Crouching Vampire, Hidden Fang

CHAPTER 13

The pain caught my attention first. It was sharp and hot, radiating out from a spot on the side of my head, dull waves of agony that brought the rest of my awareness to me.

“Unh?” I said, my tongue seemingly made of lead as I blinked my eyes, trying to shake off the last shreds of oblivion that clung to the edges of my mind. “Hrng?”

“Are you awake? How do you feel?”

I blinked a couple more times. Light and shadows flashed on my face, blurred into fleeting shapes that seemed to rush past me.

“Boo?” I asked, trying to adjust my position, and wincing at the pain in my head that followed the movement. “Ow. What the hell?”

The man’s voice was a pleasant baritone with a slight German accent, sophisticated and sexy. “You hit your head on the banister when you fell. I caught you before you tumbled down the stairs, so you should be fine. Immortality is just one of the perks of being a Beloved.”

Carefully I turned my head to look in the direction of the voice, my eyes still not focusing too well. Slowly, a face resolved itself, dimly lit, but recognizable. “Alec?” I asked, the memory of him emerging from the darkness of his house returning with an impact that had me struggling upright.

Something bound me, holding me back. I struggled with the thing, realizing as a metallic click sounded that it was a seat belt. I was in a car.

“What are you doing here?” I asked, pushing myself up from where I’d been slumped in the passenger seat. Pain bit hard and deep in my head for a few seconds, slowly ebbing away to a dull throb. “Oh, God. I remember now. You loomed up out of the darkness and scared the crap out of me.”

“I’m sorry for that, love.” Alec caught himself, making a little face. “I suppose I shouldn’t call you that anymore. Not since . . . Well. What’s done can’t be undone.”

“If you’re talking about Kristoff . . . ,” I began slowly, rebuckling my seat belt. With extreme caution, I felt the side of my head. There was a good-sized lump there. “No, it can’t be undone. Not that I would want to even if I could change it. Ouch. I don’t suppose you have an ice pack handy?”

He shook his head, glancing briefly at me before returning his eyes to the road. “You are happy with Kristoff? I had thought that you and I had a great future before us. It seemed to me that you thought so, too.”

“I don’t think we were ever really meant to be,” I said uncomfortably, and not just due to the headache. “I will always cherish our time together, though. And I can’t believe I’m saying something so predictable and trite, but I hope that you won’t allow my relationship with Kristoff to come between our friendship, or your friendship with Kristoff. Assuming, that is, that you are not really working for the Brotherhood and about to turn me over to them so they can perform insanely evil acts against my person.”

Alec’s lips thinned. He was, as I had had occasion to note at some length, an exceedingly handsome man. He was dark haired, like Kristoff, but where Kristoff had dark auburn curls, Alec’s hair was a rich, deep, dark chocolate, straight and silky, pulled back in a ponytail. His eyes were green like a cat’s, and although our physical relationship hadn’t gone beyond one night together, he had enough raw magnetism that even in my somewhat muddled state I felt the impact of his nearness.

“That you can even think such a thing about me pains me deeply,” Alec said, his knuckles white on the steering wheel.

“Well, you have to admit that you haven’t done much for making people think you’re a knight in shining armor. Where have you been? What have you been doing? And why have you kidnapped me?”

“I haven’t kidnapped you; I’ve saved you,” he said, shooting me an irritated glance. “There were reapers all around my house. I sneaked in through the attic and was going to retrieve a valuable when I heard people.”

I suddenly remembered the old diary Magda and I found. I slid my hand toward my stomach, relieved to feel the stiff vellum-and-goatskin journal resting against it. Alec must have seen the movement.

“Yes, my reaper journal. It would appear I need to find a new hiding place for it. Oh, don’t distress yourself, love. I didn’t take it from you. In fact, you will find it most interesting reading, although I would like it back when you are through with it. You might ask Kristoff to translate parts for you.”

“I’m sorry,” I stammered. “I didn’t know-”

He made an abortive gesture. “It doesn’t matter. I was about to strike you down when I saw you near the stairs, having assumed you were a reaper-or rather, one of the reapers who would not hesitate to kill me-when I realized it was you. What was Kristoff doing, leaving you alone in my home?”

“He didn’t leave me alone,” I said, sick to my stomach and confused as all get-out.

