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I walked outside the door, saw the guard, and leaned against the wall across from him. “I’m Etta.”
“I know who you are. I was in there.”
“I’m sorry. I don’t recall your name.”
“I’m called Venom. Any new legal name will incorporate what I am called.”
I smiled. Marco had a plan, after all.
“You’re from Deces’ line?”
“I am.”
“No one feared you in particular. I’d have picked it up.”
“They only fear me if they have reason to.”
“That’s what I hope to accomplish.”
I hadn’t looked him in the eye yet. I didn’t really want to know his greatest fear, but Marco had ordered it, and he’s the Master. I’d agreed to follow his bidding, so I met Venom’s gaze head-on and looked into his soul. He didn’t have a single greatest fear, but rather a list. Near the top of that list was the fear of losing the security his place in Marco’s coterie gave him. He’d been much like me before Marco took him in — tired of being the boogeyman, the Big Bad Vampire who disciplined the naughty vampires. The junkyard dog. The punisher. The enforcer.
But Marco had brought him into the coterie as a guard. A soldier. He’d brought me in as his enforcer. I wasn’t going to have the luxury of being everyone’s friend.
“I won’t let Marco fail in this new venture,” I told him. “If I have to be feared and hated to support him, so be it. He wants things to be different for me, but I don’t see how they can.”
I sensed a trickle of fear and knew it could easily become a flood. “Deep breath, Venom. If I scare you too much, you have my permission to bite me and hurt me, but not to kill me. I won’t call foul on a painful bite without lasting harm. Marco suggested I might find friendship with you, and I believe he’s right. You were once the vampire everyone feared. The one who kept the coterie in line for his Master.”
“I was.”
“I still have to be, but I’m going to try my hardest to make it so people only fear me if they’ve done something wrong.” I didn’t think it was possible, but that didn’t mean I wouldn’t try.
“I could never pull that off when I was Exsequor.”
He was using the Latin term for Enforcer. My old Master had used the French term, Sbire, which sounds a bit like spear in English. I’d been his weapon, for sure.
“Marco points out that Kendra manages it.”
“Even now, you mention Kendra’s name and a spark of fear goes through me.”
I knew. I’d felt it, and it made me sad.
Whether he sensed my sadness, or just felt the need to be honest, he told me more. “A lion I frequently feed from was present when Kirsten tortured someone, and when her friends tried to insist they do it for her, so she wouldn’t have to, she pointed out that Kendra had given her pointers. My lion, Andreas, later met Kendra and saw her in action, and his blood is flowing through my body.”
“I’ve heard several people mention Kirsten, usually in relation to Cora.” Cora is the wolf Marco is in love with, and the reason we were moving to Chattanooga.
“I don’t believe Kirsten was completely human when Marco first met her, but she at least smelled human most of the time. Something happened in the lead-up to the Big Battle, and she no longer smells even close to human.”
“What does she smell like?”
“Mother Nature, or some great Goddess of All That Lives. I do not know how to explain it.”
“I look forward to meeting her.”
He gave me a smile, and my heart slowed in my chest. It’d been so long since anyone except an old friend smiled at me, I wasn’t certain what to do.
“Do not try to find her fears, if you meet her,” he told me. “Something tells me she’ll know. She can be damned scary when angry.”
“Thank you for the advice. She’s somehow tied to Cora?” Marco was head-over-heels smitten with the werewolf, and wolves aren’t even the animal he resonates with.
