Chapter 9

CHAPTER 9

Hopefully, nobody would miss Ingo and his pals. If anything, it seemed the shanty town would be a safer place without them. So, we'd done a good thing. Cold-blooded murder was sometimes good. Right?

Jim regained consciousness a few minutes later, alarmed to find it had all been real. We questioned him about Armin—the vampire who had taken Little Jimmy's family—but he didn't know the name, and stayed out of vampire business. Now petrified of me, he definitely wasn't lying.

Jim looked at me the same way most did when they realized I was capable of eating them. I figured we were no longer friends.

With no further leads in the shanty town, and the sun having set long ago, our options for what to do next were limited. We could wander around some more, randomly ask after Armin and hope we didn't rile up any more vampires, or regroup at the hotel where we could update our resident vampire on the situation.

As I had bits of sticky vampire brains clinging to my clothes, we decided to head back, and hot-footed it away from the murder scene to the waiting sedan.

Zee sat in the back with me, unusually quiet, gazing out the window at the city's nightscape reeling by.

I probably should have told Zee all about me long before now. He still only knew half of it. "I don't always eat people."

"Huh?" He looked over.

"Me, I mean. I don't... So, with the duke, you see, he was really mean, and it was his fault all the ward weavers died. I told him what would happen. I warned him. So it was his fault."

"Fuck him." Zee snorted, flopping back in the seat. "He was a dick, and he hurt you. That's all the reason I need."

His tail absently stroked up my ankle, more as a comfort than wanting intimacy. But that was good. Maybe he wasn't mad? "And those demons, outside Razorsedge? They were going to kill me, so it was self-defense, really. I mean, I had also kind of baited them into following me, but that still doesn't excuse what they'd been about to do."

Zee waved a hand. "If you're trying to explain why you're a good person, Kitten, I already know it."

"And then there was Mrs. Lee. I didn't want to, but she was going to accept Gideon Cain's offer for the hotel, and I really needed the hotel. I'd tried being nice, but?—"

"Wait, what? Who?"

"The hotel's previous owner."

Zee's mouth fell open. "The sweet old lady with the cats?"

"Uhm..." Oh dear. "No? Nope. Never mind. What?" I sat back and pretended to think. "What did happen to her? I heard she went on vacation around the world. It's so great that vintage humans can do that."

"Fuuuuccckkk, you ate Mrs. Lee?"

I winced. Did he have to say it like that? "I said she was sweet. "

"I didn't think you meant fucking literally ."

Oh dear. Was this bad? Was Zee going to look at me like Junk Jim had looked at me? Like my whole family had looked at me when they'd learned who and what I was?

I shrank in the seat. It was happening again. My past was catching up, and soon it would be everywhere, hunting me down like I was its bounty. "Can we forget everything I just said?"

"Hey." Zee shifted across the back seat and turned my face toward him. His warm hand stayed on my cheek, his thumb stroked, and his smile eased some of the rising panic. "You are officially the most amazing, badass, awesome fucking person in my life—and that list includes me. You ate an old lady. Pfft. It happens. I bet you had a reason. You don't go around randomly eating innocent human babies."

"Not anymore."

Zee blinked.

"I'm joking." Sort of.

"And that is why I fucking love you."

He... loved me? My heart hiccuped. Did he mean that, or was he just saying it because of the dramatic moment?

Zee's smile grew. "Before your head gets in the way, I fucking do mean it. I love you, Adam Vex. I fucking loved you from the moment you scraped me off the Demontown sidewalk, and not just because you made my life worth something after all that shit at Razorsedge. I love this ." He pressed his free hand to my chest, over my thudding heart. "You have the warmest, kindest, most amazingly true heart. You will always try and do the right thing. Maybe it doesn't work out? You eat people? So what. Nobody is perfect. Except me. Obviously."

