“Tobias? Wake up!”
A rising and falling frame proved he was, in fact, still alive. My hands pulled up his maw. He was thinner than the last time I’d seen him, but his body seemed in good condition. Why was he here, and how was I going to get him out? The effort would strain my abilities, but I could probably lift him. But to do that while attempting to climb the well-worn, icy walls of a dry well? No way. I’d just have to hope I could find a way to wake him up.
I closed my eyes and tried to sense the pack that had roamed the hills, hoping if I got them to where I was, they might have greater sympathy for one of their own than their alpha had had for me. On the edge of abilities, I found their energy and gave it a slight tug, asking them to circle back to me. The alpha’s direction shifted, but just as soon as the string between us pulled, it again went slack.
Suddenly, footfalls on the ground above took my attention skyward. A head blocked the moonlight from my view above. “Gerwalta?”
“Mother?” I leapt to my feet. “Mother, I found him! He’s here. Tobias is here. He’s okay, but unconscious and... Mom, you can fly! You can get us out of here.”
The next sound I heard made my blood boil and freeze at the same time. “Oh, I don’t think that will be happening, Geri.”
With a shard of moonlight cast over his features, his eyes looked even more intense, his surreal beauty threatening. Vlad wore his usual cock-sided grin as he turned to my mother, who I realized had her hands tied behind her back, likely bound in electrical wire. “You see, Matron? I told you she’d fall for my trap. Never doubt the pull between mates. The magic that binds them also makes them blind to danger.”
I’d done many things in my life to invite my mother’s disappointment. My days and nights seemed meted for her disapproval. Never before had she looked at with such disappointment.
And for once, I felt I deserved it.
TWENTY-EIGHT
Wind flew from my lungs, leaving me gasping, powerless. Electrical wires, charged by a small battery pack taped on my back, encircled my wrists, leaving my hood abilities inert and my hands bound. A moment later, the vampire threw Tobias down beside me. He was still fast asleep, knocked out by whatever drug Vlad had given him. I struggled to survey the area around me, searching desperately for the others, but all I found was Vlad and my mother seating at a table, both with cups of tea.
“Miss Kline.” The vampire raised his cup my direction, saluting me. “I wonder if you now regret refusing a place in my harem?”
I rolled onto my back and managed from there to sit up, despite the ache in my ribs. “My only regret is not slicing off your head when I had all those swords around me.”
“Ah, yes, that would have led us down a different path for sure.” He took a sip, smacked his lips, put the cup down. “Your mother and I were just talking terms, but ones concerning you were just wishful thinking until you arrived. Thank you for your haste.”
“Terms?” The question was directed at my mother, who had the gall to be stoic. “What terms?”
But it was Vlad who answered. “The offer on the table is this: you will stay with me, provide me and my clutch with your blood, and I will allow you and your wolf to live a rather comfortable and accommodating life under my protection and let all the other fools we’ve captured tonight go free. Refuse me, and everyone else dies...while you? You will only be able to wish that you were.”
I mused silently for a moment. “Sounds awful, like the one the sultan gave you. Life in a gilded cage, comfort but no control. You think I don’t see the insult?”
“What do I care if you do?” Vlad snipped. “It will not render your choices altered.”
“Why am I so important to you?” I spit back. “You have my mom at the table. Offer to trade me and Tobias for your whole harem back. You can set up your little breeding compound where you like and feed indefinitely.”
My head swung back to my mother, but her expression revealed nothing. Defiant and uncompromising, she’d admit to no fault, whether or not there was one to be had. Was she a prisoner too, or had she gone in with the intention of meeting Vlad as her equal? Where were the others? Markus, my dad, Yan? The two yellow hoods? I searched her expression for some tenderness or clue, but found none.
Vlad’s eyebrow perched curiously. “Your mother tells me Inga is dead, that she turned on you. Tell me, Geri, how well did you know my dear, departed daughter-turned-sister?”
“Well enough to know she hated you.” I spit out the blood pooling in the side of my mouth. “Makes two of us.”
