Prologue
Zackery
It wasn’t every day Zackery sentenced a young couple to death.
It was the last thing he wanted to do—and the only thing he could think of to stop the insanity of the last six months. Beat-less heart in his throat and empty stomach at his feet, he drew a long, unnecessary inhale, followed by a drawn-out exhale he hoped would never end. Because once it did, he had to do it. He had to tap that green icon.
The screen wasn’t hot under his momentary touch, but he could have sworn it scalded his fingertip.
“Thank you for calling the United States Department of Mythological Affairs.” The voice was polite, as neutral in gender as it was in tone, and accompanied by the Department of Mythological Affairs crest on the screen—a featureless eagle with an image of four interlocked hands in a circle on its chest. The crest was a farce from all angles—wild eagles no longer resided anywhere within the United States borders, and if the support Mythological Affairs provided was anything reminiscent of the cooperation those clasped hands purported, Zackery wouldn’t have been making this call.
“If you belong to a mythological group and need to report your whereabouts in compliance with Mythological Ordinance 194.4.32, please hang up and call the Mythological Registration Offices at…”
Zackery sincerely wished there was a way to bypass this menu. Normally, he had a direct line to the individuals at Mythological Affairs he needed to speak with (being the leader of the Immortals had its perks, such that they were) but this wasn’t a normal call. No, he needed to speak to the officer who interviewed him in that alley, back in Seattle. The one who’d given him his card and asked him to reach out if Zackery had new information as to the location of Christopher Topher-son (now Christopher Matricia-mate) and his new bride, Matra Cressida-daughter (now Matricia Christopher-mate, the former surname being a complete fabrication that had taken no small amount of finagling and favor-asking to secure, since Matricia had had no known last name prior to arriving on Zackery’s proverbial doorstep).
So much wasted effort.
Finally, after making his way through the phone tree from hell, the call reached its destination and the Mythological Affairs crest was replaced by the face of one Jeff Sellers, officer in the Ordinance Enforcement Office of the Department of Mythological Affairs.
“Zackery, this is a surprise.” The man was young middle-aged, in other words the hardest kind of officer to snow. No longer naive, like his fresh-out-of-university counterparts, but not yet burned-out and longing for retirement like his older colleagues, Jeff Sellers had proven a worthy adversary in Zackery’s attempts to have the whole unpleasantness of Matricia’s past and the events in that godforsaken Seattle alley forgotten.
The real obstacle to all of that had been the once-dead man who reanimated before their very eyes. Had the man stayed dead, this all would have been over and done with months ago. But no, he’d come back to life, half his skull missing, and as much as the human authorities had grilled Zackery about why and how it had happened, he’d been as flummoxed as they were.
It was a rare occasion when Zackery had as few answers as the humans did, but this was one of them. Which did him no favors in their eyes and cast doubt upon his completely reasonable version of events (which under any other circumstance would have easily put an end to this whole affair before it had truly begun).
But no, the man had come back to life, and had relayed a story as fabricated as it was damning. Human as he was, the authorities hadn’t dismissed the man’s ramblings, though he was clearly crazed. Crazed, but human. And though Zackery was of sound mind, he was Immortal. His words carried less weight.
Which led him to today. To this call.
Zackery’s somber expression when he spoke wasn’t manufactured—he didn’t think he could have smiled if someone had told him to—but it was with effort he kept his voice steady. “I have some unfortunate news to relay, regarding the case we have found ourselves ensnared into.” That might have been said with too formal of diction, Zackery realized as the words left his lips. He would try to soften his formality with the next sentences.
“I’m sorry to hear that,” the officer replied, brisk and clearly not sorry.
“Yes, well. The young couple who were due back to Beta some weeks ago—Christopher and Matricia. They…” Zackery sighed as though trying to find words when really he just didn’t want to say them.
Across his desk, his dearest friend and advisor sat, staring at him. Zackery had asked Gabriel here so there was a witness to this effort—and possibly so Zackery could put it off no longer. Now he wished Gabriel was not there. His golden-amber eyes were unnerving in their honesty.
“They appear to have been killed.” The lie burned Zackery’s lips on the way out of his mouth so he kept talking to soothe the sting. “I just received news overnight.”
Officer Sellers didn’t even look directly at the camera, instead appearing to look at something to the left of the center, likely another screen. “If I look them up, will I find death certificates?”
“I assume so, yes.” In fact, Zackery knew the certificates had been filed. Maintaining a relationship with the more influential shifters had proven beneficial for much more than walks down memory lane over the hundred or so years since both their kinds had been revealed.
It was hard to believe so many years had passed since then, and simultaneously difficult not to tally the years at double that.
“What happened?” Officer Sellers asked, the interest in his voice thick and false.
“The details weren’t clear, but it appears they were assaulted.” Yes, Zackery was using the Alpha sector’s hatred to his advantage. Mythological Affairs would not dig where there was a possibility of involvement from criminal groups who organized against Mythologicals. It was a Pandora’s box they were loath to open and complicit in tending.
Officer Sellers’s expression turned troubled while he nodded and this time he did glance at the screen. “Must have been one hell of an assault.”
