“You’re still holding back,” Arion tells her, and quickly moves much faster than that punch came, grabbing both sides of her face. “The whole truth, sister.”
I hear it in the way the words almost chime from his lips that it’s a command, and Damien casts me a worried glance. Emily’s an alpha, but still much weaker, so I’m not overly concerned with how her pupils quickly dilate to the command.
“Edmond Portocale thinks the alphas are slacking too much on their jobs, and organized a trifecta of events to put you all under at once. Violet Portocale was in the wrong place at the right time when she became immediately connected to the wolf, the Van Helsing, and the Morpheous—all Alpha Heads of Houses. She was the quick weakness in a tough armor to lead them into a trap. The vampires were supposed to rally, along with the purebloods, but Edmond, of all people, should have known wolves and vampires don’t play together. One always wants to trump the other. Still, putting three alphas under while the most vicious was still down was the plan. The problem was, the vampires and wolves both wanted to credit for being the ones to pull it off, without using the other’s help.”
“I’m curious what specifics her source couldn’t obtain, since this all seems rather elaborate and not at all what I was expecting,” I note as I take a seat, content to let Arion continue to pull information from her, even as her nose and eyes start to bleed.
Isiah makes a whimper of a noise, but he silences when Arion cuts his stoic gaze toward him.
“Execution failed marvelously,” Emily adds as her jaw wobbles.
“Because he’s overreaching, the stupid prick,” Damien growls.
“The unregistered vampires grew wary, and most scattered too soon. Then, too few were sent for her extermination, it seems. She’s still a Portocale, even without their blood, so she’s still cursed and still trained,” Emily hurries to add, wincing like she’s still fighting the command.
To that, Damien, Arion, and I all three snort in unison.
“With all of you under, the seconds would step up, and—”
“And the Portocale Council may have been strong enough to call shots they have no business calling,” I cut in.
My schedule just got unbearably more daunting. Now I have to deal with a fucking powerful alpha Portocale on top of everything else.
I’d rather deal with Arion’s sociopathic nest; that’s how much I hate dealing with a Portocale.
Aside from Violet, of course. I’d love to be dealing with her right now, but seeing Emily in pain is somewhat a consolation prize.
“With her dead, you’d all go under one-by-one, and while you were at your weakest, you’d be placed into three Van Helsing coffins to join Arion in his plot. Only a Portocale would have been able to raise you. It was ambitious, but he didn’t care if he won or not. He proved none of you have the control you claim to have, and he’s plotting. The plotting is where the specifics run dry.”
The bleeding stops, and her eyes slowly fill back in, as Arion releases her and faces us.
“So when do we deal with Edmond?” he asks me directly.
“Adding Idun onto this situation is the worst possible thing we could do right now,” Damien says, ignoring Arion’s readied battle stance.
“Idun won’t be an issue,” Arion says, as unsurprisingly dismissive of her threat as always.
“We don’t deal with Edmond at all,” I say, causing some metaphorical steam to roll out of Arion’s ears.
“Not your call,” Arion bites out.
“Fine. Go charge into the Portocale camp and make them bleed, Arion,” I tell him as I glance at my phone, finding an alarming amount of voicemails that have piled up while it was off. “Or wait, like I intend to do, to find out what a Portocale does when they’re wronged by a Portocale,” I state vaguely, lips twitching as I glance over at Damien and Arion.
A sinister sense of humor creases Damien’s features.
Arion seems to be thinking it over, running it through his head, when I hear Shera’s car pull up near the rear entrance.
“Not a word,” Arion says to Emily and Isiah, as Damien masks them from sight with barely any effort.
Has he been feeding off someone else? He seems to be running on a lot of charge, even after the latest battle with the wolves.
The clicking of high heels follows Shera’s scent as she walks in, and those clicking heels just click louder as she walks toward us with alarmingly wide eyes.
“Don’t say we have a problem,” Arion tells her, already reading her too easily.
“I’m afraid you’ll want to know about this problem, and I couldn’t reach any of you by phone. It’d be nice if you would just put them on vibrate instead of turning them off when you want privacy,” she rambles.
Shera only ever rambles when it’s really bad.
“Emily, take Isiah and check into a hotel room. You’ll find the rest of the home empty for the day,” Arion states almost conversationally.
I hear Isiah’s relief, and Damien rolls his eyes as he drops the pointless illusion.
Shera immediately starts walking toward the stairs. “I’ll be in the media room,” she calls over her shoulder like she doesn’t want to see Isiah’s pain, and at the same time feels like he probably deserves it.
Fucking vampires.
Emily doesn’t delay. She has the pencils out of Isiah’s hands in the next blink, and they’re out of the home in less than two, taking the opening while it’s there.
