by K. F. Breene
The shape in the doorway dove to the side.
“I will save you,” came a collection of grunts from across the street. The man was fighting gravity again.
As I backed up, knowing the reflex attack was almost certainly my bad, Darius’s assistant, Moss, who I’d briefly met in Seattle and had been one of the vampires at the training the night before, reappeared in the doorway with a surly expression, a ruined suit jacket, and a burned arm beneath. How bad the wound was, I couldn’t say because of the shadows draping him, but it was more than a skim.
“Miss Bristol,” he said in a less-than-enthusiastic voice. “How good of you to come. Please, come in.”
The man across the street was braced on his forearms, staring my way. “Isn’t that place haunted?” he asked, apparently to himself.
Inside, gorgeous furniture graced the well-appointed and spacious rooms. Fresh flowers sweetened the air and oil paintings hung on freshly painted walls.
“Wow,” I said, taking it all in. Callie and Dizzy’s house was really nice, but this took luxury to a whole new level.
Moss led the way up a winding staircase with strings of flowers draping down from the banister.
“Are those flowers magic, or…?”
Moss didn’t so much as glance to the side. “We are not in the Realm.”
“Is that a no, or…?”
“Those are real flowers.”
“Right.” I nodded, breathing in their fragrance. “Is it to mask the smell of death in here, or…?”
This time he did glance back at me. With a frown.
“I mean, you know”—I waved my finger at him and then around—“vampires. You smell good with cologne, but in your other form… Does that form smell as swampy as it looks, by the way? I’m usually too caught up in the moment to notice.”
At the second-story landing, Moss paused and turned to me, his face expressionless in the low light.
“Is this a taboo subject?” I asked, suddenly unsure. “It probably is, isn’t it? Sorry.”
“This way.”
I wasn’t sure I’d ever seen a vampire stiffen, despite the whole “being dead” mythos, but Moss came awfully close.
“Do you get the flowers delivered fresh every day?” I couldn’t let go of the flower situation. Why Darius, or whoever arranged it, wanted them draped on the banisters, I didn’t know. Vases would do just fine for overall appeal, and the flowers wouldn’t die nearly as fast. What a waste of money and plant life. “Oh!” I snapped, the light bulb clicking on. “The flowers lost their lives, just like you, but they’re still beautiful. It’s symbolic, right?”
Without a word, Moss stopped in front of a pair of double doors. He stared down at me with a clenched jaw and his magic, seething, pulsed around us.
“Get in,” he said, not moving in any way to indicate the door beside us.
“Sure. Yup.” Hunching reflexively under that hard, dangerous stare, I scurried into a formal dining room.
A huge table occupied the middle of the room, surrounded by four chairs, one at the head of the table, and the others close by down the sides. Each place setting held my worst nightmare: multiple fine china plates stacked on top of each other ending in a bowl, forks and spoons for days, two knives, and three crystal glasses in front. A crystal chandelier hung in the middle of the table, bedecked with electric candles. Big, draped curtains closed off the windows, blocking out all light, and a large cream rug stretched beneath all of this.
“What a nightmare,” I murmured.
Heavy footsteps sounded just outside the door, like someone was standing in one place and stomping their feet rhythmically. After a short pause, Moss followed me into the room, his body tense. His suit coat had been changed and his injured arm hung down by his side, the hand clenched.
“Miss Bristol,” he said. “Please. Shall we sit?”
“Um, yup. Sure.” I stepped backward, and he paused, eyeing me. I kept my hands down to ease his mind. “There’s no magic around me. I mean, I haven’t collected any of it…at present. There’s magic around us all the time. You, for example, count as magic.” His blank stare was off-putting. “What I mean is, I won’t accidentally zap you.” I figured I should cover my bases so I didn’t turn into a liar. “At present.”
“Yes. Fine.” He held out his hand, gesturing toward the table. “Would you like to sit down?”
“Sure, yup.” I took another step back to allow him plenty of room to cross in front of me—he didn’t seem nervous per se, but he didn’t seem at ease, either—and waited patiently.
