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“Did you kill her?” He wasn’t accusing me, just asking.
“No, I took her to the Oracle. Calliope can help her come to terms with what’s happened to her. ”
“Calliope? You’re on a first-name basis with the Oracle? And why did she let you in? I thought she hated weres. ”
“She doesn’t hate weres!” I was vexed and wanted to defend Calliope because she wasn’t here to do it herself. “Things just work differently in her world than they do here. ”
“Her world? But if that’s the case, why would she see you?”
“I sort of have…special privileges?”
“Why?”
I couldn?
??t blame him for questioning me on this. Everyone who knew about the Oracle was aware her hospitality didn’t extend to the lycanthrope community. Of course they would assume she hated weres, it was the easiest explanation. To suddenly discover she allowed exceptions? Well, it wouldn’t make sense to me either if I wasn’t the exception in question.
“Because of the vampire…council. ” I’d almost said blood. What I wanted most in that moment was to tell him everything. To have someone who genuinely cared about me and wanted to be with me know everything about who I was. But I’d kept my secret very secret for such a long time. In twenty-two years only my mother, grandmother, a vampire, a bounty hunter and an immortal oracle knew what I really was. Of those, one had abandoned me, one I’d run away from, two used me to kill my own, and the last had seen my future but wouldn’t tell it to me.
How could I tell my sort-of boyfriend about it when we had enough complications to deal with from my being soul-bonded to him and my other sort-of boyfriend? Telling them both I was also half-vampire wouldn’t help our existing situation. Or maybe it would help things a lot by removing them both from my life posthaste.
“What does this have to do with Marcus?”
I took his hand, and he placed his other one on my cheek. Being with Desmond lacked the complications of being with Lucas. Desmond wasn’t a king. He was just a man who wanted to be with me instead of a man who wanted me to be his queen. How did this get so difficult so fast? And could Calliope have been right when she said it would only get worse?
“When Marcus attacked the club he was vying for the throne. ”
“Yes. ”
“And if he’d gotten it, he would have killed those loyal to Lucas and the Rains. ”
“Most likely. ”
“With the pack of his choice, Marcus would be outside of question. Those willing to leave Lucas would have been morally ambiguous to say the least. What if Marcus told them to follow a vampire? To embrace their urge to hunt and take their rightful place outside of the shadows, in a position of power greater than humans. They would do it. ” Our short drive from the Starbucks had brought us back to a parking space near my apartment building.
Desmond let out a huge breath, and my mouth tingled with the limey taste. “Marcus wants to help Peyton turn the human race into slaves. ”
“Starting with one of the biggest cities in the world. Can you imagine if the rogues of other cities saw this? Even if they didn’t succeed, think of how many innocent lives would be lost in the attempt. Peyton has already killed or turned some of the prostitutes. He’s starting with the people who don’t matter, but by doing that he can infect so many more before people begin to notice. ”
“The girl who attacked you?”
“She was somebody someone will miss. She was someone who mattered. He killed her because I saved her life. He wanted me to know I wasn’t capable of protecting anyone. I killed one of his children that night and in return he took a life I’d saved. ”
“He has something against you personally?”
I nodded with renewed weariness. We were out of the car and making the half-block trip back to my front door. He draped his arm around me, and I leaned my face into his chest, breathing him in. He had given me his jacket after I’d left Calliope’s, which protected me from prying eyes, and I was grateful for the illusion of modesty.
Desmond would need a little more of my personal history if he was going to understand why Peyton hated me so much.
“When I came to New York I was sixteen, and saying the city was overwhelming is an understatement. I had it in my mind that because a vampire attack had caused my mother to abandon me…” shit was that too close to the truth? I continued in a hurry, “…I would kill every vampire I met. ”
“You were sixteen?”
“I was an idiot. ”
He smirked at this.
“I did pretty well for myself at first, actually. But that was because the vampires I was finding were new, stupid and reckless. I’d been here a few months and was feeling pretty big in my britches, and then I found Alexandre Peyton. Or I guess he found me. I didn’t have the same reputation with vampires that I have now, but he still knew about me. He must have heard about some little girl trying to kill vampires and decided to have fun with me. He found me while I was hunting, and before I knew what was happening he was on me, feeding from me. Killing me. ”
