Idris

As I held my phone up to my ear, I had to brace myself against the wall for balance. I croaked a hello in the phone, trying to sound as normal as possible despite the lingering heat of Celia’s body pressed against mine.

“Idris,” said a deep male voice. He drew out my name, hissing the second syllable.

Even though I was pretty sure who it was, I asked, “Who’s this?”

“King Aleksandr. I understand you have my daughter.”

My blood ran cold at the sound of his name. Even though I knew he’d be contacting me, hearing his voice was something else. I whipped my head to find Celia sitting in the middle of the bed, looking small and scared as she took in my tense body posture. “I do.”

“Has she been harmed?”

“She is unharmed.”

“I want proof. Ask her to say her name into the phone.”

I held up the phone. “Say your name?”

“What?” she asked.

“Say your name.”

“Why?”

“Celia, please just say your name.”

“Fine,” she muttered. “Hi, I’m Celia Valerie and I like Froot Loops.”

I rolled my eyes at her and placed the phone back at my ear. “Happy?”

He was silent for a long moment. Then he spoke. “Her situation better not change.”

“We don’t harm humans, remember?”

“Ah, but she is not human. At least fully.”

I said through gritted teeth,. “She will not be harmed.”

“Good. I’m willing to discuss some treaty between our clans, but not until I see her with my own eyes.”

“Why should we agree to that?”

“Because I get what I want, Idris. Including your father.”

“Fuck you,” I spat.

He didn’t laugh. He didn’t react at all. “One hour. The warehouse at the corner of Cherry and Fifth. First floor back by the old stained-glass window. Come alone with my daughter, and certainly not that freak brother of yours. Or there will be war. Is that what you want, Idris? A war where vampires die along with scores of humans caught in the crosshairs?”

I ignored his threat. “Will you be alone, as well?”

“Yes.”

“How do I know you’re telling the truth?”

“I guess you don’t. One hour, Idris Gregorie.”

The call ended.

Celia was staring at me with wide eyes, and I was torn between wishing we could go back to five minutes ago and being grateful for the interruption. This was the time that I had to be the vampire that my clan needed—the vampire my father thought I couldn’t be.

I wouldn’t be calling Athan. I would be starting a war with both eyes open. Aleksandr’s head would fall. In front of his daughter. And there was nothing I could do about it.

“Was that…who was that?” she asked, extending a leg to the floor and standing up gracefully.

“Your father,” I said. I reached down, into the place inside where I harbored my anger and resentment. I inhaled the bitterness and clung to it. “He wants us to meet him.”

“He does?” She lifted her clasped hands to her chest, and while it was a gesture of excitement, I didn’t miss the trembling of her shoulders.

I nodded. “In one hour.”

“One hour,” she echoed as she took a step closer to me. Her eyes watched me warily. “Idris—”

“Are you ready?” I couldn’t do this, listen to the soft way she said my name. This meeting was a reminder of who she was. A Valarian. A pawn. A bargaining chip. Getting attached to her—caring about her—was not in my best interest. Since she didn’t have any information, her only purpose was to stay alive. After I killed her father, Athan would order her to be returned to her clan, whether they wanted her or not. After this, everything between us would change. I swallowed the bitter bile rising up into my throat.

Celia glanced at her clothes. “I-I guess I’m ready—”

“I’m going to scout the location beforehand. I don’t trust your father.”

“He just wants to meet me, right?” She sounded wounded.

“I’m sorry that I don’t trust the Valarian king’s ability to love anything that comes between him and his goals. Even his daughter.”

She flinched, and murmured, “Ouch.”

“From one survivor to another,” I said. “Understand that this is how I’m surviving.”

She tilted her chin in the air, giving me a defiant look. “Go. Do what you need to do. I’ll be here when you get back. Because I’m going to survive this, too.”

“Good,” I said and walked out the door.

