Something Secret This Way Comes: Secret McQueen, Book 1 (20 page)

Rather than finding ourselves in front of the cash counter at Starbucks, we were standing in the foyer of a majestic house.
House
wasn’t the right word to describe where Calliope lived. Mansion would have been much closer to the truth, but even that didn’t really fit. Her estate transcended the laws of physics binding other homes to a fixed size. It had a limitless number of rooms that could expand and recede to accommodate guests as necessary. Whether it was used to heal those who were injured or safeguard new vampires too unstable to be among the public, Calliope’s home was whatever it needed to be.

The foyer was larger than my entire apartment and probably larger than Lucas’s mammoth bedroom. The floor was covered from end to end in overlapping Persian rugs Calliope had acquired at bargain prices when there’d still been a Persia.

An immense variety of portraits all depicting hauntingly beautiful women hung from the walls. It wasn’t until my fourth or fifth visit that I realized every painting in the room was of Calliope. Done by the most famous artists in the world, she was portrayed in every era and style, from Renaissance to Impressionist to Pop. The crown jewel of the group was a Warhol painting of one of the women Calliope had claimed to be in her many lives.

The room was dimly lit in colorful jeweled splendor by dangling Tiffany lamps casting kaleidoscope shadows over the floor. Color was a mainstay of Calliope’s world. The rugs, lamps, paintings—all a dizzying array of red, blue, green and pink. Scattered along the walls were large, plush leather armchairs that made the ones in Keaty’s office look like they were for children.

Slumped in one of those chairs was a small, pale teenaged boy wearing a Pizza Hut uniform. His eyes were hazy and unfocused, but he was alive. And judging by the smell of him, completely human.

I wasn’t the only one to smell his true nature. Brigit’s eyes widened and darkened to the oily black of a hungry vampire. Her nostrils flared and her fangs were out before I could yell, “Calliope!” It was lucky I was still holding Brigit by the hair, so when she lunged for the boy, she was yanked back to me by the leash of her own body.

On cue, Calliope entered the room.

As entrances go, Calliope rarely did things subtly. She swished through the door in a flourish of red material. Her hair was done in tumbling black waves held back by ruby stickpins. She was barefoot, and trailing behind her was a snow-white tiger. Seriously.

“Secret!” Her voice sounded like a song, and she never seemed unhappy to see anyone, regardless of how they came to be in her presence. “You’ve brought me something. I was expecting you.”

I couldn’t help but smile. “Of course you were.” She was the Oracle, after all.

Brigit turned her attention from the boy to the woman who had just walked in. To a vampire’s heightened senses, Calliope was a confusing jumble of fragrance. She smelled intoxicating and alluring, but there was a pungent edge of warning to her blood. Something in the fiber of her being warded off potential predators.

“Who is this you’ve brought me?”

The tiger smelled my legs and then the hem of Brigit’s dress. It bared its teeth at her, growling, and she knew enough to stop struggling against me.

“Brigit is new. Unsanctioned. Alexandre Peyton turned her to make a bit of an overly dramatic point.” My voice wavered as I spoke.

“You feel responsible for her?”

“Yes.”

She didn’t need to hear more. She came to us and put one arm around Brigit, releasing her from my hold.

“We’ll get her settled in no time, don’t you worry. Then you can get back to that handsome wolf of yours. No sense in leaving him there too long. Wolves and caffeine are a terrible combination.”

The tiger preceded us out of the room, and before exiting I remembered the pizza boy.

“Uh, Cal?”

“Yes, love?”

“Is the boy okay there? I mean…he just heard all that, and—”

“He didn’t hear a thing. He’s busy forgetting some things before he goes home alive and well-tipped.” She wore a devious little grin, which on her was far too beguiling.

I was often curious if one of her forms had been Helen of Troy, because it didn’t take much to imagine an entire war occurring for the right to love her.

We left the boy in the room alone and began our long walk down a very dark hall.

In the room where we settled Brigit, unnatural sunlight dappled behind the curtains. It made my chest constrict from panic and longing. The sun was an illusion, a kindness she provided to those who would never see it again in the real world.

