“You can hold out your hand and I shall put this on you in a very simple process, or you can resist and I shall use force to make this happen. Is this truly the time to make your stand?”
When put like that, no, it wasn’t. Larissa held out her hand, fingers spread wide to let him put on the damn ring.
Without touching her he slid it over her forefinger. Only when darkness hit her vision did Larissa realize she had closed her eyes against whatever this ring was supposed to do to her. She opened them and saw a plain silver band resting on her finger, comfortable and quiet and so innocuous a vampire should not have it in his possession.
But while the ring looked innocuous, the smile on the vampire’s face was anything but. His sick joy radiated out from him, and a shower would be nowhere enough to make her feel clean again.
She ripped the ring off her finger and threw it at him. “There. Whatever you needed to know, you know.”
“Yes, I do, Miss Miller. You are perfect for what we need.”
“Shove it, I’m not helping you. I know what you are trying to do, and I will not take part in that.”
The vampire sneered at her. “You think not, a pitiable excuse for a human like you?” He laughed, contempt in the sound. “You amuse me. You espouse such grandiose statements, but at the first pressure you’ll break. All your kind do.”
“Go fuck yourself. No matter what you do to me, I’m not helping you.” Brave words, but the more he spoke, the smaller she collapsed inside. Gods, she wasn’t a warrior. How was she going to stay strong?
The vampire smirked at her. “You think we’ll hurt you? You are mistaken. We would not touch you. We need you. This one, though,” and he grabbed Taneasha by the hair, making her cry out as he dragged her beside him. “We do not need her.”
There was no sly creature here. Now all that was before her was a scared girl who had tried to break away from her family in the stupidest way possible, and was now confronted with the price.
Taneasha held out her hand toward Larissa. “Miss Miller!”
“Get away from her!”
The vampire regarded her coldly. “If you do not do as I say, I will skin this girl alive before your eyes. And if that does not make you change your mind, I will capture another of your students and do the same thing tomorrow. And the day after. And the day after. And I will continue until you agree to help.”
Taneasha was screaming, spittle dripping down her mouth. Cold sweat broke out over Larissa’s skin as nausea threatened with every breath she took. “I’ll do it. Please don’t hurt her.”
“That easy?” He threw Taneasha into the arms of a waiting male. “And here I thought you weren’t going to help us. So you’ll sacrifice the entire realm for a few pathetic brats. Or maybe you’ll sacrifice the realm to appease your own conscience, so instead of feeling like a murderer, you can cry and wail about how you were tricked.” The vampire smirked. “Pathetic.”
To the men, he said, “Get ready.”
Chapter Thirty-Three
‡
Wulver strode down the corridor to the meeting room, stopping inside the doorframe as Fallon’s raised voice filtered into the corridor. “Next time I see the Oracle I’m going to take one of those spiky shoes she likes to wear and nail her in the throat!”
Fallon and Aislynn were both present. Aislynn noticed him first, shaking her head as well as a small shrug to her shoulders, a What can you do? move. For her part, Fallon was standing in the middle of the room, hands on her hips and posture as aggressive and aggrieved as it got outside of a battlefield, that sword of hers looking as if it was practically vibrating on her back. He might need to order her to the sparring rooms tonight. Maybe Rorth would be brave enough to partner her.
Wulver leaned against the door. Might as well get comfy while dealing with the seething swordswoman. “Kyo’s not too happy with the circumstances, either.”
Fallon’s gold eyes were hard behind narrowed eyelids, her mouth a compressed line so tight there was no delineation between lip and jaw. “Then he should have had the balls to deny the Oracle. Larissa Miller was here. We had her safe, we could have figured everything out, and instead we had to play games.”
In her naiveté, in her constant fight against the powers surrounding them, this was where Fallon’s weakness lay. While Wulver had a few moments when he envied her fight, times like this weren’t among them. “When don’t we play games? When aren’t we at the whims of this god or that force? You talk like this is a rare occurrence.”
A muscle ticked at where her jawline met her throat, but she didn’t answer. Aislynn jumped in, no doubt to calm the negative energy vibrating in the room. “What are we going to do about Larissa Miller now?”