Secret Unleashed

Chapter Nine

A warm breeze roused me, calling for me to open my eyes. I cracked my eyelids and blinked back tears from the searing too-bright light of day.

My bare skin was hot, absorbing the sunshine and making me feel cozier than if I’d been wrapped in a dozen sweaters. I might not get cold often, but I still liked being warm.

I raised the brim of my obnoxiously large sun hat and glanced around, trying not to look directly at the pool. Given the brightness of the day and how still the water was, it would have been like staring into a mirror of the sun.

If my dreams were going to put me poolside in a tropical paradise, couldn’t they at least dim the lighting a little?

“Here,” said a soft, female voice. A pair of oversized sunglasses were thrust into my hand, and I accepted them, blocking out some of the glare.

When I turned to my left to see who my savior was, my heart stopped.

Brigit Stewart smiled back at me, and even in a dream it was painful to see her, especially looking so vital and gorgeous. She wasn’t as pale as I remembered her—though she’d still been stunning with her alabaster vampire skin. Now she was golden, like she had been when we first met, and her hair had sun-kissed highlights running through it.

This was the human version of Brigit, the version she could have been if Peyton hadn’t turned her to make a point to me.

Vampire or human, it didn’t matter. Seeing her thrilled and destroyed me all at the same time.

“Bri…” I couldn’t figure out what to say to her.

My dreams were a strange place to begin with, which made this that much more difficult. In the past, she’d used our connection—me as her patron, she as my ward—to communicate with one another on a subconscious level.

For a moment I wanted to believe this was that kind of interaction. Somehow I had been wrong about her death, and she’d managed a miraculous recovery. Surely that’s what this meant. It couldn’t be my psyche playing cruel tricks on me.

“You look sad. Aren’t you happy to see me?” She practically oozed warmth, her smile drawing me in.

Tears stung the corner of my eyes, threatening to fall, but I blinked them back, worried she might vanish if I turned away for a second.

“Are you real?”

“I don’t know how to answer that. I’m here, aren’t I? So I guess I’m real enough.”

“Are you alive?” I was trying to work around the elusive, often-aggravating dialogue of a dream.

“I haven’t been alive for a long time.”

“You know what I mean.”

“Do you know what you mean?”

My dreams were a fucking nightmare sometimes.

I reached out, hoping by touching her I could get a feel for what was happening. If this was a dream and not some communication from beyond the grave, I needed to know.

But if she was really there, I needed to find a way to bring her back with me. Though I understood the impossibility of that, I was still desperate to try.

When I touched her hand, her fingers turned gray and crumbled apart into dust. Her arm followed suit, caught on the breeze, and bits of her drifted onto the surface of the water then sank out of sight.

“Oh. Look what you’ve done,” she said, her voice never losing its cheerful quality.

I jerked back my hand in horror, hoping it would stop, but she continued to dissolve in front of my eyes.

“I’m so sorry.” Now the tears fell, and there was no stopping them. I wasn’t crying for the loss of her in the dream, but rather the restored knowledge she was gone forever from my real life.

“I was supposed to tell you something.” Her arm dropped away, and her chest began to crumble, exposing bits of rib before they too became ashes.

“Tell me.” I wiped away pink tears with the heel of my hand.

“The betrayal is not what you think.”

“The…betrayal? What betrayal?”

“Sometimes you misplace your trust, but then you find it again.”

“Brigit, what are you talking about?”

“You look really pretty in red,” she commented, and her gaze rested on my hands.

Instead of being covered in her debris, my arms were coated with thick blood, all the way up to my elbows, dripping down in a puddle around my feet.

“Don’t worry,” she whispered. “Someone else will clean up your mess.”

When I woke up, I was still in the box.

My heart seized as I stared into the black interior of the coffin, and in defiance of all logic I pushed out, scrambling against the velvet walls. I couldn’t stretch my arms fully in any given direction, and each time I tried to find purchase on something my hands slid off.

So, of course, I attempted to sit up.

My head thumped the roof, and I broke out in a cold sweat. Why had I let Ingrid talk me into traveling this way? How had Holden been so cavalier about the whole thing? As if being inside a coffin was no big deal.

Considering how many people wanted me dead, I’d given them a perfect opportunity to come right to me. And now what? I was stuck in the coffin, unable to tell where I was or who was waiting outside. What if I’d been buried alive?

Just the thought of it made my panic swell, adrenaline coursing through me as I clawed at the velvet and pounded my fists into the metal underneath.

