by I. T. Lucas
“When are the additional crews Kian requested getting here?”
Richard arched a brow. “Didn’t he tell you? He’s using them to convert one of the office buildings across from the keep into high-class apartments. With all the clan members who are coming from Scotland and from the Sanctuary for the wedding, he needed to prepare lodging for them, and the location is convenient.”
Kalugal frowned. “Isn’t that going overboard to convert an entire building into a hotel just for the wedding?”
“It’s actually a very good business decision. With so many people working from home these days, businesses are downsizing their office space, and there are a lot of vacancies. Rents are going down as well. There is much more demand for residential space, especially downtown. After the guests leave, he can either rent the apartments out or sell them for top dollar.”
“That’s smart.” Kalugal rubbed a hand over his goatee. “I guess Kian didn’t tell me about it because he’s been too preoccupied with the latest emergency.”
“What emergency? I didn’t hear anything.”
“I’m surprised.” Kalugal smirked. “I thought that the rumor had already spread to the entire village. We have an interesting new guest in the keep.” He leaned closer to Richard. “The clan captured a different kind of immortal, who in addition to dispensing venom also sucks on blood.”
Richard felt his own blood drain from his face. “Come again?”
“So here is the gist of the story…”
As he listened to Kalugal, Richard fought to keep his expression from revealing his shock. “But if the guy didn’t get a response from his leader, it might still be possible that he made it all up.”
Kalugal shook his head. “That’s no longer a valid hypothesis. First, we have Jin and Mey, who are different enough from other immortal females to give credence to his claims, and they were also born in China, where Emmett’s people supposedly settled. But the pièce de résistance is what they call themselves.”
“What is it?”
“The Kra-ell. Sounds familiar?”
Painfully so, but Richard had to keep pretending as if none of that had any bearing on him or his family. “The Krall are the fictional people in some of the Perfect Match scenarios.”
“Precisely. Vampire-like creatures who are ruled by females and who don’t form family units. Coincidence? I think not. Don’t forget that Syssi is clairvoyant. What she thought was the product of her imagination was apparently a vision. Also, she actually had a vision about them, but she thought it was influenced by the story she’d invented.”
“What does Kian plan to do about it?”
“There isn’t much he can do.” Kalugal leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms over his chest. “Our guest escaped his community over thirty years ago, and he doesn’t know what they’ve been up to during that time. He also doesn’t know enough, because the pure-bloods don’t share information with the hybrids. The good news is that there are very few of them, and they either don’t know how to activate their Dormants or can’t, which means that they can’t grow their numbers significantly enough to pose a threat to us.”
“What if there are more of them? Emmett’s community might not be the only one.”
“That’s a possibility. But I don’t see how we can find them. Their males don’t even trigger the immortal alarm. Peter and Leon didn’t suspect Emmett of being an immortal. Eleanor did.”
Richard chuckled nervously. “Given how aggressive he claims their females are, maybe they will trigger the alarm.”
Kalugal laughed. “That’s a good one. I need to tell Kian. But seriously, it’s not going to help us find them. Even if there are many more small communities like Emmett’s, they are still just needles in the haystack of humanity.”
38
Kian
Kian pressed the remote to pause the recording. “So, what do you think?”
Onegus crossed his arms over his chest. “There must be more of them. But since Andrew verified that what Emmett said was true, we can safely assume that his community is still relatively small. Although given that their fertility rate seems to be better than ours, they might have produced a small army of hybrids by now. Also, Emmett left before any of the hybrid females conceived. It’s possible that unions between hybrids produced long-lived children as well.”
“They might be too closely related,” Kian said. “With only three pure-blooded females and seventeen pure-blooded males, their genetic variation is too small to allow for interbreeding. If I were their leader, I would prefer for the males to father as many children as possible with humans, and I would be wary of the hybrids producing children between them.”
Turner shook his head. “There are seventeen pure-blooded males who we can assume are not related to each other. The children they produce with humans are not even cousins and can safely mate. The question is whether the children of two hybrids are born long-lived. If they are like us, then the answer is no. The child of two immortals is not born immortal, and she or he still needs to be induced to transition into immortality. And since they either don’t know how to do it or can’t, we can assume that if they have children, they are born human and given away to orphanages like Mey and Jin were.”
Onegus huffed out a breath. “If they keep a large harem of human females, they can produce scores of children. It’s what Navuh does, just in reverse. The pure-blooded Kra-ell males are the equivalent of the gods, and they contribute the long-lived genes to the hybrids, not the females, who don’t take human lovers. I wonder how many hybrid children they've had since Emmett left the community.”
“We can estimate it.” Turner looked at Kian. “Ask him how many hybrid males were born while he was still there. Emmett thinks that the pure-bloods arrived in the early 1900s, and he left toward the end of the century. That’s about eighty years. Based on how many were born during that time, and provided that they kept about the same number of human females in their compound, it should be easy to extrapolate how many they have today.”
