Great Aunt Marraine laughed with the sly, carefree chortle of a senior citizen who knows how to manipulate her grandchildren. “You say you don’t want to hear about it, but you can’t hide your heart from me, Adept. I helped change your diapers!”
She playfully swatted at me with the clipboard.
I held in a groan. Avoiding a topic seemed to be my favorite way to avoid something that pained me, and that applied to the Drake Family.
I wracked my brain for a subject that would make my crafty great aunt drop the vampires, then paused. “Today is Tuesday…so tomorrow is Wednesday…” I let a slow but enormous smile creep across my lips. “Is everything ready for tomorrow?”
Great Aunt Marraine’s smile turned devious. “Oh, yes,” she said. “Everything is ready, as per usual.”
“Fantastic.” I took in a deep breath, almost purring in my joy. “I do look forward to our weekly trip to the Curia Cloisters. It’s so important to visit the wizards responsible for governing us, and to voice our concerns as citizens.”
“So very important.” Great Aunt Marraine agreed.
We smirked at each other for a few moments before erupting into cackles. Wednesdays were such fun, because it brought retribution to those who backed Mason in the most painful of ways—legal ones.
Chapter Two
Killian
For the second time in recent weeks, I strode through the halls of a building so overwhelmingly luxurious, it was almost obnoxious.
I sneered as I passed a chandelier studded with real diamonds. This place reminded me of Versailles in its peak—bloated in its own wealth and self-importance.
I wouldn’t make the drive to Chicago and visit this luxurious abode if it didn’t have something I wanted badly: a library.
Specifically, a library filled with some of the oldest and most well-recorded vampiric texts.
The yappy vampire who accompanied me as guide almost frog hopped to keep up with me. “Is there anything I could help you find, Your Eminence?” He had to be on the young side—for a vampire. He was dressed in a suit and clutched a bowler hat, but the vampires who had greeted me wore clothing that was popular during the European Renaissance.
The building was owned by an ancient Elder who rarely surfaced from his room, and hadn’t left the building in decades. His Family was one of the oldest in the Midwest, and well respected, even if they were practically leader-less these days.
While the Elder’s absence politically irked me—it was a problem I’d been battling since before I became the top vampire political figure in the region—I was somewhat relieved it meant I only had to deal with his toadying Family and servants and not be plagued by wistful grumbles of centuries long past and years that were remembered with more fondness than they deserved.
It seemed to me that all too often vampire Elders forgot how recently indoor plumbing had been developed.
“Are you searching for a specific record or text?” the twitchy vampire asked as I barged into the private library.
“No.” I studied the shelves. “Leave me.”
“Y-yes, Your Eminence.” He scurried out, seemingly relieved to be dismissed.
I turned in a slow circle, letting the graveyard-like silence of the room envelop me.
It was a dark, dreary room. There was one window, but a heavy, velvet curtain was drawn across it—needlessly so since it was close to midnight.
The lights were so dimmed it almost felt like candlelight—it even flickered annoyingly like flames—but the rest of the library was decked out with all the decoration that I’d come to expect of the place.
There were books studded with jewels, a few original art pieces painted by some of the greatest artists the world had seen, ancient, alchemical instruments, a unicorn horn, and more.
But I wasn’t interested in the useless collection; I was here for the books on vampire lore.
I had my own library at Drake Hall, but it wasn’t nearly so specialized on vampire history and records. I possessed a great deal of books about wizards, fae, werewolves, and other supernaturals that I frequently went up against on the Regional Committee of Magic.
I put my back to the shelf of leather-bound, hand written books that I’d studied on my previous trip, and this time chose a bookcase that had several empty golden flasks and vials decorating its shelves.
I emptied two shelves, carefully placing the ancient manuscripts on a large table, and dug in.
I skimmed through book after book, espying all kinds of legends and details about my race, but hardly anything on the topic I was searching for—how we vampires could protect humans.
Most of our power only extended to working for ourselves. We healed fast, were among the fastest supernaturals alive, and were immortal.
But there had to be records of vampire Elders taking humans under their protection. Before the 1900s vampires had occasionally intermarried with other supernaturals and humans—that was how the supernaturally gifted vampire hunters came to be born.
The only problem was it seemed not many manuscripts about our relationships with other races—specifically humans—survived.
Probably because vampires were a race not prone to caring for other supernaturals, or even humans beyond using them as blood donors.
I set a book aside—concluding it was going to be useless—and barely refrained from growling.
This is stupid. I selected another manuscript from the pile. I should assign Rupert or Julianne to research this instead of wasting my time.
But I read on, skimming the manuscripts as I searched for any information. The thing that drove me to come here, drove me to read.
This was a chance, after all.
If I could figure out how to protect Hazel from the fae, I could reinitiate our relationship.
Although I had come to like the sassy, strong-willed wizard, I’d chosen to turn her out of Drake Hall and cut off ties with her when Queen Nyte of the fae Night Court sent me a letter that threatened Hazel’s life.
Normally I would have ignored such a pathetic attempt at manipulation, but in this case there was some truth to the threat.
Hazel wasn’t a vampire. While she could sense fae magic, a bullet could take her life in an instant unlike myself or any of my underlings.
Driving her out was the best option I had at the time. I planned to renew our relationship once I finally dealt with the Night Court, but since the fight had already lasted years it occurred to me Queen Nyte might continue to drag it out, so perhaps it was in my best interest to find a way to use vampire power to protect Hazel.
Unfortunately, none of the books I’d read ever mentioned such a thing, and I wasn’t desperate enough to ask any colleagues. Doing so would bait them, and reveal my weakness for the mouthy wizard.
So I kept researching.
I skimmed the last book at roughly three in the morning—I couldn’t delay going any longer. I still had the drive back to Magiford with Josh and Rupert—who had accompanied me here—and there was work I needed to complete back at Drake Hall.
But I paused when I flipped to a section about blood donors.
That’s what we called the humans who offered their blood for a vampire to directly imbibe from them—blood donors. In return the human was often generously paid, and usually housed and fed free of charge.