Page 41 of Unbound

It’s memories like that that make everything harder to understand. Vivian and Marco weren’t monsters every second of every day. I knew them. They had moments of compassion. Moments when they genuinely seemed to care. Moments when they seemed to enjoy being parents.

Even to me.

We had Pluto for a couple months before we eventually had to put him down. I think that was the first time I ever saw Vivian cry. And then, a month later and two states away, Gia ate an entire package of Oreos, left crumbs all over the couch, and blamed it on Pluto, apparently forgetting the dog was dead. She was only six or seven at the time. The lie was so ridiculous—and kind of sad—that she didn’t even get in trouble for it.

“Hopefully this one goes over better,” I say, closing my eyes in a long blink. My stomach is tied in knots, and I’m regretting eating anything tonight. I just want to go home. Normally, killing a demon comes with some sense of victory.

It’s such a normal occurrence for us that we don’t celebrate like we just won a championship or anything, but there’s usually at least some relief afterward. This time, there isn’t. There’s a nagging feeling deep inside me that killing this demon somehow made everything worse. Maybe we should’ve captured him.

Locked him in a basement. Questioned him. Something. Because Vaelric isn’t going to be happy that we just took out one of the demons working under him.

And we did it rather quickly. Rather easily. Which makes me wonder what comes next.

If Vaelric is still inside Vivian, then he has access to everything she knows about the Order. He knows someone on the inside is working with us. And knowing Vivian, it won’t take much for him to figure out exactly who would be willing to defy the Order to help me.

My stomach drops. Ryder. And any other hunters helping him. They’re going to be easy targets.

Chapter

Fourteen

“Can’t sleep?” Antonio asks, stepping into the kitchen and going straight to the fridge. It’s three in the morning, and we got home maybe an hour ago. Theo, Xavier, and Zeke went back out to deal with the body in the office building before heading to an emergency coalition meeting.

“Nope.” I push rice around my plate with my spoon. “But I’m also not tired. I feel like I’ve been way too harsh on people who struggle with jet lag.” Antonio laughs. “This human-vampire sleep schedule is really messing with me.”

“Yeah, I bet.” He opens the fridge. “Sometimes I’m jealous of how daft Leo is because he can fall asleep anywhere.”

“Right. I’m jealous too.” Our brother is upstairs sleeping peacefully while I sit here at three in the morning staring at rice I have no intention of eating.

“If it makes you feel better,” Devon says, suddenly appearing in the kitchen, “I’m still not used to not really needing sleep.”

“It doesn’t make me feel any better,” I tell him as he pulls leftovers from the fridge.

“I didn’t think it would.” He shrugs.

“What are we gonna do?” I ask. I feel like I can safely express my doubts around Antonio and Devon, though saying I have a bad feeling about this seems rather anticlimactic at this point.

“Letting Vaelric out was just the beginning.”

“I know,” Antonio agrees. “And we don’t have a plan yet.”

“Come up with one,” Devon says, like it’s that simple.

“There’s a reason my family locked him up instead of killing him.”

I give up on eating and push the plate away. I don’t think I could stomach another bite anyway. “It’s like he’s waiting for something, and the anticipation is killing me. Necromancy is his specialty, and we still don’t know for sure if that means…”

I trail off, shifting my eyes toward Devon. I don’t even want to say it. “If a demon can control the dead, there’s a very good chance he can control vampires too. They are dead.” The words sound worse out loud. “And if tonight taught us anything, it’s that spells geared toward humans work surprisingly well against vampires. So, if a necromancer can command a human corpse, it makes sense that he might be able to command a vampire.” I shake my head. “I can’t even begin to think of all the ways that could be absolutely terrible.”

“Well, it seems like this guy needs an army,” Devon starts. “He knows if he was locked up once, he can be locked up again. So maybe that’s why he’s trying to raise all his buddies from hell.”

“You know, that’s actually a really good point,” Antonio says and then looks at me. “And that’s one thing that wasn’t done before, Wren.”

“Taking out all his buddies?”

“Yeah. We don’t know how he was captured the first time. We don’t know what the fight looked like, or if the original goal was to kill him and things went south because he had backup.”

“Right.” I bite the inside of my cheek as I think.