His brow furrowed.
“Sorry, am I supposed to be doing something?” I asked.
“Pardon me. I wondered why you were backing away. Would you prefer drinks in the lounge, first?”
“You have a lounge? No, this is fine. I don’t even really know what a lounge is, to be honest. Where, uh…do you want me?”
“Oh. Of course.” He pulled out the chair at the head of the table.
“Right.” I unslung my small handbag from over my shoulder and briefly thought about looping it over the back of the chair. Realizing it would look gauche in this fine establishment, I quickly dropped it by my feet so no one would notice it. I considered taking the napkin off the table and draping it in my lap, but that seemed a little premature, given there was no one else at the table.
Moss took the seat to my left, one of the two chairs on that side. Darius and Marie entered a moment later, each looking beautiful and glamorous and dressed to the nines.
I smoothed my dress over my lap, wishing I could sink back into my chair. I really should’ve bought a new dress. Or even borrowed one of Veronica’s.
“Miss Bristol,” Darius said with an earth-shattering smile. The man was a looker, no two ways about it. When he was in this form, of course. The other form would crack glass. “How has your evening been?”
“Great. Going well.” I bobbed my head and crossed my ankles, as if that would somehow bring me on par with these gorgeous folks.
Moss stood as the others approached, moving a seat farther away from me. He was probably all too happy to do so.
“You remember Miss Beauchene, of course.” Darius held out the newly vacated chair for Marie.
“Of course, yes. Hi.” I gave her a little wave.
“It seems Mr. LaRay startled you earlier.” Darius took the empty seat on my other side.
Another silent cue must’ve gone out—as if by bat sonar—because a lovely woman wearing a black wraparound dress and carrying a bottle of wine entered the room with a smooth glide. A faint tickle of her magic crawled across my skin like a cloud of insects, hinting of hunger and hunting, now a familiar warning.
I stiffened, watching her closely. After the failed training session, Reagan had given me some markers on how to tell a vampire’s age, going over the level of danger for each. Newbies, like the one I had killed, were totally unpredictable and wild. They’d lose themselves to bloodlust at the drop of a hat, and even though they weren’t incredibly strong or fast for vampires, they were plenty stronger and faster than me. But while the young ones were unpredictable, the elders—calculated, strategic, and wickedly strong and fast—were more dangerous in the long term. The other vamps ranked in the middle somewhere on a sliding scale according to age.
This woman’s gait, though smooth, had little hiccups that wouldn’t seem out of place for a human, something I’d never noticed with the other three vampires in the room. Her jaw clenched and unclenched, and her nostrils flared more than once. Her hand shook just a bit when she poured my wine, and her fingers bent in a flexed sort of way, like they were ready to spring claws.
Given that she did retain some level of smoothness, it was clear the struggle wasn’t too difficult for her. New, but not incredibly so.
I relaxed silently, only then realizing the rest of the vampires were watching me placidly. Probably waiting for me to answer a question I’d been too distracted to hear.
“Sorry, what?” I
said.
“Not at all,” Darius answered politely, his posture all ease. “Please, take your time.”
“Oh, I was just… Um.” Would it be rude to say I was sussing out the danger? Probably. Although everything I did would probably be deemed rude in this highbrow setup.
“You were just taking in your surroundings.” Darius smiled in a disarming sort of way. It didn’t disarm anything. “On that topic, I noted your reaction to Mr. LaRay earlier this evening.”
“Right, yes. Yeah, sorry about that. He startled me.”
“Yes, so I gathered. And you reacted quickly and immediately. As you did with Clyde in the Edgewater.”
The Edgewater was a plush hotel in Seattle owned by Darius’s child—someone he’d made into a vampire. Someone I’d zapped a couple of times on impulse. I’d stayed there a few nights with some guy I didn’t want to keep thinking about.
“Yes.” I leaned back so the waitress could drape my napkin into my lap.
