I gave him a flat look. “Fine. For Jack.”
“Oh, well,” Tate moved between us before taking up residence next to his boyfriend, “I couldn’t find Iris or Xinyi. They’re probably in class or went to town.”
Tate’s gaze slid over to the bed where Gavin had stopped struggling. If I didn’t know he was already the undead, I’d have thought he really was dead with how still he was laying.
“Babe,” Tate began in a soothing voice, “what’s up with the shadows?”
Kyren rolled his eyes, and suddenly, the room was brighter, and the shadows wrapped around the vampire on the bed released him. Gavin jerked up on the bed, his eyes wide and frantic.
“You are all fucking psychopaths,” he shouted, shoving on his pants as he ranted and cursed at us. “You can’t just come into someone’s room and start attacking them. There are rules. The council will be hearing about this.”
“The council you’re trying to destroy you mean?” Kyren arched his brow.
Gavin sputtered over his words, the finger he’d been pointing at us just hanging there. “There are still rules to be followed. You… you get out of my room before I report you all to the headmaster.”
“Can’t we just kill him?” Tate murmured to Kyren, his eyes darting to Gavin and back. “Even if he’s not one of the ones who attacked Jack. He’s a pain in the ass, and isn’t he the one your message was for?”
“No.” Kyren’s face shuttered. “Not just him.”
Message? What message? The only message I knew about was the one in the alley written in… blood.
Ahhh.
It was all beginning to make sense. I had my suspicions before but now they had confirmed it.
Why Jack and Tate had been there. Why Jack had given up so easily, when usually she would hound us until we let her in on the mission. And now I knew who the message on the wall wasabout. It was a warning for what I could only assume were Gavin and his associates to leave Jack alone.
Unfortunately, since Kyren had already found out that Gavin’s group was not the ones who had attacked Jack, I feared his message was for nothing. Though the vampire who died to make that message probably wouldn’t have been too happy about that.
“Come along.” I gestured for Tate and Kyren to follow me, then shot a look at Gavin. “Call maintenance to fix your door.”
Tate and Kyren trailed after me and into the hallway, and we waited until we were several doors away before speaking again.
“You’re just gonna let him go?” Tate asked, peering back over his shoulder at where we’d just come from. “Even though you know he’s anti-council? What if his group plants a bomb or something?”
I shook my head. “Sadly, he hasn’t done anything to warrant an arrest of any kind. And besides, my mission is a data collecting one, not a hunt. I will report him to the proper channels, and they’ll handle it from there.”
Kyren scoffed.
“What?” I stared at the vampire.
“Some hunter. Can’t even kill your prey without written permission from your daddy.”
Without knowing what I was doing until it was already done, I had Kyren pressed up against the wall, the gun pointed directly at his heart. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Shadows filled the hallway, dimming the light, and I knew I had seconds to pull the trigger before I was at his mercy.
“Hey, hey!” Tate stood next to where we glared at each other. “Kyren didn’t mean it, and you…” He placed a hand on Kyren’s arm. “Think about what Jack would say about this? She would be super upset if you hurt him.”
For a moment, Kyren and I stood there in a standoff, neither one of us wanting to acquiesce first. Then the shadows gathering in his eyes receded, and he nodded.
“Fine.” Kyren relaxed. “For Jack.”
I jerked my chin down, lowering my gun and stepping back from him. “For Jack.”
“Now, that we got that out of the way,” Tate breathed out. “Any clues on who might have attacked Jack? Obviously, it wasn’t Gavin and, if it was Marianne, she won’t be doing that again.” He huffed a laugh, pulling his lip ring between his teeth.
“Marianne?” I glanced between the two of them. “Who’s Marianne?”
