“You shouldn’t be so rough on her, you know.” He slipped his hands in his pockets, looking back over his shoulder in Amy’s wake. “She’s loyal, brave, compassionate, all things I’d take over mystical silver-wielding or sunlight-throwing powers any day of the week. Even if she does have the worldly concerns of a 1990s Teen Flick Drama Queen.”
“She shouldn’t be wasting time...” I cut off my inner bitch. “If Amy stays with me, I’m going to get her killed.”
“What makes you think that?”
“The Ravens already tried to kill her once, and that was before I knocked one of them off and stole all their gourmet meals.”
I didn’t have to be a bitch though. I’d apologize later. Again.
“Right. Okay. So, anyways, I’ve been sent in here to kick your ass.”
I raised an eyebrow. “Meaning?”
“Meaning... It’s time to stop moping. It’s been a month since Istanbul, and sitting around being sad isn’t helping.”
I spun in my seat, making no secret of my anger. “We’re not sitting around being sad. Our best shot at defeating the Ravens is with the backing of the Matron Council. Your people are undertrained, underfed, and under some illusion that I can give them what they need. I’m just a twenty-two-year-old woman from a tiny village in Michigan, Caleb. I’m not capable of being a healer, a therapist, a trainer, or a general.”
“And... what? You think as soon as the Matron Council bestows its magnanimity on the slayers, you’re just going to pass us along and wipe your hands clean?”
My fists clenched so hard, I’d not be surprised to find I’d drawn blood. “I don’t owe the slayers anything. In fact, it’s just the opposite. I should have spent the last month hunting down the Ravens and rescuing Tobias. Instead, I’m stuck in the Black Forest, playing house frau.”
“Bullshit. You might spend your nights here, away from everyone, but you’re barely sleeping during the day. Amy says you spend hours when everyone else is asleep training yourself ragged in the basement.”
“Of course, I am. I’m going up against a six-hundred-year-old vampire with a god complex and his four closest buddies. You don’t overcome someone like that by knitting socks. Or should I just rush into where my mate is being held prisoner and wing it?”
“What makes you think Tobias is still alive?”
“What makes you think he’s dead?” Anger crackled in my bones, an impulse to find something silver and push it into a weapon threatening to consume me. “You and Amy are just the same. You don’t get that this is what I have to do, but I can’t get to it until the Matron Council gets its head out of its collective ass and agrees to take care of you all.”
The door leading from the underground garage opened, taking me to my feet and all the blood from my face.
“He’s back.”
Caleb, on edge of boiling over, threw the door open. “Good, let’s go hear whether or not your terrible burden is over.”
I was just about to dredge up another retort when Markus’s booming voice called out across the house. “Oh, my god, seriously! Geri! Geri, your slayers are threatening to kill someone.”
Caleb and I, drawn from the mire of our own conflict, exchanged a look of concern before rushing down the stairs. Markus, donning his red cloak like something had spooked him and using his body as a human shield, stood before a tall, slender man with dusty rose skin and hazelnut eyes. The scene did not explain itself, which forced me to demand to know what the hell was going on.
Markus kept his arms akimbo. “Hell if I know. All we did was walk in the door.”
Alexandra, in all her gravidity, still held herself out as unofficial overseer of the group, and appeared willing to kick anyone’s ass to prove it, pregnant belly or no. She stood a few feet away from Markus, balancing a solarium in the palm of her hand.
“That man is a vampire!” the slayer said. “We did not come all this way just to be taken again.”
“Yan is NOT one of the Ravens,” Markus insisted. “After everything I did in Istanbul to bust your asses out of Count Creepy’s mansion, do you think I’d use you to open up an all-night buffet?”
Something needed to be done before things got out of hand. Only thing was, I couldn’t figure out which side of the conflict I least wanted pissed at me.
Amy didn’t have a side, or as had always proven to be the case, a filter. The blonde huey pounded down the stairs. “Oh my god, are you seriously telling me that despite all your radical superpowers, you all are still just as bigoted and ignorant as the rest of us?” The shockwave snatched the attention from the standoff, and centered it on her. “Markus, who is this and why is he here?”
