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  “Drake, you need to come with us so they can put you on trial.”

  Well actually, there wouldn’t be one, killing with magic was a death sentence, he wouldn’t make it to the jail, no bail, nothing. I’d have to fill in Mario later on how PIB law worked. Now was not the place for that lesson. I looked over the stainless steel room we appeared in. This one was bigger than the basement in the house. It held much of the same equipment, but also big barrels that were stacked up against a wall and a second table.

  “Oh, come now Mario, you made me this way. At the command of that creepy little child. All because she wanted playthings. Dolls. Slaves.”

  I glanced at Mario wondering why he’d ever agreed to that. Drake tossed a small ball of lightning between his hands. “Does she not know? Wouldn’t you tell your so-called lover where you came from?”

  Mario shook his head. “That life is over. I work for Levi now.”

  “So you can fuck his daughter.” He chuckled and started walking around my circle. “This one is purple, the one at the hospital was red and purple. Interesting. Your intentions change, you don’t know if you’re good or bad.”

  I wasn’t going to let him get to me. I tried my hardest to keep my face blank. It didn’t matter what color my circle was. I didn’t harm with my magic unless I had to. My mind flashed to the vampires back in Romania, and my circle changed colors automatically. Well shit.

  “You should embrace it, Abigail, using black magic, the dark side, it’s intoxicating.” He licked his lips and pressed his hand against the circle. A jolt went through me as it crashed down, and I cried out.

  He broke my circle with a touch. I shot at him, and the bullet tore through his stomach. Just like the other times I had shot him though, it didn’t do much. He rushed me, and I braced for the impact, but Mario jumped in front of me.

  He grabbed Drake by the throat and threw him away. The vampire crashed into barrels, causing a few of them to come crashing down. The noise echoed through the room.

  I waited for Drake to move out from under the pile. Nothing stirred, and I looked at Mario. He held his hand up telling me to wait. I walked through the room to a stainless steel table against the wall. A silver carving knife laid on the surface. If bullets weren’t working, and magic wasn’t working, maybe a blade would.

  I slid it off the table and jerked my head to it. Mario’s eyes followed, and he nodded. I hope he understood that this meant I needed to get close to Drake.

  Something to my right crashed to the floor, and I turned. Sculpting tools laid in a discarded pile on the floor near the base with the spikes. He was playing with us. Judging by the way Mario’s gaze kept shooting around the room, he could either see or sense the vampire.

  I kept the blade tucked against my body. Something heavy slammed into me, causing me to stumble forward. I recovered and spun around. Nothing.

  I looked at Mario, and he held his hand up again, telling me to wait. My heart pounded in my chest, and I realized I knew what I was doing wrong. Drake was toying with me, he was crazy, and I was allowing him to control the situation.

  I remembered how much he wanted to bleed me dry, how much he enjoyed having his mouth sealed around my racing pulse as he toyed with me. I flipped the knife and drew the blade across my shoulder, just enough to draw blood.

  Mario’s eyes shot to me, his look clearly asking what I was thinking. It didn’t take long until Drake showed himself. He slammed into me and latched his teeth into my shoulder. I flipped the blade by the handle and with all my strength shoved the blade into his neck.

  He reared back, taking a chunk of my shoulder with him. He grabbed my wrist and pulled the knife out. The blade came out with a sickening wet sound, and I saw the wound heal up instantly. Great, it wasn’t actually silver.

  He slammed the blade into my shoulder where he just bit, pinning it to the ground. I unholstered my gun, struggling with it with his weight on my body. He grabbed my neck and pinned my head to the ground.

  I rolled my eyes back to see where Mario was. He wasn’t in my field of vision, and I had a moment thinking he betrayed me. My heart fell as I looked into Drake’s crazed eyes.

  “Poor little witch, all alone.” He laughed, but suddenly he was lifted from me and thrown across the room again.

  I pulled the knife out of my shoulder and looked at Mario. “Why the fuck don’t you slam your hand through him and just kill him?”

