by Sierra Dean
That was one way to put it.
“Holden, can you take them to the feeding room, please?” I hoped some of the on-site donors would still be around, but even if they weren’t, the coolers should have kept the blood bags mostly fresh in the meantime. “Bring me back something.”
“Where are you going?”
I stared uncertainly at the big oak double doors on the opposite side of the room. Behind them was a stairwell leading deep into the belly of the city, where the Tribunal and the elders held their meetings. Farther below were the cells where they chained rogue vampires in silver and left them to wither away and starve.
Was that what I was destined for?
“I’m going to find Sig.”
“Secret, don’t be an idiot. We can get the blood and leave. No one is here, no one will stop us. Why would you risk going below?”
Logically, I understood it was a stupid idea. Yet logic didn’t seem to matter. I had to go find Sig. “He wants me to,” I replied, giving Holden a helpless look.
He understood. He had his own sire and his own mistress to obey whenever she felt the desire to beckon him. It was much worse the higher up the lineage you went. Sutherland was my direct sire—both biologically and vampirically—and his command could not supersede Sig’s.
Sig must have known I was here—he must have been waiting for me to arrive. And now that I’d come, he wanted me to find him.
Holden had been with me when I learned about Sig’s power over me. He’d witnessed what the master vampire was capable of making me do. He must have seen the fear and doubt on my face, because he looked scared.
“I’m coming with you.”
“You shouldn’t.”
He scoffed. “Sig doesn’t control me. I’m coming.”
The others hesitated, not sure whether they should join us. Sutherland was sitting on the floor, arranging discarded papers into seven piles in a wide circle around him. If he was bothered by my predicament at all, it wasn’t showing.
“Go eat,” I told them. “Bring us back something, we won’t be long. And be careful.”
“She tells us to be careful while she walks straight into hell.” Clementine smiled sweetly. “Girl has her priorities all screwed up.” She took charge, leading Reggie and Sutherland out of the main room and up a short flight of stairs to the feeding room. Calling it the cafeteria would have been more polite, but it wasn’t filled with lunch tables and vending machines.
I walked towards the oak doors, not waiting to see if Holden was following. I hoped he would change his mind and go with the others. After all, wasn’t he mad at me? Wouldn’t this be an ideal situation for me to get my comeuppance?
Apparently he didn’t think so, because he was right at my heels when I opened the door and followed so close behind me down the stairs I could feel his suit jacket brush up against my back.
We reached another set of doors, ones I had become very familiar with over the past eight years, both as the council’s bitch and one of its most powerful leaders. If it was going to end here, there was sort of a poetic quality to finishing things where I started them.
Without knocking, I pushed open the doors and entered the Tribunal chamber.
Against the far wall, three wooden throne-like chairs sat empty. The one on the left was mine, then Sig’s, and lastly Juan Carlos’s. All, now, were vacant. It seemed strange to me to find no one waiting, but what would they be waiting for?
From a side room, one I’d never entered in all my years with the vampires, Sig came in, ducking his head to avoid bumping it on the doorframe. His height, over six and a half feet tall, made him intimidating even when he didn’t mean to be. Especially since I was only five four and he dwarfed me whenever we stood side by side. At least when we took our seats, things evened out somewhat.
Now he towered over me, looking as grim as I’d ever seen him.
“Nice of you to join me,” he said, nodding a greeting.
“Nice of you to give me an option,” I grumbled.
“Now now. You know I’ve rarely had cause to use my powers on you, and if I thought I could have compelled you here with logic and reason, I’d have done it. But I had good reason to believe you might not stick around if left to your own volition, so…” He spread his hands out, gesturing to the empty room. “Here we are.”
“This isn’t the best time to make me face the council. In case you haven’t noticed, the city is coming down around us.”
“Mmm.” He nodded. “I can feel them, their tricky little fingers tickling my spine while they pull the puppet strings of all the dead. Quite a masterful job they’re doing of it too.”
“I have to stop them.”
“You have to stop them? Still trying to declare yourself protector of the city, I see. When will you learn there are limits, Secret? You cannot save everyone, no matter how hard you try.”
I thought of Keaty’s body lying in the street, and I flinched. “I know that better than you think I do.”
“Yet you insist on trying.”
“You shouldn’t expect anything different by now.” I glanced around the room cautiously. “Where is Juan Carlos?”
“Not here.”
“Thanks, for a second I thought he’d learned to become invisible.”
“In many ways he is.” Sig walked across the room and settled into his seat, stretching his long legs out in front of him. As was his usual fashion, he wore only brown leather pants. No shirt, no shoes. Yet he always got service. “Juan Carlos chose to greet an old friend of yours upon his arrival here yesterday.”
“An old friend?”
“Yes. Surely you haven’t forgotten about Arturo’s visit.”
I went cold, because since yesterday I had forgotten about Arturo’s visit. Sig had texted me to tell me the other vampire was coming, but in the wake of everything going on, it had slipped my mind in the chaos.