But it was the vampire who answered the question, speaking in so gentle a voice, I’d have not heard him without superhuman abilities. “My name is Yan, the resident vampire at Schloss Wolfsretter. I’m Markus’s boyfriend.”
Amy’s face screwed up as she eyeballed my cousin for the briefest second. Was she more surprised that he was gay, or that he was with a vampire? “Okay, Yan, my name is Amy, and I have to say, as the only non-supe in this house, I get where the slayers are coming from. See, they were being held hostage by Dracula and all, so we’d just kind of like to know... Are you going to hurt them at all? Because there’s, like, twenty slayers here, and I’m sure if a few hit you with their weird sunlight things, you’re going to go boom, along with all the rest of us.”
Alexandra tutted. “Solaira do not harm slayers.”
“Might blast all our clothes off, though,” Caleb piped up from the top of the stairs. “Not that that would be a bad thing.”
The vampire, perhaps sensing the de-escalation, and picking up on how the odds would be stacked against him, demurred. “I have no reason to hurt anyone. I am an honorable vampire; I do not drink from someone without their permission.”
“Or without my permission,” Markus added. When Yan gave him a Really, that’s what you want to say right now? look, he clarified. “What, we’re a couple now. I’m just saying, if you’re going to suck on anyone’s anything,” Markus’s hand shot up in to the air, “the line starts here.”
Amy, blushing like a peach, turned to Alexandra. “If he were to try anything, can you end him immediately?”
The pregnant slayer bounced her solarium like a child’s plaything. “In seconds.”
“Good enough.” The blonde dropped her arms to her sides. “Now, kids, we’re all going to play nice until someone gives anyone a GOOD REASON not to. Okay? I’m talking injury, not insult, so everybody, chill.”
The slayers grumbled, even as they began to break up and move toward parts of the house other than the large living room that had become a de facto gathering spot. Yan drifted behind Markus like a shadow as the latter made his way toward me.
“A word in private?”
I tried to keep the bitterness from my tone, but I’d never been very good at faking. “Why? We all know the Council said no.”
As Markus reached the top of the stairs, he seized me by the arm and turned me toward my room, despite my still-body routine. “I said, ‘a word in PRIVATE, Geri?’”
“Okay, fine. Don’t be so dramatic.”
Once the door was closed, Markus set about his briefing. “Okay, so the part you know: the request to offer the slayers sanctum was denied.”
“You don’t say?” I deadpanned. “I told you they weren’t going to accept them.”
Markus grinned. “But they are willing to accept them.”
I shook my head. “What are you talking about? You just said the request was denied.”
“The Council of Matrons has offered the slayers housing, provisions, and assistance with reacclimating to the outside world, in exchange for something.”
I wracked my brain for the logic behind that lunacy. “For?”
Markus fixed a furrowed brow and glared. “For killing the Ravens.”
I didn’t have time to stop the cackle that erupted. “Ha! Is that all? What is this, th
e Wizard of Oz? They want to send a helpless, displaced people to take on the wicked witch?”
“We’re not helpless.” Caleb reappeared in the doorway, leaning against the frame with his arms crossed. “Overpowering vampires is what we were made to do. Each and every slayer in this house has the potential, they just need time and training.”
“If you’ll excuse an outsider’s observation,” Yan interjected as he came in as well, because apparently there was a party in my bedroom and everyone was invited, “at least one of them seemed more than capable—and willing—to kill me just a few minutes ago. Actually, at least one of the women was.”
Caleb closed the door behind them. “That was Alexandra, who, by the way, says none of the males went through awakening ceremonies. They’re wet noodles, like a nascent hood. Something I’ll need to remedy soon.”
Markus snickered, but Caleb just rolled his eyes.
“Get your mind out of the gutter, Kline.”
