The Reluctant Goddess (The Montgomery Chronicles Book 2) (30 page)

“You did this?” she asked me, her fingers pausing above Charlie’s neck. Her eyes narrowed and she looked like she could cheerfully disembowel me with one of the instruments on the counter.
 

“No, she didn’t, Mel,” Dan said. “We found him like this.”
 

Her face smoothed back into pleasant lines as she turned and walked to the cabinets and rifled through the drawers. A moment later she returned with a pair of odd looking scissors and some other instruments I couldn’t identify.
 

“I’m going to debride the wound,” she said, speaking to Dan. “And stitch him up in a few places. It will take some time.”
 

“I’m not leaving.” I sat on one of the chairs on the opposite wall. “I don’t care how long it takes. I’m not leaving.”
 

She narrowed her eyes again. I smiled. I was ready for her.

The slow simmering anger I felt was deep and scary. It was one thing to come after me. I was a human adult. Okay, maybe not human, but at least I could leave a situation when I wanted. I could walk away. To chain Charlie up, to subject him to punishment he didn’t deserve pushed all my buttons.
 

I felt like the Incredible Hulk. You wouldn’t like me when I’m angry. I had the feeling I could do a lot of damage if I ever let myself get super pissed.
 

She was the first to look away.
 

“Okay,” she said. “I’m going to give him something for the pain.”
 

I stood and moved to the table, placing a kiss on Charlie’s nose. I didn’t know if I was talking to the dog or to Opie. I didn’t know if she felt the pain Charlie experienced.
 

“It’s going to be okay,” I said, dog lover to dog.
 

The other conversation, the one between vampire and ghost was mental and consisted of an inarticulate plea for silence. I didn’t know how I was going to handle the Opie part of this equation, but I didn’t think introducing a talking dog into my environment was the right move at the moment.
 

One crisis at a time.
 

Charlie blinked, which was good enough for me.
 

I sat again, staring down at my fingers rather than what Mel was doing. I didn’t want to see Charlie or Opie in pain.
 

Nearly two hours later, Dan carried Charlie back to my room without my even asking. I guess he knew that putting the dog in the kennels wouldn’t set well with me. Besides, I wanted to make sure Charlie was all right.
 

Dan placed him on the chaise and I covered him with a blanket, feeling like a neglectful mother who’d been given a second chance.
 

"Where did you see the witches?" he asked.

I pointed to the space in front of the chase. "Right there."

He went and stood in that exact spot, staring down at the carpet like he expected to see singe marks.

It was a good thing I didn't plan on having any kind of permanent relationship with Dan Travis. His mother would have made the very worst mother-in-law, seconded only by my mother. The condoms were a “just in case” purchase. I didn’t expect to use them, but if I needed them, they’d be handy.
 

“I’ve left word for my mother that you aren’t to be bothered, Marcie. If you see anything like that again, let me know right away.”
 

“Will she listen to you?”
 

He stood at the door, looking as if he wanted to say something. He only shook his head and left me alone with Charlie.
 

To my surprise, someone had unloaded the groceries from my car. The ice cream was perfect. I know, because I ate one whole pint sitting on the floor beside the chaise. The condoms were on the counter, so I stashed them beneath the sink.
 

Charlie was still sleeping and I was happy about that. He needed the rest and recuperation. Then, once I was certain he was okay, Opie and I were going to have a little girl talk, in a manner of speaking.

C
HAPTER
T
HIRTY

Other Smother

It hit me like a bullet between the eyes.
 

I sat straight up in bed, staring at the chaise. Charlie was a muddled shape in the darkness. I studied him until I heard his soft breathing. I grabbed my phone and started typing. When I finished, I sent the text to Dan. Hopefully, he wasn’t sleeping the sleep of the just. I stared at my phone screen as if that would make his reply faster. My question had been easy enough: what is the Other?
 

When his reply came through I didn’t move. Okay, maybe my eyes blinked, but that was it. Everything else was frozen in place. The Other was an acronym: Organization of True Humans for Equal Rights.
 

I asked another question. This one resulted in the phone vibrating. I answered.
 

“Their mission?” Dan said. “To blend the races so that no one aspect has superiority. Witches, vampires, and humans would all share the same traits. People were worried that humans would disappear, that vampires or witches would gain superiority in numbers.”

On the surface, it sounded all egalitarian and fair, but like a lot of things that looked good on the surface, there was a dark side.

“How do they do that?” I asked, although I already had a sneaking suspicion. Hell, it was more than a suspicion. The Librarian, Madame X, Mary, had already given me a textbook.
 

Me. I was the key. I was, in the Librarian’s words,
the source of all this weirdness
. The only learning I really had to do was about what the OTHER wanted from me.
 

Simple, my blood.
 

“Holy crap,” I said, feeling as if the words were ice and my lips numb. “I walked right into the jaws of the enemy.”
 

I switched on the TV on the far wall, glued my eyes to it as if the cable news was suddenly going to launch into a story more important than the one I was currently living.

He didn’t say anything for a minute. When I heard the knock on the door, I hung up, knowing it was Dan.
 

Oh, goodie, a three AM meeting of the minds. I put on my robe and answered the door.
 

“How do you know so much about them?”
 

