The Vampire’s Revelations: Book 12 of the Fatal Allure Series

by Woods, Martha

  “You’ve trusted me with a lot of things as well, this is just the least that I can do to pay you back for that. Now go on, too many things for you to do to worry about me.”

  He was right about that, and with one last wave and a blown kiss I was out the door and heading down to the parking lot, thoughts already racing about the best way to make sure that everyone would be taken care of and that all danger would be kept to a bare minimum. A very tall order when you were talking about something rapidly approaching a war, but maybe if I had someone like Anthony to tell me how everyone was feeling and what their thoughts were down to the smallest degree I could more properly prepare. After all, I wasn’t the only one taking a risk here, the shifters, the vampires, the werewolves, everyone who was agreeing to help was potentially putting themselves in the sight lines of a truly fearsome and, dare I say it, utterly insane enemy.

  With that in mind, I think I know who would be a good person to call up to learn about The Game.

  “Your office looks very tacky, I’m so happy that it matches the person who sits inside of it.”

  “Hello Alexis,” I said, looking her up and down, “You can really tell that you own a strip club, how nice of you to sub for one of your girls on discount day.”

  Whereas only a few months ago that jab would have been treated with revulsion and anger as a best case scenario, now her only reaction was to grin and take her seat in front of my desk. It wasn’t the most soothing of friendships, after everything it still felt strange to call it a friendship at all, but we were building something slowly at least.

  “So, why have you called me all the way up here? As much as I wish it was so, I doubt it was to give you some advice on how to dress. Unless you figured out this wasn’t for you and wanted to ask me for a job.”

  “Very cute,” I said, leaning back in my chair and letting the tension fall away from my limbs, “We can get to that in a minute, but for now… how’s Tabitha?”

  “Tabitha? She’s doing well, I’m teaching her quite a few things and she’s teaching me in turn. She’s a very good student.”

  “I’ll bet,” I chuckled, waggling my eyebrows, “She seems very devoted.”

  “Ugh, don’t be vulgar, not all of us are as insatiable as you seem to be.”

  “Maybe not, but you’re not exactly a normal human being are you?”

  Looking up at me with a crooked grin, she allowed herself one huff of a laugh before shrugging and falling back into her seat. “Perhaps, perhaps…”

  “What I wanted to talk to you about though…” It wasn’t something bad that I was asking for, just a small favor between two former rivals turned friends. Which meant that it was something bigger to worry about, favors from friends always mean so much more than you always say that they do, purely because of the responsibility from who you’re asking. But we’re both adults, she can let me down easy if need be. “Would you be willing to tell me what the rest of the city is thinking when you learn something?”

  It took her a second to process what I was asking, and when she worked it out she almost laughed. “You… want me to be a spy for you? I’m not sure where you got the idea that was something that I would be adept at.”

  “Not just you, you’ve got a whole club of men and women whose job it is to know what people are thinking, and that’s not even getting into the witches that are in contact with you throughout the rest of the city. I just thought, given everything that’s happening lately, it would be best for all of us to be informed.”

  “So let me just get this all clear,” She said, holding up a hand lazily and inspecting her nails, “You want me to get my workers to slip their metaphorical hands into my customers metaphorical pockets to pull out a metaphorical slip of paper that will tell us all our metaphorical enemy’s plans? And the rest of the witches that are in my contact are supposed to slip through the city with all the subtlety of smoke and pick up any bits of conversation that they can? Am I getting that right?”

  “You make it sound so much more flowery but… yes, that was the gist of it.”

  “And you do know that confidentiality is one of my key principals in my business? I can’t just go around telling everyone my customer’s business, that’s a massive breach of trust.”

  “I’m not asking you to tell me everything that they say in the privacy of those rooms, and I don’t expect your workers to tell you every single detail either. But you pass around stories and warnings of rowdy patrons don’t you? You call in the bouncers to either eject or make an example of them, right?”

  Alexis nodded, I think she saw where I was going with this.

  “Well there you go, that’s all that I’m interested in. I don’t want to know that some random hunter is having trouble with his wife, or that a werewolf and a vampire had a fight over drinks, I want to know about the real worrying stories and details, the kind that would get someone ejected from one of your clubs in the first place. Not a breach of privacy more… a passing of a security recommendation.”

  She sighed into her hand, shaking her hand with a mixture of fondness and irritation. “I have to say that you’ve definitely started to think more than you used to, thank god for that. Yes that is something that wouldn’t breach my code of ethics, and yes, it is something that I could easily pass on to my workers in the future. But you need to understand how fragile something like this is, obviously my human patrons have no idea of what kind of club it really is, but since the alliance took off my paranormal guests have skyrocketed, and every single one of them knows exactly what kind of men and women work there. If you slip up and make one of these secrets known… they’re not going to have to think very hard about who they may have slipped it to.”

