Dark Light of Mine

"Do you think I'm stupid?" he said. "My little sister is about as trustworthy as a crack addict."

"I heard that," Felicia said.

"I'm sure you did." Smith turned to me. "Mind telling me what she did?"

I glanced at the time. Making school today was going to be impossible. I was too weak for football practice anyway. "I hope you have some time."

"Plenty."

Stacey and Ryland pinned Felicia between them on the bench opposite of me and Smith. She wriggled and squirmed, but she might as well have been boxed in by concrete.

"Just keep still you bloody little fool," Stacey said when Felicia tried to bite her, fangs extended.

"Or I might show you what biting really is," Ryland said from the other side, his eyes flashing wickedly, upper and lower canines lengthening with dark menace.

Felicia gulped and slumped, defeated.

With her settled down, I told Smith all about his sister's complicity in my dad's kidnapping, though I started more or less from the beginning. I told him how Shelton tried to bag us in an alleyway so he could claim the bounty only to have Felicia and a group of vampires jump us and make off with my dad. How me and Elyssa, Stacey and Shelton had rescued him, fought off a horde of vamplings, and captured a few vampires for bounty to the Red Syndicate, the ruling body of the vampires. He looked absolutely incredulous by the end of the story.

"I always knew TP was an ass, but he really went off the deep end with the bounty hunters stuff." Smith turned to Felicia. "And you! Kidnapping is bad enough, but who in the hell is creating vamplings? Maximus? Does that poser have a clue what he's doing?"

"He's got plans, Adam." Her brow furrowed with zealous sincerity. "He wants to help all of us and offer immortality to anyone who deserves it."

Smith pounded the table. "Dammit, you stupid girl." He seemed ready to lay into her with a sermon, instead pulling off his glasses and pinching the bridge of his nose. "What do you plan to do with her?"

Felicia's surprised gaze shifted to me, though she kept her mouth shut.

I raised an eyebrow. I really hadn't planned on doing anything with her even if she was a vicious little brat who'd sicced a bunch of vamplings on me and Elyssa. It wasn't like I could turn her in to the Templars. I didn't know much of anything about the supernatural community either. But maybe I could use her to get Smith to trust me more.

"I'd be happy to leave her with you once we're done here."

Smith shook his head. "I don't want anything to do with her anymore, especially after hearing what you've told me."

"How can you say that?" Felicia asked, tears brimming in her eyes. "I'm your sister."

Smith clenched his teeth and glared at her, a thousand unspoken words passing between them. I had no idea what their history was like, but it couldn't be good. He took a deep breath and seemed to calm before looking at me. "I feel as though I owe you something for the ordeal my sister put you through."

I almost blurted back that he didn't owe me a thing for the bad behavior of his sibling, but I really wanted his help. Maybe he would have helped me anyway, but a little insurance couldn't hurt. "If you can help Sheltonremove the tracker from my dad and figure out these runes, that would totally rock."

"You got it." He looked at Felicia for a long moment. "Where is the Templar you mentioned? Can she maybe lock up my sister for safekeeping?"

Felicia lunged across the table at him fangs bared and hissing, barely making it halfway before Ryland and Stacey jerked her back. "Don't you dare, Adam. I swear to god I'll kill you if you make them lock me up again."

He threw his hands up in the air. "Make them? Make them? I had nothing to do with the last time. You did that all on your own. But Maximus has brainwashed you to the point you don't even think for yourself anymore. It'd be doing you a favor."

Now that Smith mentioned it, I'd love for Elyssa to toss Felicia in Templar prison complete with a pretty orange jumpsuit. Unfortunately, I wasn't sure when I'd see Elyssa again after the disastrous meeting with her father. Just thinking about it sent my heart plunging to the bottom of DepressionBay. It made me want to hurt somebody. And if I'd had my strength right then, the 'somebody' would have been Felicia. On the other hand, Ryland could probably take her in, though I hadn't told Smith the werewolf was a Templar.

"We can take her with us to Shelton's hideout. I'm sure there's something we can do to hold her in the meantime."

Smith nodded and pulled out what looked like a brass smartphone. Once I looked at it closer, I realized it was a regular smartphone modified with a steampunk theme.

"Shelton told me you don't use a cell phone or email," I said.

Smith chuckled. "I don't have any one phone number or email address. It took me a long time, but I wrote a spell allowing this device to spoof other phones at random."

