Chapter 15

Adjusting the cuffs to the new clean overcoat I was provided, I waited for the two vampires escorting me to Luther's underground study to open the heavy wooden door. As they ushered me in, Luther looked up from the mechanical device resting in his hand, that centuries-old calm, schooled expression crack free.

Blasted hell. I'd find a way to chip it.

The door closed behind me with a soft click and I was left alone in the room with my dutiful son. The flickering flames of his hearth bathed the shelves of his expansive book collection—which spanned the entire room—in a warm, fiery glow swirling with playful shadows.

Sitting behind an oversized oak desk, he puffed his chest as he reclined on his red-upholstered monstrous chair. At his back, a wall of…

What did he call them back on the air coach?

Video monitors.

They displayed what those prying eyes of his were seeing. The contrast between the old world and new warped my mind in a dizzying spell.

Hair slicked, he steepled his fingers, shrewd eyes dissecting me, waiting for me to make the first move. There was a time when I would've been the one sitting behind that desk, examining some poor bloke like an insect under a magnifying glass.

But seeing my son sprawled on his makeshift throne, underneath this stone city, surrounded by his modern gadgets, made me feel obsolete, reduced to a relic. A figment of the past who no one no longer feared.

Hot rage flared through my veins, but I refused to let it burn through me.

Glancing around his study, my gaze snagged on a familiar text, the deep red, hand-bound leather, colored edges and gilded spine inscribed with the words Divina Commedia flashed me back through time. Aware Luther's eyes were tracking every move my muscles made, I took a step toward the bookshelf and reached for the illuminated manuscript that had been in my family for centuries. Preserved well it seemed.

"Ah, Dante Alighieri," I crooned, remembering the trilogy of poems. "Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita." I smiled as I perused the pages of Inferno, noting to myself how fitting this piece of work was. "I knew him." Slightly glancing at Luther, I feathered my fingers over the magnificently engraved vignettes still so rich in color and texture. "Did I ever tell you?"

His hear rate up-ticked. Good, I had his attention.

"I knew you loved his work," he replied matter-of-factly.

I took a deep melancholic breath, reminded of my travels through Ravenna as I continued to scan through the text. "Yes, I did. Brilliant poet. Pity how he died."

"Malaria, was it?"

I craned my neck and cocked an eyebrow, feeling the corners of my lips curl. "Is that what they say?"

Luther leaned forward on his desk, face taut, eyes spitting fire, lips pressed into such a hard line, it carved brutal edges across his cheeks. "Let's cut the bullshit, Father. You didn't leave a trail of corpses on your walk here to talk about a fucking dead poet."

There he is…Finally, the unbreakable fa?ade splinters.

In a moment's breath, I was leaning over his desk, my face inches from his as I slammed the manuscript on his desk. "How insightful of you," I gritted in a harsh whisper as I reached up and gripped him by the collar. "Let us get to it, then."

Before Luther could respond, two of his blockheads busted through the door. I peered over my shoulder and caught their weapons aimed at me. "Let him go," one ordered.

Still holding onto Luther's collar, a grumbling growl erupted from me as I sneered, baring my teeth, but I shackled my beast. During my escape from Bringham, I'd seen what those weapons could do.

"It's okay," Luther uttered. "Lower your weapons."

"My lord?—"

"I said. Lower. Your. Weapons." When they complied, he added, "Leave us. Now."

As they left, I shifted my gaze back to my son, fingers still curled around the fabric of his crisp white collar. His eyes flashed with subdued rage, but hiding the tips of his fangs was a harder ordeal.

Swell. I wanted him riled.

Eyeing my hands, he gestured for me to let him go.

I waited three seconds before unfurling my fingers, readjusting his collar as I patted his shirt free of non-existing wrinkles. As I straightened my shoulders, an arrow of recognition fired off in my brain, my gaze landing on the artifact sitting on the shelf behind Luther. Ignoring his wide-eyed expression, I hurried around the desk, heart at a hard run.

