Page 12 of Death Dance

Benoit waved his hand and headed out of my office. “I’ll make sure her delicious treat comes to no harm. They still love me the best.”

“They will until they meet Pepper,” Alisander muttered.

“I’ll probably cope. Do you think they brought presents again?”

“Inevitably,” my father complained. “I raised spoiled sons.”

“I better go make sure the presents are reasonable,” Eugene announced, and he skipped after Benoit.

Alisander shrugged and abandoned us to investigate the possibility of gifts.

I questioned everything about my life. “From the outside, anything dealing with the Originals and these Sleepers are a violent and unpleasant affair. From the inside, it’s frighteningly cozy. Are you seriously telling me the Originals and the Sleepers are the illusion of danger? Because right now, it seems like a bunch of bloodsuckers are afraid of cotton fluffs. Puppies are more threatening.”

“From the inside, we can be quite cozy.” My father grinned at me. “But yes, we cultivate the threat so the ancient evils stay asleep. It’s much easier to contain the darkness when the danger of a deeper darkness looms nearby, ready and waiting to strike. And don’t fool yourself, Pepper. My uncles and my cousins are that deeper darkness when the situation warrants it. They prefer to sleep and flit in and out of society unknown. Those days are over.”

“At least for now.” I returned my phone to its cradle. “I suppose we better greet our guests. Should I bring any of my stakes?”

“You do not need to, but you can if you want to. Like you, they are carvers. Unlike you, they will never be cherished children of the sun. It would be wise to establish your place in the world now.”

I opened the drawer I dedicated to stakes in my office and pulled out three of my more potent ones along with a belt meant to hold four. Amethysts encrusted the dark leather, and rolling my eyes over my husband’s excess, I buckled it into place before sliding my stakes into place. “How many great uncles do I have that might be here?”

“Four,” my father reported. “My father was the only one who was not turned that fateful night. Some of his brothers perished, including the one who had killed him. His love for my mother was so deep he held her until his dying breath. I found them together. Several of my uncles met their final deaths much like my father, but we try not to discuss them often. We still mourn for them.”

I wondered if even thousands of years could truly heal such trauma. “Did you actually forgive your grandfather for what he did to your family?”

“I did. He spent many a long night weeping at my family’s graves. His remorse was real. He couldn’t bring them back, no matter how many times he bled into the ground in the hope they might eventually rise. I found no joy in having to put him down when he descended into madness. But the reality was cruel: I was the only one who wasn’t held in his sway.”

“And now?”

“My uncles have small broods to keep them stable. Some of the Sleepers, who are mostly my cousins, are part of those broods. Some have broods of their own.”

“Why are they called Sleepers?”

“They keep to themselves, so they only show up when things become… interesting. As such, people tend to think they sleep between the major events of the world. In reality, they are living their lives and enjoying moments of peace when they can. Alas for us both, now that they’re here, we will have trouble getting rid of them,” he replied in a despairing tone. “The last time they showed up, I had to deal with them daily for years.”

“If you don’t survive their affection, I might even shed a single tear for you,” I replied before shaking my head and heading for the entry to supervise and make certain my relatives behaved and left my husband alone.

I remembered the dark-skinned man. At first, the memories flittered about in my head, a tangle of pain, fury, and despair.

Clarke had told us mostly the truth; he had taken control of me for a time after I’d consumed his blood, but he’d been in as poor a shape as me.

The introduction confirmed my memory: my father’s uncle, Alheen, had been the one to spare us both. He’d waited for Emerick’s maker to succumb to his injuries before dealing with the rest of the rabble.

By then, despite having drank down more than a few men larger and stronger than me, my broken body had failed much like Clarke’s had. In that moment, I’d acknowledged the truth.

I should not have survived what had been done to me even after becoming a vampire. With a flick of his dark hand, my father’s uncle had erased the specifics and left behind only the knowledge I’d been broken. The how of it, the who of it, and everything else had drowned when he called forth his power, never to rise again from the murky depths.

I would find some way to express my gratitude for that.

I considered my options, deciding I would leave Clarke out of my questions while making it clear the Original had played a role in what had happened that night. “I remember you.”

Alheen offered a grim smile. “Yes, you do. Charlie, I had tracked this Breckenan to his lair the night he meddled with Clarke and your daughter. My apologies, Clarke, but I erased my presence from your memory irrevocably. I couldn’t afford you telling my nephew I was around, and after what they did to his daughter, I knew he would become a player in this game.”

Meddled. On the surface, it seemed like such a gentle word for the reality of what we had endured. I could think of many more terms better suiting, but if my uncle’s goal was to keep my father calm, he chose wisely.

After learning the truth about my parents, I worried over what my father would do should he ever enter the same space with Jeremy Breckenan.

One of them would not be leaving the meeting alive.