A Vial of Life (A Shade of Vampire #21)(30)

“Hurry!” the wolf growled behind us.

I turned back to see that the wolf had let go of the mermaid—who now floated motionless in the water—and was dashing toward us. I was confused as to the wolf’s command to hurry, since it seemed that the mermaid was already dead. Then I looked beyond the corpse to see in the distance the ocean swelling. Teal-green tinged the water, a sea of scales shimmering in the moonlight beneath the ocean’s surface. Then over two dozen heads poked out of the waves—each sharing the same fearsome features as the mermaid I’d just tackled.

I let out a gasp and kicked harder. The wolf caught up with us. He—or was it a she?—allowed my mother to climb onto his back and carried her the rest of the way to the beach while I hurried after them.

Reaching land, my mother flopped off the werewolf and lay panting on her back on the sand, wheezing and rubbing her throat. I gazed back out toward the ocean to see the crowd of merfolk racing toward the shore.

I glanced at the werewolf, who also looked confused—as confused as a wolf could look.

Where have these merfolk come from? And how on earth did they all gain entrance to The Shade?

Chapter 9: Derek

Since we returned to The Shade, many people had inquired about our journey, so I called a meeting in the Great Dome. Sofia and I arrived in the council hall before the appointed time so that we would have a few minutes of peace before the bombardment of questions started.

As we entered the room and headed toward the raised platform designed for the king and queen to sit upon, I stopped short. The stately chairs Vivienne had designed for Sofia and me were missing. Our raised seats had been built more like thrones than regular chairs. They were large and heavy, and had been sealed into the floor. I moved closer to see that the chairs had been unceremoniously ripped from the stone.

I exchanged glances with Sofia. Her expression was marred with a frown.

“Who would do this?” she whispered.

Throughout all our time of ruling over the island, nothing like this had happened before. Heck, I didn’t think that a single chair in this room, even the movable ones surrounding the meeting table, had been taken out. Furniture in this room was to be kept as it was—specifically for the purposes of our council.

Unnerved, I swept my eyes around the room, as if expecting to find the culprit lurking in a shadowy corner. But the Dome was empty, and there were no signs of the chairs anywhere.

There was a knock at the door, which clicked open a second later. Xavier. He’d arrived here early, like us. Dying to find out what happened, he would’ve left Corrine with Vivienne.

He spotted Sofia’s and my missing seats almost immediately.

“Did you do that?” he asked, his face twisting in confusion.

Sofia and I shook our heads. “We just got here and found it like this,” Sofia murmured. “We’ve no idea what happened.”

I bent down on the platform, running my hand over the stumps where the legs of the chairs had been. The splinters of wood pricked my fingers, residue of where the chairs had been fixed.

Of course, missing chairs weren’t a big deal. They could easily be replaced. It was the intent of this action that left me ill at ease. If someone had just needed to borrow a couple of chairs, they could have easily taken them from around the table. Ripping these chairs from the floor would render them unusable—they would have been badly damaged in the process. No, whoever took them wasn’t interested in chairs. This was a direct affront to Sofia and me. Who would target us in this way? I couldn’t think of a single person on the island who would do such a thing. The Shade accommodated many residents, the population being far too great for me to know everyone on a personal level, but I liked to think that my people were happy under our rule, and loved and respected the king and queen.

Still shaken, I forced the thought aside and shifted my focus back to Xavier.

“We will need to launch an investigation into who did this,” I said, “but for now, I don’t want this to distract from our meeting. We already set an agenda and we should stick to it until all questions are answered.”

I pulled up one of the lower chairs from around the table and sat down at the same level as the council members. Sofia followed my lead. It wasn’t that I was power-hungry and required a special throne to lord it over all my subjects. And neither was Sofia. But when the two of us were leading a conversation, being on a raised platform allowed us to better communicate with a room full of people. We could see each person clearly as they talked, and it aided understanding. Besides, elevated seats were a sign of respect, and there was nothing wrong with that when the respect was genuine. I liked to believe that Sofia and I had done enough to command respect, rather than demand it.

Xavier started asking questions—questions he couldn’t ask us back in the Sanctuary because Corrine had forbidden talk of anything but Vivienne’s recovery. Even though Xavier knew that the reason I’d called this meeting was to recount everything in one go rather than having to repeat it multiple times to dozens of people, he apparently couldn’t help himself. He was too anxious to hear what had happened and why we had returned without Benjamin.

I gave in and started explaining, but I didn’t get far before the door opened again and about fifty people piled in, mostly curious vampires and witches—excluding Corrine but including Ibrahim—who had not accompanied us on the excursion. Surprisingly, there were also many present who had come with us. Neither Rose nor Caleb were among them—I assumed they had retired to bed—and the dragons were also notably absent, not that they attended many meetings anyway. They would’ve returned to their mountain apartments, no doubt eager to be reunited with their lovers.