The vampyre she assumed was Dee looked up languidly from her feeding and smiled, thick blood made extra slippery from saliva trailing down her chin.
Again. Lovely.
“Reuben,” she sighed happily.
“Dee.” He nodded, giving her a slight smile hello.
What? Was he freaking kidding? There were vampyres… feeding on humans! Hello!
“Reuben…” Caia began sternly, and then stopped at the feel of Saffron’s hand wrapping around her wrist in warning.
“Caia.” Reuben turned back to her, grinning at the look of concern on her face. “This is Dee, Andreas and Charles. This is their lair. They’ve kindly allowed us the use of one of their private rooms at the back so we can get down to business.”
“By business, you-”
“Just follow,” Saffron insisted and Caia felt herself being dragged through the room, past the blood sucking, through a tiny 1980s kitchen, down another corridor and into a back bedroom that was much larger than she would have guessed. It was also empty. It also had a heart-shaped double bed in it. Oh my.
“What the Hades is going on?” She hissed as Saffron closed the door behind the three of them.
Reuben scowled at her. “Dee knows we’re here on spy stuff but she doesn’t know what… you nearly blurting it out was very intelligent, thank you.”
How dare he?!
“Me?” she huffed incredulously. “I’m mucking up ‘the mission’? You brought us into a den of iniquity! I thought you hunted rogue vampyres, not partied with them!”
He rolled his eyes at her and looked to Saffron for back up. The faerie shrugged at him. “You’ll find no help from this quarter, Reuben. You know I hate these places.”
“These places?” Caia snapped. “What is this place?”
He sighed and shrugged. “It’s not illegal, Caia. It’s a place where willing humans act as donors. They’re addicts. The act of taking someone’s blood can be quite pleasurable to a human.”
“Is that before or after they die?”
A growl erupted from the back of his throat. “They don’t die. They’re donors. They’re well taken care of.”
Caia didn’t care if they were well taken care of or if they were willing… it was just… wrong! It was like a twisted version of a crack house. An ugly thought occurred to her. “You don’t… do you?”
Reuben looked affronted by the suggestion. “No. I do not feed on humans, I never have. But this is the last place anyone would think to look for us. We’re safe here while you gather the information you need from the trace.”
Safe? Somehow she didn’t think so.
“So you trust the vampyres with the human blood decorating their teeth and gums, do you?”
With another sound of annoyance Reuben crossed the room and lowered himself onto the bed. His dark gaze blazed with command. “I trust Dee to not tell anyone we’re here. I’ve known her a long time. She does favors for me and I allow this lair to remain open for business. It’s not pretty but it’s the way of the world, little girl. So quit squalling, take this,” he thrust the piece of paper with the names of the Septum on it out to her, “Sit down, and get started.”
Disgruntled, Caia nonetheless did what he asked and settled into an armchair. Reuben and Saffron made themselves comfortable on the bed and Caia looked up to see them both drift off into sleep. It had been a pretty long drive, and while Caia slept in the back of the car, Reuben and Saffron had remained vigilant up front. They made only one pit stop, where Saffron ran into a diner to grab her and Caia a burger. They ate hungrily while Reuben drank, what she presumed was blood, out of a flask.
He was a very neat eater… drinker? Eater? No drinker. Whatever.
The silence was only penetrated by the soft sounds of their breathing, and Caia looked nervously down at the piece of paper that had gotten her kicked out of her pack. It was still hard to believe Lucien had thrown her out. She had thought there was literally nothing that could come between them now. She didn’t think there was anything she wouldn’t do for him and had thought the feeling was mutual. But he had done it to protect the pack and that she could understand, that she respected. The way he was with the pack was one of the reasons she loved him so damn much. But, and though she knew it was irrational, she was cut to the quick by him. The hurt was as deep a gash as the loss of her pack, as the loss of her friends, Marion, Sebastian. And she was afraid the hurt her mate had caused her might not be the kind of scar that disappeared after the change.
Wow. She really was on her own now. But she’d been here before and she could do this. She could do this alone.
At that, she spread open the piece of paper and began investigating the trace. To her absolute relief the first two were Midnights, one of which was a member of the Council who had propagated the idea of a witch hunt against Nikolai. The other Midnight wasn’t nearly as prominent within the Coven; however, he was equally a racist and believed in the rightness of the war. She let loose a long stream of relieved air. This was good. This was really good. No guilt for killing the bad guys, huh? She straightened up in her seat and touched the third name. Eliza Emerett. With a whoosh Caia was pulled into the girl’s trace, her essence dowsing her in floods just as Laila’s had.
She felt sick to the stomach when she realized why.
Eliza Emerett was an eleven year old Midnight. An eleven year old innocent girl with no real understanding of the war. The only world she knew was that of her parents, the farm they owned in England, her horses Star and Pooka; the cat, Lightning, and the two dogs, Bob and Fred. And let's not forget her imaginary friend, Nicky, that hung out by the old oak tree down by the stream.
The trace devoured her, refusing to let go, and Caia struggled, pulling and twisting to be released, the nausea of her find overwhelming.