“Did they overhear too much about Violet?” Arion asks me.
“Things were too vague and too impossible to piece together. It’s one of those things you need definitive clarity on in order to really believe. Or you need to see something—the way Shera has—to consider that path,” Damien answers almost absently, speaking before I can.
I hurry up the steps, moving into the media room, as Shera sets up the monitor like we’re in for a slideshow, her hands shaking the entire time. Arion cuts off the speakers that are blaring music, a trick used for privacy in alpha homes when not all conversations need to be overheard.
Music is more accessible and can be turned up louder than ever in this era.
Damien and Arion walk in next, and Shera clears her throat as she presses play on the screen.
“What is this?” Arion asks as the dark image goes a little fuzzy.
“This is the sort of quality you get from drones that aren’t regularly updated and maintained. The technology for them is rather new, so it’s full of kinks and software that has to be—”
“You’re insulting my drones. How did you get footage from my drones?” I interrupt, gesturing at…I’m not really sure what it is I’m looking at besides a flat surface.
“It’s a horrible image, but the dirt is disturbed, and when scanned,” Shera says, pressing a button that immediately flips the screen into x-ray mode, revealing…nothing, “there’s no longer a body part there. Avery has been trying to contact you and finally contacted me. I think there’s confusion about whose beta I am,” Shera informs me very seriously.
“What the bloody hell is so special about this?” Arion asks, gesturing to the fuzzy x-ray on the fuzzy image on the fuzzy split screen…next to another fuzzy image.
I really do need to find someone to maintenance those things.
Damien sucks in a sharp breath, eyes widening, as his hands curl into fists, like he sees something we don’t, just as Shera answers, her eyes deliberately on Arion.
“Idun’s grave looks intact, but her head isn’t there anymore,” Shera says, clearing her throat as she moves onto another screen.
My stomach twists, and Arion lowers himself to a chair, his expressions shutting down as he trains all his attention to the screen.
“She’s the only one whose dismembered pieces are buried in several very distant places. The drone quality just gets worse in the spot the torso was buried, but you can still see the x-rays coming back negative for it as well,” Shera rattles on, her words coming in quicker and quicker, the panic and fear shining more evidently.
“Any chance your drones just suck too much to get a proper reading?” Damien asks me, eyes lifting to meet mine.
“No,” Shera answers in my place, back still turned. “Avery is currently awaiting Van Helsing’s call. I’m sure the Morrigan alpha and Violet need to be abridged as well.”
“There’s no way she rose,” Arion argues very quietly.
Shera nods first, and then shakes her head, almost frazzled. “According to Avery, who has been working on this all day, this image was captured just outside of Castle de Blanc.”
None of us have anything to say when a blurry, pixelated image comes on the screen of a dry, mummified body walking upright, stringy hair down to the waist, and white eyes staring directly into the camera with a hint of confusion. No arms are attached, and the legs look newly acquired.
“The most disturbing part of this is the timestamp that dates this image,” Shera goes on, clearing her throat again. “It wasn’t too long after Violet came to town.”
I drop to a seat this time, scrubbing a hand over my jaw. Damien exhales the breath it sounds like he’s been holding in, and Arion’s brow creases.
“Violet’s not part of Idun’s House. Even if this town has charged her, she shouldn’t be feeding Idun power,” Arion is quick to say, hands steepled in front of his face.
“So Idun surfaced months ago and none of us knew it?” Damien asks, casting a pointed look in my direction.
“Maybe if I wasn’t having to do things, such as hunt down a turner that Dorian never handled before he went home, then I could monitor things like stale, stagnant, inaccessible graveyards that haven’t needed watching until rather recently,” I snap.
“Idun rose months ago?” Arion cuts in, staring very deliberately at Shera.
She gives a firm nod. “Please don’t kill me for asking, but can Idun fake Portocale blood?”
“No,” I say incredulously, at the same time Arion answers, “Yes.”
Damien and I both swing our gazes to him.
“Impossible,” I argue.
“I wouldn’t say anything is impossible for Idun,” Damien states tightly. “But to answer your real question, Shera, Violet is not Idun.”
She gives a small nod, but I see the unconvinced expression on her face.
“It’s just that…she fooled you all once…” Shera lets that sentence trail off as she looks around, rocking back on her heels.
“Violet isn’t Idun,” Arion tells her very sternly, and Shera seems to relax. “You’d be cowering in fear just from Idun’s presence, most likely. Unless she’s lost that air about her with the time underground,” he adds, seeming lost in thought.
“How could she fake Portocale blood? It’s part of our curse,” I state in argument to him.