  “Because, if this is PIB, you have to handle it. And there are rules about killing your fledgling.”

  I fucking hated vampire politics. “Three bullets and he’s still moving like he’s not even wounded.”

  “Headshot, heart shot. I’ll distract.” He touched my shoulder. “Can you move it.”

  I moved my arm up enough to cup my gun. “Hurts like a bitch, but I’ve got it.” I saw Drake recovering behind him. “Thank you.”

  Drake rambled towards us, laughing. “You can’t touch me, and if you did, Keira and your maker would kill you on the spot.”

  I pushed away, thinking about the connection Mario had to the tiny freaky vampire. Mario turned around, stepping to the side enough to give me a shot, but still close enough to protect me. Drake moved in jerky movements toward us, taunting us. Mario disappeared and reappeared, pinning Drake against the spiked stand. The spikes poked out of Drake, and he laughed. “Not silver.”

  I raised my gun. “But my bullets are.” The shots echoed in the room, piercing his heart twice and his head twice. His insanity might have kept him from feeling the pain before, but he wasn’t going to survive those shots. Blood splattered over the floor and Mario.

  He turned to me and wiped the blood off his face. I pressed my lips together. “I’ll buy you a new suit, promise.”

  I lowered my gun as my hand went numb. I put the gun back in its holster and reached for my phone, realizing I wasn’t even sure where we were at.

  Mario cleared his throat. “Out of the basement, you’ll get service and some idea of where we are.”

  He pulled his shirt off and tied it around my shoulder, using it to pin my arm to my front. “I don’t want you to bleed out.”

  “Takes a lot more than a knife to my shoulder and a vampire bite to keep me down.”

  He laughed. “I’m starting to think nothing keeps you down for long.”

  Unlike the other workshop, this one had an obvious door. We opened it to find that it led outside and not into a house like the other workshop. I pulled my phone out to make all the calls I needed and looked at Mario. “Thank you for having my back.”

  “Of course, Princess.” He bowed his head slightly, but I didn’t miss the smirk on his face.

  Chapter Fourteen

  I’d left Drake’s body in the capable hands of the forensics team. I’d allowed an EMT to bandage up my arm and put it in a sling to minimize the movement of the wound and allow the muscle to heal. I didn’t like it, but it would work for now. If I needed to, I could force it to move, but it was best to listen to the medical advice.

  I walked into the interrogation room and looked at Loraine. “Listen here; I am not in the mood for you to sit here and lie to me. The cuffs restrain your magic, not mine.”

  I drew a rune on the table and moved her cuffed hands over it. “Truth rune, I’m done with the lies. What happened to Cynthia?”

  She gave me wide eyes as my magic took hold of her. My shoulder was killing me, and I hadn’t even had a chance to even after facing Drake.

  “I tried to kill her by burying her alive.” She didn’t show any emotion when she said it. She sat there all matter of fact. “She was seven.”

  “She told me you were like her.”

  She locked her jaw, and I didn’t expect an answer because I hadn’t asked her a direct question. “Why did your father use life magic to tie your soul to your body?”

  “Because he had a theory that it would make my magic stronger.” She tilted her head to the side. “He was right. We’re stronger than ever.”

&nbs
p; “No, you’re not. Your father is dead.” I met her gaze. “Now, why shifters?”

  She bristled a little bit. “My mother was a shifter; she left my father when she found out he was a warlock.”

  “So you picked women who left their children and were shifters, because of your mother.”

  “You forgot the age of the child.” She shook her head. “Really, the victims were just preference, punishing people who I thought were betraying their family. I had clients who would pay for a living doll, particularly one vampire.”

  “Keira”

  “Yes.”

  Which explained why the little creep was in town. She was there to pick up a shipment of creepy ass dolls.

  “Did you know that Cynthia’s life magic was screwed up? That her body wasn’t aging and would eventually give out?”

  She didn’t look at me. “It’s why I never went to visit her. I couldn’t stand what had happened to her.”

