Vampire Debt - Supernatural Battle (Vampire Towers #2) - Kelly St. Clare Page 0,125
pain in my head cut through my sluggishness.
I was on the ground.
Shit, did I pass out?
Dragging myself to my knees again, I swayed, staring at the phone in front of my face. It was a video of Tommy on a stretcher bed being wheeled into a hospital. She disappeared through a set of double doors.
She’s safe. I choked on a sob. She’s safe.
“I grow impatient,” the king said. He lingered a few metres away, the triplets on his left, Gina on his right.
I was about to throw Kyros’s family—his entire clan—under the bus. Regret filled me. But for Tommy, I’d do it three times over. It occurred to me to renege on the deal, but Hector could surely still hurt Tommy if the king demanded it. And if I told them, maybe there was a way to still make it out of here alive.
But…
I could say words like blood and fang out of context, but this entire conversation was in the context of me selling Kyros out—the exact thing I was compelled against doing.
“I don’t know what I can say around the compulsion,” I told the king.
His lips pressed together, showing white. His hazel eyes flashed. “You try me, human.”
Gina stepped forward. “I believe she tells truth, Father. My elder brother would have ensured she could not share confidential information. He clearly does not trust her.”
The king’s brow cleared somewhat, and he surveyed me in thinly veiled disgust. “Sundulus compulsions are usually centred around intention. Think of something else as you speak.”
If I wasn’t in so much pain, my jaw would have dropped to the floor. That’s it? All this time and I’d just needed to focus my thoughts elsewhere to speak freely?
Closing my eyes, I thought of Tommy in the hospital. “Mr Ringly has a—” I cut off, gurgling.
Fuck. Not as easy as it sounded.
“You have thirty seconds to give me something substantial before I behead you,” King Mikael said in bored tones.
My stomach swooped, churning in the wake.
Okay, okay, focus.
Maybe thinking of Tommy was too close to the current situation. Mr Ringly had a drug addiction—just like Licky Lips who I met in the alley so long ago.
I drew forth the image of the tall homeless man in my mind, holding tight to memory of me handing him a one-hundred-dollar bill.
“He has a heroin addiction,” I announced, eyes popping open at my success.
Oh my god. It worked.
My compulsion was centred around my intention while speaking.
The next words left my lips freely—common knowledge to their kind. “Vissimo can’t smell pure heroine.”
I read their shock and disbelief.
What else could I say?
I forced my mind back to Twister games with Tommy—to all the times I let her win because I was taller and could reach more colourful spots on the plastic sheet than she could. “Allowed you to win.”
The Vissimo went entirely still. They knew what that meant.
Was that enough though? Kyros expected Mr Ringly’s finances to crumble any day now, and for Ingenium to end in short duration, but I had no idea how to convey any of that.
The king smiled.
I tensed, awaiting execution.
“My son,” he said, pride filling his voice. “I’m not surprised he could execute such a manoeuvre. His mistake was to put trust in a human.”
Yes, it was.
I tuned into Kyros for the first time and jerked at the panic and rage consuming him.
“You have fulfilled your side of our bargain,” Mikhail said, sliding a glance to the triplets before returning his cruel gaze to mine. “For your friend’s life.”
Sweeping his robes aside with a practiced gesture, he clasped Gina’s shoulder. “There’s no honour in slaughter. Make sure this human has a fighting chance, eldest daughter.”
The king left through the iron doors, and the triplets exchanged a fevered look.
Gina’s mouth set, and I knew that she understood as well as I did.
I wasn’t leaving here alive.
It became clear the other siblings would stay as witnesses when the king disappeared through the iron doors alone.
Gina stood in their midst, arms folded, impassive expression in place.
A fighting chance, King Mikhail had said.
What did that mean?
I’d watched as the triplets set up. A large red circle was drawn around where I crouched in a daze. Trenit strapped a collar to my neck. A matching collar was strapped around Theodore’s neck.
Hector, the brother who took Tommy to the hospital, reappeared and strode to stand with his siblings. My eyes narrowed on him until he nodded. The Fyrlia vampire didn’t owe me shit, so I appreciated the reassurance Tommy was safe.