Alpha's Legacy (Black Moon Saga Book 3)

29. Accepting Defeat: Bria

I watch with horror as Grayson does something with his magic that ends up knocking Anna Jade right out, but not before an expression of absolute terror crosses her face. And that’s after I’ve had to stand here watching the girl shake and tremble with fear while I’ve been trying to carry on a conversation with someone I had hoped to never have to meet in person.

What I told him is true. We have heard all about him, and none of it has been good. I had assumed that a lot of it was exaggeration, though now I’m not so sure. The man is powerful, there’s no question about that. I can’t even explain how he’s able to do what he does, so casually and with only one hand at that.

But the worst part is that it’s only been a few hours since Tian left her here with us, and I’ve already failed to keep her safe. She’s been begging me for years to let her come see how we live and where we work, and though I never gave her much of an answer about that beyond some uncomfortable laughter and a brief excuse about how it’s probably not a good idea, I also put a lot of thought into how I could eventually make it work.

Our life isn’t an easy one, nor is it safe or comfortable, especially not for someone who is used to the luxury of a life lived amongst a pack of affluent and prosperous werewolves. I knew I needed to do what I could to remedy that before I could ever dream of bringing her to stay with us, even just for a weekend.

First, Tian helped us acquire this house, which used to belong to a werewolf pack that has long since moved along to a territory that is better suited to their growing needs. It was in rough shape when we got it, but we fixed it up and added our own touches and twists to it. The war room, for instance, not to mention the basement with its specialized facilities for containing and training newborn and fledgling vampires. It’s not unlike the spaces that we construct for a similar purpose in our other safehouses, though it is much more comfortable and pleasant.

As it turns out, humans-turned-vampires tend to enjoy the same luxuries as young werewolves. And as much as I hate to admit it, so do we. This has become our favorite safehouse.

It’s also our safest safehouse, which was the second part of my scheme to eventually bring Anna Jade for a visit. We had to make sure that she’d be safe here. It has a state-of-the-art security system, and we had help from The Council with safeguarding it against detection and trespassing from both humans and other supernaturals. The fact that this warlock who haunts the tunnels beneath the Riptide territories somehow found us here is not only alarming, but it doesn’t even make any sense.

“Leave her out of this. She doesn’t know anything, and she can’t help you. You’d be better off taking one of my crew as hostage,” I try to reason with him. “Take me, actually. I’d be most useful to you anyway.”

He laughs in my face, seeming quite amused by my offer. It takes every bit of my restraint and self-control to keep myself from charging at him, taking a gamble on my speed giving me an advantage over his magic. Caz and Shy don’t have that particular talent, but I do. I worry what Grayson might do to Anna Jade that I can’t predict, though, or what he’d do to me if I tried. I’m no good to her unless I’m conscious and ready to react if he slips up in the slightest and gives me an opportunity to swoop in and pull her away from him.

“You’re most useful to me here, leading your ‘crew,’ as you say,” he insists. “I know you’re the one that keeps the leash on them, and none of you are any good to me without it. But you also overestimate your worth. I’d prefer to work with you, but I don’t need you. You, on the other hand, need this one.” He grabs a handful of Anna Jade’s hair and gives it a harsh tug to lift up her head that had lolled off to the side when she passed out. “And don’t try to convince me that I’m wrong about that. I can already tell that she’s important to you, and I’m rarely wrong about these things.”

When I realize that he must think I control the others, as if I’m the only sentient one here and the others only follow my direction because I created them, I try to open my mouth and explain how he’s wrong about that, but he flicks his wrist and silences me with one incomprehensible word. And then I can’t open my mouth to speak anymore, and I can sense that my voice wouldn’t work even if I could.

“That’s enough,” he commands bitingly. “I’m tired of standing here holding this pathetic little girl who reeks of sunshine and goodness, so we’ll be on our way now. You know where to find me when you come to your senses and are ready to have a productive chat. I'll even give you an hour to make your decision, though there’s only one outcome that will help you get her back. Should you decline or fail to show up on time, the deal is off, and the girl is mine.”

I would love to shoot back some sassy retort, mostly because I enjoy the way that his expression darkens and his face turns red when his ego doesn’t like what I say, but I can’t. Even if I could talk, I wouldn’t risk Anna Jade like that.