“Let me out,” I screamed, my voice raspy with terror.

Something bumped against the coffin, and I went still, straining to hear what was going on. The lid creaked and lifted, filling the small space with an impossible amount of light. I squinted at first—momentarily blinded—but once I realized I had been released, I scrambled out of the coffin and shot to the other side of the room.

A boy who appeared to be no older than twelve or thirteen years old assessed me with a quizzical expression, fingering the tattered lining of the casket and nibbling at his lip with a tiny fang.

“Madam, are you quite all right?” he asked, his voice soft and carrying a French accent. “You seem to have destroyed your chamber.”

I swiped my arm across my brow to keep the sweat in check, and my gaze darted around the unfamiliar room. No offense to the kid, but a small French boy wasn’t going to put me at ease. Alexandre Peyton looked seventeen at most, and his angelic face made him very misleading. This stranger could easily be one of Peyton’s minions.

“Where’s Holden?”

The room we were in was lovely. Modern without being too cold, elegant without being too stuffy. The walls were painted a warm gray, and the furniture was accented in shades of violet and charcoal. My coffin was placed near a king-sized bed, and the rest of the room was a suite built to invite comfort. Large chairs and couches were set in front of a slate fireplace, and beyond that was another bedroom, where I could see a coffin identical to my own.

Holden’s coffin.

The lid was open, but there was no sign of the vampire sentry anywhere, so I repeated my question. “Where is he?” When the boy didn’t answer straightaway, I switched into the French my grandmere had drilled into me as a child. “Où et Holden?”

I must not have butchered the pronunciation too badly because the boy’s smile broadened, and he began chattering away in mile-a-minute Parisian French. My grandmere was Creole, and I’d been raised in the Canadian prairie. The French I spoke was a bastardization of Quebecois and Bayou. It certainly wasn’t the soft, eloquent language this kid had perfected over a century or more.

“Désolé, mais mon français n’est pas très bon. Pouvez-vous parler un peu plus lentement, s’il vous plait?” I hoped he wouldn’t be offended I’d spoken to him in French and was now asking him to slow down.

He frowned but appeared more disappointed than irritated.

“Your accent is atrocious,” he commented.

“Isn’t it though?” I offered him a halfhearted smile. My heart was pounding, and he would definitely be able to hear it. So much for playing down my mortal side.

“How interesting.” He tilted his head to one side, eyes narrowing, and looked at me as if I were a piece of art he was having trouble capturing the meaning of. “We were told you were…unique, but I suppose I didn’t believe it until now.”

Perhaps I should have taken his fascination as a compliment, but him gawking at me just added to my nervousness. I still didn’t know where I was, or who he was. The presence of Holden’s coffin calmed me slightly, but not as much as having the actual vampire present would.

“Who are you?” I asked, trying a different tactic since he still hadn’t told me his name.

“Oh! Mon dieu, my apologies Tribunal Leader McQueen, I have forgotten my place entirely.” He did a half bow, holding his hands at the small of his back. His shoulder-length brown curls tumbled forward to cover his face briefly, and when he righted himself, I looked at his eyes. They were a lovely color of green, not the solid black of a vampire itching to feed. “My name is Maxime.”

“Hello.” I raised my hand in a limp wave, and in spite of the fact he clearly knew who I was, I added, “I’m Secret.”

“Yes, of course.” He bowed again. “Do you prefer Tribunal Leader Secret?”

Lord have mercy, I was going to have to deal with a whole new group of people addressing me with the longest title known to man. But I knew from over a year with the East Coast council it was pointless to try getting them down to a first-name basis.

“Tribunal Leader Secret is fine.” At least it was less formal than McQueen.

“I will be your valet during your stay in Los Angeles, and I do hope if you have any needs or requests, you won’t hesitate to approach me with them. I sincerely apologize, as well, for treating you in such a common manner earlier. I beg your forgiveness.”

“Don’t worry about it.”

Evidently he was worried because he continued to gnaw at his lip. He didn’t feel old to me, ignoring the youthful mask of his appearance. “Are you quite certain I cannot make amends in some way?”

“Really, Maxime, it’s fine. I’m used to much stranger responses than that. No apologies necessary.”

If he’d been breathing, he might have let out a sigh of relief, but his shift in demeanor was obvious nonetheless. His expression softened, and a smile curved his cupid’s-bow lips upwards.

“How old are you?” I asked him.

