Page 48 of Taming the Beasts (Crooked Point #3)

Saturday

Zoey

Damn it! I shoved a key into the lock, but it wasn’t the right one. Which key was for the front doors of the bank?! Why did all my boyfriends have so many freaking keys on their keychains?

“Zoey!” Emma said. “Hurry!”

“I’m trying!” The next key didn’t work either. I turned to see Kebe only a few shops down from the bank.

“Let me try,” Emma said. She grabbed the keys from me and shoved one in.

“I just tried that one!”

“How was I supposed to know that?!” She pushed another key into the lock and the key finally turned.

“Hey!” Kebe shouted from only one shop down. “Wait up!”

Not a chance in hell, Satan. I pulled open the door.

Emma and I both ran inside. “Shit, the keys.” Emma pointed to them still dangling from the other side of the glass door.

But I was more focused on Kebe who was almost at the bank steps.

There was no time to get the keys and lock the door.

“It’s fine.” I grabbed Emma’s arm and pulled her toward the vaults.

The vaults were more secure anyway. “If Kebe wants to come in badly enough she could just smash the glass. She doesn’t know the code for the vault. We’ll be safe in there.”

We rounded the counter and ran to the second vault. I typed in the code and the vault door hissed open.

“Would you two please wait up!” Kebe yelled as she ran into the bank.

Ah! I pulled with all my might on the huge metal door. Emma and I ran inside the vault just as Kebe got behind the counter.

We were somehow able to slam the door shut just in time.

I heard Kebe hit her hands against the vault a second before it closed. She probably yelled something too, but the vault door shutting cut out any chance she had to spill yet another lie.

Emma leaned over and put her hands on her knees as she tried to catch her breath. “Why was she chasing us?”

“I have no idea.”

“Was she trying to change us too?”

I stared at the vault door. “Probably.”

“I think I’m going to be sick.”

I turned to see Emma trying to wipe the blood off her chest.

My stomach churned too. “Maybe don’t touch it.”

She stopped smearing around the mess. “Kebe looked scared.”

“What?”

“Didn’t you see her face as she was running toward the vault? She looked terrified. ”

“Well it’s her fault that there are tons of new bloodthirsty vampires loose out there.” I pointed to the vault door.

Emma cringed.

“I’m sorry, I’m not talking about Callum...”

“I know,” Emma said. “But did you see his eyes? How dark they were? He was seconds away from losing control and hurting us.”

I pressed my lips together.

“For a few minutes there I let myself believe there was a cure. There is no fucking cure! He’ll hurt me and he won’t mean to.” She started sobbing.

“He wouldn’t,” I said and put my arm around her shoulders. I think it was the first time I truly believed it. “Callum had a chance to hurt you. Hell, he probably really really wanted to back there. But he didn’t do it. He remained in control.”

“This time.”

“I hope to God there is never a time as bad as this again.”

“I had no idea the carnage they were capable of,” Emma said. “The way they were all attacking your boyfriends...”

I cringed. I didn’t want to think about Titan falling backward. Or several vampires jumping on top of Otto. “Bennett said they’d be okay.”

“Nothing about any of this is okay!”

I squeezed her tight.

“And I lost my wedding dress.”

I started laughing again. I was pretty sure the stress had made my brain stop working.

“It’s not funny! That was the worst wedding in the history of weddings. ”

“It was sweet before all that blood was spilled.” I tried to stifle my laugh but couldn’t.

“Zoey!”

“I’m sorry. Do you think the portrait artist captured all that?”

“No, I don’t think the portrait artist captured any of that! He’s either dead or a vampire himself. Oh my God, we’re never going to be able to leave this vault, are we? Crooked Point has fallen.”

I stopped laughing. “It’s like a freaking apocalypse. What happens now? Do they spread out and take over the whole United States?”

“And then get on planes and infect the whole world? Zoey, this is so bad. There won’t be any humans left.”

I wished I was still laughing. But my brain had started working again and Emma was right. This was catastrophic. There were only five werecats out there and there might be close to 200 vampires. Why had I invited the whole town to the wedding?

“What are we going to do?” Emma asked.

I tried to focus as I looked around at all the relics. “Do you think there’s something in here that could help?”

“Even if there was, I wouldn’t know which artifact.”

I picked up one of the swords from the wall. I knew I wasn’t supposed to touch anything in here. But it was kind of an emergency. “Maybe this can somehow cut through vampires?”

“No,” said someone who wasn’t Emma.

Emma screamed at the top of her lungs.

I dropped the golden sword and spun around .