I do decide to take the gamble on my speed, though, knowing that I only have a couple seconds to try to yank her away from him while he’s busy casting his teleport spell. The problem is that even a spell of that caliber only seems to require one of his hands, and it only takes about half as long as I thought. He doesn’t even bother trying to stop me because by the time I’ve made it to the spot where they were, they’re already gone.

“What the hell was that?” Caz demands as soon as the warlock disappears with Anna Jade, releasing us all from whatever magical hold he had over us. “How was he even doing that?”

“I don’t know,” I’m forced to admit grimly, already in motion in the opposite direction, headed back to the stairs. I have a phone call that I need to make, as much as I’m dreading it. “There’s only one known warlock in the world with the kind of power it takes to control a vampire, and he’s an ally. I have no idea where this Grayson guy even comes from or how he does what he does, though I also suspect we won’t like discovering the answer to that. Casters don’t have surnames, which tells me that he’s likely using an alias, and that tells me that there must be some reason that he’s hiding his true identity. And why the hell didn’t Alpha Miles warn us about him? He had to have known that this prick has been claiming up territory from literally right under him.”

“We have to call Tian,” Shy declares, as if I didn’t already know that. “He and his new warlock are probably the only two who can take on this Grayson character.”

“I know that,” I snap at him. “I’m on it. You two work on getting them under control.”

I nod toward the two fledglings still raging and bloodlusting in their cells. That’s another tragedy to come out of this, though I have neither the time nor the presence of mind to give it much thought yet.

Getting Anna Jade back must be the priority here. Who knows what that twisted warlock has in mind for her, or whether he knows who she even is. If he does, then it’s entirely possible that she was his target all along and that the vamp infestation in his territory was just some ploy to give him an excuse to snatch her, though I haven’t pieced together all the logic behind that theory yet.

I don’t know how he would have known of her or that she was even going to be here, though I suppose it’s also possible that he’s just a clever opportunist. The girl herself might not be well-known yet, but her face is recognizable. She has the misfortune of looking like her mother’s clone, which means that people don’t even have to know she exists before they meet her to figure out whose she is with just one look.

I’m just about to the top of the stairs when I hear Caz exclaim, “Oh! He left us his calling card,” from down below.

Good. That will make it easier to meet up with him in an hour, and is much better of an option than my plan to just show up back in “his” tunnels and make a ruckus he can’t ignore.

But it’s also concerning that the man seems to be so skilled at multitasking. He managed to keep a hold over the three of us and on Anna Jade, plus he kept her knocked out, cast a teleport with one hand, and somehow dropped a way for us to find him all at once? The amount of focus and concentration all that would require is rather impressive, not to mention intimidating, especially since multitasking abilities for a caster not only come from experience, but generally only accompany a massive well of magical capacity and power.

The man didn’t seem fatigued or distracted in the least. Even Kylie’s warlock can’t seem to cast a spell without looking constipated, but this Grayson was all sneers and smiles. Although now that I think of it, he also seemed way too hasty and eager to get away toward the end there. I had attributed that to him not wanting to give me more time to try to take her back, but it could also mean that adding the spell to my mouth was starting to push him over his limit of what he could handle at once.

Maybe he’s just got a practiced poker face, but even so, what matters is that he managed to get it all done. None of his spells failed, and Anna Jade seemed to feel powerless to fight back.

I know she tried, though, and though I’m proud of her for that, I’m also starting to get angry. It’s finally sinking in who is truly at fault here, other than Grayson. It’s Kylie’s warlock, who has always insisted on holding off on Anna Jade’s training.

But the girl has been casting powerful spells since she was ten years old! The first thing she did once she got her power was remove the vampiric death sentence that had been slowly suffocating her beloved "uncle" Pete for over a decade, something that no other healer in the world could achieve. Granted, she had the advantage of the bond they share, but still. She was only ten then, and she could be standing toe-to-toe with some of the greats by now, if her father hadn’t prevented her from receiving the proper education as soon as she was ready.

