Without letting my gaze travel around the club, I walked over to where Knox stood, knowing that Jabari and some others were at my back on the far side of the room. I would deal with them when I was ready. First, I wanted to speak with Knox.
“What happened outside?” I asked.
He glanced over my shoulder for a second before directing his gaze back to me. He spoke in an extremely low voice, but we both knew that Jabari could hear us. “He killed the two bouncers, Clay and Karl, when they asked for some kind of identification. They didn’t realize who he was. I sensed him, but I didn’t get outside fast enough to warn them.” Knox hung his head and squeezed his eyes shut. I could see the memory as clear as day running through his head. He opened the door in time to see Jabari ripping both the lycanthrope and the nightwalker to shreds in seconds. Neither had enough time to react.
It wasn’t their fault either—they were simply doing their jobs and didn’t realize that they were faced with a short-tempered member of the coven. If I or Knox or Danaus had been present at the door, we would have stopped them from questioning the Ancient, but things just hadn’t worked out that way.
“Did you contact Barrett?” The alpha of the local pack needed to know that yet another one of his pack members had been killed while working at the Dark Room. Something that was happening far too frequently for my liking. The Dark Room had once been a very peaceful, pleasant place for nightwalkers and lycanthropes alike.
“I left a message with his sister. It seems that Barrett has returned with Daniel, but the human is in rough shape. He’s going to need some time to heal. Barrett also appears to be worried about Daniel’s family.”
“Offer to send some nightwalkers over during the evening hours. We can remain hidden better than the lycanthropes.”
“Already done,” Knox replied with the first shadow of a smile I had seen on his face since I walked into the nightclub.
“Good. Then I guess I’ll go do my job and take care of this matter,” I said, not caring if Jabari was listening to the conversation.
Before turning around, I glanced over at Danaus and winked at him while a little smirk danced across my lips. He didn’t smile in return. He had eyes only for Jabari and wouldn’t relax so long as I was within the Ancient’s reach. There was no question that the Ancient had come to my domain with the simple intention of killing me, but he seemed content to drag out my execution and torment the members of my domain. Danaus was willing to hang back in the shadows for now, but he would be watching closely. If the talks seemed to turn sour, I knew he would be over the bar and at my side in a couple of heartbeats.
I walked across the nightclub, crossing the empty dance floor to the large booth that Jabari inhabited alone. At the entrance to the booth, two humans lay sprawled on the ground. Their breathing was labored and they were a sickly shade of pale—the nightwalker had drained them of too much blood. If they didn’t get some help soon, it would be a miracle if they survived the night.
“Knox, get these two to a hospital now!” I shouted, stepping over them so I was standing just outside Jabari’s booth. His feet were propped up on the table and his back was pressed against the back of the booth, looking for all the world as if he was the king of all he surveyed. Not quite.
“I wasn’t finished with them,” he said lazily.
“They’re nearly dead. You’re finished,” I snapped. For the first time, I noticed that his dark skin looked a little singed and he was keeping his hands curled close to his body. In our last fight, I had managed to score a hit with my blast of fire before he escaped. It had been enough to hold the nightwalker at bay for a few nights as he healed.
Sliding into the seat opposite him as Knox picked the two nearly dead humans off the floor, I crossed one leg over the other, affecting the same nonchalant attitude. “What are you still doing within my domain?”
“I need to finish killing you. You’ve grown too powerful for your own good.”
“Tipping the scales on the coven in the wrong direction, am I?” I mocked. The only reason Jabari had supported my ascension to the coven was because he saw me as a puppet he could easily wield, thus giving him two seats on the coven instead of just the one.
“You always had to know that your life span was limited,” Jabari taunted. “Hated by one and all in the nightwalker community. Hunted by the Ancients. And once it was known that I would no longer be willing to protect you, it was only a matter of time before others came hunting for you. The ultimate prize.”
“But none of them have been successful, and now you’ve been forced to do your own ugly work,” I said with a growing smile. “Only problem being, I’m stronger than you anticipated and now you can’t finish the job.”
Jabari gave a slight shrug of his shoulders, but by the tension that slipped across his face, I could tell he was still in pain. “A minor setback. You seemed to have acquired a new guardian of sorts.”
It was a struggle to maintain my nonchalant tone when a part of me longed to smash his face into the glass table between us. “Yes, I’ve found another to pull my strings. Of course, the difference between you and him is the fact that he’s trying to make me stronger, while you’re only concerned with how I can be used by you.”
Jabari and I had too much history for both of us to remain living. Nick was right—my creator was a threat to everything I was attempting to do to save both the nightwalker and human races. Jabari’s only concern was himself and how he could increase his own powers, which was accomplished only through manipulating me.
“And I’m guessing that your master’s first command is to get rid of me,” Jabari replied blandly, as if this were all a big joke.
“Actually, that’s his second command.” My sneer seemed to take some of the laughter from his expression. “His first command was to learn how to control both you and Danaus. Now we’ve moved on to the next stage.”
“And you think you’re capable of succeeding?”
“Quite confident.”
Jabari glared at me with cold black eyes. I met his unblinking gaze steadily, mindful that Nick offered up a worse hell than Jabari could even imagine.
To my surprise, I blinked first despite my growing hatred for the monster that sat across from me. No matter how much I despised him or how much he threatened all my plans, I still had need of him for one last task.
“However, I’m willing to grant you a temporary reprieve,” I ventured slowly.
“Already bucking against your new master? You won’t last long that way,” he growled. A faint glow gave his eyes an almost golden tint.
“No, I’m willing to take this chance because I’m aiming for something greater than either of you two bastards.” I clenched my fist at my side, but managed to keep my voice low and even as I continued. “War is coming.”
“It seems I’ve heard this speech before,” Jabari interrupted.
“Yes, it’s been nearly a year and nothing has really changed in our world.” There were a hundred accusations waiting on the tip of my tongue to explode. If he had only sent more nightwalkers to Machu Picchu months ago, we would not have found ourselves in the current mess against Aurora. If he had been more honest and forthright with me sooner, I might have been better prepared to deal with Rowe and the other naturi, instead of blindly believing along with the rest of my race that the naturi were near extinction and content to live out an isolated existence.
But I swallowed those words, choosing to focus on the imminent problem rather than dwelling on the past. “A war is coming between Cynnia and Aurora. If we’re not careful, the war will bring about the Great Awakening. Aurora does not care who will get killed as long as she wins. And if she does win, she will continue her campaign to rid the world of humans, which is naturally not to our benefit.”