“He didn’t?”

“No. He was out in the guesthouse. At least, I thought he was, but he didn’t answer me when I tried to contact him.”

Alec swore and slammed his foot on the brake, the car fishtailing wildly to the accompaniment of horns from the cars behind us as he pulled an extremely illegal U-turn across a grass strip dividing the highway, and headed us back in the direction we’d just come.

“Where are we going now?” I asked.

“Back to get Kristoff. They must have him. The place was swarming with them when I arrived.”

Fear rolled through me, leaving my hands clammy. Kristoff? Please answer me!

Silence hung heavily in my head.

“He’s still not answering,” I said, nausea leaving me weak and shaking.

“We’ll find him,” Alec said, his jaw tight. He glanced in the rearview mirror. “We were not followed. With luck, they will still be searching my house and will not have removed him yet.”

“I’m seriously confused, here,” I said, touching the lump on the side of my head again. “Are you on our side? Or are you yanking my chain? Because, so help me God, Alec, if you’ve done something to Kristoff-”

“We have devoted ourselves, both of us, to defeating the reapers,” he said grimly, his face set. “Such acts require much self-sacrifice, and at times have left us both in positions where we were close to destruction. I have saved his life a number of times. Do you seriously believe me capable of betraying him to the reapers? Or perhaps you think I am so desperate that I am willing to take another man’s Beloved?”

Shame filled me at his accusation. “No, I don’t think that of you. And I apologize for what I said. It’s just that you disappeared so completely, and no one knew where you were or what happened to you. And then the vampires all seemed to lose their minds and accused him of the stupidest things ever. Alec, I have to know-did you set up Kristoff?”

He shot me a startled glance. “Set him up how?”

“Make it look like he embezzled a bunch of money, and had something to do with your disappearance, and killed Anniki.”

“Oh.” He looked almost amused. “No, I did not arrange for that.”

“Then where did you go?”

He was silent for a moment, the streetlights as we passed under them checkering his face and making it almost impossible to read his expression. “I have been working.”

“Working how? For the reapers?”

The look he gave me was pure scorn.

“Sorry. Working for whom, then?”

“I have been attempting to uncover a connection between one of the reapers and a Dark One.”

“The mole, you mean?”

“You know about that?”

“Kristoff told me.”

He made a face. “I should have guessed.”

“I knew it!” I sat up a little straighter in the seat, ignoring the brief throb of pain in my head as pieces of the puzzle slid together. “You’re pretending to be a friend of the reapers in order to find out who the mole is, aren’t you?”

His smile was wry and brief. “It appears I have underestimated you. Yes, I have infiltrated the reaper organization. They believe me to be a friend.”

“Oh, I can’t wait to tell Kristoff!” At the mention of his name my spirits plummeted. “Assuming I can. Why did the Brotherhood go to your house?”

“I suspect that someone tipped them off to your arrival.”

“That’s impossible,” I said, gnawing on my lower lip, stretching out my senses to find Kristoff. There was nothing but a cold abyss, empty of all warmth and sensation, that was the man with whom I was now wholly and irreversibly in love. “No one knew we were coming here but Raymond, Magda, Kristoff, and me.”

“Someone must have known,” he insisted, making a run off the highway and sending us speeding through the night up a winding street that I recognized.

I thought briefly of the phone calls Kristoff had made, ostensibly to friends. What if one of his buddies was the mole? What if one of them had told the Brotherhood where to find us? Had they had time to badly hurt Kristoff, or was he not answering me in a misguided attempt to protect me? “Do you think he’s OK?”

“We’ll know in a few minutes,” he answered, and I shivered at the grim note in his voice.

There was no car in front of his house. A sudden spurt of worry hit me. “Magda and Raymond! They were here, too!”

Alec frowned for a moment.

“You remember Magda, don’t you? She was with me on the tour in Iceland.”

“Ah, yes. Spanish, black eyes, large . . .” He gestured toward his chest.

“No bigger than mine, thank you,” I said, crossing my arms. “She and her boyfriend, Raymond, were helping us.”

“They are mortals, and of no concern to the reapers,” he said, surprising me by driving past his house and turning into the drive of a neighboring house. “They were probably sent on their way.”

“I hope so. I don’t think I could stand having any more innocent people’s blood, metaphorical or otherwise, on my hands. What are we doing here?”

