Cold Hard Secret (Secret McQueen) (10 page)

And here I was, a pawn for him to use as he pleased.

If he wanted to chain me, he would do it.

I drew my sword.

“You’re going to have to take me down first.”

Chapter Thirteen

In the low light from the candles above, my sword didn’t gleam so much as it glowed a dark hellish red color. The handle felt warm in my hands although I hadn’t touched it in over an hour.

Peyton laughed again, and I didn’t like how dismissive he was being.

“I want to talk about you while we have all these people here. I want to talk about what a strange girl you are. Put away your toy. We’re only talking right now.”

I lowered the blade but didn’t sheathe it. My gaze darted side to side, trying to come up with any way I might be able to get up on even ground with him. But that would mean leaving Desmond behind.

I doubted they’d dropped him in here—he wouldn’t have withstood the fall in his wolf form since he’d have landed on his back or broken all four legs. Wolves, while quick and cunning, were not cats, and did not tend to land nimbly on their feet. Maybe there was a gate or door down here we could get out through. Unless he’d been human when they dropped him and the change had come after.

I looked down at the wolf for a split second, wishing he could tell me what had happened to him.

“I think it’s important there are others here to listen this time, Secret. Secret. What an apt name for you, don’t you think? I used to think it was a foolish thing, a stupid name.”

I
often
thought it was a stupid name.

He carried on when I didn’t reply. “But therein lies beauty, doesn’t it? People will not look much further into a name like that. I remember what you told your mother, that it came from her own letter.
Keep her secret.
The time is over for keeping secrets, though.”

What the fuck was he talking about?

“It’s a shame Sig isn’t here now to get you out of this. Isn’t the big bad Tribunal leader always saving you when you’re at risk of being exposed?”

A chill crept into my body and refused to leave, making me shiver uncontrollably, shaking so hard I didn’t know if I could keep holding the sword, let alone use it when I needed to.

I had an unsettling feeling I knew
exactly
what he was talking about.

“Secret McQueen, the only Tribunal leader in history who wasn’t a full vampire.” The smile came through in his voice, and though I couldn’t see his face, I knew he was grinning like a maniac. “How does that work?”

“I’m half-vampire,” I whispered, but the acoustics of the tunnel amplified my voice as it rose upwards.

“What’s the other half?”

My palms were sweaty, and I took a moment to wipe them both off and held the sword up again, wanting nothing more than to hack him to pieces. But he was out of my reach. Desmond sensed my building rage and growled in response, rubbing his giant head against me as if it might soothe me.

“Human,” I said, not sure why I was still bothering to lie. Peyton knew—he knew what I was because he’d sent The Doctor for me. He knew because he’d worked with my mother. I had spent almost twenty-four years able to keep this secret limited to a handful of people, and now a roomful of vampire rogues was about to learn the truth.

This wasn’t the coming-out party I had planned.

“Now, now, let’s not lie to each other. What’s the other half? It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to do the math. Those in this room may not be geniuses, but they’re smart enough to figure it out now, I think. What kind of vampire can make a werewolf kneel before her? What kind of vampire has a werewolf mother? What kind of vampire is wed to a werewolf king? Honestly, Secret, did you expect to hide it forever when you paraded the clues around like that?
What’s the other half?
Say it. I think you’ll find it quite liberating.”

He was right. The lie was pointless now. “Werewolf,” I grumbled.

“Speak up, dear, the back row didn’t quite hear you.”

I gripped the handle of the sword tighter, feeling the dragon inlay dig into my skin. I would rip him apart. Beheading was too kind.

“Werewolf,” I repeated.

“Yes.
Werewolf.
” More vamps joined him on the edge of the pit to gawk at me, like I would appear different somehow now that they knew the truth.

What did a half-vampire/half-werewolf look like?

She looked like a pissed-off blonde stuck in a hole with a dog and a sword. What were they expecting? Fangs and a tail? Fine, they wanted fangs, I could give them fangs. I was angry enough.

Feed,
I thought, and the fangs sprang forth with no effort. I bared them at the crowd above and took a few steps back.

“I’m going to kill you,” I snarled.

“Your threats are meaningless to me now. You should have used your sword against me when you had the chance. But that’s the problem with you, isn’t it? You think too far in advance. You didn’t kill me earlier, and for what? Because you were afraid of what would happen to your pet dog? Now you’ll both die, and I’ll go on living. All because you made a coward’s choice.”

Aw, hell no. I wasn’t dying in some pit.

And I sure as hell wasn’t going to die at the hands of Alexandre Peyton. I hadn’t survived all the bullshit I’d been through already to go out like this. I’d made it through The Doctor—barely—and I wasn’t going to let a sadist with a baby face be the last thing I saw before I died.

Fuck that.

Some of the old me had sparked to life, and I was grateful to know she was still there. The woman who didn’t cower at nightmares, the woman who wasn’t a ghost haunting the hallways of her own life. The old Secret was precisely who I needed to be right then, and I’d previously given up hope of ever being her again.

Apparently all it took was the threat of death to bring about tiny miracles.

I still wasn’t sure how to get out of the pit, but I knew once I did I’d make that little prick regret everything he’d ever done to me.

“Hey, Peyton?”

“Hmm?”

“When I get out of here, I’m going to take your other tooth.”

He faltered a moment, showing uncertainty for the first time, then he steeled himself and said, “Before you die I will have the dog skinned in front of your eyes.”

Desmond snarled, mirroring my bared fangs by showing his own to the vampire. Undead or not, I didn’t think Peyton would want to spend time with werewolf Desmond one-on-one. I’d normally put my money on a vampire in that matchup, but I wasn’t sure I’d count Des out.

And then I saw it.

