”
You’re wrong.
The words were right there. Right there on the tip of his tongue. But they wouldn’t come out. Truth was, Dante had lived fifty years without anyone suggesting that he wasn’t a vampire. In the two days he’d been at Black Moon—had he really been knocked unconscious that long?—that fact had been thrown in his face twice.
If he stayed in Black Moon until midnight, when the ReVamp crew arrived, could he figure out the tru
th? No . . . that was impossible. What did the haven have to offer that he couldn’t discover on his own?
“We have records that span thousands of years.”
Could the Primus read minds?
“Think the library of Alexandria on steroids,” he continued, his tweed jacket stretching tight as he postured. “It’s nothing like the elder scrolls, or pages ripped from the Grimorium Verum—our race’s revered tome of truth. Our library holds records from each paranormal species known to be in existence. It’s an encyclopedia of sorts. We’re talking nymphs, vampires, therians, werewolves, seekers, Watchers, you name it. If a creature has been fabled, we have record of it . . . even one with traits as mysterious as yours.”
“What’s the catch?” Hairs raised on the back of Dante’s neck. He got the feeling whatever the Primus was dishing was going to come with a hefty price tag. “You’re just going to let me roam through these records of yours?”
“I’d consider it.”
“And in return?”
The Primus smiled, the corner of his thick lips pulling off-kilter. “You’ll tell us all you know about Savage. If what you say is true, that he’ll come for us next, I want to know what kind of enemy to expect at my gate.”
Sounded like a fair deal. Especially considering Dante didn’t know much about Savage—only what Ruan had told him or what he’d picked up from random conversations overheard at ReVamp.
If he could find one other vamp like him, one other who thirsted for sex and violence the way he did, maybe this whole trip wouldn’t be a loss.
Well, Dante thought, it wasn’t a total loss anyway. He met Ariana’s honey brown eyes and remembered how they’d closed butterfly soft when he’d kissed her. Through all the evil saturating the air around him, Dante had glimpsed true innocence for the second time in his life, hadn’t he?
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