Family members make excellent leverage, Rans had said. And, hey, what do you know? It turned out he was right.
“I’m going after him,” I said, looking up at the vampire from my pathetic hunched position on the floor. “With or without you, I’m going to find him and get him back.”
Rans drew breath to speak, but Albigard beat him to it.
“Until I can figure out a way to better disguise your presence in the city, you’re not going anywhere except back to the basement cell,” the Fae stated, clearly unimpressed by my incipient emotional breakdown.
“The fuck I am,” I snarled at him, my anger swirling dangerously.
Rans stepped between us, cutting off my view of Albigard. He crouched in front of me, sitting on his heels, covering my hands with his where they twisted in the fabric of the old quilt.
He was wearing a calm, rational expression that only pissed me off more. I figured I wasn’t going to like what he said next, and—surprise, surprise—I was right.
“We have no way of knowing the circumstances of your father’s disappearance, Zorah, and the moment you start poking around and asking the wrong kinds of questions to the wrong kinds of people, the Fae will know you’re here.” His low voice was not without empathy, but I didn’t care.
I jerked my hands away, not letting go of the quilt. “The Fae already know I’m here!” I snapped, glaring at Albigard.
“One Fae knows you’re here,” Rans corrected, his tone hardening. “And he’s the one who put himself at risk to bring us to this flat so we could investigate. Now, are you going to do something suicidal in pursuit of your internal script that says you can only rely on yourself? Or are you going to accept help when it’s fucking offered to you?”
I stared at the vampire who’d done nothing but try to keep me safe, and beyond him, to the Fae who made my skin crawl. I let my gaze wander around the destroyed condo, the fear that my father had been taken against his will warring with the fear that he hadn’t been taken against his will.
Rans’ observation that only my dad and I had known I was getting a bus ticket in St. Louis pricked at me like a thorn embedded in skin. But either way, I needed answers and I was damned well going to get them.
“My only goal is to find my father,” I said, meeting Rans’ gaze again. “From this moment, that’s the one thing I care about. As long as it’s your goal, too, we’re good. If I get a hint that it’s not, then we have a serious problem.”
“Agreed,” Rans said after the barest hesitation, “on the condition that you listen when someone tells you you’re about to do something foolish.”
I turned my burning gaze to Albigard, who gave me a look that said he didn’t consider any ‘problem’ I might pose to be a serious one. When I continued to glare at him, he looked like he wanted to roll his eyes. I didn’t back down from that look, crawling skin or no, and eventually he gave me a careless nod of agreement.
“Good,” I said, my eyes falling on a broken picture frame on the floor near me. My mother and father gazed out at me from behind shards of shattered glass, smiling and happy. “So... where do we start?”
End of Book One
The Last Vampire: Book Two
By R. A. Steffan & Jaelynn Woolf
ONE
“WHOA. I FEEL REALLY, really drunk all of the sudden.”
I stared at the blank concrete walls of the cell I was sharing with my unsmiling Fae captor. My unfocused eyes moved to the half-empty cup I was holding, and then to Albigard himself, regarding me from across the room. I blinked rapidly, trying to clear my blurry double vision. “Why do I feel drunk all of the sudden?”
Rans had sent me back to the creepy basement dungeon with Albigard when it became clear there weren’t any useful clues to my father’s disappearance to be found in his ransacked condo. After less than an hour in Albigard’s company, I was already wishing that I’d kicked up more of a fuss about returning here with him alone.
“You are drunk because you can’t hold your drink, presumably,” the Fae suggested, raising an eyebrow at me.
Albigard waved a graceful hand, and the cup disappeared from my grip, leaving my fingers grasping nothing. I stared at them stupidly for a moment.
“What was in that stuff, anyway?” I asked, readjusting my feet until the ground stopped tilting to the left. For some reason, it was becoming hard to get the words to come out right unless I spoke very slowly and clearly. My eyes narrowed. “Rans is gonna be pished... I mean, pissed... if you slipped me a faerie roofie when he wasn’t looking.” I cocked my head, thinking about that for a moment before adding, “And I’m gonna be pished, too.”
“It was mead,” my not-really-a-captor said, “and you’re already pissed, it appears. I gave it to you because you said you were thirsty. Perhaps you could return your focus to what we were discussing before?”
I pondered that for a few seconds, frowning. Perhaps I could... if I could remember what we’d been discussing before. I tried to shake some brain cells loose after what had legitimately been a day from hell. We’d been at my dad’s place, looking through the destruction for any hint as to what had happened to him or where he’d been taken. There weren’t any obvious clues to speak of, which didn’t seem to surprise either Rans or Albigard.
One thing I was quickly coming to understand about supernatural creatures was that they were a bunch of arrogant, high-handed assholes. The Fae had insisted we leave
