Page 18 of Saved by the Vampire Goddess (Dark Wine Vampires #1)

Chapter eighteen

Evelina

Minnesota Ark Prime—Moments later

I ’m ready to knock some sense into Ingvar. But striking a Lux is only going to get me in deeper doo-doo. “Look, what is the big deal? All I need are an extra dozen boxes of clone blood. Once I get him through the early stages, I’ll put him to work. He’ll earn his keep.”

“That’s not the point. You violated the rules. The contract you signed.”

Geez, are all the Lux so hardheaded? Rules, contracts, blah, blah, blah. Sometimes deals change. “You didn’t want us turning the mortals who survived the Collapse. The ones who were outside a dome. Y’all never said anything about the inners like him. I violated nothing.”

“It’s implied. Because we only have so many resources to spare. And mortal blood isn’t a resource we can suddenly produce. Which community should I take your demand from? Who will make the sacrifice? Who will go hungry while you feed your newborn?”

“Look, Igor—”

His fists clench tighter, and a darker blue shade blooms on his cheeks. “My name is Ingvar.”

I know his name. He’s been my Lux supervisor since I took my latest assignment. But I devilishly enjoy the way he turns really blue when I get his goat. I can nearly hear my mom’s “Good grief, Evie, do ya gotta be so difficult?” But it’s hard to rein in my mischievous side when he’s acting like a little dictator.

“Igor, we both know you can produce more blood, you can create more clones—”

“Ingvar. Say it”—he points at Valroy—“or I take this one’s life now.”

I roll my eyes. His deeper navy-blue skin tone says I’ve pushed the limits of annoying him. “Sheesh. Fine. Ingvar .”

“And it takes months, if not years, to grow a new clone. Again. Who sacrifices because you couldn’t keep your fangs to yourself?”

“If you all would keep the antenna in good repair, I could’ve gotten emergency care for him instead. But no—you let the darn thing rot.”

Ingvar pulls a stake from the belt around his sarong. “Step aside. I’m sick of arguing with you.”

Threaten my newborn? No f’n way. I block his movement and clench my hands, willing my claws to retract, no matter how badly I want to unsheathe them and take a swipe at his purple-draped chest.

Besides, I know his negotiating style by now. He’ll bellow and complain, make unreasonable demands, then pitch something just as bad but doable. Time to cut this short. “What do you really want?”

The angel flicks his fingers at Valroy. “There might be a possible solution.”

“Let me guess. You want me to do you a favor—”

“We have an informant inside his dome. New Rome bribed one of your team to deliver fissionable material from the Prairie Caye nuclear power plant.”

“Wait a minute.” Now I’m seeing red, and my pupils sting as they dilate. “Your people were supposed to collect the uranium from all nuclear plants—”

“Apparently, some spent rods in Prairie Caye were missed.”

“Cheese and f’n crackers!”

Ingvar flinches.

Was it his mistake? I’ve never seen him look so sheepish. “Which idiot on my team knew how to harvest the rods without irradiating everyone in a fifty-mile radius?”

“Trevor. He was an engineer in his mortal life. He jury-rigged a containment barrel and delivered it to the reclamation container in exchange for a mortal. Apparently that one”—Ingvar points at Valroy—“started your compatriot thinking about the possibilities. They gave him a young woman.”

“Oh, for Pete’s sake.” I flex my fingers, glad it wasn’t my ex-boyfriend Gavin. “When I get my hands on Trevor, I’ll gladly do you the favor of beating the crap out of him and retrieving the girl. That’s the favor, right?”

“No, that’s not my request. We already took care of that problem. The woman has been relocated, and we brought in the Butcher to mete out punishment.”

My jaw drops. Among the treaty communities, the Butcher is a known sociopath and serves as an executioner. Which doesn’t mean what it sounds like. An executioner can dish out any form of physical punishment, including barbaric ones from the Middle Ages. Bringing in the Butcher is brutal, though it kinda makes sense in this case.

