A different voice over the line began to speak, one that Arthur didn’t recognize. It was a male, who spoke with a sort of smooth confidence you only ever hear every once in a while, usually in the form of the rich and famous. There was a tenor to his voice that exuded power in the same way that Bartolome’s voice did. Although, Arthur thought, there was a minor difference. Bartolome always represented an old world, old money kind of power to Arthur. He had been through it all, seen it all, and survived it all, or at least that’s how he came across. This new voice was different. It was modern, but restrained. This man sounded like he had started low, built himself up and come out bloodied on the other side of the fight, but successful. He spoke like Persephone, Arthur realized. Or rather, Persephone spoke like he did.

  Arthur felt a mix of emotions at hearing Bartolome’s voice again now, and looked up at Persephone. But she had turned in her chair, and was looking out the window over the city as the phone conversation carried on. It seemed like a foolish thing to do, turn her back on him right now. But, the phone conversation was more interesting than Arthur trying to get revenge right now. She probably knew that.

  “Everything happened as planned,” the new voice repeated, not so much in a questioning way, but more as a statement.

  “To a degree. The methods of which things were accomplished weren’t exactly…forthright. But, the one who has been at the center of all these problems is dead. And a few Ferals along with him. Your city is better off without them.”

  “And yet,” the other voice replied coolly, “It seems as though things have only gotten more complicated, and now the police are involved. That doesn’t seem fair.”

  Bartolome replied without missing a beat. “Fairness is a subjective virtue. You might be missing more people, but your position within Longley has stabilized. Furthermore, my own people can now work with you harmoniously, instead of skulking around each other all the time.”

  There was silence on the line. The tension was thick, even though Arthur wasn’t actually a part of this conversation, just an observer. Eventually, the unfamiliar voice spoke again.

  “My position within Longley…interesting. Furthermore, you seem to be implying that your…what are they called? Soldados? Will be staying around for longer. Despite the fact they no longer have a purpose here.”

  Bartolome made a sort of unconcerned noise over the phone. It was strange to hear him talking in such a way. Like he was talking to an equal, or at least someone he respected. “I need not remind you we are allies. Their presence in your city is no longer a formal one, unless you want to make some sort of declaration of which of our kind are and aren’t allowed in Longley.”

  “Hm. I’m simply wondering how you expect me to believe this was any less than an attempted coup. How you would expect them to believe it.”

  “It is not my place to judge your belief,” Bartolome replied, almost smugly. “If you wish to make a mountain out of this, so be it. Just remember, I have been around for much longer than you have, and so often do they take one’s word over anything else.”

  “So it seems,” the voice said. It had remained remarkably calm throughout this whole discussion, while Bartolome seemed to almost be gloating about getting away with this. The line went silent for a few more seconds, and despite what Persephone had told him, Arthur couldn’t just sit here and let this happen. Not that he really knew what was happening in the first place.

  “Wait!” Arthur said into the phone.

  There was no response. Persephone scoffed, turning in her chair. “You really think I’d leave our line on? Be quiet, and listen.”

  Arthur made a face, but nodded.

  “For now,” Bartolome eventually continued, “We must be friendly with each other. And why shouldn’t we be? We are both beholden to the same people. Just in different ways. Although it may not always seem it, our interests are aligned.”

  “For now,” the voice replied. The sound of a phone hanging up followed, and the buzz of dead air filled the room. Persephone sat still, not bothering to go to hang up the phone. She was looking at it, waiting. Arthur could hear some sort of clicking over the line still, and a few seconds later the unknown voice spoke again.

  “What do you think?”

  Persephone leaned forward, pointing a finger at Arthur threateningly to be quiet, and pressed a button on the receiver. She left it on speaker phone, then talked into it.

  “Well, at first I thought Bartolome was a gigantic fool. Then I started thinking he’s not. But he thinks you’re a gigantic fool. But, then I thought, it sort of seems like he’s just trying to buy time.”

  “Hm.” The voice made no indication it thought the same, or different. “What does our guest think?”

  Persephone looked up, nodding at Arthur.

  “Hello, whoever you are.” Persephone rolled her eyes, making a hand motion to get on with it. “I think she’s probably right. I never got the impression Bartolome was stupid, and he doesn’t seem like one to underestimate people. Or overestimate them.”

  “I see. Would a man like that approve of what happened the other night?”

  Arthur thought about it for a moment. “It does seem strange. Everything that happened that night was…a shitshow. We didn’t have the right numbers for the job, and didn’t know how many men you all had.” Arthur hesitated for a moment. He realized he was getting ready to spill information to what he perceived as the enemy. To Persephone, who as far as he was aware had been trying to kill him for the past year. But, strangely, he wasn’t getting that impression from them at all. “It all happened very, I don’t know, rushed. It was like as soon as we got the tiniest hint of a lead we ran after it guns blazing, thinking about it now.”