“One hundred and seventy-three.”

He would have been turned sometime in the mid-1800s, not long after Holden had been. And he was French, and beautiful, and assigned to me. My own tentative smile faltered.

“Who is your maker?” I’d been told once by Sig it was common practice for Tribunal Leaders and Council Elders to send their progeny far away to avoid conflicts of interest. I had a feeling I knew exactly whose spawn was my new man-in-waiting.

“Rebecca Archambault.”

My jaw clenched, and I gritted my teeth, biting back a growl. “Well then, Maxime, you can do me a favor.”

“Yes, of course. Anything.”

“Tell me where your brother is.”

Maxime guided me to a set of oak doors not unlike those leading to the subterranean Tribunal chamber in New York. He bowed again—something he had a lot of practice with it seemed—and scurried away before I had a chance to go in.

The uneasy feeling I had still lingered, making me wary to waltz into any unfamiliar rooms, but since I was in a city I’d never been to, all the rooms would be unfamiliar. I didn’t bother knocking because I figured anyone inside would have heard me coming, and why give them any extra heads up if they meant me harm?

From what I’d gathered during my short chat with Maxime, I was likely at the West Coast council headquarters, but he hadn’t said anything during our walk to confirm my suspicions a hundred percent, and I hadn’t outright asked. If we were where I suspected we were, I was going to sound like an idiot for asking, and idiocy wasn’t the impression Sig wanted me to make.

I opened the doors and stepped backwards rather than straight into the room. When nothing fired at me and no one lunged to attack, I decided it was safe to continue and went in with my head held high, projecting an air of authority I didn’t necessarily feel.

“You look well rested.” It was Holden’s voice, but I couldn’t find the man to match it.

I scanned the room and took in my surroundings as I searched for him. The space wasn’t at all what I expected from a vampire stronghold. For one thing, the floor-to-ceiling windows were out of step with protecting vampire safety.

The massive space reminded me a great deal of the top floor in Lucas’s penthouse, where one half of the entire area was dedicated to a big lounge-style living room with an unbeatable view of New York. Only here the view wasn’t of my beloved hometown, it was the glittery oasis of Los Angeles.

We must have been outside of the L.A. city limits because I could see most of the city sprawled out before us like a carpet of stars. What New York had in height, L.A. had in distance, spreading wider than I could see without shifting my position.

I hadn’t expected to like L.A.—that was the snobby New Yorker in me—but there was something beautiful about it, lit up orange in the early night sky. What I didn’t enjoy was discovering we weren’t in the city proper. Judging from the vantage point, I gathered we had to be up in the Hollywood Hills somewhere, and my extensive research with Us magazine told me that would put our neighbors at a distance.

Far enough away it would be difficult to get help.

Not that humans were all that helpful.

I sighed and continued to search the room for Holden. I found him nestled in a leather wingback chair near the fireplace—did every room in this building have a fireplace?—with his feet kicked up on an ottoman and a glass of whiskey in his hand.

“Are you enjoying yourself?” I snapped, unable to keep the irritation from my tone. I’d been well-behaved with Maxime, but I didn’t need to be polite to Holden. It might not have been nice of me, but my blood pressure was running sky-high, and I needed to project my anxiety onto someone. He was the best target because he’d still love me when I finished yelling at him.

“Well, it’s only a ten-year-old blend, but aside from that I can’t complain.” He swished the amber liquid around in its lowball glass and smirked at me. We’d done this song and dance before, and apparently he didn’t feel the need to cower before my rage anymore.

That took half the fun out of it.

“Did you think it might be a bad idea to leave me on my own, locked inside a coffin when I woke up?” I crossed my arms, my gaze drifting from his smug facial expression to the drink. Damn that whiskey looked good.

So did his face, but I wanted to think about something other than how handsome he was. It was hard to be mad at someone if you were busy musing over how pretty they were.

“Want some?” He held the glass up to me, and I took it, swallowing some of the booze. The whiskey burned a friendly welcome glow from my throat down to my belly, soothing the savage beast within.

“You knew how I felt about being in there,” I reminded him, my voice low and soft to keep any tremor out of my words.

“Did you freak out?”

I couldn’t tell if he was teasing me or honestly wanted to know. “I did.”

“I’m sorry.” For once he didn’t phrase it like a question. He sounded genuinely apologetic. “I didn’t plan to be gone long, and when I went back, Maxime said he had it under control.”

