Kelly Meding - Requiem for the Dead

"Yeah. I know." I needed another complication like I needed another death in my repertoire. "Listen, how's Milo?"

"Healing but still on a lot of drugs. We haven't told him about your latest death. Marcus doesn't think we should until he's stronger."

"If we're lucky, he doesn't have to know until I'm alive again."

"How's that?"

I explained Elder Dane's wishes for the Assembly vote and my need to stay under the radar.

"Well, if you want a shot at Vale, he's contacted us," Kismet said.

"What? When?"

"A few minutes ago. It's why I called. He wants to ransom back the scroll and the cure. I doubt he knows what the cure is, just that you wanted it. He asked for half a million dollars, cash."

"Are you serious?"

"Perfectly."

"Where does he think we're going to come up with that kind of money?"

"He doesn't care. He gave us twenty-four hours."

"The vampire Families might pay it."

"For a gnome cure that we can't guarantee will work?"

"Yes. Gina, go to Alucard Communications and ask to speak to a man named Eulan. He's engaged to Isleen and he wants to save her. He'll hear you out."

"All right, I'll do it. And I'll tell the others that I spoke to Wyatt."

"Make sure Demetrius knows he can stop looking over his shoulder."

Wyatt grunted.

Kismet snickered. "What are you going to do?"

"I'm going to do what I do best." I glanced at Wyatt, who nodded, supporting me without question. "I'm going hunting."

Hunting didn't happen as soon as I'd hoped. Mostly because I didn't have clue one where to start looking for Vale.

Scratch that. I had a pretty long list, including the decrepit police station where we were held and the old motel where the Marcus/Prentiss showdown happened, but Astrid knew about those places, too. She'd have Watchtower people scouring the locations, plus the homes and businesses of the rest of Vale's family and social circle. I needed to go somewhere my friends wouldn't notice me, and I couldn't think of anyplace.

The pups invited me to join them for dinner, and even though I was still a little queasy from the Juliet Potion, I sat down with three red-headed teenage boys and watched them devour box after box of Chinese food. Wyatt ate a healthy portion of food, too, while I picked at plain white rice with a pair of chopsticks. My lack of attention to the food gave me a chance to watch the men in the room.

Peter was definitely the alpha of the brothers. When we assembled in the small dining room off to the side of the kitchen, Mark had laid out the dozen or so white boxes, as well as a few wax-paper bags, packets of sauces, and pairs of chopsticks. The three of them waited until Wyatt and I had seated ourselves before taking chairs on the other side of the table.

Wyatt helped himself to pork lo mein and fried rice, and once he finished, Peter picked up a container, put a small amount of vegetables on his plate, then handed it to Mark. Mark sniffed and curled his lip. He gave it over to John without comment. They went like that with every container of food. Sometimes Peter took a lot, sometimes he didn't take anything, but he always served himself first. The whole thing was kind of strange, but it also fit with them letting me and Wyatt get our food before serving themselves.

No one really talked at first, beyond grunts and simple commands to pass the soy sauce.

"Mark?" Wyatt said. "In what year was the Treaty of Versailles signed?"

I nearly dropped my chopsticks. I definitely flung some rice across the table. Wyatt was watching Mark over a half-eaten spring roll, intently waiting on an answer to the most left-field question of the month.

Mark picked up a piece of pork with his chopsticks, as though the answer was written on it in brown sauce. "Um, 1918?"

"John?"

"June 1919," John replied promptly.

"Peter, when did the U.S. officially end our involvement in the first World War?"

Peter squirmed.

Wyatt sighed. "Anyone?"

"1921, after the Knox-Porter Resolution was signed," John said.

"I'm so confused right now," I said. "What's with the history quiz?"

"Being cut off from Thackery meant their education stopped," Wyatt said. "They might be orphaned Lupa, but they're teenagers and they still need to learn. We're picking up with an easy subject."

"History is easy?"

"Those who don't study history are doomed to repeat the past."

"Thank you, Aristotle."

"Actually, it was George Santayana," John said, "and what he said was—"

"Will you turn it off before I fong you?" Peter asked. "Geez, we know you're smart, okay?"

John flushed red and looked down at his plate.

"Fong?" I said. "Do I even want to know?"

"It's from a movie," Peter replied. "It's slang for kicking or beating up. Wyatt doesn't have a TV, but we had one when we lived…um, with Dad." He looked away.

Dad meant Walter Thackery, may he rot in hell.

"So is John the only one who did the reading assignment?" Wyatt asked.

"I tried," Peter said. "I really did but I'm not good at that stuff. I never was, even when Dad—Thackery, taught us."

"You didn't like anything he taught you?"

"I liked learning how to fight."

"And I said we'd work on that together."

I almost flung more rice across the room with that little nugget of information. Wyatt was going to teach the kids to fight? He was taking this "under his wing" thing seriously. More seriously than I thought, and that might not be good for him, considering they were wanted by the Assembly. A month ago, I'd have loved to see all three of them dead, and now Wyatt had practically adopted them.

Thumping my head against the table wouldn't change anything, so I refrained.

"We'll find something you enjoy studying more than world history," Wyatt said. "As long as you promise to try."

"I do promise," Peter said. "We all did."

Wyatt pop-quizzed them a little bit more while they cleaned their plates and divvied up what was left in the containers. John got everything right. Peter didn't know a thing. Mark was about fifty-fifty. The entire production was sort of adorable in an alternate universe kind of way. Wyatt sounded like any parent making sure his kids were ready for a big test.

"I don't want to die." Words spoken in earnest by a sobbing, terrified boy I'd watched being tortured for information at an abandoned construction site. A boy identical to the three eating dinner with me. A boy who'd died sobbing in a pool of his own blood, sweat, and piss because I'd thought Wyatt was dying, and now we were protecting that boy's surviving brothers.

"I don't want to die."

I pushed away from the table and found the bathroom tucked down the hall from the living room. Closed the door, turned on the faucet, and then sat down on the toilet as the emotion bent me in half. So much that it wasn't able to manifest as tears, because I wasn't sad. I'd done my job, like I always did my job, but the end result was that I'd participated in the capture and murder of a teenage boy. No, three teenage boys. Brothers to the boys I was trying to help now. Boys Wyatt saw as family—he didn't have to say it, because I saw it.

I wrapped my arms around my aching middle and rocked a while, letting the regret worm its way up and out. The shame of looking Peter, Mark, and John in the eye, knowing I'd done the same thing to their brother—I'd looked Daniel in the eye while his fingers were being cut off.

"Shit." I pressed the heels of my hands into my eyes, needing to rub those images away.

Someone else had done the cutting. Someone else had landed the killing blow. But I'd been complicit. I'd done the asking, and I hadn't stopped anything. I didn't have the stomach for that kind of torture anymore. I could kill goblins all day long to keep them from hurting innocent people and never bat an eyelash at the slaughter. Halfies, too. This was completely different.