After dropping that bomb of an information piece, Malachi refuses to answer further questions, stating that it’s Rylan’s business and if he wants me to know, he’ll tell me. We end up in the shower again to wash off the blood, but we keep it brief. Later, when I’m tucked safely between Wolf and Malachi, silently tracking Rylan’s continued pacing with my mind, I allow myself to think about what Malachi did and didn’t say.
I thought these three were the last of their bloodlines. In hindsight, that seems very naive. Malachi, yes. It’s known that he’s the last one. Everyone knows it. But while my father might have extensive information on the seven bloodlines, it’s not information he ever shared with me.
Rylan still has family alive.
I open my eyes to find Wolf watching me. Malachi’s body is loose and relaxed at my back. Impossible to tell whether he’s actually asleep or if he’s merely giving us a measure of assumed privacy. I swallow hard. “Do you have family alive, too?”
“Sure.” He shrugs as much as someone can while laying on their side. “There’s a few cousins. My parents and sister are no doubt still rampaging through Europe and leaving chaos in their wake.”
He says it so casually, too casually. Wolf talks about his family the same way I recited what my father did to my knee to keep me from running. No one keeps their words totally emotionless unless they’re hiding something ugly beneath.
Sadness swamps me, even as I tell myself I’m being silly. Surely I wasn’t expecting any of these men to have the idealistic childhood of which I was deprived? I know better. My father might be a monster, but there’s something to be said about power corrupting. Immortals don’t manage to stay alive for hundreds of years by being nice and kind. Doing so is as much as inviting enemies to come in and cut off their heads.
I shiver. “You’re not close.”
“No.” Another of those shrugs. “My parents were even more unhinged than I am; it didn’t make for a restful childhood. I haven’t seen them since I left a very long time ago. It’s better for everyone that we don’t congregate often.” He won’t quite meet my gaze. “I take great pains to ensure I don’t cross paths with my sister more than strictly necessary.”
I can relate, though it makes me sad. I reach up and cup his angular jaw. “I’m sorry.”
“You keep apologizing for things that aren’t your fault.” His grin is quick and sharp. “Careful, love. Someone might see that big heart of yours and try to take advantage.”
“I don’t have a big heart.” Sometimes I think I don’t have a heart at all. All my life, I’ve never known peace. First, because I was raised in my father’s compound as a powerless dhampir, which translated to a useless dhampir. Then, when I was sent to Malachi as a sacrifice, all I could focus on was gaining my freedom. But even that wasn’t enough because my father’s been hunting us ever since we broke the blood ward around his old house. Every step of the way, I’ve been looking out for myself first.
Maybe if I hadn’t been, Wolf and the others wouldn’t have been taken.
“Get that look off your face.” He presses his thumb to the spot between my brows. “You could use a little less worrying. Malachi and Rylan are both too brilliant not to figure this out.”
The right words, but the wrong tone. I frown. “There’s something else you’re not telling me.”
“Wolf.” His name is barely more than a rumble from Malachi. A warning.
I sit up. “We just had this conversation. Why are you still keeping things from me?”
“I—”
Wolf stretches out and props his head on his arms. “What he’s trying to figure out how to bend over backwards to avoid saying is that there’s a distinct possibility that Rylan’s mother will take the questions about seraphim as an excuse to hunt you down and kill you.”
I flinch. Judging from what everyone has told me about seraphim, I can’t exactly blame her for wanting me gone, but… “I’m getting heartily tired of having a target painted on my chest.”
“Get used to it, love. Those that remember what your people did when they held power will either want to use you or kill you.”
The walls feel like they’re closing in. I hadn’t thought beyond removing my father as a threat. He’s been larger than life for so long, it never occurred to me that there would be others baying for my blood if they got half a chance. I shudder. “It will never end, will it? We’ll be running forever.”
“Eh.” Wolf shrugs, totally relaxed. “We just need to kill your father, convert all his little followers to being your followers, and you’ll be set. Our enemies come after you, we’ll kill them. They send others, and we’ll kill them, too. Eventually, they’ll realize we’re too powerful to fuck with and don’t have any intention of repeating history and they’ll leave us alone.” He grins. “Except for the odd assassination attempt to keep us on our toes.”
“You are not making me feel better.” My voice comes out reedy. I press the heels of my hands to my eyes. “I thought it would be over after we kill my father.”
Malachi wraps his hands around my wrists and gently tugs them down. “When you have eternity, you’ll come to appreciate the little things that break up the monotony.”
It speaks volumes that they consider assassination attempts to be little things. “I could use a little monotony in my life.”
He gives my wrists a gentle squeeze. “You’ll have it.” He glances at Wolf and shrugs. “Besides, if it ever gets to be too much, we can always jump to a realm that’s never heard of seraphim. That would create other challenges, but it’s always an option.”
I lick my lips. I don’t know that I’m ready to abandon this realm, but the escape hatch option calms me all the same. “Are there many other realms? More than this one and Azazel’s?”
