Page 86
It was either that or Annalise somehow tricked me. It was possible I took the wrong girl. Maybe I made a mistake and tracked the wrong lineage. And if that were the case, it meant I’d tied myself to an Omega with meaningless DNA.
I was wrong, though.
Her DNA wasn’t meaningless. I was just looking at it all wrong. The power was there all along; it simply manifested in a different way than I expected.
The child doesn’t even really matter. Not nearly as much as her mother. The entire time I spent stressing about an heir with powerful blood, I had ignored the blood that was already in my possession.
Once I reassessed, it was embarrassingly easy to keep Annalise compliant. Simply threaten her daughter, and she’d fold like a house of cards.
The memory sours further, and I sneer.
Omegas are always so weak. Soft. Useless. My mother was the same. As soon as my father died, she simply faded away.
Both of my parents worked for House Noctis, a mid-level vampire stronghold known for its macabre tradition of burying their enemies in pits of blood and ash before setting them on fire.
They’re one of the oldest vampire houses still standing, obsessed with prophecy and bloodlines. They keep meticulous records of deaths, births, rivalries, and debts of all Supernaturals, and their records are still regarded as the most accurate in the world.
Ironically enough, it was a rivalry of their own that caused the deaths of two vampires and nearly twenty of their staff, including my father.
He was an accountant, and thanks to his diligent reporting, was allowed access to the first levels of their personal libraries.
Books were his first love, before my mother.
Grandfather once told me that he would abide a scholarly son, but not one who would Bond a piece of trash Omega with terrible breeding. That’s why he cut my father off, forcing my parents to find work with the Leeches.
Dad spent hours in that library, and as a young boy, I often accompanied him. I remember playing Matchbox cars under a large polished oak table, while he muttered to himself and flipped through ancient scrolls and dusty tomes.
He died in that library—shot once through the chest and once through the abdomen. It wasn’t until he lay dying in a pool of his own blood that I finally discovered what he researched so diligently all those years.
He saved his last words for me, and only me. A piece of prophecy he found in the Noctis’ vaults.
“Find the daughter of flames…”
At only eight years old, I didn’t care what he was saying at the time. The only thing I could concentrate on was stopping the blood pulsing from his wounds. I remember the feel of warm, sticky blood on my small child’s hands as I worked unsuccessfully to stop the bleeding.
I was frantic. Terrified. I certainly wasn’t listening to his ramblings. At least, not until he grabbed me with a strength belying a dying man.
“Listen to me, Jonathan!”
His command was little more than breathless words hissed between blood-covered teeth.
“Listen!”
He tangled shaking fingers in my shirt and pulled me closer until I was the only one who could hear his gurgled words. I distinctly remember the wet warmth of his blood flying from his mouth and covering my cheek.
Like little droplets of water misting out of a hose.
“The daughter of flames. Find her. Four became one, and she is the key. Find her, Jonathan. If she ends up in the wrong hands…”
He said no more, but the implication was clear. His eyes glazed over, his fingers—still tangled tightly in the fabric of my shirt—went limp. No matter how hard I begged, he never said another word.
Shuddering, I shake away the morbid memory like a bad dream.
That was over fifty years ago, and I did what he asked of me. I found the damned girl, and I made sure she wound up in the correct hands—mine.
Thirty years. That’s how long it took to track her down.
A search that led me through restricted libraries, I had to bribe my way into. Through dirty catacombs and ancient legends about Houses that had crumbled to dust centuries ago. I tracked genealogies and lineages and spent months translating dead languages in dusty vaults beneath vampire estates.