He stopped the car and got out, gesturing for me to follow. “There is a back way into my house, via the attic.”

There was a narrow, mostly invisible break in the hedge that served as a fence around his property, and between him and his neighbors. I squeezed through the break, spitting out bits of yew leaves that poked into my mouth, following silently as Alec sneaked through the garden, past a small, dark guesthouse.

“Wait here,” he whispered, pushing me against a tree trunk while he crept up to one of the windows of the guesthouse. He returned a moment later, gesturing again for me to follow. We slipped past an empty pool, the water rippling gently in the evening breeze, lit from below to make the pool a glowing teal beacon that had nothing on the clarity that was Kristoff’s eyes.

“Can you climb?” Alec asked in a hushed voice as he stopped next to a large split-trunked tree.

I looked upward to where the tree’s branches lay against the roof of the house. Normally, I wouldn’t consider such a thing, but Kristoff’s life was at stake. “I’ll manage,” I told him.

By the time I struggled from the leafy and branch-riddled embrace of the tree and through a window into a dark, close attic, I had come to the conclusion that climbing a tree in any apparel was hazardous, but doing so in a gauzy sundress meant to entice one particular man into a frenzy was definitely not a smart idea. More than once Alec had been forced to climb down to detach me from some particularly troublesome branch, ultimately being forced to rip the material free.

“Note to self: Next time pack tree-climbing clothes, preferably something in the non-tear nylon family,” I said as I got up from where I’d landed on the attic floor. Through the thin light streaming in from the outside house lights, I could see that the front of my dress was smudged with dirt, little leaves and twigs clinging to bits of torn fabric, long, wrinkled tears leaving the bodice more a memory than an actual garment. A faint breeze on my backside told me that the skirt was likely to be in the same condition.

“I would say you look charming, but I doubt if you would appreciate my approval of your underwear,” Alec said, his eyes on the exposed portion of my bra. “This way. I feel their presence in my house, so we must go very cautiously.” He started to edge his way around the boxes and discarded furniture that littered his attic, pausing a moment at the door to mutter, “That is odd. I feel . . . Hmm.”

“Feel what?” I whispered as he silently opened a trapdoor in the floor, sticking his head out to examine the hallway below before he got to his feet. There was a foldout set of narrow steps that must have been very well oiled, for he lowered them without a sound.

“Feel the presence of people I had not expected. Unfortunately, I can’t tell how near they are. Come. We must be silent now.”

I followed him as quietly as possible as he crept slowly down the hallway. The upper floor was dark, but lights shone up from below. I picked off twigs and leaves and a couple of bugs as we headed to the main stairs. Alec held up a hand to stop me. I stayed against the wall as he slid along it to the stairs, peeking over the edge to the floor below.

He stood up suddenly and, with an inexplicable smile at me, ran down to the floor below. I stood stunned for a moment, then followed.

I made it to the bottom of the stairs before I realized what it was that had Alec so amused. Four men and two women were arranged in various poses of bondage on the huge living room floor. The women had been propped up more or less upright, their hands bound behind them, their feet tied, with duct tape across their mouths. Two men were prone on the floor, blood around them indicating that they had been injured, although they, too, had been bound. The other two leaned drunkenly against each other, their eyes spitting fury as I slowly entered the bizarre scene.

But what had me coming to a complete halt was the sight of the two men lounging on the couch.

“Took you long enough to get back,” Andreas said, looking up from where he was examining his fingernail.

Rowan, who had his feet resting on one of the prone men, stopped flipping through a magazine to glance up. “You found her, I see. We figured you must have her, since they didn’t.”

“Yes, and you might have told me you two were in town,” Alec said, strolling over to the two men. He squatted next to them and eyed them carefully. “It would have saved me a great deal of trouble. Where is he?”

“Kristoff?” Andreas nodded his head toward me. “He’s over there.”

I spun around and almost choked with horror. Kristoff lay on a small honey-colored couch that sat under a huge mural of the ocean, one arm hanging lifelessly off the edge.

“You bastards!” I shrieked, running across the room to where he lay. “What have you done to him?”

“I like that,” Rowan said, nudging one of the guys on the floor as he raised his head. “Did you hear her? She called us bastards.”

