I nodded, slowly, too stunned to even think. Valentino’s wolves killed my family. There was no way I could forget him. “Count Valentino,” I said, my voice surprisingly strong. “He’s dead.”
“I know. In fact, his real name was David Smith.” He laughed, though it had a bitter edge to it. “It’s a little-known fact that most vampires change their names when they begin to rise through the ranks. House Smith doesn’t quite have the same ring to it as House Valentino, no?” Jonathan took a deep breath and let it out slowly, as if preparing for his next words. “I belonged to that House at one time.”
I stiffened and drew my sword. I had killed everyone connected to House Valentino. Or so I thought. If Jonathan had somehow survived, then there was only one thing he could want from me. Revenge was a pretty big motivator.
I started to move forward, intent on finishing the job I started. Valentino and his wolves ruined my life. His House may have been destroyed, but the damage he caused was so massive, I had yet to recover.
I probably never would.
“I didn’t ask you here to harm you,” Jonathan said without moving. Nathan had moved to the edge of his seat, ready to spring the moment I made another move toward his master, no doubt.
“Then why am I here?” I stopped, though I kept hold of my sword. I knew the anger was showing on my face. I was so upset I could hardly think. That wasn’t good for anyone.
Jonathan stood and turned his back to me. He walked slowly to the other side of his desk as if I wasn’t holding a weapon that could cleave the rest of his head from his shoulders. There was a lot more trust in that simple act than I would have expected.
“Don’t get the wrong impression,” Jonathan said, easing into his chair. “While I was bitter at first, I came to realize that you, unwittingly, had set me free from my bonds. No longer was I bound to the rules of a vampire House. I was free to act on my own.”
I studied Jonathan, trying to figure out what he was getting at. It took a few moments, but finally something clicked. A regular Pureblood never could have survived his wounds. And if he were a vampire, he wouldn’t have been set free, as he put it, at the death of Count Valentino. That meant ...
“A werewolf.”
Jonathan nodded. “Very astute of you.”
“I killed everyone,” I said. “I’m sure of it. I counted the bodies.”
“Almost everyone,” Jonathan said, nodding. “When you broke free, you inadvertently set my new life into motion. You almost killed me, should have even. I was bleeding from the wound you inflicted on me.” He smiled. At least, half his face did. “But I didn’t die. I learned the error of my ways in that sword strike, learned I didn’t need to be subservient to the vampires. I could find my own path, forge my own life.”
“But how?”
Jonathan shrugged. “I don’t know. Call it fate, if you will. The bleeding eventually stopped and I was able to crawl out of the wreckage of the House. Some Luna Cult members found me and brought me in. They took care of me, nursed me back to health when I surely would have died otherwise.”
I closed my eyes for a second to compose myself. This was definitely not what I had expected when I came here. Having old memories brought back to the fore was a torment that went far beyond pain.
I opened my eyes and stared at him hard. “Did you kill my family?”
“No,” Jonathan said, his voice firm. “I know what happened, and I am sorry. When Count Valentino ordered your family’s death, I stayed behind. I had nothing to do with the slaughter.”
He seemed so genuine I couldn’t help but believe him. I’m not sure what I would have done if he would have admitted to killing my parents, my friends. Would I have risked being overwhelmed just to kill him?
“You changed my life,” Jonathan went on. “I survived and realized that living my life a slave to the vampires was not a life at all. I could have found another House and risen in the ranks there, but chose instead to stay with the Cult, to work with the Denmaster to form our own vampire-free House.”
“Wait,” I said, shaking my head. “You aren’t leader here? Then who is?”
“Simon is our Denmaster, not that you would know him. He doesn’t know who you are.”
I frowned. “I don’t understand.”
“Simon is the reason I have asked you to come.”
I was about to ask him about Simon, but it was then that something else he had said hit me. “A vampire-free House?” I said. “Are you serious?”
“Just because we aren’t vampires doesn’t mean we can’t have our own House. We stand against the vampire Houses, refuse to bow down to them. The Luna Cult has given us more power than we ever dreamed possible, and we do not wish to relinquish that power and return to our subservient ways.”
I tried to come up with something to say, but words failed me. This was insane. Werewolves didn’t have their own Houses. They were the pawns of the vampires, supposedly the weaker of the two shifters. They protected the vamps, were their daytime guardians. They didn’t form their own organizations. There was no werewolf union. It just didn’t happen.