“No one’s ever tracked them properly, but there are at least dozens.”
Wolf laughs, sounding more like himself. “No one’s tracked them properly because they’ve died trying.” He flicks Malachi’s hair off his shoulder. “Might be a fun challenge in a couple hundred years when the baby bats are grown and have flown the nest.”
I blink. “Did you just call the…” I’m not quite able to call it a baby yet. It’s not a baby. It’s a cluster of cells. “Did you just call it a baby bat?”
“It’s as good a name as anything.”
A reluctant smile pulls at the edges of my lips. “You can’t even turn into a bat.”
“Rylan can.” Wolf makes a show of shuddering. “Freakish thing. Too big. Could probably carry you on its back if you wanted.”
I feel the man in question approaching. “I think he’s done with his call.”
“Spooky.”
I shoot a look at Wolf, though I can feel Malachi watching me. There’s a tension about him that makes me think he’ll lunge forward if I suddenly topple. It’s a strange thought, that he’ll always be there to catch me. I trust him. I do. But my need to stand on my own is nearly overpowering. “I’m fine, Malachi.”
“You’re shaking.”
I hate that he’s right. I lift my hand and study the tremors as Rylan closes the distance between us. He’s moving inhumanly fast, and I shouldn’t be able to track him so effectively as a result. The seraph bond is freakish.
Too much change. Too much information. Too little time.
Dealing with the long-term effects of the seraph bond will have to wait until we’re out of crisis mode, whenever that happens. If it ever happens. The thought depresses me. Instead of responding to Malachi’s question that isn’t a question, I twist to face the door as Rylan walks through.
His expression is a careful mask, giving away nothing. “I spoke with her.” He doesn’t make us wait, thankfully. He just sighs. “It’s…complicated.”
“Threat?” This from Malachi. He links his fingers through mine, tense enough that I can tell he wants to haul me back into his arms and wrap me up in himself. I’m not entirely opposed to the idea, but I just got done telling him that I need to stand on my own, so I can’t walk back on it now.
Rylan shrugs. “She didn’t start making threats, but that’s not how she operates. At this point, she’ll wait and see, and if she decides she needs to act, we’ll hear from her in a decade or so. She did give some interesting information.”
He moves, strangely stilted, and sinks onto the edge of the bed near me. “When seraphim became pregnant, they would retreat into their fortified locations for the duration. Based on when they’d go missing, it was estimated that the gestation cycle is similar to a vampire or human. Forty weeks, give or take.” He looks at me, dark eyes conflicted. “We don’t have information on what happens during that time. They would disappear with a retinue of vampire…servants…and reappear with a brand-new seraph baby. Most of the time, the vampires that went with them were never seen again.”
Wolf whistles. “Suppose it’s too much to pretend they were just moved to different colonies.”
“They wouldn’t be able to because of the seraph bond.”
Damn it. I press my lips together, fighting against the urge to scream that it’s not fair. That we deserve to catch a break for once. “You think they drain the vampires and kill them during the pregnancy.”
“We don’t know what to think,” Malachi cuts in with a warning glance at the other two. “Seraphim don’t drink blood.”
“Other ways to drain a victim.”
“For fuck’s sake, Wolf. Shut up.”
Drain them of power, of life, of what makes them them. The thought leaves me cold. I was only interested in blood when I lost control earlier, but that’s the thing: I wasn’t in control at all. If that hunger had switched to more magical things, I wouldn’t have been able to stop it. Neither would the men. “You have to leave.”
“Absolutely not.”
I glare at them all. It’s not easy with them arranged the way they are, but I make a valiant effort. “I am not endangering you just because I’m pregnant. That wasn’t part of the bargain.”
“None of this was.” Rylan shrugs. “We work with the realities we have. It might be that you’re just mirroring a full vampire more than your seraph half. They need to consume large amounts of blood.”
“I’ve never needed blood before.” I was never even offered it until Malachi, so if that was a requirement of living, I would be long gone. “That doesn’t make sense.”
“It makes as much sense as anything.” He doesn’t look away. “We are working on theory here. There’s no reason to jump to the worst-case scenario.”
“That’s enough.” Malachi’s voice has gone harsh. “We all need sleep and then we need to come up with a plan for tomorrow. Everything else can wait.”
Until I get hungry again. Or the magic goes weird. Or…
We have been more unlucky than we’ve had breaks that went in our favor. First we used me to break the blood bond that trapped Malachi, only to discover I was actually half seraph and had bonded with all three men. A seraph bond isn’t something that can be reversed.
Then, we finally thought we’d have some time to figure things out, to explore the new powers the bond had allowed us to share, only to have my father show up and take the men.
Then, I find out I’m pregnant, the one way most likely to dethrone my father, only for the pregnancy to be just as freakish as I am. The kind of freak that endangers those I’ve come to care most about.
It’s only as I’m falling asleep that a small voice in the back of my mind points out I didn’t immediately throw up the blood I consumed.
That I feel better.
