Chapter 19 Julian

It was late and it was cold, but neither bothered me. Time was just as irrelevant as the weather. A snowstorm had passed earlier in the day, but a bitter wind had carried it away from Chicago, leaving the city even colder and the sky open.

I played the part, wearing a puffy gray coat and jeans, although my body needed no insulation. My flesh was as cold as the air, anyway.

As Hadrian ordered, I was within close proximity to the subway station that led to the shifter school. I sat on a park bench with a good vantage point of the staircase that led down to the station. The park was far enough away that I felt confident I wouldn't look too obviously camped out and stalker-ish. Over the past week, I'd seen police officers go by, their sights not dwelling on me for too long. It was Chicago—there was a lot going on to keep them busy.

As it was late and the city was mostly quiet, I doubted that any shifter would come crawling out of the subway station. Every night had been the same: nobody resembling Hadrian's daughter had come out.

I turned another page of the book I was reading. For all the music I'd memorized from my favorite composer, I had relatively no idea who Ludwig van Beethoven was. For the past few evenings, I'd read about the prodigy's abusive childhood, and how he'd been scorned by his father for his " playing by ear" methods with the violin, telling him that he'd never amount to anything.

My own childhood was remarkably similar. My father had been abusive, both physically and verbally, and while I hadn't spent any time with music as a child, I'd been told enough times that the trees in the orchards would produce just fine without me.

The camaraderie I felt with Beethoven increased, and I knew that the sonatas and marches I'd studied over the years would only have more meaning for me now.

Being so enveloped in the composer's history, I hardly noticed the soft footsteps in the snow behind me. Snapping the book shut, I whirled around to mark whoever it was daring to sneak up on me.

It was Piper. I barely recognized her underneath all the layers she wore. Her hands were shoved into the side pockets of a padded dark royal purple overcoat that hung down to her shins. She wore tan boots that looked fashionably feminine, and her blonde hair was scrunched under a lavender beanie. A green scarf wrapped around her neck and trailed down her front.

Piper stopped as soon as our eyes met.

"What are you doing here?" I demanded, getting to my feet. I immediately regretted it. Piper had never shown any ill-will toward me. Sure, she had her quirky moments, but she'd always been kind.

She pulled her white-gloved hands out of her pockets and shrugged awkwardly. "Hadrian sent me."

I stepped toward her. "Hadrian sent you? At this time of night? Piper, you're going to freeze to death." I could see her teeth chattering .

"I guess you'd have to turn me into a vampire to save me if that were to happen," she said, a small smile creeping across her face.

I didn't see the humor and set my jaw. She knew how I felt about her desire to be turned.

Her grin disappeared. "Hadrian's waiting in your apartment. He sent me to gather you."

"Hadrian's here?" I said with disbelief.

Piper nodded.

"Why in the world did he come? I've only been away from Heritage Prep for one week."

Piper shrugged, then wiped at her nose with her sleeve. She was shaking uncontrollably.

Her condition pushed away my frustration momentarily. I couldn't let her stay out in the cold like this.

"Let's get back to my apartment and get you warmed up," I said. "I'm afraid I don't have fixings for coffee or tea, but you can at the very least take a warm bath."

Piper nodded ever so slightly, little puffs of air releasing from her mouth as she breathed quickly. "That sounds lovely."

I put my arm around her shoulder, knowing that my own lack of body heat would do little for her, but I hoped she'd at least take some comfort in the gesture.

I never thought I'd see the day I'd be walking a vampire Initiate back to my apartment, but that was precisely what I was doing.

* * *

I opened the door for Piper, and we walked into the apartment complex.

"Thank you," she said through chattering teeth as she quickly entered the warmth of the lobby.

I watched as she eyed the large gas fireplace with several couches and chairs surrounding it.

"I've got a smaller fireplace in my apartment," I said. "You can warm up there."

She nodded, and together, we walked through the lobby and past the restaurant that was closed for the evening.

I took long strides as I passed my neighbors' doors. I didn't know them—I generally kept to myself. Getting to know humans was dangerous. All it took was for one of them to find out I was less than human, then suddenly, a group of hunters would be forcing their way through my door. Because I was a threat to the community. Yes, it had happened once, but before I'd moved to Chicago.

