by Kate Martin
Indira set her cold eyes on me again. “They killed your parents. Does that mean nothing to you?”
The heat in her voice told me it meant something to her. “Of course it does. You think I can live in that house and not think constantly about my father? I do. I–” I stopped. Thinking about the exact words she had used. “Parents?”
“Yes. Parents. Your father, and your mother.”
The icy feeling on my neck stopped slithering around and froze solid. “My mother was a good will ambassador, a charity worker. She was killed by extremists in South America while bringing medicine to children.”
“Your mother,” Indira said, stalking towards me once again, “was a Hunter by blood. And though she left the Society, she was my friend. And while she was bringing medicine to poor children a group of vampires targeted her and everyone she had helped. Vampires killed your mother, not human terrorists.”
The world wavered, bowing in and out and causing me to stumble for balance when the floor threatened to give way beneath me. I crashed back into something solid and cold; something that smelled like lightning.
Solo wrapped an arm around me, holding me upright. “Kass,” he whispered into my ear, “are you all right?”
I snapped myself out of my own shock and pulled away from him, aiming for the door. “That’s a lie.”
“It is no lie,” Indira said. “Vampires have taken everything from you. Help us.”
“Help you? You tell me something like that, with no warning, no gentle lead-in, and you think I want to help you? Stay away from me.”
“We have done nothing but tell you the truth.”
“Which you only told me in an attempt to manipulate me to your advantage. Would you have told me otherwise? No. I’m done here. At least the vampires don’t lie to me.” I grabbed the door and threw it open, remembering only at the last moment that I needed to curb my strength. My feet hit the tiled hall floor, ending an echo through the hotel that seemed to shake loose the tears in my eyes.
I didn’t head back towards the ballroom. I couldn’t possibly face anyone at that moment. I had just about reached the huge staircase when the scent of lightning caught up to me.
“Kassandra!” he called after me.
“Leave me alone.” I checked for any possible witnesses, and upon seeing none, sped up.
Solo went faster. He appeared on the first landing right in front of my nose. I pulled to an awkward stop, sliding sideways so as to avoid him, and crashed into a decorative crystal lamp. The tear-drop shaped crystals scattered over the floor.
I cursed, not caring who heard. My grandmother would have had a heart attack.
“Kass, just stop. Listen to me.”
“No. You listen to me.” I kicked away the crystals that rolled under my feet, threatening my balance. “I have had it with people wanting things from me. Everybody wants something. The General, Cade, Aurelia; they all want me to do things I can’t do. The last thing I need is you and your twisted family wanting something too. I am not an international spy, I am not a double agent and I will not learn how to be one.”
Solo put his hands up in surrender, or defense. Neither would really spare him. “Okay. All right. I get it. I won’t pressure you. But please, let me explain something.”
“What?” I wanted him gone. I wanted to be alone. I felt like tearing the next thing I saw to pieces with my bare hands, and at that moment, he seemed a good candidate.
“I’m sorry. Okay? I apologize. I should have warned you about them. And they shouldn’t have told you about your mother like that.”
“I don’t believe that, by the way. My mother was not a Hunter.”
“She was. I swear.”
I kicked up one of the little crystals from the floor, caught it, and flung it straight at his face. He deflected it at the very last instant. “Say one more thing about her and I will kill you. She is not up for discussion.”
“Fine.” He continued to keep his hands up, skirting around me like some kind of raging wild animal. “You’ve got it. Can we go somewhere and talk before someone sees us?”
“I’m not going anywhere with you.”
“At least go down this hall here, around the corner.” He gestured to the empty corridor, slowly taking a few steps in that direction.
I knew he wouldn’t leave me alone, not until he got to say his piece. I kicked the closest crystals at him, hitting his shins, then moved in the direction he had prescribed. Wisely swallowing whatever curses he had to say himself, he followed me.
Once we were out of earshot of the main lobby of the hotel, and far from any occupied rooms, I turned on him and waited.
He took a deep breath before beginning. “All they want is to give you the chance to choose sides.”
“I don’t think that’s it at all. You may have gained their trust somehow, but you were one of them. I am not.”
“You’re family. That counts.”
“Bite me. I want nothing to do with your family.”
“How can you say that? How can you take sides with the creatures that slaughtered both your parents?”
“You’re a creature too. And so am I, have you forgotten that? What happens when the Hunters find out what I am? What happens then? Will they bleed me dry, or burn me to ashes?”
“You could have the same chance they’ve given me.”
“Doubtful. I’ve already dealt with my father’s death. I know who did it, and it wasn’t anyone in that house with me. And I highly doubt any of them killed my mother. I’m not stupid. Some vampires are complete monsters and you and your Society can kill them all you want. But there are others who are good and who are trying to help. Those are the ones I live with, so you can forget about my cooperation.”
“But that’s my point. Kass, I have Fillip’s trust. He listens to me, and he ranks high in the Society. If you help me, we can reestablish communication between the Society and the Alliance.”
“No. I can’t trust them.”
“You don’t know them.”
“Exactly. And besides, you don’t even like vampires. You hate them. So why would you want to help make nice with the Society and the Alliance?”
