“Secret and I are talking, little one. Do not think your youthful insolence will play here with the big girls. You will take this blood and live, or refuse it and die. That is the choice. Be a good vampire, behave and don’t make trouble, and you will live. Ignore what I am telling you, and the next time you see Miss Secret over there, it will be when she is delivering your death warrant. Do. You. Understand?”
Brigit’s eyes were wide, her face splattered with the discarded blood. She looked insane, like she couldn’t be reasoned with, but she nodded her understanding. It gave me a chill when Calliope got serious because it revealed something inside of her that was old, strong and very frightening.
She held another bag to Brigit’s mouth, and this time the girl took it, tearing it open with a dainty bite before glutting herself on the contents. The Oracle was looking at me, waiting for me to continue.
“Do you know about soul-bonding?”
“Ahh.” Her face collapsed and she let out a heavy sigh. “It’s that time now for you. I thought we had longer.”
“You knew?”
“You need to understand. There are certain things in your life that must happen to you. I cannot always warn you about them because you are so stubborn you will try to keep them from happening.”
“You knew I had a soul mate?”
“Common human understanding is that everyone does, is it not?”
“Human understanding and romanticizing really don’t apply to my life.”
“I suppose not. Although the love triangle transcends human romance. There were plenty of them with the old gods. But I digress. In your situation you should know things, romantically, are not going to be easy for you.”
“Duh.”
“I don’t only mean the wolf king and his lieutenant.”
“That’s the only love triangle I’m currently a part of.”
She smiled, but there was a little sadness to it. “The wolf is one half of who you are. There is another half. A whole other arena for trouble.”
My face must have gone white because she raised another bag of blood to give me, but I waved it away. “You’re saying—”
“I’m saying what I’ve said. Your love life will be complicated, to say the least.”
I barked a laugh, shrill and short. “If it gets any more complicated than it already is, I think I’d rather do without.”
“We shall see.”
Brigit mumbled something into her now-empty bag, and Calliope freed it from her mouth. The girl licked blood from her teeth and lips, then looked at me before speaking. “You are a vampire.”
“I am.”
“But you smell like a wolf?”
Calliope regarded me carefully, wondering if she would need to help Brigit forget more than usual.
“I’ve been told that.”
“Are you like him, then?”
“Him who, Brigit?”
“The one who made me?”
“Peyton?” I asked, and she nodded. “We are both vampires, if that’s what you mean.”
She shook her head and scrunched up her eyes the way an annoyed little girl would, obviously frustrated. “No. The wolves. Do you have wolves like he does?”
My stomach was suddenly in my shoes. Calliope gave me a mournful look and brushed some of Brigit’s blonde hair off her face.
“Pet wolves?”
Brigit shook her head again. “Werewolves.”
I stared at Calliope, but her face told me nothing. If she understood more about this than she was telling me, she wasn’t showing it. I rose from my chair and went to stand next to Brigit.
“Peyton has werewolves? How do you know that?”
“Three of them grabbed me off the street in the middle of the day and took me to this old building. I guess it was a theater, it had a big screen…” Her eyes began to tear again. “I tried to run, but one of them held me and made me watch as one of the others changed. They told me if I tried to escape, they’d feed me to the wolf.”
“What theater?” I asked.
“The vampires woke up when the sun went down,” she continued, not hearing my question. “Peyton came. He asked if the wolves had taken good care of me. Until I met you, I didn’t believe in vampires. Or werewolves. I didn’t think any of this was real.” Brigit turned her face away, a bloody tear rolling down her cheek.
I knelt on the opposite side of the bed so I could see her face, and waited for her to look at me.“Brigit…”
“After he killed me he told me everything would be better if I found you. He said once you were dead I’d be free. Free from what?” Red tears streamed down her face. “Can I be alive again?”
I shook my head. “No. But if you can tell me where he is, I’ll make sure he pays for what he’s done to you.”
She sniffled and wiped her face against the pillow. When she saw the bloodstained smear on the case she began to cry again. Incoherent mumblings crossed her lips, but nothing that helped me.
“Where is he?” I asked again.
Calliope placed a hand on my shoulder and gave a gentle squeeze.
