“I have the king, and he kind of runs the show.” I winked. “Pretty sure that’s all I need.” I paused. “No, wait, I don’t even need that considering I’ve survived five centuries without any allies, including my daddy dearest. Actually, despite him and his numerous assassination attempts,” I said, venom leaking into my voice as my grip on my sarcastic tone wavered.
I didn’t blame myself—it had been a somewhat trying few weeks, even for me.
“I was not behind any plots against your life,” Father said, voice firm and resolute.
I scoffed. “And I didn’t start the London riots.”
His eyes were cinder blocks against my skin. “A king is not an ally if he is no longer king,” he said instead, referencing my earlier comment.
I leaned forward, placing my hands palm down on my desk. “The dude is not looking to be going anywhere any time soon, unless someone kills him—highly likely to be me.”
He didn’t blink. “There is talk, serious talk, about overthrowing him. Not by the rebellion.”
I rolled my eyes, unsurprised that there was talk about overthrowing Rick—he hadn’t been popular since giving me that pardon—but that was on him, not me. “There’s always talk about overthrowing some king in some kingdom.” I waved my hand. “I’m sure it’s happened before. Rick can handle it.”
My father’s annoyance flickered through at having to continue to convince me of this, though I wasn’t sure why. I’d never blindly listened to anything he said before. Not that he’d ever sat down like this before. This could very likely be the longest conversation I’d had with the man in five hundred years.
“No, Isla, it hasn’t happened before,” he said tightly. “I know history isn’t your strong suit on account of knowledge of such things making you a valuable member of society—”
“I am a scorch mark on our society, just how I like it,” I interrupted with a jaunty grin. “I work hard at not learning history and pissing off monarchs to make such a glorious reputation possible.”
My father didn’t rise to the bait.
“I don’t think you understand what this means,” he said firmly. “Our kind has never once lowered itself to the level of humans with their bloody wars. Not since the Great War. And that was outside the Vein Lines, against lesser species, not within it.” His stare was grave and resolute, almost… desperate? “This is something that will change the course of our society. And you’re central to it.”
I shrugged, refusing to succumb to the prickle at the back of my neck telling me my father spoke the truth. “What can I say? I’m popular. People always want me around for the end of eras. It’s kind of my thing.”
“I have friends in high places,” he said in answer, obviously gearing up to a long-winded explanation that including a lot of name-dropping.
I grinned. “I have friends in low places, and they’re so much more fun. Plus handier in a fight.”
“This war isn’t just going to be fought on the battlefield, Isla. Or in the gutters.” His eyes went over me in distaste, like he was talking to me on the corner I prostituted on instead of the corner office of the building I owned on Wall Street.
“This war will be fought in mansions, castles, boardrooms. If the ruling Vein Lines decide to overthrow the king, you will be the first casualty. It is not yet current knowledge, the depth of your involvement in the prophecy, but it will be. Then you will be the main target. Even more highly sought after than the king.” Again, something flickered on his face, in his voice, something I couldn’t quite catch. Something I didn’t want to catch, because that would mean I might have to face the prospect that my father didn’t actually want to kill me.
I’d been living with that reality almost all my vampire life. I’d just learned that my most central tragedy was all a lie; I didn’t need this too. I was unstable enough as it was. And I was already pretty fucking unstable before all this.
“Of course I’m more sought after than a monarch,” I said, forcing myself to continue the conversation without throwing something, preferably my father’s head, at the window. “I’ve pissed off a lot more people.” Then I narrowed my eyes, catching the middle part of his previous monologue. “You know about the prophecy?”
He nodded once, stiffly and gravely.
I let that tick over in my mind, figuring out what it might mean if the prophecy was circulating like a funny cat meme.
Not good things.
And it wouldn’t bring laughs like a cat falling off a counter.
“Then why is it that you’re not sitting back and letting your precious ruling families try and rip me to shreds?” I asked with genuine confusion. “Why aren’t you involved with Mother? I’ve committed the ultimate crime, besmirched the family name. Like really. The Rominskitoffs will always be the Vein Line who had a slayer in the family. And you’re all about family integrity.”
His entire life had been built on making sure we were at the top tier of vampire society, that we punished all those who slighted us ruthlessly, and without mercy. Since I was the one who slighted the family most of the time, it was me they punished ruthlessly, and without mercy.
My father’s face was marble, but his rage didn’t need to be expressed in order to be known.
“I’m not here to discuss that, Isla,” he said after a lengthy silence.
I stared at him a long while before I leaned forward, the demons scratching at my throat, itching to be let out. The events in Russia screaming at me, since I’d been doing my best to ignore them.
Ignore him. The cruelty in his eyes. The emptiness in his voice.
“Did you know?” I asked, my voice little more than a whisper.
Father quirked his head in confusion. “Did I know what?”
“About Jonathan?” I continued, letting more emotion than I intended slink out of the words. “That he was alive. That he was a vampire.” I paused, regarding him and then laughing coldly. “Of course you were involved in the plan. To make me a worthier daughter.” I clapped my hands. “Bravo, Father. You really played the long game on that one, even if I did fuck it all up by shacking up with a slayer and eliminating almost all our Vein Line.” I narrowed my eyes. “And trust me, I’m not done.”