“Ah, and you’re witty. I shall enjoy your humor in the years to come.” Vlad stood, bringing his teacup along with him as he paced in my direction. “Truth is, Inga never should have been turned. She didn’t have the constitution for an immortal life. I blame myself, really. You see, when she was no more than my human child, I neglected her. Abused her, even. She grew up with what I believe your generation calls daddy issues. She’s spent her eternal life running between two father figures. Me and Igor, Igor and me. The last turnover was about twenty years ago. I didn’t realize that when she was giving regular checkups to my young slayers, she was also slipping a little something extra into their vitamin shots. Left all the male slayers infertile. Oh, Inga was kind-hearted. As much as a vampire can be, anyway. She didn’t want to kill the slayers to keep me from feeding. She just wanted to make sure I wouldn’t get my hands on any more. Then, the cycle flipped, and she was off with Igor again. She was on her way back to me soon enough. Inga always came home again.”
A swirling of emotions made it impossible to react. What Inga had done was horrendous, but was it the best possible solution to an untenable situation? How many more slayers would have been bred in captivity if she’d not sterilized the males? How we’d remedy that in the future was a problem for another day.
“So you see, Geri,” Vlad continued, “while I adored my slayers, would have been happy to keep them forever, I’ve known for some time that source of sustaining blood had an expiration date. I was so delighted when Caleb wandered onto the scene. One vibrant, fertile stud for all my lassies. Inga thought it would make up for her previous transgressions. I was starting to worry, thinking I might finally die... in sixty or seventy years, when my slayers died out. But then, my sister surprised me with one final offering.”
In a blink, he dropped the tea cup, crouching down beside me and pulling me up by the hair. “Hamunshet’s gift. Oh, dear one... I would take your father. I would keep the Muñezes. I would even barter back my slayers for the right offer. But all of them put together aren’t worth a single blade of your hair. All I need is you. Oh, and the children you and this asenaic—” His head jerked in Tobias’s direction. “—will produce. And your children’s children. And their children’s children... Perhaps with the occasional outsider thrown in to keep the gene pool healthy.”
Confusion swirled in my soul. “What makes me so special, Vlad? What makes you so deserving?”
My mother cleared her throat, pivoting in her seat. “I think that what my daughter means is, while it’s true her veins carry wolf blood, we’re three centuries down the line. Whatever elixir asenaic blood seems to be for you, surely the effect would be increased by a fresher coupling.”
Vlad, amused, pulled back. “Are you offering me an alternative, Grand Matron? Unless the offer is the illustrian I was breeding—”
“I told you,” my mother interjected, “I killed it. Her and her mother.”
What was she talking about? Mina was alive, and Brünhild hadn’t killed Alex. Alex’s death had been a tragic consequence of forcing so much power into an attack when she was already so compromised.
“And Inga all in the same swoop,” Vlad acknowledged. “Yes, I recall. You have a remarkable sense of bloodlust. And all this leads me back to Geri.”
“The pick of any under the command of my office, every twenty years!” The mirror cracked, and my mother’s inner demons took control. The words flew from her lips with a
passion I’d rarely witnessed in her. The air of desperation clung to each syllable. “And the forced acquiesce of an acceptable wolf mate, in perpetua. I can make that happen.”
Venom laced my tongue. “Mom, you can’t!”
Her eyes drilled into me. “Silence! You are not a righteous hood. You have no say in my decisions.”
Vlad stood, taking two steps to my mother. One of his long fingers traced a line down her cheek. “The time for feigning ignorance is over, Brünhild. You know as well as I do why I want Geri. I’ve tasted her blood; I know what she is.” He leaned in, his tongue darting out. A slick line of saliva marked the path Vlad licked up my mother’s jawline. “And I know what you are.”
I saw everything and understood nothing. For the first time in my life, Brünhild Kline was... scared.
Her words trembled over lips gone white. “She doesn’t know. No one does.”
“Know what?” I inched closer to the table as well as I could in my position. “What is he talking about?”