My horror turned to sheer terror as I realized the pattern on the floor was due to blood, not the design of the carpet. “Oh, my God, you’ve killed him! I swear by all that is holy that you will all pay for this. I will not rest one single second until you’ve suffered the way you’ve made my poor Kristoff suffer.”

I collapsed on Kristoff, sobbing into his chest as I clutched his lifeless body, my mind swimming with endless agony that threatened to burst from me in a blinding, searing light.

“Ah, nothing is sweeter than the sight of a Beloved reunited with her love,” Andreas said, his voice mocking the depth of despair that filled me.

Rage unlike anything I’d felt before washed over me. I lifted my face from the empty shell that was Kristoff and focused my gaze on his brother. “You think it’s sweet, do you? Let’s see how sweet you think this Beloved is when she’s through roasting you alive, you bastard brother killer!”

“Pia, stop,” a voice murmured in my ear.

“Ooh, someone’s in trouble,” Rowan said archly, pushing over the reaper on the floor.

“You’re second,” I told him, focusing my attention on him until light rained down from above. He yelped and leaped to the side, bouncing on the couch as he patted wildly at the sparkles of light remaining on his clothing.

“Beloved, you’re pulling out my hair.”

Alec crossed the room, giving the two men an irritated glance. “Mind the sofa. That’s Italian leather, and it didn’t come cheap.”

“You’re third,” I growled, slamming down a wall of light between Alec and the doorway through which he was obviously about to go. “Don’t give me that look, Alec. I’m sure you think I’m the worst sort of idiot for falling for your innocence act, but I assure you-”

“If you’re through with my ear, I wouldn’t mind if you released it. I’ve lost all feeling in it now.”

“I assure you that I . . . I . . .” I looked down. I had been clutching Kristoff’s head to my bosom as I swore eternal vengeance for his death, but somehow he’d shifted so that the fingers of one hand were gripping his hair, my other hand grasping his ear.

Eyes brighter than any gem regarded me.

“Boo?” I asked, my heart doing a backflip or two.

His face twisted into a momentary grimace as a muffled laugh, followed by, “Did she just call him ‘Boo’?” made its way from the vampires. “Would you mind releasing my ear?”

I stared in stupefaction at my fingers closed around his ear. It was turning white. “But . . . you’re dead.”

“Not quite. Nearly, but not quite,” Rowan said, vaulting the recumbent reapers as he strolled over to us. He hesitated a moment. “If I touch you, will you rain light on me again?”

“Eh?” I said, my brain finally catching up with my heart.

He gently took me by the arms and pulled me off of Kristoff. “When we found him, the reapers were in the act of hacking off his head. But he’s always been a fast healer.”

Kristoff sat up, rubbing first his ear, then his throat. I was aghast to see a nasty, jagged-looking welt that wrapped around the front, disappearing into his collar. “It no doubt looked worse than it really was. You could have arrived a bit earlier, however.”

“Traffic,” Andreas said with a shrug.

“You’re not . . .” I looked from Kristoff to Rowan, who had released me, and beyond him to where Alec leaned against the wall, an odd expression on his face. Andreas got to his feet and picked his way across the bodies, stopping to peer at his brother’s neck.

“You’ll do,” he said finally with a nod.

“You guys didn’t . . .” I looked back at Kristoff. “What the hell?”

He sighed and opened his arms, grunting when I threw myself into them, clutching him and kissing every part of him my mouth could reach, babbling the whole time about all my confusion and horror and love.

It took a good ten minutes to work all of that out of my system. Kristoff just held me the whole time, stroking my back and suffering me to examine him to make sure he wasn’t still in some way harmed.

“They almost cut your head off,” I said, pulling down the back of his collar to look at the vile scar that remained. It was still thick, red, and ugly, but was fading with each passing moment.

“‘Almost’ being the key word,” he said.

I spun around, glaring at the people who lay on the floor. The vampires had pulled the two women up onto the couch. “Those . . . scum! Those evil, detestable, repulsive scum!”

The men twitched violently as I stalked toward them slowly, my hands fisted, pulling down light from the moon, which even now glowed gently above the treetops.

“I had no idea your Beloved was so bloodthirsty,” Rowan said. “Are her eyes glowing?”

“Beloved, this is not-” Kristoff started to say.

“Which one did it?” I interrupted. “Which one held the knife?”