  “Yet you wanted to kill her.”

  “I felt guilty for bringing her into this world, When she turned seven and started showing signs of magic. I knew exactly what my dad would want to do to her, what he would use her for. I couldn’t allow him to force her into this.” There was that moment of sanity in her eyes again. “What would you have done, Agent Collins?”

  I didn’t have an answer for her. “Walk me through what you were doing to the shifters.”

  “I found my targets through my customer database. Once I found someone who matched, I mixed the poison that was in the wine. My father would deliver it to them, as a gift, secretly. From a secret admirer. Not many people think about it if it looks professional. Like a traveling wine company.” She shook her head. “It’s easy to get the wine there. He’d wait, and then bring them to me.”

  “He couldn’t do that for me because Mario was there.”

  “I’m surprised you were stupid enough to drink the wine.” She smiled. “Guess you aren’t so perfect. Then I’d put them on the stand. The spikes would hold them there while I made a cast of their faces to base my dolls on. By the time I was done, they’d lost too much blood to heal.”

  “And making them up and shipping them?”

  “Just a bit of fun.”

  Yes, because bodies in boxes were always ‘just a bit of fun.’ “Your father, he sent me the vision of the little girl, he broke my circle at the hospital. Are you just as powerful?”

  “Yes, and that doll, that was to keep me in check, you were right about that.”

  I stood. “Thank you. That’s all I needed to hear.”

  “Agent Collins, what happened to Cynthia?”

  I paused in my motions. “Her soul is at rest now.”

  “Thank you.”

  I walked out and leaned my head against the wall. Mason walked up to me. “No holding back, right to the magic?”

  “She lied to my face before. I still have blood on me, my shoulder hurts so much, and honestly, all I want is a nap.”

  He looked at his watch. “It’s almost midnight; you should be crawling into bed right about now.”

  “Mm, that sounds wonderful. Call me if you need me. I’m going home. I’ll fill out all the paperwork tomorrow.”

  He nodded. “You’ve got a deal.”

  I walked out of the police station and paused at the sign of a Flamingo in front of the Hummer. Taped on it was a picture of Tayler and me from prom. “Dinner, Saturday.”

  I shook my head and threw the thing in with the rest of its friends and headed home.

  I walked into my house to find Levi and Mario sitting in my living room. “For fuck’s sake guys, it’s past midnight. I’m exhausted. Go home.”

  “We have an emergency council meeting due to the death of Drake.” Levi raised a brow. “Seems the council is quite impressed, but there are vampire laws that we must follow up on and clarify what happened.”

  I rubbed my eyes. “Seriously. It was PIB business.”

  Mario nodded. “That’s all you have to say, that it was PIB business, I happened to be there as an asset, and I didn’t deliver the death blows.”

  “Why can’t you tell them that, and I can take some painkillers and go to bed.” I walked to the kitchen ignoring the two.

  I had expected Mario to come into the kitchen to talk to me, but it was Levi who was close on my heels.

  I reached up with my good arm to look for the pain meds I knew I had somewhere. Normally Clarissa had a potion for me, but I hadn’t had a chance to talk to her yet.

  “Abigail, it is your duty to come and give the report. To make sure you broke no laws, that you understand that Mario was not able to kill Drake for you, despite your life being in danger.”

  I still didn’t answer him. My fingers found the round bottle, and I pulled it down off the shelf. I used my left hand to hold the bottle while fighting with the stupid childproof cap.

  “Abigail?”

  “I heard you,” I snapped. “I just don’t want to.”

  “All those times I told you, vampire business, and you got to happily ignore what was going on, those times are gone.”

  I slammed the bottle on the counter. “Fine. You want me to play princess. I will. But I am not happy about it. I was almost killed by a psychotic vampire warlock because someone thought it was a good idea to change him.”

  Levi calmly took the bottle and opened it, handing me two pills from inside. “How is that different than other cases.”

  I paused to figure out what was really bothering me about it. “You know how you said vampires might be worried about you changing me?”

