I don’t mean to fall asleep, but like so much else with this damn pregnancy, it’s as if I don’t have a choice in the matter. One moment I’m cursing my circumstances and the next I open my eyes to a strange room. It’s not the hotel; it’s nowhere near as concrete as that. The whole space feels strangely misty and uncertain, and yet as I sit up and look around, it also doesn’t feel like a dream. Normally, when I dream, I don’t realize it is a dream until I wake.
I feel awake now.
I push to my feet, waiting for a wave of nausea, but my body feels strangely muted. I inhale slowly and exhale just as slowly. For the first time in a week, I actually feel like myself. Nothing hurts. I’m not exhausted. It’s enough to make me want to cry. I didn’t realize how bad things had gotten until I was allowed this reprieve. I swallow thickly. “What am I going to do?”
No use focusing on the problem the pregnancy represents now, though. I have to figure out what’s going on. Is this another trap? My father’s powers lie in compulsion and glamour; I’ve never heard him talk about dreams before. This isn’t a bloodline vampire power at all as far as I can remember. There are only seven of them, each following one family. My father’s glamour. Malachi’s fire. Rylan’s shapeshifting. Wolf’s blood. And then air, earth, and water. None of those should be able to influence dreams.
So what is this?
My chest gives a familiar thrum and I don’t think. I simply follow it. It’s the bond inside me, recognizing—I’m afraid to hope it’s recognizing what I think it’s recognizing. Distance and time have no meaning here. One step seems to launch me forward miles. Or maybe the mist is what causes everything to feel strange. I’m not sure.
In the distance, the mist rolls away and the familiar form of a man stands there. I recognize his pale skin, short white mohawk, and lean frame. The bond inside me thrums happily and nearly jerks me off my feet. “Wolf!
He turns slowly, recognition alighting his light blue eyes. “Mina.”
One step brings me to him. I reach out a trembling hand and press it to his chest. Real? Not real? I can’t be sure. He looks even paler than normal, deep circles carved into the space below his eyes. “How are you doing this? How did you bring me here?”
“It’s not me, love.” He looks around, a frown pulling his dark brows together. “This doesn’t feel like vampire magic. Means it’s most likely you.”
Me or someone else planted us both here. I look around, but there’s still nothing but mist. I can’t sense danger, but I can’t sense anything at all. I didn’t feel Wolf before I saw him, and even now, with my palm against his sternum, it’s like neither of us are really here. “The bond?”
“That would be my best bet.”
That’s comforting, though I would feel better if someone had a full explanation. “Is this a dream?”
“It must be. I’m not hungry.”
A pang goes through me. It’s already started. Of course it has. My father wouldn’t hesitate to put them into painful and agonizing situations to ensure he gets what he wants. I swallow hard. “It wasn’t supposed to be like this.”
“It never is when things go wrong.” He shrugs, but his eyes go sharp. “You’re close. The bond hasn’t bitten us once.”
“I’m trying. I knew where he was taking you, so I made sure to follow as closely as I dared.” The bond is another problem to the huge stack of them. I found out relatively recently I’m half seraph by accidentally bonding with Wolf, Malachi, and Rylan when my powers unleashed. One of the lovely little side effects of that bond—in addition to these new powers I can’t control—is that there’s a limit on the distance we can travel from each other before we experience pain. It’s worse for the men than it is for me. Distance isn’t the only issue, either. Even if I stay within range, eventually the bond will force us closer. There’s a physical component that I recently had to navigate with Rylan, and I don’t relish the idea of having to do it with all three of them.
I hate it, but so far the only option we’ve found to eliminate the seraph bond is…
Azazel.
I straighten. “Wolf, I need to know how to summon Azazel.”
“No, love. Straights are dire, but not so dire as that.” He runs a hand over his short mohawk. “He demands payment up front, and I don’t know what will happen to the bond and us if you jaunt off to the demon realm. Even if time passes differently there than it does here, that’s quite a bit out of the established distance limits.”
