A Secret to Die For (Secret McQueen) (12 page)

Chapter Seventeen

According to my hastily devised plan, the cops and the werewolves were staying behind at Rain Hotel and preparing themselves with weapons and ammo. They were also supposed to look over the old layouts of the city Lucas had—a byproduct of running a huge architectural firm and being a real-estate kingpin—and try to determine where the necros were most likely to hide out.

Once the vampires and myself were fed, we were going to regroup and split into smaller units, with the intention of scouring the city and bringing the necromancers to justice.

It sounded all well and good on paper, but so had the Spider-Man musical, and that turned out to be a disaster of Hindenburg proportions. I was worried this entire thing would explode in my face the second we crossed the threshold into vampire territory.

What was I thinking? Were they really going to let me waltz through the door, saying
Thanks for the blood
, and send me on my merry way?

Evidently that was exactly what I hoped would happen, because I was leading a group of four vampires right up the stairs to the council’s front door.

We made it through the main entrance with no fanfare. In fact, the entire great room was empty. On any given night, the room was bustling and full of dozens of vampire wardens doing their work like busy little office drones. Now, though, the floor was carpeted in discarded paper, and the room was darker than I’d ever seen it. Usually the lights behind the stained-glass window panels gave the illusion of permanent daylight to the room, but now it was pitch-black.

Guess the vampires hadn’t considered a backup generator.

Not that they’d really need one, since they could see in the dark.

Still, it was eerie to find the place this quiet. I wasn’t the only one who thought so, since Reggie announced, “This is messed up.”

That was one way to put it.

“Holden, can you take them to the feeding room, please?” I hoped some of the on-site donors would still be around, but even if they weren’t, the coolers should have kept the blood bags mostly fresh in the meantime. “Bring me back something.”

“Where are you going?”

I stared uncertainly at the big oak double doors on the opposite side of the room. Behind them was a stairwell leading deep into the belly of the city, where the Tribunal and the elders held their meetings. Farther below were the cells where they chained rogue vampires in silver and left them to wither away and starve.

Was that what I was destined for?

“I’m going to find Sig.”

“Secret, don’t be an idiot. We can get the blood and leave. No one is here, no one will stop us. Why would you risk going below?”

Logically, I understood it was a stupid idea. Yet logic didn’t seem to matter. I
had
to go find Sig. “He wants me to,” I replied, giving Holden a helpless look.

He understood. He had his own sire and his own mistress to obey whenever she felt the desire to beckon him. It was much worse the higher up the lineage you went. Sutherland was my direct sire—both biologically and vampirically—and his command could not supersede Sig’s.

Sig must have known I was here—he must have been waiting for me to arrive. And now that I’d come, he wanted me to find him.

Holden had been with me when I learned about Sig’s power over me. He’d witnessed what the master vampire was capable of making me do. He must have seen the fear and doubt on my face, because he looked scared.

“I’m coming with you.”

“You shouldn’t.”

He scoffed. “Sig doesn’t control me. I’m coming.”

The others hesitated, not sure whether they should join us. Sutherland was sitting on the floor, arranging discarded papers into seven piles in a wide circle around him. If he was bothered by my predicament at all, it wasn’t showing.

“Go eat,” I told them. “Bring us back something, we won’t be long. And be careful.”

“She tells us to be careful while she walks straight into hell.” Clementine smiled sweetly. “Girl has her priorities all screwed up.” She took charge, leading Reggie and Sutherland out of the main room and up a short flight of stairs to the feeding room. Calling it the cafeteria would have been more polite, but it wasn’t filled with lunch tables and vending machines.

I walked towards the oak doors, not waiting to see if Holden was following. I hoped he would change his mind and go with the others. After all, wasn’t he mad at me? Wouldn’t this be an ideal situation for me to get my comeuppance?

Apparently he didn’t think so, because he was right at my heels when I opened the door and followed so close behind me down the stairs I could feel his suit jacket brush up against my back.

We reached another set of doors, ones I had become very familiar with over the past eight years, both as the council’s bitch and one of its most powerful leaders. If it was going to end here, there was sort of a poetic quality to finishing things where I started them.

Without knocking, I pushed open the doors and entered the Tribunal chamber.

Against the far wall, three wooden throne-like chairs sat empty. The one on the left was mine, then Sig’s, and lastly Juan Carlos’s. All, now, were vacant. It seemed strange to me to find no one waiting, but what would they be waiting for?