He regarded me long and hard. With no affection. Not that I expected it, or wanted it. Right now, I wanted to quite literally rip my father’s placid expression off his ageless face.
“I knew, after the fact,” he said. “Once you had been turned. I did not agree with the methods, but I was impressed with the result. I was not impressed with your mother using a vampire of such lowered stature to complete her task.”
He pursed his lips in distaste. Not at the fact that my mother had made me believe she’d murdered my human husband in front of me, no, that she’d used a vampire without the nobility of a name to do it.
“If it had been a reputable Vein Line, we could’ve worked with that,” he continued. “Given you a mate. But it is clear now that wasn’t her intention. She had larger plans that even I didn’t expect from her.”
I analyzed my father’s words. He was a lot of things, but a liar he wasn’t. In my father’s eyes, there was no need to lie. Lies preserved people’s feelings, improved one’s stature, or were used as weapons. He didn’t care about people’s feelings, our family’s stature was well established, and he didn’t need mere words as weapons.
So it was the truth.
For whatever it was worth.
To me, it was worth little more than tits on a bull.
“You honestly didn’t know that Mother was behind this revolution?” I asked. “You know everything about our family.”
“Not everything, it seems,” my father replied. There was something in his voice. Something that resembled pain.
He was betrayed by Mother. Not a thing that had happened in millennia. They betrayed people all the time, but as a couple. Sure, they weren’t faithful, but after thousands of years, a vampire needed a little variety.
Monogamy was a
myth in vampire unions.
Their marriage was nothing close to affectionate. But it wasn’t each other who mattered to them, it was the figureheads they turned into with the union. It was the power the two of them created with our family.
Power was, and always would be, more important than something as asinine as love in the vampire community.
“So what? Now you’re pissed at Mom and you’re getting back at her by joining forces with the enemy?” I asked. “Just bang your secretary and buy a Porsche. Whatever it is, leave me out of it. I’ve died enough lately, and I’m not stupid enough to walk into a trap by agreeing to work with you.” I leaned forward and focused on my screen to cement my dismissal.
“It is not a trap, Isla,” my father said, his voice even. He stood. “But I know words will do little to influence you. Even logical ones.” His eyes ran over me in distaste once more. “Especially logical ones. But actions are harder to ignore. And maybe I’ll speak with the king.”
I grinned. “He’ll execute you on sight, so please, do that.”
There was no answer as he left the room.
Not that I’d been expecting one.
I hadn’t been expecting any of this.
I picked up the phone, dialing as soon as I heard my father enter the elevator.
The phone barely rang before a shrill and childlike voice answered.
“Isla!”
I winced. “If I could get a popped eardrum, you’d be so dead,” I hissed, letting my residual anger at my father’s words leach through the phone. “But you can’t pop my eardrum, or my cherry, unless you’ve got a time machine, so you’ll stay undead a little longer. That and I need you for something.”
“Anything,” Scott said immediately.
I sighed. “You need to at least make me work for it, Scotty. It’s no fun otherwise. But not now, because this is time sensitive.”
There was a pause of about two-point-five milliseconds.
“What do you need?”
I shook my head.
“I need you to dig up everything you can on my father, his loyalties, and his current activities,” I said, voice flat and firm. I glanced out the window, trying to store all the information in my mind for later inspection. “Do it discreetly, and try not to get killed. At least until after you get the information,” I requested.
There was a pause. “What—”
“No questions, Scotty. Part of the deal. Keeping that wagging mouth of yours shut is in there too. Any overprotective male in my life hears about this, I’m feeding you to them, capisce?”
I hung up before he could reply, or ask me to go to a Taylor Swift concert or something.
Twirling in my chair, I regarded the jumble of shapes that would’ve been words if I hadn’t been immersed in the memories of what had just happened.
Was my father sincere? Or was he playing me?
Which was worse?
Which was more likely to end in blood?
Who was I kidding? They’d both end in blood.
I smelled it as soon as I got out of the elevator.
“Not one day can I go without someone bleeding in my apartment,” I said to myself as I opened the door, preparing for a fight.
Once inside, the smell was stronger, mingled with death.
Nothing attacked me immediately, so I reasoned death had come and gone. Plus, the blood had a stale quality to it. Signs of a struggle were everywhere: broken glasses—my favorite champagne flutes—overturned furniture, the works.
“Just another day in my fabulous life,” I muttered, throwing my Chanel on the side table and going in search of the dead human who had obviously been home when the latest set of assassins came a-knocking.
Rick was going to be pissed that his little pet had expired. But really, she was damaged, and not even in the cool way—not like me—so it was probably for the best. There was no way he could be that attached to her. She didn’t even speak, for Hades’s sake. Yeah, she had the whole hot-as-shit thing going on, but I was hotter than shit and I needed my mouth—and what came out of it—to make people obsessed with me. Or hate me.
Whatever.
Thorne was not there. The lack of his thundering heartbeat told me that, and our freaky-deaky connection. I could sense him, alive on this hunk of rock, somewhere too far away to distinguish what exactly he was doing.