I’d been so busy looking for outcroppings of rock to use as a handhold, I hadn’t scoured the walls for anything else. But about three feet under Peyton was a slim hole in the stone. It wasn’t big enough to get fingers into, so I might have overlooked it on my first pass, but it was certainly capable of having a blade stuck into it.

I didn’t know how deep it went, or if it would give me enough leverage, but I was going to find out.

It meant leaving Desmond behind, but I had to believe he was capable of taking care of himself against a few vampire guards, if worst came to worst. Ideally they’d be focused on me, and he wouldn’t be a priority.

I wiped my hands again, wanting to be sure I wouldn’t slip. I’d only have one shot at this, and if the hole was deep enough to get the blade into, I didn’t want to fall. I’d have to act fast, and there’d be no time for second-guessing or mistakes.

Smiling to myself, not caring whether he saw it or not, I hurled my body against the opposite wall. The slippery stone didn’t give me much purchase, but I simply needed a kick-off point. I angled the sword as I pushed towards the wall beneath Peyton, and my focus was all on the small gap between the stones. I jammed the sword into the space, and blessedly it stuck in almost a foot.

I held tight to the handle, knowing I’d need to have the sword in hand when I reached solid ground. I mirrored the move I’d just made, reminded of jumping window to window in the Paris alley only the night before. That had been much easier with the jutting ledges and no wet stone, but the mechanics were the same.

Bracing my feet on either side of the sword, I pushed the blade deeper as I got my bearings. Ideally I’d have been able to jump right up to Peyton, who was now scrambling to his feet. But if I jumped up, I couldn’t take the weapon with me. I pushed off again, upward, and yanked the sword from the wall as I went.

I hit the edge of the pit, and a few of Peyton’s crew shuffled backwards, clearly not expecting me to have managed an escape. I clambered out before they had a chance to get their wits about them, and shook my mussed curls out of my face.

“I think it’s high time I got to take that promised stab at you,” I hissed.

Peyton took a long look at me, his lips curled into an angry snarl that exposed his one remaining fang. The fang I
would
take with me when I left this godforsaken place.

His glanced around the room to where his crew was waiting, nervously anticipating his orders.

And then he ran.

Chapter Fourteen

“Oh
hell
no.” Not five minutes earlier the guy had been accusing me of failing because of my cowardice, and now he was running away? There was no way I was going to let Alexandre Peyton get out of here by fleeing the fucking scene.

His gang got wise to his plan then, and as a unit they surged towards me until I was at the edge of the pit, on the precipice of tumbling back in. I was
not
going down there again. Not until this was over, and only then to reclaim my boyfriend. I was surrounded on three sides by vampires, and at my back was a giant hole.

Get your shit together, Secret.

One of the vampires lunged for me, and I sidestepped in time, sending him reeling downwards into the pit. For a brief moment I feared what he might do to Desmond, until I heard a pitiful scream, followed by the sound of flesh being shredded.

Some of the other vampires heard it too because they stepped backwards as a group, not wanting to be the next victim to plummet into the waiting teeth of the monster below.

“Get out of my way and you don’t have to die.”

One of them, a woman barely bigger than me, laughed out loud at this. “You’re outnumbered and outmatched, and you still think you can threaten your way out of this?” Her voice was rich with a French accent that would have made her sound charming in any other situation. Now it made me want to pummel her even more.

“Wasn’t the pit supposed to hold me? Wasn’t the wolf supposed to kill me? Your so-called leader ran for the hills when I got out. He knows something you guys don’t.”

“What’s that?” she sneered dismissively, taking a step closer.

My sword cut through the air, shining boldly. When my hand stilled, a single drop of blood fell to the floor at my feet. The whole circle went still, and the woman blinked at me.

“I’m a lot scarier than I look.”

Her lips parted, and a stream of blood issued forth. Then the two halves of her body fell apart in opposite directions, slapping against the floor and onto the shoes of several of the nearest vampires. There were still two dozen of them. The odds shouldn’t favor me, but now their attention was on the slabs of meat that had once stood among their ranks.

In the past, I’d have considered leaving them alive. I’d have tried to find a way to let them go or to bring them to their council for proper justice. But that time of my life had passed. These people had willingly helped my enemy. They’d watched with gleeful detachment as he’d dropped me into a pit with an angry wolf, and they’d waited for the blood to flow.

The blood was going to flow now, but it wouldn’t be mine.

I raised the sword again and looked around the circle, pointing to each of them in turn. “Eeny, meeny, miny, moe.”

At least a half dozen followed Peyton’s lead and bolted, one slipping in the mess of blood and gore on the floor.

“Who’s next?”

“I am.” A vamp who hadn’t been part of the crowd rose from the seating behind them and stepped through the group. He was a behemoth, pushing seven feet tall.

I think I was supposed to be intimidated by his size.

A few of the remaining vampires chuckled and sneered, stepping back to give him room. Clearly
they
thought I should be scared.

If I had a quarter for every giant vampire or monster I’d dispatched, I’d be at least a dollar richer. And I’d use that dollar to bet on me. The odds clearly weren’t in my favor.

I’d probably walk away with a nice investment on my return.

Again the handle of the sword felt hot to the touch. I could practically feel it humming under my palms.

It had tasted blood, and it wanted more.

“I think you’ll do nicely to satisfy the blade,” I said to him.

The vamp looked momentarily confused, as did the group around him. Were they expecting me to shit my pants and dive back into the hole for protection? These guys were slow on the uptake.

After pointing the sword towards his feet, I traced the air on the way up. “If I had my guns, I’d go for the knees first. The bigger they are the harder they fall, and all that. Then…” I lifted the sword so it was in his eye line, “…I’d blow your head off.”