"How… How did you acquire this?" I asked, reaching for it, awed by the unmarred beauty of the silver-hilted dagger in my hand, its balanced blade reflecting the orange flames of the hearth as if the steel itself was made of fire.

It looked exactly as it did five hundred years ago. Remarkable.

"I was preserving it for you," Luther said, eyes locked on my fingers as I ran them down the length of the sharp edge.

I drew a tiny droplet of blood on my fingertip as my eyes flicked to his. "Were you?"

He lifted a shoulder. "I knew you'd want it back one day."

"Hmm," I said, licking off the small red bead from my fingertip. "I was certain it was lost during my capture at Dundrennan."

Luther appeared to have forgotten how to blink, perhaps even how to breathe. The dimple in his chin deepened as he clenched his teeth. He stared at me for an extended breath as his throat bobbed.

Had I said something to alarm him? Then a curious thought stirred. "How exactly did you come to possess it?" I asked, my brows pinching. "You were in Cromarty at the time I was ambushed and taken prisoner by my brother. We'd been on opposite ends of the country. News of my capture probably didn't reach you for days if not weeks. Not to mention I'd been traveling through a dense forest. The chances of you finding the dagger…quite outstanding if not near to impossible."

His face muscles relaxed, but his eyes remained alert, the gears in his brain turning.

"Well?" I asked, growing inpatient by his stunned silence.

"I bought it at auction many years ago," he blurted out, running fingers through his black hair before signaling to the array of artifacts accompanying his book collection."Father, it's how I've acquired most of my antiquities."

I frowned. Probable enough, but I wasn't truly convinced. The erratic beats of his heart told me something was amiss. He was either lying or withholding some truth.

"Are we going to talk about everything other than why you felt the need to kill several of my men simply to pay me a visit?"

Haughty asshole.

Unbuttoning my suit jacket, I took a seat on one of the black leather chairs in front of his desk. Continuing to admire the blade, I rested an ankle over a knee, then shot him a steely look. "Know what needles me?" I asked, pausing to give him a minute to ruminate on my question. "Why you waited half a fucking century to unearth me from that tomb?"

He leaned back in his chair and puffed his chest. "It wasn't the right time."

The air seemed to chill around us. I should've been relieved he wasn't going to try to lie to me, but I couldn't help the acid that churned in my stomach at his blatant honesty. I tilted my chin downward, planted both feet back on the floor, and inched to the edge of my seat. "Oh. And who the damn saints determined when the right time would be, precisely?"

He rubbed at his clean-shaven jaw, eyes focusing on everything except me. "Kane went on a hunting expedition after he captured you. Sent men to all our command posts, and they cornered us. Forced me and my men to flee."

I leaned in even closer, nerves fraying. "Flee?"

A slow blink followed by a sharp inhale. "We boarded a ship to the Americas."

My hand tightened around the hilt of my newly reacquired dagger. "Let me understand this correctly. After my brother captured and tortured me. After he buried me in the dungeon of my own family's castle, you took your men—my men—and you fled to America, leaving me to rot?" I jumped off the damn chair so harshly I knocked it back.

Luther's face paled. "Father, calm down."

Clamping a fist, I brought it to my closed mouth as I bit down on my teeth. Swaths of heat flashed across my chest as I fought to control the beast clawing from within. Canines descending, I gritted, "Don't you fucking tell me to calm down. All this time, you've been hiding underground in this fucking city like vermin. And not once in the last five hundred years did you make any attempts to rescue me from that hellhole?"

He swallowed. "It's more complicated than that."

Approaching his desk, I plunged the pointed blade right into his precious antique desk, cracking the wood. "Enlighten me."

Luther lurched back, slack jawed.

"Speak."

"This desk… was a one-of-a-kind?—"

"And now it's fucking rubbish. Try again."

"At…at the time," he began, his gaze shifting up from the blade. "A trip across the ocean for our kind required a special crew. Sixty-six days at sea with no food, sunlight beating on our heads for most of the day. We… um…" He swallowed hard, but something caught in his throat. "We needed help."

