Chapter 7

I met Eve when I was fifteen and we were mated by sixteen. For four glorious years, she was everything to me. She had been beautiful and mine. She was a foot and a half shorter than me and had light blonde hair and crystalline blue eyes. Since I was so big, I always needed a king sized bed. I used to lose her in the covers, she was so tiny. But she had always been there.

Until she got killed by Annihilists. And I was left all alone. I survived her death, much to my disappointment. I survived the aftermath. I was glad I didn’t leave my Family now, but back then? It seemed like the cruelest twist of fate to lose my mate and still have to go on.

Why should I survive when she couldn’t?

Even now, I could see her blonde head resting on the pillows. It was a different bed and a different house, but I could picture it so clearly. Sometimes, when I woke up, I swear I could smell her. Other times I woke up and the first thing I remembered was that she was gone. Then sometimes, I forgot.

The gaping hollowness in my center was there to tell me I was wrong. Whenever I had a moment of peace. Whenever I thought, for a bare second, that perhaps it was all a mistake.

I brought a deep breath into my lungs and let it out. My chest eased and my heart stopped pounding. I managed to get ready for bed in relative peace and I climbed between the sheets. But nothing was okay.

Like every night, I felt exhausted, but couldn’t sleep. I craved sleep, though. I craved the moments where Eve would come alive again. She’d smile at me and her eyes would look alive. She’d hold my hand, and I remembered the feel of hers. It always felt so real, and my body resisted those dreams, staying away for longer than it should have.

Because when I woke up, she wouldn’t be there.

But for one moment, one perfectly painful moment, the dream would feel real. When that moment passed, I’d be left with this. All of this… nothing. To think that I once had something worthwhile in this room, something that made me happy, and now everything in it felt like a gaping wound in my chest.

I did what I could to shut my brain off and stop thinking about anything, everything. To just stop.

“Billy,” Dovie said, two days later, “I know you’re excited, but if you do not stop hopping around, I’m going to be forced to push your face into the window. I do not wish to push your face into the window, because I love you, but I shall do it and I shall do it within the next five minutes.”

I glanced in the rearview mirror and saw Billy stick her tongue out at Dovie. “Don’t be ludicrous. If you push my face into the window, I’d make you sleep. For a long time.” Her nearly white eyes flashed brighter for a second, as she no doubt sampled Dovie’s energy, and then dulled back to their still bright shade.

Billy was both a tracker and a Battery, meaning she could drain energy from one person, store it within herself, and then give it to another person. After Eve died, when I had the most trouble sleeping, I’d asked her to drain me dry. She refused to do that, because it would have been bad for me in the long run, but she had emptied my stores enough that I could fall into a dreamless sleep. I woke up exhausted, and knew better than to ask her to do it a second time. No matter how nice it sounded.

My eyes went back to the road. Slush was falling from the skies and my SUV didn’t seem to like it much. Several times I almost lost control of the vehicle and went off road. Apparently, the snow in New Mexico was no match for the foul weather up in Seattle. The dampness in the air was ridiculous. It was making Dovie’s already wavy red hair curl uncontrollably.

“Ha,” Dovie said. “Please. As if you wouldn’t get bored without my witty commentary to keep you entertained.”

“I could find a way,” Billy promised.

“Utter fallacy,” Dovie declared. “But I’ll let it go, because it’s time to check in with car number two.” She tapped on her phone for a second and then I heard the dial tone come in.

“Hello?” Sunbeam answered, sounding tired.

“Hi, hi, Beamer,” Dovie said. “How are you on gas and do you need anything to eat?”

“Not at the moment,” Sunbeam said after a second or two, probably double checking with the other passengers. “How far away are we?”

“Less than an hour,” I said and Dovie repeated.

“We should be good to go until then,” Sunbeam promised.

They hung up and seconds later, the entrance into Seattle came into view. The traffic going in was smooth and unfettered. Coming out, not so much. On the opposite side of the road, there was a roadblock and one of those orange and white gates that a car could easily blast through if they wanted.

There were cars lined up outside it and each one had to pull into a little toll booth and hand over their ID. I could see a guard inside the alcove, running the IDs through a scanner and handing them back. Then the gate would lift and the one car would be allowed through. There were a total of three booths, to speed the process along, and it seemed like a well-oiled machine.

It would look almost civilized. If it weren’t for the guards all around the buildings. They each had a gun on their hip and in their hand, and they walked calmly back and forth, between the toll booths. They kept their faces emotionless and I had little doubt they were prepared to shoot on sight.

I remembered when Asire had first been Orphaned, Billy asked all sorts of questions. Including if someone could get out of Seattle with a fake ID. Asire told her that if someone was caught making fake IDs, whether they did it for someone exiled or not, they would be killed. It was not taken lightly.

“Holy shit,” Billy said from the back seat. “And people come here on vacation?”

I found it hard to believe too.

We passed the toll booths and continued on our way, into the City of Orphans. The gray skies and rain fell heavily on us. It was past sunset and the utter darkness was a surprise. Half the streetlights looked blown out. Very few of the dark ones didn’t have broken bulbs. Yet, businesses were still open, despite the dark and damp. Cafés, bookstores, restaurants.

Very few people were out by themselves, though. Almost everyone I saw was in a group of three or more. Much like in bigger cities, they kept their heads down and didn’t pay attention to those around them. The entire atmosphere of Seattle was different from all the surrounding cities and towns.

It was darker here. Not just by light, but attitude.

