Page 27

I shake my head. No. Holy shit, no. “Augustus is dead,” I blurt.

I’m saying more than I want to, but it’s like I can’t hold all of my own thoughts.

Like some of them are slipping out before I can catch them.

“Ares killed him after what he did to Ophelia and the others. Giovanni is also dead, and Cliff has been missing. We assume he’s dead.

So, their influence is over. It’s done.”

She looks pleasantly surprised at that. “Thank you for that information,” she says with a smile that flickers before my eyes. “But I’m afraid this is an all-or-nothing mission. Tell your friends to clear the city, or I will do it for them. And they’ll never see me coming.”

I want to throw up. Scream. Cry. I want to pummel this twisted woman into a bloody pulp on the sidewalk, but I can’t move. My feet remain glued to the ground beneath me.

Why won’t all the insanity just stop? Can’t things just chill the fuck out for a while? The dire situations just keep piling up, one on top of the other.

“What got you here?” I ask, my words like ice. “What gave you such a God complex?”

She shakes her head. “We can talk psychology all day, but it won’t change anything.

It won’t make you understand. But you need to tell your friends.

I won’t wait much longer. Ares is a very proficient killer.

Maybe I’ll use him again. Or Sysco. He’s quite unpredictable, isn’t he?

Or maybe it could be Harry who takes out the rest of them.

He’s so calm. I would like to see what it’s like when he loses control. ”

“Fuck you!” I bark, trying with everything I have in me to lunge at her. I want my hands around her throat. I want to smash the back of her head against the pavement. I think I’d like to sink my fangs into her neck and see what her blood tastes like. I want to take all of it.

“A warning, Lana, a heads up. That’s all this is,” she says, her demeanor calm despite my outburst. “I will clear this city. So, those who wish to live need to leave New York.”

I stare at her, seeing her without being able to see her. Every word she speaks, I feel them in my bones. I feel them in my chest. The history is there. The proof is evident. She’s taken out the Steele family. She already made Ares kill so many.

If she says she will do this, she’s going to do it.

And she’ll use someone I love to accomplish it.

“We need some time,” I say, and every word feels like a defeat. “There’s someone here, someone with ties to the Royals. They’re trying to bring back the Blood Father, and I would think that’s the last thing you would want.”

Finally, what I have to say stills her.

Her face pales. Her shoulders slump. Her gaze narrows.

“There is a necromancer and a vampire with too much knowledge and a family mission looking for his bones as we speak,” I say.

I can feel it. I won’t defeat this woman.

So, I need to get very, very clear on what needs to happen now.

“We’re close. And we plan to stop him. So, you need to give us time to take care of this. ”

Dammit. I wish I could actually see this woman. I wish I could read her better. Does she realize how serious this is? Does she take me seriously? Does she understand the gravity of what it would mean for the Blood Father to return?

“Two weeks,” she says. My skin prickles as she speaks, and instantly, a ticking clock starts counting down in the back of my brain.

“You have two weeks to resolve this situation. No longer. Then I will take care of it myself, and I will choose which of them, maybe even you, suits me to clean New York of the Barons.”

Fourteen days. And then she’ll turn one of us into a weapon.

“Do you understand the gravity of what I’m saying, Lana?

” She asks as she steps forward. I want to take a step back, to put some distance between us, but I remain frozen, the world tilting surreally around me.

"You can’t stop me. They can’t find me. Many have tried.

I’ve erased my identity from memory. You’ll forget my face the second I’m gone.

You’ll forget my voice, my walk. I’ve honed this gift over decades. I am the blank space no mind can hold."

A chill settles into my bones. My instincts scream, every part of my body aware I am prey before a predator who doesn’t need claws or teeth.

"Do you understand?" she asks, her voice suddenly thunderous in my mind.

I nod.

I don’t just understand. I believe her.

She nods. "You have your time. Two weeks to find the necromancer, to stop the Blood Father. But no more."

She snaps her fingers, startling me.

I blink, and the world shifts.

The street is empty. The hospital is gone. I’m standing in a part of the city I don’t recognize.

I spin once, twice. My heart pounding. My breath shaky.

I don’t remember her face. I don’t know where I just was.