We finally arrived at my place. Judging by the door being intact, it was obvious that Hadrian hadn't forced entry.

"Should I be concerned that Hadrian could so easily enter my apartment?" I muttered as I tested the doorknob. The door was unlocked, and I threw Piper a hesitant glance.

She shrugged. "Hadrian's the most powerful vampire in the world. I'm not sure there's any place that could keep him out."

I snorted. "Except for the shifter school."

"For now."

I pushed the door open, the dim lamp in the far corner of my apartment shining through and revealing a woman with black hair styled in a pixie cut lying unconscious on my authentic Kashan rug. I recognized her immediately as my neighbor from three doors down. I'd never spoken with her before and didn't even know her name. Her head was tilted to the side, revealing a vampire bite in the softness of her pale neck.

The slow and subtle beating of her heart told me Hadrian hadn't drained her completely, and I was relieved to know that she was still breathing—at least for now.

Stepping past her, I found Hadrian sitting in the only heirloom I'd salvaged from the Skye Boarding House a hundred years before.

Anger rose within me seeing him sitting smugly in the chair that had survived the destruction of vampires, but I didn't let it show. Hadrian was staring at me with disinterest.

"There's our Winter Watcher," Hadrian said softly.

"You left a mess on my rug," I deadpanned.

"Her name was Jolene," he said, crossing one leg over the other as he sat up straight. "And it appears your pet is doing a fine job cleaning things up."

I shooed Rainbow away, and the cat meowed in frustration as it hid behind the curtains. It was one thing to see a vampire guzzling blood, but it was beyond unsettling seeing a cat lick the bloody remnants as if they were the spills from a bowl of milk. Was Rainbow showing vampiric tendencies? After all, the thing had died, and I had noticed the small creature pawing at the blood bags I'd been drinking the past few days.

I made a mental note to talk to Shea about it.

Hadrian chuckled. "She sacrificed a date with a doctor to spend the evening with me."

Disgust bubbled in my throat. "You hypnotized her to gain entrance into the apartment complex? "

Hadrian nodded, his eyes flashing back down to the sleeping form on the rug. Tapping his head, he said, "She wasn't endowed with much up here. Really, it was far too easy to control her mind. But her blood was remarkably sweet. I'd highly recommend drinking from her at some point, if you get the chance."

I didn't even entertain the idea. "Why are you here?"

He smiled as he leaned forward. "I came for an update, of course."

I blinked a couple of times. "An update? On what?"

"You've been silent since you started your mission a week ago," he replied. "I thought I'd visit you personally to discover your progress."

"About finding your daughter?" I snorted. "You don't think I'd contact you the minute I capture her?"

He chuckled, then snapped his fingers. "Oh, I know you would. But it would be difficult to catch Arya if you weren't around the subway station when she emerged from her underwater home, wouldn't it?"

I wondered at the vampire leader's irony. Hadn't I just been pulled away from my post to have this conversation? Still, alarms were going off in my mind. Hadrian suspected something. He was trying to catch me in my words.

"I haven't seen Arya appear, and I've kept my eyes on those stairs nearly the entire time I've been back in Chicago."

Raising a finger, Hadrian said, "‘Nearly' being the keyword, right?"

I shrugged. "I'm a vampire. Even I must step away for a drink from time to time."

"And how long does it take you to gain your fill of blood?" Hadrian questioned .

I was falling deeper into the vampire leader's snares. To be honest, I'd been running particularly low on the stash of blood bags in my refrigerator. After Shea's visit, I'd headed for the nearest blood bank to keep from taking her up on her offer. Resisting her was hard enough even with an ample supply of the next best thing.

The place had been busy, and my attempt to steal a box of blood bags had very nearly failed because of the amount of staff there. In the end, I'd been successful, but it had taken a lot longer to obtain my precious blood bags than I'd anticipated.

I tried not to let my increasing anxiety show. "I suppose that depends on how thirsty I am."

Hadrian rose from the chair, keeping his untrusting eyes on me. "Let me change the question to something a little more direct, then. What were you doing on Saturday morning?"

