His hands tightened around me. “You don’t have a say in that shit, Isla. Because you might not take your life, or your death, seriously, but I sure as fuck do. Considering it’s mine too. So I’ll take it as seriously as anything I ever have in my years on this planet.”
Duncan made a gagging sound. With a flick of Thorne’s wrist, a knife went hurtling through the air. He didn’t take his eyes off me.
Duncan let out a string of curses. “Why do people keep throwing fecking knives at me?” he hissed.
“Because you keep existing to piss them off,” I hissed back.
“Oh, it’s not like I’m here, risking undeath and limb or anything, for you assholes.”
I rolled my eyes. “Yeah, right. You’re doing it for a paycheck and a good time. Plus that slayer chick wouldn’t bone you and you’ve got to get your rocks off somehow. What better way than killing an entire Vein Line?”
Duncan’s silence signified my victory.
Thorne’s eyes had still been on me.
“We’ll be fine,” I told him. “We have to be. I’ve got us reservations at Eleven Madison Park on Wednesday. The foie gras is said to be to die for, so let’s wait for that before we perish in this war, okay?” I asked him sweetly.
He yanked me into his embrace, kissing away my words, and maybe his doubts.
But not death.
It was with us, both when we landed and the entire journey through the stark and lifeless landscape of Russia, to the town I used to call home.
Or Hell. Just a little colder than the original.
With worse inhabitants.
Hence Thorne thinking me being used as bait was a “bad idea.”
“It’s the only idea we have,” I told him and his angry eyes. “And the best one.”
“Seconded,” Duncan said from beside me, regarding the house casually. Just another Sunday for him, I guessed.
“You’re not going in alone,” Thorne said, the chill from his words wafting from his mouth in visible puffs.
I frowned at his words and then inwardly frowned at my concern for Thorne and the fact that he was cold.
That wasn’t my problem. He was a grown-ass man, and I was toasty below room temperature, like always, so what did I care?
“We’ve gone over this. I have to go in alone,” I told him. “Sorry, honey, but the ‘meet the parents’ stage of this relationship doesn’t involve me taking you for dinner while my father gently gives you shit about not being good enough for his daughter. For one thing, there’s no way in fuck my father would be gentle when he ripped your limbs off. Plus, they would’ve only thought you were good enough for me if you’d actually gone through with the initial plan and killed me like you’d intended to at the beginning. And there will be dinner—you. Hence the need for you to slip around the back and help witchy and wolfy—who I hate. Have I mentioned that? So, if an unfortunate accident befalls him while you’re battling for your lives, I wouldn’t be crying too much. Or at all. I might be dancing on his grave. You know, if I’m not inside my own. Which I won’t be. Because I’ll be saving your asses,” I said to both Thorne and Duncan.
Thorne hardened his jaw, so much so I was worried it might crack under the force of such a gesture on icy skin. “I can take care of myself,” he gritted. “And you,” he added on an afterthought.
I grinned at him. “Of course you can,” I reassured him, but my tone came off patronizing, as was my default. He didn’t exactly look reassured, but I continued. “And I can’t believe I’m saying it, but less drama at this juncture is preferable. We might still have the element of surprise since we arrived on an unregistered jet and the weather makes it impossible for them to catch your scent.” I regarded the desolate tomb that held the undead remains of my family.
One I hoped, after tonight, would entomb the very dead remains of my family.
“So let’s just make it look like I’m here for tea and a catch-up with the psychopaths while you and Duncan do your part with Sophie and her mangy mutt who are likely already waiting around back. Okay? Good. Great. Catch you on the flipside, motherfuckers.”
I turned around to face the music and hopefully end my parents once and for all.
I purposefully didn’t say goodbye to Thorne or acknowledge that this might be the last time I was seeing him alive.
Because that simply wasn’t an option.
