I stare at the petite imp with newfound respect. I guess she’s recovered from the shock of finding blue boy on her mistress’s bed.
Keon backs up and climbs off the bed as Iza places her hands on her hips and approaches, spewing words I don’t understand. They sound like curses, though. Lots of curses.
Keon’s eyes narrow, his tail coming up over his shoulder, arrowhead tip quivering.
“Um, Iza?”
She huffs. “Now I have to change the sheets. Again.” She jabs a finger at Keon. “You. You do not come in here, or I will do it. No more warnings. Now get out.”
Blue boy doesn’t argue. Instead, he skirts around the bed and hurries toward me and the door. I step aside in time to avoid being knocked aside, and then he’s out of the room, slamming the door in his wake as if to make a point he hasn’t articulated yet.
Iza picks up the laundry, as calm as can be, and begins to refold it and place it neatly in the basket. The imp has a system.
“What jussst happened?” Cyril asks.
Yeah, I’m wondering the same thing. “Um…Iza? What the hell just happened?”
“I told him if he didn’t leave immediately, I’d bite him.”
Blue boy was scared of a bite?
She looks up at me, her mournful eyes alight with glee. “Imp bites are very painful to some daemons. Excruciating, in fact. They can make them sick for days, and in some cases, even kill…” Her eyes widened. “He is one of those daemons. Don’t worry. I’ll keep him away from my Fee.”
Well, well, looks like we had our own lethal weapon on staff.
Leaving her to her enthusiastic bed-stripping, I head out into the corridor to find blue boy leaning up against the wall.
“I’ll slit its throat,” he says. “I’ll find it when it sleeps and I’ll—”
I jump without thinking, and I’m beside him, my dagger at his throat. “Sorry? What was that?”
I expect him to flinch, to tense, to do something, but he merely smiles. “You could be a Blade.”
“No, thanks. I prefer not having a leash around my neck.” I jump again and make sure there’s enough distance between us because being close to him makes my skin crawl. “Stay away from Iza and stay out of Fee’s room. You’re here to help Fee at the Academy not spy on her, so just stick to that, yeah?”
“You don’t give me orders?”
“Oh, I know. It’s not an order, it’s a warning.” I slice a sharp look his way before turning my back on him. It’s a bold move. One that lets him know I’m not afraid of him.
“Has he moved?” I whisper from the corner of my mouth.
“No,” Cyril says. “But I think he might be checking out your buttocksss.”
Now that is alarming.
“Eyes up, dirty blue boy. Eyes up.”
A surprised chuckle follows in my wake.
Chapter Seventeen
Fee
My pack closed in, but no one moved to attack. They’d all heard the vamp’s plea, and they were just as confused as me.
“Help us…” the vamp said again.
The passenger door opened, and a woman got out. She staggered around the van on unsteady legs and fell to a crouch beside the man.
“Ella?” he asked.
“She’s okay. They’re all okay,” the woman replied.
All? “Hey.” I snapped my fingers to get their attention. “You do realize you just busted your van into a Loup pack house?”
“Regency, yes?” The female looked hopeful.
She was also more alert than the male vamp, less about to keel over.
“You did this on purpose?” Grayson asked.
“No, not the damage,” she said. “Bryson lost control. He hasn’t fed in weeks. We’ve been running for over a month, and they found us. We didn’t know where else to go.”
“We’re not in the business of helping vamps,” Bastian sneered. “We in the business of killing them.”
And it was unlikely that these vamps weren’t aware of that fact. They’d come here out of desperation. We were the lesser of two evils.
“Bastian.” I gave him a look that said stop.
His chest heaved in annoyance, but he inclined his head and obliged.
“Who are you running from?”
“I don’t know who they are or why they want us, but they’ve been rounding up vamps for weeks,” the woman said. “We managed to avoid them by masking our scent.”
“Not much of a mask,” Bastian said. “I’d be able to smell you for miles.”
“But not the vamp scent. You won’t smell that, and neither do they. If they find you, then you’re never seen again,” she said. “I saw them…I saw their fangs. They’re like us, but…but they’re different.” Her eyes widened. “They look completely human.”
