Gypsy Moon (All The Pretty Monsters #4)(42)

Isiah makes a whimper of a noise, but he silences when Arion cuts his stoic gaze toward him.

“Execution failed marvelously,” Emily adds as her jaw wobbles.

“Because he’s overreaching, the stupid prick,” Damien growls.

“The unregistered vampires grew wary, and most scattered too soon. Then, too few were sent for her extermination, it seems. She’s still a Portocale, even without their blood, so she’s still cursed and still trained,” Emily hurries to add, wincing like she’s still fighting the command.

To that, Damien, Arion, and I all three snort in unison.

“With all of you under, the seconds would step up, and—”

“And the Portocale Council may have been strong enough to call shots they have no business calling,” I cut in.

My schedule just got unbearably more daunting. Now I have to deal with a fucking powerful alpha Portocale on top of everything else.

I’d rather deal with Arion’s sociopathic nest; that’s how much I hate dealing with a Portocale.

Aside from Violet, of course. I’d love to be dealing with her right now, but seeing Emily in pain is somewhat a consolation prize.

“With her dead, you’d all go under one-by-one, and while you were at your weakest, you’d be placed into three Van Helsing coffins to join Arion in his plot. Only a Portocale would have been able to raise you. It was ambitious, but he didn’t care if he won or not. He proved none of you have the control you claim to have, and he’s plotting. The plotting is where the specifics run dry.”

The bleeding stops, and her eyes slowly fill back in, as Arion releases her and faces us.

“So when do we deal with Edmond?” he asks me directly.

“Adding Idun onto this situation is the worst possible thing we could do right now,” Damien says, ignoring Arion’s readied battle stance.

“Idun won’t be an issue,” Arion says, as unsurprisingly dismissive of her threat as always.

“We don’t deal with Edmond at all,” I say, causing some metaphorical steam to roll out of Arion’s ears.

“Not your call,” Arion bites out.

“Fine. Go charge into the Portocale camp and make them bleed, Arion,” I tell him as I glance at my phone, finding an alarming amount of voicemails that have piled up while it was off. “Or wait, like I intend to do, to find out what a Portocale does when they’re wronged by a Portocale,” I state vaguely, lips twitching as I glance over at Damien and Arion.

A sinister sense of humor creases Damien’s features.

Arion seems to be thinking it over, running it through his head, when I hear Shera’s car pull up near the rear entrance.

“Not a word,” Arion says to Emily and Isiah, as Damien masks them from sight with barely any effort.

Has he been feeding off someone else? He seems to be running on a lot of charge, even after the latest battle with the wolves.

The clicking of high heels follows Shera’s scent as she walks in, and those clicking heels just click louder as she walks toward us with alarmingly wide eyes.

“Don’t say we have a problem,” Arion tells her, already reading her too easily.

“I’m afraid you’ll want to know about this problem, and I couldn’t reach any of you by phone. It’d be nice if you would just put them on vibrate instead of turning them off when you want privacy,” she rambles.

Shera only ever rambles when it’s really bad.

“Emily, take Isiah and check into a hotel room. You’ll find the rest of the home empty for the day,” Arion states almost conversationally.

I hear Isiah’s relief, and Damien rolls his eyes as he drops the pointless illusion.

Shera immediately starts walking toward the stairs. “I’ll be in the media room,” she calls over her shoulder like she doesn’t want to see Isiah’s pain, and at the same time feels like he probably deserves it.

Fucking vampires.

Emily doesn’t delay. She has the pencils out of Isiah’s hands in the next blink, and they’re out of the home in less than two, taking the opening while it’s there.

“Did they overhear too much about Violet?” Arion asks me.

“Things were too vague and too impossible to piece together. It’s one of those things you need definitive clarity on in order to really believe. Or you need to see something—the way Shera has—to consider that path,” Damien answers almost absently, speaking before I can.

I hurry up the steps, moving into the media room, as Shera sets up the monitor like we’re in for a slideshow, her hands shaking the entire time. Arion cuts off the speakers that are blaring music, a trick used for privacy in alpha homes when not all conversations need to be overheard.

Music is more accessible and can be turned up louder than ever in this era.

Damien and Arion walk in next, and Shera clears her throat as she presses play on the screen.

“What is this?” Arion asks as the dark image goes a little fuzzy.

“This is the sort of quality you get from drones that aren’t regularly updated and maintained. The technology for them is rather new, so it’s full of kinks and software that has to be—”

“You’re insulting my drones. How did you get footage from my drones?” I interrupt, gesturing at…I’m not really sure what it is I’m looking at besides a flat surface.