Page 110 of Becoming D'Vaire
“No, this time it reallyisthe end. She’s finally going to pay for everything she’s done,” Idris responded.
“Okay, good. She was a real bitch,” Grigori commented. Delaney wasn’t sure if it was the snootiness rarely heard from the vampire or the words themselves, but all the D’Vaire men burst into a cleansing bout of delighted laughter.
“Work’s done, let’s head home,” Mac said when he got his mirth under control.
“I wouldn’t say all your work is done,” Idris muttered as they headed for the door.
“Sweetheart, you’re never work,” Mac remarked with a pat to Idris’s ass. Delaney held on tight to his vampire as he helped him put one foot in front of another. He couldn’t wait to get home and tell everyone they no longer had to watch every step. They could walk into the future without looking back. The Latarian and Carvallius chapters of their lives were finally truly and irrevocably over.
Chapter 39
Reverent Knight Drystan Gylde-Kempe walked into the interrogation room with his mate on his heels. The man inside glanced up and although his broken nose, courtesy of Delaney, had healed, there were still pale shadows of bruises under his eyes, which were full of fear. Drystan was confident that they could get Duff Cominsky to talk about how he found himself helping the woman who spent over six hundred years using Dra’Kaedan as a conduit, then nearly killing him twice. He set his coffee down on the table as Conley swung a chair around backward, so he could straddle it.
“Kind of strange, us hanging out like this, isn’t it?” Conley asked. Drystan wanted to smile at the forced good humor flowing out of his other half, but a stern face would be more intimidating to the teenage shifter.
“I don’t have to talk to you guys. My brother’s the Kellas cat alpha. You have to let me call him so I can go home.”
Drystan lifted one dark brow. “I wasn’t aware you had any siblings, Duff. In fact, I’ve got a copy of your sanctuary application, courtesy of the D’Vaires, and it clearly states that you’re an only child with deceased parents.”
“Dugan Cominsky, that’s my brother. I get to call him. I watch a lot of television and I know my rights.”
“Apparently you’ve been watchinghumanshows,” Conley said, then gave him a Cheshire grin. “Here’s how it works in the Council of Sorcery and Shifters. We have no treaty with the Consilium Veneficus. I’m guessing the Kellas cats belong to them, so I don’t have to let you do shit. I can put you in a cage for the rest of your life if I want, and there isn’t a damn thing you can do about it. So, I’d suggest if you ever want to see the light of day again, you better start talking.”
“Is that true?” Duff asked Drystan. Clearly, he trusted him to tell the truth, and Conley was scaring the crap out of him. The interrogation could not have started any better. Then again, it was not usually all that difficult to intimidate a teenager.
“I’m afraid so. No matter what, you’re going to have to face justice for the role you played in the attempted kidnapping of High Arcanist Delaney Volkov-D’Vaire. If you cooperate, that’ll go a long way toward shortening your sentence. I don’t get to decide your punishment. A Juris Knight will be randomly assigned to do that,” Drystan said.
“Unless we turn your ass over to the Sentinel Brotherhood. Guess who’s in charge of deciding punishments over there?” Conley asked as Duff shrank back away from him. “You already know, don’t you? Skeleton Lord Gavrael and Skeleton Lord Gedeon D’Vaire sign off on all of them. I’m sure they’d lock you in chains until you were nothing more than a pile of bones for what you’ve done to their family. I have to say I think it’s probably a justifiable sentence, so it wouldn’t impugn their honor in any way.”
Drystan didn’t say anything. He waited for Duff to decide how he much he was going to say. The silence stretched as he clenched his fists and stared down at his sneakers. Then he pushed his chair closer to the table. His gaze was resolute but wary. “What do you guys want to know?”
“Let’s start with you. Tell me about your brother,” Drystan suggested.
“He’s okay, I guess. We used to have a real good relationship. As our leader he has a lot of duties, but we used to hang out whenever he had time.”
“What happened to your folks?” Conley asked.
“I didn’t lie about them. They died, but I was a baby, so I don’t remember them. Dugan raised me. My dad got caught stealing from another group of shifters, and they killed him. My mom died of heartsickness.”
“So you and Dugan got along. Then what?” Drystan asked.
“The Arch Wizard put together this traveling marketplace. I don’t know, I guess he wanted more groups of people to interact. So, we went, and Dugan met his mate. She’s a wizard. Her name is Verly Giles. After they met she came to live with us, and things were different. Dugan didn’t have time to do anything but hang out with her. That wasn’t how it was supposed to be, he’s my brother. My only family. I started thinking about striking out on my own, and how it would be impossible within the Consilium Veneficus. They pretend they want all the races to join, but they only care about wizards. Dugan used to complain about that all the time until he met her.”
Drystan wasn’t going to waste time explaining what place a mate was supposed to have in your life and that if Duff was patient and understanding, they could’ve all found a way to get along. He wanted details and to get them, he needed to keep Duff talking. “So Dugan and Verly ignored you, and you wanted some independence. How did you get to Las Vegas?”
“It was easy. I’m a cat and a small one. I just went to the airport and shifted. I climbed into a large animal crate with another cat that I hid behind. I went to New York first. I didn’t know that the humans and the Council have a treaty which doesn’t allow shifters to go anywhere in their world. I needed help, and they basically told me to fuck off. I didn’t know what to do, so I did the sneaking into the cat carrier thing again and flew to Las Vegas. It’s where the Council Headquarters is, so I figured it’d be awesome. Only it wasn’t because I didn’t have an identification card, and I knew there’d be all kinds of questions. I was afraid if I went to the fallen knights, they’d call my brother. I didn’t know you guys don’t know shit about what happens within the Consilium, otherwise I wouldn’t have spent a few months hiding in a smelly gym with barely any food.”
“That’s where the Antonov kids found you, right?” Drystan asked.
“Yeah, I started doing the whole playing sports thing basically because I was bored as shit and didn’t know what the hell to do. I’d really fucked myself over. I almost called my brother, but then Mr. and Mrs. Antonov invited me to come to their house. It was the best. There were kids my age and I had fun there.”
“But they couldn’t afford to feed another mouth, so they started telling you that you needed a sanctuary,” Drystan said.
“Yeah, I’d told them my parents were dead, and I sure as hell didn’t mention Dugan. Since their son Victor Antonov works for the Arch Lich and the Lich Sentinel, the subject of D’Vaire came up. Everyone was talking about how they had plenty of money and it was the best sanctuary out there. I liked the idea of money—my brother’s our leader but he doesn’t have a pot to piss in. That clicked in my head as the perfect place to go.”
“You made it through the application process,” Conley prompted.
“Yeah, I mean I just told them the same shit I told the Antonovs. They asked me about where the Kellas cats were. I lied and said I had this hard-as-fuck time growing up in tents and shit. I might not have had much money growing up, but we had a house. It was actually a really good story, I was proud of myself for my creativity. I told them I didn’t know if there were any more Kellas cats alive and that if we had an alpha, he must be a secret or some shit. Everyone kept talking about how hard it was going to be to get into D’Vaire but since I told them I didn’t have any connections and there was no alpha, they had nothing to verify. I got in.”