There were eight vamps crammed into the van, and the house stank to high heaven when they all spilled out. Bobby herded them outside, and several Loup surrounded them to make sure they stayed put.
But they weren’t a danger to us. Not in this condition. And they weren’t acting like regular vamps either. They sat huddled, hugging each other as if…As if they cared about one another.
“This is freaking me out,” Dean said. “This is not typical vamp behavior.”
“No,” Grayson agreed. “Vamps are predators. They have low empathy and huge egos. Their instinct is to hunt and kill.”
“This would explain why the vamp attacks suddenly dropped,” Dean said. “And why we’ve barely seen a vamp for weeks.”
I’d seen this before. “Hunter and I caught one a couple of weeks ago. He was filthy and stunk to high heaven. He mentioned something about being hunted.”
“What happened?” Grayson asked.
“Hunter ordered his Loup to kill him. He thought the vamp was high.” I sighed. “I could have stopped him, but I didn’t.”
“It’s not your fault,” Grayson said. “Vamp behavior has been out of whack recently. They’re solo creatures, at the most living in pairs or trios, but recently they’ve been nesting in large numbers, and now this… There has to be a link.”
“We need to investigate,” Dean said. “If there’s a new breed of vamp hunting the old breed, then we need to know why. We need to know what the fuck is happening to change the vamp behavior.”
Grayson nodded in agreement. “Change patrol protocol to keep an eye out for this new kind of vamp that look completely human. You’ll need to work on scent alone.”
Kristoff, the witch turned vampire who worked with the Dominus, might be able to do some digging, or he might already know something.
He might have got the details of the Dread rendezvous slightly incorrect, but Conah had cleared him when it came to duplicity. The vampire’s information had been correct to the best of his knowledge.
We could use him now. “I know someone who might be able to help. I’ll call Azazel and get him to reach out.”
Grayson nodded. “In the meantime, these vamps are under our protection.” He shook his head. “Never thought I’d fucking say those words. Bastian, get them set up in the garage. Give them blankets and see if you can get hold of some pig’s blood. I need to call the other packs and clue them in.”
Grayson walked away with his phone to his ear.
I turned to my beta. “Dean, what’s the landline number here?”
He smiled. “We need to get you a mobile for Necro use.”
I held up my comm. “This usually works well enough, but yeah, I need a mobile for when I’m in the city.”
“I’ll sort it for you.”
He tapped the landline number into the comm for me, and I sent it to Azazel with a message to call me if he was in the city.
The phone rang a few moments later.
“Azazel?”
“Fee, is everything all right?” He sounded tired, as if he’d been asleep and I’d woken him. I loved the sound of his just-waking-up voice.
I closed my eyes, reveling in it. “Yes. Everything’s fine, but I need you to do something for me.”
“Anything.”
“I need you to contact Kristoff.”
Azazel called back fifteen minutes later, sounding worried. I sat at the island in the kitchen nursing a cup of coffee, one eye on the Loup going back and forth with blankets and supplies for the vamps, and my full auditory attention on Azazel’s gravelly voice.
“Kristoff’s line’s dead,” Azazel said. “The number’s been disconnected. It’s not like him to get cut off and not be in touch to let us know. We’ve been working together for a long time.”
Uriel came to mind. “Seems to be the season for not being able to get hold of people.”
Bobby placed a plate of cookies in front of me, freshly baked from the smell of them. Yep, looked like the house was fully awake now.
“What do you mean?” Azazel asked.
Grayson walked by and gave my nape a reassuring squeeze before heading outside.
“Uriel hasn’t been answering my calls.”
“Comm?”
“Not the comm, and not when I call him with intent.”
“That isn’t like him.”
“I’m beginning to think I need to pay the Beyond a visit.”
“Uriel is a celestial, and the Beyond is a vast place. He could simply be out of reach at the moment.”
“I know, but he was looking into the Dread’s story, and now he’s gone all radio silence…I need to be sure he’s okay.”
“I’ll take you after your visit to Deadside in a couple of days.” He sounded weary and it pressed my worry button.
“Are you all right?”
“You mean aside from missing you?” There was a smile in his voice, which pushed back the anxiety a little.
“Yes, aside from that. You sound tired. I don’t think I’ve ever seen you tired.”