His mouth twisted into a crooked line, much like he had eaten something bitter.
“That’s what I thought. Stop trying to play me.”
“Kass.” He reached for me.
I grabbed him first. With a quick tug I pulled him towards me, then shoved him down and away, releasing him at the last instant so he would fall. He crashed against the wall, cracking the old stone, and pulling down a decorative curtain.
He sat up, untangling himself from the fabric. “Dammit! What was that for?”
“You don’t get to touch me. This is all your fault. You’ve been leading me here since we first met. You’re a liar and a manipulator. If I see you again, I will kill you myself.”
“Come on, you don’t mean that.”
“Try me.” I turned and headed back down the hall, away from him.
“Kass! Kass, stop. You know me. You can trust me.”
I didn’t answer, just kept walking. I didn’t know him. I didn’t know him at all. But I knew a past him, and that was something I wasn’t quite ready to admit to myself.
He was on me in an instant. Not enough time for me to dodge effectively. We both crashed into another nearby lamp. Crystal and glass shattered all around us, clinking against the tile floor and scratching my skin. In the confusion, I managed to wrap my hand around a broken shard. When we hit the floor, Solo landing hard on top of me, I pressed the broken glass to his throat even as it cut my own hand.
“Get off me.”
“Can we talk?”
“I can scream and have all of hotel security down here in a matter of seconds.”
He shifted sideways, sitting on the floor beside me. A thin line of blood ran down his neck. “I didn’t mean for that to happen. You pack a hard reflex there.”
I sat up. “I’m trained by the best.”
<
br /> “Are you hurt?”
“It’s nothing.” I chucked the shard of glass to the side. Some of my anger had leaked away, but Solo was doing a really good job of pissing off all my vampire instincts.
“Let me see your hand.” He made another grab for me, but my blood made his grip slick and I pulled away easily.
“It won’t kill me.” Standing, I brushed off the bits of glass clinging to my gorgeous silk dress, checking for tears. Thankfully, I didn’t see any. Miracle of miracles. I was wrinkled though. “Don’t follow me.”
As I turned to leave, Solo lifted his hand to his mouth. The hand with my blood on it. His eyes closed for just a moment, then he was on his feet again, practically nose to nose with me. Barely a second had passed.
“You do know,” he said.
“Know what? What the hell are you doing tasting my blood?”
“I can see things when I drink the blood of vampires. The more I drink, the more I see. I saw enough in yours. You just figured it out, it’s foremost in your mind, right there for me find.”
“You talk in riddles now?”
He grinned, and looked much like the character I had likened him too. “Past lives, Kass. It all comes back to the past.”
I froze. He was one hundred and forty years old, plenty of time to remember a relatively recent past life. In detail. “Can you sense lives in others?” Did he know?
“It’s a weak ability. But my other makes up for it.”
“Good for you.” Panic began to set in. Knowing the truth on my own was bad enough. If he knew now too . . .
“You saw it, right? When you touched me before. You remembered.”
Playing dumb seemed my best option. “Remembered what?”
“Us.”
I backed away, keeping a hand out in a gesture for him to stay. “There is no us.”
“There was. There could be again. Once a Hunter, always a Hunter, Kass.”
Voices began to creep down the hall. I recognized two as Fillip and Indira. But were they coming for Solo, or for me? I looked around. Tapestries torn down, lamps broken and scattered—it looked like a small warzone. And one not caused by humans. The wall behind the tapestry had a Solo-sized dent in it.
He could be caught here. Not me. He could explain.
I ran. I ran as fast as I could possible go, sure no human eyes would be able to detect my passage. I reached the door to my suite and keyed in the number code to unlock the door. Once inside, I let the heavy door close and lock once again.
Cade arrived not two minutes later.
“Hunters,” he said, no judgment lining his voice. Just a statement of fact.
I sat on the bed, doing my best not to cry tears of anger and frustration. “I guess you heard everything, huh?” Including my apparent relationship to Solo.
“Most of it. The developments are unexpected.” He began moving around the room, running his hands along the walls, under the lampshades, across the edge of the desk. Checking for spyware, I assumed. It took a while, and in that time I managed to get myself back under control. I didn’t want to feel like a sniveling child. Once satisfied, Cade made his way to stand by my side. “You handled yourself well.”
I scoffed. “Thanks.”
“I kept out of sight. I do not believe they are aware of my presence here. But something else puzzles me.”
“What’s that?”
“You told me what you learned from your Hunter memories. They detect us by a dark aura. There have now been two vampires we know of who have stood before Hunters and gone unidentified.”
It was like being hit over the head, only with information, rather than a bat. I knew what he meant, and I knew what it implied. “Me,” I said, surprised my voice still worked, “and Rhys.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know.”
There was one more thing that bothered me. “Cade, how much do you know about my parents? I mean, did you have to research or anything before you took over?”
“We looked into your father, since we intended to work with him. Not much was found about your mother.”
“So you can’t prove or disprove what they said about her?”
“I cannot. Are you afraid your parents kept things from you?”
