No, m'lord," I hastily answer, "but if we could make the citizens feel more secure, that the terms of the treaty hold and they are safe within the city walls, perhaps they'd be more willing to give."
"Knowing the numbers would not reassure them. To the victor go the spoils. Humans never should have started a war with us. Your defeat was inevitable. It is only through our kindness that we have not made you all slaves. Perhaps you should remind the citizens that our generosity is easily withdrawn."
This meeting has taken a turn for the worse—ever since Victor strode into the room. Why do I feel a need to prove that he may have fooled me last night, but I'm not someone to be messed with?
"We're not the enemy, Dawn," Victor says.
"Tell that to their families," I say, pointing to the photos on the table.
He bows his head slightly, as though conceding the point.
"I believe we are done," Valentine suddenly announces.
When the servant arrives to retrieve me, Valentine remains sitting. I give him a small curtsy and he nods his head very gentlemanly. The Old Family vampires are conservative creatures. Despite the fact that they kill us for blood, they're still elegant. Polite and courteous. Appreciative of a lady who behaves like one.
Victor rises to his feet. "It was a pleasure, Miss Montgomery.
I want to respond, For you maybe. Instead I keep my tone as cordial as possible. "I look forward to our next meeting."
It'll take place at your theater and I'll have an army of Night Watchmen with me.
With my back stiff and my head held high, I follow the servant from the room.
Outside, Winston hands me up into the carriage. Receding fog drifts past us as we clatter along. Back to home and safety.
At the city's main gate, we go through the ritual of having our Agency IDs checked while they search the coach for any hidden vampires. Bowls of blood are strategically placed—the thought being that vampires won't have the strength to keep their fangs retracted long enough to get through the checkpoint.
Winston and I are cleared to go on our way into the city.
It's still dark when we arrive at my apartment building. As the driver helps me out of the coach, I breathe a sigh of relief. "Well, we survived, Winston."
"Yes, we did, Miss Montgomery."
"Please call me Dawn."
"Yes, Miss Montgomery. Sweet dreams." He climbs back onto the coach and, with a flick of his wrist, sends the horses cantering down the street. He's a strange old guy, but they say no one is faster with a stake. Wish he'd been my parents' driver—but like them, their driver was killed.
I feel a growing sense of relief as I take the elevator to my floor.
Before I've even slipped my key into the lock, the door swings open. Rachel looks like she's aged ten years.
"Oh, thank God you're back. How'd it go?" Before I can answer, she grabs my arm and drags me into the apartment.
"What do you know about Valentine's son? Victor?" I ask, as I drop my briefcase on a table and start unbuttoning the bodice of my dress. "He was there tonight."
"Instead of Valentine?"
"No, with him."
"Why?"
As soon as I'm out of my bodice, she starts unlacing the back of my corset. It's a ritual that began when she accompanied me to Valentine Manor. I feel my rib cage expand as the laces are undone, and take a deep breath before answering. "I don't know. Mind games, maybe."
I know I need to tell her about the trouble that Vivi and I got into and how Victor saved us because Victor being Valentine's son has changed everything. He's not a secret I can keep any longer. But I can't just blurt it out. I need to come up with a strategy that will lessen the amount of trouble I'll be in. "I need to get the feel of Valentine Manor off me and then we'll talk, okay?"
She smiles, and in that moment she's just my guardian, looking out for me, not working for the Agency. "Sure. Relax for a while. The important thing is that you survived. You hungry? I'll fix you something to eat."
Food is her answer to everything. "Starved."
In my bedroom I strip off my clothes and pile them in a corner. With each item, I'm shedding the mantle of delegate. I walk to the bathroom, removing pins as I go until my unruly black hair falls down around my shoulders. It matches the real Dawn. I fantasize about one day showing Valentine who he's been messing with. I'll do it with a stake in my hand.
