Heir to the Coven (16 page)

I could tell the majority of the coven thought Kain was on the right path. I could not believe he would mention that idea in front of every one. He should be showing a united front with Rainor and me and wait until we were alone to say he had concerns. “To answer your question, we all would be the wiser the first time it happened and three of us would patrol with one lone vampire at our mercy the next night.”

Serena was next. “But that would still leave one of us dead at the vampires’ hands. I don’t like this plan, it gives them too much power to move around our territory, and that’s not even taking into account us turning over half of one of our establishments to them.”

This was going nowhere fast. Time to put my money where my mouth was. “If it will prove to you all that this isn’t a plan on Anton’s part to arrange accidental deaths for each and everyone of us so he can slowly take over our territory, I will go first. Tonight I’ll patrol the city with a vampire at my side.”

“Anton will enjoy that,” Dawn said.

I glared at her. “Anton no more patrols the city than our leader does. I’ll be with one of his foot soldiers. When I come back safe and sound I expect you all to see Kain for your new assignments that include parts of the vampires’ territory. Assignments that Kain will happily create while I am fearlessly risking my neck for the greater good. Does anyone have any more questions?”

Half a dozen hands shot up.

“Questions that aren’t about me and Anton.”

All the hands went down except for Harris’. This I had to hear because he had been way too quiet during all this. “Yes, Harris.”

“If you and Dawn are going to have a smack down over this can I watch? Because I missed you knocking her on her ass and Mercy won’t give up too many details and I feel slighted.”

“No.”

“Please? I’ll make you a cake.”

“That wouldn’t entice me to let you do anything Harris, you can’t cook.”

“Then I’ll buy you one.”

“I think we’re done,” Rainor said. He stood up and addressed the room. “Thank you all for your time. Natasha, thank you for taking the lead with this and for putting up with the immaturity of some of those in our family. I leave you all with this to think about. If we do not learn to adapt to new ways, we become as stagnant and unbending as they are and we are doomed to become them. Part of what makes a half-caste different from a vampire is that we move with time instead of getting stuck in it.”

Once he left the room we were all free to go. Although a few sat mulling over what Rainor had said, most people were filing out amongst a cloud of disgusted and worried mutters. No one could understand why I was allying us closer to the vampires after one unauthorized feeding and I could not tell them that there was another more sinister reason behind it. Even if I did open the door to the real reason it would have led to more trouble as paranoia took hold and witch hunts broke out inside our walls. I would rather them be unhappy thinking this was about scratching my Anton itch then terrified of what might happen to us all as a result of the treaty violation. The Order produced panic and panic in a half-caste was a dangerous thing. It did hurt to hear Gabriel say to Serena that I was ok with this arrangement because I was practically a vampire myself.

Good to know I was as well liked after all these years as the day I set foot in this house for the first time. They had hated and feared me then. Who wouldn’t look at a half-caste raised by vampires for eleven years who then moved on to live with the Elders for another three with trepidation? It was like saying I had been reared by the boogie monster and Attila the Hun. Then they found out why my vampire family had ejected me. That’s when the real fun began because they wanted to test me to see if it was true. Well, it was fun for them for about a month and then it was fun for me. You kill one guy with a spoon and it earns you some breathing room. Ok, a lot of breathing room.

Like I said before, when I wasn’t a natural born vampire the way Lucius hoped he tossed me aside and forgot me, but my half-caste blood reared its head at puberty with a bang. You see, Lucius had a vampire consort in addition to whatever dessert he currently had and she didn’t like me. Her name was Vivian and she went out of her way to make me miserable whenever she noticed me, which tended to happen often unless Anton or my nanny squirreled me away somewhere.

Shortly after my eleventh birthday, which went unnoticed by everyone, I was in a particularly bad mood. Turns out I was suffering from my first bout of PMS, but Anton who had just returned from a trip thought my mood was because I had been forgotten so he made a sad little celebration out of giving me the necklace he had brought back. I had loved him for it because even when we were apart he still thought of me. He was the only one who ever thought of me back then. After watching me push my dinner around my plate and snap at Vivian’s dessert, he had taken me by the hand and ushered me to his room.