  “Yes.”

  “I felt like I was getting a glimpse into my future. And it was scary. All my cases before, with the exception of Devon, weren’t things that I could turn into. Looking in Drake’s eyes…there was no sense of sanity there. I don’t want to become that.”

  He was silent for a moment. He put a hand on my uninjured shoulder and then did something he rarely ever did. He pulled me into a hug.

  I tensed for a moment, but then let myself relax. He was trying to comfort me. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. “What happens after the council meeting?”

  “We’ll have to see. There’s still the matter of Keira.”

  I nodded. “We know exactly why she was in town.”

  “You explain that, and we’ll decide what we need to do. I’m sorry Abigail.” He kissed the top of my head.

  I wasn’t sure what to think about the sudden display of affection, but I wasn’t going to mention it right now. “After the meeting, can I please sleep?”

  “Yes, I’ll have Mario bring you back here so you can sleep through what’s left of the night and probably far into the day.”

  I snorted. “I have to go fill out paperwork tomorrow.”

  “Ah, yes, the dreaded paperwork.” He let go of me. “Take your pills, lessen the pain, so you aren’t as irritable.”

  I rolled my eyes as he walked out of the kitchen. I looked in my fridge for something I could take the pills with and settled on just water and an apple.

  Osiris jumped up on my counter, and I stared at him. “You can lecture me when I get home.”

  He meowed at me, and I nodded as if I actually understood him. “Vampire princess business. I’ll be back.”

  He meowed again and then trotted off. I imagine he was probably going to sleep. The spell to stay as a cat was exhausting and we’d done a major spell earlier as well.

  Mario walked in. “Who are you talking to?”

  “The cat.” I laughed. “You know, he likes to know where I am.”

  Mario raised a brow. “I’ll never understand that.”

  “You don’t have to.” I took the pills with the water and then bit into the apple. “Give me just a couple minutes to eat.”

  “Levi went ahead to prep the council. He wanted me to tell you to not show up in the blood-stained clothes.”

  I looked down at my black clothes. “You can hardly see it.”

  “Still.”
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  “Fine. Let me eat and then I’ll change into something more princess-worthy. Okay?”

  Mario bowed his head. “If you need any help getting dressed, let me know.”

  “Not likely. I’ll be fine. Thank you.”

  He left the room and let me finish my apple in peace. I wasn’t sure how I was going to manage to get the t-shirt off, but I’d figure it out.

  I walked up the stairs to see Merick sitting on my bed. “Seriously, we have a guest room.” I kept my voice very low.

  He nodded and motioned to the pictures. “Working,” he mouthed.

  “Fine.” I unholstered my gun and put it in the small safe by my nightstand. I hated going into the council without my gun, but I knew that would be bad form. I grabbed a dress and went to the bathroom to change.

  I slowly peeled my shirt off and over my shoulder. The feeling had started to return to my fingers which I was grateful for, but that also meant the pain was starting to settle in more as well. I wiggled out of my pants and pulled the dress on. I slowly moved the sling back over me and let it keep my arm tight against my body.

  I’d be showing weakness in front of the council, reminding them that I wasn’t one of them. That I was human. Dread sat in my stomach, and in the end, I took the sling off and left it laying on the counter.

  I’d pay for it in pain later, but as long as I kept the movement minimal, the damage wouldn’t get worse. I walked back out, and Merick raised a brow when his eyes landed on my shoulder.

  “I’ll be fine,” I promised. “Don’t want to show too much weakness and a reminder that I’m very mortal.”

  He nodded, and went back to the pictures without saying a word.

  I walked downstairs and met Mario standing in the living room. He turned and his eyes fell on my shoulder. “Abigail.”

  “Don’t, trust me. The council doesn’t need a reminder that I’m human. Okay?”

  He laughed. “You are so much more than human, Abigail. Oh so much.”

  “You’re right; I’m one kick-ass witch. Now, let’s get this over with.”