“Pardon?” Zackery didn’t need the man to repeat it—he just wanted to make him say it again, in part to see if he would.
He didn’t disappoint. “Must have been one hell of a beating to take down two Immortals.”
Zackery wasn’t sure what he’d expected the man to say, but something as crass as that in the face of news that two young people—vampire or not—had been murdered wouldn’t have graced the long list if he’d stopped to make one. “You know as well as I, the term is a misnomer.” Zackery matched brisk with brisk and didn’t let off as he continued. “Regardless, Christopher was Born, and Matricia was not Immortal—they were not immune from harm and you had half the city looking for them—I’m surprised it didn’t happen sooner, if I’m being honest.”
The officer now gave Zackery his full attention, turning and looking squarely into the camera. Zackery did not look away. “What are you implying?”
“I am stating a fact. Your department chose to call attention to two of my citizens’ presence in the Alpha sector—”
“You just said Matricia was not an Immortal—”
“Matricia Christopher-Mate was an Immortal by marriage, if not by blood. Do not play coy. She fell squarely under my jurisdiction the moment their marriage was recognized by me. Your department called the dogs on two children—”
“They were over eighteen—”
“They were under twenty-one which is the age—”
“—of adulthood under Mythological Ordinance 2.0.22. Yeah, yeah.”
“I’m glad you’re familiar with the statutes you’ve been charged to uphold.” Zackery had to work to keep his voice steady. “Which means you’re also aware that the Department of Mythological Affairs became in breach of the Ordinances the moment they failed to protect a member of a Mythological group.”
“Those two were under investigation for the attempted murder of a human!”
“They weren’t even there!” Zackery lost the battle to control the volume of his voice. “And even if they had been, their trial and sentencing falls under my jurisdiction as leader of Immortal kind. Correct me if I’m wrong, Officer, but even under human law, you don’t condone vigilante killings of suspected criminals, correct?”
A vein pulsed across the forehead of Officer Jeffery Sellers as he attempted to stare Zackery down through the screen. This isn’t how Zackery had wanted the conversation to go—generally speaking, he preferred civilized discourse over intimidation, but needs must. He was not one to shy away from a fight, especially with a man so clearly inferior to him. What the officer had no way of knowing was that Zackery had been intimidated by truly terrifying people very early on in his very long life—and long ago had decided he would never allow himself to be intimidated again.
The decision had served him well.
The truth was, while everything Zackery had said was true—officially—if Matricia and Christopher were found by human authorities, he would be unable to save them. They would be put to death and he would be all but powerless to stop it. Killing them on paper was the only way to keep them alive.
“You are a busy man, I am certain,” he said calmly now, into the silence of Officer Sellers’s scramble to decide how to proceed. “I have relayed the information I called you to relay. Now I leave you to deal with the man who started this whole mess. Good day.”
After tapping the red icon to end the call, Zackery sat back into the soft, worn leather of the chair behind his desk for a moment before lifting his gaze to Gabriel, still sitting across from him, still staring at him with those guileless, see-everything eyes of his. Sometimes Zackery truly hated his role as Heir. “It was the only tenable way forward.”
“I fear we won’t know the truth or falsehood of that statement for years.” Gabriel’s golden brown hair was long, beginning to curl at the ends. It made him look like a surfer in a bespoke suit. No matter that he was some four centuries old, he didn’t look a day over a human forty. “We won’t know if this was the right decision until Luceam is much older, a grown woman, and her parents suddenly reappear. What then?”
What then? Zackery stood and paced the room, passing shelves laden with three lifetimes of books on his way to the tall, mullioned windows that looked out onto the forest behind the manse, Forest Noir. “They’ll have a jolly fun reunion, I suppose.”
“You can’t even make that sound like the truth.”
“Because it’s not,” Zackery agreed, “but I didn’t have a choice. Mythological Affairs has been down my throat from the moment we returned to Beta, asking to meet with Christopher, to see proof of Matricia’s parentage—proof, I might add, that I forged to protect them both. They were convinced the two of them had something to do with that mad man’s death and reanimation, and…” He stopped, a sigh escaping his lungs as though he’d been holding his breath for hours. It wouldn’t be the first time. “I was quickly running out of ways to keep the authorities away.”
“Where are they now?” Gabriel asked. “Christopher and the girl—his mate.”
“They are with Joaquin King—Cressida’s brother.” Another instance of his relationship with the shifters being more than slightly beneficial. “I need to send word to them that their absence must be extended.” Indefinitely.
“And what of Topher?”
“What of Topher?” Zackery parroted.
“Topher is close with the Kings. Are you expecting Cressida and her brother to lie to him about the fate of his own son?” Gabriel challenged.
“No. I will deliver the news to Topher. As Christopher was my assistant and was killed on my watch—”
“He wasn’t killed—”
“I will be the one to tell Topher of his son’s fate.” Not that Zackery was looking forward to the task. He turned, abandoning his view of the forest—the only real greenery for miles. “He can ask me all the questions he like.”