“If I asked you what was wrong would you tell me Natasha?” He had asked.

“I am in snit over nothing. I cannot seem to help it.”

“May I hazard a guess as to the cause?”

“By all means.”

“Your birthday was last week and no one remembered.”

It had been a good guess, but I really had no idea why I hated the world. “Perhaps.”

“I believe I can help.” He then handed me a box. Inside the small leather case, was diamond necklace set in white gold. The rope chain was plain gold, but the pendant was a bee made of delicate gold work studded with diamonds. The wings actually looked like they had veins in them. The bee’s body was joined to the head with a tiny loop of metal that made it look like it was flying when it was moved. I had never seen anything so beautiful

“Oh, Anton!”

“It pleases you?”

“Very much. Put it on me please.” He had complied and we stood together as I admired it in the mirror. “Thank you.”

“Do you know why I chose a bee?”

“No.”

“It was to honor your mother. Her name was Melisande, very close to Melissa which is Greek for honey bee.”

In the reflection of the mirror, I had looked up at him and known that I loved him. I had never loved anyone before. That was when Vivian burst through the door.

“Come here you mongrel!” she had demanded.

I had started to walk towards her, but Anton put his hands on my shoulders to keep me with him. “What is the matter Vivian?”

“That trash insulted Daniel.”

Anton shrugged. “Your dessert? She out ranks him.”

“Before the war she out ranked him. If she had any use at all she would out rank him, but she does not. She will apologize to him and have her back lashed.”

“She is a child and you will not touch her. I will see to it that she apologizes to the dessert.”

“Stay out of this Anton,” Vivian said.

“You will not take your lingering jealousy of Melisande out on her daughter. Lucius will hear of this.”

We all knew Lucius would side with Anton if for no other reason than that he had a penis, just like we all knew Vivian hated to be reminded of that. Her eyes fixed on my new necklace and she said, “Then I shall have to punish her another way.” She ripped my necklace off in a blindingly fast motion.

The rage started as a knot low in my abdomen. The more it hurt, the hotter I felt myself becoming as if my skin would burst into flame. My pulse was racing. I could feel myself getting uncontrollably angry and I could not stop it. With my teeth gritted I said, “Give it back.”

She slapped me.

Someone was growling and I realized it was coming from my throat. Vivian’s eyes were huge and in the mirror I saw that my green eyes had gone blood red. The knot in my abdomen began to feel like claw digging into my insides. I could smell the blood that had begun to leak from between my legs. So could the vampires.

Anton said, “Natasha, I need you to look at me.”

“Give it back.”

“You insolent child,” Vivian said. “How dare you threaten me?”

“I have not threatened you yet,” I heard myself say. I was breathing hard with the effort to control the anger that was going to explode out of me at any moment.

Anton took notice of my eyes in the mirror. “Vivian, do not move a hairsbreadth. She is going to snap at any moment.”

“I am not afraid of Melisande’s bastard get even if she is finally coming into her powers.”

Those were Vivian’s last words.

With a snarl that sounded like it came from a wolf’s maul instead a human’s throat, I lunged forward in my first burst of vampiric speed and tore her throat out with my teeth. I was too small to drain her dry and even if I had been able to finish her off that way Anton recovered his senses too soon and pulled me off of her. But the damage had been done. I had spilled enough of her blood into my mouth and onto the floor that she could not heal the wound unless she drank the blood of another vampire. Anton was not about to help her and we watched her turn to dust at our feet. She looked so surprised.

“Mine.” I took the necklace from the pile of ash and put it back on my own neck.

Two hours later, with Lucius howling down the walls that I pay with my life for killing his consort, Anton had me bundled up and out of the house. That is how I wound up with the Elders.