I tried to subdue the crawling sensation that swept over my skin, remembering that I’d suffered the same at my own insistence until recently. How that had changed, I was still uncertain. But I’d made that choice for myself, and I raged at the idea of keeping another from their birthright by force. But this wasn’t about me.
“The fact remains, they are... well, nascent. Even the women, who know how to use their power, haven’t been trained in combat. How could we take that kind of offer to them?”
“Okay, first of all,” Markus said, “we are not offering them anything; the Matron Council is. And second, Caleb is right. This isn’t an oppressed people, they were hostages. They’re like us, Geri. They’re supes. And supes don’t get mad, they get even.”
I balanced my forehead on the tips of my fingers. “What does Inga think?”
“Inga? Oh, she...” Markus’s cheeks reddened as his eyes sought butterflies. “She, um... took off. To do recon, I think. She said she’ll call if she finds out anything.”
Damn her. What gave her the right to go look for her father, and leave me here to deal with the mess her brothers had wrought?
But since things were left to me, as everyone had somehow decided I was the leader of this little party, I was prepared to lay things out as they were, without any heroic upsell. “I don’t feel right about this. Markus and I have been trained as warriors all our life, and we barely managed to escape. And that was only with two Ravens on the scene. You can bet your ass that next time, they’re bringing all their forces. Without the hoods standing beside them, the Ravens will shred them.”
Caleb shrugged. “So we train them.” He turned to Markus. “You said the council was willing to forward us some provisions?”
“Yeah. As far as shelter, they deigned to allow us to remain here at the RotHaus, though what any of them could do to make us leave, I’d like to know. It doesn’t belong to the Matron Council; it’s Aunt Brunnie’s personal property. But the food and weapons they talked about would help. We do make some gnarly silverware, you know.”
“Then we’ll accept the offer,” Caleb said. “And between the three of us, we can train them pretty quickly.”
Yan leaned forward. “I can assist with pointers on the best attack methods that work on vampires. If... the slayers are comfortable with my presence, of course. And if they promise not to actually kill me.”
Caleb clapped his hands. “Great, so it’s all settled then. We’ll draw up plans, break them out into groups, and get going right away.”
Had they all gone insane? “Look, it’s not that I don’t care about the slayers, but I have to stay focused. The Ravens have Tobias, and I have to save him.”
Markus dared my ire. “I don’t see how those two goals are mutually exclusive.”
Yan raised a finger. “I’m sorry, but who is Tobias?”
“It’s complicated,” Markus said at the same time I said, “He’s my mate.”
Markus tried to reconcile the two statements. “Tobias is the werewolf Geri found in Chicago two years ago when his mate was kidnapped and then killed by the Ravens. Indirectly, anyway. He was with us in Istanbul, but Vlad Tepeş took him prisoner.”
Yan turned back to me. “Then how is he your mate, if his mate was killed? Werewolves mate for life.”
Markus and I exchanged a look, one in which he asked permission to share my secret. I shook my head. The fact that he was asking, however, let me know I could trust my cousin. As much of a gossip as he was, if he hadn’t told his boyfriend, he wouldn’t unless I said it was okay.
“They do,” I said while chastising myself internally to be more careful with my words in the future.
Yan’s voice ticked up a note. “Did you mean ‘mate’ the way Australians use it, like friends? I can never keep all the variant forms of English in check.”
“No, I mean I love him. And he loves me, I think, only...”
Of all the people I had no right to expect to come to my rescue, Caleb did. “The treatment the vamps were using on the wolves plays around with their hardwiring,” he said. “We’re not really sure what the consequences are yet, but when I was their prisoner, I overheard talk about undoing lupine societies from the inside out. Seems Vlad still has a bit of a chip on his shoulder about the way things went down in the Balkans back in his day. He blames the wolves and he wants revenge.”
