Prince of Power (25 page)

Her stomach lurched and her vision swam. “I can't think about that right now. I know we need to, but I'm so overwhelmed.”

He gathered her into his arms and sank with her onto the sofa. Somehow, she'd managed not to really think about it until that very moment, but what if Anton wasn't truly safe there? She didn't want to believe that vampires in their own midst would kill without cause.

It was possible, though, wasn't it? Anything was. Maybe believing that they could make things work between them—that they could find peace here together—only made her a fool.

Anton held on to Tyra until his muscles ached and long past that. Until the dawn cast the room in a warm glow, and then the sun streamed in full force and Tyra's skin started to radiate a little more than seemed strictly healthy. Her body was exhausted and limp against him, but her eyes were sharp and angry. She was doing the math and coming around to the same answers he had.

Maybe admitting that they wanted to be together wasn't enough.

“We should close the blinds,” he said.

“I've been alive for more than a century, Anton. I know how much sunlight I can handle.”

He stiffened and pulled away. They were both exhausted and frustrated, and Anton, for one, was freaking starving. Maybe vampires could get away with not eating very often, but he sure couldn't. And frankly, he'd gotten spoiled having a hot dinner every day in that homeless shelter. “You got any food in here?”

That seemed to upset her apple cart. “God, of course. I can't believe I didn't think to offer you food.” She followed him into the kitchen area. “What are you in the mood for?” She got busy grabbing pots and pans in the way she seemed to do everything else. Cool and efficient, with a cauldron of God-only-knew-what bubbling below the surface.

Anton shrugged. “Anything. I don't actually remember when I last ate. Hell, I'd go for that fucking beef-and-cabbage shit at the shelter. I'm so hungry I'd even go for some of the slop I used to get growing up.”

He was flooded by memories of his father. Not only the food, which was no big deal, really. It was usually some kind of mediocre crap, though occasionally if his father was very pleased, it was something hot and tasty, because it didn't take much to perk those idiots up and keep them in line.

But somehow, remembering the food brought all of it back. For a moment his vision went dark and he gripped the edge of Tyra's stove for balance. It had a slick, shiny surface, but then Tyra was there, and she was warm and solid against him. It didn't cease to amaze him how she could be no bigger than he was in size but could still hold his body in her arms as if he was that little girl sleeping in her guest room. He found he didn't mind it as much as maybe he ought to.

Sort of like before, when he'd realized it kind of rang his bell a little to be with a woman strong enough to fuck him up. Having that same woman hold and comfort him was extremely gratifying as well.

“Anton.” Her hand brushed across his cheek.

“Don't do that,” he murmured. “I'm probably filthy.”

“Do you think I care about that? Here.” She pulled him to the floor and they sat together on a small, shaggy area rug in front of the stove. She reached into a nearby cabinet that seemed to turn in a circle like some little embedded carousel and pulled out a box of Kudos bars. “This okay for now?”

He ripped one open and took a bite. “Mmm. Is it okay if I eat the whole box?”

She laughed. God, what a beautiful laugh. And he had brought so much darkness into her world. Who would have thought you could bring darkness into a vampire's life? He shook his head a little. This needed to be about more. Not about survival and defeating wizards so that she and her kind could be safe. It had to be about living. And laughter. He needed to find a way to help her do more of that. Those thirty seconds of laughter alone had erased twenty years from her face.

Her face got a little more serious, but she smiled and snatched a granola bar from the box. “I was thinking. There's a vampire community in DC we could look into. Georgetown. Very hip area. City. The family owns some townhouses over there, I think. Maybe if we weren't here on the estate, things wouldn't be so tense.”

Ah, damn. He put a hand on her knee. “Tyra, you need to be with your family. You're going to want to fight.”

She bit her lip. “I still could. We patrol those areas. It's not as active. Most of the vampires are here in Ash Falls so most of the wizards are too, but it doesn't mean we don't still have problems in the District. And when we do, they're worse because it's more densely populated with humans.”

His gut clenched. “You'd hate that, wouldn't you?”

She shrugged. “Less action? Maybe. But…” She shrugged her shoulders. “It's something to think about. I don't like the idea that any of us are unsafe here on the estate.” She pressed her lips together and bounced the balls of her feet a little. A nervous tic, the feet. “I'm worried most about Thad, actually. He didn't say it, so I don't know if he hasn't thought it or he just didn't want to call it out, but what if someone living here at the estate feels strongly enough that he was wrong to let you stay and tries to harm him for it?”

Anton's heart hammered. He hadn't thought of that. Shit, even he knew these guys would be screwed without their leader. Thad had been part of the point in taking out his father.

Anton closed his eyes for a second and let everything tumble in his head. Tyra seemed content to let him chew on his thoughts, and God bless her for it. What were they going to do? He didn't want to make Tyra give up the home that she loved, but they couldn't be looking over their shoulders on the estate all the time, either.

