Bad Blood by Everly Faith

Author:Everly, Faith
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Independent
Published: 2020-08-11T16:00:00+00:00

Eleven

DOMINIC

“So this is where she lived?”

I had expected the disdain in my cousin’s voice, and as such didn’t react to it. “You sound underwhelmed.”

“Oh, do I?” Jessabelle held a hand to her chest. “Because I meant to sound disgusted. I’ll have to try harder.”

“All right. Enough.” Kristoff, ever the peacemaker. He turned to her. “Do you need to feed? Because you’re roughly as cranky as a toddler.”

Jessa threw her hands into the air. She managed to make even exasperation appear graceful. “What do you want from me? I hate this world. I hate wearing their idea of clothing. I hate bugs, and there are so many in the air at this time of year. I hate the stench. How do they live with the stench? Are they so accustomed to being filthy that they know no better?”

I chose to hold my tongue rather than remind her of where she’d come from. The gutter in which my uncle Augustine had found her. Dressed in rags, hunting rats for supper. I’d heard the tale of how he’d considered feeding from her or keeping her as a pet—her beauty had been a thing of wonder even then, malnourished and covered in filth—and how he’d decided to turn her, to foster her as a daughter.

He’d held her up and treasured her as one would a sparkling jewel for two hundred years. In that time, she’d forgotten just how far she’d come. How low she’d once been.

Was that it?

Or was being here in the city a reminder of how she’d suffered? For while passing a homeless man huddled in the doorway to a boarded-up building, she averted her eyes with what I knew was more than disgust or pity. It was memory. A kinship she couldn’t forget, no matter how many years passed.

We were a block away from Sophie’s building, where she’d lived two floors above a sandwich shop. Yes, it was rundown, the paint peeling away from the exterior walls, a rusted fire escape along the side that looked as if it was long past the point of bearing weight.

I stopped, holding out an arm on either side to stop my cousins.

Kristoff picked up the scent as easily as I had. “Lycans.”

“They’ve been near recently,” I murmured, scanning the area. It was quiet, the streets empty except for the occasional passing car or straggler making their way home from a night out. Morning would come soon enough.

“They want her, and you know how determined Justin can be when he wants something.” The disgust in Kristoff’s voice was plain.

“The idiot,” Jessabelle spat. “Believing Augustine’s lies. What is there to be done with one as stupid as that?”

“Stupid and greedy,” I agreed. For Augustine believed the absence of a Blood Queen would weaken us to the point where he could then take power. If he thought Lucian would step aside that easily, he had another thing coming.

“Father was always good at using the weak-minded to do his bidding.” Kristoff’s chuckle lacked humor. “This is exactly the sort of thing he would be involved in.

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