The hesitation in his voice made my gut clench. Deducing who he meant, I proceeded to seek confirmation. "From?"

Luther stood, walking around his desk and putting his palms up to placate me even before his reply caused my ire to erupt. "Father, please, hear me out. I had no choice. They offered me and my men safe passage on board one of their ships."

I was right, then—he'd made a pact with my enemy. "In exchange for what?"

Back stiff as a steel beam, he tried to keep his breath steady. His gaze clamped onto mine, a shimmer of resignation and perhaps even regret shining in their depths. "That I wouldn't return to Scotland for you… not until the time they would call upon me."

Pulling the blade from the desk with minimal effort, I took a step toward him. "The witches who killed Arabelle… the ones who burned her alive until nothing remained but ashes. The same wretched beings who tried to eradicate our kind?"

He took a step back, his voice dropping in supplication. "I had no choice."

Closing the gap between us, I pointed my dagger straight at his heart, the tip pressing on his tailored shirt. His eyebrows hitched when he realized his back was against a bookshelf. "You had a fucking choice," I said, my eyes trained on his. "You could have told them to bugger off. You could have come for your blood."

"If we didn't get on that ship Kane would have exterminated us. And with that, any chance of you ever escaping that coffin. If it hadn't been for those witches, you'd still be a withered husk."

Those last words struck like a fist to my gut. They'd been the ones to leave me in that coffin and now he wanted me to thank them for breaking me out. I would not agree to owe them anything, especially my freedom.

But bigger questions remained.

Why offer Luther a chance of survival to begin with? We'd been their enemies for centuries. They'd succeeded at killing Arabelle, my mate. And while in my brother's hands, I was no longer a threat to them. Why the need to save Luther? And why unearth me now?

"What does the Vates Ordo want with me?" I asked, lowering the dagger.

"When we made our pact, I wasn't allowed to ask questions. They simply stated it was in both our interests to lie low for a while. The time would come when they would call upon us to settle the debt."

Pressing on my temple, I paced in a small circle. "They were biding their time. But for what? Why wait five hundred years? How do I fit into their scheme?"

He sighed, long and hard. Another revelation was about to be dropped. "They're on their way here…. As we speak. To discuss the terms of our agreement."

I spun toward him, every muscle on my neck and shoulders bunching into tight coils. "Terms?"

His expression changed, fear morphing into hope, remorse into ambition. The dark gleam in his eyes took on a life of their own. "A new age approaches, Father. The world as we know it is about to spin wildly on its axis. A shift in power, with us at the top, not the mortals."

A candlelight flickered to life in my mind, the answers weaving themselves together like the threads on a tapestry. "They promised you power. This," I said, gesturing to the walls of his underground compound, "this is all because of them, isn't?"

"They agreed they wouldn't interfere with my work as long as I…"

"Didn't return for me…" My chin dropped, and a fist wrapped around my betrayed heart. If having my own brother sentence me to an eternity of despair wasn't crushing enough, my own son had bartered with my life, dissolving that age-old adage. Blood, it seemed, was not always thicker than water.

I stumbled backward and fell into the second chair positioned in front of his desk. Rubbing my forehead, I tempered my angered pain, otherwise I would've ripped his throat out with my bare teeth. "All those centuries, starving, my flesh consuming itself. My mind melting into chaos without rest. And those witches held the key to my freedom. Because my son handed it to them. I peered up at my disappointment of a son. "You allowed them to let me suffer."

Skulking back to his stolen throne, he said, "You have this all wrong. My hands were tied. The only way to defeat Kane and rescue you was to collaborate with the Vates Ordo. If it was a decade or centuries later, it didn't matter. I didn't have the men or resources to launch an attack on Bringham."

"Excuses."

