The Lair

CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

Carter

After I hung up with Sebastian, I sat in the car for a minute, mulling, planning, and bracing myself for the shitstorm that was to come after I told Lily what I’d learned.

I thought of Sebastian’s suggestion. Actually just tranqing Lily when I got out would probably be the easiest way to go. Not that I was going to do that. I’d done it once, as an absolute last resort. Back when she didn’t trust me. I wasn’t going to do it again. Even if it would make things much easier. I’d just have to convince her that this was for the best.

Yeah. Because she was going to be so excited to throw in with the man who’d brought down all of humanity.

I climbed out of the Mazda to find her standing with her arms crossed. I held up my hands in a gesture of surrender as I shut the door behind me. Joe stood a little ways away. Out of the blast zone, I guess.

“I am not letting him bite me,” she growled.

“Don’t worry. He said he wouldn’t.”

Her brow creased in a frown. “Oh.”

“He had another plan.” Her frown deepened. “You aren’t going to like it any better.”

She didn’t protest as much as I thought she would. Instead, she listened, quietly. Thoughtfully. Head tilted to the side like she did when she was thinking through a problem.

Then she looked up at me. “He has the cure?”

“That’s what Sebastian said.”

“And Sebastian really thinks we’ll be able to just walk through the front door. That Bob will just let us in?”

“Yeah. He does. And maybe he’s right. The Dean obviously thought you were an abductura. Maybe he told Roberto. Maybe that’s where Ely was going to take you.”

Her eyes flashed. “Then he will have to cure me. I’ll be useless to him as a Tick. If there are no vampire abducturae, then I’m pretty damn sure there won’t be any Tick abducturae, either.”

Joe had stepped closer. He was rocking slightly back and forth the way people always do when they hold newborns. Somehow he made it look tough. And right.

Stoner Joe. Trader Joe. Preacher Joe. None of those names had ever really seemed right to me. But “father” did.

“But Lily, you’re not an abductura,” Joe said.

“No. But Roberto doesn’t know that, right?” She smiled as her mouth trembled. She seemed terrified still, but determined. “And we can get in there, to wherever he keeps the cure. We can steal it. Then we kill him.”