Forbidden (The Preternaturals) (15 page)

The streets were lined with guards. Enforcers, as Anthony was calling
them. Some were guardians and some were vampires, and they weren’t
even trying to hide their presence anymore. In Vegas he’d seen more
public vampire behavior than usual, even before he’d seen the news
to get a full picture of how bad it truly was, but here, there was
none of that.

The enforcers weren’t just managing the preternaturals. They were
managing the humans as well, and they weren’t keeping their nature
secret. A couple of human teenagers scurried past a vampire enforcer
outside the front entry of Anthony’s building. Of course, there
would be heavier security when Anthony wasn’t in the compound.

He didn’t meet with other factions on the royal grounds. He wanted
neutral territory. Hadrian nodded at the guardian in the lobby as he
made his way to the elevators. This guardian was more alert than
previous guardians who’d held that post. Ordinarily whoever was
behind the reception desk would be boredly reading a paper or a book
or talking on the phone, but this one constantly scanned the lobby as
if danger might suddenly materialize.

And maybe it would. If preternaturals had been outed, and the magic users
as well, perhaps someone
could
just materialize in the middle
of the lobby—though Hadrian was sure Anthony would have had wards
put on the place to prevent such careless magic.

Father Hadrian jabbed the button of the cherry-paneled elevator, anxiously
watching the dial crawl down to one. He wasn’t sure why he was so
anxious.
You know
, the voice in his head chided. Was Angeline
here? He hadn’t been able to contact her after she’d left for
prayers, and he’d had to start traveling as soon as the sun hid
itself from view and the dead sleep lifted off him.

He’d had to stop and feed once in Oregon to recharge his energy. Traveling
long distances this way was difficult, but it was faster than by car,
and he didn’t feel comfortable leaving Angeline alone with the
vampire king, though he couldn’t say why this should bother him.

Two guardians stood outside the single door on the sixth floor.

“I’m expected,” Hadrian said, when they gave him a skeptical look.

One of the guardians raised his wrist to his mouth and spoke into the
electronic device circling it. He adjusted his earpiece, and after a
few moments he nodded and stepped aside. “They’re on the roof
beside the pool.”

“I’m familiar with it,” Hadrian said, annoyance creasing his brow.

The metal door clanged against the brick when he reached the top, and
Hadrian cursed as all eyes turned on him.

“I can’t begin to tell you how late you are,” Anthony said. “And
usually, that’s Cain’s role.”

“I came from Vegas. It’s not as if I can teleport.” The whole gang
was there. The werewolf pack alpha, Cole, and his demon mate, Jane,
along with their pup, Noah. Werecat Greta and her sorcerer, Dayne.
The demon leader, Cain and his mate, Tam. And Anthony’s human mate,
Charlee, with their baby, Sydney.

The baby was a year old now and sat on the ground, cuddling with the pup
and pulling on his ears. Noah growled at her good-naturedly and
licked her face. The pup was a werewolf, one of the stronger ones—so
strong he’d been born in his fur instead of human form. He wouldn’t
shift to human for several more years.

No one at the table appeared happy to see Hadrian.

“Where’s your angel?” Anthony asked.

“I thought she’d be here,” Hadrian said.

“It looks like she stood you up. You’re of no use to me without her.
Guards!” Enforcers that lined the wall like gargoyles, stepped
forward.

Cain stood then. “We need to focus on what’s important, and Father
Hadrian isn’t. We’ve got bigger problems right now.” The
enforcers stepped back against the wall, waiting for further
direction.

Hadrian was surprised to see the demon coming to his defense. Even Tam didn’t
seem overly upset with him. Out of everyone there, Cain and Tam had
the biggest reason to hold a grudge. Hadrian had helped the group’s
last enemy kidnap Cain’s mate the previous year. But Cain and Tam
were too old and world-weary to care much about revenge. Those two
might be his only allies.

Hadrian slipped into the chair next to Tam. She slid him a bundle of stapled
paper, the same as everyone else at the table had.

“Thanks.”

“No problem,” she said, turning her attention back to her mate who was
still trying to keep Anthony from executing Hadrian.