Finally she jerked back and felt her head slam against the wall behind the armchair. Reuben shot up from his half-sleep and stared at her in concern. Saffron was slower to wake, but Caia waited for her to do so.
And then she pinned them both with a look that would fry their asses to the bed.
“You bastard,” she whispered.
He groaned, scrubbing his face before swinging his legs over the side of the bed. He leaned towards her, studying her face quietly. Finally, just when she thought she might change into a lykan and attack him, he nodded at the paper. “What happened? What did you find?”
She glared at him. “You really don’t know?”
“I really don’t know.”
“Eliza Emerett.” She stabbed the name on the paper with her finger.
“What about her?”
Was he deliberately being a jackass or did he honestly not have a clue what she was talking about?
She stood up and he watched her warily as she approached him. Yeah, he better be wary. “She’s eleven, Reuben.” She threw the paper at him. “She’s an eleven year old Midnight. Her biggest fear is when her old dog, Fred, is going to bite the bullet!”
Saffron groaned and buried her head in her knees. Reuben swore and snapped up off the bed, crumpling the paper in his hand. “Nikolai,” he hissed.
Caia stopped, watching the tension ripple through the vampyre’s body. “You really didn’t know?”
“No!” he whirled on her.
“Wow.” She relaxed a little, seeing how upset the news made him. “You’re not so evil after all.”
He chortled but the sound was anything but happy. “Don’t kid yourself, Caia.” He sneered at her and held up the crumpled paper. “This wouldn’t stop me. Nikolai knows that. He seems to have forgotten, however, that we aren’t dealing with me. We’re dealing with you. And I know even threatening the pack couldn’t get you to kill a little girl.” He slammed a fist into the wall with a rare show of loss of control. “We are so effed!” he spat, ignoring the crumbling plaster work.
Caia ignored him and looked at Saffron, whose face was blank of expression. “Well… at least he knows when he’s hitting a brick wall. I mean, metaphorically speaking. You know… I’m the brick wall. I won’t budge on the killing of a little girl and he gets that. You get what I-”
Saffron threw her a look of disdain. “You’re prattling. Shut up.”
“I’m nervous, OK!” She stepped back against the wall and let herself slide to the floor. “I mean, where do we go from here?”
“Hades?” the faerie suggested dryly.
Caia made a face. “Not helpful.”
They stayed in tense silence for a while, avoiding eye contact. Finally, Reuben cursed again under his breath. “Why is this going wrong? This isn’t the way it should be going. That damn Prophet…”
Something niggled at Caia.
Reuben? The Prophet? The Prophet?! Yes!
The Prophet! That was it! Caia’s head jerked up. “The Prophet!” She leapt to her feet in one fluid movement. “That’s it.”
Reuben frowned. “What’s it?”
She smiled slowly. “We need to talk to the Prophet.”
When they weren’t getting all giddy with excitement like she was, Caia almost slammed their heads together. Then she realized she hadn’t actually explained to them what she was so excited about. It had been a long week.
“OK,” she began hurriedly. “So my original plan was to get the Council to take away Marita as Head of the Coven and have the gods replace me. That way I’d be in control of the trace and begin peace negotiations – I know, I know, how terribly naïve. Anyway, what if we find the Prophet and ask him if he thinks the gods will take away the trace if I do become Head of both Covens.”
They stared at her blankly for a moment before Reuben asked, “And why would the gods take away the trace?”
She threw her hands up in half-assed exasperation. “Because! The trace exists for one reason only… a weapon for each leader of each Coven. If I’m the Head of both Covens then the purpose of its existence no longer… well… exists! Surely the two traces would, like, I dunno, cancel each other out. The gods wouldn’t see any reason for us to have it anymore.”
The vamp and faerie stared at her for what seemed forever and then they looked to one another, and slowly, but surely, a mirror-image grin began to spread on their faces. Reuben turned back to Caia, his eyes glittering with respect. “That’s brilliant, Caia.”
“You think so?” she whispered, feeling the first glimpse of relief and warmth shimmer to life within her chest since the loss of their pack.
“I more than think so.” He turned and started shrugging into his coat. “Right, we have the Prophet to find.”
18 – The Prophet
The last few weeks had been excruciating to say the least. Patience, she discovered, was not one of her virtues. But at least she didn’t have to stay in that horrible place with Dee and her band of merry bloodsuckers anymore. Caia never would have thought she would be so grateful to be invited by Nikolai to stay at his safe house. His safe house wasn’t a basement apartment full of blood and empty kitchen cabinets. So, OK, the fridge in his safe house was filled with bags of animal blood belonging to Reuben (courtesy of a butcher – she wasn’t even going to ask when he had time to visit a butcher, as she was beginning to realize there just wasn’t any point interrogating the most mysterious person she had ever met) but the safe house was a modest-sized beach house with no neighbors for miles around. It was plush and luxurious inside and Caia could lose herself in the sound of the surf, while they anxiously waited for the Prophet to get back to them.