  “I understand, and believe me, I will be incredibly careful not to betray your trust or to let anything slip that shouldn’t be. Hopefully this is something that will never have to be used, hopefully our alliance will always be strong and if the worst happens we can all band together to stop it. But individuals may always decide that they aren’t happy with how things are being run or who is being allowed into the city, and that is something that we shouldn’t be caught off guard by, don’t you think?”

  Slowly, she nodded her head, arching her brow in what I could only assume was a show of being impressed, but it was always hard to tell her true intentions behind any of her actions. “Alright, I’ll get the idea across to everyone, now that I’m sure you’ve actually thought this through properly and you’re not just trying to… clumsily emulate being an all seeing overlord.”

  “Just because I’m friends with Joseph doesn’t mean that I see the world the same way that he does, no fault to him at all. I just don’t think I can ever be that ruthless, trying to learn a couple of secrets is about as far as I can see myself going.”

  “For now,” Alexis said, “For now, you have no idea the kinds of things that you might have to do to protect everyone. Have you even killed anyone yet? And I don’t mean someone dying through your actions, I mean have you made the conscious decision to kill someone and followed through on it?”

  My silence was as good enough an answer for her as she could get, but rather than mock her expression softened considerably. “You should think about it, try to prepare yourself for when it eventually happens, because eventually, with everyone that you see fit to try and save, it’s going to happen.”

  It was quite an unwelcome thought, but as much as I wanted to deny it, it was a necessary one. I couldn’t just coast by expecting everyone to be fine with what I did or for every situation to be settled peacefully. Sooner or later one of these occasions was going to go badly, and I wouldn’t have someone like Vincent or Damon by my side who were much more comfortable with the act of killing. Sooner or later I was going to have to make the decision on my own to shed some blood, and if I didn’t make the decision myself it was going to be made for me. Hopefully it would just be my life on the line when that time came, I don’t want anyone else to potentially be hurt because of whate
ver it is I decide to do on that day.

  “Don’t look so down,” She said, barely stopping herself from rolling her eyes at the lost look on my face, “Once you do it the first time it’s hardly something that even registers. It’s not something that’s on my top ten favorite activities by any means, but when I think about the people that I’m protecting and the things that I’m trying to stand for the decision to take the life of some nameless thug that sees fit to lay claim to everything that I’ve worked for, it’s hardly a decision at all. You’ll see that, someday, but for now there’s no reason to stress yourself about it so much. If it happens, it happens, just go with it.”

  “I kind of signed an oath to uphold the law,” I said, “It’s kind of having a hard time gelling with me.”

  “Oh please, half the things you were doing on your own time were illegal when you were still working there, and even then about ninety percent of your coworkers were completely corrupt. I think it’s fairly safe to say that no one actually cares about that oath aside from when they want to say that they’re the good guy.” She leaned forward, plucking one of the chocolates from the bowl on my desk and popping it into her mouth. “Don’t be a hypocrite like all the rest of them, make your own decisions for your own reasons and handle the consequences like an adult. That will make you a leader worth following more than anything else.”

  She had a point when it came to the oath, hell the person who I had sworn it in front of for the first time was rotting in a jail cell for killing an innocent lab tech and conspiring to kill a lot more, at least according to the reports. I don’t think I would ever forgive Rick for what he did, as much as part of me was desperate to do, and a large part of that is due to the face that he was just… such a hypocrite. He expected everyone else to hold themselves back from things that he jumped into head first with no sense of control, who thought that paranormals were monsters only capable of death and destruction when he allied himself with a group that could be called terrorists and murderers on the best of days. I didn’t ever want to become something like that, a shell of my former self who so desperately clung to the glory days that I would grab onto anything that could give me even the slightest hint of control that I’d lost so long ago.

  The first step to that I suppose was accepting that sometimes things didn’t work out the way that you wanted them to, there was a reason that I’d carried a gun all those years. Just because I never wanted to use it and would use all of my power to make sure that a situation could de-escalate before ever needing to use it, I had to train myself to know that some situations can’t be solved with words, sometimes people are going to come for you and to not be prepared for that eventually in a way makes you just as responsible for what happens as they are for hurting you. Not if you were an average citizen on the street, but if you were constantly courting danger and throwing yourself into the most dangerous of situations with some of the vilest criminals that the city could produce, then needing to be prepared to use violence if need be was just the asking price of admission.

  In a way, my powers and the responsibilities that I had now were very similar to that gun that I still have sitting in my desk drawer, just as crucial to keep in the holster for as long as I can, but if I ever need to take it out I need to make sure that I am trained enough and fast enough to be able to use it without putting myself or anyone innocent in danger. To just push everything to the side and hope for the best wasn’t just hopelessly naive, it was wildly irresponsible.

  “I’ll take it under advisement,” I said to Alexis, taking one of the chocolates for myself and all but falling limp in my chair, “God… I miss not having any responsibilities.”

  “Weren’t you a criminal investigator?”

