Bitter Blood

But anyway, I sat, because the alternative was to go full throttle, and I wasn’t quite there. Not yet. Shane kept standing, leaning against the wall, arms folded. He was watching Enrique, who was doing the same thing; bodyguards, I guessed, facing off in silence and ready for the other to make a move. There was muttering among the business leaders, and at least one of them got up to leave the room in protest.

“Sit down, Mr. Farmer,” I said without looking at him. “We’re going to have a conversation about your son and where he gets his funny ideas.”

Roy Farmer’s dad got an odd look on his face and sank back in his seat. “Is my son alive?”

“Yep,” Shane said, with false cheer. I wouldn’t have been quite so quick to reassure him. “Hope you don’t mind the fix-up on his car. Oh, and his arm.”

“You bloodsucking parasite son of a—”

I moved, then, slamming my palm on the table hard enough to leave a crack in the wood. “I didn’t kill him,” I said. “Shut up and take it as a gift.”

He did, looking white around the mouth. Then I looked at Hannah. “You put us in the crosshairs. You put Eve in the crosshairs,” I said to Hannah. “Why would you do that?”

“Why did you have to put her in the middle?” she asked me, in a frighteningly reasonable tone. “You know that the vampires won’t let her stay there for long; they’ll have her killed before they let humans gain power in this town through her status as a legal consort. You knew that when you married her. By putting pressure on her from the human side, we were hoping we could save her life and make her leave you. Get you to understand how dangerous this is for her, and for you. We don’t hate you, Michael. But you’re in the way.”

“Wait,” Shane said, turning his head toward her. “You had Roy Farmer beat her up to help? That’s what you’re telling us?”

“It’s hardly our fault. Roy was never supposed to do more than frighten her,” Naomi said, with that charming little way she had. “I assure you, he was never supposed to harm her badly. He was only to make it clear that she would not be accepted as Michael’s wife. As the vampires have also made it clear. I have heard that Oliver sent Pennyfeather to make that same point.”

“Eve’s not a pawn you can move around the board,” I said, spearing Naomi with a glare, then Hannah, then the others. “And neither am I.”

“But that is exactly what you are, Michael. You, Shane, Claire, Eve—all of you. You are played for one side or the other at every turn, and you fail to see it.” Naomi shook her head in what I was sure was fake sadness, but it was very convincing. “Mistakes have been made, but no one intended permanent harm to your lover. You may take my word for it.”

“My wife,” I said, pointedly. “Call her that.”

Naomi inclined her head. “D’accord.”

I looked at Hannah. She hadn’t said much so far, and left Naomi to try to make the justifications. She watched me, and Shane, with calm and careful attention, hands loose and relaxed on the table in front of her.

But she was afraid. I could feel that, hear it in the rapid beat of her heart. All of the humans were afraid. They ought to be, I thought. They were allied now with a traitorous vampire, and they’d just made an enemy of someone who by all rights should have been their friend and supporter.

“You should never have touched Eve,” I told Hannah.

“I’m sorry for what happened,” she said. “But, Michael, you all made your choices, and your choices have consequences. If you want Eve to be safe, you should allow her to come back to her own side. With us.”

“Why do there have to be sides? We’re people, Hannah.”

She shook her head. “You were people. You like to think you still are, but you’re a killer at heart. And there are always sides. If you can’t give her up just because you love her, then you’re selfish, and you’re the one putting her more at risk every day—from your own kind.”

“So what am I supposed to do?” It burst out of me in anger, and all of a sudden I was on my feet, eyes blazing, rage bringing out my fangs and my fury. “She’s my wife! This isn’t you, Hannah. It’s not like you at all, bringing innocent people into this, getting them hurt, maybe killed!”

Hannah didn’t move, and she didn’t reach for a weapon. Enrique pushed off the wall, and so did Shane in a match move, but I was the only one showing any threat.

Hannah said, “Gentlemen—could you leave me, Naomi, and Michael alone, please?”

The Morganville businessmen all got up and left the room without argument. Enrique stuck around.

“I will if he will,” Enrique said, and nodded toward Shane, who nodded right back.

“Maybe you guys can go have a stare-off in the other room,” I said, and got a challenging frown from Shane. “If something was going to go sideways, it already would have happened. Right?”

“Probably,” Shane said. “But I don’t like this.”

“It’s better if we do this alone,” Hannah said. “You, me, and Naomi. There are things we need to keep private, even from our advisers.”

I studied them, then jerked my head at Shane. He made an after-you motion to Enrique, then followed the other man out of the room.

The door to the kitchen shut tightly behind them.

From the moment the door closed, Hannah said nothing. It was as if she’d just…powered off. It was Naomi who stood up and walked the perimeter of the kitchen, apparently fascinated by the countertops, the appliances, the drawer pulls.

“The solution to your problem is perfectly commonplace,” Naomi said finally. “Let Eve think you have ceased to care for her, and her safety will be assured. Your marriage is the problem, and it’s the marriage that must be ended. You may choose the timing of the legal actions, of course, but it’s imperative that you make her leave you now.”

“I can’t do that.” The anger wasn’t helping me, and all too soon, it drained away, leaving me feeling empty and hollow. “I can’t just push her away. Hannah—”

Hannah wasn’t looking at me, or at anything. I had a visceral sense of sudden danger, and I turned on Naomi. “Why are you here? You’re not Captain Obvious; you can’t be. How did you get them to even let you in the door?”

“I was wondering when you’d ask that,” she said, and smiled at me from under her long eyelashes. “I can be very persuasive. It’s been my strength. Once I realized that Hannah Moses made such an excellent leader for the human resistance, it was clear I should ally myself to it. How else am I to bring down my sister?”

I glanced at Hannah again, eyes widening, because it wasn’t right that she was sitting so quietly, like a doll that had been switched off…or a puppet.

The distraction was all Naomi needed. If my nerves hadn’t been strung guitar-tight, I’d never have seen her move; even with that much warning, though I didn’t understand what she was going to do. I thought she was going to stake me, and I raised my hands in defense, but she darted past me, behind me, grabbed me, and pulled me off-balance. I felt her hands snaking cold around my chest, then pushing my chin high—

And then she bit me before I could yell for help.

Her fangs slid into my throat, and it felt like being stabbed with ice; all the warmth began to flood away from me, into her, and in its place I felt a terrible dark influence sliding through my veins. Naomi, like Bishop, her vampire father, had the power to subvert other vampires—and now, she had me. Just as she’d taken control of Hannah, and through Hannah, the entire human resistance.

We were all just puppets now.

It didn’t take long, and there was absolutely nothing I could do to fight it. When she let me go, I collapsed to my hands and knees on the tile, mouth open, fangs extended, and Naomi walked calmly back to take her seat again at the table. She looked at Hannah. “Then that’s finished,” she said, and tapped her fingers on the wood of the table in a complex, musical rhythm. “Michael. Stand.”

I did. I wanted to lunge at her, kill her, rip her apart, but I knew that none of it was showing on my face or in my body language. Just as nothing showed in Hannah’s. The reason it hadn’t fit for Hannah to have put Eve at such deadly risk was that it hadn’t been her choice. It was Naomi’s decision—all of it, tracing back to Naomi. And it was way too late for me to do anything about it. I couldn’t even try to warn people.

“This is what you will do, Michael,” Naomi said. “You will go back to see your lovely wife and tell her you’ve had second thoughts. You’ll do whatever is necessary to destroy all trust between you. And then you will pack your