He didn’t answer, but I wasn’t satisfied with silence.
 

“Tell me.” I might not be able to compel him, but I was more than willing to zap him if it came to that. Maybe just a little.
 

“My grandfather founded the OTHER.”

Maybe more than a little.
 

I folded my arms, wishing I weren’t so damned cold. This bone deep chill had nothing to do with external temperature and everything to do with being afraid. There was a certain inevitability to Dan’s explanation.
 

I’d known there was something different about him from the beginning. Now I knew what it was.
 

He was my enemy.
 

I expected the bars to come down on the windows any second. Or my door to be remotely locked. Maybe a cage would descend from the ceiling. Here’s where I’m led to my cell, transfused, and the studies began.
 

Except I wasn’t quite as helpless as I’d once been and the scenario didn’t make any sense.
 

“Why?”
 

“Why didn’t I tell you?”
 

“No, why offer me a safe house? Why insist on accompanying me around San Antonio?”
 

I wouldn’t have stood a chance if I’d returned to my townhouse on my own without knowing everything. I’d thought, at the time, that my only enemy was Maddock. I had no idea that the entire world was gunning for me. Okay, maybe not the whole world, but a major segment of it.
 

Why not put me in manacles and do whatever they’d planned? For that matter, why had the Librarian let me leave?
 

What was I missing? What were they waiting for?
 

“So, what are you going to do?” I asked, proud that my voice didn’t quaver.
 

“Do? Nothing. Keep trying to protect you.”
 

“Why, if you’re for one world order and all that jazz?”
 

He bent and scratched between Charlie’s ears, talking to him softly. He straightened, leaned over, and turned on the light.
 

Me? I preferred the darkness. If I couldn’t see something, I wasn’t afraid of it, and at this moment I was very much afraid of Dan.

“You know the old saying about keeping your friends close but your enemies closer? I know what the OTHER is doing because they trust me. Plus, I have people in the organization.”
 

“Just like you have people following me.”
 

To his credit, he didn’t deny it. All he did was lift Charlie’s dangling leg and sit on the end of the chaise.
 

“I told you my father died. What I didn’t tell you was my grandfather got it into his head that it had something to do with my mother being a witch.”
 

“Did it?”
 

He shook his head. “No. It was an accident. An icy road, an overpass, and he’d had one or two beers. Because my mother was with him and survived, my grandfather blamed her. He decided he didn’t want his grandchildren to have a witch bloodline.”
 

I frowned at him. “My mother isn’t a witch. My grandmother said that it wasn’t a hereditary vocation. You had to have some talent in the art.”
 

“My grandfather either didn’t know that or didn’t believe it. He disliked the thought of his offspring being anything but fully human. At first, he wanted to invent a cure for the witch taint, but when the vampires were made public, he realized that humans could easily be outnumbered.”
 

“So that’s when he became a if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em kind of guy.”
 

“In a way,” he said.
 

I moved over to the bed and sat at the end of it.
 

“He wanted to know if things could be reversed. Could you change someone from a vampire back to a human? Could a witch be stripped of her powers?”
 

“Could they?”
 

He shook his head. “Not that he’d discovered.”

“Where does the Librarian come in?”
 

He shook his head. “An affectation Mary uses. She’s a good researcher and my grandfather hired her to learn everything he could about vampires and witches.”
 

“Did he know about the rest of the Brethren?”
 

He shook his head again. “Not at the time.”

“So, are the Angelus Chronicles something she just made up?”
 

“No, they’re real. She didn’t discover them until after my grandfather died.”
 

“You’ve read them, haven’t you?” I asked, certain of it.
 

“Yes,” he said. “She sent me a copy of everything she gave you.”
 

“I’ll bet your grandfather would have thought I was the answer to a prayer,” I said.
 

“He would have destroyed you. Instead, he let his obsession destroy him.” He smiled, but the expression held no humor. “He wanted to save humanity and he ended up stripping himself of what made him human. He became a monster.”
 

“Why haven’t I been locked away?” I asked. “Stuck full of needles and drained of my blood?”
 

I’d given up the battle to sound unfazed by his revelations. My voice was noticeably affected and I gave away my fear by trembling. My fingers were clenching my arms so tight I might give myself bruises. Lucky me, I was a vampire and healed fast.
 

“Bureaucracy is probably the reason for the delay.”
 

“Bureaucracy?”
 

“The OTHER isn’t controlled by one person, but a congress of people. Someone probably needs to get all the signatures on a document or something.”
 

“And when that happens?”
 

“They’ll send me word. They want to use my lab facilities,” he said. “Begin with giving a volunteer a transfusion from you.”

I was so cold I could barely move.
 

“So what happens when you get the go ahead?” I asked, proud that I could still talk.
 

“We go into lockdown.”
 

“What do you mean?”
 

“I’ve begun fortifying the castle for when they make a move. They can’t do anything overtly, but they can be a nuisance. They’ll try to hack our communications, but we’re connected to a satellite. They can’t touch our water supply since we’ve built underground cisterns and we’ve put in enough food for two years.” He grinned at me. “Even stuff for S’mores.”
 

“I don’t understand.”
 

I pushed down the sudden, buoyant relief I felt. I couldn’t get ahead of myself in the celebration department.