“I found this in the basement when I went to check on the prisoners,” Nate threw Verity onto the bed, the mattress bouncing her a little.
The room he had brought her to was by far more luxurious than her cell and positioned higher in the building. More apartment than room, she decided. There was a small lounge area set before the bed, and an attached bathroom.
The blonde vampire, Jacinta, and another woman she had not seen before, both frowned down at her.
“Alatar’s sister,” Jacinta observed. “By reputation.”
“Caught trading with the enemy,” Nate supplied.
“That is a lie,” Verity protested. “I was walking towards the city when the gargoyles spotted me.”
“This is the healer,” Jacinta said to the other woman.
“Ah,” the woman was dressed in the black uniform. “So, why do we have the pleasure, Nate?”
“She got free of the cells,” Nate pointed out. “I couldn’t very well return her to them.”
All three vampires stilled, their heads angling upwards in unity, as if listening to something she could not hear. They were still and silent for so long Verity wondered if she’d missed a statue spell being cast. She looked from one to the other, watching for some sign off life.
She saw the blonde woman take a breath, and Nate swallowed.
“I will go,” Rebecca decided, answering something unspoken between the three. When she moved, it was so fast that Verity exclaimed, her hair lifting in the vacuum, and her eyes failing to track the woman to the door in any more detail that a blur.
“Wow,” Verity said. “She is so fast.”
The two remaining vampires looked at her and then each other. Jacinta arched her eyebrows. “What do you want me to do with her?” She sneered. “You should take her to your room and f-k her into submission.”
“I don’t do humans,” Nate replied. “Too fragile.”
“She is a healer,” Jacinta pointed out. “That makes her not human.”
“I am happy with human,” Verity decided. “I am really, really human like. Extremely fragile.”
The door opened and Rebecca returned. “He wants to see her.”
“Who is he?” Verity wondered as Rebecca tugged her up from the bed and across the room.
They stepped out into the hallway, this one was lushly carpeted and had artwork that Verity was almost certain was original. The elevator took a moment to open, and Rebecca selected the top floor, which was only the level above.
When they stepped out, two armoured and armed soldiers turned their guns to them and then relaxed. Rebecca didn’t acknowledge them, dragging Verity between them to the door. She knocked and then opened it.
If the room below was luxurious, this one was opulent in size and appointment, from the furniture to the curtains. A dark-haired man in a suit was on the phone, looking out the window. Double doors opened into a bedroom, where a blonde man was sprawled half-dressed face down on the bed.
A woman walked out the bathroom adjoining the bedroom as they entered. Verity recognized her immediately, her eyes sweeping back to the blonde man on the bed and the dark man in the suit by the window.
“Oh, thank f-k,” she shook herself free of Rebecca. “Ashlynn, please, surely you are in contact with Alatar and can verify that I am Verity, his half-sister.”
“I know that Alatar has a half-sister called Verity,” the dark-haired woman searched her face. “But I have never met her. He wasn’t very close with her.”
“Your dad’s pet warlock?” The blonde man rolled onto his side. He was even better looking, Verity decided, in person than on their social media posts.
Ashlynn sat on the bed and leaned back against him. “Dad’s best friend. If you are Verity, who was the love of Alatar’s life?”
Verity had to think. “Tara,” she said hesitantly. “I am his half-sister. We didn’t grow up together. He was already an adult when I was born. I don’t actually know him that well.”
“It is possible,” Ashlynn decided. “That lines up with what I know of him.”
“So,” Elior finished his phone call and stalked across the room to stand before Verity. He was taller than he looked on the social media posts and Verity found his height quite intimidating considering that he was glaring down at her, the red of his Other eclipsing the grey of his eyes. “You are the menace that disrupted an entire afternoon and cost four people their lives.”
“I pulled a fire alarm,” Verity felt her heartbeat begin to race in fear. “I don’t know anything about four people’s lives.”
“Whilst we were evacuating this building for a fire that didn’t exist,” he snarled at her. “Four of my men were attacked. They called for backup, but we were too scattered to organize it in time. They died.”
“I am very sorry for that,” she swallowed back bile. “It wasn’t my intention.”
“What was your intention, exactly?”
“To get the guards away from that place in the basement, so that I could free those people.”
“The people we have taken prisoner because of their crimes against us?” Elior’s nostrils flared.
“People being tortured,” she held his eyes.
“Because of their crimes against us,” he had not raised his voice the entire conversation, he did not need to, his tone was icy enough that she felt her skin react, the hair standing on end.
“People in pain,” she breathed it, her fear strangling her voice.
“Saints preserve us from wannabe do- gooders,” Elior’s disgust was visible. “What am I going to do with you? I can’t kill you as apparently your blood has some use to us.”
“Set me free,” she whispered. “Please. I will come back every week and donate blood, I promise, but please, set me free.”
“If I have my way,” Elior replied. “You will never know freedom again. Take a crate up to Nate’s room. He brought her in, he can keep her. She can stay in the crate whenever he is not in the room.”
“People think that you are a hero,” a tear fought its way free and slipped down Verity’s face. “If they knew what you really were…”
“And what am I?” He demanded.
“A monster in a suit.”
The corner of his lip curled up. “I have never struck a woman in anger,” he told her quietly. “I am not about to start today as tempting as it might be. Get her out of my sight and tell Nate to keep his new pet out of my way.”
Rebecca grabbed her arm and turned so quickly that Verity’s feet slid out. She strode out of the room and past the armoured guards, and into the waiting elevator. As the doors closed, Rebecca glanced down at her and arched an eyebrow. “You certainly know how to make enemies.”
“He is an awful man.”
“He is a man who carries the weight of the world on his shoulders,” Rebecca corrected. “He is a tired, stressed, overworked and underappreciated man, whose every day is hounded by people who want to kill him. But,” she added as she opened the door into the room. “You are lucky that you caught him on a good day, or he might have ripped you into many small pieces.”