Page 61 of Furever Loyal
“Yes. I see him. Is he a vampire?”
“What? No. They’re extinct. Don’t be silly. No, that man is Krawll!” Kincaid crowed quietly. “I knew he had to be linked to it.”
“Oh. So what does that prove?”
“Uh, nothing. Yet. But he’s linked to it, you bet your ass.”
Together, they watched as Krawll looked around before entering the Family Restaurant. It was certainly a sign there was something going on, but it didn’t give them any actual information.
“I think we need to go in there,” Haley said heavily. “We’re not going to get anything useful here.”
“I know.” Kincaid rubbed at his chin. “I want to give him time though.”
“Time for what?”
“I don’t expect he’s going in for food. So I want him to go meet whoever it is he’s meeting. Then we’ll go in, find him and whoever, and unravel the next piece of this mystery.”
They sat back.
“So…vampires?” she asked.
“Yes. Vampires controlled Rome. They were powerful, evil, sadistic creatures. We wiped them out, then got into a fight with the human mages. That lasted until about a hundred years ago, when we finally got the upper hand and wiped out their strongest mages in a huge battle in Alaska in the early 1900s.”
“You sound like you were there,” she commented, interested in the way he spoke of it.
“No, but my father was. He died in the eruption.”
Haley blinked. “The what?”
“The Novarupta volcanic explosion. Not a natural thing. The mages caused it in an attempt to wipe out our forces.”
“You mean the Ursa?” She struggled over the uncertain term.
Kincaid shrugged. “We often use Ursidae to mean plural, though either one works to be honest. And no, this was a joint effort. All the great houses and the minor ones came together. Ursa. Canis. Drakos. Raptere. Panthera. We all took them on, after centuries of warfare.”
“Holy shit. Does Drakos mean what I think it does?” she asked, wondering what the two others were as well.
“If you think it means dragon, then yes.”
She was still watching the restaurant while her brain tried to wrestle with all these implications. Another black car approached. This one was a limousine, but also looked heavy and protected.
“Who the hell is this?” she asked as another tall man got out. He was somewhat slender compared to Kincaid or Krawll, but still powerful-looking. Just not as bulky.
“That,” Kincaid said, sounding victorious. “Is Laurent Canis himself! I knew those two had to be in league with one another. No way. I can’t believe our luck!”
Haley was watching another person emerge from the limo, however, a person that brought back a lot of memories.
“Now we can hopefully figure out what the hell is going on.”
She swallowed. “I might be able to help with that,” she said a little hoarsely.
“What? What do you mean?”
Kincaid turned to look at her, but she just pointed at the woman standing at Laurent’s side.
“See that woman?”
“Yes. That’s his mate. Melanie Canis.”