Anthony glared at Father Hadrian, not willing to relent, even with the demon
leader in his face.

“Look, if we’re able to move on, you should be able to,” Tam said.

It was true. Hadrian had only wanted to usurp Anthony’s police state,
but he’d had a hand in almost killing Tam.

Anthony growled.

“Even without the angel, I have information that might interest you, but I
can hardly share it if I’m dead,” Hadrian said.

“I doubt very much you have anything unique that my intelligence
officers haven’t been able to glean already.”

Hadrian shrugged and stared him down. He’d remain silent until Anthony
caved because if he knew the vampire king, he couldn’t resist
having one more piece of information to file. Father Hadrian flipped
through the packet of papers to see list after list:

Major hot point areas of riots and vampire violence, places the king had
sent enforcers to try to take more control. Areas where magic users
were gathering and joining power that the rest of the preternaturals
should avoid. Plans to finish the infrastructure he’d been putting
into place on the sly in all the major cities in the country. He
wanted to control everything.

Hadrian growled. Nothing he’d done had slowed Anthony Burgess down one tiny
bit. Instead it had energized him, driven him with even more purpose
than before.

Sydney gurgled and clapped her hands delightedly as the wolf pup pounced on
her, then she shrieked.

Cole growled from the table. “Noah, play easy with her.”

The pup looked up guiltily and then went back to licking her face while
her fat fingers tangled in his fur. Her baby fangs popped out, and
Hadrian shuddered at the display. So unnatural. She shouldn’t have
been allowed to see her first night. Guaranteed, Anthony wouldn’t
be so gung ho about his plans to control the world if she weren’t
so fragile and in need of protection.

Hadrian went back to the packet of papers which detailed the damage control
various factions were attempting in order to simmer down the
political uprisings. There were also details of what the humans were
planning. From all accounts, the humans were gearing up to fight.

“What’s this about therians disappearing?” Hadrian asked. The way Jane
gripped Cole’s arm wasn’t lost on him.

Anthony continued to glare, his arms crossed over his chest.

“I give up with you two,” Cain said. The demon turned to Hadrian.
“Therians are disappearing everywhere, but they are especially
disappearing in areas with a strong witch and sorcerer base. We think
they are being imprisoned and used for their blood to work stronger
magic which will no doubt be used against us if we can’t stop this
petty infighting and neutralize them.” He shot one last glare at
Anthony and went back to his seat on the other side of Tam.

“Fine,” Anthony said. “What do you know, Hadrian?”

Hadrian looked up from the papers. “Right, because I’m going to tell you
so I have nothing else to keep me from execution. That’s smart. I
may be young still by vampire standards, but I’m not that stupid.”

“Are you sure about that?”

“Enough!” Cain shouted, shooting a glare at each of them in turn. “I have
better things to do than listen to you children carry on this way.
Hadrian, what do you know?”

Hadrian hesitated. It wasn’t that he was afraid to die, necessarily. It was
more that he didn’t particularly welcome it, and sitting in the
middle of the lion’s den where everyone hated him, with no
protective angel in sight, weren’t odds he liked to play.

Cain grew impatient. “If Anthony tries anything with you right now he
will answer to myself and the rest of the demon world. Now talk.”

Out of all the people on the roof Hadrian should think about trusting,
Cain was at the very bottom of the short list. The demon had spent an
impressive length of uninterrupted time torturing the hell out of him
to gain information on Tam’s whereabouts.

But the demon leader also didn’t play politics. Whatever he said,
happened. He had no reason to lie to anyone because there was very
little he couldn’t make happen in a more straightforward manner.

“All right,” Hadrian said, putting down the papers. “The other night,
Angeline said the angels are planning to fight.”

“I suspected as much. I spoke to one of the warriors to feel them out.
They love a good fight,” Cain said.

“No. Fighting
us
. They want to take us on when our focus is split
trying to fight the humans and magic users. They want to bring on the
final battle they’ve been talking about for ages.”

Cain’s eyes glowed red and narrowed. “Is that a fact?”

“It’s what Angeline said.”

“And you trust her?”

Oh what a tangled web that was. “In her current state, I don’t
believe she is very prone to lying.”