Arturo, in my opinion, was a traitor and the man responsible for having me kidnapped by The Doctor. From what I had pieced together, he had framed my father to bring me to Los Angeles. He’d then colluded with Alexandre Peyton to have me kidnapped and killed by a madman.
When their plan had failed, he’d provided Peyton with a drug that let him manipulate werewolf DNA. The same drug Desmond had been dosed with while we were in Paris.
It seemed Arturo had it in for me, but I didn’t know why, and I had no hard evidence to bring before the council. All I had to confirm my own suspicions was a letter sent with the drugs, signed with the letter A. It was flimsy at best, but I knew deep down he was the one behind it all. Too bad I’d killed Peyton, so I couldn’t force him to admit the truth now.
The word of one Tribunal leader against another would divide people’s loyalties. But what was worse, now that my bloodline had been revealed, there would be people who would doubt me simply because of what I was. I wouldn’t be able to convince the council Arturo was a traitor, not without evidence.
And where the hell was I going to find proof? I had other, vastly more important things to worry about. I couldn’t spend my time dwelling on why one vampire had it in for me.
“Fuck. Can’t I just kill him and be done with this whole thing?” I raked my hands through my hair and gave Holden a pitiful look.
“Who? Arturo or Juan Carlos?” Sig asked, and I couldn’t help but notice his slight smile when he asked.
“Why not both?” Holden offered.
Why not both indeed? So many of the difficulties in my life would be erased if I could do away with Arturo and Juan Carlos. Admittedly, my desire to kill Juan Carlos was more personal than professional. He’d had it in for me from the beginning, and now…
“Does Juan Carlos know about me?” My voice trembled. Though I knew the secret would come out sooner rather than later, I had hoped not to be around when the third Tribunal member figured out what I really was.
“He’s heard the rumors.” Sig twined his fingers together over his sculpted abs and watched me carefully. I wonder
ed what it was he was hoping or expecting to see in my expression. “Naturally, when he caught wind of it he was…well, he was rather furious.”
“And here I figured he’d be overjoyed.”
“Overjoyed to learn he’s been working alongside a werewolf for years?” Sig clucked his tongue. “I think you know our Spanish friend better than that.”
“I assumed it would fill him with a raging case of the I told you so’s when he found out what was wrong with me. He’s been obsessed with it as long as I’ve known him.” And on more than one occasion he’d physically threatened me over it. Sig was the only thing that had kept me alive all this time, and now that Juan Carlos knew the truth, I wasn’t sure Sig could still protect me.
“Regardless of what he felt, I’m sure you can understand why he and Arturo have bonded so quickly.”
At least Sig seemed to believe me about Arturo, even if no one else would.
Then lightning struck. There was someone else the elders would believe, no matter what they felt about me. I’d thought Monica might be a great character witness in my own case, but she could do me one better.
“Monica could test Arturo’s blood,” I blurted. “She would know right away if he was a traitor.”
Sig’s smile broadened, though he didn’t seem at all surprised by my ingenious plan. “My dear. For a smart girl, you are exceedingly slow on the uptake some days.”
“Calling her smart is generous,” Holden muttered, but I waved him off, ignoring the insult.
“You thought the same thing?”
“Of course. Why else would I invite that insufferable bore to come here? I find the West Coast Tribunal to be exhausting and snobbish at the best of times. They are all far too young to wield the power they do, and don’t get me started on having siblings seated next to each other.” He rolled his eyes and sighed. “What a mess.”
“Does Arturo know he’s meant to go before Monica?”
“I tend to believe visits with the seer are best left as a surprise.”
There was a profound logic in this, since no one in their right mind would want to spend time with Monica if they didn’t have to. I used to think Sig was the most frightening vampire I’d ever met, but that was before spending ten minutes alone with Monica. She might have been permanently trapped in the body of a cute little girl, but it wasn’t fooling anyone. Her blind eyes saw everything, and I couldn’t imagine a person alive or dead who wanted their past laid bare by her.
“You have a plan, then?” Holden asked.
“In all the time you’ve known me, Mr. Chancery, have you ever found me to be unprepared?”
“No.”
“Two thousand years is an awfully long time to come up with contingency plans.”
“So what do you have in mind?” I asked warily.
“We may want to invite your friends downstairs. You’re going to be here awhile longer than you anticipated.”
Chapter Eighteen
“No. Nope. Uh-uh.” I shook my head emphatically. “We aren’t staying. We have a city to save. Sorry.”
“You are not a superhero, my dear. The city is not yours to save, and I’m afraid for the time being the people of New York will need to continue to fend for themselves.”
“Did I say no? I’m pretty sure I said no.”
“You said no,” Holden agreed.
I pointed to him as if to say, See, he agrees. Sig was unmoved.
“Once you have appeased the council, you may go about your business however you choose to. If that means throwing yourself onto the pyre this city has become, then by all means. I will even volunteer the assistance of whichever vampires I have at my disposal to help you find and destroy these irritating necromancers.”
I sensed a but coming.
“But you have no choice in the current matter. You will stay here until the elders are satisfied, and I will not be swayed in this.”