I shrugged off the stiff and uncomfortable sense of foreboding that came with putting my finger on the button which was inside the mouth of an intricately carved depiction of Hades taking up a good portion of the stone beside the wooden double doors.
One had to literally venture into the mouth of the Devil in order to gain entry to this house.
My family.
One thing I got from them—subtlety was not in the Rominskitoff DNA.
Then again, neither was mercy, compassion, the ability to love, and apparently taste as my mother opened the door.
Wearing head to toe green velvet.
Velvet.
“Karl Lagerfeld thankfully declared this trend over, Mother,” I said by greeting, waving my hand up and down at the tight-fitting dress that molded to every inch of her ageless and beautiful body. Her hair, the same red as mine, was chopped harshly to brush her angular cheekbones, helping to give the impression that every inch of her was hard, sharp, able to draw blood. Not just her fangs.
Her ivory face pinched slightly. “Isla,” she said, her accented voice filled with distaste. Then again, that was ever present whenever she talked to me. “What a surprise.”
I smiled. “Well, I missed the last four hundred or so Christmases, so I thought I’d pop in for a chat. Maybe share a glass of blood. I would’ve brought a willing young virgin to share, but Viktor and Evgeni must’ve seen to making sure there are none left of age.” I paused. “Oh, you mean you’re surprised to see me undead, not just at your doorstep presenting you with the stark truth of just how bad your fashion choices are. Right. Yes. You exposed me to the king and then got yourself a seat to my execution, which I bet was as coveted as the runway seat at a Celine show. That’s probably why you’re surprised, is it not?”
Her face remained impassive, but something moved in her eyes. Rage, perhaps. She looked like she wanted to unleash it. I was very tempted to poke at her once more to finally see such a thing happen. In all the centuries I’d had the displeasure of knowing my mother, never once had I witnessed her raise her voice. Or even contort her facial features into a scowl.
The most she did was a slight raise of her brow and perhaps a lip curl of distaste. Otherwise, it was the mask that she had perfected to give the world a show of a beautiful, ageless, red-haired woman with ice white skin, eyes like emeralds, lips like Snow White herself and the body of a pinup girl.
It was only right before you died that you saw Medusa underneath.
Which I guess boded well for me when she stepped back, opening the door fully.
“Come in. We are not uncouth enough to discuss such matters on a doorstep.” She spat the last word as if we were sitting in the gutter sharing sips from a glass bottle in a paper bag.
“Why, thank you for the kind welcome, Mother, especially after you tried to have me executed. Why wouldn’t I want to come into the childhood home in which you tortured me, and I will likely be outnumbered by the entire family that shares my blood and will want nothing more than to spill it over the marble floor that’s warmer than your heart?” I asked with a smile.
The heels of my boots resounded on that marble floor, echoing through the cavernous room that opened to the house of horrors I used to call home.
It may have been centuries old with stone-walled interiors, but it wasn’t exactly cliché vampire trappings with burning torches mounted on the walls for light.
Since electricity was invented, it filled the room via a huge crystal chandelier handing from the high ceiling. The space itself was stark and unwelcoming, a grand staircase which spanned a balcony and spanned off to one set of stair
s on each side. Why have one set when you could have two?
Upstairs were bedrooms, drawing rooms, libraries, and other various well-decorated spaces those of status and decorum boasted in a centuries-old structure.
And then there was the downstairs. The spanning dungeon that stretched completely underneath the structure itself. It was part of the original design. As it should’ve been, I guessed, since my father was the architect.
And what does a newlywed young vampire aristocrat of a noble Vein Line want when building the house for the family he planned on furthering the race with?
Family room? Where the children can play, break each other’s arms, use human limbs as chew toys?
Of course.
Kitchen, where more humans were hung upside down and drained in crystal jugs so fresh blood could be served to all of those at the baby shower?
Definitely.
And a dungeon in which you can imprison your enemies, your friends who turned into enemies, humans for torture and your fifteen-year-old daughter who tried to set the aforementioned humans free once.
