Julius made a derisive noise in the back of his throat. Flicking her curl aside, he leaned forward to brace his elbows on his knees. Threading his fingers together, he rested his chin on them as he replied, “See, that is your problem. I always told you that you should never get attached to things — or people. It just gives me more to play with.”
He tilted his head and with a disapproving little frown, admonished, “Really, Harlan. Ananchor?You should know better than that. Now I’m going to have to flush her, and that won’t be very nice for her at all.”
Zia held her breath, her eyes glued to her vampire’s stoic expression. Harlan’s voice was unnaturally calm when he asked, “And why do you have to do that?”
“Because I’m going to keep her for a while,” Julius answered, like it was the most obvious thing in the world. “Once we’re back home and you’re doing what I trained you to do, maybe I’ll consider giving her back. We’ll see.”
“You don’t want an anchor.”
“Grim,no.”Julius looked disgusted by the very idea. She was too relieved to be offended. “You wouldn’t catch mebreedingwith a witch even if my life depended on it. Once I’ve got control of the family, I’m going to find myself a lovely little bloodbond to give me an heir.”
The sly look returned, but this time it had a hungry edge that made her stomach bunch up into a series of painful knots. “Tell me, Harlan, how is little Adriana doing these days? I hear she’s living it up here in the city. I thought I might stop by her apartment to say hello.”
The threat hung above them all, thickening the air to the point where it felt like it was hard for Zia to breathe. She was scared for her vampire, but she wasterrifiedfor Adriana. What kind of misery would this monster force on her friend? She didn’t pretend to know everything about vampire culture, but she knew enough. It would not be simple pain. Not just suffering.
It would be a lifetime of torture, just because Adriana happened to have a coveted genetic quirk.
Her eyes darted between Harlan and Julius as they stared at one another, communicating silently.
Eventually, her vampire tilted his head to the right. His eyes flicked to hers for barely a second before they went back to watching the predator at her side. “She’s well,” he answered, like the question was sincere, “and untouchable.”
Juliustskedonce more. He was so focused on Harlan, that he didn’t notice when Zia began to inch ever-so-slowly to the right, toward the empty side of the booth.
“Oh, we’ll see about that. She really was such a pretty, sweet little thing. I wonder — why did you never have her tested? Was it because you wanted her for yourself? Or maybe you planned to sell her to the highest bidder.” Julius’s saccharine tone vanished. His voice rose in pitch and volume as he speculated, “Maybe you promised her to Felix. Maybe you always planned on betraying me. You know how far a bloodbond would go to solidify his claim over the family.”
Zia watched Harlan’s thumbs circle the cuffs again, this time counter-clockwise. She bit back a surprised little squeak when she felt another deliberate brush of his consciousness in the back of her mind. This time, it was accompanied with the distinct sense ofdrawing —magic moving out of her gently, in a steady current, as he did something she couldn’t see.
Blood trickled down her wrist as the pool in her palm overflowed. She didn’t think she was at risk of bleeding out, but fear made her breath choppy anyway. She couldn’t black out. That would make her even more of a burden for him than she already was.
She had no idea what he was planning, or what this monster sitting next to her would do. She just hoped she could keep herself together until the escalating tension broke.
“So you don’t just want your pet assassin back to help you take back the power you’ve obviously lost,” Harlan surmised, bland and entirely unmoved by the horrifying implications of Julius’s accusation. He said it like he was simply confirming something he already knew. “You want Adriana, too.”
“You could get rid of Felix and Yvanna in an afternoon.” Julius waved his hand. That gaudy ring winked in the low light. “That would solve fifty percent of my problems with only a little bit of mess. Adriana would solve the other fifty percent with none.”
“Why are you so certain that Adriana is neutral?” His thumbs disappeared behind the cuffs, tracing shapes she couldn’t see against the metal. Zia felt the pinpricks of magic moving under her skin as she inched across the padded bench. There was a whole two feet between her and Julius now.
“Please,” Julius scoffed, straightening his spine. He slapped his hands on his knees. “Why would you go so far to hide the girl if she wasn’t?”
Harlan narrowed his eyes. There was a swift popping sensation deep in the churning magical core that bound her to him. It was familiar, and when she recognized what it was, Zia had to fight to keep her eyes from widening to the size of saucers.
He broke the ward.
He was going to use the cuffs. But what would they do? She doubted he planned to just restrain the man. There was no way her vampire was going to let Julius walk out of this room alive. But if he didn’t have a weapon…
Zia felt the trickle of blood over the pounding pulse at the base of her throat.But he does, doesn’t he?
“Because I care about her,” Harlan answered simply. “She’s my daughter in every way that matters.”
“Andthat’swhy it’s always been easy to control you.”
The world turned upside down in an instant. Like someone had waved a flag, both men acted in the same second: Julius snatched her arm and drew her roughly into his lap as Harlan lunged over the glass table, cuffs in hand.
She felt the hot barrel of a primed bolt gun pressing against her temple, but had hardly processed the revelation before Harlan snapped a cuff onto Julius’s wrist and attempted to wrestle his arm back against the booth.
They were snapping and snarling, all pretense of civility vanished like a puff of smoke, and Zia was caught in the middle. Outside the room, the faint sounds of screaming and dull whine of discharged bolts filtered in — just before the much louder sound of a bolt gun going off next to her ear made her jerk. It took her a frantic second to realize the bolt missed both men and instead went over Harlan’s shoulder to hit the ceiling. Plaster rained down onto the glass table and its pretty miniature roses, and the acrid scent of hot plasma stung her nose.
There was a stunned second where they all held perfectly still.