Kebe was standing in the middle of the vault. Her face was splattered with blood and the bottom of her dress was torn.

I blinked, but she was still there. How was Kebe standing there?! We’d locked her out and the vault door was still closed.

Emma screamed again.

“Stop screaming,” Kebe said. “I’m trying to concentrate.”

I picked up the sword I’d dropped. “Don’t move or...or...I’ll slice your throat, Satan.”

“Satan?” She gave me a funny look. “Not even close to being correct.”

I think I was very, very close with my assessment. My scared ass had forgotten that the bitch could teleport. Clearly she hadn’t needed some random artifact to do it. She just teleported all willy nilly like a demon.

“Get the hell out of here!” I yelled and waved the sword around. “Disappear to wherever you came from! Be gone, demon!”

Kebe held up her hands. “Look, I’m on your side.”

“Bullshit.”

“I am! Maybe I wasn’t a half an hour ago. But that did not go at all the way I planned. And I’m freaking out just as much as you are! You saw me running down the sidewalk. That shit was terrifying.”

I held out the sword. “But you planned that terrifying shit. You clearly knew the whole time the coin was evil. Why the heck should we believe anything you say now?”

“I didn’t think the coin was evil.”

“Then what did you know about it?” Emma asked.

Kebe sighed. “I knew it would create vampires very easily and I believed that vampires were wonderful and perfect creatures and that there aren’t nearly enough of them in this modern world.

And I also knew that there was a bit of a nasty, thieving little werecat population in Crooked Point and vampires kill werecats, and I was just trying to fix the problem like Daddy wanted me to. ”

I had so many questions. But first... “My boyfriends aren’t nasty! Stop saying stuff like that about them. And vampires don’t kill werecats. It’s the other way around.” That’s what Bennett had said.

Kebe shook her head. “No, not really. Vampires are stronger and faster. Your boyfriends don’t stand a chance out there.”

My heart sunk. Kebe was a dirty liar, but she sounded truthful right now. I felt tears welling in my eyes.

“And I know they’re not nasty,” Kebe said.

“I’m sorry. I was just told for thousands of years that they were.

And it’s hard to get the stereotype out of my head.

They seem quite civil and organized. They have very impeccable taste.

And I’ve never seen one of them take a nap in the middle of the street. ”

What the fuck?

“But I was just doing what Daddy told me to do,” she said.

“I always do what Daddy tells me. But when the vampires suddenly turned on me? They’re supposed to be my babies.

” Her voice cracked and she touched the center of her chest, like she actually possessed a heart.

“But they didn’t act very thankful that I’d created them.

Instead, they attacked me. Huxley saved me back there from being bitten.

And then Ace saved me too. And that’s when I knew that Daddy was wrong about this one thing.

Not all werecats are bad. And not all vampires are good babies.

It’s much better to make them the old-fashioned way. The coin vampire babies are no good.”

“I’m so confused,” Emma said. “Who the hell is your father?”

“King,” Kebe said. “The guy that Zoey strips for for small sums of money.”

What the fuck?! The sums weren’t small. King was one of my best tippers. But that was all beside the point. “Ew. Didn’t you say you cammed with him too?”

“No, I said we talked. Don’t be gross. He’s my daddy.”

“Stop calling your father that! You’re the gross one!”

“But he is my daddy.”

“Stop it!”

“Fine. What do you want me to call him? The god of the dead?”

“So he’s Satan?”

“No.”

“You just said...”

“He’s Anubis,” Kebe said. “Obviously. He didn’t even try to hide it. He wears a freaking Anubis mask when he talks to you. This coin belongs to him.” She pulled the silver Anubis coin out of her pocket. “Your boyfriends stole it from him.”

Oh my God. Otto had said he thought King looked familiar.

Emma reached out and hit her hand, knocking the demon coin to the ground.

“Well that certainly won’t do anything,” Kebe said.

“I think your boyfriends may have actually gotten the fabulous design for this bank from my daddy’s home when they broke in.

They really do have wonderful taste. So different than Daddy described.

And I’m sorry, I should have trusted my gut.

But my daddy can be very persuasive. The way your boyfriends have behaved around me isn’t anything like how he described though.

And as I touched Anubis’ scales...” she turned and looked at the golden Anubis scales sitting on the shelf.

She shuddered. “The aura was off. It’s like you said, Zoey.

Maybe measuring a heart against the weight of a feather is rigged.

Maybe the scales are evil. Maybe my daddy is evil too. ”

I opened my mouth and closed it again. “Sorry, if Anubis is your father...who the hell are you?”

“Kebe.”