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I didn’t want to stake Brien.
Not even if it was the only way I’d ever be a slayer again.
You. Are. So. Fucked.
8
BRIEN
As we headed below the castle to our lair, Jules seemed to come back to himself. He shot me a look as cunning as the great white shark he’d chosen as the Maritime Syndicate emblem.
“My office,” he said in clipped tones.
My nape tightened. It had been a long time since Jules had beaten me—he didn’t fucking dare. Still, I couldn’t help reacting when he ordered me to his office in that particular voice.
“Of course,” I said expressionlessly, mindful that other vampires would be watching from the shadows.
Prosper, definitely—and probably a couple of others.
We’d kept Jules’s decline a secret from the outside world, but everyone in the castle knew he was losing it. The vampires high in the hierarchy were circling like wolves closing in on a wounded alpha, waiting and watching. Eyeing me for weaknesses.
Behind me, Cain and Talon crowded closer, uncaring that it might draw my father’s attention—and anger.
Fuck, I loved these guys. They had my back, always—my only real allies in the spiderweb of intrigue that was Castle Leclerc.
Jules’s office was attached to his private apartment. We followed him down the long, winding flagstone stairs to the underground lair where the castle’s resident vampires resided.
As we descended, the air grew damper, its scent a mix of salt water and dirt and the musky aroma of vampires that hurtled me back to my boyhood. Happy memories, of running through the tunnels and spying on the older vampires during a rare hour of freedom from my tutors. I’d had three—one for schoolwork; one for physical education and martial arts; and one for everything else, including piano, dance lessons and etiquette.
And later, after Cain and Talon had been turned, of slipping into the shadows with them and escaping castle to go to a pub or even a campfire on the beach with the other island kids.
As we reached the first landing, Prosper stepped out of the shadows. Jules nodded at him as if he’d known his lieutenant was there all along and kept going down the stairs.
Prosper was built like a midweight boxer, lean and muscular, with short dark hair, fuzzy caterpillars for eyebrows, and permanent pouches under his eyes like a TV cop who’s seen too much. Combined with his love of camp shirts, it was the perfect cover. Most people, even other vampires, never realized he was a vampire until it was too late.
He blocked my descent and raked his hard brown eyes over my face. “How did it go in Quebec City?”
“Good,” I said.
Prosper raised an eyebrow, silently demanding I expand. In the year since my mother’s passing, he’d become bolder, subtly pushing me to acknowledge that he was dominant to me.
I brushed past him. I was the crown prince; I didn’t report to him. He could hear my report along with Jules.
And the question of dominance had yet to be settled.
When we reached the lower level, we turned right, following the torchlit passage to Jules’s apartment. Prosper’s quarters were next to my father’s. The rest of the rooms in that section were taken by Jules’s thralls and his top people.
My own apartment was on the opposite side of the castle, something I’d made happen the day I turned twenty-one.
Jules’s apartment had been furnished by my mother. The living room was an opulent space of leather and velvet and rare objets d’art. A half-dozen candles flickered on the inlaid-marquetry coffee table, and a young, scared-looking thrall waited at the sideboard with an open bottle of blood-wine.
“Close the door,” Jules ordered her and she hurried to obey. “You,” he barked, stabbing a finger at Cain and Talon. “Wait in the hall.”
They hesitated, but they had no choice but to obey.
Jules jerked his chin at me. “In my office.”
I pressed my lips together and complied. Prosper followed, closing the door so I was trapped in the office with the two of them and Jules’s large ebony desk. I stared at the shiny black surface.