I shifted my gaze to Piper, who was standing close to my unconscious neighbor, stuck in an awkward posture as she was forced to listen to the tense conversation.

Looking back at Hadrian, I said, "I was keeping watch over the subway station, just as you've asked."

Hadrian sighed as he slipped a hand into his left pocket and withdrew a small tablet. "Julian, Julian, Julian. You should know me better than this." The vampire leader handed me the device. "Go ahead and hit play whenever you're ready."

I looked down and saw the Play button hovering over a still of the stairs leading down to the subway station, with me in the foreground on my favorite park bench.

"You've been watching me?" I asked, feeling a surge of fear and anger. Most of all, I felt stupid.

Of course, Hadrian would be keeping an eye on me. This task to kidnap his daughter was extremely important. He wouldn't just let things fall by the wayside. The question was, how? Maybe there'd been a drone or another piece of tech in the air—something I had completely missed. Or perhaps a hidden camera in a tree.

"I merely tapped into the city security camera system," Hadrian informed, spinning a finger in the air. "Surely it doesn't hurt to have multiple eyes on the subway station. You know, just in case one of us misses something."

I hit the Play icon with a mildly shaking finger, and the camera footage showed 11:55 a.m. as the recording time.

"As you can see," Hadrian said, "you're on the phone. After verifying with Piper, it is confirmed that you were not talking to her. Marguerite also verified that you weren't speaking to her, either. And you were definitely not on the phone with me."

Shea , I thought with a grimace. How well would that revelation go over with Hadrian? Yeah, I was on the phone with a witch who was eager to show me some of her magic...

I blurted out the first thing that came to my mind. "I was following up on a lead about a certain dragon shifter line."

Hadrian's eyes widened. "You've located the Draculs?"

I bobbed my head. "I have a source that has seen one known as Arthur here in the city."

He rubbed at his permanent five o'clock shadow. "That's fascinating. Especially when you see what happens after you leave the premises."

Looking back at the screen, I saw myself quickly walking out of the camera frame. At the 1:01 pm marker, several people climbed the steps out of the subway station, including two teenage girls. One was clearly Arya. My heart plummeted .

Hadrian tapped the screen, pausing the video. "In case you couldn't tell, one of those disembarking passengers is my daughter. The other one—according to Kendall Green—is the same phoenix shifter we fought against in the alleyway. Her name is Ashlyn Summers."

Summers . The face of another phoenix with the same last name surfaced in my mind—Evandrus. It had been over a hundred years since I'd seen Evandrus Quinn. But back then, Camilla Skye—whom I loved like a sister—had begun a relationship with him. Could this Ashlyn have any relation to Evandrus?

"Don't you find it at all coincidental," he continued, tearing me from my thoughts, "that not long after you left your watch, my daughter appeared from the subway station?"

"I had no idea," I sputtered.

"Indeed," he replied. "What's even more convenient is that, if you skip ahead to 3:55, you'll see that Arya and her friend return to the subway station, and ten minutes later, you return to your watch."

A spike of panic shot from my stomach, and I fast-forwarded the video to that point in time to validate Hadrian's claim.

To my horror, the vampire leader was correct. But even more shocking was that there was a third girl walking back to the station, and I recognized her immediately.

Shea.

"It makes me wonder, Julian, just how many times could you have missed my daughter coming out of her hiding place over the past week? How many times could you have missed snatching Arya?"

Shrugging, I said, "You're the one with a video feed. Have you seen her come out before or after that time? "

He gave me a serious look. "I don't have time to monitor video surveillance, Julian. That's why you're here." He sat up again, relaxing a bit. "But upon a fast-forward viewing, no, she hasn't stepped out of the subway station besides this one time."

I shook my head, completely shocked at what this footage meant. "I can't believe it. I can understand your distrust, Hadrian. But believe me when I say that I had no idea your daughter would come and go during that one window of time."

"I want my daughter," Hadrian stated, pointing a finger right under my nose. "You've missed at least two chances. Your lack of productivity is grinding away my patience."

"She's bound to make another appearance during Winter Break," I said quickly. "Chances are, Arya will surface again then."