That seemed to put an end to the vampire’s confusion, as he nodded once. I made a mental note to thank Caleb later. Hell, it wasn’t really a lie, what he’d said. Vlad had told me as much, and I didn’t have any reason to think Drac was lying. Still, something niggled at me. My attraction to Tobias was easy enough to understand, even before I knew I was part-wolf. Not only was he buff and hot and all rough-sexy in a Hugh Jackman-as-Wolverine type of way, he’d saved my ass too many times to count. But his attraction to me? Had I been imagining it in the early days? Purely physical, of course; I didn’t dismiss for a moment his feelings for Kara. But still, could a bonded wolf be drawn to someone not their mate? Was there something in the archives that could explain the aberrant behavior?
The curiosity had my mind wheeling, and was about to take control of my feet.
“Markus, which matron is on duty at the Schloss?”
“Chin Zhu, why?”
Good. I didn’t know Chin personally, but that made it more likely that she wasn’t one of my mother’s allies.
“Let the slayers know what the council has offered,” I said. “I think it’s a fool’s deal, but ultimately, it’s their decision to make. I need to run an errand.”
“Run an errand?” Markus asked. “You mean you’re actually leaving your room? Where are you going?”
“I want to see if I can appeal to Chin’s better nature.”
THREE
Inga had told me that if Tobias and I were truly mates, one of us would know if the other died.
“But we never actually... you know,” I’d said to the vampire.
Inga had merely smiled ruefully, the way only those grown wise with age could. “But you’re some sort of wolf-hood chimera. I wouldn’t expect the way mating works with you to be the same. In any case, you love him. I think there’s a power to that that goes beyond whatever magic or supernatural talents we have. It’s anchored in our humanity, and if that anchor slackens, you’d feel it. Just like I would, if something happens to Igor.”
I’d stumbled for words. “You’re not... You and Igor, I mean, you...”
Vampires couldn’t blush, but she’d given it her best attempt. “No, Igor and I do not now nor have we ever had a sexual relationship. The love of family we feel has bonded us for centuries, even in the times when I was too pigheaded to accept it gracefully. That’s why I feel safe telling you that if you feel Tobias is still alive, then he is.”
He was. I could feel him somehow, like the warm feeling you had long after finishing a good meal. His existence fed me. But at the same time, I couldn’t ignore the implications. If Vlad hadn’t killed him immediately when we’d left, he had bigger plans f
or him. But what?
In the meantime, since leaving Triberg was on hold, I had another wolf to rescue. This one, from the pages of time and the shadow of infamy. Somewhere in my family tree was a branch upon which a noble lupine sat, maligned and overwritten by the so-called shame of seducing Gerwalta Faust. I intended to trim back those overgrown twigs and reclaim his dignity.
“Name, clan, and sanjak, please.”
The voice piping through the speaker when I pulled up to the security gate of Schloss Wolfsretter wasn’t one I recognized, but that meant little. Hoods from around the world and from every clan rotated through the House of Red’s ancestral home.
“Gerwalta Kline, House of Red, American Midwest under Brünhild Kline.”
“Gerwalta... Kline?” The tremor in the woman’s voice was impossible to ignore.
“Oh, you’ve heard of me.” I turned down the music playing on the car stereo. “I’d like to request a word with Matron Chin. I understand she’s in charge at the moment.”
Which begged the question, why wasn’t my mother here?
“Matron Chin is in session, and...”
The gate attendee either neglected or didn’t bother to turn off her microphone as her tongue turned to German, the Schloss’s official language even if most everyone actually conversed in English these days. Despite the attempt at secrecy, I still picked up on a mention of “Die Verräterin.” The notoriety of my ‘betrayal’ preceded me.
Good, knowing who they were dealing with would save so much time.
Finally, the voice came back full and steady. “Miss Kline, according to our records, you have been relinquished by your matron. Therefore, you have no official sponsorship or standing.”
“Mom remembered to fill out all the paperwork, huh?”
She either ignored what I’d said, or chalked it up to rhetoric. “Relinquished hoods may not enter the compound.”
“Right. Remind me, what’s your name?”
The uncertain voice drew the answer out like taffy. “Beatrice Jones, House of Green.”
Rebellious Hood Page 3