“I can’t—”
“Don’t make me remind you I can force you to stay like I forced you to come down here. My invitation earlier was a polite suggestion compared to what I could make you do. Have you forgotten so soon?”
How could I forget what he’d done? I had barely walked away from it with what little sanity I had left. “I remember.”
“Then you will stay.”
What choice did I have? He was right. He could make me do whatever I wanted, and any free will I thought I had here was no more than an illusion. I was going to stay whether I liked it or not, and I definitely did not like it.
“Mr. Chancery, would you be kind enough to collect the rest of your group?”
“Tribunal Leader Sig?” he replied, his voice hesitant.
“Hmm?”
“We’ve made an alliance with Lucas Rain’s werewolves. They and several human police officers are expecting our return and know we’ve come here.”
“And?”
“Might I suggest we have one of the wardens deliver a message to them? So they don’t send in reinforcements when we don’t immediately return.”
“I could go myself,” I suggested. Both vampires gave me condescending glances. Nice. Really nice. “Or not.”
“Send Sutherland,” Sig declared.
“What?” I stepped closer to Sig and held both my hands up like he was a physical force I was trying to hold back. “Sutherland isn’t… He’s not… I don’t think that’s the best idea.”
“Secret, when your father worked for the West Coast council, they deemed him more than capable of doing tasks for them. When you reported back after the California debacle, didn’t you tell me he’d managed to recreate an entire Tiffany window on his own?”
“Yes.”
“Then surely he’s able to walk two blocks to a hotel and inform your friends you are alive and well and will remain so for the foreseeable future.”
Maybe I was being overprotective, but I had good reason to be. “Everything he did with the council was before his time with The Doctor.”
“Please call the man by his name. Giving titles and nicknames to things creates an unnecessary mythos around them. You’ve made this man a monster in your own mind, but he is just a man, and a dead one at that. Use his given name.”
I tried and fumbled the first time, then finally said, “Friedrich Kesteral.”
“There you go.”
“Sutherland was kept with Dr. Kesteral longer than Holden or I were. We still don’t know what was done to him because he won’t talk about it. But I felt his pain. He shared his dream with me, and I knew his fear and everything he experienced. He might have been functional before, but he’s practically a child now. I don’t think—”
“Even a child can deliver a message. And I assure you once I give him the order, there will be no difficulty.”
Sutherland was part of Sig’s bloodline the same as I was. If he told my father to cross the street clucking like a chicken the entire way, Sutherland would be compelled to do it.
Though, considering my father’s general state of mind, he was probably on the brink of clucking like a chicken most days anyway.
I nodded grimly, accepting Sig’s decision, and Holden left the chamber to go find the other three. Once I was alone with the Tribunal leader, he got to his feet and came to stand before me. I had to crane my neck to glance up at him.
“As much as I can,” he said, “I promise nothing bad will happen to you tonight.”
His kind expression was too much to bear, and I had to look away. “You can’t make that promise.”
He placed his fingers under my chin and lifted my face so I had to meet his gaze. His ice-blue eyes were narrowed seriously, and he’d brushed his pale blond hair off his face so there was nothing to distract me from all the razor-sharp lines of his cheek and jawbones. A Greek sculptor could not have imagined a man more finely constructed than Sig.
He was almost old enough he could have posed for them.
“Do not confuse my threats for apathy. You are one of the most precious, most dear
things in the world to me. I have protected you for the eight years I have known you, and you’ve never made things easy for me.”
“It’s not like I try to find trouble.”
“You do, though. A day without conflict for you would be impossible to imagine.”
“I’ve imagined it lots of times.”
“Perhaps one day you’ll learn to live that way, hmm?”
“Guessing today won’t be that day.”
He shook his head and put both hands on my shoulders, his thumbs tracing the sensitive skin at my throat. I wondered if he was feeling for a pulse.
“I think we both knew a day would come when the world learned what you truly were. You weren’t careful enough about hiding the truth. Each year someone new found out. It was only a matter of time.”
“The truth didn’t bother you,” I reminded him.
“I’ve always known your worth. From the first moment I laid eyes on you, I could sense what you would become. I didn’t need Calliope’s prophecies to know that.”
“Calliope’s what?” The Oracle had said a lot of things about fate to me, and making decisions that would impact the course of my life, but this was the first anyone had told me about a prophecy.
“It’s not important.”
“Um, if there’s a prophecy about me, I’d sort of like to know what it is.”
“Ah, therein lies the rub. For how can you manifest your destiny if you know what’s to come?” He touched my cheek. “I’m afraid your future is not yours to know.”
“That seems unfair.”
“Such is life.”
Great. Calliope had told Sig—a man she despised openly for breaking her heart—what would happen to me, but neither of them was willing to tell me. That probably meant it wasn’t going to end well.
Was I surprised?
No.
The kind of life I led wasn’t one that came with old-age benefits. I’d known a long time ago the chances of me making it to my thirties, let alone retirement, were slim to none. Making it this far, considering everything I’d seen and done, was startling enough.
“I’m supposed to get married,” I sputtered, not having a better response on the tip of my tongue.