“I’ve seen your face in my nightmares, Magister.” I spit his title with as much venom as I could manage. “You’ve haunted my nights since I was ten.”
A muscle in Luc’s jaw twitched, but he didn’t otherwise show any outward emotion.
“Listen to him, mon chou.”
I whirled on Claude, catching myself with the corner of the couch’s armrest before I could topple over and ruin any chance I had of being taken seriously. “Don’t call me that. You just lost that right.”
Claude flinched as if I’d hit him with my fist instead of my words. “Please. Just listen.”
Guilt hit me at his words, his pained expression. He’d done what he thought was right. Was his decision so much different than my own when I’d decided to get the police department involved? Not really. Biggest difference was, I hadn’t had the chance to betray his secret.
“I know that the last thing you want to hear is the sound of my voice, Agent Davis, so I’ll be quick. I was there when your brother disappeared. But I didn’t kill him.”
I narrowed my eyes at the vampire. “Bullshit. Visions are related to emotion. He would have seen you as the most important thing in the room for your face to imprint onto his clothing. And it would have had to have been during a heck of a traumatic event.”
“I might have been the most important thing to him in that moment. But it’s not because I killed him.” Luc’s eyes revealed an iron will, and I could see why he’d ruled his small part of the world for so long. But I was beyond fear of this vampire. I’d lived my life afraid of him, of what he represented, even when I’d just thought him a nightmare. I was done being afraid.
“Oh, really. Then why the hell would your face be the first thing I saw?”
“It’s because I saved his life. Your brother, Agent Davis, is not dead.”
Chapter Thirteen
“You’re a liar.” If the Magister had physically punched me in the gut, I didn’t think it would have hurt as much as the twisting pain that struck me with his words.
I started to turn to look at Claude, but movement behind the Magister drew my eyes back. The man who had been hovering behind the Magister stepped out of the shadows, and all the air left the room.
The fine line of his jaw was the same, as was the carrot-colored hair and pale skin. His hair hadn’t darkened into a true red like mine; it had stayed lighter. But he looked smaller somehow. The young man I remembered had always seemed so large.
But then, he would have seemed so to a ten-year-old.
The young man in front of me, tentative smile on his face, was of average height and slight build. And more important, he was a young man.
My brother had been nine years my senior when he disappeared. I had been ten. The man in front of me hadn’t aged a day since—he looked every bit nineteen years old.
“Vampire.” My voice was barely perceptible to my ears, but vampires had great hearing. Mind reeling, I couldn’t for the life of me get it to stop. Couldn’t come up with a single thought other than that word.
“Your brother was injured that night. Gravely. I saved his life and made him a vampire—against vampire law, I should point out. I’ve had to pay dearly for it, but I’d do it again. No doubt that was a powerful enough event to imprint his coat.”
Something about that wasn’t right, but I couldn’t grasp it. But Claude wasn’t as affected.
“A grave injury cured by a vampire turning? Sounds like he was bitten. Another mistake of Nicolas’s?”
I couldn’t for the life of me tear my gaze from my brother Eddie’s face to look at Claude, but I could hear the growl in his voice. The anger.
“Is there ever going to come a time when you realize his harmless mistakes are anything but?” Claude asked.
Luc smiled bitterly, and the vampire behind him—my brother—shifted on his feet. “As you can see, your brother is alive and well. We’re in his house, in fact. He is not being held prisoner, nor is he being coerced.”
I could see that, but that created more questions in my mind than it answered.
“Why didn’t—” I shook my head, and it was as if pieces of a puzzle settled, each fitting into its rightful place. Anger settled into my chest, smothering any affection. I glared at my brother, hard. If looks could have killed, he would have dropped right then and there. “You just took off for a new life and left the old one because you didn’t give a shit, didn’t you?”
I wanted him to argue the fact. I wanted him to say he was coerced or had amnesia or was locked in a dungeon. I wanted him to tell me that my memory was faulty, that he hadn’t been as unhappy with his lot in life as I remembered. That he hadn’t constantly argued with our parents. That he hadn’t just left without a word.
But he just shrugged. “I gave a shit. Hell, I missed you, Bea. But you know how they were to me.”
