“You killed those vampires.” I hadn’t meant it as an accusation, but the tone rankled him.
“I did.” He challenged me with a look. “I tracked my targets, made sure they were killers.” He rolled his shoulders. “It doesn’t make me any less of a murderer, but it helped me sleep at night. I have no innocent blood on my hands, and I plan on keeping it that way.”
“Lacroix might hammer on you until you crack.”
“I won’t.” Corbin infused steel into his voice. “Not on this.”
“Can you do this? Stay here, with him? I can’t promise he won’t make you cross lines, but you could save a lot of lives, a lot of human lives, if you help us get ahead of this.”
Corbin cast his gaze across the garden. “You just want to know what he’s planning?”
“Yep.”
“How do I get out?” He stopped his perusal on me. “When the time comes, what’s my exit strategy?”
“I hope you won’t need one.”
“You think he’ll bring me in that close?”
“He already considers you clan. Part of that is your connection to me, part of it is his need to secure what he’s identified as a valuable resource and a potential heritor. He’s going to want you to be happy to make me happy. He’s going to want to prove he can protect anyone I place in his safekeeping. Such as future progeny. He’s also going to want to stick it to the Grande Dame. He doesn’t care for her or the Society. He’s not thrilled by what they did to me, either. But seeing as how he didn’t have me sprung either, he wasn’t invested until he knew what I was and what I could do. Until I became valuable to him.”
“That’s brutal,” Corbin murmured. “I thought I got a raw deal.”
“We both had families who loved us. We might not have kept them long, but that’s still more than a lot of people get.”
Kids blessed with two families, like me, whose second mother loved them like blood, were rare. People who lost them both through violent and sudden means, well, we were probably as common as unicorns.
Corbin scratched the dark stubble on his jaw. “How am I supposed to get word to you?”
“Don’t trust Grampy to keep the lines of communication open?”
“No.”
“Your immunity complicates things. He would honor the offer to let us stay in touch if he thought he could control what you were saying and doing. Since he can’t, he’s going to ease you over to the dark side one cookie at a time.”
“Lucky for us, I don’t have a sweet tooth.”
“Will your power affect a wraith?” I raked my fingers through Cletus’s tattered cloak. “Drain him?”
“We can find out.” His gaze hooked into Cletus, and with an effort of will, he tugged on the wraith.
Cletus drifted closer to him, head cocked, then froze, the mist of his cloak darkening.
“I can’t call him,” Corbin said, sweat popping on his brow. “He can hear me, but he’s not receptive.”
“Good.”
Calling off his experiment, Corbin exhaled. “Why is that good?”
For one thing, it meant he couldn’t drain Linus through their connection. For another, it kept Maud safe.
“I’m sending Cletus with you. He’ll get a lock on your location and report back. That way Linus and I can keep an eye on you. I’ll send the wraith to your room each night until you’re confident you can go for longer stretches. The new clan home can’t be far. Lacroix has roots in the area, and old vampires prefer staying close to home.”
“Okay.” He blew out a breath. “What about afterward?”
“I’m going to talk to the Grande Dame about an immunity deal. You bring us intel on Lacroix, she grants you a pardon for your past crimes. It’s a fair trade, even though it won’t protect you from retribution unless you join a clan willing to keep you safe in exchange for the novelty of having a Deathless in their ranks.”
“You’re half vampire.” He gave me a measuring look. “Ever consider starting your own clan?”
“I’m already Dame Woolworth. I don’t want to be Master Woolworth too.”
“I get that.”
“Linus has thriving progeny and a solid reputation. One of the clans in his debt might be more willing to host you for his sake. A favor owed by the Grande Dame’s son carries weight.”
“Linus isn’t here,” he pointed out. “Are you sure you can speak for him?”
“Yes.” Even if the bottom fell out between us, he would honor this bargain. That’s the kind of man he was: honorable. “I’ll send details with Cletus when it’s safe.”
Linus would know how to make our note-passing scheme work. He had used the wraith for multiple covert ops in the past.
“Ah. There you are.” Our escort had located us at last. “I searched the gardens.”
Before turning to him, I scratched off the sigil with my fingernail. “I got sidetracked with a stroll down memory lane.”