From a side room, one I’d never entered in all my years with the vampires, Sig came in, ducking his head to avoid bumping it on the doorframe. His height, over six and a half feet tall, made him intimidating even when he didn’t mean to be. Especially since I was only five four and he dwarfed me whenever we stood side by side. At least when we took our seats, things evened out somewhat.

Now he towered over me, looking as grim as I’d ever seen him.

“Nice of you to join me,” he said, nodding a greeting.

“Nice of you to give me an option,” I grumbled.

“Now now. You know I’ve rarely had cause to use my powers on you, and if I thought I could have compelled you here with logic and reason, I’d have done it. But I had good reason to believe you might not stick around if left to your own volition, so…” He spread his hands out, gesturing to the empty room. “Here we are.”

“This isn’t the best time to make me face the council. In case you haven’t noticed, the city is coming down around us.”

“Mmm.” He nodded. “I can feel them, their tricky little fingers tickling my spine while they pull the puppet strings of all the dead. Quite a masterful job they’re doing of it too.”

“I have to stop them.”

“
You
have to stop them? Still trying to declare yourself protector of the city, I see. When will you learn there are limits, Secret? You cannot save everyone, no matter how hard you try.”

I thought of Keaty’s body lying in the street, and I flinched. “I know that better than you think I do.”

“Yet you insist on trying.”

“You shouldn’t expect anything different by now.” I glanced around the room cautiously. “Where is Juan Carlos?”

“Not here.”

“Thanks, for a second I thought he’d learned to become invisible.”

“In many ways he is.” Sig walked across the room and settled into his seat, stretching his long legs out in front of him. As was his usual fashion, he wore only brown leather pants. No shirt, no shoes. Yet he always got service. “Juan Carlos chose to greet an old friend of yours upon his arrival here yesterday.”

“An old friend?”

“Yes. Surely you haven’t forgotten about Arturo’s visit.”

I went cold, because since yesterday I
had
forgotten about Arturo’s visit. Sig had texted me to tell me the other vampire was coming, but in the wake of everything going on, it had slipped my mind in the chaos.

Arturo, in my opinion, was a traitor and the man responsible for having me kidnapped by The Doctor. From what I had pieced together, he had framed my father to bring me to Los Angeles. He’d then colluded with Alexandre Peyton to have me kidnapped and killed by a madman.

When their plan had failed, he’d provided Peyton with a drug that let him manipulate werewolf DNA. The same drug Desmond had been dosed with while we were in Paris.

It seemed Arturo had it in for me, but I didn’t know why, and I had no hard evidence to bring before the council. All I had to confirm my own suspicions was a letter sent with the drugs, signed with the letter A. It was flimsy at best, but I
knew
deep down he was the one behind it all. Too bad I’d killed Peyton, so I couldn’t force him to admit the truth now.

The word of one Tribunal leader against another would divide people’s loyalties. But what was worse, now that my bloodline had been revealed, there would be people who would doubt me simply because of what I was. I wouldn’t be able to convince the council Arturo was a traitor, not without evidence.

And where the hell was I going to find proof? I had other, vastly more important things to worry about. I couldn’t spend my time dwelling on why one vampire had it in for me.

“Fuck. Can’t I just kill him and be done with this whole thing?” I raked my hands through my hair and gave Holden a pitiful look.

“Who? Arturo or Juan Carlos?” Sig asked, and I couldn’t help but notice his slight smile when he asked.

“Why not both?” Holden offered.

Why not both indeed? So many of the difficulties in my life would be erased if I could do away with Arturo and Juan Carlos. Admittedly, my desire to kill Juan Carlos was more personal than professional. He’d had it in for me from the beginning, and now…

“Does Juan Carlos know about me?” My voice trembled. Though I knew the secret would come out sooner rather than later, I had hoped not to be around when the third Tribunal member figured out what I really was.

“He’s heard the rumors.” Sig twined his fingers together over his sculpted abs and watched me carefully. I wondered what it was he was hoping or expecting to see in my expression. “Naturally, when he caught wind of it he was…well, he was rather furious.”

“And here I figured he’d be overjoyed.”

“Overjoyed to learn he’s been working alongside a werewolf for years?” Sig clucked his tongue. “I think you know our Spanish friend better than that.”

“I assumed it would fill him with a raging case of the
I told you so
’s when he found out what was wrong with me. He’s been obsessed with it as long as I’ve known him.” And on more than one occasion he’d physically threatened me over it. Sig was the only thing that had kept me alive all this time, and now that Juan Carlos knew the truth, I wasn’t sure Sig could still protect me.

“Regardless of what he felt, I’m sure you can understand why he and Arturo have bonded so quickly.”