“It was a sword, actually,” Rowan said, gesturing toward the man nearest me.

I slammed down a ball of light smack-dab on the man’s groin. He screamed through the duct tape, his body curling into a fetal ball.

“Ooh.” Rowan winced, neatly sidestepping the twitching body. “He won’t be having children now.”

“There’s a lot more he’s not going to be having by the time I get through with him,” I said, stepping forward with dire intent.

Kristoff caught me around the waist and pulled me back. “No, Beloved.”

“Just let me smite them, Kristoff. They all deserve it! You can’t deny they deserve it,” I said, squirming in his grip.

“I don’t, but not this way. You are too sensitive. You will hate yourself once you’ve recovered from your scare, and hate me for letting you do this.”

“One little smiting, that’s all I ask,” I said, struggling. “Just that one, just Sword Boy there.”

“I think ‘boy’ is going to be a moot term,” Andreas said, watching the reaper as he rolled around the floor.

“No,” Kristoff said firmly, his frown deepening into a scowl as he suddenly pushed me to arm’s length, his gaze raking me up and down. “What the hell are you wearing, woman?”

“Pia had a little contretemps with the tree while climbing into the attic,” Alec explained as I hastily tried to cover all my exposed parts.

“Why did you enter that way?” Rowan asked.

Alec gave a little shrug. “I had no idea you two had arrived. My first thought was to protect Pia.”

“Are you going to just stand there letting them ogle you?” Kristoff demanded of me, his eyes dark as the sea in a storm.

“Nobody’s ogling me,” I said, giving him a look.

Kristoff glared over my shoulder. I turned to see his brother and cousin both considering me with their heads tipped identically to the side.

“Nice legs,” Rowan said.

“And ass,” Andreas added. “Is that something sticking out of the top of her panties?”

Kristoff growled. I eep ed, clutched at both the tattered remains of my skirt and Alec’s reaper journal, and looked wildly around the room for a blanket.

Alec sighed and detached himself from the wall. “Upstairs, second room on the right. There should be some women’s things-”

I was off before he finished.

The clothing I found in a guest room closet wasn’t in my size, and the only skirt I could fit into was too tight to be comfortable. I raided the room Kristoff had said was Alec’s, finally making my way downstairs in a pair of silk lounging pants that were a bit snug around the hips, and a worn T-shirt that was also a bit tight. Retrieving my purse from where it had fallen before I fell down the stairs, I put the journal in it and took a moment to comb the twigs out of my hair.

“I have several questions, and I’d like them all answered,” I announced as I finally descended the stairs into the living room. “First of all, where are Magda and Raymond?”

Kristoff eyed my unorthodox outfit. That was the best you could find?

Don’t be impertinent.

“A couple of the reapers were trying to scare them when we arrived. We scared them, instead,” Andreas said with a pointed smile at the woman sitting nearest him.

Her eyes narrowed with spite.

“Your friends left. We thought it would be best if they were not in the way,” Rowan explained.

“OK. They must have gone to find the hotel we were going to head to after this. I’ll call later. Next question-what on earth are you two doing here, evidently rescuing Kristoff, when you were utter and complete bastards, betraying him in Vienna?”

“She likes that word ‘bastard,’ doesn’t she?” Rowan asked Andreas.

“I suppose it’s understandable, given her point of view,” he answered.

“Boo?” I asked, pinning Kristoff with a gimlet eye.

He sighed as the two men snickered, gesturing me to a chair. I sat, but crossed my arms.

You just had to use that name in front of them, didn’t you? They’ll never let me hear the end of it.

You’ll survive. Answer my question .

“They didn’t betray me,” he said, jumping to the side when one of the reapers got his legs around a glass coffee table and sent it tumbling toward Kristoff.

Andreas and Rowan hauled the reaper up onto the chair opposite me. I singed his toes.

“Beloved . . .”

“I’m stopping, I’m stopping. Go on.”

Kristoff looked helplessly at his brother and the other two vampires. “I could use a little help.”

“Oh, no,” Alec said, gesturing toward me. “She’s your Beloved. You can explain the pact to her.”

“Pact? What pact would that be?” I asked, narrowing my eyes at the man who filled my every waking thought.

Kristoff smiled smugly in my mind.

And right now those thoughts lie heavily in the “what’s going to happen if you don’t stop stalling and start spilling” arena .