“The nursery is untouched if you’d like to see your dollies.” The cruel edge in his voice made me wonder if he had been here during my stay, if he had been one of the vampires who escaped. “You remember your old room, don’t you?”
“I’ve wasted too much of my grandfather’s time.” I poured as much regret as I could muster into my voice. “I’ll have to request the grand tour of the estate on my next visit. I didn’t spend much time outside my room the last time I was here.”
“There were casualties the night you escaped,” he said softly. “I lost friends I’ve known for centuries.”
“Your friends should have never locked me in a cage. I don’t deal well with confinement.”
The vampire took a menacing step into my personal space, and Lethe moved. She palmed his throat and slammed him against the stone wall, a dozen feet away, pinning him with his feet dangling above the grass.
“Bad vampire,” she tsked. “Grier is under our protection.”
“You can’t—” He coughed. “The master—”
“That deal is done,” Hood said. “His secrets are safe, and so is his clan, but Grier is pack.”
Confirmation they had ties to Lacroix smarted worse than expected, but I concealed my reaction to the sting.
The vampire’s eyes widened in shock, his lips moving over the word pack like he wanted to spit out the taste.
Grandpa would love hearing that I didn’t want to be a member of his vampire clan but had accepted a spot in a gwyllgi pack.
“Put one finger on her,” Lethe snarled, their noses touching, “and I’ll bite it off then shove it up your nose into your brain. If you have one, which I’m beginning to doubt. Grier is Lacroix’s granddaughter. You’re a lackey. You’re a predator, start thinking like one. She’s so far up the food chain you can’t see her from where you’re standing.”
“Let him go.” I reached into my pocket. “I got this.”
The second she relaxed her grip, he broke away and charged me. I let him. Welcomed the confrontation, as a matter of fact. I couldn’t afford a hit to the reputation I had started building the night of the ball. I had to prove I could hold my own, that I didn’t need protectors, that I was more powerful than the familial baggage leaving ruts in the road of my life from dragging it behind me all these years.
Impact drove me to the grass. The vampire straddled my hips, clamped his hands around my throat, and squeezed.
I could have pulled the stake, but it was a last-resort kind of weapon. I would have to kill him if I drew it. I wanted my legend constructed on powerful bones, not bloody ones, so I took the modified pen in my hand and…stabbed him in the meat of his thigh.
Okay, so a little blood was required for a necromancer to get the job done.
The vampire howled and reared back as I dove into my genetic memory.
Sigils whirled through my mind, and I discarded each suggestion while searching for a statement piece.
The vampire was doing his best to strangle me while Hood restrained Lethe, whose snarl kept grabbing my attacker’s attention. The distraction gave me all the time I needed to isolate the perfect sigil. Grampa would love this.
Too busy wrapping his hands around my throat to restrain my arms, the vampire made it easy for me to dip a finger in his blood. The poor guy must have thought I was about to dig my nails into his wrists to pry him off me, but I only painted a sigil above his former pulse point.
Before higher reasoning caught up to primal instincts, I closed the design with a satisfied grin.
Power shimmered over him in a rippling cascade that left pebbled skin in its wake. His pallor, a hallmark of vampirism, only highlighted the gray sweeping over him in a second current of magic.
Eyes gone dull, he released me to touch his face. “What…have you…done?”
With him suitably distracted, I planted my left foot and right shoulder on the ground. Snapping my hips to the right as I kicked off with my left foot, I flipped the vampire onto the grass beneath me.
“I’m proving a point that I don’t need anyone to fight my battles for me.” I patted his cheek. “I’m leaving you here as a monument to stupidity that Grandfather can gaze upon as a reminder. Maybe if you play your cards right, he’ll move you into the front gardens. The view is better there, trust me.”
“You…can’t—”
Whatever he thought I couldn’t do, I had already done. His lips froze in a horror movie scream. Eyes wide, hands clawing his face, his pose left something to be desired, but a few perennials planted in the earth around him might brighten his morbid expression.
Dusting myself clean as I climbed off him, I almost smacked face-first into Lethe. “What?”
“You turned him to stone.” She toed him with her shoe. “Are you half gorgon too?”