Gabriel just stared, for so long that Zackery began to feel discomforted—which was saying something.
“You cannot deny it is a sound plan,” Zackery insisted.
“I cannot deny it is a regrettable one. And a plan I fear will come back to haunt us both,” came Gabriel’s reply. “Why are you risking so much for this family? Not just their safety, but your very role as Heir is at stake if your fabrication is discovered. Or have you not stopped to consider this?”
Zackery sat for a moment while he calculated his next words very carefully. The calculation wasn’t due to any need to obfuscate the truth. On the contrary, his pause was because he wanted to make very sure that what he said was enough to underscore the importance.
“The girl—Luceam,” he began. “She was not born of her parents’ coupling, but of their very blood.”
Gabriel understood—but didn’t yet believe it. Zackery could see it in his furrowed brow and the way he pulled his chin back, and he couldn’t blame him for his disbelief. It was hard for Zackery to comprehend, and he was the one saying it.
“Are you insinuating…”
“Christopher told me the story while we were in Alpha,” Zackery explained. “He and the girl’s mother, Matricia. They shared blood when they were barely more than children.”
“Shared blood.” Gabriel’s eyes were wide. “Were they blood bonded?”
“Completely. They drank from one another—full blood bond.” It was unheard of, especially since the laws forbidding ingestion of blood by any Immortal were passed in the early twenty-first century. Most wouldn’t risk the penalty of death. But even before that, it was widely considered taboo among their kind to allow a human to drink from the Born Immortal vein. To do them both, one to the other, and back again, was tantamount to inextricably tying their lives together. A bond as powerful as that shared between a Turned Immortal and the fledging they sired, but unyielding so long as the bond was maintained. And that wasn’t the half of this story.
He forged ahead. “Shortly thereafter, they were parted with the relocation of our kind. They had not seen one another since—yet Luceam is Christopher’s daughter.”
“It can’t be,” Gabriel argued, his face slack with shock, but there was no passion behind it. “The only account of a blood born child is scant mention in a journal hundreds of years old.”
“True. But you commented on her likeness to Christopher the first time you saw Luceam,” Zackery reminded him. “You weren’t mistaken.” Their visage was alarmingly similar.
Gabriel shook his head slowly, clearly thinking deep about what this all meant. “You said he saved his love’s life in the alley—healed her wounds—”
“It was more than that,” Zackery confessed, knowing where Gabriel was going. Blood bonded, siring a blood born child—what came next was the natural conclusion, but this part of the story was complicated and dangerous if it fell into the wrong hands. “He reversed death itself, Gabriel.”
Though how he’d known to do it still had Zackery flummoxed. It had been the strangest thing to watch, like witnessing Christopher possessed. He had gone very still, like he was listening when there was nothing for him to hear. Then he’d moved with precision, tearing open the cuff of his shirt with his teeth, scoring his skin and lowering his bleeding flesh to Matrica’s slack lips. Zackery had been so shocked even his attempts to stop him were halfhearted at best, more a reflex than anything purposeful.
“Holy heaven and hell. That’s why you can’t let authorities gain custody of Christopher or Matricia.” Gabriel’s voice and fine features still held his shock. “It would be 2008 all over again.”
2008. The year a vampire and a shifter killed a reporter on live television, dropping a proverbial bomb onto humankind. To call the following months a nightmare would be an understatement. “Similar drama, but this time the humans would be hunting down a single Born Immortal with the ability to cure death,” Zackery replied. “And his blood born daughter. They wouldn’t leave their punishment in our hands—they’d kill Christopher outright, and Matricia too.”
“After they ran countless experiments and attempted to profit from their blood,” Gabriel agreed. “If Mythological Affairs finds out about this, it could ruin everything—uproot our very existence.”
That was certainly part of it—the part that had led him to make the call today, for certain. But there was more to it, and Gabriel could see it.
“Good god, what else is there to tell, Zackery?”
This was where things got even more complicated and nuanced. The issue of Matricia and Christopher, while dire, was black-and-white—if their actions were discovered, they would be killed, no questions asked. This last bit, however, muddied everything surrounding their fate—including Zackery’s own responsibility to them—into shades of gray. “The prophecies state that the one to succeed me in my role will be born of blood,” he said slowly, meeting Gabriel’s ochre gaze with his own before going on. “All these years since receiving the seer’s vision, I’ve assumed the term to mean one Turned.”
“Blood is taken and venom given by the sire to their fledgling,” Gabriel said, leaning forward in his seat to brace his forearms across his knees. “It is a rebirth from blood. A reasonable assumption for you to make.”
“Reasonable, but wrong,” Zackery countered. “I now believe beyond any doubt that the prophesy is not referring to a Turned Immortal but to one who is Blood Born.”
“Christopher’s daughter.” Gabriel was appropriately gobsmacked, which at least helped vindicate Zackery’s initial shock when he’d first come to the profound realization that the girl’s parentage, her creation, all the complications attached to it led to one inexorable conclusion.
“She is the future Heiress, Gabriel. One day Luceam will take my place as leader of Immortal kind.”
Hello!đź‘‹ 