"Lissa, perhaps it's better if we do this."
"No." I wiped tears away. I was angry. As angry as I'd ever been, I think. And sad, too. "I'm so sorry, Lily. So very sorry. You should have gone on already." My claws were swift as they separated her head from her body. Both began to flake away. I turned and ran up the stairs.
* * *
"The girl had started the turn, Wlodek." Merrill's words caused Wlodek to cease signing his name between the L and the O.
"You think Lissa might make more females for us? That she has the blood gene to do it?" Wlodek's hand was still, poised over the documents that lay on his desk as he gazed at Merrill.
"Possibly. That girl was dying before Lissa got to her, no doubt about that, and wasted away as well. Any male would have lost her quickly, I believe." Merrill wanted to sigh but didn't. "I don't believe the girl would have successfully turned; there wasn't enough body mass. Likely, she may have remained intact for two more days, but no longer than that. Lissa was quite upset over the whole thing. I am hopeful that Lissa has the gene, however. That would bode well for our future." The Vampire race needed more females. Were desperate for them. But Lissa had been too upset over Lily's death. Merrill hoped Wlodek wouldn't force her to attempt turns after her five-year probation was over. The ten-turn rule would be ignored if the turns were all female.
"We will keep this under advisement and make a decision when the time comes," Wlodek guessed at Merrill's thoughts. "In the interim, we will not add this to the records. It is most fortunate that your friend Griffin let the information slip about the genetics. We would likely still be searching for reasons why females couldn't complete the turn."
"He says it's extremely rare, and nearly impossible to find," Merrill muttered, wondering if he shouldn't have kept the information to himself after all. At the moment, only he and Wlodek held the information, and it would remain with them.
"I expected as much," Wlodek nodded sagely and finished signing his name.
* * *
Weldon, Winkler and Kelvin were allowed to recuperate in the Packmaster's large home located outside Charleston. Winkler was in the worst shape of all of them; the moment they'd allow him to wake a little from the tranquilizer darts they kept shooting into him, he'd start fighting. That meant he was beaten by six werewolves, every time. While werewolves heal notoriously fast, continued beatings will take their toll. Robert and Albert had been in on that kill, along with Stephan. All of the vampires went home after the remnants of the Sugar Grove Pack had either been exterminated (if they knew about Gap's little indiscretion) or sent to Buckhannon if they didn't. Buckhannon got two females out of it; a father and a mate had known. Weldon had been vicious and thorough in his decisions. You don't kidnap the Grand Master and expect to live over it.
"You bought us time," Merrill had hugged me before he left. "I knew you'd be somewhere in the area since you keep me updated on where you're going. It just took a little time to track you down. Davis from the Dallas Pack helped out; he knew where Winkler rented the cabin. The snow slowed us down a bit but we were able to find you." Wlodek had also insisted that I call and talk to him, so Merrill dialed his number and I talked. Wlodek said he understood the pain of having to kill a child of your own making. He also said that it was likely the girl didn't have enough mass to complete the turn and her final death was an inevitability. Hoping he was being honest with me instead of lying to spare my feelings, I brushed away tears and struggled to numb myself to all of it.
Weldon sorted things out with the Summerville Packmaster while he, Winkler and Kelvin rested up. It was two weeks away from Christmas and the holiday week would be spent in Dallas unless I had somewhere else to go. The call I was dreading to make after the Sugar Grove ordeal, however, was the one to Gavin. I made that call the day after we arrived in Charleston.
"Honey, it's me," I said, as soon as he answered. Gavin growled. He'd already heard something from somebody. Maybe one of the Enforcers. This was what I was afraid of—his anger. When he was coherent enough to talk, he let me know what he thought.
"You should have just ripped into them!" He shouted, making me hope he was underground somewhere so nobody would hear. I had to hold the cell away from my ear; his voice was so loud and painful.
"But honey, they would have killed the Grand Master."
"Fuck the Grand Master!" I'm sure he didn't mean that in the physical sense. "What were you going to do, Lissa? Would you care to tell me that?"
"I was hoping that if the girl turned, the wolves would clear out and I could go hunt them," I said. "I wanted to take them down as quickly as I could and hoped that I could find Weldon and the others in the process."
"They wouldn't have let you live," Gavin snorted.
"Maybe. I did the best I could, Gavin. Wlodek told me to stay with the girl, and I was hoping he and Merrill would send somebody. At least to keep the Grand Master alive."
"Fuck the Grand Master."
"You said that already," I retorted. My temper was rising, now. "This was my assignment, Gavin. The Council sent me to do this."
"The Council has no business sending a youngling female out on an errand such as this with no supervision." He started cursing in French. Or maybe it was Italian. How did I know? And he'd called me a youngling female. That burned my toast. If he'd been there with me, I'd kick him for that. And then he'd more than likely pound me. So far, being engaged to a vampire sucked most of the time.
"Gavin, if you want to punch me, then you'll have to wait until we see each other," I interrupted his cursing. That made him curse even louder. Well, he was pissed, no doubt about that. Merrill hadn't said one cross word to me the whole time he'd been here. Why couldn't Gavin do that? I wondered how long it would take him to realize I'd hung up on him in mid-rant.
"This was my fault," I told Weldon later. I'd taken a tray of food into his room so he could eat dinner. He wasn't in bed; he was on the sofa in the sitting area, watching television. "Somehow, that idiot found out about me at the Packmaster's meeting last spring and decided that his granddaughter would make a good vampire, since she was dying and he wasn't willing to let her go."
"Lissa, sit down," Weldon muted the television and patted the sofa next to him. Here came the fatherly lecture. I sat down.
"Yeah. He did it because of that," Weldon acknowledged. My eyebrows shot up. "But Winkler, Kelvin and I were caught off guard and we shouldn't have been. We were all lounging around, not expecting anything of the sort when those ass**les just waltzed right in with a fake story and before you know it, they had all three of us tranquilized up to our eyeballs. They hauled us out of that cabin trussed up like sheep. You can't take all the blame for this, Lissa."