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“WILL YOU ALLOW ME TO offer my guests a proposal?” Lord Gilden asked me sardonically.
“You’d better hurry,” I said with a scowl. “My trigger finger is getting itchy.”
He almost smiled, but controlled himself as he rose to his feet. “Lady Galantine’s offer should suffice. Ms. Sterling will allow you to live if you all agree not to use your fledglings like sex slaves and pass them around to your allies as rewards.”
“They aren’t fae,” I reminded him. “They’re not bound by their word. They’ll nod and smile to your face, then return to mistreating their covens as soon as your back is turned.”
“Not if I cast a spell to bind them to their promise,” he pointed out slyly.
I finally figured out why he was so calm about this standoff. He’d arranged for them to be here and Ruen had delayed my visit to his office on purpose. I hated being manipulated, but in this instance, I’d let it slide.
The vampires exchanged glances, then looked at me. I grinned toothily and swept my mini crossbow across them all. “Make your decision,” I said. “Someone is going to die tonight. I don’t care if it’s you, or a rogue who needs to be hunted down like a rabid dog.”
Believing me utterly because they knew I wasn’t lying, they turned to face my boss. “We agree to your terms, Lord Gilden,” Lady Galantine said, casting a bitter look at me. I knew I’d just made an enemy, but it was something I could live with. I’d never imagined I’d become an advocate for fledgling vampires’ rights, yet here I was.
Drake dropped his shield and his power filled the room. It wasn’t easy to hold my weapon steady when my knees were suddenly feeling so weak from sheer lust. “Do you agree not to lie to humans to lure them to join your ranks and to no longer mistreat your coven members?” he asked.
“I agree,” the vampires said in unison. His spell settled onto them and sank in before they could grasp the implications. Drake hadn’t just changed the rules so they couldn’t use their covens as sex slaves. He’d made it so they couldn’t be mistreated at all.
Lady Galantine was the first to realize she was now going to have to treat her minions with a semblance of respect. Her eyes blazed with anger and hatred as she flicked a look at me. I smiled in fierce satisfaction, then lowered my crossbow.
“If any harm befalls Ruen or Ms. Sterling over this bargain, I will take it as an act of war and I will end you all without a moment’s thought,” Drake said. “Thank you for attending this meeting. You may go now.”
Shaken by his threat of death, they filed towards the elevator, giving me a wide berth. I half expected one of them to mutter something like, “You’ll pay for this,” on their way past me, but none of them were brave enough to speak.
Ruen waited for the elevator to descend before he spoke. “That went far better than we’d hoped, my lord,” he said, cracking a rare smile.
“You were in on this, too?” I asked accusingly and he nodded smugly.
“When did you figure out my plan?” Drake asked as he crossed to take a seat behind his desk.
“Not until towards the end,” I admitted, feeling dumb for not figuring it out sooner. “Why didn’t you just ask me to play along?” I asked in annoyance at being duped.
“I couldn’t allow them to realize they were being manipulated,” Drake said as Ruen and I sank down onto the visitors’ chairs. “Your rage had to seem spontaneous, which is something you excel at.”
The two men shared satisfied smiles, but my satisfaction of the situation was momentary. “This won’t really change anything,” I realized dourly. “There are hundreds of master vampires in Nexus alone. We only manipulated twelve of them into changing the way they treat their covens.”
“As I said before, you know nothing about vampire politics,” Ruen said.
“Yeah, I heard you the first time,” I grumbled.
“The twelve masters I invited here tonight are the leaders of the vampire community in Nexus,” Drake told me. “They set the example of how the rest of their kind should behave.”
Ruen gave a rusty chuckle as our boss smiled, extremely pleased with himself. I was sure my partner couldn’t care about the lesser vampires’ woes. He was just happy that he’d been a part of the plan to manipulate and control the masters.
“You’re so devious,” I said half in admiration and half in irritation for being used.
“I’ve been wanting to curb their treatment of their covens for centuries,” the lord said, steepling his hands and resting his chin on his fingertips. “You finally made it possible for me to bring them to heel.”
“Does this mean I get a bonus?” I joked.
“Indeed,” he replied and my pulse sped up at the momentary heated look in his eyes. “I’m sure I’ll be able to think of something suitable for you as payment.”
I sincerely hoped my reward would include taking our clothes off. With Ruen sitting right next to me, I had to control my urge to throw myself on the gold desk and beg the dragon to take me. Instead, I voiced a question that needed to be asked. “Are the masters going to order a hit on me now?”
Drake’s brows lowered into a dire frown. “They wouldn’t dare.”
Ruen shifted uneasily when smoke issued from our employer’s nostrils. “Lord Gilden warned them that he would eradicate them all if any harm befalls either of us,” he reminded me. “They aren’t stupid enough to risk their lives for petty revenge.”
“Watch out for Lady Galantine,” the weredragon warned me. “She isn’t above hiring someone to make your life miserable.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“I heard she hired someone to drive one of her enemies to madness,” he said gravely. “It was due to an insult her rival made at a party. Lady Galantine doesn’t like to be laughed at, especially in public.”
“How can vampires be driven to madness?” I queried.
“Rumor has it she drank tainted blood,” Ruen said with a shudder. “It was well known that she favored handsome young human men. We believe Lady Galantine’s employee slipped into the rival’s house and added particles of silver to her pets’ food and drink. She ingested the silver as she fed on them during the next few nights.”
“The lady became extremely ill and almost died,” Drake said. “There wasn’t quite enough silver in their food to kill her, but it ravaged her mind. She had to be locked away for the safety of everyone around her. I’ve heard she still raves inside her cell to this day.”
“How long ago did that happen?” I asked in a disturbed tone.
“A little over two hundred years ago,” Ruen said.
“What happened to her coven?”
“She killed most of them when she went mad,” our boss said. “The rest were taken into other covens.”
“The masters took control of them?” I figured and he nodded. “I’m guessing Lady Galantine didn’t hire a vampire, since he broke into the rival’s house uninvited.”
“It could have been one of my kind,” Ruen said. “The lady frequently held balls and parties and invited master vampires from all over Europe. They always have an entourage and the assailant could have posed as a servant. Everyone in the entourage would have been given permission to enter the premises for the night. Masters revoke invitations after their guests leave. They need to be reinvited before they can enter again, but he only needed to gain entrance once.”
“So, if I revoked your invitation to my place, you wouldn’t be able to enter?” I asked in surprise.
“Of course not,” he said with an eyeroll. “Didn’t your mother teach you anything about vampires during the decade she trained you?”
“She taught me the quickest way to kill bloodsuckers,” I retorted. “The Sterling women are trained to kill monsters, not to become friends with them.”
“Yet your mother is now engaged to a vampire,” Drake pointed out with a smirk.
“My grandmother was livid when mom told her about it,” I said. “It’s going to take her a while to get used to the idea of having a dead man for a son-in-law.”
Our eyes met and we silently acknowledged our strange and unexpected relationship. Mom knew I was sleeping with the dragon, but she hadn’t passed that information on to the rest of our relatives. They now knew Fate had manipulated them into mating with their enemies, so to speak. They were all still adjusting to the idea that they could date men regularly rather than just using them for one-night stands.