  “And,” the voice on the phone said, “It seems as though the only one who suffered as a result, was you.”

  “I…well, I died. I…” Arthur thought about what the voice on the phone was trying to imply. It was a familiar feeling, really. It felt like every single other time he’d talked to Saint, or Bartolome, about anything meaningful. It felt like he was being manipulated. “No. You’re wrong.”

  “He’s not wrong,” Persephone cut in bluntly. “It was a half-cocked attack that fell apart the moment you step foot on the premises. Like you just said, it was rushed, sloppy. You were a literal lamb to the slaughter. An offering. You want to know how I know?”

  Arthur shook his head, “It doesn’t matter, we planned for this. We’d been tracking you for over a year. A year! Saying a year of time was nothing is just…”.

  “Who is we?” Persephone cut him off.

  “Well, Saint and I.”

  Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road.

  Persephone gave him a look like she was disappointed in him. “You and Santiago. They put a human in charge of finding, hunting and killing another vampire?”

  “Well,” Arthur said sheepishly, “It does sound strange when you put it like that.”

  “You didn’t answer me, Arthur. You want to know how I know all that? It isn’t just educated guesses.”

  Arthur sat silently, sullenly. He felt like he was getting lectured to, but it was one of those lectures where he was completely in the wrong, so he had to just sit there and take it the best the could. His pride was wounded, and he had a feeling whatever Persephone was about to say was going to make him feel really stupid.

  “I know all that, because I’m the one who fed you the information.”

  Arthur slowly looked up at her, but she didn’t appear to be joking. He did in fact feel stupid, and immediately his pride flared again and he was about to tell her to prove it, but it seemed like always she was a step ahead.

  “The assassins at Syndrome? Ours. The chance meeting with Claudia? Not by chance. The idea that I wanted you dead? I told her that. And the lead you got about my location? That didn’t just fall out of the sky. In fact, what I am surprised about is how easy it is to trick Santiago. I mean seriously.”

  Arthur was staring at the floor. All he could think about was how stupid he’d been. He knew something felt wrong about this, even told Saint, but Saint didn’t listen. Idiot! Both him and Saint. It had all come together too quickly after a full year of silence.

  “Why did it take you so long? To do all that?”

  Persephone shrugged. “I wanted to go after them immediately. For…for what they did at your apartment, when you still worked for us.”

  The voice over the phone spoke now, for the first time in a while. “But, I cautioned her against it. We needed to see how much of a threat Bartolome really was. What he wants. Hence, one of the reasons we brought you here.”

  Arthur shook his head, “Come on, you want me to snitch? Seriously?”

  “No,” the voice said calmly. “We want you to make a decision. Let me make this clear. The reason we brought you here was to show you that we are willing to extend an alm of trust. Let you listen into that conversation just now. Show you that the people you were working for have been using you, from the start. That they don’t care. Persephone, tell him.”

  She looked at him. “Once the chaos broke out and those morons started spraying bullets all over the place, I saw what happened to you. One of Santiago’s men tackled that Feral and sent both you and him over the edge. And you know what he did afterwards? Not. A damn. Thing. He got right back into the fight.”

  Arthur was silent. He felt a kind of rage boiling in him, and wasn’t sure at this point who it was directed at. All he knew is what he knew from the beginning, when he had first met Saint and talked to him. They were vampires, he was a mortal. He was nothing more to them than a tool that could be discarded. His hands balled into fists as Persephone kept going.

  “And guess who found you? It certainly wasn’t them. Because after that, as you put it, little shit show, they ran. Turned tail and fled into the night. And when we were packing up to get out before the cops arrived, guess whose body I found broken, mangled, and dead outside. Regardless of what you think is happening right now, let me be clear. I didn’t kidnap you Arthur. I locked you up because I figured you might react poorly to us based on all the bullshit you’ve been fed, and I was right. But, like I said before. I’m the one who found you, took you before the fucking coroner could, and gave you a second chance.”

  Arthur was staring at his hands. Silence hung in the room for a while, and as Arthur looked up he realized Persephone was looking at him with…pity. The anger in him was throbbing, and he felt like he had to get it out somehow. Arthur felt like screaming, like smashing everything in the room, like taking the phone and throwing it out the window as hard as he could. But, something in him knew she was right.

  “But why?” Arthur said gritting his teeth. “Saint is my friend!”