Finally, he opened his eyes. If Thad was willing to go along with it, he had an idea that might work. “Okay, here's what I think we need to do.”

***

The tunnel door leading into Xander's old home was rusty from disuse, and it groaned in protest when he pushed it open. Except for the vaguely musty air that came from the home having been closed for so many months, it lay very much in wait for its owners to return. He almost opened his mouth to apologize for neglecting it.

After Tam's death, he hadn't been able to return, and then he'd been surfing the couch at Theresa's house. The bed in the bedroom was still unmade. He wandered through the small dwelling, oddly afraid to disturb anything in what he had once thought of as his own little castle. Now he was a stranger in his own home.

Even as he insisted to himself that he didn't want to look at the note she'd left for him that night, he was almost magnetically drawn to it. It lay askew near the leg of the dining room table on the beige carpet where he'd dropped it, taped to a CD case. Some human singer he'd never heard of: Matt Alber.

He opened the card as he had before. It took effort not to brace himself for the impact of the cold terror that swept through him as he read her apology.

Xander, I'm so sorry we've been fighting so much lately, my love. I found this song and thought of us—track 5—please listen, I think you'll get it. I love you. I'm in this forever, and I'm still holding on until the end. Went out to get lingonberry crepes from IHOP. We can have a snack and talk when you come back from patrol. And we can fix this. I know we can. We always do.

And that night he'd dropped the whole thing right there and run for the door, even though he'd known it was too late. Her death had shot through his veins like lightning, and he would need only to close his eyes to live it all over again. It was one of the reasons he didn't sleep as much these days. Even vampires had to sleep with their eyes closed.

He turned the CD over now and scanned the track list. “End of the World,” he read aloud. It seemed appropriate. For Xander that night, it nearly had been.

He dropped the disk into the CD player on the bookshelf. Its clock blinked 12:00, because at some point the power had gone out and nobody had been around to take care of things. A beautiful piano melody and a melodic voice filled the room. He sat on the couch and hugged a pillow to his chest. Pottery Barn, because Tam had loved that place and pretty much everything in their home had been ordered from there.

Her constant Internet shopping had been one of their sources of ongoing bickering. Not that they couldn't afford it so much as that he hated the clutter and saw it as wasteful. Now he would gladly go back in time and let her have as many faux fur throws as she wanted from that damned store, if only he could.

The voice on the CD was lamenting about squeezing out every moment before the end, and suddenly the dam burst. Xander buried his face in the pillow and sobbed quietly. Had they? Fuck, had they? There had been a lot of passion, but he and Tam had fought like cats and dogs. He had loved her but he had spent so much time angry, too. And now it seemed like it had all been such a waste. What if he hadn't tried hard enough?

How had they gone from being so in love at the beginning to being so furious all the time? And once mated, vampires rarely split up, which given their long lifespan… well at the time, it had started to seem suffocating to him. And now…

The song ended, and Xander crossed the room, punching the “Track Repeat” button. He stood in the dining room and made a slow circle.

The song played again, and he did understand what Tam had wanted him to hear that night. She would have continued to fight for them. Though there was never going to be any way to know, he'd like to believe that he would have hung on, too. He shook his head and ignored the tears that rolled down his face. In many ways, she had been far stronger than he had.

But now?

He walked to the CD player again and punched the “Stop” button, grabbed a slightly dusty tissue from a dispenser on the living room end table, and blew his nose. The house, all two thousand square feet of it, suddenly closed in on him like it wanted to expel him from the premises. He started for the tunnel door to head back to Theresa's.

He paused to take one final look from the basement door. There was nothing he wanted to take. The thing about sentimental mementos was that sometimes they only caused more pain. He had enough of that to last him a lifetime. He'd ask if someone could handle clearing it out for him, and surely someone else could use the place.

The door closed with a creak and a thud behind him. “Bye, Tam.” His quiet whisper echoed in the dimly lit corridor.

So where did this leave him? Hopefully, Theresa wouldn't need him much longer. Guess this made him another homeless schlub hanging out in the barracks again. He ambled slowly back toward Theresa's. Maybe he could get off guard duty soon. Being there didn't feel right anymore, either.

Tyra swung the heavy duffel over her shoulder and motioned to the small figure next to her. “Come on, keep your head down and stay close to me.”

The girl nodded and pulled the strings tight on her hoodie.

Anton stepped up to the door. “Do me a favor and let me go first.”

Tyra sighed. “Anton, we talked about this.”

His cheeks hollowed like maybe he was biting the insides of them. “Exactly. If anyone tries to do a smash-and-grab tonight, they are going to be angling for me and I want to give them an easy target.” He pointed to the other duffel, still lying by her feet. “Now come on, we already laid all this out. Don't go trying to change the game plan now. Hand me the bag.”