“You struggled to react to the various bombardments last night. Why is that, do you think?”
I barely stopped myself from nervously dabbing my forehead with the napkin. “If I knew the answer to that, I probably wouldn’t be sitting at this huge table with vampires.”
Speaking of the huge table…
“Where are all the other chairs?”
“I had them removed,” Darius said, not at all impatient or cross that I had changed the subject instead of answering his question. “Reagan doesn’t enjoy extra chairs around the table. You two are so similar, I thought you might have a similar issue.”
“Us? Similar?” I frowned at him. “We’re complete opposites.”
“I think Darius is confusing life with battle,” Marie said. “You and Reagan are similar in battle. Which is why we are perplexed that the training session didn’t go well. You froze up. Why?”
It seemed I wouldn’t be wiggling out of that topic of conversation.
I sipped my wine, thinking back to the night before. “My mind just went blank. I was trying to remember all the spells I’ve learned, and nothing would come.”
“Yet, when you are not thinking at all, spells come easily, as Mr. LaRay can attest,” Darius said.
The waitress and a couple of helpers wheeled in a tray before visiting each place setting and moving the plates around. My small plate received a piece of bread and my bowl was filled with soup. She paused next to Darius and the helpers waited by their tray.
“Would it make you more comfortable if we ate?” Darius asked me as if it were a normal question. Why else would someone invite guests over for a midnight dinner if not to actually eat dinner?
“I don’t mind,” I said, locating the large soup spoon and picking it up gingerly.
“She feels awkward. We would do best to eat,” Marie said.
“I agree.” Darius gave a little wave, and the helpers sprang into action, arranging the rest of the plates like they had mine.
“Do vampires not generally eat?” I asked. There were plenty of other things to do besides sharing a meal in close quarters. Like sitting idly with a cup of tea. In public.
“Not generally, no.” Darius took up his soup spoon. “It makes us hungry for our true sustenance, which is not always on hand.”
I wrinkled my nose, knowing he meant blood. His comment about hunger made the memory of the newbie flash through my mind. Almost immediately, a wave of goosebumps covered my body and magic rose around me, ready for action.
Marie lifted the spoon to her lips, and without warning, the magic started to churn, wild and feral.
10
“Don’t eat,” I said, my voice rough and my control wobbly. Their magic was swirling around me. If their bloodlust rose, I didn’t trust myself not to reach for my magic cloud on impulse.
All three vampires paused and, almost as one, slowly lowered their spoons. The helpers drifted back in and whisked the bowls away.
I sat back, my appetite gone and the magic still churning around me. I locked my fingers together so I wouldn’t do anything crazy.
A flick of Darius’s eyes and my bowl was cleared too, followed by my place setting. The man could read people better than anyone else I’d ever met. Secrets would not be easy to keep around this crew.
“You have no control, is that it?” Darius asked, studying me.
“Absolutely none, no. Not when I’m in the thick of things. I don’t think about what I’m doing at all, I just do.”
“Yet in the training session, you could not do at all.”
“She countered the spells with ease,” Moss said. “Her defense wasn’t lacking—it was her offense.”
Darius sat back. “Yes, of course.” He crossed his arms over his chest and tapped a finger against his chin. “Interesting.”
“For the most part, she didn’t attack first in the Guild compound either,” Marie said. “She retaliated.”
“Watch her hands,” Moss murmured. They were clasped tightly on the table, the better for me to avoid accidentally killing someone.
Darius dropped his own hands to his lap. “I am sorely tempted to rush you and see what would happen.”
A thrill of fear ran through me; I knew how fast he could move and how long his claws could get. My hands shook.
“But I must be honest: I am somewhat worried about what you would do.” He continued to study me, and strangely, the others weren’t looking at me at all. “You have a fantastic imagination when it comes to spell work.”
“I don’t know about fantastic, but it’s certainly overactive.” I swallowed past the lump in my throat and resisted the urge to wipe away the moisture beading on my forehead. I couldn’t give my hands the opportunity to work magic without my permission.