At least Sig seemed to believe me about Arturo, even if no one else would.

Then lightning struck. There was someone else the elders would believe, no matter what they felt about me. I’d thought Monica might be a great character witness in my own case, but she could do me one better.

“Monica could test Arturo’s blood,” I blurted. “She would know right away if he was a traitor.”

Sig’s smile broadened, though he didn’t seem at all surprised by my ingenious plan. “My dear. For a smart girl, you are exceedingly slow on the uptake some days.”

“Calling her smart is generous,” Holden muttered, but I waved him off, ignoring the insult.

“You thought the same thing?”

“Of course. Why else would I invite that insufferable bore to come here? I find the West Coast Tribunal to be exhausting and snobbish at the best of times. They are all far too young to wield the power they do, and don’t get me started on having siblings seated next to each other.” He rolled his eyes and sighed. “What a mess.”

“Does Arturo know he’s meant to go before Monica?”

“I tend to believe visits with the seer are best left as a surprise.”

There was a profound logic in this, since no one in their right mind would want to spend time with Monica if they didn’t have to. I used to think Sig was the most frightening vampire I’d ever met, but that was before spending ten minutes alone with Monica. She might have been permanently trapped in the body of a cute little girl, but it wasn’t fooling anyone. Her blind eyes saw everything, and I couldn’t imagine a person alive or dead who wanted their past laid bare by her.

“You have a plan, then?” Holden asked.

“In all the time you’ve known me, Mr. Chancery, have you ever found me to be unprepared?”

“No.”

“Two thousand years is an awfully long time to come up with contingency plans.”

“So what do you have in mind?” I asked warily.

“We may want to invite your friends downstairs. You’re going to be here awhile longer than you anticipated.”

Chapter Eighteen

“No. Nope. Uh-uh.” I shook my head emphatically. “We aren’t staying. We have a city to save. Sorry.”

“You are not a superhero, my dear. The city is not yours to save, and I’m afraid for the time being the people of New York will need to continue to fend for themselves.”

“Did I say no? I’m pretty sure I said no.”

“You said no,” Holden agreed.

I pointed to him as if to say,
See, he agrees.
Sig was unmoved.

“Once you have appeased the council, you may go about your business however you choose to. If that means throwing yourself onto the pyre this city has become, then by all means. I will even volunteer the assistance of whichever vampires I have at my disposal to help you find and destroy these irritating necromancers.”

I sensed a
but
coming.

“But you have no choice in the current matter. You will stay here until the elders are satisfied, and I will not be swayed in this.”

“I can’t—”

“Don’t make me remind you I can force you to stay like I forced you to come down here. My invitation earlier was a polite suggestion compared to what I could make you do. Have you forgotten so soon?”

How could I forget what he’d done? I had barely walked away from it with what little sanity I had left. “I remember.”

“Then you will stay.”

What choice did I have? He was right. He could make me do whatever I wanted, and any free will I thought I had here was no more than an illusion. I was going to stay whether I liked it or not, and I definitely did
not
like it.

“Mr. Chancery, would you be kind enough to collect the rest of your group?”

“Tribunal Leader Sig?” he replied, his voice hesitant.

“Hmm?”

“We’ve made an alliance with Lucas Rain’s werewolves. They and several human police officers are expecting our return and know we’ve come here.”

“And?”

“Might I suggest we have one of the wardens deliver a message to them? So they don’t send in reinforcements when we don’t immediately return.”

“I could go myself,” I suggested. Both vampires gave me condescending glances. Nice. Really nice. “Or not.”

“Send Sutherland,” Sig declared.

“What?” I stepped closer to Sig and held both my hands up like he was a physical force I was trying to hold back. “Sutherland isn’t… He’s not… I don’t think that’s the best idea.”

“Secret, when your father worked for the West Coast council, they deemed him more than capable of doing tasks for them. When you reported back after the California debacle, didn’t you tell me he’d managed to recreate an entire Tiffany window on his own?”

“Yes.”

“Then surely he’s able to walk two blocks to a hotel and inform your friends you are alive and well and will remain so for the foreseeable future.”

Maybe I was being overprotective, but I had good reason to be. “Everything he did with the council was before his time with The Doctor.”

“Please call the man by his name. Giving titles and nicknames to things creates an unnecessary mythos around them. You’ve made this man a monster in your own mind, but he is just a man, and a dead one at that. Use his given name.”

I tried and fumbled the first time, then finally said, “Friedrich Kesteral.”

“There you go.”

