“We heard through the grapevine that Miss Adad put a call out on our life, and Frank here––Frank is Anna’s cousin, did you know?––told us you’d come to Los Angeles to see her We thought it would be a good time to visit, too. Turned out better than we expected. We came for the lady, but found you both together, and the doors wide open. Couldn’t have been easier.”
“Hadn’t heard you two were friendly,” Anna Halverson interjected, her face sour.
“Oh yeah, real lucky I’d say. We’re not set up for war where we come from. No, it’s best to do it like this. Straight to the point.”
Mikhail didn’t have to ask what they meant to do. He was strapped down on a rooftop. They meant to let him and Alya burn with the dawn. It was a particularly disdainful form of execution. There’d be no formal combat. No ritual exsanguination. And that was surprising, because both he and Alya were well worth draining.
“Gunnar got this nice table for us,” Anna said, drawing her hand along the slick metal. “He ordered it over the Internet. They say it’s strong enough to hold an elephant. More than we needed, I’d say—”
“Mom, you said the very best.”
“It’s a beauty, I’ll give you that. Never thought we’d need two at a time, though. Hope those chains aren’t too uncomfortable, Miss Adad.”
“Oh no,” Alya said. “They’re fucking lovely.”
Mrs. Halverson pursed her lips at Alya and turned back to Mikhail. “Isn’t this straight out of a James Bond movie? No one but Paul can set you free—”
“Anna,” her husband said, his voice quiet but cutting.
Mikhail knew the table. The locks were coded to handprints. Halverson’s prints, apparently. Knowing the table, he knew there was no escaping. Little Gunnar had done his research well.
Alya’s bonds, however…
Gunnar stepped forward. “You killed my best friend back there. I wish I could watch you die.”
Mikhail raised a dismissive brow at him and rolled his head toward Halverson. “New York doesn’t want your land. House Faustin never attacks sovereign territory unless there is compelling reason. I’m sorry you gave us one. The code we all must live by is discretion.”
“I’m sure sorry, too. But folks have a right to live as they see fit without other folks coming from hundreds of miles away to tell them how to do it. Our kind keep to themselves. Always have.”
“You are eating animals. By choice.”
“We’ve come to realize it’s the right thing to do.”
“Humans are our perfect food. Swallow anything else and it degrades you.”
“And I’d say it’s degrading to hunt our close kin.”
Every so often a group of vamps would get it in their head that it was wrong to feed from humans. As if they hadn’t evolved side by side to do just that. As if all vampyr society wasn’t built around the safe and controlled consumption of human blood. Idealistic vamps who decided to live on animal blood inevitably became animals themselves. Blood was not just so many liquid calories. Vamps quite literally were what they ate.
Mikhail was sure the degradation had already begun in these families. That’s why they weren’t even cleaning up after themselves anymore.
Curious about their reasoning, he said, “The media has picked up on the carcasses. That’s our immediate concern.”
The boy smirked. “They blame it on Satanists—or space aliens.”
“How long do you think those answers will satisfy them?”
The boy lifted his chin. “When they realize we eat animals, like they do, they’ll be okay with us. One day we won’t have to hide anymore.”
Mikhail sighed. The Halversons hadn’t been reading their history books.
Alya finally spoke—he wondered how she’d managed to keep her mouth shut so long. “Bloody fucking hell. Why don’t you just kill us now so I don’t have to listen to this idiocy anymore.”
Anna stepped forward. “You know, I’m real tired of taking my marching orders from people I’ve never met. You have nothing to do with us. We ask you for nothing and we’ve never caused you harm. And yet you decided to put a hit on my husband, Miss Adad. Why?”
Had she? Mikhail wondered why she’d targeted Halverson.
Her voice dripping with scorn, Alya drawled, “Oh, I don’t know. I suppose I thought it would be fun to declare open season on lunatics.”
Anna took hold of her husband’s arm. “And you call us animals.”
It was hard to make convincing threats when you were naked and strapped to a table, but Mikhail gave it a try. “If you go through with this, I promise you my family will seek revenge. Faustin revenge is extracted straight from the flesh. I assure you they will not stop until they slaughter you and all your kin. I’ll die now, but you’ll not live another week.”
Halverson smiled under his mustache. “Now why would your family think we have anything to do with your death? Our intelligence told us you and Miss Adad were fighting. And in fact, it looked like you’d been fighting before we got there.”
Mikhail bit the inside of his cheek. There was that. They might think he and Alya had killed each other.
“And Miss Adad doesn’t have any family to speak of—or at least that’s what we understand.” Anna Halverson smiled sweetly at Alya. “At least, not since your father disowned you for being a whore.”
Mikhail’s hands curled into fists. Halverson jabbed a finger at him. “Don’t look at my wife like that.”
“Tell your wife not to speak to my––” The word mate came to his tongue, the certainty of it surprising him. In an instant he recovered, rephrasing the sentence. “Tell her to apologize to Prince Adad.”
Halverson chuckled. “Sorry. Don’t think I can do that for you.”
“Don’t worry, Mikhail. I’m not impressed by apologies from filthy animal eaters.”
The Arabic tinge to her English came out under stress. It pained him to hear it. She was his mate, and he’d failed her back at the house. When she crept into his arms, exhausted and vulnerable, instead of making her safety his first priority, he’d fallen asleep. He couldn’t stand the thought of the sun blackening her skin. Lord, take me. Let her live.
“That’s enough.” Halverson put up his hand. “Each to his own, that’s what I always say. You think the way I eat is an abomination. We think the same of you. I’m not even going to exsanguinate you, Miss Adad. Or you, Faustin.”
“In a couple of generations, you will be animals,” Mikhail said with absolute certainty.
“We’ll see about that.” Halverson took his wife by the arm and popped a toothpick in his mouth. “We’ll just see.”
The vamp named Frank started to slink away.
“En joy yourself while you can, you sneaking rat bastard!” Alya called after him.
Frank stopped and turned around. He pointed at her, opened his mouth, then closed it again. His face flushed purple and he began to shout. “No more high and mighty threats from you, your royal bitchiness. No. It’s over. Sometimes the little guy wins. Like now. So…so…fuck you.” He gave her the finger, stepping backward as he did, ruining the effect.
Alya said, “I should have killed you for biting Jason Biggs.”
“You should have, ’cause I did it on purpose,” Frank said. “But I gotta go. Sun’s coming up. That always makes me a little, you know, edgy.”
Frank left his field of vision. Mikhail heard a door slam shut behind him.
Alya said to the Halversons, “I’ll give you all one more chance. Let us go, and we’ll call it even. Force me to take matters into my own hands, and I won’t answer for the consequences.”
Halverson laughed. “You’ve got a pair of brass balls on you, missy, I’ll give you that. But nope, best you both just die quietly, so we can sort out our own business in peace.”