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Prologue
THEN
“She is dead.”
Bellamy grips the edge of his desk with bony fingers and thinks his heart might give out. It lurches in his chest, then seems to disappear entirely, as if erased. Her name doesn’t need to be spoken because he innately knows the truth.
He knew it. He knew it even before Atlas Poe uttered the words, standing in the doorway to his office, afraid to step inside. He had felt severed all morning, blaming it on a dream he had, as if he lost some crucial part of him and couldn’t remember it. But now he knew why. When you spent your years training a witch, shaping them to be another version of yourself, and take on the role of their guardian, they become connected to you in ways beyond what’s natural. In many ways, she had become a daughter to him, though any love was conditional.
“What happened?” Bellamy asks, his voice barely audible in the vast depths of his office.
“She was killed,” Atlas says. “Murdered.”
Bellamy’s eyes pinch shut. “By whom?”
“They believe it was the vampire, sir,” Atlas says. He clears his throat.
Oh,damn.
Bellamy leans back in his chair, struggling to take a breath. There is a deep sorrow inside him that wants to rise but he never has room for sorrow in his life, so he pushes it away and lets the disappointment wash over him. He had given Dahlia one more chance to prove herself. During her last mission, the one that nearly got her ejected from the guild for good, she went and got too close to the female vampire she decided to befriend before killing, and the vampire became wise to her. If it wasn’t for Bellamy rescuing Dahlia at the last moment, Dahlia would have died then.
And this time, Bellamy wasn’t there to save her. He assumed he wouldn’t need to. He thought that her desire to prove herself would have meant she’d taken extra precautions. But somehow her glamour must have slipped. Her truth must have come out. Valtu probably murdered her on the spot. The last he had heard from Livia was that the two of them had become very close. He almost smiles at the thought of Valtu suffering from the sweetest betrayal, but he stops short of feeling happy.
How can he be when his dear Dahlia is dead?
“This is my fault,” he says quietly, mainly to himself.
Atlas hears him. “How so?”
Bellamy grunts and runs his hands over his face. They shake slightly as they do when his emotions become too much for him. All the magic in the world couldn’t seem to get rid of them; neither did conventional medication like anti-depressants. He is a young sixty in every way except that. He hates to think what he’ll be like in ten, twenty years. The thing he despises the most about vampires is that they don’t have to suffer through aging. It is thoroughly unfair.
“She wasn’t ready,” Bellamy says, glancing at Atlas briefly. “I knew she wasn’t ready. She was too foolish, too weak, lacked a sense of purpose and self. Too eager to make people like her. No doubt she threw her mission all away for that vampire. And look what that got her.”
Atlas nods. He doesn’t say much, which is why Bellamy likes him. Atlas is also a powerful witch in his own right. He’d been kicked out of the guild a couple of years ago for accidentally murdering a human, a civilian caught between Atlas and his attempt to slay the vampire witch Lenore. But Bellamy operated outside of the guild most of the time. He gave control to the new leader, Qiang, under the pretenses of his early retirement, but continues to run a sect outside of the guild, guarded by magic that Qiang, or any witch on the committee, can’t see through.
It is in this sect that Bellamy welcomes witches such as Atlas Poe, who have been ostracized because of mere circumstances. Murder is often necessary for Bellamy to accomplish his goals, so why should he judge those who have done the same? The founding father of witches, Jeremias, the Devil rest his soul, welcomed the darkness, and so Bellamy wants to do the same. Especially now that Jeremias has been dead for some time.
Someone has to take his place, after all.
“I have more bad news,” Atlas says.
Bellamy sighs. When it rains, it pours. “What?”
“Livia is also dead.”
Bellamy feels flames building inside him. First Dahlia, now Livia? Both witches, both like daughters to him in some way.
“What about the book?” he asks.
“We don’t have any intel on that. Yet.” Atlas pauses. “There is something else. But it’s good news. It’s something you may want to take advantage of.”
“And what is that?”
“The twins are unprotected.”
That really gets his attention. He sits up straight, staring hard at Atlas’s dark eyes which look like black holes across the dimly lit office. “How do you know?”
Atlas doesn’t say anything for a moment. Bellamy knows he won’t be forthcoming. Let him keep his secrets. Atlas has many connections to the city of San Francisco, ones he won’t speak of, plus there is the magic that Atlas possesses, magic that even Bellamy doesn’t fully understand the origins of. Something about his bloodline being connected to Edgar Allan Poe.
