AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Was that what I was destined for?
“I’m going to find Sig.”
“Secret, don’t be an idiot. We can get the blood and leave. No one is here, no one will stop us. Why would you risk going below?”
Logically, I understood it was a stupid idea. Yet logic didn’t seem to matter. I had to go find Sig. “He wants me to,” I replied, giving Holden a helpless look.
He understood. He had his own sire and his own mistress to obey whenever she felt the desire to beckon him. It was much worse the higher up the lineage you went. Sutherland was my direct sire—both biologically and vampirically—and his command could not supersede Sig’s.
Sig must have known I was here—he must have been waiting for me to arrive. And now that I’d come, he wanted me to find him.
Holden had been with me when I learned about Sig’s power over me. He’d witnessed what the master vampire was capable of making me do. He must have seen the fear and doubt on my face, because he looked scared.
“I’m coming with you.”
“You shouldn’t.”
He scoffed. “Sig doesn’t control me. I’m coming.”
The others hesitated, not sure whether they should join us. Sutherland was sitting on the floor, arranging discarded papers into seven piles in a wide circle around him. If he was bothered by my predicament at all, it wasn’t showing.
“Go eat,” I told them. “Bring us back something, we won’t be long. And be careful.”
“She tells us to be careful while she walks straight into hell.” Clementine smiled sweetly. “Girl has her priorities all screwed up.” She took charge, leading Reggie and Sutherland out of the main room and up a short flight of stairs to the feeding room. Calling it the cafeteria would have been more polite, but it wasn’t filled with lunch tables and vending machines.
I walked towards the oak doors, not waiting to see if Holden was following. I hoped he would change his mind and go with the others. After all, wasn’t he mad at me? Wouldn’t this be an ideal situation for me to get my comeuppance?
Apparently he didn’t think so, because he was right at my heels when I opened the door and followed so close behind me down the stairs I could feel his suit jacket brush up against my back.
We reached another set of doors, ones I had become very familiar with over the past eight years, both as the council’s bitch and one of its most powerful leaders. If it was going to end here, there was sort of a poetic quality to finishing things where I started them.
Without knocking, I pushed open the doors and entered the Tribunal chamber.
Against the far wall, three wooden throne-like chairs sat empty. The one on the left was mine, then Sig’s, and lastly Juan Carlos’s. All, now, were vacant. It seemed strange to me to find no one waiting, but what would they be waiting for?
From a side room, one I’d never entered in all my years with the vampires, Sig came in, ducking his head to avoid bumping it on the doorframe. His height, over six and a half feet tall, made him intimidating even when he didn’t mean to be. Especially since I was only five four and he dwarfed me whenever we stood side by side. At least when we took our seats, things evened out somewhat.
Now he towered over me, looking as grim as I’d ever seen him.
“Nice of you to join me,” he said, nodding a greeting.
“Nice of you to give me an option,” I grumbled.
“Now now. You know I’ve rarely had cause to use my powers on you, and if I thought I could have compelled you here with logic and reason, I’d have done it. But I had good reason to believe you might not stick around if left to your own volition, so…” He spread his hands out, gesturing to the empty room. “Here we are.”
“This isn’t the best time to make me face the council. In case you haven’t noticed, the city is coming down around us.”
“Mmm.” He nodded. “I can feel them, their tricky little fingers tickling my spine while they pull the puppet strings of all the dead. Quite a masterful job they’re doing of it too.”
“I have to stop them.”
“You have to stop them? Still trying to declare yourself protector of the city, I see. When will you learn there are limits, Secret? You cannot save everyone, no matter how hard you try.”
I thought of Keaty’s body lying in the street, and I flinched. “I know that better than you think I do.”
“Yet you insist on trying.”
“You shouldn’t expect anything different by now.” I glanced around the room cautiously. “Where is Juan Carlos?”
