Blood Magic by Laken Cane

Chapter Sixteen

“I knew you had an ulterior motive,” I said.

“Just one motive of many.” He sighed. “Ms. Silver, I have no plans to hurt you. And this coven would be much better off with me as its master.”

“I believe you know more than you’re telling me,” I told him.

“Not about the shading,” he said. “There’s a lot we need to learn, but I’m afraid I do not hold the answers. I can only point you toward those who might.”

“I will call the number tomorrow.”

“I would like you not to mention my name,” he said.

I cocked an eyebrow. “I’m not stupid, Bastien.”

I’d seen them in the ground. I knew what these vampires did to each other. I would not mention his name. And even as I was thinking of protecting him, I wondered why I was.

He opened another set of doors which led into a small foyer. Along one wall was a bank of lockers. He opened one and gently pulled out a red feathered mask which he handed to me. “Put this on, Ms. Silver. It will protect your identity.”

“Do you expect me to believe the vampires don’t have cameras all over this place?” I asked, incredulous.

“Of course there are cameras,” he said. “But no one will see a reason to go through them until you are long gone.” He shrugged. “And if you behave, not even then.”

“They won’t smell my…”

“Your wolf? No. They would only catch your scent if you were bleeding, if you had fed them, or if you’d had sex with them. Somehow, I do not believe any of those things will happen here tonight.”

“Or ever,” I said, “except maybe for the bleeding part.”

“You will not do that either,” he murmured, “as long as I am here.”

For a moment I said nothing. “How did you know about my wolf?” I asked, finally, but then, abruptly, I understood. My eyes widened. “Because you tasted me,” I whispered. “The night I pulled you from the ground. You deliberately tasted me, and now…what? You know what’s inside me? You know my scent?” I was horrified. And I was regretful. I should not have gotten so close to a newly freed vampire. I’d known better. “I saved you, and you repaid me by biting me.”

He said nothing, neither denied nor admitted, and he certainly didn’t apologize. At the end of the hallway waited a bouncer in a small room, and he nodded at Bastien when we approached him. He barely glanced at me before shoving open a pair of smaller doors, and then, Bastien took my arm, and he would not let me jerk away. He pulled me into a whole new world.

Not everyone wore a mask. Only the humans. At least that was what I assumed. And there were many of them. Suddenly, I was questioning everything I thought I had known. There were humans in this room. And they knew about the vampires.

“Who are they?” I whispered. “Who are these humans?”

“Law enforcement,” he murmured. “Governmental agencies, hospitals, every occupation, every age, both rich and not so rich. All beautiful,” he said, then added dryly, “To a vampire, all humans are beautiful on the inside.”

“How did I not know this?” I looked around the room, which was similar to the room upstairs only less noisy, darker, and more richly appointed. And as we walked I saw humans willingly feeding vampires. Humans with masks who were completely naked, some wearing only collars, some having sex, with vampires and with each other…

How could I not have known?

“We all keep our secrets, Ms. Silver,” he told me. Maybe there was a little pity in his voice. “You have been out of the supernatural world for a very long time, even if you did not think you were.”

He knew everything about me. Obviously, he knew everything about me. I didn’t know how or why, and it didn’t really matter. It was enough that it was true.

I was dizzy suddenly and overwhelmed with anger, frustration, sadness even. Mostly at and for myself. To say I was confused was an understatement.

I had known nothing. I wondered if Remy had a clue. I wondered if any of the humans down here were people I knew.

“We must eat,” he told me gently. “And we do not all abduct and shade humans, or snatch homeless people and runaways off the streets, the way you might have thought we did. We have networks. We have friends. There are people who crave our bite. Slowly, the world will come to know us. And when they do, it will be people like this who start it. People like this who stand up for us. People like this who champion our cause. It is not as far off as you might think. And the absolute worst thing would be if men like Frederick Axton show the humans that they had reason to kill us. To hunt us. If they fear us, they will hate us. We must take that fear away.”

“You said you didn’t want such a thing to happen,” I said dully.

“I don’t. But if it must, then we should give it the best chance we can.”

“I want to leave now,” I told him.

“Ms. Silver,” he started.

“I want to leave now,” I said. “I can’t breathe. Get me out of here before I start screaming and don’t stop.” I needed to tear the mask from my face, but I didn’t dare.

“Come,” he said. “We will try again another time.”

“No, we won’t.” God, I was so very angry. I felt betrayed by the humans, though they weren’t even my people. They weren’t my pack. So why did it hurt so much?

I couldn’t wait to get to the car. I burst through the exit doors, gulping in deep breaths of fresh air, and Bastien disappeared. Joe and Remy came to meet me when they saw me rushing toward them, but I didn’t stop to chat. I got into the passenger side of my car.

One of them could drive. I didn’t care who.

“What the hell happened back there?” Joe asked.

“Just get me out of here,” I said.

Once again, Remy got into the back seat. “Kait, what happened? Did they hurt you? What did you see?”

Honestly, I wasn’t sure how much to tell them. I couldn’t think. But finally, I had to tell someone, so I told them. “There were humans in there,” I said. “Humans who were feeding vampires, willingly feeding them. A lot of humans. They know vampires exist and they are happy about it.”

“Of course there are humans who know about vampires,” Remy said. “Think about it, Kait. I know about vampires and I’m human. Joe knows about them and he’s human. Hell, you know about them, and you’re human. Did you think we were the only ones?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “Of course not. I guess it was just a shock, seeing so many of them. Part of me wants to believe they were mind-controlled. Or else why would they be there, bloody and disgusting with dead vampire fangs and dicks inside them…” I shuddered.

“I hear ya,” Remy muttered.

“There’s more, though,” Joe said. “What else, Kait?”

I absolutely could not tell them that Bastien had bitten me, that he had tasted my blood. I couldn’t tell them that he now knew me better than either of them did. That would be just another of my secret shames. “Bastien said that they are slowly creating a world in which the vampires will be accepted. They’re grooming humans to accept them—all over the world. He believes it will happen sooner than we think. But they are already well on their way. I can’t even imagine.”

And if the world discovered the vampires, they would discover the wolves.

“Would that really be so bad?” Joe asked.

“Yes,” Remy and I said at the same time. It seemed we were doing that a lot.

“As long as they didn’t hurt anybody,” Joe said. “I don’t see why they couldn’t live with the humans in a peaceful way.”

“Joe,” I snapped. “We are right now investigating a case in which a vampire master is controlling the minds of humans and causing them to kill each other.” I shook my head and threw my hands into the air but stopped when I realized I was behaving like Max. “Seriously, Joe. Seriously.”

“Of course some vampires are bad,” Joe said, unflappable. “Just as some humans are bad. You deal with that. You catch the bad guys, and you make sure in whatever ways necessary that they never do it again.” He shrugged. “That’s just my way of thinking.”

“And he is representative of what we will have to deal with when the vampires try to take over the world.” Remy sat back against his seat and stared out the window, silent and moody. I couldn’t blame him. I was feeling a little damn moody myself.

Things were changing. The world was changing.

I didn’t like it even a little bit, but as far as I could tell, there wasn’t a single thing I could do about it.

“On the positive side,” Remy said finally, “by the time vampires become commonplace and accepted, you and I will be long gone from this world and we won’t know a thing about it.”

Maybe you will,I wanted to tell him, but I’m a wolf.And Wolves live a long damn time. Of course, that was only true if I didn’t get attacked by someone who knew what he was doing. Someone like a hunter.

But I had a feeling that when vampires became mainstream, I was going to be right there in the thick of it.