“Sutherland was kept with Dr. Kesteral longer than Holden or I were. We still don’t know what was done to him because he won’t talk about it. But I felt his pain. He shared his dream with me, and I knew his fear and everything he experienced. He might have been functional before, but he’s practically a child now. I don’t think—”

“Even a child can deliver a message. And I assure you once I give him the order, there will be no difficulty.”

Sutherland was part of Sig’s bloodline the same as I was. If he told my father to cross the street clucking like a chicken the entire way, Sutherland would be compelled to do it.

Though, considering my father’s general state of mind, he was probably on the brink of clucking like a chicken most days anyway.

I nodded grimly, accepting Sig’s decision, and Holden left the chamber to go find the other three. Once I was alone with the Tribunal leader, he got to his feet and came to stand before me. I had to crane my neck to glance up at him.

“As much as I can,” he said, “I promise nothing bad will happen to you tonight.”

His kind expression was too much to bear, and I had to look away. “You can’t make that promise.”

He placed his fingers under my chin and lifted my face so I had to meet his gaze. His ice-blue eyes were narrowed seriously, and he’d brushed his pale blond hair off his face so there was nothing to distract me from all the razor-sharp lines of his cheek and jawbones. A Greek sculptor could not have imagined a man more finely constructed than Sig.

He was almost old enough he could have posed for them.

“Do not confuse my threats for apathy. You are one of the most precious, most dear things in the world to me. I have protected you for the eight years I have known you, and you’ve never made things easy for me.”

“It’s not like I
try
to find trouble.”

“You do, though. A day without conflict for you would be impossible to imagine.”

“I’ve imagined it lots of times.”

“Perhaps one day you’ll learn to live that way, hmm?”

“Guessing today won’t be that day.”

He shook his head and put both hands on my shoulders, his thumbs tracing the sensitive skin at my throat. I wondered if he was feeling for a pulse.

“I think we both knew a day would come when the world learned what you truly were. You weren’t careful enough about hiding the truth. Each year someone new found out. It was only a matter of time.”

“The truth didn’t bother you,” I reminded him.

“I’ve always known your worth. From the first moment I laid eyes on you, I could sense what you would become. I didn’t need Calliope’s prophecies to know that.”

“Calliope’s what?” The Oracle had said a lot of things about fate to me, and making decisions that would impact the course of my life, but this was the first anyone had told me about a prophecy.

“It’s not important.”

“Um, if there’s a prophecy about me, I’d sort of like to know what it is.”

“Ah, therein lies the rub. For how can you manifest your destiny if you know what’s to come?” He touched my cheek. “I’m afraid your future is not yours to know.”

“That seems unfair.”

“Such is life.”

Great. Calliope had told Sig—a man she despised openly for breaking her heart—what would happen to me, but neither of them was willing to tell
me
. That probably meant it wasn’t going to end well.

Was I surprised?

No.

The kind of life I led wasn’t one that came with old-age benefits. I’d known a long time ago the chances of me making it to my thirties, let alone retirement, were slim to none. Making it this far, considering everything I’d seen and done, was startling enough.

“I’m supposed to get married,” I sputtered, not having a better response on the tip of my tongue.

“Who’s stopping you? Though I hazard to remind you it didn’t go so well the last time you tried.”

I socked him on the arm, which was about as effective as punching a brick wall.

“You swear to me once this is over you’ll let the vampires help me?”

“I do.”

“Fine.” I made it seem like I was yielding because it gave me the illusion of control, and sometimes it helped to pretend like I was making my own choices.

He bent down and kissed me lightly on the forehead, then tilted my chin up again and pressed his mouth to mine. It wasn’t a passionate kiss, so I didn’t feel the need to wriggle free of it. Something about it felt right and appropriate in a way that had nothing to do with romance.

Sig’s natural gift for setting those around him at ease took hold, and the tension that had been building in me since I first walked through the council’s doors began to melt away.

At least if I was walking into an ambush, I’d be relaxed.

Holden returned with the others in tow. Sig gave Sutherland his instructions, and my father nodded politely before leaving us.

“So much for getting in and out,” Clementine observed. “You’re not really good at stealth missions, you know.”

I almost laughed. She was more right than she could have guessed. I could get in undetected without much difficulty. It was getting out I hadn’t mastered.

It was too late to start trying now.

“You will be present as Secret’s entourage,” Sig announced. “It will show the council she has those who are willing to stand behind her, even in difficult times such as this.”

Reggie lifted his hand. “I seriously didn’t sign up for this.”

“But you are here now, and you will do as I say. Unless you’re inclined to disobey the direct command of two Tribunal leaders.” Sig raised an eyebrow in challenge, and Reggie dropped his hand, easily defeated.