A couple of eyebrows rose.
Yes, let’s speculate about everybody’s
previous relationships and back story.
Because it wasn’t as if
the world were ending or anything.

Tam’s nose wrinkled. “Why does that name sound so familiar?”

It took her about half a second. For someone so ancient, she had a
memory like a steel trap.

“Your sire is an
angel
now?” Tam said.

Hadrian looked up to find an odd look in Anthony’s eyes. Did the vampire
king know Angeline?

“Tam, can you neutralize the angel threat?” Cain asked, turning to his
mate.

“Hon, I know you think I’m the most badass super witch that ever there
was, but there are things even beyond my power. Do you know how powerful they are up there?
I can’t just
neutralize
them. It’s not like I have a can of Angel Raid in my tent
or anything.”

Cain rolled his eyes. “I don’t mean take on the hosts of Heaven on
your own. Can we bar their access to this plane somehow, just eliminate their drama
altogether? No one gets into my dimension without my permission. Shouldn’t those in
this
dimension have some say-so in who crosses over?”

She sighed. “I could look into it. Go into the dusty old books. Call up
a few powerful witches that aren’t totally freaked out that I gave my soul to a demon. I’ll
need a few days.”

Cain grinned. The look was beyond strange on his face. Then he kissed her
on the cheek like some smitten schoolboy, and that was even weirder.

Anthony called the meeting back to order, clearly perturbed that every time
this motley crew got together, someone had control of things, and it
was rarely him. The vampire king may be top dog among his own
species. He may have developed a rather impressive police state that
would warm the heart of any power-crazed sociopathic dictator, but
when they all got together, it always seemed to be Cain that everyone
followed. And why shouldn’t they? He was over eight thousand years
old. That was hardcore seniority.

Hadrian turned to the demon in question. “Out of curiosity, outside of the
angel threat, what do you care what happens in any of this? You’ve
got your own dimension to retreat to.”

“My demons rely on humans to feed. We don’t have an out. We can’t
die. If we don’t feed, we suffer. And not all of my demons have
mates, which means, if the humans band together with the magic users
and block the feeding trough, I’ve got a lot of starving demons on
my hands.”

The demons could feed from any human, unless they took a mate, which also
had to be human. A mate allowed them to feed from one source forever.
It wasn’t unlike the mating claim the vampire king had with his
human queen.

“So, then maybe you should encourage your demons to take mates.”

“Do you have any idea how hard it is for a demon to find a human willing
to give him her soul, especially given the fucked-up mating ritual
we’re stuck with? What I need is for this issue to resolve itself
so my demons are protected and everything goes back to normal.”

Hadrian hated to tell him, but everything was
never
going back to
normal. They had entered the new normal, and if more preternaturals
fully appreciated that, there would be pandemonium in the streets
that even Anthony wouldn’t be able to control.

The vampire king rolled a giant blueprint out onto the table, forcing
everyone to move their piles of papers out of the way. “These are
the main hubs, the cities where we could take control and run the
place if we can eliminate the magic user threat. Infrastructure has
been eased in. We just need enough magic users on our side to create
wards to keep the others out. They won’t be able to undo our magic,
right Tam? Dayne?”

Both the super witch and the sorcerer nodded.

“It’s almost impossible to break someone else’s magic,” Dayne said.

“Even for someone like me,” Tam added. And she was the oldest witch that
even existed.

“Then we implement what we have in Cary Town in all these other places. Let
the magic users move to territories in the more rural areas and
outskirts and stay out of our zones. The humans in the areas we take
will be ours, which should give vampires and demons a steady stream
of feeding options.”

Hadrian growled. But he wasn’t the only one. The werewolf alpha was staring
holes into Anthony.

“Yes, why don’t you do that, Anthony. Why don’t you create a world in
which my wolves have nowhere to go without you fucking micro-chipping
them and tracking their every move,” Cole said.

It was still a sore spot that the pack alpha had refused to reveal the
location of the pack’s den, and that they used a portal charm from
Cain to travel without passing through Anthony’s border patrol
security. It was a wonder the vampire king even allowed him to these
private meetings.