She hefted the bag of rocks. “Here. You sure this will be enough to take with us?”

“This'll be plenty.” He grunted and slid the strap over his shoulder. “We don't want to weigh ourselves down with too much.” He glanced behind them into the living room. Xander had readily come back to help, as had Zarek, another of the soldiers. “You guys good to go?”

They nodded an affirmative, and Anton pulled open the door. The night air was calm, no storms or snow predicted, and aside from a few random sounds in the distance of life happening on the estate, everything seemed to be business as usual. Anton moved slowly, ears surely pricked as hers were for any signs to the contrary.

Tyra's car, a graphite Outlander, sat in the driveway looking like home base for a game of tag. In theory, all they needed was to get to it and get inside, and they could ride out of there. The plan was to check out one of the clan townhouses in the city to see if it would meet their needs… Tyra sighed. She'd just started down the stairs, a paler, smaller hand clasped in hers, when the quiet “pop” of a silenced shot came from the shadows of a neighboring house—the new tattoo artist's—and Anton staggered backward. A second shot hit her upper arm and her vision colored with the same dark shade that had quickly bloomed over the shoulder of his white Redskins sweatshirt.

Tyra squeezed the hand she was holding. “Get inside. Now. Xander!” She ran toward the shots. They could go ahead and try to shoot her; it would be hard to do once she'd ripped their arms off. A tangle of thorns grabbed at her clothing. Of course it would be a thorny bush.

Fangs sank into her forearm but she managed to get her hands in a mass of hair, enough to stun the vampire by hitting the back of his head against the brick of the house behind him. They both tumbled to the ground and rolled through a stinging, nasty, prickly mess before she managed to get a knee between the legs and—yep, definitely a male. Not that such a move didn't hurt females plenty too, but that was definitely a male response.

“Fuck.”

Moonlight glinted on a shiny object nearby. The gun.
Get
the
motherflipping
gun, Ty.
Apparently great minds thought similarly, because her opponent wriggled and shimmied, flipping in an effort to go after the weapon at the same time. A long ponytail caught under her knee.

Tyra pressed her lips together and lunged forward, using the hair as a kind of leash. Knee planted in the small of the older male's back, she pulled up enough on the ponytail that the moonlight illuminated the face of Elder Grayson.

Behind her there was shuffling and talking. Someone—Xander, sounded like—was talking on his phone. Probably reporting in to Thad. Why the hell weren't they helping out here?

“What the hell are you doing, sir?”

Elder Grayson's lips peeled back angrily from his lips. His fangs glinted in the moonlight. “You have brought a scourge into this place, and you are going to regret it. Mark my words.”

She stared into the murky hate in his eyes. “Why are you so unwilling to accept that he wants to bring peace for our kind? That maybe he can actually help do that?”

Elder Grayson's face carried the expression of someone who had just smelled something disgusting. “You should not exist in this world, either of you. Our races were not meant to mix. Only trouble can come from it. Our king is going to bring this race to his knees if he continues this way.”

Dread settled in Tyra's gut. What was this? She'd never heard any vampire speak this way. They were, after all, freaks of nature in their own right. Or enhancements. However one chose to look at it. Vampires were as much a minority race as wizards, perhaps more so, the only difference being that the wizards were unwilling to live and let live. As the humans would be, if the vampires did not keep their existence hidden.

But really… to say that they were abominations? That sounded like some kind of Sunday-morning human televangelist special, not the kind of enlightened thinking she'd come to expect from her kind. Sure, Elder Grayson was one of their oldest but…

She shook her head. Xander hung up his phone, and Zarek stood by holding a pair of titanium cuffs. Off to the side, Alexia had pulled off her hoodie and was helping Anton bandage his arm. He was alert and talking, and the other bullet had hit the vest he was wearing, thank God. Nothing life threatening. She didn't have to kill anyone after all. She maintained her kneeling position on Elder Grayson. Disrespectful, sure, but she didn't dare let him up.

Tyra frowned at Zarek. “Thanks for the help, you guys.”

The two males shrugged and smirked, murmuring lame excuses on the order of “You had it all under control” and “We didn't want to interrupt.”

Uh-huh.

Zarek stepped forward. “I'll take it from here. Xander told Thad we'd be bringing Elder Grayson up to the house to talk to him.”

She nodded and sighed, suddenly completely wiped out. As soon as Zarek had his hands on the old male, she ran to Anton and butted her forehead against his.

“I'll, uh, leave you two alone,” Alexia whispered. “Go back to the main house and check on Selena.”

“Thanks, Lex,” Tyra said. “Do me a favor and call one of the docs, will you?”

Anton shook his head against hers. “I don't need a doctor. I'm fine.”

Tyra didn't watch or listen for a response from the small human, though. She closed her eyes and rested against Anton for a moment, waiting for her heart to stop racing.