“Come,” Jonathan said, rising. “I want to show you something.”
I looked from Jonathan to the two men sitting on the couch. This whole thing made no sense. If they were indeed werewolves who had rebelled against the vampires who enslaved them, then why would they have come to me, a vampire? If he had been a part of House Valentino like he claimed, Jonathan would know what I was. He would have seen my fangs, seen my rage. Hell, he might have been responsible for what I had become.
Nathan and Gregory both rose. They had no weapons on them. At least none that I could see. They moved to stand beside Jonathan as he reached a hand beneath his desk. I tensed, expecting him to pull a gun; but instead, I heard a click and the wall to my left slid open. He gestured me toward the yawning darkness.
“Please,” he said. “We need your help.”
The sincerity in his voice left me speechless. I could easily kill all three of them, I was sure. I probably should have.
Then again, they could have had me killed already if that was what they had planned. There had been more than enough opportunities for that. I couldn’t bring myself to kill them, not until I knew what they wanted. After that, we’d see what happened.
I bowed my head slightly and sheathed my sword. I took a step back, clearing the way to the new opening. “After you,” I said.
Jonathan gave me his half smile and then a quick nod. He ushered Nathan and Gregory ahead of them. They passed by me and headed down into the darkness.
“Thank you,” Jonathan said as he came up next to me.
“Don’t thank me yet,” I said. “I haven’t agreed to anything. I’m still trying to decide if I should kill you or not.”
He nodded as if he wouldn’t have expected anything less, then followed his two associates into the gloom.
I stared after him a moment, wondering if I was doing the right thing. This wolf might have been responsible for my change, for the loss of my family. He had been there when I killed Count Valentino and his followers. He had to be guilty of something.
I took a deep breath, swallowed my anger, my fear, and followed the werewolves down into the darkness below.
11
“This part of the Den was here before we took over,” Jonathan said as we made our way down the stone stairs. Moisture seeped in through the walls, staining the stone a muddy brown. It smelled of mold and dampness that could only mean we had traveled well belowground.
“I don’t think the people who owned the place back when it was a library used it for much of anything,” he continued. “When we found it, there were hardly any signs that anyone had ever been down here at all. I think it might have originally been planned to be used as a bomb shelter of some sort.” Jonathan shrugged. “We made some changes so we could use it for something else.”
We reached the bottom of the stairs and entered a large room that looked to be twice the size of the Den above us. The whole place was made of stone. Pillars dotted the room and held the roof above our heads. A stainless-steel table sat at the room’s center, and a variety of surgical instruments lay on a tray next to it.
Cells were built into the walls. They surrounded the entire room. There had to be at least twenty of them, if not more. Their bars were made of what looked to be heavy iron, and they were mounted into the stone from ceiling to floor. There were no windows anywhere down there, which further solidified the idea that we were well underground.
The place reminded me forcibly of a vampire dungeon. When he had said it might have been an old bomb shelter, my mind had immediately gone to Ethan and his private second basement. Even though I had never seen his workspace for myself, I knew it looked nothing like this.
Now I could think of nothing else but the cages in which the vampires usually kept Purebloods. It made me sick to even think about it.
But unlike the vampire dungeons where there could be dozens, if not hundreds of caged Purebloods, only one of the cells was occupied here. From where I stood, it was hard to make out the hunched form lying on the stone floor. Growls and whines came from the thing, and it shuddered uncontrollably as if it had a permanent case of the shivers.
I stopped at the bottom of the stairs, refusing to go any farther. Whatever the place was, it wasn’t somewhere I wanted to be. I had been trapped in a cell like these before. It wasn’t an experience I ever wanted to repeat.
“Don’t worry,” Jonathan said, striding across the room. “We aren’t going to harm you. Like I said before, we need you.”
Nathan and Gregory took up positions on either side of the occupied cell. They stood well back from the cage, as if they didn’t quite trust what was inside. Gregory’s smile wilted as he stood there, eyes flickering back and forth from Jonathan to the thing within the metal bars.
“I want you to see this,” Jonathan said, turning to me. “You of all people will understand what we are going through. You will know the pain we are suffering.”
“What’s going on here?” I asked, gesturing toward the creature trapped within the cage. I didn’t like this at all.