“Am I short a crew member?” My question is purposely vague. I don’t want the details in any way, shape, or form. I don’t need that image in my already overtaxed brain, but I do need a head count for my crew.

“No, Trevor still lives. Barely.”

“Okay, then.” I frown at the Lux. “So, what do you want?”

“New Rome is working on a nuclear bomb. They are taking the spent nuclear fuel from the reactor and converting the uranium to plutonium. Their emperor has a crazy notion of blowing up the dome so he can expand his territory—”

I throw my hands in the air and pivot to look at Valroy. At least he’s standing now, no longer bowing and scraping. “Your emperor’s a real idiot.”

“You’ll get no argument from me—not after what he did to my sister.”

Ingvar relaxes his wings. “I’m glad we’re in agreement.”

“We’re in agreement that the emperor’s a turd sack.” I turn back to face Ingvar, so he can see the determination in my eyes. “I’m not agreeing to anything else.”

“You will if he wants to live.”

I cross my arms and roll my eyes. Igor is getting on my last nerve. “What are you asking for?”

“We need you to retrieve the rods.”

“Why don’t you flash inside their dome and steal them back?”

“Flash technology can’t penetrate the New Rome dome.”

I was led to understand that already, but the Lux don’t always believe in full disclosure. “If you can’t get inside, then how are we supposed to?”

He averts his gaze and shifts his feet back and forth. “There is a way to create an opening.”

“All righty, then. Why don’t you walk through your little hole and demand the nuclear materials? If everyone inside reacts like Valroy did, they’ll bow down and hand it over.”

Ingvar sighs. “Our DNA can’t pass through, but yours can.”

I laugh—I can’t help it. “You guys created the domes. Why didn’t you make it so you could penetrate them—”

“Reasons. We had our reasons.”

“Afraid one of your own kind would set themselves up as a dictator?”

His wings rise halfway—their version of a shrug. “Maybe. Or be tempted to play god.”

“A bit ironic, don’t ya think?”

“What I think is irrelevant.”

“So explain this.” He’s gotta make sense if I’m gonna help him. And that’s a big if . “You can’t get inside a mortal-only dome, but can just drop inside mine. Why?”

“We programed the ark differently from the mortal-only domes.” He waves his hand around, and his skin turns a darker blue. “This belongs to us. You work for us. I’m your boss, as much as you want to ignore the fact.”

“And you’re asking me to go inside New Rome—”

“Both of you.”

“What?”

“Both of you must go.”

“You guys are really giving me a headache, ya know?” I rub a hand over my forehead. They have no idea what they’re asking. “You want me to take a baby vampire into a dome filled with mortals? Are you crazy? Do you have any idea what will happen?”

Valroy wraps his hand around mine. “Evie, let him speak. I want to hear the offer.”

“A reasonable man.” Ingvar’s wings relax again. “Excellent.”

He may be happier, but my hackles rise. “Hey, I’m still in the room. Do not go all misogynistic on me. I’m his maker and know what he’s capable of. I say whether he goes anywhere. So pitch your idea to me.”

Ingvar grins at me, and the way he screws up his face to do it isn’t pretty. “Here is the deal. Valroy has knowledge of the imperial buildings inside the dome. We have a basic map to where the scientists are conducting their experiments. It’s within the emperor’s palace. Heavily guarded.”

“Why don’t you have your informant steal it?”

“We need to keep her in place. We cannot risk her life.”

I give him the evil eye. “But we’re expendable?”

He nods like the idea is self-evident. “We will provide a containment device. All you have to do is enter the imperial palace, collect the plutonium they’ve processed, and escape with the football.”

“The football?”

“The containment device.”

“You goofballs really called it that? Like the American president used to have?”

“The scientist who worked on it thought the name was funny. Now I understand.”