I don’t think that she even realizes how close she came to defeating Grayson with just the few spells that she does know, and that was without even moving her mouth or making a sound. I could see it on his face, though. At the end, when she finally decided to try fighting back, that was the only time that his confidence seemed to falter. She almost did it, whatever it was that she was trying to do, which was probably why he felt the need to knock her out. He couldn’t take the risk of her draining his power when he was already juggling so much with it.

I bet if she’d fought for even three seconds more, she’d have broken him, and we could have swooped in to detain him. Shy was maybe three strides away from being in range to cuff the warlock with the suppression manacles when he caught on and froze him in place, and Caz was back there too, even though he wasn’t as close. I don’t know how Grayson not only sensed them both but also managed to pinpoint their individual locations so that he could restrain them with only a wave of his hand and a couple words, but I watched it with my own eyes. That’s what has me now suspecting that most of the stories I’ve heard about him are probably true.

And that brings me back to wondering and worrying about how he even found us here, let alone how he managed to get in. This place is hidden, secured, and shielded against magical interference. The location and the fact that we even have a base here are confidential information that only three people besides my crew even know about, all three of whom I know for a fact would never have said a word to anyone about it. They're all too close to Anna Jade to be willing to risk her safety like that.

I’m sure that Grayson teleported here somehow, though I don’t know where he could have possibly landed that would have allowed him to skirt past all our traps and defenses. I know he skipped right over them because otherwise we would have been notified that they’d been activated. And to get to the basement, of all places, he’d have needed a series of keys to bypass the locks on our secure doors, and we definitely would have detected him then.

Unless he went directly to the basement, effectively bypassing virtually every security measure we have in place, though there’s only one way to do that. Only two people have that ability, and I’m one of them. Tian is the other. The rest of the crew have to use their teleports to take them to the various designated landing pads around the estate, and then they need their keys to get around. All key usage is tracked and monitored.

I can’t make any sense of this, though the good thing about that is it keeps me distracted all the way until I retrieve my phone and start to dial Tian’s secure number. That’s about when the flood of emotions finally hits me. Panic, mostly, but also regret. Remorse. Embarrassment. Guilt. And not least of all there’s anger, at myself as much as anyone else I can think of to blame.

It kind of feels the way that it did all those centuries ago when I was still learning to control my bloodlust, when I’d have to make the walk of shame back home to Tian to ask for his help with cleaning up my mess following a long night of succumbing to the urges. I mean, I suppose that objectively speaking, losing one teenage girl isn’t as bad as indulging in a feeding spree for a night, but it doesn’t feel like it. In fact, it feels worse, especially because I can already picture how he’s going to react to the news, and I know it’s my fault.

It feels like an eternity passes after I dial the number and wait for his voice to come on the line, though in reality it’s only a few seconds.

“What’s wrong?” he asks first thing, not even bothering with a greeting.

I can almost feel his panic and worry for his daughter pulsing through the line. He must know that for me to be calling him at this number so soon after he left, whatever news I have for him is nothing good. And he’s not wrong.

“There’s no point in beating around the bush, so I’ll just tell it to you straight: we just had a surprise visit from a warlock with a dark essence so strong that Anna Jade was immediately repulsed by it. He was incredibly powerful, so much so that he was able to restrain and silence us so that we couldn’t get to him.”

“What happened, Bria? Is Anna Jade alright? Just tell me,” he insists, the desperation in his voice oozing through the line and stirring up my own internal storm of emotions again.

Breathing isn’t even necessary for a vampire, but even after all these centuries, my formerly human body still hasn’t broken the habit. And in situations like this, taking a deep breath is still somehow soothing. I know I’m going to need that extra boost of strength to make it through this, so I take a second to breathe deeply and brace myself for the impact of what I have to say next.

“She’s gone, Tian. He took her,” I admit to him, speaking aloud the words that I thought I had eliminated every possibility of ever having to say.

I tried so hard to make sure that something like this was virtually impossible, but it didn’t even take Grayson Donovan three full hours after the moment that Anna Jade arrived to bust in and defeat all the plans and failsafes that I had so carefully laid into place over the past several years.

I should have listened to my gut all those years ago when Anna Jade first asked me to take her home with me. I’m no good with kids, and this is not the place for someone who hasn’t even learned how to defend herself. It wasn’t a good idea to bring her here, and I knew it.