Page 14 of Vampires & Bikers

I reported on the last couple of days and he was in a strange, meditative mood, listening to me without interruption. He appeared tired and distracted and not that worried about the increased shifter activity.

He said, “The shifters have launched several attacks in Yel-al. We have defeated them, but I suspect these were to distract us. I have heard about this Snake. I’d like more information…”

Before I could speak, there was a knock on the door and Harris rushed in.

“YourHighness!” He looked flustered. He barely seemed to register that I was in the room. “Two of our plants in theHarrati sea have been bombed and destroyed! The men working there were killed. Survivors say bombs were dropped from the air. Gas reserves have been damaged, we are gathering estimates.”

“From the air? They have planes?”

Harris shook his head. I had never seen him look so upset before. “Nothing has been confirmed. Shifters have never had access to this kind of technology before. We need more information!”

“My team is on it,” I said.

Vlas looked at me. “We need to close the cities, tighten access and control air space.”

I nodded. “I will convene a war room, alert the council.”

Vlas came closer. “Look into the Harrati business, Luc. It’s important.” His face had an unhealthy pallor but I had no time for this.

I rushed off to organize an emergency meeting of the most influential advisors and counselors. It appeared that we were about to go to war and needed a coordinated response.

This would require all the families to send fighters and resources.

I informed the head of our forces, Captain Curranos, to ready all troops and call on our reserves. When I asked him what our capacity was, I was shocked to hear only a few thousand. We needed more vampires.

We couldn’t simply seize humans and turn them, and they were too volatile anyway when young and we needed experienced soldiers.

I keenly felt the loss of Matteo. He would have known what to do and how to approach this situation. I felt certain that Sunny the Snake was behind Matteo’s murder. He must have discovered their plan to gain power somehow. All of this happened while I was away, stuck on Ice Island, trying to resolve a dispute between warring families.

I called Tick. “I need more information about those tunnels, urgently. We need to destroy them.”

My phone pinged.

But it wasn’t a message from Ruby.

I had sent more messages during the day, but none of them had been read.

I didn’t like that.

Why wasn’t she reading her messages? I thought of her face when she had mentioned this, Danny, character. She didn’t like him, and she was afraid of him. She didn’t want him to find us.

Perhaps I needed to pay him a visit.

Chapter 7

Ruby

The fight I have with Danny is a turning point for me.

He comes back from Sunside Swamp in a foul mood because they didn’t find Luc. He comes into the house ranting and raving, wanting to know if I knew where Grace was and when I say I don’t, he accuses me of lying. He grabs my phone, wanting to check my messages and when I take it from him, he throws it against the wall, breaking it.

“Why did you do that?” I ask him, furious.

“You’re lying to me!” He screams at me and starts throwing chairs around. When I try to stop him, he shoves me out of the way and that’s when I’ve had enough.

“Get out!” I yell at him, “and don’t come back!”

His eyes widen but I start pushing him out the door, locking it before he can come back in.

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