Everyone in the car fell silent, watching the people move around outside the windows. As I drove, it became clearer who was prey and who was predator. The latter didn’t bother trying to blend in. There were vampires openly staring at pedestrians in a blood haze, as well as spell-casters freely doing magic.

“It seems unnaturally calm,” Dovie finally said. “I keep expecting to see one of them attack someone else, but everything is so…calm.”

“It feels like that moment in a horror movie, before the monster jumps out to attack,” Billy said. “Only, I don’t know when the monster is going to jump out.”

Dovie’s phone went off. She absently answered it and I heard Sunbeam say, “You guys good up there?”

“Yup,” Dovie said. “What about you?”

“All’s good here too,” she answered back. “Do we know where Asire lives?”

“Yes,” Billy answered.

Another five minutes of driving and the streets started to change. It became ritzier, calmer. Safer. Less deadly in the way that a shark is less deadly than two.

Eventually I pulled out of the main hub of the city and into a neighborhood. All the houses were large and had gates and security lights. One glance and I knew which houses would be easy to break into and which ones would be almost foolproof.

I pulled up to a gate that was about twelve feet tall and topped with iron spikes sharp enough to make anything hesitate before jumping over. There was a keypad next to the gates and I pulled up to it. There was the nine digits, an enter button and a small orange one with the word ‘Call’ on it. I hit that.

Two second went by and the gate started to swing open slowly.

“If we die, it’ll be here,” Dovie said.

“Yup,” Billy agreed.

Regory and I chose not to comment.

I pulled through the gates and the car behind me barely managed to get through before they closed. The driveway was long enough that I didn’t immediately see the house. But once I did, I was impressed. It was large enough that even I, having grown up in mansions, could appreciate it. But it was the safe house and had all of the orphaned legions putting their paychecks into it. I wasn’t surprised it was so big. It had to house all of them.

There were a dozen cars lined up next to the house and I angled mine to join the others. Just as I was pulling over, I saw the front door open.

Regory’s door flew open and he jumped out of the car before I had even thrown it into park. Billy was right behind him. Dovie and I exited in a much calmer state.

I rounded the end of the car just in time to see Regory wrap his arms around a girl and haul her into the air. He squeezed her so tight, I was surprised she could breathe. And yet, somehow, he still managed to pick Billy up with his other hand and hold her off the ground as well.

Dovie and I froze where we stood. Regory. Stoic, calm Regory…wasn’t here at the moment. He held onto the girl with all the enthusiasm of someone who thought their loved one was dead. And she had her arms wrapped around his neck just as tightly. I couldn’t even see Billy.

“Do you feel a little like an ass right now?” Dovie asked, wrapping her arms around herself.

“Yeah. You?”

“Yep.”

If we had allowed Asire to join our Family before she was Orphaned, well, she wouldn’t have been Orphaned. They would have had to get us to sign her away, and unless she did something truly heinous, I’d never do that. If she was anything like Billy and Regory said, I couldn’t imagine her doing that.

The others grouped around us and we all stood there, waiting in the slush. I’ve never seen Regory so excited for another person to walk into a room. Or out of a house, as the case may be. None of us felt like we could interrupt the moment. Especially me, since I was the reason Asire was here instead of safely in a Family.

Finally, Regory dropped the girls onto their feet and they embraced just as tightly with each other as they had with Regory. Only it didn’t last as long. They separated and seemed to realize for the first time that they weren’t alone.

Billy had tears in her eyes. I was starting to feel like even more of an ass. Every second getting worse.

“Jesus Christ,” Dovie said.

“What?”

“Look at Asire.”

Which, I realized, was what Shade, Wynn and Dovie were all doing. I finally turned my eyes on her and immediately felt all my thoughts disappear into the ether. Dovie was right to exclaim as she had. I knew the girl didn’t look much like Billy, but holy hell.

The girl was gorgeous. It wasn’t a matter of opinion. It was a matter of fact.

She was five or six inches shorter than me, which still put her around six feet tall. Her hair was straight, long and dark brown. It hung all the way down to her hips. Her skin was beautifully pale, colorless like that of a redhead. Her eyes were black, which made her skin pop even more. Because she was so tall, her limbs were long and graceful. Her hips were pronounced, making everyone know that they could really grab onto them. Her breasts were full as well, which meant her figure was curvy and easy to drool over.

Everyone knew who her parents and grandparents were and seeing her face made it more obvious. Her features were the perfect blend of Caucasian and Native American. Her lips were almost full, but not quite. Her nose was slender and straight. It was everything that someone could expect in a beautiful woman.

“Jesus Christ,” Dovie said again. “Can I sleep in her room?”

I just wanted to kick start my brain before she got close enough to talk. An image of Eve floated into my head and suddenly, it didn’t matter anymore how beautiful Asire was. She wasn’t my Eve who no one could compare to. Everything from the last two minutes disappeared and I came back to myself.

Regory and Billy started walking toward us, Asire trailing them. She took the steps quickly, and with each one I could see her switching from reunion mode to business mode. It was an interesting shift to watch.

“Asire,” Billy said, “This is Loki Heron, he’s the head of the Family, as you know.”

She didn’t offer to shake my hand, which I found myself grateful for, but she did offer a nod of her head. “Nice to meet you,” she said almost professionally.

“Hello,” I greeted. “Nice to meet you as well. This is Dovie,” I gestured to her, “Wynn, Shade and Sunbeam.” They all waved cautiously. Sunbeam was shy around people and the others were probably trying not to picture her naked. Or trying very hard to, in Dovie’s case.

“Let’s head in. I’ll introduce you to the others,” she said and turned on her heel. She took the steps two at a time and we followed at a much more sedate pace.