Around my throat is a choker of tightly linked metal chains. Bite protection. It was hidden beneath the high collar of my black dress. I twist and turn the complicated mechanism to unlock it in the back. The band clinks as I lay it over a towel rack. I can breathe a little easier. I catch my reflection in the mirror above the sink. My blue eyes are dull, weary with the weight of what I have to tell Rachel, and from the postadrenaline crash of my first solo visit. I feel dirty after my encounter with Valentine. In the shower, I let the hot water pour over my body, shedding another layer of delegate. The splashing noise relaxes me. Until I shut my eyes. Then I see Victor's face, his incredible blue eyes as he studies me. Was he tense, wondering if I'd tell his father everything? But if he didn't want me to, why respond to the summons? He had to know I'd be there. So why come at all? Why risk exposing his true self to me? Maybe Rachel will have a better idea of what it could all mean.
I shut off the water and towel dry. I slip on some flannel pants and a tank top from the Race for the Blood 5K run my parents organized and cosponsored. I'd volunteered to help with the registration. No one showed up. No big surprise.
When I pad out into my bedroom, I discover that I'm not alone.
On my bed sits a vampire. One I hoped to never see again. One I just finished rinsing off my skin.
Victor.
Victor immediately stands and holds up his hands. He's not wearing the suit anymore. He's in a black T-shirt and jeans. Once again blending in with the night. Or he would be if he wasn't in my blue bedroom. He sorta sticks out here. "I'm not here to hurt you, Dawn."
Right. His tone is reassuring, but since I saw him beside his father, everything about him is suspect. Not only is he a vampire, he's Old Family, which means he's manipulative, deceitful, cunning. He's nothing like I thought he was.
I don't have to ask how he got in here. The French doors leading out onto my bedroom balcony are slightly ajar. With a vampire's strength and uncanny agility, he could have easily scaled the building, leaping from balcony to balcony. And he didn't need to wait on an invitation to enter. At this moment, I really wish that wasn't just a myth.
I bolt for my dresser, open a drawer, yank out a metal stake, and spin around. But Victor moves too fast, displaying the blinding speed possessed only by the powerful Old Family vampires, those born with fangs, those who don't know what it means to be human. I barely have time to raise the stake before he grabs both my wrists and manacles them behind my back with one hand while the other covers my mouth, as we slam into the wall.
I'm immobilized, completely helpless. I hate him for that. For overpowering me so easily.
I realize that last night he moved more slowly, deliberately striving to disguise what he was. Even now, with his mouth closed, his fangs hidden, he's too human. He leans in and I feel the press of his body against mine. His warm breath skims over my cheek, circles around the shell of my ear. "If you make any more noise, Rachel is going to come in here. It won't be pretty."
Fear assaults me. My stomach sinks to the floor. I know what his veiled threat means. He'll kill her.
He eases back, and once again I look into his blue eyes. Last night they'd intrigued me. Now I'm repulsed. His gaze drops to the rapidly pounding pulse at my throat. We stay like that for what seems an eternity. Normally I wouldn't let him touch me without a fight, but he's right: With all the noise I'd make defending myself, Rachel would come in here—
I can't lose someone else I love. And I do love Rachel. She's been a part of my life ever since my parents first went to work for the Agency. She was a friend to the family long before I needed a guardian. I don't want to be responsible for her death. My brother died protecting me. I don't know that I could survive any more guilt.
A knock sounds on the door, and I jerk, my heart speeding up.
"Dawn? I heard a noise. Is everything okay in there?" Rachel asks. Her voice is sweet, innocent. She's completely unaware of the monster in my room.
Victor's gaze burns into mine. "Your choice," he says quietly, and slowly removes his hand from my mouth.
I swallow hard. "Just me being a klutz. I dropped something. I'll be there in a few minutes, Rachel."
"Hurry. Food will be on the table in ten. Don't want it to get cold."
I hear her footsteps retreating and briefly wonder why I didn't hear them arriving. Something to do with my focus being on Victor. Victor. I may not be able to fight him, but I'm not going to die docilely. I set my jaw and glare at him, daring him—
"You think I'm here for your blood," he says quietly.
"Why the hell else would you be here?"