“That still doesn’t answer the question of whether there are more communities of them.” Onegus uncrossed his arms and braced his elbows on the conference table. “It’s crucial that we find out. They might not be a problem now or even in a hundred years, but if they keep producing hybrids who can live up to a millennium, that could become a problem even if they never figure out how to activate their Dormants.”
It was a chilling thought. Eventually, they could overrun the planet even without more of them arriving.
Kian patted the small box of cigarillos he’d slipped into his pocket before the meeting. Once it was over, he planned to do some serious thinking on the roof. “We don’t know where Emmett’s people are, but we can start with where they were when he left, and follow the breadcrumbs, provided that they left any. If we find them, we can potentially catch one of the pure-bloods and question him about the rest of their people. But if they don’t keep in touch, that would be the end of the thread. Besides, there is nothing we can do to stop them from multiplying, and given their peculiar social structure, we can’t hope to integrate them either.”
“If we find them, perhaps we can.” Turner had a calculating gleam in his eyes. “I have a feeling that it’s not going to be difficult to lure the males away, and the females can’t multiply as rapidly on their own.”
“If the males were unhappy, they would have left already,” Onegus said. “There are plenty of human females for them to seduce. But they stayed, which means that they either have no problem with how their society is structured, or that the leader has an unbreakable hold on them.” He looked at Kian. “That’s another question that you should ask Emmett.”
“I’d better write it down.” Kian pulled out his phone and added the two questions to the list he was compiling for his next visit with Emmett. “If you think of anything else, text me. I’m going to question him again this afternoon.” He glanced at Turner. “Do you want to join me?”
�
��You’re taking Kalugal with you today. Let’s see how that goes first.”
“Very well.” Kian lifted the remote and switched to the next item on the agenda. “Let’s talk briefly about the gala.” He looked at Onegus. “How’s that going?”
Thanks to the chief, Kian was spared from having to attend. Onegus was much better at schmoozing and politicking than Kian could ever hope to be.
Onegus shrugged. “Brandon and his posse of socialites have everything covered. I only need to show up and deliver a speech.”
“That’s what I’m asking about. Do you have it ready? I want to go over it. After all, you’re pretending to be me.”
“I’m still working on it. I’ll email it to you as soon as I’m done.”
“Email it to Bridget first. She’s a master at motivating people to volunteer and to part with their money.”
“Speaking of Bridget.” Onegus cast a sidelong glance at Turner. “Any chance I can borrow her as my date for the event? I need a shield against the gold-diggers who think that I’m the billionaire who’s funding the charity.”
Turner smiled. “Sorry, but the answer is no. She’s already told Kian that she doesn’t want to attend. You’re on your own.”
As Onegus groaned, Kian chuckled. “Ask Brandon to be your date. That will keep the gold-diggers off you.”
“You think it didn’t occur to me? But Brandon treats these events as his personal hunting grounds. Besides, if he pretends to be gay or even bi-sexual, he will have to fight off unwanted advances from the same sharks he has to do business with.”
“You can ask Ingrid,” Turner suggested. “She would love to attend a gala event.”
“Yeah, no.” Onegus shifted in his chair. “If I take her, all the other clan females will hate me for not inviting them. Bridget is the head of the rescue operations, so that would have been okay, but I can’t just take any random female.”
“You’ll survive.” Kian clapped him on the back. “Let’s move on to the security measures for the upcoming wedding and my birthday celebration. The conversion of the office building is nearly done, and Ingrid is in the process of furnishing the apartments for our guests. They can use the underground passage to walk to the keep, which was the main impetus behind converting that particular building. William has all the necessary surveillance equipment, but I don’t want outside contractors installing it.”
Onegus nodded. “I’ll get a team of Guardians on it.”
“Also, I need to transport our guests from the airport in a way that will not draw attention.” Kian looked at Turner. “Any suggestions?”
“Use delivery vans. The neighbors are used to seeing them delivering building materials and furnishings to the building. They will think nothing of it.”
“Our guests are not going to appreciate being transported like cattle.” Kian folded his arms over his chest. “But since they are not all arriving at the same time, we can outfit a couple of delivery vans with passenger seats. The other option is to camouflage our bus to look like a delivery van.” He turned to Onegus. “Find out which option is faster to do. We don’t have a lot of time. Also, once the guests start to arrive, I need a team of Guardians to secure the building. They can use one of the apartments as their command center. You’ll need to coordinate with Ingrid which one she can spare.”
“Consider it done. Anything else?” Onegus pushed away from the conference table.
“That’s all.” Kian rose to his feet. “As always, too much is happening at the same time, and I wish we didn’t have the events to worry about. But as Syssi pointed out, if we wait with our celebrations for when it’s convenient, we will never get to celebrate.”
39
Leon
“What happened last night?” Bowen handed Leon a mug filled to the brim with coffee.
“Where is Margaret?” Leon pulled out a chair and sat at the table.