Judging by the tan coloring Brigit’s features, she had been a bit of a sun worshiper in her human life. From my chair in the corner of the room, I wondered how many other parts of her life she wouldn’t be allowed to enjoy now because of me.

I felt as guilty for Brigit’s current situation as I would have if I’d turned her myself. It made me sick to know she would never see her family again. She could no longer enjoy whatever macrobiotic food lifestyle had kept her so thin. She couldn’t go to the beach in the Hamptons this summer or date a normal human boy.

Her life had ended, but in more ways than it would with a normal death. With human passing you lost everything, but you weren’t there afterward to know it. When you became a vampire, you had to mourn your own losses.

It was that awareness of the missing parts of one’s life which often drove new vampires mad, turning them into killing machines. Coupled with the strength and power inherited from their master’s blood, it was difficult to combat the initial reaction to vampirism.

I was genuinely grateful I had never had to experience it.

Calliope had chained Brigit to the bed with satin-covered silver. It wouldn’t burn her, but it held her in place. I was pretty sure it was fairy-wrought silver too, so the extra enchantment helped.

The Oracle was standing next to the bed, humming a strange song while she unpacked bags of blood from a small red cooler. My stomach growled.

Without batting an eyelash she threw one of the bags to me. I took it with thanks and bit into the bag, drinking its contents like a juice box. The blood was cold, but I wasn’t going to pick nits when I was being fed for the first time that night.

“So, tell me about this man of yours.”

“You’re the Oracle, Cal, I was hoping you’d tell me.”

She was holding one of the bags to Brigit’s mouth. The girl ripped it open with her teeth and shook it like a wild dog, spraying blood all over the bed and herself. Calliope sighed and threw the bag into a wastebasket, then took Brigit firmly by the chin and looked her right in the eyes.

“Secret and I are talking, little one. Do not think your youthful insolence will play here with the big girls. You will take this blood and live, or refuse it and die. That is the choice. Be a good vampire, behave and don’t make trouble, and you will live. Ignore what I am telling you, and the next time you see Miss Secret over there, it will be when she is delivering your death warrant. Do. You. Understand?”

Brigit’s eyes were wide, her face splattered with the discarded blood. She looked insane, like she couldn’t be reasoned with, but she nodded her understanding. It gave me a chill when Calliope got serious because it revealed something inside of her that was old, strong and very frightening.

She held another bag to Brigit’s mouth, and this time the girl took it, tearing it open with a dainty bite before glutting herself on the contents. The Oracle was looking at me, waiting for me to continue.

“Do you know about soul-bonding?”

“Ahh.” Her face collapsed and she let out a heavy sigh. “It’s that time now for you. I thought we had longer.”

“You knew?”

“You need to understand. There are certain things in your life that
must
happen to you. I cannot always warn you about them because you are so stubborn you will try to keep them from happening.”

“You knew I had a soul mate?”

“Common human understanding is that everyone does, is it not?”

“Human understanding and romanticizing really don’t apply to my life.”

“I suppose not. Although the love triangle transcends human romance. There were plenty of them with the old gods. But I digress. In your situation you should know things, romantically, are not going to be easy for you.”

“Duh.”

“I don’t only mean the wolf king and his lieutenant.”

“That’s the only love triangle I’m currently a part of.”

She smiled, but there was a little sadness to it. “The wolf is one half of who you are. There is another half. A whole other arena for trouble.”

My face must have gone white because she raised another bag of blood to give me, but I waved it away. “You’re saying—”

“I’m saying what I’ve said. Your love life will be complicated, to say the least.”

I barked a laugh, shrill and short. “If it gets any more complicated than it already is, I think I’d rather do without.”

“We shall see.”

Brigit mumbled something into her now-empty bag, and Calliope freed it from her mouth. The girl licked blood from her teeth and lips, then looked at me before speaking. “You are a vampire.”

“I am.”

“But you smell like a wolf?”

Calliope regarded me carefully, wondering if she would need to help Brigit forget more than usual.

“I’ve been told that.”

“Are you like him, then?”

“
Him
who, Brigit?”

