“You know, your mother was mouthy too,” Draco said softly, turning his dark eyes to me. “She didn’t stay that way for very long.”
Fire erupted in my belly. “What do you know about my mother?”
Yes, I was angry, but not because this bastard had killed her. Okay, I was totally pissed that he’d killed her, but what bugged me more was that he knew she had a smart mouth. Even I didn’t know that. I didn’t remember my mother, which was fucking weird since I was nine when she disappeared, but my father had never been around long enough to talk about her. I felt like her memory had died somehow, and I mourned the loss of knowledge.
“I know that you look awfully like your mother, except I think you have your father’s nose. She was also very adept with a crossbow.”
A crossbow? “I don’t understand.”
Faline finally brought the town car into land and shut off the engine. “Your parents were members of Rogue Faction,” she threw casually over her shoulder, then got out. I blinked, then blinked once more before my eyes dried out. Had she just said Rogue Faction? Who in the actual fuck were they? She opened the passenger door and reached in, pulling me unceremoniously out of the car. I landed with a thud on the pea gravel.
“Watch it,” I growled, indicating the tiny pebbles under my ass. “This shit gets into every crevice, especially into the tread of shoes. How annoying is that sound on tiled floors?”
Faline’s glower told me she didn’t agree, but I maintained my opinion. Draco was already moving with a preternatural, almost gliding grace up the stairs and into the foyer of the house. Faline hauled me up and shoved me hard up the stairs. I stumbled, going down onto one knee. The resounding pop echoed around the marble foyer I landed in, and pain streaked through the joint. She picked me up, forcing me to march forward. Every step was agony as the joint threatened to give way.
“I don’t suppose I can get some ice?” I asked.
“You’ll be lucky to survive the night,” she replied.
I tried to ignore her words, but the way my stomach twisted into a hard knot said my brain didn’t believe it.
She pushed me down the basement steps, not bothering to catch me as I fell. I tumbled, falling hard on my right shoulder, the same one that was still healing from when my truck got totaled. Biting my lip, I kept the scream in until blood flooded my mouth. I spat it onto the floor of the landing, glowering defiantly at Faline as she stepped behind me.
“Oops,” she said.
I’d give her oops. I shuffled around until I was on my knees, well, just one knee. I held the other one off the ground, since the pain was too much to bear if there was any weight on it.
“What are you going to do to me?”
She looked over my shoulder, and I followed her gaze, sucking in a gasp when I saw what was there. On a raised platform that looked like a metal table you found at a vet clinic, was a coffin. Its polished red-brown mahogany surface reflected back the bare bulb hanging overhead. I swallowed.
“Is that where Lover Boy sleeps?” I asked, hoping she didn’t hear the shake in my voice.
“No. That’s where you’re going to sleep. Forever.”
She physically picked me up this time, threw open the casket’s lid, and dumped me facedown into the cold white satin. My panic was instant. It felt like barbed wire was winding around my chest, squeezing tighter and tighter with every beat of my heart. My shoulder throbbed in time with my pulse, my knee an accompanying base line. With my elbows locked and both shoulders screaming at the position, I knew I was going to have to get some serious chiropractic help after I got out here.
“Why are you doing this, Faline?” I asked when I was sure my breath was steady. “I thought we were friends.”
Her responding laugh was derisive. “Oh, that’s so sweet. You thought that, huh?”
“Yes,” I ground out. “Why?”
“Because of who you are.” Draco’s voice sounded far away, but as he spoke, it got closer. “Because you are the last of your lineage.”
“Last of what lineage?”
“Your parents’ marriage was the linking of the two strongest Rogue Faction blood lines in the world, and your birth was a physical manifestation of that that link. You have so much power flowing inside your veins, but you have no idea how to harness it.”
I choked down his words, finding them sharp and uncomfortable. “I’ve never heard of an organization called Rogue Faction before.”
“That’s because I’ve made it my job for the last five years to eradicate every single last one of them,” he screamed suddenly, losing the face of his civility.
I turned my face on the satin pillow to looked at him as he stood over the casket.
He leaned it and whispered conspiratorially, “This is where you say, ‘You’ll never get away with this.’”
“I’m not misquoting Scooby-Doo for you,” I replied, sucking in a hiss when my shoulder screamed at the shift in position. “You made all the baby vampires. Why?”
He smiled, flashing his fangs. “To draw you out, to see what you were made of. I wanted to know whether you were a worthy adversary like your father was… before I killed him. Did you know he begged me not to kill you after I was done with him? He begged me and begged me to let you go, to live. He also promised he’d leave the Faction if I let you both go. That he’d disappear with you and I’d never hear from him again.”
A tear squeezed from the corner of my eye. “Why are you telling me this?”
“Because I want you to know that about him before I kill you like he killed my kiss.”
So, this is why he was doing this. “How many did he kill?”
“All of us,” he
