Page 52 of Bitten By Chaos

“He only cares about the work, not me.” I snatched a vial from the counter and held it out for her so she could take my blood to get started.

“Then he’d still be in for this. Why not use him? He sure used you and Zoe—no offense, Doc.” She stuck the needle expertly in my vein and withdrew several vials after the first.

I stared hard at the warring glow of various magics that I knew she couldn’t see around each tiny tube and forced myself to think beyond my own pride and anger for any valid excuses.

“Let’s go pay him a visit,” I agreed, my posture slumping. “I am only agreeing to question him to get up to speed with anything he might be able to offer information-wise. Then we come back here where it’s safe and continue working until it’s time for the catering appointment.”

Lydia grinned, rocking her shoulders in a sly move. “I can’t believe you’re planning a fucking wedding! I’m all in.”

Rolling my eyes, I bumped her with my hip. “Come on, let’s get this over with.”

“Is it safe for you to go back there if what you said about Elsa is true?” Lydia grabbed my arm as I raised it to open a portal.

“She won’t know if I take us directly into the lab. And right now, I have far more power, so I’d almost like to see her try to do something about it.” The knowledge of her interference in our last life together sent shivers of rage through my body, stoking the magic within. If she raised a hand against me, I wouldn’t hesitate to act.

Lydia stepped back, and I opened the doorway to the lab in the vampire estate’s basement where my father spun around, slamming a large metal cabinet closed behind him.

Right away, things felt off. For one thing, I’d never seen that cabinet before. For another, he’d noticed and acknowledged my presence immediately with a too-wide smile. But my senses told me something else was happening, and I squinted at him out of instinct.

A blue aura swam into view, swirling around him. Not only was that impossible for a vampire, but it wasn’t the blue I was used to in aura’s—the one that indicated truth. No, this was different somehow, and yet familiar…

I threw out an arm, and the cabinet door behind him flew open, sending him sprawling. Out of the interior fell a corpse, ghostly white and in the tatters of what used to be a camouflage uniform. Her blonde hair had tumbled over her face, leaving the jagged red marks of a vampire bite over an old matching scar.

My stomach dropped. Major Marcia Honeywell, who had disappeared from the MorningStar lab without a trace after it was destroyed by a changeling, lay exsanguinated on my father’s laboratory floor. Despite my managing to avoid retrieving her for him, Elsa had somehow managed to do it anyway, just as she’d promised.

The major had tortured both Julian and me. She was ultimately the one responsible for the silver poisoning that forced me to make my deal with the queen. And yet—I remembered when she’d shown me the top of that scar and told me she’d known my father as well. That he could act sweet but be ruthless. She’d been as much of a pawn to him as I was. And now she was dead.

Stuffed into a cabinet.

Refusing to find her and inflict harm was one thing, but would I have saved her if I’d been earlier? I glared at my father, who’d risen to his feet.

“What have you done?” I demanded.

His gaze darted to the body on the floor. He knew I meant aside from draining her, and he better answer in the next two seconds if he didn’t want his throat ripped out. I felt about as unstable as I had when I’d first been turned.

“She was one of my original test subjects secured by Elsa,” he explained calmly, moving over to his lab station as though he was about to continue studying something else. “Elsa procured her as a natural psychic, and with patient zero, I was able to isolate the demon genome. I thought it would allow me to, well, make more of you. But somehow, though the abilities were strong, they never matched the way the sample the demons had given me freely attached themselves to you.” He smiled weakly as though he thought he was complimenting me.

I stared, holding Lydia’s wrist to prevent her from doing anything rash. This was my fight if it came to that.

“So, you admit you knew they weren’t gods at all, but demons?” I started with, stepping closer to him.

“Is that what concerns you? No, no, I didn’t and don’t care what they’re named. What matters is what they are, and what they provided toward the evolution of our kind.”

“Our kind?” I echoed.

“Witches, vampires.” He stuck a needle in his own arm and withdrew a sample of blood. Then he smeared a drop on a glass slide and set it beneath a microscope.

“Look at me,” I demanded, and he did with a sigh. “So, Marcia had demon DNA as well because of you, and you drained her?”

“I would think that was obvious given what I said,” he snapped.

“You’re planning to drain a powerful witch and a fairy now, aren’t you?” I asked, pulse thundering as my father’s ultimate vision unfolded in my mind. He’d worked for Elsa and others all so he could find a way to become the ultimate creature himself. “Unless you’ve already done it?”

“No. Not yet. My studies show that it’s important to let the magic of each settle first. If I were to do one after another, the magic could become volatile.” Dad adjusted the microscope as his words washed over me, cold and terrifying.

“What do you mean, volatile?” I asked, shifting my weight as I studied my own hands, sparkling with swirls of the fae and witch magic I’d consumed in short succession.

Dad looked up, scrutinizing me. “You took both already yourself, didn’t you?” He asked with a grin.

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