Bitten to Death

She doesn’t want to face the truth, replied my Inner Bitch from her favorite bar stool. Every time she gets close to someone, she starts a fight. Then she doesn’t have to.

Can we stop the ego gossip, please? I begged. This is not about me. This is about . . . well, shit, now I’ve forgotten. Let’s hope the vamp remembers.

Niall took his time cleaning Trayton’s wound before he said, “The Weres are not, have never been mine to destroy. Not until . . .”

“Until Disa showed up?”

“Oh, she’s been here since the mid-1800s. But she was just someone to be pitied back then. She kept her ambitions, and her powers, hidden until quite recently. By then it was too late for us to stop her. Though we did try.”

Trayton moaned and Niall put a hand on his forehead. He quieted immediately.

“So why didn’t she just off the Weres when they went wild in the dining room?”

“I suppose she didn’t move against them because you were there,” he said. “You’d already made it clear that Hamon had bound us to lawfulness during the negotiations. And she couldn’t endanger the Trust.”

“Maybe she thought you should be able to control them.”

“I did try. But once the original hold is broken, it’s difficult to weave a new one, especially when the Were is infuriated and hurt. And so we did nothing.” He winced. “Which meant we had to sacrifice one of our own. Disa felt it was worth it. After all, he was one of the Trust’s least important members.” Niall sounded like he was trying to convince himself.

Trying to maintain that loyalty to something bigger. I guess I can see that. But to the point where you’re rationalizing deaths and subverting your cantrantia? I gotta know more about this little woman who always gets her way. “How did Disa become part of the Trust?” I asked.

“You mean you don’t know?”

I shrugged. “Why should I?”

Niall snorted. “Because Vayl is the one who brought her here.”

Chapter Nine

I’m not psychic, but sometimes I get these feelings. Like once the phone rang and I knew I’d be happier if I didn’t answer it. But I did anyway. It was my Granny May, calling to tell me my mother, her daughter, had just died of a massive heart attack. Granny May didn’t last long after that, proving once again that parents should never outlive their children.

Now I realized I should let the details of Disa’s arrival into the Trust remain in the Blissful Ignorance drawer of my life file. It would have no bearing on the mission. Might even make it tougher to pull off. But I had to ask. “Vayl was here before Disa?”

Niall avoided looking at me. But, oh, I could feel the eagerness radiating off him. Like an old lip-wagger who’s trying to figure out if spreading her juicy morsel during the church service will count against her in the afterlife. “Long before.”

“Why did he bring her in?”

Niall looked around the suite, went to the hall door to make sure it was locked, and came back to sit on the bed beside Trayton. I drew the chair up beside it.

“Has Vayl told you about his sons?” he asked after we’d settled in.

“Yeah.” Hanzi and Badu had been the only surviving children of his eighteenth-century marriage to his fellow Roma Liliana. The boys’ murders had sparked their parents’ turning, Vayl’s revenge on the farmer who did the killing, and his endless search for their reincarnated souls.

Niall said, “In 1857, right around this time of year in fact, Vayl heard of a Seer who had gained great renown among the literati of Athens. He wouldn’t rest until he’d met with her and asked if she could feel the presence of his sons’ souls, either in the netherworld or here, on earth.”

“I imagine he was pretty excited.”

Niall leaned forward, got rid of a small bubble of silver. They’d slowed to a dribble, leaving Trayton to rest easier, though he’d gone as pale as his vampire nurse. “He was practically babbling with glee. Some of us thought he’d taken some bad blood he was so changed from his usual quiet demeanor.” Which would have been worse in April, the anniversary of the deaths of his sons.

“So he went to Athens?” I asked.

“Often. Every week for half a year. And all the time his behavior became more and more erratic. Great highs when he would laugh and dance and demand huge parties. Intense lows when he’d hunt the streets alone, endangering himself and the entire Trust.”

“What was he hunting?” I asked through lips that had suddenly gone dry.

“We eat to live,” Niall said flatly. “But even then we preferred willing donors. It is better to coexist than merely survive, yes?”

I might have nodded, but I wasn’t feeling quite connected to my head anymore, so I couldn’t be absolutely sure. “So Vayl went hunting for unwilling donors?”

“Precisely. People who would not be missed. Those whom other humans would prefer to be rid of. He would take on entire gangs of street thugs, come back bloodied and beaten, but still be triumphant. Then he would return to Athens.”

“What happened in the end?”

“He began to suspect Disa had not the second Sight she claimed. He asked me to come along with him to help