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MY MOUSE TOOK US TO the side yard of a house in the town I’d visited a couple of years ago. “The wiccan’s store is in a town to the north of here, about an hour away by car,” I said to Freya. “Can you get us there by ten o’clock?” I knew her kind could travel vast distances quickly if they needed to.
“It would burn up too much of my energy to run that far,” she said as she made her way around to the front path. “There’s a far better way to get there.”
Intrigued, I followed her from the yard to the sidewalk. A car was approaching and she stepped out in front of it. I felt the wave of compulsion she sent out, but I wasn’t her target this time. The driver stopped his car a few yards from her. He sat motionless behind the wheel, waiting for her command.
“Are you going to steal his car?” I asked in disapproval.
Freya gave me a look over her shoulder, assessing my expression. “I’d intended to, but I suppose I can merely compel him to drive us to our destination instead.”
“That would be a better idea,” I said in relief. My mate was nothing like normal vampires, but I didn’t know why. She was an enigma that I would have to solve one riddle at a time.
We climbed into the back of the car and I buckled myself in. Freya didn’t bother to. “Drive northward,” she ordered and he took off. There was only one road that led to the next town, so she didn’t need to give him further instructions.
Our chauffeur was in his thirties. He was wearing a wedding ring, so we were probably delaying him from heading home. His partner was bound to be worried about him when he didn’t turn up.
The guy’s phone rang about ten minutes later. “Answer it,” I said, but he ignored me.
“Do as Nickolas says,” Freya ordered him.
He took his phone out of his pocket and answered it. “Hello?” His voice sounded slightly drugged.
“Where are you, babe?” a male voice asked. “You were supposed to be home fifteen minutes ago.”
“Tell him you have a surprise planned and that and you’ll be home in a couple of hours,” I said.
The driver repeated my words and his husband laughed in delight. “I won’t ask what you’re up to. You know I love surprises! I’ll keep your dinner in the oven until you get home. Love you!”
“I love you, too,” our chauffeur replied automatically, then his partner hung up.
“His husband will be disappointed when he comes home empty handed,” Freya figured.
“He won’t be,” I said. “What sort of surprise would you buy for your husband?” I asked our driver.
“I’d buy him jewelry.”
“Maybe the wiccan will have something we can give him, so his partner won’t be suspicious,” I mused.
“Why do you care about humans so much?” Freya asked.
“I’ve been trained to cover my tracks,” I replied with a shrug. “Humans fear supernatural creatures, even though shifters and vampires helped save the world from demons. My team does their best to stay under the radar.”
She nodded in understanding. Her master had taught her how to hide from the angry mobs who’d hunted her kind.
“What was your master like?” I asked curiously.
“She was ancient,” Freya said. “I believe she was already several thousand years old when she discovered me and decided to turn me.”
“Why did she turn you?”
“I was dying,” she replied, turning her face away so I couldn’t read her expression. “She’d lost several fledglings in a battle against a rival nest and decided to bring me into her fold.”
“Did she treat her nest badly?” From what I understood, all master vampires were cruel and abusive towards their minions.
“She was a harsh mistress, but she taught us how to survive. She trained us to be her soldiers so we could protect her from her enemies.”
“What happened to her?”
“We ran into a stronger nest several hundred years after I was turned. Their master killed my master and his nest slaughtered everyone except for me.”
I almost didn’t want to know why, but I had to ask. “Why did they spare you?”
“I went insane with grief for my dead master,” she said in a distant tone and turned to face me. “I wasn’t able to control myself enough to flee. They surrounded me and their master gloated that I would become his most beautiful conquest. He intended to take control of me and become my new master.”
A chill ran down my spine at her tone. The same danger I’d sensed when she’d been watching me in the nightclub crept back. I reached over to take her cold hand in mine. “How long were you his captive?” I asked, trying hard to control my rage that she’d been abused by the master of the rival nest.
“He didn’t get a chance to subjugate me,” she said flatly. “He resembled my former chieftain slightly and something inside me snapped. I picked up a fallen sword and unleashed my fury on them all.”
“You killed a powerful master vampire and his entire nest all by yourself?” I asked in shock.
A brief smile flickered across her beautiful face. “I was covered in their blood by the time I was done. I’d been severely wounded during our battle, but I drained a deer and healed.”
“You’re a warrior,” I said proudly, as if she was already my wife. “You’ll fit right in with our squad.”
“You must give up on your delusion that I’m your mate,” she said chidingly and tugged her hand out of mine. “My kind aren’t able to feel love or affection. We only feel hunger and lust.”
“I’d settle for lust,” I joked, but it was a lie. She didn’t have a soul, so she couldn’t possibly love me in return. I hoped Alex would be able to help us with her necromancy. She’d given Yas back a normal range of emotions. Maybe she could do the same thing for Freya. “What happened to you after you killed the rival nest?” I asked.
“I wandered alone for many centuries. Eventually, I became a master myself and created a nest. I trained them to drink from animals rather than humans. We hid from the people who were breeding like rabbits and creating large cities that gave us fewer places to seek refuge.”
“Where is your nest now?”
Her expression became bleak at my question. “Killion and his nest murdered them while I was hunting. I felt them die and sped back to our lair, but the rivals were gone. It took me a decade to learn who was responsible. I’ve been searching for him ever since.”
“Why didn’t you make a new nest?”
“We aren’t able to love our fledglings, but it’s still painful to lose them,” she replied. “I’d rather live alone for the rest of my existence than to suffer pain like that again.”
She couldn’t make new ones now that my parents had forbidden vampires from creating fledglings, but she would have been able to back then. It was strange that vampires could feel grief after losing their minions and masters. “It must have something to do with the death magic that binds them to you,” I mused.
“What are you talking about?” she asked in confusion.
“I was just wondering how soulless beings can feel grief at losing their fledglings or their makers,” I explained. “I figure it’s because of the death magic that created your kind. It binds fledglings to their masters so they can’t rebel against them. You yourself became grief stricken when your master died.”
Her upper lip curled when I mentioned death magic. All vampires feared necromancers. Mom had the ability to command bloodsuckers. Alex couldn’t control them very well. That was probably because the spells were preventing her from reaching her full potential.
