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Oh, he deserves it. That's not the point. And not my Master, Rand added for good measure, though pointless since he was only talking to himself.
"You demanded this meeting out of courtesy," Lyssa said quietly. "I demand the same from you, Mordecai."
She did something that released him, for abruptly Cai's body slumped as if cut from a gallows arm. He sprang up just as quickly, moving behind the chair and taking a defensive stance, fists up and face laced with fury. She didn't move. Jacob stepped back, though he stayed close, in Rand's peripheral vision.
"Don't do that," Cai gritted. "Ever again."
"An improvement. You didn't curse, though you didn't say please." Lyssa gestured to the chair. "Shall we try again? Explain to me why you're not Trad, but you know so much of them."
Cai stared at her. The vampire seemed conflicted about what to do next, but it surprised Rand when he returned to the chair. He sat on the edge of the seat, though, his body reflecting his tension.
If I throw that rock now, will you go?
No.
Cai coughed over a harsh half-chuckle that had no humor in it. Stubborn-ass shifter.
Lyssa had given him a curious look at the laugh. Cai subsided, falling silent and staring a hole in the side of the desk. The vampire queen clasped her hands in a loose knot on the desk.
"You are correct," she said abruptly. "You were brought here against your will, Mordecai. While that isn't always an inappropriate thing in the vampire world, I'll offer you something for your total honesty. Whatever things you wish protected about yourself will not leave this room. I won't tell the others how you come by the knowledge you have, unless it is pertinent to finding her."
Now Cai looked surprised. Lyssa's expression didn't change. Rand thought she must practice being a statue, but whatever Cai read from her face seemed to work. Rand tended to use senses other than vision to pick up what was really happening. Even as human, his sense of smell was far more developed. What he detected from Lyssa, after exercising whatever power had allowed her to manacle Cai's mind that brief moment, was a sliver of sympathy. She'd seen something in Cai's reaction that had made her realize a different tactic was needed, a different type of sincerity. Rand had no idea what it was until Cai spoke.
"I was taken by a Trad from that Appalachian group when I was fifteen. And human."
Rand's gaze snapped to Cai. He was standing where he could see the male's profile, and Cai's expression looked brittle as glass.
"Why would the Trads take a young male?" Jacob asked.
Cai's voice took on a bitter edge. "I met the choosing guidelines. I had some abilities they thought would be useful."
"Which would be?" Lyssa asked.
Cai said nothing for a long moment. Then he reached toward the desk and the potted plant there, which had a variety of purple blooms. Plucking one off its stem, he closed it in his hand. After another pause, he lifted his gaze and met Lyssa's eyes.
Magic warmed the air around Cai. Different from what he'd used to reinforce the chains or heal Rand, but similar. Closer to this.
Perhaps twenty seconds had ticked by when Cai opened his hand. Rand and Jacob pressed forward to see what he had revealed to Lyssa.
A newborn flower was breaking through the seed that had been fertilized inside the cup of the blossom. Before their eyes, it kept growing until it bloomed, a newer, vibrant version of the mature flower. The threadlike roots overlapped the split sides of the seed and spread out over the lines of Cai's palm.
Creation magic. That was why it hadn't felt exactly like healing energy to Rand. Creation magic could be used to heal, though in a different way from healing magic itself. Creation magic could not only spawn life, but it could change the nature of things, accelerate their process, like healing a wound, or making chain far stronger than expected.
Rand hadn't expected a vampire like Cai to possess the talent for it, or the head of the Vampire Council to recognize it. But the flicker in Lyssa's eyes said she did. Cai had said she was part-Fae, after all.
Sorcerers, the Fae, shifters. While all of those knew of creation magic, few could use it as Cai had just done. And he was implying he'd had the ability as a young human, perhaps even since birth. But to what extent?
The exercise or presence of such magic would leave a detectable signature to a shifter, and possibly even other vampires. Though Rand had detected those traces of power from the vampire, when not in use, their presence was so faint as to be overlooked or mistaken for the latent power Cai had as a vampire. Was that natural or practiced? Had Cai intentionally learned to mask it so completely? If so, why?