His words sounded hollow, and the whiny, self-entitled tone I’d heard from my teenage brother was still there in this pseudo-man. He’d missed me the way he might miss a favorite record. Not like he should have missed a family member. Had being made a perpetual teenager kept his attitudes the same as the truculent kid he’d been back then, or would he never have grown up, even if he’d been given the chance?
“Since your brother is quite alive, I beseech you both to let go of this needless investigation into my family.”
That would be so much easier. And in fact, I ached to leave this whole mess behind me. Leave Eddie behind me. Leave all these damn vampires to their business. Even Claude. Especially Claude. To go and find a life that didn’t involve vampires of any sort. To pretend my brother died that night—or hell, maybe reach out to him to figure out if he might potentially grow into a good man.
But Claude—Claude had worked to bring Nic to justice for years. Maybe decades. Probably longer than I’d been alive.
And despite the fact that he had blabbed my secret to a man I considered an enemy, I realized that I loved the misguided vampire. Enough to put myself on the line to help him bring his obsession to a close.
“Blood isn’t everything. A man as old as you should know that. Your son deserves to rot in prison—or worse. And as far as I’m concerned, you do, too. Go fuck yourself,” I told Luc. I nodded to my brother—how little he deserved that title. “And you can go fuck yourself, too.”
Luc, resignation in his posture, turned to Claude, who said, “I’m with her. He has to be stopped, Luc. I know that you don’t want to believe him truly evil. I know you want to attribute his actions to simple rash decisions—to emotional outbursts. But he will continue to hurt people. And I just can’t allow it. Not any longer.”
As if a light switch had been clicked, Luc suddenly looked every bit the ancient vampire—the old man—that he was. His perfect skin didn’t wrinkle, neither did his hairline recede or his muscles fade. But he looked exhausted, and resigned. He nodded slowly, as if the gesture pained him. “Nicolas warned me that you would not bend on this. I’d hoped that I could convince you.”
“Nicolas knows of this?”
“I didn’t tell him I was coming here, talking to you and the agent, if that’s what you’re asking.” I half expected Luc to attack, but he simply stood a moment.
“You’ve been helping him.” Claude’s voice lost all of its anger. He sounded let down. “You were there when he used the brand to mark that selkie. Just as you were there when Beatrice’s brother was almost killed.”
Becoming the topic of conversation didn’t agree with my brother. He fidgeted when Claude’s gaze slid to him, and glanced nervously at the front door behind me as if he wanted to run away.
“Of course I was there,” Luc said. “I am present for all of my son’s sins. I clean them up. I punish him. And I pray that they will not be repeated. But I am never without sorrow. Never without regret.”
“Fuck your regret,” Claude said, and finally some fire returned to his voice. “You’ve enabled this. You’ve covered up for him for what? A century? More? I can’t let this stand, and I can no longer wait for your permission or your judgment.”
“I know you can’t. But I promised her. I swore to always keep him safe.” He struggled for his words. “I couldn’t keep her alive, Claude. But I swore that I would do better for our son.”
Claude took a step forward and Eddie jumped, just a little bit. He looked at the door again. Damn. Was Claude really that scary, or was my brother that much of a wimp?
“I can’t pretend to forgive what you have done—no matter how good you thought your reason. Where will you stand now?”
“I cannot help you in this, you know that.”
“But you’ve already taken a stand, haven’t you? That’s why I’m out of town so much now, sent to handle affairs that you used to handle.”
“Not exactly.” Luc shook his head. “I needed to be here—to stop him—”
“To clean up his messes, or to keep me from catching him with the evidence you couldn’t refute?” Claude’s fists clenched and unclenched at his side, but his words came out calm. “Very well, maître.”
No. That was far too accepting for my taste. The Magister might get away with siding with his son—I could understand that, even if I couldn’t contemplate ever making such a decision myself. But for Claude to stand neutral?
I opened my mouth to give him a piece of my mind, but never got the words out. My brother flinched behind Luc.
I barely had time to duck in front of the couch when the door burst open and a vampire sprinted in so quickly I registered the door opening after the vampire was nearly on Claude.
A shot rang out. Claude. He’d pulled and fired so swiftly at the vampire approaching, I hadn’t even seen it.
The vamp barely slowed. Long knife in hand, he stabbed at Claude. I almost couldn’t wrap my mind around it, even though I knew that a bullet wouldn’t do much damage to a vampire.