Necessity.
Even though there were stacks of stone underneath us, I could hear them. The faltering heartbeats that were weak but racing with fear at the same time.
The perfumed air, done so by one of the many terrified human servants, couldn’t disguise the metallic twang of blood, nor the bitter stench of death.
Then again, death was Mother’s perfume of choice.
She walked into the middle of the sprawling space before turning on me. “Where is this conversation to take place, Isla? What have you come to do?”
I tilted my head. “Well, since I’m on your turf, you choose. We could always go to the sitting room for tea. I always liked the view of the town and the unyielding and depressing sprawling landscape you lord your terror over. Or we could do the cigar room if we wanted to indulge in some of the harder stuff. You know, I love the many bound books and smell of rich mahogany.” My Anchorman reference went straight over her head, as expected. I idly wished Sophie was there to appreciate it, or at least to zap my mother so she gained three hundred pounds and split out of that criminal dress.
She was there, of course, just not within hearing distance for excellently placed movie references. And it wouldn’t be half as funny when I told her later.
“Or,” I continued, “we could skip all the formalities and go straight to the dungeon where you could finish what you oh-so-gracefully started. You know, my execution?” I said sweetly. “I know you dislike me, Mother, but that was rather intense, even for the woman who arguably was the reason for the Cold War because of a slight at a party.”
Her mouth twitched. “You were sleeping with a slayer, Isla,” she hissed. “An unforgiveable crime to the Vein Line. You’ve always been a disgrace, but that was treason. You were beyond redemption at that point.”
I eyed her. “Or maybe I was redeemed. And that’s the fucking point.”
She laughed, the sound cold and cruel and welcomed by the cold, cruel house. “You are a vampire, Isla. That will never change. Whatever this childish hope is that you are somehow able to be anything else than that is the reason I had to take such measures to shock you back to yourself.”
I gaped at her. “So getting me executed was your way of teaching your wayward daughter a lesson? Some parents just cut their children off financially, perhaps ground them. Or maybe just disown me and let me live my own undeath.”
She blinked at me with a look so full of malice it surely would have stabbed me with something akin to hurt if I had any shred of affection for the reptile who birthed me.
Luckily I wasn’t plagued with that.
Hadn’t been since she killed my husband and every friend I’d ever had and presented me with their corpses.
Or since before then.
Since birth.
“That is not an option,” she hissed. “And execution was never going to happen.” She waved her hand. “That king—though such a title being given to him is blasphemous—is infatuated with you. I witnessed that at the Feast. I knew even treason would not push him to do the duty that the gods themselves put upon him,” she bit out. “His humanity is almost as good as yours. So I knew he would at the most kill the human, and he didn’t even do that.” Her curled lip turned into a grin that brought my blood down in temperature precisely to the same as her heart. “But that was all the better, considering it exemplified his incompetence for the right people and helped our cause. Immensely.”
I blinked at her. “Cause? You’re admitting that you’re part of this idiotic thing Father has headed to reinforce your idiotic belief that you’re better than humans and you’ll rule the earth with bad fashion choices and sadistic pleasures?” I asked.
She gave me a look that was distinctly maternal, perhaps the only one I’d ever had in the entire stretch of my existence. One that looked at a small child with impatience at its stupidity. I knew mothers did that, despite their insistence to the contrary; I’d witnessed enough of humankind to know they did. Children were so frustrating after all. No wonder people shook them.
Mother shook me.
And broke me.
Bled me.
So this was the shaking mother look.
“Don’t act dense, Isla,” she snapped, wandering over to a shaking maid in the corner who could’ve been a statue holding a silver platter had it not been for her accelerated heartbeat that was pursued by terror.
The maid’s eyes bulged slightly at my mother’s approach, but she mustn’t have been new, for she didn’t flinch as Mother snatched a goblet of blood from the tray.
