Chapter Thirteen

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I cringed internally when the two men looked my way.

"Augustus. Fancy seeing you here."

Fuck. Why would he have left his coterie and moved here?

The vampire didn't look much changed in the three years since I had last seen him. His blue-black hair was pulled into a neat pony tail at his nape. He was wearing a bastardized version of the clothes he would have worn as a human. A high collared shirt and short black cape as was tradition in the fifteen hundreds, but his pants were a more modern suit pant along with which he pared shiny black dress shoes. He looked down his long aristocratic nose at me, and I met his dark eyes calmly.

"Indeed. It seems you require an audience with my Queen?"

I knew the two men were reassessing the whole night. They would assume I had lied about my knowledge of the Stygian Queen and her scions since I knew one of her subjects. That bitch was smart. We had been here all of twenty minutes and she was already well on her way to eroding the tentative trust we were building as a team.

"We do, if she will see us. How are you doing? Was your King not treating you well enough?"

Read between the lines guys.

"The night is young we will have plenty of time to discuss my former keeper and catch up, Delany," Augustus replied. Annoyed by my subtle hint to the men that the games had already begun. "If you would follow me, I think my Queen will be pleased to grant you an audience."

We followed the vampire back behind the house and onto a well-worn footpath. I fought not to look at the men on either side of me, but crossed my fingers that they would stick to the plan no matter what else the Stygian Queen would throw at us. I was nervous with Augustus here. He had information about me that she would not have previously possessed.

The dirt path cut through the forgotten neighborhood in a line leading straight to the vampire queen's home. I made mental note of our surroundings in case this meeting went poorly and we had to make a quick exit.

Castiel began trying to make polite small talk with the vampire in front of us. "It is nice to meet you, Augustus. My name is Castiel and this is Maverick."

The vampire sniffed and ignored the nephilim.

"Delany, you are looking well, and you smell delicious as ever. I am so glad you came to visit tonight. It has been ages since we last...spoke."

Another tactic. Ignore the men, make it seem like he and I had a close personal history. If the dig landed then right now the two men would be wondering wether or not we had been lovers, if I had been a blood whore. Fuuuuuuuuuck. We weren't ready for this.

"You seem in good spirits, Augustus. Especially since the last time I saw you were covered in blood. Tell me, how long did it take the finger to grow back?" I bared my teeth at him in some semblance of a smile. He flexed his hand subtly at the reminder.

My counter strike. Listen closely boys, our shared history isn't one of friends. I had to be so careful. I couldn't come right out and tell the men I didn't know he would be here, that he and I were in no way friends, or the Stygian Queen would learn that our alliance was new and untested. And that would be dangerous.

Augustus said nothing more. Having done his job to sow the seeds of discontent and suspicion he led us quietly up to the massive black mansion that I could only assume belonged to the Queen herself.

The windows on the front of the massive colonial were all dark. The once white columns along with the red brick exterior had both been painted an unforgiving black. She must have a real flair for the dramatic.

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