“Funny thing, supernatural blood,” Vlad mused, backing away. “It’s a genetic chemistry lab, all the ingredients stable on their own, but mixed together in different proportions, and BOOM!” His clap made both of us shake. “Explosive results. Huey blood keeps a vampire alive until for some reason, after half a millennium, the magic just dries up. I can drink slayer blood and that’s, well... yummy, really. Hood and werewolf blood, a little more gamey, and not quite as powerful. But cross a werewolf with a hood or a slayer, you get liquid life and death. And I thought that was the ultimate cocktail. But then... Then I tasted the blood of one who had all three creatures running in her veins.”
My mother’s eyes fell closed.
“All three?” For some reason, I took the question to Vlad, who seemed to be the only one willing to give answers. “That’s impossible.”
“Hood begets hood.” Brünhild’s loathsome words melted through a sighing resolve. Her eyes shone as she lifted them to meet mine. “Words I tried to drill into you. Words my own mother drilled into me. She never wanted me to repeat her mistake.”
My world turned red. “No. No, that’s impossible, Grandpa Germain was a hood.”
“Yes, Jacques Germain was a hood,” my mother said. “But he was not my father.”
The words echoed in my head, but repetition didn’t bring clarity. Three bloods ran in my veins... The hoods of my mothers, the wolves of my fathers, and the slayers... My grandfather was a slayer? My mother was half-slayer?
Suddenly, Caleb’s words while descending from the tower came back to me.
All I’m saying is, I’ve never heard of silver flame until now.
When I pressed my brain, I realized that I hadn’t heard of another hood with the talent either.
Except for... me.
Vlad held his hands to the sky. “And truth, like a blanket, grows heavy and smothers out our misconceptions.” The vampire refocused on my mother. “Geri and the wolf are mine, payment in kind for my slayers.”
The monster returned to my side and reached down, his cold, bony fingers threading through my hair, pulling me to my feet by the scalp. I refused to offer him the pleasure of my cry, and filtered the pain through clenched fists and ground teeth.
“What say you, Miss Kline? You, your wolf, and eternal comfort, or just you and all the others be damned?”
My acidic glare met his. “How about neither and you go take a long walk on a sunny day?”
“Do you need further incentive?” His chin lowered into his chest. “Very well.”
At the far side of the room, where there may have once been shutters or a pane of glass, only a window frame remained. Vlad pulled me to it, forcing me to look down below, to a clearing where a man stood tied to a tree. For a moment, I assumed it must be one of the local hoods. The cloak distinguished the captured as a member of Casa de los Amarillos, but I couldn’t find familiarity in the swollen, broken skin or the blackened, bloodshot eyes. Only when I noticed the patch of solitary gray hair just above his right temple did I realize the truth.
“Dad! Let my father go, you fuc— Ah!”
Vlad yanked me back, his cold cheek pressed against mine, sending a pain shooting down my neck. “Do you know what happens to a vampire when he does not feed, Geri?” he asked, his voice distorted by fangs. “I think it’s much like what wolves experience: a form of madness. The onset is quicker, though. It’s been seven weeks since Istanbul, when you were kind enough to leave my father behind, who I’ve made certain hasn’t had a drop of blood in all that time.”
I shook my head. “Igor’s strong. He can endure it.”
“In his prime, perhaps, but at his age?” Vlad laughed. “If not for his kinship with your distant cousins here in Navarre and their blood, he would have disintegrated long ago.”
Below, guided by two other vampires I assumed to be members of Vlad’s clutch, Igor emerged from out of my line of sight. Ragged, pale, skin on bones, he was a fading echo of the vampire I’d come to know and trust over the last two years. His brown eyes found me, and a momentary sadness made the depth of his suffering reverberate.
As he turned his head, Igor saw my dad. Like an unrepentant criminal being led to the gallows, he bucked, struggling against the hold of his captors, crying out words in a language I didn’t understand.
“What are you doing?”
Vlad grinned. “Have you ever been to a zoo, Miss Kline? I haven’t, but I understand animal feeding times are quite a draw.”
“Feeding time?”
It didn’t make any sense. Vampires didn’t need so much blood as to kill their prey. Such deaths were usually the result of intent, or the consequence of inexperience.