I felt bad for the two wardens. They had agreed to come along in order to help us find the necromancers, and now they’d been sucked into a political coup. They couldn’t have imagined anything like this would happen when they’d followed Holden the previous evening.

Leaving the Tribunal chamber, we followed Sig through the dank stone halls to a much larger space, one I was familiar with but the others might not be. The elder council’s judgment hall wasn’t a fun place to be. I’d come here once to argue for Brigit’s right to be a warden, and I’d felt like I was the one on trial.

This time, I would be.

Without knocking, Sig swept into the room with a commanding aura draped over him like a cloak. If anyone knew how to make a grand entrance, it was Sig.

Inside the room, fourteen vampires fell silent, all eyes turned to us.

Aside from the twelve members of the elder’s council, Juan Carlos had taken his rightful position on the Tribunal seats kept in this hall, and Arturo was sitting beside him, in a chair I’d never seen before. It was on the same level as the three Tribunal seats, but not identical.

At least he wasn’t sitting in my place.

“You’ve brought us the traitor, Sig,” Juan Carlos crowed, coming to his feet.

“You speak boldly and out of turn,” Sig replied. “Secret has not been found to be a traitor, nor has any such charge been brought against her. Your distaste for her alleged bloodline notwithstanding, she has done nothing wrong.”

Juan Carlos’s mouth formed a thin line, and he gave me a withering glare. “She’s bewitched you.”

I didn’t give Sig a chance to reply because I laughed so loud anything he said would have been lost. “Are you out of your fucking mind?” I wiped pink-hued tears from the corner of my eyes. “You might choose to think the worst of me, and that’s your prerogative or whatever, but you can’t be stupid enough to think I could enforce my will on Sig.”

“You are a manipulative little cunt, and I wouldn’t put anything past you.”

Though the room had already been silent, it was now so still I could have heard a pin drop. It’s amazing how quiet things can get when no one around you needs to breathe.

My face flushed hot from his words. It was no great surprise that Juan Carlos hated me, and I knew he’d never trusted me, but for him to outright disrespect me like this in front of the elders was appalling. For all intents and purposes I was his equal.

If this were the wolf pack, it would be within my rights as queen to rip his throat out.

Too bad wolf law didn’t apply here.

“How
dare
you,” I spat back.

The vampires around us were watching the proceedings like some kind of insult-laden tennis match, their gazes volleying from one side of the room to the other, but none of them showing an allegiance towards either of us.

“You are a liar, a traitor and a
freak
.” His face was splotched red with anger, and when he spoke, spittle flew into the air from the emphasis he placed on each word. “And now we know it. The truth is out, and I will be rid of you once and for all.”

Bristling with rage, I forced myself to look somewhere else, and my attention landed on Rebecca, Holden’s sire. “Rebecca,” I said.

“Tribunal Leader Secret.”

At least she was still using appropriate decorum, where Juan Carlos seemed to have forgotten all his.

“Is there a rule in the council that says a werewolf cannot sit on the Tribunal?”

She fidgeted nervously and glanced to the man standing next to her, but he waved his hand for her to answer me. “No.”

“What are the rules regarding a Tribunal leader, then?” Now my focus returned to Juan Carlos, and I suspected my face was as red as his.

“The only rules regarding the Tribunal are as follows.” She spoke as if reading from a book. “A Tribunal leader will remain in their position until they are removed by death. If their death is the result of a declared fight, the victor of that fight has rightful claim to the seat. If the death is the result of natural causes or an accident, the Elder Council will determine the successor.”

“Anything else?”

“A Tribunal leader may never be challenged or killed by another Tribunal leader.” Now her attention turned to Juan Carlos as well.

He trembled, barely able to contain the anger vibrating through him.

“How did I come to be on the Tribunal, Rebecca?” I asked.

“You were the victor in a declared fight against Daria Chabert. The council convened, in regards to your perceived mortality, and deemed you were still fit to take the seat.”

“And has the council’s opinion on my ability to lead been changed in any way since that time? Have I given any reason to doubt my loyalty?”

“At the request of your fellow Tribunal leaders you were sent to the seer, Monica. She determined you were suited for leadership and trustworthy to the council.”

“And has Monica ever been wrong about anyone?”

“Monica is never wrong.”

A thin, malicious smile crossed my lips, and I could tell it was doing nothing to improve Juan Carlos’s mood. “Thank you, Rebecca.”

“If I might…” She started to speak then let her words drift. This called my attention back to her, and for a moment we simply stared at each other.