Page 61 of Cruel Destinies

“You’ve been silent since you started your mission a week ago,” he replied. “I thought I’d visit you personally to discover your progress.”

“About finding your daughter?” I snorted. “You don’t think I’d contact you the minute I capture her?”

He chuckled, then snapped his fingers. “Oh, I know you would. But it would be difficult to catch Arya if you weren’t around the subway station when she emerged from her underwater home, wouldn’t it?”

I wondered at the vampire leader’s irony. Hadn’t I just been pulled away from my post to have this conversation? Still, alarms were going off in my mind. Hadrian suspected something. He was trying to catch me in my words.

“I haven’t seen Arya appear, and I’ve kept my eyes on those stairs nearly the entire time I’ve been back in Chicago.”

Raising a finger, Hadrian said, “‘Nearly’ being the keyword, right?”

I shrugged. “I’m a vampire. Even I must step away for a drink from time to time.”

“And how long does it take you to gain your fill of blood?” Hadrian questioned.

I was falling deeper into the vampire leader’s snares. To be honest, I’d been running particularly low on the stash of blood bags in my refrigerator. After Shea’s visit, I’d headed for the nearest blood bank to keep from taking her up on her offer. Resisting her was hard enough even with an ample supply of the next best thing.

The place had been busy, and my attempt to steal a box of blood bags had very nearly failed because of the amount of staff there. In the end, I’d been successful, but it had taken a lot longer to obtain my precious blood bags than I’d anticipated.

I tried not to let my increasing anxiety show. “I suppose that depends on how thirsty I am.”

Hadrian rose from the chair, keeping his untrusting eyes on me. “Let me change the question to something a little more direct, then. What were you doing on Saturday morning?”

I shifted my gaze to Piper, who was standing close to my unconscious neighbor, stuck in an awkward posture as she was forced to listen to the tense conversation.

Looking back at Hadrian, I said, “I was keeping watch over the subway station, just as you’ve asked.”

Hadrian sighed as he slipped a hand into his left pocket and withdrew a small tablet. “Julian, Julian, Julian. You should know me better than this.” The vampire leader handed me the device. “Go ahead and hit play whenever you’re ready.”

I looked down and saw thePlaybutton hovering over a still of the stairs leading down to the subway station, with me in the foreground on my favorite park bench.

“You’ve been watching me?” I asked, feeling a surge of fear and anger. Most of all, I felt stupid.

Of course, Hadrian would be keeping an eye on me. This task to kidnap his daughter was extremely important. He wouldn’tjust let things fall by the wayside. The question was, how? Maybe there’d been a drone or another piece of tech in the air—something I had completely missed. Or perhaps a hidden camera in a tree.

“I merely tapped into the city security camera system,” Hadrian informed, spinning a finger in the air. “Surely it doesn’t hurt to have multiple eyes on the subway station. You know, just in case one of us misses something.”

I hit thePlayicon with a mildly shaking finger, and the camera footage showed 11:55 a.m. as the recording time.

“As you can see,” Hadrian said, “you’re on the phone. After verifying with Piper, it is confirmed that you were not talking to her. Marguerite also verified that you weren’t speaking to her, either. And you were definitely not on the phone with me.”

Shea, I thought with a grimace. How well would that revelation go over with Hadrian?Yeah, I was on the phone with a witch who was eager to show me some of her magic...

I blurted out the first thing that came to my mind. “I was following up on a lead about a certain dragon shifter line.”

Hadrian’s eyes widened. “You’ve located the Draculs?”

I bobbed my head. “I have a source that has seen one known as Arthur here in the city.”

He rubbed at his permanent five o’clock shadow. “That’s fascinating. Especially when you see what happens after you leave the premises.”

Looking back at the screen, I saw myself quickly walking out of the camera frame. At the 1:01 pm marker, several people climbed the steps out of the subway station, including two teenage girls. One was clearly Arya. My heart plummeted.

Hadrian tapped the screen, pausing the video. “In case you couldn’t tell, one of those disembarking passengers is my daughter. The other one—according to Kendall Green—is the same phoenix shifter we fought against in the alleyway. Her name is Ashlyn Summers.”

Summers. The face of another phoenix with the same last name surfaced in my mind—Evandrus. It had been over a hundred years since I’d seen Evandrus Quinn. But back then, Camilla Skye—whom I loved like a sister—had begun a relationship with him. Could this Ashlyn have any relation to Evandrus?

“Don’t you find it at all coincidental,” he continued, tearing me from my thoughts, “that not long after you left your watch, my daughter appeared from the subway station?”

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