He shook his head. "That's not good enough. If you're incapable of capturing Arya, you'll have to be on the lookout for her friends. If you can successfully kidnap one of them, we can use them as bait."

Friends? Shea was friends with Arya. Did that put her in jeopardy? I'd have to talk to her after Hadrian left.

"That could upset the entire school if students start going missing," I warned.

"Why should we be concerned about upsetting a school of shifters?"

This mentality was one of the things that had pushed me away from Hadrian fifteen years ago. His complete lack of empathy for other living beings was so abrasive. The vampire leader was so focused on his goals, he didn't care who he stampeded over to get to them.

Hadrian snatched the tablet from me and made a few quick motions on the screen, then handed it back .

"Thanks to our mer friend, Kendall, here are a bunch of snapshots of Arya's friends, with their names." He placed his hands on his hips and smiled broadly.

I looked down to see a close-up of the girl, Ashlyn Summers. She had fiery orange hair, tan skin, and yellow-green eyes. Her name was bolded at the top, and once again, I wondered if she had any relation to Evandrus Summers from the boarding house long ago.

"The next picture will be of particular interest to you," Hadrian said, smiling slyly.

I swiped my finger to show the next friend. The picture was of a young man with thick, dark hair and serious amber eyes. I could tell right away which family this boy came from without even looking at the bolded name.

"Tobias Dracul," Hadrian declared. "If you were to catch him, you'd be able to satisfy your own personal vendetta as well as help me. You know, the whole ‘kill two birds with one stone' concept."

I held no enmity toward the boy with sharp features staring at me from the tablet. He'd done nothing wrong. Tobias had nothing to do with Alice's murder.

But I played the part, gritting my teeth and flaring my nostrils. I pretended, instead, that I was looking at the face of Claudette Dracul, which wasn't too difficult. The boy resembled her in so many ways.

"Before you break my tablet," Hadrian said, still grinning at my reaction, "move on to see the other two boys that could potentially draw Arya out."

Doing as Hadrian said, I swiped to find the next boy, Nikolai Candida, his short, dark hair shaved with unique patterns. Like the Dracul boy, this one was labeled as a dragon shifter .

Swiping one more time, I found a boy with longer, blond hair, as well as blue eyes. His appearance screamed California Surfer , but the young man was labeled as a phoenix shifter, so I doubted the boy spent much time in the water.

"Most of these students happen to be the same shifters who fought us in the alley near the subway station," Hadrian said. "Kendall says that Arya is closest to Ashlyn Summers and Tobias Dracul, so our best chances are kidnapping one of them to draw Arya out."

I nodded, swiping back to Ashlyn and then to Tobias. "I'll start looking for them."

"Good," he said, clapping me on the shoulder. "You'll notice that the other girl who was accompanying Arya was not in the group of individual photos. I have an agent attempting to learn more about her as we speak."

A stab of panic struck me like a knife to the back. Shea, you're on his radar now.

"But if any of the others come out, you're to grab them. To make sure that you do, your Initiate, Piper, will be by your side from now on."

I did my best to hide my disappointment. Now, I not only had to worry about security cameras watching me. Piper would be keeping an eye on me, too. But maybe that wasn't so bad. In the last conversation we'd had, I told her about some of the not-so-great things about being a vampire, and they seemed to have an effect on her. Perhaps I could pursue that some more?

"I'll be glad to have her help." I nodded toward my Initiate, who was still standing awkwardly, looking out of place.

Hadrian kept his hand firmly on my shoulder and looked at me for a long moment .

"I need my daughter, Julian," he said with a cold seriousness that sent chills down my spine. "She's the key to a locked door full of answers."

I nodded. "We'll get her."

"Keep my tablet," he said, glancing down at the screen, then brought his light blue eyes back up to meet mine. "I'll be watching."

The vampire leader moved away, stepping past my still unconscious neighbor, and headed for the door.

"What about my neighbor?" I called, stopping Hadrian as he was reaching for the doorknob.

He threw me a cold look. "She's your problem." With that, he swung the door open and stepped out. The door closed, and I found myself alone with Piper and my inert neighbor.

Sighing heavily, I stared at the unconscious woman, shaking my head. "He leaves messes everywhere he goes."