  Persephone had to cover her mouth with her hand as she suppressed laughter. A moment later she put her other hand up, “Sorry, sorry. But you can’t really believe that. How many times did Santiago keep things from you? Only tell you just enough to keep stringing you along? How much did he reveal about what CargoLink actually, you know, does?”

  “I was just a contractor,” Arthur said meekly.

  “That’s right. Just a contractor. You worked for them, they paid you, and they kept you in the dark. If them leaving you for dead wasn’t enough proof, I don’t know what to tell you.”

  “Then why go through all the trouble of getting me to work for them? Letting me make up the plan to go after you? It’s ridiculous. None of it makes sense. Why not just kill me and be done with it. Why? Why did they just leave me…?” he said quietly. It was hard to express what he felt. Some kind of combination of confusion, anger, and sadness. They just left me.

  The room was silent. Arthur looked down at his open palm. His grey, lifeless palm. He turned it over. He could barely see the veins in his hands anymore. All of a sudden he felt very tired.

  “So why am I here?” Arthur asked.

  The voice over the line spoke this time. “Contrary to what you might have been lead to believe, we did not want you dead. In fact, Persephone knew from the beginning that you weren’t involved in Aiden’s death. But, what we did know, is that gunning him down in the middle of the street is against all of our laws. Bartolome does have a level of authority to hunt down and capture certain vampires. But unless they intend to fight back and kill, all of them are put through trial. Bartolome did not give Aiden that chance. He decided to execute him on the spot.”

  “Wait, wait. Aiden? Is that the man who they killed in front of my apartment?”

  “That’s him. They gunned him down like an animal.” Persephone was looking out the window again, Arthur noticed. The voice on the phone hardened, transitioning from a collected, coolness to pure ice. “More importantly, he did it on my turf, in my city. In my fucking city!” Silence while the voice gathered itself. No. Shit like that doesn’t fly here. In Longley, my word is law, and you respect the law or you get put six feet under.”

  A realization was slowly creeping over Arthur he listened to the voice. Persephone was still turned away from him, but he addressed her. “You didn’t kill the Claw…you are a Claw,” he said to her.

  She turned back around. “You’re half right. The hand we sent you to deliver to Bartolome was indeed a Claw, and that Claw was indeed their target. But we got to him first.”

  “Wait, what?” Arthur said, disbelief across his face. “Wait. Why?”

  She smiled a half-smile. “Because he needed to die. But we knew if Saint got to him first, he’d put the man through more pain than he deserved.”

  That didn’t explain much, but another thought caught Arthur’s attention before he could delve anymore into it. “Wait a minute. If you’re a Claw, then, you’re…” Arthur trailed off, looking towards the phone.

  “For now,” the phone said. You can just call me the Baron. It’s a pleasure,” the voice said, without a hint of pleasure. “Now, here’s the facts, Arthur. For one reason or another your ‘friends’ decided to leave you for dead. The why is irrelevant. The only thing that matters, is you got these short end of the stick for something you shouldn’t have been involved in from the start. I think Persephone and I can both agree employing you for as long as we did was foolish, and it put you in far too much danger, and put us at far too much risk.” The voice continued without waiting for her to reply, but Persephone was nodding.

  “As a result of this, debacle, is cops sniffing up every alley of Longley now wondering why there’s been two grisly massacres in the city. And although I have some favors owed from the good Captain, at the end of the day he still has to do his job. You of all people should know that things like this aren’t so easily swept under the police departments rug. Which means we have some damage control to do before we decide on our next course of action, regarding Bartolome and Santiago. So now you have the facts. And also, a choice. Persephone?”

  She looked at him. “Arthur, I want it to be clear that I’ve never held ill-will towards you,” Persephone said. “In fact, you did a lot of good work for us. I was only distant because I didn’t want to involve you any more than we had to, believe it or not. But, now you’ve become a third party getting strung along by dangerous, malicious people. Tonight, that can change. Although I’m the one that turned you, and you pretty much owe your life to me, we don’t operate like that. Your life is your own. But, you are capable, and have managed to survive for a long time under pretty severe circumstances. You’ve earned your right to a second life as far as I see it. Most humans wouldn’t have lasted more than a few weeks. So, if you want to get up and walk away, you can. The door is right there. Although, I suggest you might leave Longley if you do. You might be able to figure out how to survive under your new circumstances by yourself.”

  Arthur felt like she was going to follow up with something, but it seemed more like she and the Baron were waiting for him instead. But he needed to know more. “And if I choose to stay?”

  Persephone grinned, her sharp fangs flashing underneath her lips, “If you stay, then you work for us. Formally. Part of the team. Not a contractor or whatever bullshit Saint fed you. And then, I’ll teach you everything you need to know about being a vampire. How to survive. How to get stronger. How to win.”