“Still asleep.” Taking his coffee with him, Bowen took a seat across from him. “It took her hours to calm down after that scream. It was nearly morning when I carried her to bed.”
“You could have thralled her.”
Bowen shook his head. “I don’t know how safe it is to thrall her in her current state. Besides, it would be difficult to explain to Anastasia why her friend doesn’t remember anything from last night.”
“Right.” Leon rubbed a hand over the back of his neck. “She took the blindfold off just as I was about to bite her.”
Bowen winced. “No wonder she screamed. How did you explain it?”
Leon smiled sheepishly. “I pulled off an impossible feat. I managed not to lie. I told her that I’m the product of genetic manipulation, which is not a lie because the gods were most likely genetically modified, and she assumed that we were part of a government experiment. I also told her that my venom has healing properties, which can prolong her life and keep her healthy, but that there are also potential complications. She said she’ll take it, which is almost as good as giving her consent. When she transitions, and I tell her the full story, she won’t be able to accuse me of lying because technically I didn’t.”
Bowen put his mug down. “You still told her too much.”
“What else was I supposed to do?”
“I’m not saying that you had a choice, only that she can’t walk away from here with what she knows. You need to tell Kian.”
“If she transitions, then all of this is irrelevant. Right now, she’s not going anywhere, and there is no need to worry Kian.”
“I disagree. She has a phone, and she can call people and tell them about you. You need to take it away from her.”
“I made her promise that she wouldn’t tell anyone. Besides, who is going to believe her? This is the girl who hears conversations in her head, or at least used to. No one is going to take her seriously.”
“Nevertheless, she shouldn’t have access to a phone right now.”
“I can’t take it away without her throwing a major tantrum. Perhaps I can have William reroute it through security. If they hear her saying something she shouldn’t, they can disconnect the call.”
“Good idea. Call him. I’m sure he can do that remotely. But if you tell William, you need to tell Kian as well. You don’t want him finding out about it from someone else.”
“There is that.” Leon pushed to his feet. “I’ll make the calls outside. If either of the ladies wakes up and asks about me, tell them I had to call the boss.” He smiled. “Still not a lie.”
Bowen chuckled. “Don’t look so smug. Despite your valiant efforts not to lie to her, Anastasia is still going to give you hell for not telling her the whole truth and nothing but the truth.”
“Yeah, she will.” Leon walked out the door.
Instead of calling Kian, though, he decided it was safer to call Onegus.
“Leon. I didn’t expect a call from you this Monday morning. What’s up? Are you bored already and want me to assign you to a mission?” the chief teased.
“Hardly. I have a bit of a problem.”
When he was done, Onegus let out a whistle. “Your story was good, but Bowen is right. We can’t let her walk away with what she knows. I will speak with Julian. He can give her the same drugs he used on Eleanor and make her forget last night. But it has to be done right away.”
Leon’s gut twisted. He didn’t want to do that to Anastasia. She would never forgive him, and frankly, he wouldn’t forgive himself either.
“We also have her friend here. She heard Anastasia scream, so the same would need to be done to her, but I don’t think it’s safe given that she’s just had surgery. Can we wait another day or two? Anastasia might start transitioning. It has been over a week since I first bit her.”
“I’ll talk to Kian and let you know. But first, I’ll tell William to reroute her calls, text messages, and emails through security.”
“Thank you.”
“Don’t thank me yet.” The chief ended the call.
Damn. He sincerely hoped Kian wouldn�
��t insist on the drugs. But given how paranoid he was about security, he probably would.
40
Richard
After Kalugal had left, Richard hadn’t gone to his makeshift office at the construction site. Instead, he rushed home.
Stella was in her workroom, and as he opened the door, she looked up from her sewing machine. “What happened? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
“We need to talk.” He walked over to her and offered her a hand up.
“You’re scaring me. What’s going on?”
He led her to the living room and motioned for her to sit on the couch. “I think you’ll need a glass of wine with this story.”
“It’s ten in the morning. Just spit it out.”
Letting out a breath, he sat next to her. “Did you hear about the cult leader who kidnapped a Guardian?”
Her eyes widened. “I didn’t. How did a human manage to do that? Put a gun to his head?”
“He compelled the guy to go with him. They got him back and captured the cult leader, so you don’t need to worry about the Guardian, but what they discovered is another story. The cult leader’s name is Emmett Haderech, which is obviously fake, and he’s not human. He claims to be long-lived, not immortal, and he’s a carnivore who needs blood for sustenance. Also, his people are ruled by a ruthless female. Sounds familiar?”
Stella’s eyes grew to the size of coasters. “Do you think he’s part of Vrog’s community?”
“Isn’t it obvious? Emmett might be Vlad’s uncle.”
She swallowed. “What if he’s Vlad’s father?”
“It’s not likely. Emmett escaped his community over thirty years ago, and he founded the cult three years after that. When you met Vrog, he still answered to his leader.”
“That’s a relief.” She slumped against the couch cushions.
“You need to tell Kian, Stella.”