"You love me, Zee?" I whispered. Nobody had ever loved me, not once. But for Zee to really love me, for it to be true, he had to know the truth. All of it. "Zee, listen, before you say that, you have to know about the prophecy?—"

The car screeched to a halt, throwing Zee against the privacy glass between us and the driver. My belt jolted me back, trapping me against the seat. I scanned the outside, through the blacked-out windows. We couldn't be far from the hotel, but I didn't recognize the handsome Victorian houses packed close together on either side of the street.

"The fuck?" Zee flung open the door and sprang from the back seat.

"Wait!" I tried to jab my belt free but it fought back.

A familiar voice crooned in its preteen pitch. "Oh looky what we have here. A bad demon in my car."

"Isn't it past your bedtime?" Came Zee's cocky reply.

My belt finally popped free, and I clambered outside.

A black limo blocked the street. A street we shouldn't even have been on. Princess Daisy stood in our car's headlight beams, as though performing on a stage in her knee-length, black pleated skirt and pristine white socks. But in this performance, the backing dancers were all straight-faced, suit-wearing, silver-eyed vampires.

My heart sank. The last thing I needed today was a late-night meeting with vampire royalty.

"I just want what's mine back," she declared, huffily crossing her arms.

She probably didn't mean the car.

"Victor?!" Daisy screeched when Zee and I didn't immediately reply. Her blonde ponytail switched like an angry tail.

"He's not here," I told her, then crossed in front of the car to stand at Zee's side. "And he's not yours."

"Hm." Daisy tapped her chin. "That's a pain."

"And you can't go to the hotel. If you mean to hurt him, the wards will activate."

"I know!" she whined in angsty teen. "But I really do need to torture him for an agonizingly long time, until he tells me everything about you, Mr. Vex."

"Adam?" Zee laughed. "What's to know? I'm a way better catch. Murdered a bunch of fang fuckers." Zee counted his list on his fingers. "Led the charge at Demios. And there was that one time, I found a bunch of suckers resting up after getting separated from the rest of you dickfaces and fucked them up so bad there was no way to know which body part went where. Good times."

"You, demon." She glowered, and there in the depths of her deceptively young eyes, was the ancient killer. "I just want you dead."

"If you didn't know, I offer reasonable, pay by the hour terms. Just send your weird-ass clones to my room and I'll make sure they're each given my personal attention. It'll be the best fucking last night of their lives. Trust me. I never disappoint a client."

"Shut up! Foul creature!"

"Zee..." I warned. We'd already killed three vampires that evening, but taking on a vampire princess and ten of her entourage didn't seem like a good plan.

Zee rolled his eyes and folded his arms. "Ugh."

"Princess, I'm sure you don't want to cause a scene on the street here, so what can we help you with?"

"You may get in my car and come home with me, where we will discuss what all that cute glamor is hiding and why Gideon Cain is obsessed with you."

If I got in her car, there was a high chance I'd end up being a gift to her mom again. "That's not going to happen."

"Ha!" Zee barked. "Nobody is getting in your weird pedo car, girly."

"You will address me as Princess, Your Majesty, or My Liege. "

Zee laughed. "You will address me as His Royal Fucking Godliness."

"What are you the king of, demon?"

"Myself. And sex."

Daisy glanced at me, as though checking whether I knew Zee wasn't making any sense, or if she was the only one who'd noticed.

"Anyway," I began, and was immediately cut off by Zee strutting forward.

"And another fucking thing. Stop beating on Victor. We made it clear he's ours now. You lot need to back the fuck off. He picked us, because you fang fuckers don't know a good thing when you have it. Now we have it—him. We have him . He's a whole lot more awesome than you narcissistic freaks, and he's real good at making furniture." Zee showed Daisy his middle finger. "Suck on that, Buffy."

I was beginning to suspect Zee had some personal hang-ups when it came to vampires. But at least he was standing up for Victor.

Our driver chose that moment to fling open the car door and sprint away, which was probably what we should have already done.

Daisy dipped her chin, and said, "Kill that demon!"

Oh dear.