“Ah, yes. About him…”

“Don’t worry about Max.”

“No offense, Holden, but ever since I killed Charlie I haven’t been Rebecca’s favorite person.” Never mind that Charlie Conaway had been a homicidal jackass, using his thrall to murder innocent girls. He’d also been Rebecca’s favorite based on her treatment of me following his death.

“Max is different.”

“How is he different?” I sat on the leather ottoman in front of him, our knees touching. He made a move like a flinch when I sat, but it seemed as though he wanted to move closer, not farther away. He reclaimed the glass from my hand and settled back into the chair.

“I know you don’t like Rebecca much, but it’s clouding your opinion of her progeny. Have you forgotten she made me?”

“Did you ever consider you’re the reason I have a negative bias about her spawn?” I countered, but couldn’t keep from smirking.

“Now, now, Ms. McQueen. Keep talking like that and I’ll think you’re secretly in love with me.” He tried to smile, but it faltered, making the guilty feelings I thought I’d left in New York swell up all over again.

What was I going to do with these boys? Why couldn’t we just have a nice, totally unrealistic, three-way live-in love relationship where Desmond cooked, Holden tidied and I brought home the bacon by bossing around every vampire on the East Coast.

Was that too much to ask?

I guess the fact vampires and werewolves hated each other, and my boys especially hated each other, wasn’t going to help make my fantasy pipe dream a reality. If I tried to imagine what living with them both would be like, it was a horror movie and a television sitcom all rolled into one. Holden would constantly be making dog jokes, and Desmond wouldn’t ever stop reminding me Holden was dead. Not the most romantic scenario.

And I only had myself to blame.

Three months earlier I’d found myself in the unique position of being able to pick—once and for all—which of them I’d bind myself to for the rest of my life. I’d been human, and it was a clean slate. I could have spent my life with Desmond, a nice mortal life in the sun with babies and daylight and all the stuff I’d dreamed about having as a child.

Or I could have let Holden bite me. I’d have been a real, full-blooded vampire, no longer a freak of nature to the Tribunal, and I could have spent eternity with the beautiful man sitting in front of me.

So what did I do?

I made a Devil’s bargain with the fairy king to be returned to my old self. Meaning I was back to square one and no closer to knowing which of them I should be with.

I was like a kid in a candy store being told to pick between two delicious treats when I desperately wanted them both.

“Sorry,” I whispered, not sure if I was apologizing for spacing out or loving him. I just felt the need to apologize. “You were telling me about Maxime.”

“I was.”

“Why should I trust him?”

Holden gave the whiskey a thoughtful sniff. “Why should we trust anyone, really? I mean, what is trust but a leap of faith?”

“I like to think of it as more of a currency.”

“I trust him. Is that enough for you to invest?”

I stuck my tongue out at him, having had my own analogy used against me.

Holden continued, “I think Charlie gave you an unfair opinion of my siblings. You can’t let one insane movie star taint your entire perception of Rebecca’s offspring.”

“I’m getting a good idea of her type, though.”

“Is that so?”

“Yup. Deceptively handsome and wily as hell.”

He smirked. “You think I’m handsome?”

I rolled my eyes. “You’re missing the point.”

“I never miss the point. You’re letting your experience with a rogue taint your opinion of an entire family line, and that’s not fair. Charlie was Rebecca’s first. I’m not saying I know much about the finer details of turning someone, but maybe something went wrong. Maybe she screwed it up. Or maybe he was just a fucking psycho in life.”

Hadn’t I been thinking the same thing a day earlier? He was right, of course. I couldn’t assume every vampire sired by Rebecca would be the same as Charlie Conaway. Holden was noble, and good, even if he could be a giant pain in the ass. It wasn’t fair of me to question Maxime just because Rebecca had sired him.

After all—when push came to shove—I knew Holden would pick me over Rebecca.

But knowing my distrust was illogical wasn’t the same thing as changing my mind. Holden seemed to sense I was still hesitating because he set aside his glass and took both my hands in his. “Before I came to America there was a period of a few decades where it was just Maxime and me. Rebecca had gone off to make her mark in Spain with Charlie, and she’d left us—the weaker ones—behind in Paris. I can assure you with one hundred percent certainty Max will never, ever betray you.”

“How can you be sure?”

“Because I told him what you are to me.”

My hands went still, sweat pooling between my palms.

“And what is that?”

Holden leaned forward and pressed a gentle kiss on my lips before speaking. “The love of my life.”