"To forge a friendship."
Is he joking? "Yeah, well, that's not going to happen. You're a damned vampire. Why didn't you tell me who—what—you were? You let me believe that you were a Night Watchman. That you were … human. But you're a monster, just like your father."
"Don't ever say that. I'm not like him."
"It's in the blood."
"You think you know everything about vampires, but there is so much you don't understand."
"I understand you've destroyed everything I care about. I know I loathe you."
If vampires had feelings, I would have thought that I'd hurt his. He gently takes the stake out of my hand, as if he were taking a present, then releases his hold on me completely. I quickly slide away from him and cross my arms over my chest.
"Has Vivi recovered from the other night?" he asks. Okay, I wasn't expecting him to care about that. But, of course, he doesn't. He just wants to keep track of all the players on the board.
"Yeah," I say. "She doesn't remember much. And I haven't told her anything. She's not a threat to you." I don't want him trying to get her next.
"I never thought she was," he says.
His arrogance increases my hatred of him. Unsaid is that he doesn't see me as a threat either. And I want to be. So badly.
"Why are you really here?" I ask.
"Because I know how much you hate my kind," he says, anger and frustration mixed together. "I figured the first thing you'd do now that you know about me is tell the Agency about the theater. I wanted to ask you to honor your promise not to."
I shake my head.
"Dawn, there are good vampires out there. We're not all like those monsters who attacked you, and we're not all like my father."
"Prove it. Turn yourself in to the Agency. Work for them."
"That's impossible. I won't have them monitoring my every step. They'd lock me up and use me only at their convenience."
"So?"
"I wouldn't be able to wander the night."
"Your problem, not mine."
"It would've been your problem when you were attacked on the trolley," he says. "Had I been locked up in an Agency tower somewhere, then where would you be now?"
An image flashes through my mind: me being fed on by vampires. No, a single vampire. Nameless, faceless, shapeless. But he sounds just like the one in front of me. I force it out of my head.
"Why did you rescue me?" I ask.
"I told you: right place, right time."
As soon as I saw Victor standing next to his father, I thought this was all a game, and his intentions were to manipulate me. I figured his father sent Victor after me, maybe even arranged that attack on the trolley so his son could rush in and save the day. That sounds exactly like something Valentine would do. No, Victor saving my life can't be just a coincidence.
"You expect me to believe that?"
"Would you rather I hadn't?"
"It's just a little unlikely," I say. "The city's delegate being saved by a Valentine vampire? I mean, what are the odds?"
"Good, if you watch the night like I do," he says. "You really think you're the first human I've saved?"
A strange part of me wants to believe him, to think he's different from the monsters in my dreams. But I have seen what monsters can do.
"There have been others?" I ask.
"Of course. Those weren't the first Lessers I've slain, either. The Night Watchmen patrol this city, but I do my fair share, too."
"Why? What do you have to gain from killing your own kind?"
"They aren't my kind!" he says, his voice low but bordering on anger. "They're murderers who think they have the right to feed off any human they please. I'm not like that. Humans have hearts and souls, and have every right to walk the night without fear of being attacked. But we need more blood, Dawn. Vampires have the right to survive, too. Trying to bully it out of the humans—I know that's not the way to do it, but we can't survive without it. Animal blood doesn't cut it for us. You know that."
"Save it for the negotiation table. Or are you here to take my blood?"
"If I wanted it, I'd already have it."
I can't deny the truth of his words. He's had so many opportunities: on the trolley, at the theater, right now. He's done nothing to indicate he's a threat to me, but I'm having a hard time looking beyond the fangs. And he did threaten Rachel.
"Dawn?" It's Rachel again.
"Coming!" I look at Victor. "If I don't go, she's going to come in here."
"Just think about what we can do to get more blood."
"We?"
"You're the delegate, but if there's something I can do to help, I will." He purposefully sets my stake down on my dresser and starts walking toward the balcony.
"Victor?" He stops, his back to me. "You knew I would be at the manor tonight. Why did you go there?"