"So the number you use changes each time," I said. "Wow, now that's cool."

"More like freaky," Felicia said. "In case you didn't know, my brother is a total nut-job who thinks there's a conspiracy behind everything. He even thinks someone in the Conclave killed our—"

"Shut it, Felicia," Smith said, smacking the flat of his palm on the table.

"What's the matter?" she said in a whiny mocking voice. "Don't want them to know how crazy you are?"

He took a deep breath and calmed himself. "I may be a conspiracy nut, but I'm not crazy."

I looked at Felicia. "Do yourself a favor and stop trying to tick off your brother. Otherwise I may ask Stacey or Ryland to knock you out."

"I might even do it myself," Smith grumbled.

I looked around and noticed more people coming into the restaurant. It was time to get a move-on. "We should go to Shelton's now."

Smith nodded. "Meet me at your car. I need to grab a few things from my place."

"How in the world are we going to fit everyone into the back of that sodding Prius?" Stacey asked.

Good question.

We made our way out of the restaurant, Stacey and Ryland pressing Felicia from each side. Felicia, for her part, looked defeated and slumped visibly between them. Even if she did break free, either of those two could catch her in an instant, and considering how much wolves and panthers relish the hunt, the takedown would probably get nasty.

"Should I follow Smith?" Ryland asked me as the sorcerer split off from us and went between two shops.

I shook my head. "No. Let the man have his privacy. Besides, if his hideout is anything like Shelton's we couldn't get in without a magic wand anyway."

"It would still be a good idea to know where it is," Stacey said.

I gave the two of them a look. "You two just agreed on something? Amazing."

Ryland grinned at Stacey.

She blushed and gave me a cross look. "Really, my lamb, must you ruin things with such a crude observation?"

Felicia, for her part, looked completely out of it. Her head was down, pigtails flopping on the sides. With the short plaid skirt, knee-high socks, and the geek glasses, she looked like a Catholic school girl who'd gotten busted for hacking computers. I wondered why she wasn't cold considering it wasn't much above freezing at the moment, but neither Stacey nor Ryland seemed all that affected by the weather, either. Maybe I'd been as blissfully and supernaturally unaware of the cold before donating most of my blood to Stacey.

At least I wasn't dragging like before. My body still felt loaded down with bricks but Meghan's pain-killing tea was still doing the trick.

We reached the car. Ryland had to drive—I didn't trust myself behind the wheel—and we needed someone strong in the backseat with Felicia. That left Stacey. She pushed the vampire into the backseat from one side while I climbed in on the other, sandwiching her between the two of us. Felicia didn't know I was in a weakened state, so hopefully she wouldn't try anything.

I closed the door and leaned back, my eyes wanting to close again and not open for a good eight hours or so.

"I'm sorry," Felicia said.

I opened my eyes and looked at her. "Kind of late for apologies."

"I know." She hung her head and bit her lower lip. "You just don't know how things are under the Red Syndicate. They rule everyone with an iron fist, and all the initiates like me are treated like dirt. Maximus makes us feel important. He wants to help people, not enslave them like the masters do."

"The masters?"

"Yeah, the vampire governors. They make rules and live like kings while the rest of us have to do whatever they tell us. It's really unfair."

"Maybe you should have thought of that before becoming a vampire."

"Maximus saved me. I was in a really bad place in my life. He gave me a purpose and a family."

Ugh. I wasn't having any of this crap. Since when did a vampire help anyone? Granted, I only knew what I'd seen in the movies, but this girl was full of excuses. "I'll bet your brother and parents were happy to find out about your new family."

She sniffled and a tear trickled down her cheek. "My parents are dead."

I congratulated myself on not feeling bad for making a girl cry. On the other hand, I felt bad about her parents if it was true. Of course, all I had to do was ask Smith when he got back.

"I'm sorry."

"Why do you think Adam is so loony? He thinks it was a conspiracy reaching all the way up to the Overworld Conclave." A bitter laugh escaped her lips. "As if those idiots could agree on anything, much less conspire to kill a couple of no-name people at the bottom of the rung."

"Why aren't you a sorceress?" I asked. "Obviously your parents were part of the arcane community seeing as how your brother practices magic."

She pulled off her glasses and wiped red-rimmed eyes. "That's just it. My dad was a big-wig in the magic community but my mom was just a nom. Adam got all the abilities in our family." She sniffed and wiped her nose. "I was just plain old me. A nom."