Lyssa and Jacob had their gazes locked on the vampire, and Rand could only imagine the ricochet of thoughts passing between them. With an odd self-consciousness, Cai worked the new flower into the plant's soil, tamping it down around the roots with gentle fingers before he sat back. "I expect you understand why the Trads would be interested in a guy who could make a seed germinate."
"Any seed." Lyssa said it as a statement.
"Yeah, that's what they thought." Cai's lips twisted. "I'd be king of the world if we ever get hit by famine, because it only works on plants. Fortunately, I have the survival skills of a cockroach, so when they realized I couldn't make a human woman fertile from their seed, those skills helped me figure out how to stay alive. They never caught a female vampire while I was with them, but eventually they believed I couldn't do it with any type of female mammal. By that time, I was making my mark as a useful member of their fucked-up little society. Another vampire in the group turned me. Not the one who took me from my family."
He lifted a shoulder. "A made vamp can leave if he kills at least one other member of the clan, proving he's no longer the bottom of the totem pole. It took a hundred years, but I did it."
"That's an extraordinary amount of determination," Lyssa said.
"I don't like anyone to take choices out of my hands." He met her gaze. "Don't do what you just did to me, ever again."
Her lips curved. "Can you stop me?"
"No. Not right now. But I figured out how to kill a Trad after a hundred years. I'm willing to put in the time to figure out how to set you back on your heels if you fuck with me."
Jacob shifted and Lyssa's gaze slid to him. He stilled, a muscle flexing in his jaw. Rand had moved with him, though, and the midnight blue eyes cut to him. "Going to take us both on?" the servant asked the wolf, with deceptive mildness.
"He gets stupidly protective in that form," Cai advised. "Logic won't have anything to do with it."
"Hard to figure out how to stop me if you're dead," Lyssa pointed out to Cai, ignoring Rand and Jacob as if the servants' exchange hadn't happened.
"Trads tried their best to kill me. If you succeed where they failed, then that's that. But otherwise...just don't."
Rand's gaze slid back to Cai. The note in his voice was unclassifiable, but it came out close to a proper petition to a vampire queen. Well, as close as
someone like Cai could manage. But the emotion behind it was one soul speaking to another.
Cai liked this queen, Rand realized. Respected her, as much as the vampire could respect anyone. He had obviously picked up in a short time what Rand had drawn from her, too. She wasn't set against him, against anyone. She would act in the best interest of the vampire girl, and of the vampires as a whole.
Before Rand could get used to Cai's shift in attitude, he went right back to being confrontational.
"Some years after I was taken, I found out my human mother went above and beyond to try to find me. When she started babbling crazy shit about vampires, my father was afraid for the rest of my siblings and had her put in an asylum." Cai stared at Lyssa. "You know how awful most of those were in the early 1800s? But before that happened, she discovered who the local vampire in charge was and went, a lowly human, to seek an audience. Graham. Think he's an overlord in California now. Not that I give a flying fuck about your attempt at a government, but I've tried to keep track of him."
Cai's jaw tightened. "He told her that the fate of humans fallen into vampire hands, particularly Trads, was not their concern. Unless she had something to trade worth having, she wouldn't leave an audience with him alive. So she was shared with him and several other visiting vampires for a couple days. She would have died there, but his servant risked Graham's wrath, and dropped her off at a city hospital during daylight hours. That was when the babbling about vampires landed her in an institution. Her mind was probably broken from those few days with them, so she couldn't pretend not to know about vampires. She died a few years later."
He rose. Jacob drew closer, but Lyssa lifted a hand, stilling him. "Let him say his peace," she said quietly.
"Yeah, let me say my peace." Cai's lip curled. "So, when you want me to care about fucking vampires, you are barking up the wrong fucking tree. I owe no one my allegiance, and any one of you can do your best to kill me, but it won't change that. I'll be dead and gone before I'll pay a tithe, bow down, suck the dick or follow whatever the hell protocols that overlords, Region Masters or the head of the goddamn Vampire Council lay out."