***

Ivy must have been a far stronger female than she looked. Then again, hell probably had no fury like a female whose father had just been frog-marched down the hallway in handcuffs. To her credit, she hadn't yelled or screamed, but a steady stream of tears flowed down her face like a faucet that hadn't been turned off all the way.

Thad gave a nod of thanks to Siddoh, whose biceps strained with the effort of holding her back.

Thad looked around the receiving room. It was an inviting room, mostly filled with comfortable furniture and a very large flat-screen television. They used it for small receptions sometimes. His father had used it to receive subjects, and very recently Isabel had done the same thing. Turned out his female was better at giving the folks face time than he was, and boy did he love her for that.

His anxiety was ratchetted high enough without having to settle property disputes and arranged mating problems or whose dog got who else's dog pregnant. No, thank you.

Thad sat in a large, maroon velvet chair, the closest thing that passed for a throne in the place, wishing he could sink into the floor. No part of this role was easy. But this? He hadn't expected to be staring down a member of his own Elder Council for trying to kill a member of the royal family.

Siddoh and Ivy remained at the rear of the room while Elder Grayson was brought forward, and Thad stared the elder vampire down until it seemed the elder vampire ought to have withered to dust right there on the immaculately combed carpet. Finally, Ivy gave up the fight and relaxed in Siddoh's arms, but Siddoh seemed smart enough to keep hold of her. Good.

Thad rubbed his eyes. Nobody in the room had any idea how cold he felt inside. How fast his heart was pounding. How he had no clue what to say. How exhausted he was. Was this what the next nine hundred years were going to be like?

He cleared his throat. “Elder Grayson, I don't think I have to tell you how much it angers me that you and I are facing each other like this. And even more so that you've put me in such an awkward position. You've been a member of the Council in good standing, and Ivy has been a good servant to this household. She meant a lot to my father and she means a lot to me. And only her presence here has kept me from having you sent straight to one of the interrogation sheds to spend the day in contemplation of your actions.” Elder Grayson seemed to have no response for this so Thad continued. “This is an extreme betrayal—”

“Betrayal.” This was barked by Elder Grayson, who suddenly seemed to have woken from his stupor.

Ivy started tugging to get free of Siddoh's grasp again. Not as hard this time but definitely tugging. Bingo. Smart guy, that Siddoh. Just when you thought he was screwing around all the time. Siddoh spoke into her ear, and Ivy stopped her struggles. She relaxed against him, nodding quietly.

Elder Grayson was still cuffed and held by Xander and Zarek, who Grayson paid little attention to. He was busy staring Thad down like his eyes alone might have the power to turn the king to stone.

Thad swallowed.
Like
Isabel
says. Fake it till you make it.
“Elder Grayson. You shot at my sister and her mate on protected vampire property. What the hell would you like me to call it? I'm damned tempted to call it treason.”

Elder Grayson strained a little at his bonds and at the two males holding him. “Your father would be ashamed, Thaddeus. You've lost sight of what is important to this race, allowing a danger like that into our midst.”

Thad didn't allow a single muscle to twitch in his face. The reality? He wasn't sure on any level that he'd handled things properly with Anton. He thought he had. He
hoped
he had. But no way on planet earth would he give outward indication of his doubts. “I think you need to take a long, hard look in the mirror before making such statements. You endangered the lives of our kind in your own right this evening. And in a far more insidious way.” He looked up to Xander and Zarek. “I want him in holding until tomorrow.”

Siddoh's eyebrows jumped, which was probably the closest he would come to questioning Thad's actions. Siddoh's observation was astute; the punishment wasn't much, given the circumstances. Thad had needed to take swift action of
some
kind, but he wasn't certain yet what course of action was best. He didn't know of anything like this happening before in their history.

Realistically, the vampires had never been known to shelter a member of an enemy race. Never had one of their own attacked a member of the royal family from inside. On the surface, it could be argued that Elder Grayson's motives were to uphold the greater good, but… Thad tapped his finger against his upper lip. When he factored the male's actions from the Elders' Council meeting? Something was rotten in Ash Falls.

Siddoh leaned down to Ivy as her father was led past. “Come on, sweetheart, why don't we go to the kitchen for some tea?” Ivy brushed the tears from her face and nodded. Lee had stepped in for a bit and locked his intense aqua-colored eyes on Thad for a beat before he nodded slightly and filed out behind the prisoner.

Thad waited until the room was empty before he allowed his head to drop backward onto his shoulders. The Council meeting. The attack on Tyra. Was Elder Grayson acting alone or was this a larger conspiracy? The stamped stucco looking back held no answers for him.

That stare from Lee. He'd known Thad's suspicions. Shared them. Thad trusted his best friend and guard with his life. A threat from their own kind was far more dangerous than a wizard in their midst ever could be. Together, he and Lee would find a way to get answers.