He’s right. I know he’s right.
But so is Grace.
I lift my chin. “I promise I won’t bargain away my time like that. I’ll think of something else.”
“He’s a one trick pony, is Azazel. It’s seven years’ payment. That’s the only currency he works in.” Wolf shakes his head. “It’s not worth the risk.”
I grab the front of Wolf’s shirt and shake him. Or try to. It’s like shaking a brick wall. Frustration blooms, hot and sick, in my stomach. “I have exactly two people to breach the compound. We can’t win. Even with the pregnancy, we can’t win.”
“Even with the what?”
The feeling in my stomach gets worse. A pulse that becomes a thrum. I press my hand there and flinch. It’s hot. Literally hot to the touch. “What the fuck?” Another pulse, hotter this time. It hurts. “What the fuck?”
“Mina, love, did you just say you’re pregnant?”
I open my mouth to answer, but the mist around us swirls. No, swirls is too tame a word. It feels like what I imagine being in the middle of a hurricane is like. Phantom wind pulls at my hair and clothing, so strong it forces me back a step from Wolf. “Tell me how to summon him!”
He shakes his head again. “It’s not worth the risk.”
The fact this comes from Wolf, who is arguably the most unhinged of my men, should be enough to stop me. To convince me to find another path. Instead, it only infuriates me. I agreed with them on passing on Azazel’s last offer. It was the right call, but that was back when we had options.
I’m out of options and out of ideas.
“Tell me.” Power thrums through my voice, demanding answers, demanding obedience.
“Damn it, Mina.” He hits his knees, and guilt tries to prick me, but I don’t have time to feel guilty. He speaks in rough tones. “Circle of blood, charge it with your magic, focus your intent on him and him alone. He’ll come.”
“I’m sorry.”
He shudders, slumping down to his hands and knees. “It’s not worth the risk,” he repeats. “He’ll ask for more than you can safely pay.”
It’s worth the risk to me. I’d do worse than summon a demon if it means getting my men out of my father’s clutches and to safety. “I can handle myself.”
“You’re making a mistake, love.” The mist rises up and swallows him whole. I take a step in his direction, but there’s nothing there. It’s as if Wolf never existed. If we all survive this, then I’ll deal with the consequences of using our bond to force his compliance. Maybe it makes me a monster, maybe he’ll never forgive me, but at least he’ll be alive.
But only if I succeed.
My body clenches in agony, jarring me from my thoughts. I double over, holding my stomach, and scream.
“Mina!”
I jerk away to find Grace with a freaked-out expression on her face and her fingers digging into my shoulders. She doesn’t immediately let me go, though. She pauses, gaze searching my face. “Are you awake?”
“My eyes are open!”
“Yeah, they were before, too.” She shudders and releases me, backing up quickly. Like she’s scared of me. She glances at the door, but then seems to change her mind about fleeing my presence. Instead, she walks stiffly to the other bed and sinks onto the edge. “What the fuck was that, Mina?”
I start to sit up, but my body feels like I’ve run miles and then climbed a mountain. “Ouch.” I press my hand to my forehead, wincing when I realize I’m sweaty. Really sweaty. My stomach hurts a bit, but nowhere near like it did in the dream.
I sit up so fast the room takes a sickening spin around me. “I dreamed of Wolf.”
“Honey, I don’t know what you were doing, but that wasn’t normal dreaming.” Grace shudders again. “Your eyes were open and you had this aura… It was like some demon possession shit.”
“Do demons possess people?” Wolf had said Azazel was a one-trick pony, but that didn’t mean there weren’t other types of demons out there. As I’m discovering, the universe was vast and had more than one realm. Even in this one, there were more supernatural creatures than vampires. I’m a prime example of that, for all that the seraphim are supposed to be extinct.
“No.” She shakes her head. “They can do a lot of fucked up shit, but possession was invented by the church.”