“Reagan says that we should focus on that. On your creativity. Based on what I have seen, I would agree, but you have to learn some sort of control. As you are, you are dangerous.”
My temperamental third eye was screaming at me to get up, nice and slow, and get my butt out of that house as fast as possible. The pressure in the room seemed to be increasing. Rough and putrid magic brushed against me. The feeling of insatiable hunger scraped along my spine. Twisted in my gut.
“That’s been the case since I first showed up at that church and met Reagan and the Bankses,” I said, and licked my lips nervously. “Say, by the way, how often do you guys feed?”
“The older a vampire gets, the less he must feed,” Darius said, as calm as a summer’s breeze. He was probably lucky he couldn’t see the turbulent magic rolling and shifting above him. “I am perfectly satisfied, I can assure you. Everyone in this room is. I ensured that would be the case before arranging this meeting with you.”
Everyone in this room was perfectly satisfied.
Why had he needed to clarify the location?
“I would like to get you doing as many spells as possible in Reagan’s warehouse,” Darius said, and a soft scrape sounded from outside the room. “Over and over. I want them in your muscle memory. That will take the thinking out of the equation. I also want you exposed to dangerous or uncomfortable situations as much as possible. You need to spend some time living in fear to get used to what it does to you. Only when you understand your reactions can you begin to control them. Lastly, you need a teacher that understands you. That knows how to work with you.”
A strange sort of panting invaded the tranquility of the dining room. It sounded like a dog was sitting in the hot summer sun just outside the door.
“You need me alive, right?” I said, having a hard time focusing on what he was saying. My mind went back to Emery telling me about vampires when we were in Seattle. You should always keep your wits when dealing with a vampire. They are smart and cunning. If a vampire can get one over on you, or use you, or…something you probably wouldn’t even think of, they will. Without hesitation. They have no loyalty.
“Yes, about what happened last night,” Darius started. “I had not intended to put you at such risk—”
I held my hand up to stop him. Callie had told me I held the power, and it was time to exert it. “Answer my question.”
Something sparked in his eyes. His pause was slight, but enough to give away his pivot. “I do need you alive, yes. But I will not allow the enemy to use you.”
The air thickened and my temperamental third eye started doing a jig, trying to get me moving. “You need me alive as long as I’m not a threat to you.”
“Just so.”
Which meant he’d kill me if the Guild successfully captured me.
I exhaled slowly, trying to calm my rapidly beating heart.
With everything I had, I wished Emery were with me. He would know how to navigate this situation.
“Then I guess we know where we stand.” My throat clearing didn’t cover the sound of a soft scratch outside of the door, as though a claw had gently slid down the wall.
Darius’s words came back to me.
You need to spend some time living in fear to get used to what it does to you…
“What is outside that door?” I asked, my knuckles white from gripping my hands together.
“That took much too long,” Marie murmured, and Darius and Moss both slightly nodded.
“I think it wise for you to leave the safety of the Bankses’ house,” Darius said, ignoring my question. “You are welcome to stay here, if you would like. Reagan has opened her home as well. Or, if you’d prefer—”
I held my hand up. “What is outside that door?”
“—I can rent something for you in the area. I would advise your friend to stay put. A non-magical person has no business in your life at the moment. It would likely be incredibly dangerous for her, and she has been through enough magical drama.”
Light footfalls passed the room, like something was running. Another set of footfalls, this time with nails softly clattering on the wood floor, shifted closer to the door.
“You need to be pushed, Miss Bristol,” Darius said. “Known Guild members have been seen in this area. My people are keeping an eye out. The shifters are on alert, as are the local mages and witches. But the Guild is notorious for their covert tactics. I expect to see some of the local mages shift their allegiance. That will lead to spying. People who have acted as friends may help trap you. You must be ready before that.” He paused for a moment. “To answer your question, you have finally clued in to the five brand-new vampires waiting outside of this room. I will not let them kill you, but I will let them try. Your training has begun.”