Ten
“Want me to show you to the room that you’ll be staying in while you’re here?” Desmond asked.
I glared at him. “You’re not going to answer me?”
He shook his head. “I wouldn’t bring you into anything that you couldn’t handle, Iris. I’ve seen the way you’ve handled growing up here. Your friends with witches, vampires, and fey…you don’t hold grudges like some of us do. Immortals are notorious for that. Even the humans that have sworn fealty to those groups, they have the same biases as those that they’ve sworn fealty to. When I found out that you wanted to be a Peace Broker, I knew you were a decent person.”
I sighed. “I’m not a decent person. I’m twenty-four. I’m naïve enough to think that good can be accomplished through talking.”
“You’re also chasing after a vampire,” Desmond reminded me.
I huffed. “What does that have to do with anything?”
“It means you are willing to forgive. I’m not in a place where I can think objectively about this situation. I need you to tell me when I’m being crazy.”
“Really?” It was hard to believe the Alpha thought so highly of me. I wasn’t used to that.
He nodded. “Really.”
I put my hands on my hips. “Can I say something that you aren’t going to like?”
“Maybe.”
I hit him on the arm and winced. I forgot how strong he was. He didn’t even flinch.
He only looked at me with amusement. “What are you doing?”
“Trying to inflict pain on you for being stupid and not telling me the whole truth about why you picked me to be your mate.”
“I did,” he insisted.
I glared at him. “I don’t for one second believe that you chose me because you think I’m a good person. I think you did this to piss Nina off because you’re trying to figure out who tried to kill you. You thought it was a good chance to lure the killer out. You’re too good of an Alpha.”
Desmond tilted his head to the side. “Maybe I did.”
“Did you ever stop to consider that whoever came after you originally might come after me?”
He reached out and grabbed my hand, startling me as he gripped it tightly. “I won’t let anything happen to you, Iris. When I was with your sister…I really did care for you. Moon City doesn’t get a lot of young humans that you watch grow and change and immortal children…it isn’t the same. They’re rare, too.”
I gently pulled away from him. He let me. “You did take the time to answer my questions about the Peace Brokers. You also arranged that whole thing for me where I was able to follow them for the day.”
“Do you remember what you learned while working with them?”
“I…. I learned that they have secret buildings in the human cities. All over…they started doing it to collect data on rogue attacks.”
Desmond narrowed his gaze. “I forgot about that. Rogue attacks from who?”
“Rogue attacks from Immortals. You….” I stared at him. “You were looking into that with Nina. You used the courting process as an excuse to go investigate the secret cities where other immortals live. There were other immortals vanishing.”
Desmond looked at me with wide eyes. “You’re right. I didn’t remember that. All I remembered was traveling with your sister…but Nina knew what I was doing. She wouldn’t let me go with you, so she went. We…”
I glared at him. I wanted to hit him again. “You did what you were doing with me! You’ve done this whole plan before.”
He growled. “I need to have a talk with your sister.”
The door to the loft opened. I turned at the sound of it. So did Desmond. Calix stood there, covered in blood that dripped onto the ground. Drip, drip, drip….
“Calix!” I gasped. I ran over to him. So did Desmond.
“Brother, what happened?” Desmond asked.
Calix panted heavily; his red eyes had veins that looked like they were about to pop. “Your sister confronted me after you left. Someone attacked us. I tried to save her…. but she’s gone. They got her.”
“Nina’s gone?!” I shouted.
Calix nodded. “Yes. I’m sorry. I tried to save her. Your mother—”
“Calix, what about my mom? My mom was with her. What happened to my mom?” I demanded.
Calix’s face fell. “I…she came out. She tried to help. She was shot, Iris. I had to do something—she wasn’t going to survive, and she told me to do it.”
My heart pounded against my chest. “She told you to do what?”
Calix opened his mouth. He closed it again. I knew. I knew what he’d done but I didn’t want to believe him. Growing up in Moon City, I’d always been told there were two types of vampires. The vampires that were born, from the gods, and vampires that were made. As in the off spring of other vampires.
Not their children. Those were different, obviously. No. Their sired. Ones they turned by draining their blood and burying them alive in an unmarked grave.
“She’ll rise tomorrow evening, when the sun goes down,” Calix told me, “She won’t be human anymore. She’ll be a vampire. She’ll only be able to come out at night, but she’s alive.”
I wanted to scream. I wanted to kill him. He was immortal. Descended of old gods and humans and ancient magic. It was almost impossible to kill him. All of the things that were supposed to kill immortals…vampires, especially…. they were lies. Fabrications made up by humans thinking they had the answers on how to destroy these old beings.
It wasn’t that easy. But at that moment, I wished it were.
My knees crumpled. I screamed. I screamed and cried. I shook with rage, and Desmond held onto me as I did it. Calix had sired my mother. She would live forever. One day, I would die. She would not.
The person I thought I’d been in love with had turned my mother into a dark version of herself. She’d never be the same again. Neither would I. Because there was no way I could look at Calix the same way ever again.
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