From the maid’s grey pallor and lack of flush skin, I guessed it was her own.
Charming, making the terrified help drain themselves and actually serve their own blood on a fucking silver platter.
“You may do your best to act like a superficial and insipid idiot at every turn, but I know even you have something akin to a brain,” she continued, wandering around the room, inspecting it for specks of dust. I knew she was hoping she could find it, if only to beat a maid or two. She turned, sipping demurely. “I also know that you’ve been investigating like some little character in a horrid human fiction book. Not for your race, or even the king whose reign is running short. No doubt serving your own agenda, as you always have.”
I gaped at her. “You’re accusing me of having my own agenda?” I argued. “Yes, I forgot, you did just get back from your mission in Uganda building wells for children and your extensive work for humankind. I do know how hard you work to make sure this world isn’t too overpopulated and the soil is well fertilized with bodies. That’s how you grow such vibrant roses in the middle of Russia.”
My eyes went to the table in the middle of the room, the ostentatious vase that was always filled with countless bunches of bloodred roses.
Never dead. Always vibrant.
Always.
Through the centuries, that vase of bloodred roses greeted any prisoner, visitor or guest to the Rominskitoff household.
Roses were, after all, the sigil for the house. The beautiful symbol of blood with thorns that were only visible after you got too close.
“Yes, Isla, continue to spout your nonsense,” Mother said blandly. “But your purpose was to end up right here, getting the information you so wished to get so you could run back to your precious king in order to get a sanction to finally grant your revenge. Our death.” Her shrewd eyes inspected me. “That’s all you’ve wished for since that day that human of yours was taken care of, isn’t it?”
I narrowed my own eyes at her, hatred flowing through my veins with white-hot intensity. “‘Taken care of’? The moment you massacred my husband and every other single person I’d come into contact with and liked in my short existence in the sunshine of life before I plunged into the eternal night of undeath? Yes, that may have been what tipped the scale of me purely wanting to escape from you for a lifetime of torture and abuse to actually wanting to exterm
inate you. Or maybe it was the centuries of assassination attempts, of children’s bodies at my doorsteps, of my meathead brothers coming to rip out my heart or ruin valuable sofas. Or perhaps it was the threat of having me raped and impregnated, then killing me after stealing my unborn child.” I paused, my eyes flickering down her body “Or it could be the dress. Pick one.”
She observed me. “It baffles me to see how you came from such noble blood to sully it so with your… humanity,” she spat. “Never have I been more disappointed to have created such a thing.”
“Never have I been so disappointed to be your creation. But I think I’ve improved greatly on the original model,” I hissed. “Now come, Mother, let’s stop with the niceties and you tell me Father’s evil plan, as I’m sure you’re itching to do before you lock me up and torture me.”
She laughed again. “Oh, you think your father is the mastermind of such a complex and brilliant revolution?” she asked incredulously. “His concerns have always been too much with uniting the family instead of the race. Perhaps that is where you got your weakness from, as he’s the reason his golden daughter has managed to escape her deserved fate for the centuries he’s allowed you to run around like a common street vampire.”
I blinked. Father had allowed me to survive? Was him watching and condoning my torture since age five considered compassionate or me being his golden girl? My mind snapped back to the party at Thorne’s the night of the explosion, my father saving me from what would or would not have been a death blow.
“No, your father buries his head as he always has. It is not with him that the brains of the revolution were built. And it will not be him who helps leads the races into the new era where the rightful creatures will take their rightful places.”
I crossed my arms, wishing I’d brought a tape recorder or something. This was a lot of propaganda to try to remember. “If you tell me it was one of my idiot brothers, I’ll fall off my Choos,” I commented dryly. “They likely couldn’t lead a bloodhound to one of their murder scenes, let alone a whole faction of psychopathic supernatural creatures.”
Mother’s eyes narrowed once more. “Your brothers are loyal soldiers to the cause,” she snapped. “But no, they are not leaders.”