“The one who made me?”

“Peyton?” I asked, and she nodded. “We are both vampires, if that’s what you mean.”

She shook her head and scrunched up her eyes the way an annoyed little girl would, obviously frustrated. “No. The wolves. Do you have wolves like he does?”

My stomach was suddenly in my shoes. Calliope gave me a mournful look and brushed some of Brigit’s blonde hair off her face.

“Pet wolves?”

Brigit shook her head again. “Werewolves.”

I stared at Calliope, but her face told me nothing. If she understood more about this than she was telling me, she wasn’t showing it. I rose from my chair and went to stand next to Brigit.

“Peyton has werewolves? How do you know that?”

“Three of them grabbed me off the street in the middle of the day and took me to this old building. I guess it was a theater, it had a big screen…” Her eyes began to tear again. “I tried to run, but one of them held me and made me watch as one of the others changed. They told me if I tried to escape, they’d feed me to the wolf.”

“What theater?” I asked.

“The vampires woke up when the sun went down,” she continued, not hearing my question. “Peyton came. He asked if the wolves had taken good care of me. Until I met you, I didn’t believe in vampires. Or werewolves. I didn’t think any of this was real.” Brigit turned her face away, a bloody tear rolling down her cheek.

I knelt on the opposite side of the bed so I could see her face, and waited for her to look at me.

“Brigit…”

“After he killed me he told me everything would be better if I found you. He said once you were dead I’d be free. Free from what?” Red tears streamed down her face. “Can I be alive again?”

I shook my head. “No. But if you can tell me where he is, I’ll make sure he pays for what he’s done to you.”

She sniffled and wiped her face against the pillow. When she saw the bloodstained smear on the case she began to cry again. Incoherent mumblings crossed her lips, but nothing that helped me.

“Where is he?” I asked again.

Calliope placed a hand on my shoulder and gave a gentle squeeze.

“Maybe we should give her a break. It’s been a difficult night. She can answer more questions later,” Calliope whispered.

Admittedly, Brigit wasn’t in any condition to give the responses I needed, but it pained me to let up now when I was this close to getting the information I needed. I stood, prepared to leave, when I heard Brigit murmur a word that sounded like Orpheus. That got Calliope’s attention, her body going rigid and eyes widening.

It also told me where I would find Peyton.

If Brigit was correct and Peyton had werewolves working with him, then there was no time to waste. A rogue vampire with plans to overthrow a city was bad enough. But I knew of one werewolf who would be foolish enough to join forces with him, and it made everything that much worse.

This ended tonight.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

“It’s Marcus.”

I was back outside on 52nd, and Desmond was trying to keep up with me as I barreled down the street, wanting very badly to be back in my apartment.

“Marcus?” He was confused and had every right to be. “Is this about the other night?”

“No. Yes? No, I don’t know. But—” I stopped mid-stride and turned to face him. He nearly collided with me due to the abruptness of my stop. “I hunt vampires.”

“I know. You’re working with the vampire council. You mentioned it.”

“Okay. Well, they sent me to hunt a really bad one who seems to have it in his mind he can take over New York if he infiltrates our population from the bottom up.” He looked puzzled but didn’t ask for explanations. “We, Holden and I, couldn’t figure out how it could be possible since this vampire isn’t powerful enough to have a daytime servant.”

“A what?” He unlocked the passenger door, opening it for me before going around and letting himself in the driver’s side.

“Someone to do his bidding in the daytime.”

Desmond’s face looked a little ashy. “They can do that?”

I nodded and continued. “This vampire, Peyton, he and I go way back, and it’s because of him that girl attacked me.”

“Did you kill her?” He wasn’t accusing me, just asking.

“No, I took her to the Oracle. Calliope can help her come to terms with what’s happened to her.”

“Calliope? You’re on a first-name basis with the Oracle? And why did she let you in? I thought she hated weres.”

“She doesn’t hate weres!” I was vexed and wanted to defend Calliope because she wasn’t here to do it herself. “Things just work differently in her world than they do here.”

“Her world? But if that’s the case, why would she see you?”

“I sort of have…special privileges?”