Kristoff glanced at the reapers, then over to Alec. “Do you mind storing them elsewhere?”

“Not at all,” Alec answered, making a fancy little bow. “Might I suggest the cellar?”

It took them a few minutes to haul all the reapers downstairs. Judging by muffled thumps, I believe a couple of them were dropped on the way, but I didn’t feel too bad on their account. They had come close to killing Kristoff, and probably would have harmed Magda and Raymond if the vampires hadn’t stopped them.

“Proceed,” I said when they had all trooped upstairs to where I sat.

“It started about fourteen months ago.” Kristoff sat next to me, frowning at the tight T-shirt. “If you recall, I told you that it had become clear someone was passing information to the reapers.”

“The mole,” I said, nodding, my hand on his leg. Just feeling him so warm and solid next to me made me relax.

“The council tried for several months to pinpoint the leak, but was unable to. The mole knew they were looking for him, and the flow of information was temporarily halted. We eventually decided to take matters into our own hands. We decided that if one of us was marked as the traitor, it would allow the real one to relax his guard and go back to passing information.”

“So you set it up to make it look like you were the traitor?” My fingers tightened on his leg. “Why you?”

Kristoff shrugged, his fingers absently toying with the tendrils of hair that had escaped from my ponytail. “Luck of the draw. It took some time, but we eventually arranged it so that the council, presented with the evidence, had no choice but to imprison me.”

“But one of the charges had to do with Anniki.” A horrible thought occurred to me.

“No,” Kristoff said quickly. “We did not kill her. But we incorporated the mystery of her death into our plans, as we did the captive reapers. Alec went to ground, ostensibly a victim of my heinous plan, but actually to mislead the real traitor.”

“So all that trying to find Alec was an act?” I asked, prepared to be annoyed by his pretense.

Alec made a face as Kristoff answered. “Not all of it. Alec disappeared as planned, but then he went completely out of contact, which was not what we intended. We really were trying to trace him, just not from the time he left Iceland, which you believed.”

“It was too dangerous for me to make contact,” Alec explained. “I was being watched, and suspicions were already high as to my true intentions. I knew that sooner or later our paths would cross again.”

“It was very convincing,” I said, giving Kristoff a little frown.

He shrugged. “It had to be. Rowan and Andreas had to appear to support the council, although Andreas couldn’t quite bring himself to condemn me as easily as did Rowan.”

“He was never a good actor,” Rowan said, nodding toward Andreas. “I was much more convincing. I thought you were going to spit at me once or twice.”

“You’re damned lucky I didn’t,” I told him before turning back to Kristoff. “OK, I got that. You guys set up this whole big thing to flush out the mole. I’m a bit pissed that you didn’t bother to tell me about it, though.”

Kristoff’s fingers were warm on the back of my neck. “Our plans were set into motion long before I met you, Beloved. I had no idea if you could continue to carry out your role if you knew the truth.”

Relief filled me. So that was your deep, dark secret.

My what? He was startled, a wary feeling in his mind.

The big secret I could feel you keeping from me. The dark place in your mind, the one you always keep me from seeing. I have to admit that I’m relieved that this is what you were keeping from me, and not something a lot more . . . well, scary. I was worried.

He said nothing for a moment. No doubt he was embarrassed about the fact that I knew he was keeping something from me. It didn’t matter, I told myself. We hadn’t known each other long at all, and although I would have preferred Kristoff feeling as if he could trust me, I understood that he was reticent to share such involved plans until he was more comfortable with our relationship.

Don’t worry, Boo. I’m not going to yell at you for not trusting me. I understand. I’m just glad that this is now out in the open. “I assume those couple of unnamed friends you kept calling were Andreas and Rowan?”

Kristoff nodded. Pia-

Don’t apologize. Or rather, don’t do it now. You can do so later, with some massage oil, perhaps. You like lemon? “I take it that you knew that Alec was pretending to be the Ilargi all along, then?”

“No.” He glanced over to his friend. “That took me by surprise, as well. I had no idea that Alec had anything to do with the reapers.”

“I told you I’d find a way to infiltrate them,” Alec told him.

“I thought you meant to do so by the woman.”

“What woman?” I asked.

