Before I was revealed, I arranged the mask of Dame Woolworth on my face, using every trick I had learned from Linus to make my persona seamless. Without knowing me, Lacroix had no hope of prying it up or peeking beneath.
“Grier, my darling girl. You look well.”
Gaspard Lacroix was frozen in his late thirties. His hair was long and black, and he kept it bound at his nape with a simple ribbon. Power rolled off his skin, giving the air a tangible weight, and my already unsettled stomach lurched. Only the tattoo between my shoulder blades kept me standing while his magic hissed I should fall on my knees before him, kiss his feet, lick the tiles beneath his shoes.
The gwyllgi had a natural immunity to vampiric lures. Otherwise, they couldn’t take odd jobs for vampires without being enslaved by them. Why pay when you can get it for free?
Corbin was the wild card, and I regretted playing him. I wasn’t certain if he had any natural immunity to a vampire of Lacroix’s caliber, or to lures at all, but I had to find out before I left him to my grandfather’s tender mercies. Now all I had to do was wait for Lacroix to strong-arm him and see if Corbin buckled.
“I appreciate you taking this meeting with me.” I arranged a polite smile. “I have a bit of a situation, and I was hoping you might counsel me.”
“Tell me more.” He gathered my hands in his, warm and dry, pressed a kiss to each of my cheeks, then pulled me toward an elegant wingback chair opposite the one he had been in when we arrived. “Sit, sit. Let us discuss this problem.” He reclaimed his seat without acknowledging anyone else was in the room. As much as I wanted to be flattered to be the center of attention, I knew a snub when I saw one. “What can I do to help? Anything. Name it, and it will be yours.”
“This is Corbin Theroux.” I gestured him forward, and he came without a trace of the nerves he must be experiencing. “He escaped a secure facility where the Grande Dame placed him for observation.” I let that sink in. That he mattered to the Grande Dame, that she had set him aside, that she wanted him observed. “He came straight to me and begged for asylum.”
I was laying it on thick, but Corbin didn’t contradict me, thankfully.
“Interesting.” Lacroix shifted his focus to Corbin, and already I could breathe easier. “Why would she…?”
“He’s Deathless.” I suppressed a flinch when Lacroix shot his gaze back to mine. “He’s my progeny.”
“Welcome.” He bounded to his feet, eyes sparkling, and shook hands with Corbin. “It’s a pleasure to meet you. Forgive my earlier rudeness. I have not had much occasion to converse with my granddaughter, and she was all I saw.”
Guess I wasn’t the only one laying it on thick. Maybe it ran in the family. Perish the thought.
“I understand, sir.”
Sir. I was shocked when Corbin didn’t choke on the word, but the militant cadence to his voice betrayed that it was all an act. Good news for us, since Lacroix’s touch didn’t appear to influence Corbin’s distaste for the man.
“Well-mannered, I approve.” He indicated Corbin should take the other vacant chair. “Take a seat, son.”
The endearment set alarm bells clanging in my head, but I couldn’t pinpoint why.
“You understand the delicate nature of the issue,” I said, readjusting my mask. “I’m betrothed to the Lawson scion, but the Lawson matriarch has a vested interest in my progeny. There are no other known Deathless vampires in existence. The temptation to observe one has proven greater than the sum of his past crimes in her estimation.”
“Past crimes,” he murmured, clearly interested. “Elaborate.”
Corbin kept his head straight, eyes forward. “I come from hunter stock, sir.”
Surprise he had shared the truth of his past radiated through me, but Lacroix would approve of that killer instinct. Provided he could hone it and redirect it.
“Fascinating.” Lacroix all but rubbed his hands together. “I suppose that must have been the crime that led you to be held in the black pit they call Atramentous.”
“I was careless,” Corbin admitted, “and I got caught.”
“None of that, now.” Lacroix clucked his tongue. “You can learn, you will learn.”
The volume of the warning bells doubled, tripled, and I finally processed why his attitude grated.
I was female, to be given into an advantageous marriage. Corbin was male, and he was, by vampire law, the closest thing I had to a biological son.
Lacroix was showing his age, falling back on old prejudices, and losing mega points with me.
He was reaching if he meant to proclaim Corbin the new Lacroix heritor using that thin connective tissue, but he had embraced Volkov for less. And Corbin had the benefit of being able to sire children, which Volkov, as a Last Seed, couldn’t do. Corbin could establish a ruling bloodline. A pure bloodline.
