Zack went off to greet his niece and hopefully to fully apologize for interrupting what should have been a nice morning.
“When the hell did Marcus go missing?” Neil sat back, obviously shocked by how his day was going. “He seemed fine at the wedding. I didn’t see him at the reception, but I wasn’t surprised. I mean, Kelsey dumped him not so long ago and she’s already married two other dudes.”
“She didn’t dump him.” It was far more complex than that. “She and Marcus are good. I was so busy I didn’t notice he wasn’t at the reception.”
I had been the hostess of that wedding and the reception that followed, and it had been important to me that the whole thing went smoothly. Kelsey was kind of the opposite of a bridezilla, so I filled in. I had to put together an elegant wedding honoring the traditions of half demons, mutant werewolf human hybrids, and werewolves who’d grown up in weird cults and just wanted everything to be normal. It wasn’t easy. And there were vegans there, too.
“I find it interesting that we’re missing those particular two members of the community. The academic and Devinshea have had trouble before, haven’t they?” Myrddin sat back in his chair, his hands coming up and forming a temple in front of his chest. I liked to think of it as his thinking face. His thinking face always brought about my worrying face.
How would he know Dev and Marcus had trouble in the past? Who had he been talking to? He’d only been here with us for a few weeks, but he was already very knowledgeable about my family, and that didn’t sit well with me. “Marcus and Dev get along fine.”
A single brow rose over Myrddin’s eyes. “Oh, really?”
Daniel reached over and slid a hand across mine. “You know they haven’t always gotten along, and that’s mostly Dev’s fault. Come on, baby. We have to consider every possibility. I know Dev wouldn’t go somewhere without telling us.” He turned back to his mentor. “Devinshea has had problems with Marcus in the past.”
“Hey, I was there when Marcus tried to take off Dev’s head,” Neil interjected. “It wasn’t all Dev’s fault. I didn’t like Marcus much that day, either.”
It had been the moment Marcus discovered my relationship with Dev, way back before we married. It was truly in the past and had nothing to do with their current issues.
“There is a prophecy concerning Marcus that Dev isn’t comfortable with.” Daniel summed up the problem succinctly.
Myrddin nodded. “Yes, the one about his eventual companion. I’ve read about it in the Council documents. It’s from the prophet of light, Jacob. I believe he foretold a time when Marcus would take a woman of the queen’s line as his companion.”
I hadn’t read the prophecy. I hadn’t realized it was written down somewhere. It was unnerving that Myrddin knew more than I did. Still, I’d been there when Jacob had faced Marcus and made things clear to him. “Yes, it was why Marcus protected my great-grandmother all those years ago in Ireland. If he hadn’t, she probably would have been taken as a companion and I wouldn’t exist. According to Jacob, this woman will be a relative of mine and will be the companion he’ll walk into death with.”
There are only a few ways to end a vamp’s life. Sunlight works on most classes of vampires. Marcus is an academic and their primary power is in their ability to daywalk. He could die if someone cut his head off or poked him in the heart with something pointy, but other than that, Marcus is pretty much immortal. As far as I knew at the time, he was the oldest vampire walking the plane and it weighed on him. Every now and then, however, a vampire and a companion are so in tune the vampire dies with his companion. It’s called sympathetic transference and Daniel has it. Marcus wanted it, wanted to love so much his very body followed when his wife was gone.
“For,” Myrddin corrected. “The actual prophecy states a woman of the queen’s line is the companion he will walk into death for. Not with.”
I hate prophecy. Seriously loathe it. It’s not that I don’t like Jacob or his demonic counterpart, Grayson Sloane. They’re cool dudes right up to the point when their eyes go weird and they talk in what I like to think of as misheard rap lyric. “For, with? I don’t think it matters. The gist is Marcus is going to get down and dirty with someone related to me and Dev is worried it’s Evangeline.”
My baby girl. Don’t get me wrong. Dev loves all three of our kiddos, but Evangeline is the apple of his eye. He adores his daughter and so does Danny. I often worry that Rhys gets left out. Lee is human so we worry about him constantly. Rhys takes after his Green Man dad and already shows great fertility powers. Seriously, if you don’t want to find yourself pregnant, don’t hang out with my baby boy. He’s not good with controlling it yet, and we’ve had a few incidents with plants around him exploding. Once he turned the household ivy into that creature from Little Shop of Horrors. We don’t worry about Rhys the way we do Lee.
Or Evan. My daughter took after me. She’s a companion, and according to Danny she’s almost as bright as I am. In our world it can be a dangerous thing to be. A companion is yin to a vampire’s yang. Our blood makes a vampire stronger and faster and smarter than one without a companion. Our blood also makes them hopelessly addicted. Vampires can see a companion’s “glow” and they rarely let one go. Before Daniel took over, companions were viewed as commodities. They were bought and sold and sometimes traded.
I did not want that for my daughter. So I worried about that tiny ball of light as much as I did Lee.
“Ah,” Myrddin said, as though he finally understood. “Devinshea is protective of his daughter. She’s a powerful companion, or she will be when she grows up. Even I can see a bit of her light.”
“You can?” Daniel asked. “Is that the demonic part of your DNA?”
Demons can see our light, too. It’s awesome. It’s like someone put a big old “get it here” sign on every single one of us. There’s a reason we’re rare.
“I suppose so. I can’t see the glow as brightly as you or other vampires can, but I can tell who is a companion,” Myrddin explained. “I can certainly understand Devinshea’s worry. A man who once attacked him might be his young daughter’s fated mate. That would bother anyone. Would he attempt to kill the vampire?”
Dev had tried something different. He’d gotten Marcus and Kelsey together, thinking he could stave off any attraction to our daughter. He’d thought if Marcus was involved with Kelsey, he wouldn’t ever leave her and by the time Kelsey was gone, Evangeline would have found a more proper partner and the threat would be avoided. The pull between Hunter and trainer could be as powerful as a vampire and a companion, but it also could be temporary. Kelsey had outgrown the need quickly, and that left Marcus out in the cold.
But Dev wouldn’t…
“No,” Daniel said quickly. “Absolutely not. Look, Dev and I disagree on this. I know Marcus. I understand him. If it works out someday between Marcus and Evan, I’ll be relieved because I can’t stand the thought of some vamp I don’t know having that kind of influence over our daughter. But Dev has other issues with Marcus. Like Neil said, in the beginning Marcus wasn’t exactly friendly to him. He warmed up, but Dev can hold a mean grudge. Still, he wouldn’t hurt Marcus.”