He’d probably stormed off and was being pissed somewhere watching Meg Ryan movies. Good thing too, because he got far too hysterical about assassination attempts in the past. It would be twofold now that he knew of my breakable condition.
But what he didn’t know wouldn’t hurt him.
It would only hurt me, which was fine. Despite what Thorne thought, I was a dab hand at handling pain. Even better at dishing it out.
Though it seemed today I would not be dishing pain, as I sensed only one living thing in the vicinity. A familiar living thing.
I rounded the corner to the room that she’d all but sequestered herself in since she’d been there. She barely exited her little self-induced prison. I was actually kind of glad about that; I just couldn’t be bothered dealing with whatever she’d turn out to be.
Trouble, of some variety. I knew that because I was trouble, and therefore I recognized it. If we hadn’t been battling a war and my once-dead husband coming back from the dead, I would’ve been tickled pink at having an entertaining, potentially insane human under my roof. Especially considering Rick’s reaction to the aforementioned human.
But there was only a certain amount of crazy a girl—even this girl—could deal with.
But crazy waited for no girl.
Or vampire.
So I entered the room where the blood and death was originating from. Her room.
I stared at her. Then the mangled corpses at her feet. Then the bloody dagger in her hand. And the blank, if emotionless look on her small human face that still, even now, portrayed nothing but innocence. Her eyes fastened on me and revealed the truth.
“Oh my Hades,” I said with a smile. “You’re a psychopath.”
She didn’t say anything, merely stood there with her knife and her corpses and her fucked-up soul. Most likely waiting for me to scream at her for staining my rug—though that did kind of piss me off—or whine about stabbing houseguests.
Though from a glance, I guessed these were enemies, maybe hybrids—they were too mangled to quite see at that stage. And I didn’t care about guests who couldn’t handle themselves against a human. They deserved to die in that case, and certainly didn’t deserve to be a guest of mine.
My grin widened. “We’re going to be such good friends.”
Chapter 5
The front door crashed—yes, literally crashed—open.
Rick’s eyes went to me, then the room. “Where is she?” he demanded, face devoid of its usual blankness, eyes wild.
I scowled at the remains of my door. “The knob works, you know. The destruction of property was highly unnecessary and quite dramatic. For me to say that, you know you’ve gone too Madonna.”
His entire form pulsated in an unrestrained fury I’d never seen from the monarch. “Where the fuck is she?” he roared.
I blinked in surprised. “Dude, calm down. She’s in the shower, washing off the blood.”
That didn’t help. Like at all.
“Blood?” he hissed. Then he was on me in two strides, hands crushing the bones in my upper arms. “If you let her get hurt…” he threatened, not needing words to communicate the pure murder in his eyes.
I yanked myself from his grip with considerable effort and pain, scowling at both him and myself. I didn’t like being weaker than anyone, and I was a little mindful of the fact that vampires weren’t meant to be getting close enough to touch me or else they’d find out just how vulnerable I was.
Though Rick was technically an ally, it paid not to show weakness to anyone. Even friends. Especially friends. They made the most ruthless enemies.
“What? What will you do if I
let a human woman, who I have no fealty to, get hurt?” I challenged, pissed off that my arms weren’t healing as quickly as I’d like. “Because if you’re going to be throwing around threats, I’ll start throwing copper fucking daggers. People need to stop thinking I’m going to protect weaker beings in my greater proximity. That’s not how I roll,” I seethed. “I gave you the opportunity to take her with you. You didn’t. So if she dies, it’s on you, dude.”
Rick might’ve hit me, and then I might’ve done something slightly dramatic like try and hopefully succeed in killing him. But his attention moved when a fluttering heartbeat entered the other side of the room.
Helen, as I was calling her—because she seemed deaf and dumb for all intents and purposes—was standing in the doorway having washed the blood off. She was wearing a fluffy white robe that drowned her in Egyptian cotton, highlighting her pale skin and huge doe eyes.
She really worked the victim thing.
I would’ve almost believed her had I not witnessed the crazy in her eyes as she stood over the corpses she’d created. The corpses she shouldn’t have been able to create, since they were crazed vampire hybrids with exceptional strength and ravenous bloodlust. But she’d done it. Without getting a scratch on her. And she’d liked it. I’d seen that on her face when I’d walked into the room drenched in violence. The satisfaction in death. Pain.
I wasn’t judging. I thought it was fantastic.
I didn’t do female friends, apart from Sophie. Well, I didn’t really do friends at all until recently, but the only females I liked were the ones who knew how to handle themselves in a fight and who knew to kill any man who insinuated they needed protecting.
Though Sophie and I had been lagging on that score lately.
I expected Rick to do the alpha male thing and rush at her much like he’d just rushed me. Though he wasn’t likely to crush any bones, because they didn’t heal as easily and he seemed loath to cause this strange little psychopath any pain. Granted, he didn’t know she was a psychopath.
Yet.
I couldn’t wait to watch him find out.
I could’ve told him right then, saved a lot of trouble. But I loved trouble, especially if it meant karma was finally going to come around and give Rick a much-needed dick punch.