“Is this a threat? This will only make Igor strong again.”
“Oh, make no mistake, as hungry as my father is, your father will not last long. Even when he is restored, Nicolae and Petru, my Ravens, will easily overpower him.”
Fear kicked in at last, my heart pounding like a wild thing in my chest. The decision was in my hands, but its implications burned. Say yes to Vlad, and my father lived. Say no, and watch as he methodically killed every person he’d captured tonight and force me through who knew what kind of tortures until, at last, battered and used up, he disposed of me, too.
“Niña!” My father’s eyes caught mine from below, blazing courage. “Te amo. Siempre te amo. Tell your mother, I forgive her.”
“Pietro!” My mother’s voice broke in its fierceness. “Vlad, no. I’ll do whatever you want. I’ll—”
Vlad waved his hand, and the two vampires below let loose their charge.
I closed my eyes, for even what my ears heard overwhelmed. My dad’s cries gargled through blood, and my mother’s through terror. But despite refusing to see it, I suddenly felt it: his anguish, his despair, his life ebbing away... The wolf within my father reared its head, let out one last sorrowful howl, and fell into darkness.
My knees gave out on the spot just as the vampire released his hold, letting me collapse. “I forfeit.”
He curled a hand around his ear. “What was that, Miss Kline? Do speak up.”
“I said, I forfeit!” I threw my head back to fix him with a stinging glare. “Tobias and I will stay with you. We’ll... We’ll breed. But let the others go, and swear you’ll leave them be forever.”
“Not so fast.” Vlad crossed to where my mother sat, her face covered in tears but her expression molded by hate. “Your word as well, Brünhild. Your daughter and her mate remain my guests for life, and you will forget she even exists, understand? If I ever catch a whisper that you or any hood under your command is so much as looking for me, I’ll destroy you all.”
My mother’s words came through restrained tears. “None under my command shall pursue you. I swear this as the Grand Matron of the Wolfsretter.”
A drunken grin spread across Vlad’s face. “Ah, the old names. I do like them. Ladies, we have an accord. Hurry up now, Matron. Time for you to grab your little commandos
and be on your way. Oh, but before you go...”
The vampire crossed the room to where a shopping bag had been left on the floor. I’d thought it garbage, some bit of refuse left behind in the rundown abode by a squatter. I should have known better. Vlad crossed to my mother as his hand went inside the bag. What he pulled out seemed impossible. A blade. A silver blade, one only a few inches long with tiny jewels encrusted in its hilt. As a weapon, it was useful, though not big enough to do any serious damage to a vampire. As silver, it was useless. For the first time in my life, I understood why such an object had been bequeathed to me instead of merely being recycled into another form: it was my grandmother’s dagger, and the silver must have been blood-claimed by her.
Vlad used the dagger to slice away the electrical cord binding my mother before turning the hilt and shoving it into her weapon hand. “A token of good faith. Your daughter left this behind in Istanbul. Take it with my good wishes.”
The self-proclaimed sultan snapped, and with that, a fourth and fifth vampire walked into the room. Reality hit, punching me the stomach. All five Ravens were here. If I just had a way to attack, we could take them all down now.
And leave Tobias unconscious and open to attack, trusting in the honor system that they wouldn’t go after him? Smart move, Kline.
The only way we’d take them out like this was if we set off a bomb. As a rule, supes didn’t deal in explosives. We were of the old world, and fought with its rules. Only, as I thought about all I’d learned tonight, I realized, we did have a bomb. Two in fact, and now that Vlad had unwittingly given my mother a fuse to light them, the plan forming in my head just might work.
“Mircea,” Vlad said to the vampire on the right, who couldn’t have been any older than me when he was turned. “Escort our guests to town. Do not release their bonds until daybreak. Mihnea?”
The other vamp, a man who could have been Inga’s brother based on his looks, dipped his head. “The sedative we gave Mr. Somfield should be wearing off soon. Once he’s awake, please see him and Miss Kline to a containment chamber before daybreak. They will have much to speak on once they are able to talk.”
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