The farther I strode from the apartment, the more shattered I felt, like elastic skin stretched over broken bones and torn muscle. I wasn’t sure what King Aleksandr would say or do, but I was smart enough to know that this was the end of whatever chance I had to touch Celia Valerie. What would the Valarians do with her? Would her body heat for another vampire like it did for me? Would she beg him to touch her? Would she look at him like she did me, like she’d die if I didn’t kiss her?

I’d always thought that place in my soul full of anger made me hard, strong. But now I realized it didn’t. Not at all. It was an extreme emotion just like love, and if I could feel anger that strongly, then I could love, too. I wasn’t strong, I was ruled by my feelings. But if I didn’t have anger, what did I have?

I checked the time. I had about fifteen minutes until sundown. I’d check out the warehouse, then retrieve Celia, and we’d meet her father.

I hadn’t been able to trust my father not to hurt me. So I couldn’t trust hers, either.

Celia

Idris gripped my arm tightly, and although he was touching me, leading the way, he wasn’t there. It’d been three days—maybe. I wasn’t quite sure of the time since I’d been stuck underground with no windows—and it was frightening how much it hurt to see Idris turn to stone around me.

Maybe he’d been keeping me happy so I’d help influence my father to their side. It could be that all of his kindness had been because he wanted something from me. As soon as that phone call had come through, he’d barely said three words to me. I was once again human collateral. It stung so badly that sometimes I could barely breathe from the pain.

I clung to what he had said—that when this was all over, I’d look back on this time with him and that I’d resent him, if not find him altogether forgettable. I hoped so, because right now I couldn’t imagine walking away from him. How fucked up was that?

He led me up a set of stairs and then aimed his wrist at the portal. It shimmered and we stepped through. It closed up behind us—a lattice of brick again. We moved quickly through a warehouse, and I had to jog to keep up. At least I was wearing sneakers. Even though my sweatshirt was thin, I was sweating. My stomach was a bundle of nerves and my heart beat a constant thumping rhythm in my chest.

I was meeting my father. I’d dreamed so many times of this moment. Of course, in my dreams, I’d received a phone call, and the man on the other end said, Is this Celia Valerie? And I’d said, Yes it is. And he’d replied, We’ve been looking for you for years. Your mother and I want to meet you. We’d arranged a time, and I’d shown up at their house, which was a nice little suburban colonial with a garden full of tulips. They hugged me, and then fed me pie, and we marveled at how well I blended into their family.

My dream never involved nightfall, a secretive meeting, or goddamn vampires.

Idris had told me that he scouted the warehouse ahead of time, but he’d found no trace of Quellen or a mass gathering of Valarians. And to be honest, I didn’t care. I wanted to meet my father. Maybe this would all come back to bite me in the ass, but knowing I had a living, breathing parent was a dream come true.

We reached the warehouse in question, but didn’t enter. Instead Idris led me over to a small shed that attached to the side. “What—?” I began.

“No way am I bringing you in there before finding out if he’s telling the truth,” Idris said, his voice low and firm. He pointed to a door inside the shed that led out into the warehouse where they’d be meeting. The door bore a thin, three-inch-long crack. “You can watch from here, and if I call your name, you can come out. Do not,” he ordered harshly, “by any means, leave this shed until I say so. Understand?”

“Yes, I understand.” I straightened my spine, a little tired of his tone. “You don’t have to be angry about it.”

His eyes flashed, and he opened his lips, but then clamped them shut again before nodding.

“When will your brother get here?” Idris had told me that he called him when he was out.

A shadow crossed over Idris’s features. “Later. Don’t worry about that.”

“Okay.”

“Do not speak, or make any noise, either.” He tapped his ear. “Vampire hearing.”

“I’ll be quiet,” I promised.

He didn’t move, and in this small shed, the only light was from the moon shining in a dirty window. It cast an eerie glow across his face, his eyes nothing but black holes. I still wanted to touch him, to ask him what would have happened if we’d had more time in the small apartment.