I dig into my brain. She’s there. She has to be there. She was blonde, right? No, brunette. Actually, I have no idea if she had hair at all. If she had eyes. If she was two feet tall or twenty. Fuck. How? How can a person do something like this?

A gifted person can do this.

They can turn someone against everything they normally would do.

They can make an uncle slaughter dozens of his family members in one night.

They can help an inexperienced woman turn Ares against his own kind, make it so he can’t even remember what he was doing.

Fuck.

I turn, orienting myself. One more damn thing. It’s one more damn thing to go tell the others.

I thought I could face Ophelia. To try and mend things. But this… Her association with this woman, Ophelia turning to someone like this for help… Things are too broken. We’re too far past the point of no return.

I won’t be going to visit Ophelia in the hospital.

The clock is ticking.

I head down into the nearest subway station and wonder just how much we can all take before we break.

When I get to Ares’ building, I feel… sick. Nervous. Scared. A sense of dread is coating my insides. I feel like I’m always weighing who do I tell? How much do I tell? It’s fucking exhausting.

So, by the time I reach the thirty-eighth floor, I’m too wiped out to even think about measuring it all.

Roman is seated at the helm, scanning over tons of footage. Ares stands over his shoulder, watching it as well. They really are so damn similar. To my surprise, Sysco is standing right next to Ares, watching with that wild intensity that is signature to him.

Juliet is at the back of the room, talking on the phone. She sounds stressed, but professional.

“We order the machine. It isn’t really an option at this point,” she says. “The money is there. I’d planned to use it to remodel the lab, but it’s just going to have to wait. Okay, thanks.”

Juliet said she is an ER doctor, but from that conversation? She’s a lot more than that.

I make a mental note to Google her name later.

She hangs up and slides her phone into her pocket at the same time Ares turns and scrapes those dangerous eyes of his down my body.

“How did it go?” he asks, his tone a little wary.

I draw in a deep breath, resolve settling into my bones. I’m done holding information back. I trust everyone in this room. Yes, I’ve only known Juliet and Roman for a few days, but I’m just going to take a leap of faith on them.

“I didn’t make it to the hospital,” I say. “I was… intercepted. And given a warning.”

And so, I relay everything that’s just happened.

The world fracturing, the cerebral state the woman put me in.

Her warning about the Barons’ hold on the city, that she’s planning to use one of us to take out the rest of the Barons.

I tell them that she told me we have two weeks to intercept the resurrection of the Blood Father before she goes after us.

“Who is she?” Ares snarls. “Name. Description.”

I shake my head. “That’s just the thing. I couldn’t even figure out what she looked like when she was standing in front of me. It was like she was erasing herself from my brain in real time.”

“That doesn’t make any sense,” Sysco says, his eyes narrowing.

“I know,” I say with a nod. “Trust me, it wasn’t a fun trip. Ares, I can’t even imagine how you feel about the eight days Ophelia took from you. I feel fucking violated that she simply erased herself from my memory.”

He swallows once, and I almost wish I hadn’t brought it up. He’s been struggling enough to not hold himself responsible. Why did I have to remind him?

“So, she makes threats to the entire vampire population of New York, to us directly, and we don’t even have a description?” Sysco says, his tone annoyed and disgusted.

“Is this who was working with Ophelia?” Juliet asks.

I nod. “She’s a therapist, I do know that.

Ophelia went to her because she specializes in helping people with trauma caused by vampires.

But even Ophelia didn’t know her name. She said they would always meet someplace new, and Ophelia could never remember where they’d met, couldn’t remember her name, or what she even looked like. ”

“That’s fucking freaky,” Sysco sneers.

“That’s a little bit of information to go off of,” Ares says. “She’s a therapist, and we know she’s a woman. That’s got to narrow the results a little bit.”

Roman is typing away furiously at the keyboard.

“Not really,” he says, his tone dark. “There are over thirteen thousand therapists in New York State, and according to this, women make up over seventy percent of therapists nationwide. Good luck finding a directory of every single therapist in New York City.”

“Damnit,” the curse slips over Ares’ lips. “There’s really nothing else to go on, Lana?”

I shake my head, hating that she’s this damn good. “It’s just an empty void in my head. This… damn, this is kind of scary, Ares.”

“You might not have her face, but we have yours,” Roman says. He snaps a picture of me and puts it into the computer, and within seconds, my face is popping up on cameras.