“I know how it looks,” Jonathan said. “But no one has ever been kept here against their will. Come. Look in the cage. You will understand once you see.”
I hesitated before finally crossing the room. I kept telling myself I was being stupid for ever trusting the wolves. Werewolves were the enemy. I killed them just as readily as I killed vampires. Not to mention the fact that one had once belonged to a House that killed everyone I knew. These three should have been dead long ago.
But somehow, someway, they trusted me. Okay, maybe that wasn’t entirely true. Nathan looked as though he trusted me about as much as I trusted him, which was not at all. Jonathan was the one who seemed to trust me for some reason, and it appeared that was all that mattered in the end. I owed it to them to at least take a look at what they had.
I stopped two feet from the cage. Nathan and Gregory both took a step back to give me more room. Jonathan flipped a switch and an overhead light dimly lit the creature within the cell. It was just barely bright enough for me to get a good look at it without having to use my vampire-enhanced vision.
The creature lay on its stomach, its neck bent so that I could see only the nape of its hairy neck. It was nude, clearly humanoid, and covered in a light coating of fur. The snarls and whimpers shook the creature, as if making any sort of sound caused it pain.
“What is it?” I asked, my uneasiness going through the roof. I was sure I had seen something similar to this before but refused to believe it.
“Look closer,” Jonathan said. “I think you know.”
My throat went dry as I took a step forward, putting myself far too close to the cage. Seeing this once had been bad enough, but I felt compelled to take a closer look just to be sure.
The creature’s head snapped up at my approach. Its ears were human, and the long dirty blond hair on its head looked normal. It rose to all fours and turned to face me. I took an involuntary step back.
Its face was partially shifted to wolf. The nose was elongated, but it still looked like a human nose. The eyes were yellow, yet still held the shape of the human eye. The beast’s lower jaw was partially extended, showing vampiric fangs thrust out from ruptured gums that dripped blood in a constant plink. Its chest was coated with dried blood, and the floor in which it had lain was sticky with it.
The creature roared and leaped at the bars. Its human hands ended in claws that raked at the metal. Its belly was void of hair, as if the transformation had started taking place at its back but hadn’t worked all the way around to its front. It was quite clearly male.
“Thomas.” The name slipped through my lips before I could stop it. I knew that what I was looking at wasn’t my brother. It just reminded me of him, what had happened to him.
“No,” Jonathan said, coming to stand next to me. I didn’t even react to his nearness, though my instincts told me I should have. If he had wanted to, he could have driven a blade straight through my heart and I wouldn’t have been able to stop him. “It’s not your brother.”
I swallowed a few times before I could speak. “I know. But ... who would do this? Valentino is dead. Was it an accident?”
“No, House Tremaine did this.” Jonathan spat the name. “They are a Minor House looking to increase their power base by bringing the Luna Cult into their ranks.”
I turned a shocked expression toward him. A vampire House wanted to assimilate the Luna Cult?
“They found out there were werewolves in the Cult, and they somehow managed to capture our Denmaster.” Jonathan lowered his head. Fear was evident in his voice. “This was Simon’s second. They sent him to us as a warning, as a reminder of what they can and will do if we do not cooperate.”
I turned back to the creature in the cage. I knew what had caused the mutations within the beast. I just couldn’t believe anyone—vampire or werewolf or Pureblood—could ever do that to another person. A few drops of blood didn’t do this. This definitely didn’t happen by accident.
Vampire and werewolf blood have similar qualities. It’s like the difference between what makes a house cat different from a tiger. They are similar beasts, but different in obvious ways. The vampire gets to keep much of its human form, whereas the werewolf undergoes radical changes.
But they both still have the same hunger. They both need the blood to survive. They hunger for it. The wolf often craves the meat of their victims as well, whereas the vampire tends to only want the blood; but in essence, it’s only a minor difference to the same monster.
Despite the similarities, however, the blood doesn’t mix. I could never feed on a werewolf, and a werewolf could never feed on me. To do so would create a monster like what lay behind the heavy iron bars.
The creature roared and threw itself against the far wall. Blood sprayed from its mouth. It dug at the stone wall with its claws as if it could claw its way out. The look in its eye was one of pure madness, of pure hunger.
“I know what happened to your brother,” Jonathan said, his tone low and sympathetic. “I was there, but I did not take part. I never condoned turning another human being, cursing them to this sort of fate.”
