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“She can help me feel better when I’m unhappy. Isn’t that what partners are supposed to do? Lovers? Girlfriends?”
“I was asking Etta.”
“You are Ryan’s friend,” Etta told Ruth, “so I will share some of my secrets with you when we are alone, but I’d rather not do so in this room.”
Ruth gave her a smile I knew was as far from friendly as it got, and then she turned it on me, but I’d seen it before so I only shrugged and told her, “I’ve promised her I won’t ask her to keep anything she learns from me away from Marco, and she hasn’t asked me to keep anything I learn away from my superiors. I have a feeling she and I will need to renegotiate that at some point, but as of now, there are no such agreements in place. She isn’t asking you or me not to tell others, but she’s giving us the opportunity to decide for ourselves what we’re comfortable sharing, and not. She’s trusting our discernment. She knows I won’t put my fellow Slayers at risk, but she’s also trusting me not to put her at unnecessary risk. It’s going to be a balance, for sure. So far, I’m at peace with the decisions I’ve made.”
She lifted a brow. “You sent the Slayer from Atlanta up to help the young Slayer in Dalton deal with the Lugat?”
I nodded.
“The young Slayer is dead, and the Atlanta Slayer has been gravely injured.”
Well, fuck. I’d been worried about the young one, but I thought I’d sent someone capable of helping him. “And you feel this is my fault?” No way could she blame Etta for pulling me away. If someone wanted to find fault other than the Lugat who’d struck the killing blow, that would land on my parents.
Ruth shook her head. “No. It’s their fault for jumping in before proper surveillance was carried out. It’s true you’d have discovered the Celrau helping them and went in for the kill with a different approach, but you were called away. There’s only one of you, unfortunately for our side, and you can’t be everywhere and do everything.” She lowered her voice and repeated herself. “You can’t be everywhere and do everything. It isn’t possible. There are going to be casualties. Make sure none of them are you or your loved ones.”
I ran that through my head several times before I was certain she was telling me it was okay to keep some of Etta’s secrets.
“You’re one of my loved ones, Ruth.”
She smiled, “I know, and it warms my heart. I love you, too, young Ryan.” She turned to Etta. “I’m looking forward to getting to know you better. You’re in my beach house rather than Ryan’s home because the town can’t keep you safe at his place, off by itself, and his home isn’t shielded from Slayers. Our dome of protection extends a half-mile into the ocean, but I don’t recommend you swim farther out than a football field until the couple after you are captured or killed. This entire county is ours. If you see a road sign telling you you’re about to enter another county, you should turn around.”
“I have a request,” Gideon told Etta. “That you’ll lead two training sessions with our kids. One with the youngsters, so they can smell you and talk to you. Get a feel for you. We’ll do a short Q&A, but I’ll answer most of the questions and will help guide you how to best answer the ones I’d like you to address.”
This was huge. Gideon had asked Mira and Panda to work with the older teens, but he hadn’t let them around even the younger teens, much less the little kids.
“Second session,” Gideon said, “will be with our teens, and you’ll be able to be brutally honest with them during the Q&A.”
“You want me to help train Slayers to kill Strigorii?”
She sounded incredulous, and I shifted her dress so I could kiss her bare shoulder, and then slid the fabric back in place. “You can guide the discussion. Maybe you can help give them some perspective, so they can see the humanity left in you? So they’ll think twice before deciding who lives and who dies?”
“Yes, of course. I apologize for jumping to the wrong conclusion, Gideon.”
He grinned. “Oh, you jumped to the right conclusion, but our Ryan is correct as well. You’ll get to direct the conversation, and it will be good for the kids to see you as someone on our side — the side of good. Guardians of the humans.”
“My Master has continued Abbott’s experiment — befriending the Slayer, inviting him to our meetings, showing him we have nothing to hide. I thought he’d lost his mind, but now, as I understand more and more how Chattanooga works, it makes sense. Pack wolves and lone wolves, lions and wolves, vampires and everyone. Hell, we even have a mated grizzly and rabbit in Chattanooga. Their relationship is a metaphor for the entire metro area — disparate entities coming together to create a power I don’t think anyone can understand or fully grasp. So yes, I will speak of this to your youngsters, in the hope this model can spread to other cities.”
“The truth is,” I told Gideon, but it was really for the entire room, “Abbott did such a good job of keeping his city clean, there wasn’t much for me to do. Most of us don’t like Gavin, but he’s better than the most ruthless Slayer at keeping the city rid of supernaturals who would harm humans and cause problems. Brooke in Birmingham is the same way — if she catches someone hurting humans, she takes them out. Blade in New Orleans is doing what Augustus used to handle. Where we’re needed most is in the cities without good leaders, but our management is sending our best Slayers to the cities with good leadership, which leaves the cities with the Griffins of the world at the mercy of everyone an evil vampire draws into his coterie.”
And this was the topic our town discussed often. The European Slayers were still in the majority on the council. Our town, and one other like us, were interested in partnering with the vampires like Abbott, Marco, Brooke, and others, but there was a rift between the oldest Slayers in Europe and the oldest Slayers who’d come to America years before.
“Not everyone the evil vampires draw to them is also evil,” Etta said. “Vampires must follow their Master Vampire’s orders. It isn’t a choice — the power forces us, as if we’re puppets.”
“We all know this to be true,” I told the room, and I stood. “We’ll stop by the market on the way to the house to purchase food for Etta’s eagle and me. He’s under her control and won’t lash out, even to defend himself, so it’s important no one decides to test themselves against him.”
“I stocked the kitchen with all your favorite foods,” Ruth told me. “No need to go to the market. If there’s something the eagle needs, you can get it later. You need some time with Etta before the sun rises and takes her. Feel free to sleep when she dies for the day. We have your back. No one will mess with either of you on my watch.”
Chapter 28
Etta
I heard Ruth tell Ryan I could retire for the day in the gun safe, and Ryan had already told me that was how he intended to keep me safe from the sun.
Having an entire town of slayers know where I was bedding down went against every cell in my body, but I had to trust I’d be safe while dead to the world. As Marco said, if the slayers wanted me dead, with this many of them in the town, they didn’t have to wait until the sun took me. I was afforded safe passage, and that means something amongst the old ones.
Ryan walked me through the house when we arrived — living room, dining area, kitchen, bedrooms. I didn’t have to ask why the windows facing the ocean were all covered with storm shutters — a good sniper can accurately strike from farther than a half-mile away.