When that story reached Rainor’s coven on the announcement of my pending arrival, they were all waiting to get a look at me. I think they were disappointed that I was not six feet tall and muscle bound. They said it had to be a lie because no one as quiet and reclusive as I was would have the audacity to kill the consort of a caste leader. They decided to test me and because I did not strike back, they said I was weak. Rainor, who knew the truth, warned them off but it was not his job to fight my battles for me; I had to find my own place within the coven. What they did not know was that I played a game of my own.

One thing living with the Elders and the vampires taught me was how to go undetected. When I was unsure of myself as a child, as I was when I entered the coven house, I held back and waited to see what would happen. Being a smart ass came with age and certainty of myself. They also taught me by sheer brute force how to behave properly so I conducted myself like a lady while I learned the weaknesses of my tormentors and stored them away for future use. As it turned out, it was mostly unnecessary to gather that information this time, but it lulled them into a false sense of security where I was concerned. Even other covens that visited us made mention of Rainor’s young guard dog that turned out to be a lap dog instead.

At the end of my first month at the house, all of the young half-castes were taken on a routine visit to one of the other covens to see how negotiations worked. It would be held at a half-caste run restaurant since all negotiations took place over a meal. They had weapons, we had direct and easy access to a caste of vampires they wanted to take out, seemed like an easy deal to show the young pups how it was done. Five of us went along with Rainor and his enforcer at the time, Bernard, although the adults road in our new automobile leaving Kain, Rebecca, Nathan, Francis and myself to follow in the carriage. I had situated myself in the corner so I only had to be next to one of them. Kain, who in general left me alone, took the spot next to me, but Rebecca sat across from me and she loved to get under my skin.

“I do not understand why Rainor brought her along,” she said to Francis while staring at me. “She is utterly useless.”

Francis laughed. “There is no possibility she killed a vampire on her own.”

Kain interrupted them. “Rainor said she did so it must be true.”

Rebecca rolled her eyes. “If she drank vampire blood then she would have to be in the Order and that is no Soong even if she looks like a vampire.”

Nathan, who liked being right more than he disliked me said, “The Soong drink blood for sustenance on a daily basis, drinking it once does not make you part of the Order it means you are eligible to join if you survive the tasting of it.”

“Thank you professor,” Rebecca snipped. “Either way she is not Order material.”

“How would you know?” I asked. It surprised them because I normally ignored their barbs.

“My mother-”

“Was a red light worker who got pregnant by accident and sold her unborn baby to our coven to be caste to earn money while she was too fat to be used under a man,” I said.

Kain gave me a look and laughed. “She has you there, Rebecca. It would appear being quiet and listening pays off nicely. While we are on the subject of silence, be quiet all of you we are there.”

The rules for coven meetings stated that everyone had to come unarmed although the leaders could bring their enforcers who were the most deadly half-castes the coven had. Bernard went in first with Rainor behind him and the five of us brining up the rear. I heard a scuffle, a gunshot and the outraged cries of those my age. I rushed inside and saw that we had been set up. The other coven had not simply wanted access to their enemies; they had wanted an all access pass, which meant my coven needed to be gone. They had killed Bernard. Rainor, taken completely by surprise, was in custody. Rebecca was crying, Kain was shaking with fury, the other two were standing there like statues and I, well I calmly pulled the door shut behind me and waited to see what happened next. This sort of violence had been considered light dinner entertainment with Lucius.

Rainor struggled against his captors. “This is against all our laws. When we do not return my coven will retaliate. It will be civil war and divide us when we need to stand united against the vampires.”

“I do not want a battle,” said a man sitting at a nicely set dining table. “That is why we are going to discuss the terms of your surrender over our meal with the presence of my ambassador.” A taller man stepped forward and gave us all a once over.

“Are you Gideon?” Rainor asked the man at the table.

“I am.”

“You are making a mistake.”

“How can I be mistaken when I am not the one being held prisoner? Bringing us to a ticklish subject. Our laws say that one being restrained in any manner cannot handle a negotiation, but if I free you, Rainor, I suspect you will start a fight. Since your enforcer is no longer available, you will need to select one of your brats to speak for you.”