The children of Deathless vampires were said to be true immortals, though their grandchildren were believed to be mortal, but mortals could be made immortal easy enough if you had, say, a goddess-touched granddaughter on speed dial.
I had expected Lacroix to barter with me for Corbin. I had expected to be the leverage. But I was a known entity, and Corbin was a shiny new toy, ripe for the claiming since I had as good as admitted he was a clanless fugitive.
“I will offer him asylum,” Lacroix announced. “How can I not? He is your progeny, and that makes him clan.”
Corbin, who had done a bang-up job of appearing calm and collected, shot me a sideways glance.
“You make a generous offer, Grandfather.” Unable to comfort Corbin, I got ready to dump bucketloads more shade on the Grande Dame. “They caged him, refused to teach him how to feed. He lives on donor blood. He’s ignorant to his vampire heritage.”
Lacroix couldn’t have looked more affronted than if he had been a fluffy cat who fell into a bathtub.
“Vampires are predators.” Lacroix bared his teeth, but he kept his fangs tucked politely away. “They are made for the hunt, for the kill.” He must have remembered not everyone present was on Team Murder Good. I was Team Murder Bad, but I doubted there was a local chapter. “Those were the old days,” he said, injecting nostalgia into the sentiment. “We feed without killing in this era. That is the wisest and best course to maintain our species’ anonymity.”
There was no mention of killing being wrong, not that I had expected one. Still, I felt better about Corbin’s potential immunity after he made fists so tight I was amazed he didn’t swing them at Lacroix’s head.
Corbin had dedicated his life to saving humans from The Vampire Threat. I didn’t have to be an active member of that chapter to know they used all caps for that kind of thing. Bad enough he was a vampire, that he had chosen this life, betraying his old one, but for Lacroix to expect Corbin to kill humans to survive? That was a rookie mistake.
Lacroix had grown too used to preaching conversion to the members of the Undead Coalition. And I suspected he had let slip the bait he was using on accident: the unregulated hunting of humans. A return to the old ways. His ways. He wanted to pass out sunglasses in all his Welcome to Clan Lacroix kits so that his converts might view the future through the rose-colored lenses of his past.
But Corbin hadn’t bought his way into a clan—he hadn’t wanted immortality, he had chosen it as an alternative to death. That was it. Expecting him to clap his hands and squee over a chance to spill oceans of human blood proved how out of touch Lacroix was with this demographic. Corbin would grit his teeth and starve first.
“Humans do tend to glorify the supernatural” was the most neutral response I could cobble together.
“That doesn’t mean the poor boy can’t be taught to feed from willing partners.” Lacroix didn’t hear me over the plans he was making. “I would be happy to oversee his education personally.”
He slapped Corbin on the back, his fingers digging into the meat of his shoulder, and old magic hit me.
Bend, bend, bend, it seemed to whisper across my senses, but I refused to break, and so did Corbin.
Much to my relief, he didn’t exhibit any signs he was aware of Lacroix’s grasp to strangle his will.
Touch boosted the power of a Last Seed’s lure—Volkov had illustrated that firsthand—and Lacroix was giving it all he had, pumping his lure into the room until I coughed as it lodged in my throat. The tattoo on my spine burned, the ink pulsing with my heart, the design holding Lacroix’s compulsion at bay.
Perhaps this meant Deathless were immune to Last Seeds. Perhaps they were immune to all lures. I was happy to let Linus puzzle that out. All that mattered to me was that Corbin’s eyes remained clear, and my mind remained my own.
“You have much to learn, but it has been an age since I had someone to teach.” Lacroix did a poor job of concealing his annoyance, but he appeared more intrigued than put out by this discovery. “My son, George, was adopted. Last Seeds can’t produce children, so when the time came to name my heritor, he was chosen from among the descendants of my line as the most qualified.”
The offer to Corbin was clear, but I was too busy savoring the morsel he let slip about my father. While I had been holding on to the hope Lacroix and I weren’t blood related at all—as with Volkov, sometimes a LS adopted an heritor—it was good to have confirmation.
This meant Lacroix had been cultivating his bloodline, as some vampires chose to do. They reached back to find their closest living relative and then set about ensuring their line continued, usually supporting the humans financially in return for pick of the litter as heritors or clan members were needed.
Ah well. Linus had the Grande Dame, and I had Gaspard Lacroix. No one was perfect.
Before that thought marinated for too long, Lacroix snapped his fingers.
“Say your goodbyes,” he told Corbin, “and then we will leave for our clan home.”
Corbin strode to me, eyes bright, pleading, but I had to pretend not to see, not to react.