Page 69 of Transfiguration
“Fuck you, Ronnie. I did nothing to your kid.”
“He’s worried about you. I don’t want to banish him across the veil to keep him safe. Don’t make me.”
“I’m not making you do anything, Rou. Just trying to find answers and get my men back. I need to talk to a certain asshole vampire. Thought I’d take the easy way to get there.”
“Matthew is broken.”
“And I plan to put him back together and break him again,” Con said. “I have spells that bind pages to missing books to find them. Never used it on a living form before, or an undead one, but it’s worth a try.”
“Hart won’t let you.”
“Fuck Hart. He’s got shit to answer for, too.”
“You really think he’s going to answer our questions? He’s like the ultimate man of mystery. I’ve been trying to get answers from him for over a decade.” Seiran shot back.
Con smiled, feeling the edge of his sanity fade. “I have ways of making people talk. It’s okay if you aren’t scary. I can be scary enough for the both of us.”
“I can be scary,” Seiran said.
“Mhmm. End of the world and all that. Maybe worry about your control and let me worry about getting answers, yeah?” Bryar appeared at Seiran’s side. For once, Con was happy to see him, thinking he’d enjoy getting to watch people get hacked up. “Take us to the Fellowship,” Con told Bryar. “To Hart.” He had a dozen thoughts, needed to access files, but first had questions for the big man himself. What did Hart know? If he was going to have to race around the world finding Matthew’s body parts, it was taking too long to find Bella. Was she already dead? Did they plan to kill her? Or worse, use her as a vessel for a demon or another of these array things and steal her power? Did Hart know anything?
Seiran grumbled tiredly.
“Fuck off, Ronnie. I need to talk to Hart. You didn’t tell him about Luca, did you? How pissed is he going to be?”
Seiran narrowed his eyes but shrugged. “Guess today is as good as any day to end the world.” He looked at Bryar, who waited quietly, subdued, but always lethal, his gaze glowing bright red. If anyone saw him and didn’t know he was fae, they would think he was a demon. Blood borne fae and demons, were there similarities? Perhaps both were wild magic?
Bryar reached out to open another portal but could only land them outside the building on the first floor. “Warded,” Bryar said.
“Interesting,” Con said out loud. “Warded against fae magic, too. They’ve been hiding shit from me.” He walked in, past the guards, not worrying as everyone recognized him and Seiran. Bryar turned into his bug form, hiding in Seiran’s hair and vanishing beneath the power of the Pillar. They made their way up and Con’s chest hurt with the memories. Sam and Luca by his side, Bella looking up at him for protection. He’d failed them all.
Someone had taken them from him. Payback was a bitch, and he was in the mood to fuck some shit up.
THIRTY
“What’s the plan here?” Seiran asked.
“To see a summoner about a dead vampire.”
“Page was just a pawn in all of this.”
“Sure,” Con said as he wove his way through the multiple checkpoints. Seiran stayed close and Con sighed. “You’re about to see me be not a nice guy.”
“Okay,” Seiran agreed. “I’m not always nice, either. I think I was nice for too long. It makes people think I’m weak.”
Con snorted. “Not always nice. I’m a bad guy, Ronnie,” Con said. “We all are. Sam, me, and even Luca. I kill people. Sam does too. Luca…” he swallowed hard, his stomach rolling over at the memory of Luca’s burned face. “He was good at tearing businesses apart until the people do themselves in. He’s got control of the darkness inside him, but it would be easy for him to release it and really hurt people.”
They could all be dark as shit. Sometimes it was necessary to be the bad guy. And there would always be someone worse than any of them, always another serial killer, a trafficker, someone who destroyed people’s lives just because they could. Sometimes it was big business, and sometimes it was a coven of witches trying to create more power for themselves.
Seiran nodded. “But the world doesn’t end, right? If you become the bad guy for a few minutes or even days? I’m not sure I have that luxury.”
“We’re about to find out,” Con admitted as he didn’t think the answers he needed were going to be given without a fight.
“You’re all mine, too, you know,” Seiran said. “Friends. Found family, whatever. No one deserves what they did to Luca. And I’m worried about Bella. Gabe has all his people searching for any clues to where she could be.”
“That’s useful,” Con said as the elevator arrived on Hart’s floor. “Good thing we can go above his head and ask the biggest of dogs about a slip of a girl.”
“What if he doesn’t know?”