But then he was gone with a swirl of his coat, striding out of the shed and shutting it behind him. I scrambled over to the door leading to the warehouse to look through the crack. After a moment Idris strode to the center of the warehouse. Back in the apartment, he’d spent a good fifteen minutes sharpening his weapons. I’d counted them. One in his boot. Two at his belt, and another two held in a brace on his upper back.

I’d asked about guns, and he said the best way to kill a vampire was to cut off his head. Guns were only effective in slowing them down. I remembered sinking that knife into the Quellen’s eye, the sound of its blood splattered, that ear-piercing shriek right before Idris took off its head. I shivered.

Idris stood still, his back to a wall. I was so glad the moon was almost full, because that was the only way I could see what was going on inside the warehouse. I pulled my sleeves over my hands and rested them on the door. I wasn’t sure how long I’d be waiting here.

Another minute passed, and then a door creaked open. Idris straightened and his hands slid to his belt.

A figure emerged from the far corner of the warehouse and I squinted my eyes to get a better look. The figure drew closer, and I squinted to see better. My father. I knew it, just as I knew the sun rose in the east, set in the west, and cookie dough was meant to be eaten. He was striding toward Idris, his long coat brushing the floor with every step. I had to bite my cloth-covered fist to prevent myself from crying out.

His hair was the exact same color as mine, and he wore it long, down past his shoulders. That was my hair—hell, we had the same haircut. And as he drew closer, I could see it more clearly—in the shape of his chin, and that dumb cowlick at our right temples—that he was my father. And he was a freaking vampire.

He came to a stop ten feet away from Idris. “Where is she?”

“Safe.”

“I thought I made it clear she was to come here.”

“And I need some assurances that she’s safe with you.”

I could only see my father’s profile, but he flinched. “And what reason do you have to think she’s not?”

“She’s human.”

“I thought we went over this. She’s only half human.”

“Then why has she been unprotected all this time? She knows nothing of you. At least that’s what she tells me. Is that true?”

My father didn’t speak for a long moment, and when he did, his voice had changed somewhat. Less pompous. “I loved her mother very much. I promised her I’d let Celia live a normal human life until she was to be turned and then return to her rightful place.”

“Little late for that, isn’t it? She’s already having the nightmares.”

My father’s lips twisted into a sneer. “There are things about her you don’t know. And neither does she.”

What? I wanted to scream. Tell me who and what I am!

“So you loved her mother, and yet you don’t care about the future of the human race?”

“I care about their future very much,” my father said. “I just disagree with them on their future. Speaking of, would you hurt my daughter? That’s what this whole thing is about, right? If I don’t do what you want, you’ll hurt her?”

“My father—”

“He died at your brother’s hand. Not mine.”

“He was dead the minute you got into his head. What did you do? How did you do it?”

The Valarian king lifted his chin, and it was so much me, that I nearly gasped. “Would you hurt her?”

Idris’s nostrils flared, and then he spoke in a deadly quiet voice. “I’d do what it took to secure the safety of my clan and the human race.”

He meant it. He meant those words, and the last feeling I had for Idris Gregorie died a slow, agonizing death in the pit of my stomach. I was only good to him as collateral against his enemy. The man screamed duty-bound. How had I thought he could care for me with Valarian blood running through my veins?

My father just nodded. “I see.”

“But I haven’t hurt her. I saved her from a Quellen ready to stick a knife in her chest. Just so you know, someone wants her dead.”

My father’s head jerked up. “Excuse me?”

“A Quellen was in her bedroom. Tried to kill her. If I hadn’t been there, he would have succeeded. How many enemies you got?”

My father stared at Idris so intently, so quietly, that even Idris shifted under the weight of that gaze. Finally, the king said, “You’re lying.”

Idris laughed. “You know I’m not lying.”

My father glanced around, his movements growing erratic. “Where is she? I want to see her. The Quellen should not…no.”