  “Yea, but those were people responsibilities. As bad as some of the crimes were, the times where I was chasing after someone whose body count was more than five were very few. Now it seems like every two weeks there’s someone with a new problem, some new vendetta, who has a legion of people behind them all ready and willing to spill blood for whatever reason it was that they decided was right.” I threw my head back, letting the groan that had been tickling at the back of my throat free, “I miss just having to go after murderers who just wanted what was inside a cash register and went a little too far. Things were so much simpler then.”

  “I’ll be sure to tell every mass murderer that we come up against from now on that they’re greatly inconveniencing you, that will make them stop whatever it is that they’re doing.” Rising from her seat, Alexis walked over to my office window and stared down at the city below us. “It’s incredible to think that all of this… it’s hiding so many like us. Even now that we are revealing ourselves to each other, it’s so easy to forget that so many of us exist. Like someone could snap their fingers tomorrow and we would all just vanish without a trace.”

  “Well we’re all here now, and while I have a say none of us are going anywhere.” I joined her at the window, feeling like if I looked closely enough I would be able to see all of the countless paranormals contained within our city. “You spent so long hiding, from people, from paranormals, always certain that if you poked your head up too far it would get cut off. If we can… I want to change that. I want to make this city, this world, better for people like you and me. I want to open up our arms and welcome those who want to be part of us, and I want to defend them as hard as we would defend ourselves. I don’t know if that’s possible, I don’t know if we’re just going to fail but… I want to try.”

  “Then that’s what matters,” She said, placing her hand against the glass for a brief moment before taking it back, “That’s what no one ever does, and what needs to happen for change to occur. People need to try.”

  “Are you going to be alright to get back, I can always drive you.”

  “No, I’ll be fine, really.” Alexis and I had spent a few more hours talking, going over potential plans and strategies for how to actually take advantage of the opportunity we had with her network of I suppose what we could call spies. Over time she’d definitely started to warm up to the idea, maybe even started to get excited in that strange, subtle way that only she seemed to get. The consequences for not upholding my side of the bargain would be understandably dire, but I had a feeling that as long as we all did what we were supposed to do everything would more or less work out.

  Now the most pressing problem that I was finding was making sure that she got home safely to make all of this actually happen.

  “My car is right over there, and I’m going to be driving anyway, just let me drive you.”

  “Amy… are you worried about me?” She asked with a smirk, “Or are you just worried about me getting to everyone to tell them what we spoke about?”

  Damn, caught red handed. “...Both?”

  “Both. Ok, I appreciate honesty,” She sighed, “Fine, but just drive me straight there, no delays, no detours.”

  “Of course,” I laughed, “We’re not going on a date, I want you to get back to everyone as soon as possible too.”

  Bundling herself into the passenger seat of my car with no small amount of grumbling, Alexis folded her arms and tried to keep some of the warmth in her body from leaching out into the cold air. It was a cold, cold day, one of many that had come with the season, and though it would have been easy for a witch of her caliber to summon a flame or some kind of heat source I appreciated her refraining from doing so within the confines of my car. Just because I was working for paranormals with no small fortune between them didn’t mean that I wasn’t still insured, and I’m pretty sure it wouldn’t cover fire damage like that.

  “Just a short drive, there and back, you’ll be right on track in no time.” I tried to convince myself that I wasn’t going to stick my nose into anything, that all I was going to do was drop her off and go about the rest of my day exactly like I’d planned, but I think by now we all know exactly what kind of things I tended to do in the heat of the moment. I’d be lucky if I could walk to the
coffee shop without finding a group of mystical homeless people to go on a journey with.

  “I appreciate you wanting to make sure that I’m comfortable in here by myself,” Alexis said through the window, “Could you hurry up and get in here? It’s freezing today.”

  “I’m coming, I’m coming…” I sat myself down in the driver’s seat, shutting the door behind me with one last burst of cold air. The car rumbled to life, the light coating of frost on the windshield starting to fall away with each swipe of the wipers and the growing heat of the engine below, both of us eager to get our short trip underway so that we could finally get something productive done with our plan. I wasn’t quite sure of all the small details, Alexis was the one who had more of an idea of that for obvious reasons, but I still had some advice and guidelines that I thought may be useful to everyone concerned.

  If we were going to have our people spying on other people throughout the city, we had to be aware of what kind of city this actually was, and after years of working through some of its worst crimes and prosecuting some of the worst monsters I had ever had the displeasure of coming across, so bad that they made some violent paranormals seem positively tame by comparison, I felt like I had a pretty good idea of the dangers that were inherent when you spied on people like this.

  Alexis was no stranger to that danger either, considering the exact circumstances behind our meeting in the first place. So many of her girls, so many innocent young women butchered by a cruel monster who had wanted nothing but to cause as much pain and anguish as he could in exchange for power. The kind of grub who would willingly slaughter his own mother if it meant that he could have even one single scrap of influence more, the kind that had no regard for anyone except himself and what his goals were. We had both come up against that and we were in no way eager to repeat the process, but if we did we had damn well better have a plan to do something about it. I wasn’t going to be the one to tell her that another one of her girls had been found butchered and on display, and I didn’t want to be the one whose fault it was.