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“No, I think this is going to be one of those occasions where I speak and you listen. Sit down, please.” He backed me into the apartment, shutting the door behind him.
Without any option except to obey, I retreated to my loveseat and sat, placing my gun on the coffee table. I wouldn’t be able to shoot Sig even if I wanted to, which I currently did not. After surviving two thousand years, I doubted a pistol would be the thing to finally bring the master vampire down.
“Imagine my surprise, when after eight years of keeping your secret, I received a phone call yesterday from Bertrand on the Parisian council, informing me of an interesting rumor circulating his city’s streets. Do you have any idea what he told me?”
“Yes,” I muttered.
“Speak up.”
“Yes.”
“And what was it I might have heard from Bertrand?”
“They know. About my wolf.”
“Correct. They know about your wolf. Every vampire in Paris, and probably half the major European cities, are talking about this very, very popular rumor. A vampire Tribunal leader who is half werewolf.”
“It’s not like I wore my Kiss Me I’m a Werewolf shirt, Sig. They were Peyton’s sidekicks. Can’t we just discredit—?”
“If they were rogues, why didn’t you do your job and nip this situation in the bud before it became an issue? Rogues are disposable.”
“Killing them would have meant letting Peyton go free.”
“This gossip is beyond our control now. It would be one thing to call them liars at the start, but we’re past that point. They’ll want proof.”
“Tell them you’ve sampled my blood, then. Tell them what they want to hear.”
“And they’ll believe me, why? We share a bloodline. Juan Carlos has openly expressed his misgivings about you, and apparently not only to me. The jig, as they say, is up.”
“What does that mean?”
“I can’t protect your secret anymore. Juan Carlos wants to take the issue to the council. He’ll be asking them to elect a replacement.”
“They can’t elect a replacement.”
“It’s not a political coup he’s asking for. It’s a council-sanctioned order of execution.”
They would pick my replacement, and that replacement would assassinate me. I understood it now all too well.
The vampire council was going to kill me.
“You’re just going to sit back and watch this happen?” I stared at him, wondering if I’d ever really known him. I used to believe he cared about me, but now that I knew he’d lied to me for years about our true connection, I didn’t know what Sig felt or wanted.
“Don’t be foolish. Would I be here warning you if I intended to watch you die? No. You know you’re not without friends on the Council. There’s a chance this may yet go in your direction instead of his. You have done a fair job thus far as a Tribunal leader. I don’t think any of the elders believed you’d live as long as you have, yet you continue to surprise us all.”
Was this his idea of flattery?
Somehow, though, I was buoyed by his words. He had a point. Up until now I had served the Tribunal well. I’d even met the approval of…
“Monica. Sig, Monica knew what I was, and she didn’t care. She thought I was fit to be on the Tribunal. That has to be good for something.” Monica was one of the creepiest vampires I’d ever met, and that was saying something. Thousands of years old, she was forever trapped in the body of an eight-year-old and had a peculiar ability for seeing a vampire’s whole history with one bite.
I’d only met her once, but when she’d sampled my blood, she seemed delighted about my mixed heritage, over the moon that she could still be surprised at her age. She hadn’t outed me to the Council in spite of knowing what I was.
Sig sat back, contemplating. “I hadn’t considered the Monica angle. The Old One has a short attention span, though. I’m not sure she’d be the best witness to you when it comes to the elders.”
“The elders are scared of her, Sig.” Anyone in their right mind was scared of her. “If she vouches for me, it will carry a lot of weight.” Plus Monica wasn’t terribly fond of Juan Carlos, which went a long way to help me.
“It’s an avenue worthy of exploration, I agree. But this isn’t something the Council will forgive easily.”