“Maybe we should give her a break. It’s been a difficult night. She can answer more questions later,” Calliope whispered.
Admittedly, Brigit wasn’t in any condition to give the responses I needed, but it pained me to let up now when I was this close to getting the information I needed. I stood, prepared to leave, when I heard Brigit murmur a word that sounded like Orpheus. That got Calliope’s attention, her body going rigid and eyes widening.
It also told me where I would find Peyton.
If Brigit was correct and Peyton had werewolves working with him, then there was no time to waste. A rogue vampire with plans to overthrow a city was bad enough. But I knew of one werewolf who would be foolish enough to join forces with him, and it made everything that much worse.
This ended tonight.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
“It’s Marcus.”
I was back outside on 52nd, and Desmond was trying to keep up with me as I barreled down the street, wanting very badly to be back in my apartment.
“Marcus?” He was confused and had every right to be. “Is this about the other night?”
“No. Yes? No, I don’t know. But—” I stopped mid-stride and turned to face him. He nearly collided with me due to the abruptness of my stop. “I hunt vampires.”
“I know. You’re working with the vampire council. You mentioned it.”
“Okay. Well, they sent me to hunt a really bad one who seems to have it in his mind he can take over New York if he infiltrates our population from the bottom up.” He looked puzzled but didn’t ask for explanations. “We, Holden and I, couldn’t figure out how it could be possible since this vampire isn’t powerful enough to have a daytime servant.”
“A what?” He unlocked the passenger door, opening it for me before going around and letting himself in the driver’s side.
“Someone to do his bidding in the daytime.”
Desmond’s face looked a little ashy. “They can do that?”
I nodded and continued. “This vampire, Peyton, he and I go way back, and it’s because of him that girl attacked me.”
“Did you kill her?” He wasn’t accusing me, just asking.
“No, I took her to the Oracle. Calliope can help her come to terms with what’s happened to her.”
“Calliope? You’re on a first-name basis with the Oracle? And why did she let you in? I thought she hated weres.”
“She doesn’t hate weres!” I was vexed and wanted to defend Calliope because she wasn’t here to do it herself. “Things just work differently in her world than they do here.”
“Her world? But if that’s the case, why would she see you?”
“I sort of have…special privileges?”
“Why?”
I couldn’t blame him for questioning me on this. Everyone who knew about the Oracle was aware her hospitality didn’t extend to the lycanthrope community. Of course they would assume she hated weres, it was the easiest explanation. To suddenly discover she allowed exceptions? Well, it wouldn’t make sense to me either if I wasn’t the exception in question.
“Because of the vampire…council.” I’d almost said blood. What I wanted most in that moment was to tell him everything. To have someone who genuinely cared about me and wanted to be with me know everything about who I was. But I’d kept my secret very secret for such a long time. In twenty-two years only my mother, grandmother, a vampire, a bounty hunter and an immortal oracle knew what I really was. Of those, one had abandoned me, one I’d run away from, two used me to kill my own, and the last had seen my future but wouldn’t tell it to me.
How could I tell my sort-of boyfriend about it when we had enough complications to deal with from my being soul-bonded to him and my other sort-of boyfriend? Telling them both I was also half-vampire wouldn’t help our existing situation. Or maybe it would help things a lot by removing them both from my life posthaste.
“What does this have to do with Marcus?”
I took his hand, and he placed his other one on my cheek. Being with Desmond lacked the complications of being with Lucas. Desmond wasn’t a king. He was just a man who wanted to be with me instead of a man who wanted me to be his queen. How did this get so difficult so fast? And could Calliope have been right when she said it would only get worse?
“When Marcus attacked the club he was vying for the throne.”
“Yes.”
“And if he’d gotten it, he would have killed those loyal to Lucas and the Rains.”
“Most likely.”
“With the pack of his choice, Marcus would be outside of question. Those willing to leave Lucas would have been morally ambiguous to say the least. What if Marcus told them to follow a vampire? To embrace their urge to hunt and take their rightful place outside of the shadows, in a position of power greater than humans. They would do it.” Our short drive from the Starbucks had brought us back to a parking space near my apartment building.