Kelly Meding - As Lie the Dead

Joy over the safe delivery was demolished by an impending sense of doom. “But my bargain with Phin was good only until the baby was born. What happens to Rufus now?”

“Nothing yet.” Phin’s voice surprised me, and even Wyatt jumped. Phin stood just inside the room, his body half hidden by the door. He had a healing burn on his left cheek and a serious crease to his forehead. “Welcome back.”

I swallowed, tormented by enough conflicting emotions to choke an empath. He had stabbed me and left me for dead. Allowed Belle’s cronies to attack and drive me out of my apartment. He’d also given me top secret information about his people. Oh yeah, and he saved my life. Again. I wanted to hug him tight and punch him until he cried.

“You have every right to be cross with me,” Phin said when I didn’t speak.

“Cross?” I repeated. “Cross doesn’t even begin to cover it. You stabbed me in the gut and tossed me into a fucking Dumpster.”

“He … what?” Wyatt asked. He started to stand. I grabbed his arm and kept him still as a familiar flush crept up his neck.

Phin ignored Wyatt, his blue eyes never blinking. “I won’t ask your forgiveness, Evy, but when I tell you what I learned, I believe you’ll agree the risk was worth the outcome.”

“You’d better have one hell of a story.” I settled back against the pillow, still clutching Wyatt’s hand. He remained seated, a silent sentinel. Phin stepped into the room but kept his distance.

“You recall the man in the black hat?” Phin asked.

I nodded.

“His name is Snow, and he’s a low-level member of the Kitsune Clan, who are—”

“Wait, I know this one!” I’d heard the word “Kitsune” before, referencing an animal. Now what was …? “Foxes. They’re were-foxes, right?”

“Correct. Snow has been actively recruiting for someone who wants to create a … well, for lack of a better term, an anti-Triad organization. A sort of nonhuman enforcement group to go after the Triads who punish indiscriminately.”

Wyatt snorted. “They’ll end up going after all of us.”

Phin pinned him with a hard stare. “Your people have a long history of punishing whomever they wish, as long as those punished are weaker than you. The Triads are out of control, and my people are beginning to fight back.”

I thought of what he’d said in the Green Apple diner, about wanting to join the Triads. Policing his own kind. I could see how such a group might appeal to Phin, even if its existence scared the shit out of me. “Who’s he been recruiting?”

“Mostly Therians, but there are some vampires and a few half-breeds. I never thought I’d see the day when the two stood in the same room and didn’t try to kill each other.”

Ditto that. “How many?”

“Around sixty, so far.”

Twice our numbers, although our training gave us an advantage in combat. “I don’t guess the man he works for is named Leonard Call?”

Phin’s head twitched sideways. “How did you hear that name?”

“A little birdie told me.” I briefly outlined my conversation with Isleen, including her woman on the inside. “If he’s been building this force for a month, we’re damned lucky we finally got wind of it. With our own numbers so low, a sneak attack would have devastated us.”

“An attack of any sort still might,” Wyatt said. “Even if every Triad in the city had shown up at Olsmill the other night, we wouldn’t have won without help from the Bloods. We always kept the Dregs in line through fear and intimidation. That’s obviously not working anymore.”

“Obviously,” Phin drawled.

I pondered Isleen’s other comment about a larger threat looming, one ten years in the making. I’d thought to ask Rufus about it, to get some skinny on the earliest days of the Triads. “Who decided that?” I asked before I could censor myself.

“Decided what?” Wyatt asked.

No stopping now. “Fear and intimidation, Wyatt. Isleen got me thinking…. She said things really started to hit the fan around the time the Triads were first organized. You were there.”

He bristled like a threatened dog and stalked across the room before I could stop him. “She said this was all our fault?”

“No, that’s not what I said.” I struggled to sit up again, the movements less painful now. “What changed ten years ago that made the Triads necessary when they hadn’t existed before?”

He glared at me, the flush in his neck rising to his cheeks. “Your mother was murdered by vampires eleven years ago, Evy, and you’re asking me why?”

A chill spread through my chest. Her body had been found drained of blood, two weeks dead, so the possibility of her being killed by vampires had always existed. It just hadn’t been verified and never would be since her body had been cremated. No one had voiced it so bluntly since my days in Boot Camp, when the information was used to goad me into action. It had always worked.

I threw back the blanket covering me, noting—but not caring—that I was wearing only my bra and panties. Both legs were wrapped tightly in gauze bandages and medical tape, but I swung them off the bed anyway.

Angry fingers of pain tore up and down my legs, and I barked out a terse “Fuck you, Truman,” as I tried to stand up. “My mother was a fucking heroin addict who slept around and got herself killed.” My weak legs wobbled. My left knee screeched as weight was added, and I flopped back onto the bed, panting. “Why ten years ago?”

His face was a thundercloud. “Because that’s when the shit started hitting the fan. Halfies seemed to come out of nowhere, and they were attacking anyone they could. The goblins began oozing out of the sewers and old bootleggers’ tunnels and attacking in the open. They all got bolder, which attracted the wrong sort.”

“Wrong sort of what?”

“Of freelance bounty hunters, mostly. Dregs are drawn to this valley, mostly through the power of First Break”—which we knew courtesy of our brief visit to Amalie’s hidden home—“but vampires travel the world and sometimes leave Halfies in their wake. Those early hunters had no code or organization. They did what they wanted to make their kill, and consequences be damned.”

The fire blazing in his eyes spoke volumes for the things he’d witnessed those nameless hunters doing. Isleen had verified that vampires left the city for long periods of time but always returned to the source of energy that fed them. Home to the Break.

I was chilly sitting there in my underwear. I drew the blanket up and around my shoulders, still puzzling out his story. “So which straw broke the camel’s back? Who organized?” I thought I knew the answer but wanted to hear him say it.

“The Fey Council,” he replied. “The last straw happened downtown, ten and a half years ago. Five Halfies went into a Greek restaurant about thirty minutes before closing. The owner, his wife, their daughter, and four customers were there. The owner and two of the male patrons were bled right away. Two vampire hunters tracked them down, but not before the Halfies … entertained themselves with some of the women.”

I felt sick.

Wyatt grimaced. “The hunters decided they couldn’t risk the survivors spreading rumors of vampires existing. That it was better to keep it a secret; that they’d be better off dead than living with the trauma. So they killed everyone who was still alive, turned on the gas main, and burned down the evidence.”

My head spun, and I clutched the edges of the blanket, finding it very hard to breathe. “They murdered innocents,” I whispered, trembling.

“The restaurant owners had two teenage sons who were left orphans. Everyone said it was a tragic accident.”

I dropped my head into my hands, unable to fathom such an action. Slaughtering the Halfies, sure, in the most painful manner possible. But not the murder of four innocent women simply to keep a secret. What sort of person did that? A hand touched the top of my head. I looked up. Wyatt had crouched in front of me, his entire face alive with emotion—fury, regret, grief.