Ignoring the sick feeling in the pit of my stomach, I asked, “Did she say what happened?”
“She collapsed before they could get it out of her.”
“Where is she now?”
“In the hospital.”
I stood. “Great, let’s go.”
“She’s in a coma and is currently unresponsive.”
“Shit,” I whispered, my heart plummeting to my toes. I sank back into the chair. “Tell me what happened from the beginning.”
“There’s not much to tell. She apparently stumbled into the precinct asking for you. When they told her you no longer worked there, she got agitated. She mentioned there were others, and that you were supposed to help them, then she collapsed.”
Frowning, I asked, “Are you sure you heard right? She said that I was supposed to help them?”
He nodded. “That’s what I was told.”
“Who contacted you?”
He paused, his nose flaring as if he smelled something rotten, then said, “Officer Gonad made the call.”
Great, it would have to be him. Gonad hated me, not because of Mick’s death, but because he made a mistake, was put in a position where he felt helpless, and couldn’t handle the humiliation. He was pissed that I got transferred instead of fired and was making it his life’s mission to bad-mouth me to anyone who would listen.
“I’m out. Let someone else handle it.” It sickened me to give it up, but if it meant not having to deal with that idiot, so be it.
He sighed again. “Believe me; I would if I could.”
“Wow, thanks for the vote of confidence.” The asshole at the end was implied.
“You’ve come a long way, Diana, but we both know you’re not ready to tackle something this big, and trust me when I say this is big.” At my questioning look, he explained. “Shortly after I hung up with Gonad, I got a call from Tobias—he’s Zacharias Wylde’s right-hand man. He said the woman in the coma belongs to Zacharias. They would like our two offices to work together on the matter. When I told Tobias I would be the one handling it, he shut me down. Zacharias wants you, and he wants to meet with you tonight.”
A sense of trepidation rolled through me. Working with Zacharias Wylde was like being a lowly analyst and having the head of the FBI call you in on a case. Tymon was right; I wasn’t ready for this.
As if reading my mind, which I was pretty sure he could do, he said, “You are not in this alone. I told Tobias that I would be helping from the sidelines. I need you to trust that I’ve got your back, that we all have your back. Do you think you can do that?”
Five months ago, the answer would have been no. The only person I trusted was Mick, but things had changed. Tymon had kept his promise to me. Each time I managed to stop him from frying my brain, he’d praised me with information. I’d learned that Lenora Moreau was born in the 1800s to a wealthy French family. At the age of seventeen, she married a French count. She was turned sometime in her late twenties, but Tymon didn’t know the specific details on how she became a vampire. He talked about the coalition, which took place fifteen or so years ago when a group of men—all of them human—accidentally stumbled into a shifter bar. When asked to leave, they put up a fight. It was a lose-lose situation, and they got their asses handed to them. Two nights later, they went back to that same bar and killed every shifter inside the place. It wasn’t the first time something like this had happened. A year or so prior to that, a man was refused entry into an underground blood club. Blood clubs were places where vampires were allowed to feed freely on humans. Enraged at being denied entrance, the man and some of his buddies went back to the club after closing and torched it. The twenty or so vampires still inside the place all perished. A week later, the guy and his four buddies vanished. The incident caused an uproar, and relations were strained between humans and vampires after that.
A year later, when those men walked into that bar and killed all those shifters, it was like pouring gasoline on an already blazing fire. It was a declaration of war—a war in which, no matter how you sliced it, we could not win. When powerful players in the supernatural community came forward and demanded that our government take action, the coalition was formed. For us to peacefully exist alongside each other, there would need to be rules, laws, and regulations put into place. Alphas in the shifter communities came together peacefully and divvied up lands, while vampires split into territories. Each territory was to be governed by a Lord. The United States was divided into North, South, East, and West. I already knew all of this, but it was interesting hearing Tymon’s take on it. What I didn’t know was how a vampire Lord was chosen. According to Tymon, a vampire Lord was determined by three things: age, strength, and cunning. Lenora, who at that time was living with her seethe in Alabama, decided she wanted to be Lord of the South. Unfortunately for her, so did Zacharias Wylde. Tymon didn’t know much about Zacharias, other than that he was originally from Europe and had relocated to Charleston in the early 1900s. Rumor had it, Zacharias challenged Lenora for the position. The day before the challenge was to take place, she got cold feet and called it off, which meant that Zacharias won by default.
Three years later, Lenora relocated her seethe to Charleston. Tymon suspected it was to pester Zacharias. Not long after that, Zacharias established the Paranormal Human Division. This meant that he was essentially my boss, or rather, my boss’s boss. After learning all of this, I had two questions: Who was Zacharias