Hearing Jonathan talk about Thomas brought a sharp pain to my chest. I didn’t want to listen anymore, didn’t want to have anything to do with the Cult or the pathetic creature trapped within the cage. It hurt far too much.
“I also know that while your brother’s blood has become mixed, he at least escaped with his life. He helped you escape before the Madness took him. He might still be out there.”
“Stop,” I said. Anger surged through my body, and it took all my self-control not to draw my weapons and kill him where he stood. The urge was so strong I was shaking with it.
I backed away from the cell, fighting myself with every step. The creature in the cage howled and thrashed, clawing at the wall, at the bars, at anything it could get its hands on. I doubted there was anything left of the person the werewolf once was. It was a mindless beast now, its only urge was to kill.
“Help us,” Jonathan said, moving between me and the beast. “They have Simon, our Denmaster. I can only stand in his place for so long before some will begin to question me.” He glanced toward his two associates. “If we don’t bow down to House Tremaine by the midnight before the first night of the full moon, they will infect Simon with vampire blood. He will be driven crazy, turned into a mindless monster. You cannot let them do that to him.”
“Why not?” I said, turning a steely gaze on him. I didn’t like being reminded of my past failures. “Why would you come to me? You know I care nothing about werewolves and the Luna Cult. Why would I help you?”
“Because you are the only one I know who knows what it is like to live with this kind of weight on your shoulders.” Jonathan met my stare without flinching. “And you are the type of person who would do something about it.”
I glanced past him to the two men by the cage. Nathan was glaring at me, eyes full of all the hatred he could muster. Gregory stared back at me, his face void of any expression.
“Please,” Jonathan said. “I have kept your secret for years now. I could have turned your name over any number of times to any number of people, but I didn’t. I believe in what you do ...” He paused and frowned. “To a point, anyway. Do you realize what would happen if House Tremaine took over the Luna Cult?”
I thought about it. If this Minor House were to assimilate the Luna Cult, taking on their Purebloods, as well as their werewolves, they could easily jump quite a few rungs in the power struggle that defined vampire society. Sure, as far as I knew there were only a few wolves in the Cult, but there were so many Purebloods they could turn, they might even leap to the top of the ladder. If they did that and someone who knew my name joined them ...
Jonathan must have seen the understanding dawn in my face. He nodded and spoke slowly, keeping his tone light, unthreatening. “And since we know who you are, where you live, things would become quite difficult for you. House Tremaine would eventually get this information from someone in the Cult that is privy to what I know. They would come after you.”
“Is that a threat?”
“No.” Jonathan shook his head. “I am just stating a fact. Only I know for sure where you live. Nathan and Gregory are the only other two who even know who and what you really are. With Joshua dead, no one else knows.”
He was showing a lot of trust in telling me that. Still, just the thought of anyone knowing who I was didn’t sit well with me.
“Then what is to stop me from killing you three now and taking care of all my problems at once.”
Nathan took a step forward, his hands balled into fists, but Jonathan motioned him back with a wave of his hand.
“Nothing,” Jonathan said. “I hope you would consider what it would mean to allow someone like Count Tremaine to gain so much power. If he could do this”—he waved his hand toward the beast in the cell—“then what’s to stop him from doing it to someone else? There could be an epidemic.”
I frowned. I hated to admit it, but he had a point. The Luna Cult was far-reaching. There were hundreds of members in Columbus alone, and if they were to fall under the power of a single vampire entity, there was no telling what kind of havoc they would cause. How long before Tremaine’s influence spread throughout Cult Dens across the globe?
“Think of it as a chance to take down a Minor House. We want to work with you. We don’t have to hate one another. We have the same goals.”
I glanced back at the cell, at the beast it contained. I looked from the good-humored Gregory to the surly Nathan. The cold stone walls seemed to close in on me, forced me to realize how fragile this situation really was. All it would take is blood, just enough to contaminate any one of us, and we would end up like that creature bashing its brains out in the cell. Tremaine would do it. What was stopping him from doing it to everyone who stood in his way?
“Okay,” I said, taking a deep, cleansing breath. I knew I was crazy for even considering it, but honestly, could I really let Tremaine do this to anyone else?
The answer was no. I would rather go down fighting than to let this happen to others, even if they were werewolves. No one deserved that fate.