I roll my eyes. This is the problem with having a Lux supervisor who was born post-Collapse. “And if we get this done for you, Valroy lives?”

“Yes.”

I can smell a better deal a mile away—too much experience negotiating with concert promoters. Ingvar needs this badly. The mistake happened on his watch. So my counterproposal can be a tad greedy. “I want a year’s credit toward my service, plus I can take twice the goods when I return to the Hill, including a new sink and stove for my kitchen.”

“No.”

“Nice try.” I tap a finger on my lips. I’m gonna have to keep a newbie vampire fed right now. “We also get twelve cases of clone blood tonight, and twelve cases at a future date once you get a new clone functioning.”

Ingvar looks like I’ve just pulled out his molars without anesthetic. “I suppose we could get you six now, and six later.”

“No. Twelve each.”

He huffs. “I will talk with our scientists. That’s the best I can do.”

“And all the other stuff—don’t forget the sink and stove. Oh, and fix the darn antenna—I want regular maintenance calls from here on out. I’m tired of patching the cable. Get back to me—in writing—”

He fans his wings with a little flap, cutting me off. “There is another part of the deal. You must go tomorrow. We will get you through the dome, and you’ll be on your own from there.”

“Wait one darn tootin’ minute.” I clench my jaws, waving my hands in the air, signaling him to slow his roll. “Valroy just made it through the turn. If I take him into a dome filled with mortals tomorrow night, it’ll be a blood fest. He’ll kill the first one he finds, and then the mortals will blame the vampires and stop trading with us.”

“That isn’t my problem.”

“But it is mine as team leader. No. I need at least a month to get him weaned down to two bags a day and ready to tolerate being around mortals without going nuts.”

“You have one week.”

“That’s not enough!”

“It will have to be. Our intelligence says we don’t have a month.”

“Evie—”

I turn toward Valroy. “Yeah?”

“I can do it.” He squeezes my shoulder. “I have to. If he explodes his device, it will kill my sister and everyone I ever knew.”

I glare at him. “You don’t know what you’re talking about. You won’t be ready. You won’t have the self-control.”

“I was a major in charge of the imperial palace battalion. If I can do that, I’m disciplined enough to resist the temptation of mortal blood.”

Men. I’ve forgotten how they overestimate their abilities.

Ingvar gives one of those weird Lux bows. “As I said, Valroy is a reasonable person. And you really have no choice.”

I glare at him, but the threat he dangled… No matter how mad I am with Valroy for trying to leave, I want him to live. F’n Lux . “How are we supposed to get into the palace?”

“The emperor is holding his annual Saturnalia ball—”

“Geez Louise. You want us to go in the front door? Valroy was an imperial guard—he can sneak us in through their entrance.”

“Uh, Evie? Once the guards change shifts, they activate the door alarms,” Valroy says.

Ingvar nods. “Triggering the alarm might spook our inside person. We cannot risk it.”

“That means no picking locks on other doors, too?”

“I’m afraid so,” Valroy says.

I glare at Ingvar and hook my thumb in Valroy’s direction. “Everyone knows what he looks like. He’s a dominus, for cripes’ sake. If we go through the front door, the footmen will recognize him. They’ll never let us into the palace.”

The back of Ingvar’s wings rise at the shoulders, and they fan out quickly and collapse. His version of a smirk. “It’s a masked ball.”

“Fine. But I want the whole thing in writing. So come back when—”

Ingvar snaps his thin fingers together. A document appears in his hand, along with a fancy envelope. “The contract, and your invitation to the ball.”

“Smartass.” I rip the paperwork from his grasp. “Give me a few hours to read through it. But I want a good-faith—”

He snaps his fingers again. Twelve cases of clone blood appear.

“Ya know, you don’t have to snap your fingers like you’re some kinda magician. I know you have a special device that transports matter.”

He does that smirky thing with his wings again and makes a starburst with his fingers, a Lux sign of agreement. “But it’s so much fun.”