“No,” I lied. “Parents always hide things from their children. I was just curious. It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t change anything.”
My supposed Hunter blood didn’t matter. My mother had never lived that life, and she hadn’t offered it to me. I didn’t have to care beyond that.
I had other things to worry about.
Chapter Nineteen: Third Time’s the Charm
So now everyone knew. I had been a Hunter in a past life, and I, like Rhys, could go undetected by them. No one had any theories as to why. The only thing that had been decided, was that no one outside of our immediate family would know. The Council could not know. Even Isaac had been kept out of the loop, and Madge had been sworn to secrecy by Aurelia.
No one had approached me again in New York. My grandmother had said nothing about her illustrious guests. The only one she had asked me about was Francis, and I beat around the bush on that one. I’d decided that the second Rhys was cleared of this ridiculous murder charge, we were getting engaged and I would send my grandmother a picture of the ring. Yes, that would end any match-making on her part. Indeed it would. It certainly wouldn’t throw her into a flurry of rants and lectures on my age and lack of responsibility or anything like that. Nope, not at all.
I’m entitled to my delusions.
The next days were filled with memories and exhaustive research. Aurelia was absolutely elated that I could now detect past lives in others, and truthfully, so was I. It meant I could help. The only catch—I had to be in physical contact with the person in order to detect anything. So, I’d bounced around the house, happily tapping everyone on the shoulder and reading their past lives. Most of the family could sense their own, and could confirm what I saw. Like how Cade had once been a little girl in the hills of the Alps. That one amused me to no end. But Millie could not remember her own past lives, and so I spent a lot of time going through the long trail of experiences she’d had before her life as a Flapper, and regaled her with stories of loves and losses, dancing and children, and even her life as a slick thief. Brody liked that story the best. The idea of his sweet and honest Millie conning others made him laugh.
I had gotten pretty good at the whole process, and Aurelia and Cade had agreed to let me go out with one of them to search for more information that could free Rhys. But first—I needed to learn how to charm.
Which is why Millie had taken me into town for some shopping, and mind-altering.
“Now don’t forget,” she said, “eye contact is a must, you have to relax, and simpler is better.”
“How could I forget? You’ve reminded me at least once every five minutes since we got here,” I said with an overly sweet smile.
Millie gave me a playful shove, but I could see the amusement in her face. I was glad to be spending time with her again. I’d missed her.
“So,” I said, scanning the multitude of people milling about the local mall, “any preferences on my first target?”
“Hm.” Millie tapped her chin, searching for a suitable guinea pig. “How about that one, over there?” She gestured towards a teenage boy, knit hat pulled over his hair despite it still being warm outside, and a skateboard tucked under one arm. He leaned against the second floor rail, looking bored and impatient even as he bobbed his head to whatever music was playing through his earbuds. “See if you can get him to go inside that formalwear store and buy a tie.”
“You’re devious.”
“What can I say? I like a man in a tie.”
“I’ll be sure to tell Brody that.”
“Oh, he knows.”
And with that, I went laughing off towards the skater boy. As I got closer, I fumbled with my cell phone, making it appear as though I wasn�
��t watching where I was going. I bumped into him, sending both his board and my phone to the floor.
“Oh! I’m so sorry!” I said, reaching for both.
He popped one bud out of his ear. “Watch where you’re going, will ya?” He retrieved his board before I could, then looked up at me, his body still tense and his heart rate up. I think he planned on yelling at me further—until I smiled at him. Then his whole demeanor changed. “Oh, um, I mean, you all right?”
“Fine,” I said, shoving my phone into my pocket. “Just in a stupid hurry, I guess.”
“Meeting someone?”
“No, not really. Just here to pick up a tie. Hey, you know, you’d look really good in a tie.”
He scoffed and broke eye contact. Dammit. “Heh, no way.”
“No, really. I think it would look nice.” I needed his gaze back, so I reached out and gently touched his arm. That counted as flirting, right? I didn’t really have much experience.
Regardless, it worked. Skater boy looked back at me, and I made sure to gaze right into his green eyes. “Look nice, huh?” he said.
“Yeah.” This was it. I could do this. I just had to imagine my own will as stronger than his, as overwriting his. “You could try it out. Go in there and buy a tie. Right now.”
The sensation was a little like sinking, but at the same time like floating. I imagined his will like a collection of tiny strings that I could twist and curl into any shape I liked. Then I saw it, a tiny dilation of his pupils, and a slight glazing over of his eyes. “Yeah, okay,” he said. “No problem.” And just like that he walked past me and into the store that boasted mannequins dressed in blazers and collared sweaters.
I turned back to Millie, unsure of what to do next. She waved me back over.
“Now what?”
“Now we wait and see if he walks out of there with a tie.”
“Wait. Okay, yeah.” My fingers twitched and I couldn’t stand still as I watched the storefront, waiting. “That felt so weird,” I said, trying to distract myself. “Like I could actually go inside his head.”
“You’ll get used to it. Now stop fidgeting like a small dog wanting a bone.” Gripping my one arm, she exerted enough pressure that I stilled.