“Aren’t you a clever one? Cleverness is the root of a long life of a vampire and the makings of an Elite,” Belham assured him in a low, bright voice. It was an attribute he seemed to admire the most. He’d praised my cleverness many times. I wasn’t clever, just perceptive and skilled at reading people and responding accordingly. They were survival skills, and it seemed unreasonable to get accolades for them, although I graciously accepted the compliment. The cleverer he considered me, the less he micromanaged.
“It is an intriguing quality,” William’s calming, kind voice cosigned.
Then William shook his head. I mistook it as him encouraging Belham to show mercy. I quickly discovered it meant the opposite. William made an unsuccessful attempt to shield me from seeing Belham punch his fist through the vampire’s chest and rip out his heart before beheading him in such a swift succession of movements, I was sure my mind had played tricks on me. But the body, the blood on Belham’s hand and face, and the pools of it on the floor confirmed everything. William’s face was a mask of apathy.
William had the audacity to ask me to lunch afterward.Lunch?I had been pretty close to losing breakfast and damn sure I didn’t want lunch. Belham was the monster people knew.William was the one lying in wait if he failed. They were beautiful monsters. It was information I’d never forget.
And here I was interacting with another.
“Things are as they should be.”
She leaned into me. “Immortality would look good on you,” she said.
“So does humanity.”
I disliked the way her perceptive eyes stayed pinned on me. They knew only parts of what happened the night I’d become a person of interest to them, and not just the peculiar woman who could walk through wards as if they never existed. Before that night, it was the extent of what they knew of my magic. It was the extent of whatIknew of my magic. I’d never been placed in a position to trigger my protection spell and wasn’t sure whether Vina was correct about it having been removed.
My immunity to wards had served me well on some occasions, but I rarely used it. Wards were erected for a reason, and finding out the purpose usually led to disastrous situations. Situations I’d prefer to avoid. If that made me a coward, I didn’t care. I liked to think I had a healthy appreciation for self-preservation.
“Do you fear being a cautionary tale like me?” she asked.
I feared I already was. Stumbling into favor with the most powerful vampire houses in the world had earned me influence—at the cost of my anonymity. I was viewed as an obstacle by those hungry for a war between the Houses of Hollows and Knight. They didn’t mind telling me.
My closing duties at Cloak and Dagger included checking inventory, replenishing garnishes, cutting limes and lemons, and ensuring we had a good blood supply for the vamps. If we ever ran out, there were always humans willing to step in. The humans that frequented Cloak and Dagger seemed unable to accept the unspoken rule that our worlds operated inparallel to theirs. Never to really interact. Their fascination with supernaturals had them latching on to everything they did. They gawked and swooned. Some were bold enough to offer their services. “It’s better directly from the source,” was a less than witty flirt I’d heard used often.
How clever, Mr. and Ms. Pedantic.
The trajectory of my life would have been different if that night I had used my usual exit out the front instead of the back. But the back was closer to where I’d parked, and I was exhausted. The area was poorly lit, but a scan of the security camera monitors in the office where we kept them hadn’t given me any reason to be concerned. I was wrong.So wrong.I had missed the staked vampire slumped against the wall near the dumpster. Once closer, the heavy scents of ingredients used for sleep spells wafted toward me. Vampires didn’t have a pulse to determine their well-being. He was unresponsive and ashen. Contrary to lore, their skin maintained its human hue; it only paled when they were about to die from injury or starvation.
I dragged him into the club. My coworker took one look, let me know in no uncertain terms he wasn’t getting involved, and left me alone with a dying or possibly truly dead vampire with a stake in his heart. Which put me in the perilous position of saving him or reporting to his house that he was dead. After seeing the House of Knight ring, my heart sank. There were a dozen hazardous things I would rather do, including wrestling a Komodo dragon, than dealing with the infamous House of Knight.
Staking a vampire wasn’t really enough to kill them. It put them into reversion, a slow death. If they could feed, they’d heal and survive. Killing a vampire required a swift and vicious attack with the sole purpose of placing them in a position where they couldn’t save themselves.
Not having any idea how to handle a stake wound, I treated it like a knife stabbing and left it there. Older vampires were stronger and able to go longer without feeding, which made them harder to kill.
The vampire appeared to be in his early twenties, but I had no idea what his vampire age was. He could be a millennium for all I knew. The darkening, necrotic appearance of his hands suggested to me the beginning of a vampire’s true death.
Goose pebbles formed over my arms at the sight of a crudely carved crest on the side of the stake: the House of Hollows. I had met Corrine a few times, and nothing about this scene seemed like it would have been sanctioned by her or her house. There was something very wrong going on.
“I refuse to get in the middle of this,” I whispered to myself. But it was too late. I was already entwined in it, and the only option I had was to save the vampire.
“Don’t die,” I urged him.
Finding a funnel, I pushed the contents of a blood pack into his mouth. And waited several moments.
Nothing.
Desperation made me rethink handling the stake injury like a blade, so I pulled it out and funneled more nutrients into the vampire. And waited.
Nothing.
He wasn’t healing and remained unresponsive.
“It’s better directly from the source.”I groaned at the bromide statement repeated in the club to lure vampires. Sometimes it was even used by the vamps themselves.
With a sigh, I opened his mouth enough to puncture my forearm.
I was surprised that it only took a few drops before the necrosis receded and his hands took on their natural hue, though he was still unconscious. After a few more drops, heroused. Propping himself up, he took hold of my arm and painfully pulled from it like a dehydrated person drinking from a water bottle. Feeling lightheaded, I was about to stop him when he did it on his own, lifting his eyes to me and revealing brilliant ice-blue irises. Nothing like any I’d ever seen on a vampire.
