Page 9 of Just Dare Me
“Are you not listening? What I want is for you to come closer.”
“I’ll rephrase. Tell me why you’re here. And while you’re at it, tell me why and how your people have scooped us on every raid. This isourfight.”
“It wasmymaster who was attacked in a cowardly ambush on the Ambassador Bridge.”
“Yeah, I know. You know how I know? Because I was standing on that bridge when itblew up. It wasmypeople who tried to stop the East Side horde, and it wasmyboyfriend who killed Ariel Moaz, which, by the way, avenges the attack on your master—you’re welcome—and last but not least, it’smyboyfriend—actually, my fiancé—who is now held hostage by their psycho bitch harpy.”
“Ergo?”
I try to keep my voice down by clenching my teeth. “Ergohome! Your master walked away from that attack. He’s probably eating poutine and Nanaimo bars as we speak. No harm, no foul. Which means it’sourfight!”
She seems to seriously consider my words with an unconscious nod. “Have you ever actually tried poutine?”
My shoulders slump. With a sigh, I answer, “Yes.”
“Did you like it?”
“Yes.”
“And Nanaimo bars?”
I cut her a bitter smile. “Delicious.”
“My master hated both.”
“Okay, it’s a Canadian joke, that’s all. Once again, not literal.”
“He loved meat, naturally. Filets, rib eyes.”
“Adam’s apples,” I add.
Her voice turns dour. “He enjoys nothing anymore, because he’s dead. He did not survive the blast on the Ambassador Bridge. We have only been propagating such a facade in order to maintain some semblance of peace among the Windsor factions, if only temporarily. Appearances don’t keep long. Soon the truth will come out, and the Cleveland clan will be first to make a claim on our territory, as they have already done on yours. Ergo…yourfight is very muchourfight.”
My bluff meter is going haywire. A dead master isn’t something a vampire would lie about, even with high stakes on the line. But there’s no way they could actually keep a secret like that, is there? “Do you think I’m an idiot? He can’t be dead. All of Windsor would be in chaos as soon as his sire bond was broken. We just went through this with Henry Stadther. A total shit show.”
“My master’s bond was not broken, because it was not his alone. Hundreds of years ago, he consolidated his sire bond with another’s by taking her not as a mistress, but a bride. An equal sovereign. In colloquial terms, a queen. She now wields that sire bond alone.”
“Bullshit. I never heard of any vampire that would share power.”
“I concede that it’s unheard of, maybe even thought to be impossible. I certainly would not have believed it if I hadn’t seen it for myself.”
“Yeah, okay, let’s say I bite, pun intended. Who is this chick, then? Who’s this vampire queen?”
“Her name—my name—is Dominique.”
“Yourname? You’re telling me you are the Windsor clan master?”
“Their queen, yes.”
“You?”
“Me, yes. Do you always require so much repetition? I can speak slower, if that would help.”
“A clan master. A blood baron. Head honcho of the nighttime nom-nom. Just hanging out in an alley in Detroit. Alone. Talking to me.”
She steps into the moonlight. “I am Dominique Antoinette de Salomé-Lafosse, Windsor master and Queen of the Damned.”
She’s tall and gorgeous in that severe, intimidating way that would make other women instantly despise her. The angles of her cheekbones and jaw are like the cut of a diamond, glinting in the moonlight. I don’t know anything about high fashion, but her slacks and blouse have to be expensive to drape so perfectly. She somehow looks both gothic and modern at the same time.