“A reaper, a woman I’d met a few years ago. She proved difficult,” Alec said, dismissing the subject. “I found another one, a secretary who had just joined and knew little about them. She was most informative.”

“So you found a way into the reaper headquarters?” Rowan asked, suddenly interested.

Alec nodded. “I myself couldn’t go inside-there were too many high-ranking reapers there who would have known me for what I am-but I did discover a way we can bypass the security.”

I looked from him to Kristoff. “I hate to sound like a party pooper, but now that we found you, Alec, we don’t need to break in. It’s not likely your mole is going to be there, after all.”

“There is still the matter of the director to be dealt with,” Kristoff said, taking my hand.

I tried to pull it away. His fingers tightened.

“I am not going to be party to wholesale murder for the sake of . . . well, I don’t even know what that would be, since there is no earthly reason you can have other than revenge for wanting to go after Frederic,” I told him.

“There are a number of compelling reasons why we should do just that,” he argued.

“Oh, yeah? Name one that doesn’t involve you guys wanting to get even.”

Kristoff opened his mouth, looked askance for a moment, then cast a pleading glance at his brother and cousin.

“Huh? Huh? ” I looked at them as well.

“Well, there’s . . .” Andreas stopped, his face screwing up as he thought. “There’s . . . er . . .”

“I thought so.”

“He poses a threat,” Rowan said suddenly.

The other two vampires nodded eagerly.

“A very big threat,” Andreas added.

“To whom? Other than in general to you vampires, I mean.”

“To Kristoff,” Rowan said, pointing.

Kristoff looked as surprised as I felt.

“He doesn’t even know Kristoff!” I protested. “Well, hardly knows him. He did imprison him, and tried to kill him after he couldn’t make me do the job for him, but that was two months ago, and I’m sure by now he’s forgotten all about Kristoff.”

“Thank you,” the love of my life said dryly.

You know what I mean, Boo. Besides, so long as I remember you, you have nothing to complain about, I said, blowing him a mental kiss.

His fingers tightened around mine.

“No other suggestions before I rest my case?” I asked the threesome.

The gentle whoosh of air from the air conditioner was the only sound for a moment.

“I hate to destroy any illusions you might possess regarding the director, Pia, but I’m afraid there is one very compelling reason for us to confront him and the other reapers.” Alec stood in the doorway, leaning against it with a mildly interested expression, as if he was somewhat bored.

“What would that be?” I asked.

He smiled. “You.”

“Me? I don’t stand in the way of anything Frederic wants.”

“You are a Zorya and a Beloved. Surely you’ve been in the Brotherhood long enough to know how vehement they are about anything to do with us. In their eyes, you are an abomination, tainted by your relationship to Kristoff, a contradiction to everything sacred. You must, at all costs, be destroyed before you can contaminate anyone else.”

I stared at him, my jaw slack, for a moment or two. “But . . . the reapers offered me a deal. They’re going to execrate me once I get Ulfur.”

The look he gave me was pitying. I leaned into Kristoff, needing comfort. “It says much about your purity of character that you believed what the reapers told you, but unfortunately, we know them of old. They will not honor their agreement with you.”

Kristoff?

I’m afraid he’s right, he said slowly.

You knew this? I asked, astonished.

I suspected that the deal the reapers made with you would not be honored, yes. But I did not know for certain, and since you wanted above all things to no longer be a Zorya, it seemed worthwhile to pursue.

You might have mentioned your suspicions to me, you know. I’m a big girl, Kristoff. I can take a little adversity.

I had no proof either way.

“I’m sorry, but a vaguely could-be-possible threat still isn’t enough,” I said after thinking about the matter, as well as making a mental note to have a long talk with Kristoff about my relationship expectations. Incredibly handsome and mouthwateringly sexy he might be, but he had a lot to learn about relationships. “I realize I can’t stop you guys, but you won’t get any help from me. My job now is to find Ulfur. The trail for the Ilargi may have run into a dead end, but I’m not giving up.”

“Excellent,” Alec said, striding into the center of the room, his eyes twinkling with enjoyment. “Then we can count on your assistance after all.”

“Huh? I just said-”

“You said you were going to find the Ilargi. Well, my fair little Zorya, that trail ends with the director.” His smile grew wider as I stared at him in incomprehension. “Oh, didn’t I tell you? Frederic Robert knows who the Ilargi is.”