Vengeance (The Captive #6)(14)
She was almost back to the orphanage when the door opened and a head popped out. Tempest’s shoulders slouched; she forced herself to walk calmly when she spotted Pallas standing in the doorway. She was afraid she would be tackled into the snow by someone in white if she started running. Picking up her pace, she hurried through the snow to the open door of the orphanage.
“There you are,” she breathed.
She nudged Pallas back inside before embracing her friend. Pallas was five inches shorter than she was. She was also a lot more voluptuous with breasts so ample Tempest could barely get her arms around her. Pallas hugged her back before stepping away. Pallas’s thin brown hair hung in wispy strands around her pretty, oval-shaped face.
“Where were you?” Pallas demanded.
“Looking for you, and trying to figure out what is going on.” Tempest shrugged out of her cloak as Abbott and the other children appeared in the doorway. “Why don’t you take the younger children upstairs, Nora,” she suggested.
Nora’s blue eyes darted around before she gave a brief nod and gestured for the younger boys and Agnes to go upstairs. Tempest motioned toward the living room, glancing back to make sure the children were out of earshot before following Pallas and Abbott inside. Far larger than her home, the living room of the orphanage had two couches, a love seat, and a large coffee table in the center of the room.
A piano, tucked into the corner, had remained untouched since she’d been a little girl. The one child who had known how to play it had aged out and moved on from the town years ago. She had no idea who the vampires were in the portraits lining the walls; they’d been here decades before she had.
To the left of the living room was the dining room with a table that could seat twenty vampires around it. She’d spent a fair number of nights sitting at the table, hoping to be fed, but going to bed hungry. More recently, she’d often sat at the table to play games and laugh with the children. Over the past year and a half, she’d started to believe these children would never have to experience hunger again, but now she suspected she’d been wrong.
Closing the sliding doors separating the living room from the hall, she pressed an ear to them before being satisfied the children weren’t creeping down the stairs to listen to their conversation. She turned to Abbott and Pallas and hurried to join them near the front windows.
“Do you know what is going on?” she asked Pallas.
Pallas tucked a stray wisp of hair behind her ear. “No. They knocked on our door last night and told me I had to house two of them.”
Tempest glanced at the window as a half-dozen horses trotted by, heading toward the hotel at the end of the road. “We have three staying here,” she murmured, watching as the riders dismounted and hurried inside. “They said it was on the queen’s orders.”
“That’s what they told me too, but it can’t be true.”
Pallas’s words caught her attention. “Why not?” she inquired.
Pallas stepped closer and cast her voice low. She wrung her hands nervously before her as she looked between the two of them and began to speak, “The queen was a human. I can’t see her treating humans so poorly. When I told them I worked at the blood bank, they took me there this morning to show them how things ran. All of the humans are locked within there. Some of them are hooked up to needles and containers like the ones used before the new king took power. Why would the queen bring that practice back now and turn it on the humans? She fought so relentlessly to free them from their oppression before becoming the vampire queen. She was a rebel and a blood slave herself, Tempest. None of it makes any sense to me.”
Tempest felt as if the world slowed as more horses pranced down the road. She’d heard those same things about the queen, but had all the rumors been wrong? She didn’t understand how that could be possible. Some of the stories were probably wrong, yes, but she couldn’t see all of them being wrong, and with the more compassionate treatment of humans recently, she knew they couldn’t be.
“Who is she then?” she pondered aloud.
“I don’t know, but she has a lot of followers,” Pallas replied.
Tempest studied the mountains looming over their town. “Someone has to get out of here, and get help,” she murmured.
CHAPTER 6
William spent the next two weeks moving from town to town in search of the man who had ended his life. Night was descending when he rode his horse into a small town nestled into a small cropping of mountains. In the distance, a larger mountain chain stretched high into the sky; he’d look there next if he found no hint of Kane within this town.
He tossed his reins to the stable boy who rushed up to greet him and gave him a small gold coin. “I’ll take real good care of him sir!” the boy gushed out.
“Hold on.” William dug into his money purse and pulled out another coin. “I need someone to send word back to the town of Chippman for me.”
He didn’t know if Aria and Braith were still there, but Jack would be able to get in touch with them if they weren’t. The boy’s eyes fixed on the coin. “My brother can sir.”
“Bring him to me.”
“I will.” The boy hurried away with Achilles. William stood in the doorway of the stable, staring out at the distant mountains. A shuffle of feet alerted him to the return of the two boys. The second one was an older vampire of maybe fourteen or fifteen. William handed the coin to the older boy. Both children stared at it with hungry eyes.