That’s right. She’d know, wouldn’t she? I’m sure being from a family with a legacy of hunting monsters was handy when it came to information about said monsters. They must keep records. “How do you know that but not how to summon Azazel? It seems like it should be right up your alley.”
“My mother destroyed the records before she made her bargain.”
So much emotion in such a short sentence. There are layers of history there, and I should care, but I can barely think past the current mess. When push comes to shove, I barely know Grace. I shiver, the air conditioning icing across my sweaty skin. Whatever happened to me, it’s over. For now. I think back through what Wolf did and didn’t say. He’d told the truth when it came to summoning the demon, but his simplified version left a lot to be desired. No doubt that was on purpose since I’d had to compel the information from him in the first place.
Guilt pricks, but I shove it aside. I had no choice. He wasn’t going to tell me, and I need this information to have an icicle’s chance in hell of saving them. I’ll work on earning his forgiveness after I’m sure he’ll be alive and free to give it.
I press my fingers to my temples. Wolf said to charge the circle, which confirms my suspicions on why he was the one to summon Azazel. The blood ward was vital to the process, which is a problem because I don’t know how to charge my blood. I only know how to bleed.
Life has never been easy for me before. No reason for it to break the trend and start being easy now. “Wolf said I need to make a circle, charge it, and then focus to summon Azazel.”
“That’s it.” Grace sounded suspicious, not that I blame her. It sounds too good to be true. Too simple to work.
“Sounds easy. Is a lot more complicated in practice.” I shake my head slowly. “Wolf is a bloodline vampire whose specialty is blood. He can do things that no one else outside his family can.” No one except me, at least in theory. I swallow hard. “It’s a power we share.”
“You do.” Again, the disbelief.
I still haven’t told her about my seraphim half or my bond with the men. Grace might have some strange allegiance to Rylan—or owe him a favor, as she says—but I don’t know how far that, well, grace extends. She’s a monster hunter from a family of monster hunters, and everything I’ve discovered about seraphim to date paints them as monsters even among otherworldly creatures that prey on humanity.
There’s a reason they were hunted to apparent extinction by the vampires.
The amount of harm the seraphim did…
I can’t guarantee Grace won’t decide that I’m too much of a threat, even if I don’t know how to use my fledgling powers properly, or even that the little cluster of cells inside me that is a combination of both seraph and vampire will be too monstrous to allow into the world.
I’m not sure she’s wrong there, either.
I’m not sure of anything anymore.
“I can’t control it,” I finally admit. In fact, none of the bloodline powers have manifested since I fled the mountain home where my father had finally caught up with us and taken the men captive. I haven’t thought too hard about that, but it has to be because I’m so exhausted all the time. “I’m not even sure how to begin to make it work.”
“Well, shit.” She slumps onto the bed. “Guess we’re back to square one.”
A hopeless situation.
I give her a long look. “Why help me? You got me out of there, which is repayment enough for whatever debt your family owes Rylan.”
“Undoubtedly.” She shrugs. “Honestly, I was going to pay your hotel for a week and then leave today, but now that I know you can summon Azazel—or at least one of those vampires can—you’re stuck with me. I need access to that demon.”
I don’t tell her that her chances of finding her mother alive are low. Maybe they aren’t. This world is strange and vast and odder things have happened. It’s not my place to crush this woman’s hope when I’m engaging in my own long shot.
I need my men back, I need to kill my father, and I need to announce this damned pregnancy publicly where no one can refute it to ensure my half-siblings don’t hunt me until the end of days just like my father planned to. I need to essentially crown myself queen the same way my father acts the part of a king. None of my siblings are as formidable as he is, but that doesn’t mean they’re not dangerous.
The only path to peace is through power, and it means taking my father’s place as head of the compound…and head of the bloodline.
Ironic, that.
I hold three sets of bloodline powers inside me, but none of them were passed to me by my father.