Idris looked uncomfortable now, but he didn’t dare look in my direction. “What are you saying?”

“I’m saying…”

Something moved across a hole in the ceiling, enough to blot out the light of the moon for one second. Idris tensed, and I gasped.

The king’s eyes darted to me, and I felt it the moment he saw me. “Celia,” he whispered. That one word, full of longing, was like a rope around my heart. I burst out the door and raced toward him.

Idris roared out a garbled, “Stop!” but I wasn’t focused on him. My father stood there, arms open, and I was almost there, so close, just as a form dropped to the floor behind him.

Something flashed in the moonlight, and then my father’s pale throat was gushing blood. I screamed just as he gurgled my name again, clutching his throat as a large vampire stood behind him, white fangs gleaming. “Knew you’d lead me to her, old man.”

I didn’t make it to my father’s side. As his body crumpled, I was picked off my feet by Idris as he took off sprinting across the warehouse. I lay limp in his arms, unable to speak, or move, my father’s lifeless eyes haunting me.

Sounds came from all around us now, bodies dropping to the floor from the hole in the roof. I glanced behind us to see Quellen, vampires, and that giant one with the blade coming after us. We moved at superhuman speed, but then everyone in here was superhuman.

We were nearly at the door when a group of five vampires descended in front of us, blades drawn. Idris skidded to a halt and whirled around, but we were boxed in. There was no escape. Idris’s heart beat steady against mine, and I saw the minute he made a decision to fight. He set me down gently, drew his blades, and faced a group of Quellen head-on. My knees were barely holding me up, and I couldn’t see how we were going to get out of this. Where was Athan? Where were the other Gregorie soldiers?

Idris took on two Quellen at once, dispatching them quickly. More rushed at him, and for long, agonizing seconds, all I could see was a blur of limbs, flashing of blades, and arcs of blood. Idris was a strong fighter, quick and deadly, and took out a few, but he was no match for the dozens that surrounded us. I tried to hit back at the ones grabbing me, but my fists were like flies on vampire and Quellen bodies. My heart sank into the floor, mixing with the blood and dirt there when I was forced to recognize that we were losing. There was no getting out of here with Idris. Whoever this vampire was, he wanted me.

I tried to reach Idris one last time, to lock my arms around his leg. Of course that wouldn’t help him fighting, but I was desperate to stay with him. “Celia.” He turned to take my hand, face splattered with blood, a giant wound splitting his scalp, leaking blood into his hair. I sobbed, and our fingers touched just as a hand tangled in my hair and yanked me away.

I screamed as loudly as I could. I struggled and pulled and kicked. I snarled like a wild animal, but it did no good. A fist slammed into my stomach and I fell to the floor on my side, unable to move as I gasped for breath.

Five feet away, Idris was huddled in a ball on the floor, surrounded by vampires who wasted no effort pummeling him until he was a mass of beaten flesh. I choked out a sob, the contents of my stomach threatening to come up. Idris wasn’t moving. He was no longer protecting himself. And they weren’t stopping. They continued to stomp, and slash, and punch, and my tears slid out of the corners of my eyes to seep through the wooden floor.

I didn’t turn away, and I tried to shout, but my voice was hoarse. “Please stop,” I said. “Please leave him alone.”

But no one was listening to me.

Suddenly boots filled my vision, blocking out Idris’s lifeless form. The figure crouched, and I stared into the eyes of the big vampire who had slashed my father’s throat. He had the audacity to grin at me while he twirled a bloody blade in his hand. “Celia Valerie. Not as pretty as I’d hoped, but maybe you’ll look better once we get you cleaned up.”

I inhaled sharply and with every ounce of energy I had left, I screamed into his face, “Fuck you!” He’d denied me my family reunion. He’d killed Idris.

His grin only grew, and every organ in my body shriveled. “You’ll make a great queen,” he said, before passing his wrist in front of my face. I cursed the goddamn somnus just as the gas took me under.