“What kind of snooping around?” I ask.
“Mostly breaking and entering the city’s treasury offices and hacking a couple of bank files.” Kian points to Caden and Maddox. “The twins have been sneaking around some of the Order’s office buildings.”
“So?” I say with a long breath afterward. “I don’t need dramatics.”
“The Order has been buying a shit ton of property up over the last two years. Homes, apartments, and businesses. And it’s all been under Nikolaos’s nose,” Kian grumbles. “They even bought places from Nikolaos. Granted, a lot of this has been done through offshore shell accounts and dummy corporations, but still.”
“So New Elysium is rife with Benedictines. That doesn’t surprise me given what I saw around Chloe’s house. Do we have any information on how Nikolaos got his hands on the second soulmarked?” I ask.
“From what I can get out of the nomads who were in the den,” Raphael says, standing up from the chair he’s been sitting in, “she was caught in the city fresh off the Greyhound bus.”
“Two marked in one city…” I say thoughtfully. “Her getting off the bus means she was running then. It’s not necessarily intentional.”
“Yeah, fucking weirdest coincidence I’ve seen in a while, but they do happen,” Raphael says.
“Where’s she at right now?” I ask.
“In the wind. Whether it’s with Nikolaos’s coven or she got away, we don’t know,” Raphael answers.
Well shit.
“I don’t give a fuck whose soulmarked she is, I want her here with us as soon as possible,” I say.
Having her here would give us a step toward a legitimate claim to the city, at least with the Council, and the evidence to show how Nikolaos has been running this shitshow so far.
“Already on it,” Raphael says. “I’m calling around to a couple people to see what I can find. But it won’t come cheap. We’re going to need to pay out for this.”
“Get it done,” I say.
Turning to Matthias, I’m ready to ask if he’s made any progress on what I assigned him.
“Don’t ask me yet.” Matthias raises his hand at me. “I’ve put feelers out. I’m waiting on calls and fucking snail mail, if you can believe it.”
“What?” I ask in confusion. “What the fuck?”
“You know some of our kind can’t get with the times. A couple of the ones I had to ask refuse to even use your basic fucking telephone. Pen in paper is their preferred method,” he snaps at me with annoyance.
“You’re keeping this on the down-low though, right?” I ask.
“Of course,” Matthias says. “I don’t want the Council getting wind of any of this right now.”
It’s good that he understands the importance of keeping any word of witches quiet. The last time there was word of one in the wind… Fuck, a lot of us died that century. Died in ways that make the Order’s methods look kind.
Witches are a nasty fucking breed of monster. They’re evil, vile, and seek the destruction of all. Their magic perverts even the darkest of hells. I’ve counted myself lucky I’ve only encountered one in my lifetime. One I barely survived killing. I’ve seen whole covens destroyed by them.
Thank the gods they are truly rare, and that they cannot reproduce like humans and vampires do.
“Alright,” I say, and repress a shudder at the thought of witches living.
“My turn,” Andrei says with a strange little smile on his face. “I have interesting news, I suppose.”
I round on him. “Which is?”
“Chloe’s blood,” Andrei says.
My voice comes out in a deep rumble from my chest. “Andrei, if you want to play games, I’ll strip you naked and drop you in the middle of Siberia.”
Raising his hands in a shield, Andrei says, “I’m not, but your reaction is what I wanted to see.”
“What?” I ask.
“Let me ask some questions. I want to see if my thoughts are right before I answer anything.”
Sighing, I nod my head. Nothing in this fucking city has been fucking simple yet. Why should this be any different?
“How much blood did you give her?” Andrei asks.
Leaning back on the table, I think back on the turning. How it felt when I was drinking from her, and how it felt when she drank from me. How even when she fought me, a large portion of my blood went into her. How when she drank deep from me it felt as if she were draining my cock as much as my body.
“What the fuck?” Matthias sounds like he’s gagging. “Can’t you keep your dick soft when you’re thinking of our dear mother?”
Smirking, I look down at the semi-hard cock in my pants. “What can I say, boys, your mom gets my engine revving.”
“I want to die now,” Raphael groans.
“You can’t die again, you already did that once,” I say then look at Andrei. “To answer your question, she drank a lot. I’m not entirely sure how much but…”