His chest expanded. "No, not excuses. Back then, we would've been overpowered by the Shadow Knights, not anymore. The weapons you've seen my men use, the ammunition consists of toxin-filled bullets—an anticoagulant concoction fabricated by their alchemists. It blocks our healing capabilities. Wounds are deadly. Practically makes vampires mortal. The witches did that. Can you imagine what would've happened if I'd refused to cooperate? Father, they gifted us a weapon Kane can't fight against."

Sitting forward, I placed my elbows on my knees and hung my head. "Once again we're at the mercy of their damn magic." I looked up, meeting the self-assured smile plastered on his face. Imbecile. He thought this a victory, but the witches had us by the fucking balls.

I shook my head, lips twisting into disgust. Arabelle and I had fought so hard to rip their claws from our flesh. To rid ourselves of their power over us only to end up in a worst situation. Her—dead and below ground—and I, destitute of power and back in their clutches. A part of me now wished they'd left me inside that bloody coffin. "Seems everyone got what they wanted. The witches kept their magic, you stole my kingdom. Why, suddenly—five hundred years later to be exact—was I worth releasing from my iron prison?"

Luther inclined his chin, eyes growing cold. "You can ask them yourself when they get here."

My eyes cut down to slits. "But you were planning to meet with them without me. Evidently, you felt my presence was not required. Yet now you see fit to include me?"

"You weren't at full strength, Father. Still aren't. I didn't think you'd?—"

"Precisely." I stood and adjusted my cuffs. "The only time you ever considered others was when it involved your own self-preservation. Seems nothing's changed."

His jaw twitched, lips ready to spew some defense. I'd had plenty of his nonsense for one night. "I will not be a pawn in your game or theirs," I began, cutting him off before he even released a single vowel. "If there's something I've always known, it is to never trust those witches."

"Things are different now." He leaned over his desk, the lines on his brow deepening as he ran a hand through his slicked-back hair, unruffling it at the sides. Eyes pleading with mine, he gritted, "We are indebted to them, Father. If we go back on our word?—"

"Your word," I shot back, closing the distance between us. "I owe them nothing."

He slammed a fist down onto his desk, splintering the wood further. "You owe them everything," he snarled, fangs descended at full length, eyes flooded a deep red with blood. "This world, Father, is not our world. It belongs to the fucking mortals. You wouldn't last a day out there without the protection my coven offers, a privilege earned by a blood oath I took in your name, our family's name. You may loathe the fact that you chose to sire me, that you made me your kin, but I am all you have. I am your legacy and the only reason you are standing before me, breathing oxygen back into your cursed blood, is because of those saints-damned witches and the fact I sold my fucking freedom to them."

I drew closer, meeting his flaming stare, sharing his stinking breath. "You will not make a mockery of my name. You will not heel before those detestable creatures. And I will not be a barter for your debts. They should have thought better than to accept your word in my name."

"Think this through, Father. Despite our strength and our numbers, our vulnerabilities remain the same—we are still prisoners to the darkness. You know we are no match for a full-fledged hive. If we don't meet with them, the Divine Mother will order an attack."

Fucker wasn't wrong, which only made my rage burn like molten lava. But I wouldn't let my irascibility make an idiot out of me. A humorless chuckle slipped from my lips. "Guess you're still incapable of not shitting all over everything. And now I must clean up your putrid mess. Tell your precious witch friends that I will meet with them… when I very well damn please." I reached for the door of his study.

"Where are you headed?"

"I've been underground for long enough."

"Don't leave the premises."

I paused, barely looking over my shoulder. "Beg your pardon?"

"The city is not a safe place for a newborn vampire."

"I may be reborn, but I am no careless fledgling. Remember your place. I don't take orders from you."

Stepping out into the hallway, I shut the door behind me and grinned wider when the crack of something hitting the door blasted from inside his study.

The two blockheads standing guard eyed the dagger in my hand with a glint of trepidation in their eyes. They didn't attempt to stop me from leaving. Self-preservation was a primal skill. "Well, mates, time to see my promised kingdom. Lead the way." I winked, marching my ass up behind them to the next floor where loud, ritualistic booms of drums and indistinguishable music assaulted my ears.