Page 89 of Love Lives
"That's no good. If we run now, they're just going to pick us off one by one." He glanced back at me. "Are you armed?"
Was I...? I reached into my jeans pocket, feeling for a stake that Collin had pushed on me earlier, while I was still busy trying to summon the ghost of a person who'd been dead for centuries. His paranoia had annoyed me then. Now I was glad that my little brother had a good head on his shoulders. "I have a stake."
"Not ideal, but it's something."
"We gotta wake everyone and get the artifacts." I pushed past Aldrich and knocked on every door on my way down to the living room. "Everyone up!" I called. "They've found us!"
The way the alarm system had been explained to me, we were only going to have a few minutes at most. Elena and Caspar were in the living room when I got there, arguing about what to do.
I strode past them and grabbed the stones from the table, along with the marble.
One after another, the rest of the family assembled in the living room, everyone with their own opinion on how to proceed, half a dozen voices talking over each other.
Suddenly, Aldrich was right next to me. "Hide the stones," he said. "We can't run and I'm not giving them back to Vlad."
I nodded, trying hard to hide that feeling of nausea that made me want to throw up instead of taking any other action at all. In the middle of all that, my dad's voice came to me. I knew exactly what he would have done. All those years of listening to him rambling at us over dinner... maybe that was going to pay out after all.
Hurriedly, I made my way back up the stairs, to dad's old office this time. There was a loose floorboard under the carpet by his desk. Not just any floorboard either, it had ancient sigils scribbled all over it. The perfect hiding spot for the things that mattered, Dad used to say. There wasn't anything in there now, except for a few dust bunnies. My siblings and I had scoured this office for anything that might help us in our fight against the undead.
And what had we found under this floorboard? Photographs. Not of anything paranormal. Just childhood pictures of us and Dad.
The things that had really mattered to our old man, after everything. The things he couldn't bear to lose. Not magical artifacts or valuable knowledge. Just memories.
I hid the artifacts away and put the floorboard and carpet back in place. No time to dwell on days gone by now. For a second, I contemplated hiding the marble as well, but if Vlad wanted that, he could have it. Technically, it was his anyway.
If only I knew how to break the theft protection on it...
Shoving the thought aside, I went back down to be with the rest of my family. I didn't make it any farther than the stairs, though, before the front door opened.
We'd set vampire traps outside that should have bought us another minute or two, but our visitors weren't impressed by our traps. Because they weren't vampires.
Three people strode into the house, and none of them had pale skin or fangs. Their leader was a stocky man with blond hair and a patch of bright red scales on his cheek. To his right stood a woman with long silvery hair and amber eyes that seemed to glow in the darkness of the hallway. The last person to enter our house was another man, though he was a bit shorter and leaner than the one with the scales. At first I thought there was nothing unusual about him until I noticed the feathers in his hair. Black feathers.
My breath caught in my throat.
Black feathers. Red scales. I’d seen these things before, in my visions of the end.
The man with the scales fixed me in his gaze and I felt like I couldn’t move. "Did you think you would get away with your crimes?"
I wanted to ask what crimes, but no words made it past my lips. Before I could find my voice, Caspar, Aldrich and Talon emerged from the living room, wearing matching grim expressions.
"Identify yourselves," Talon demanded.
I wanted to tell him to shut up and run, even though I knew he wouldn’t listen—and that running was most likely pointless.
A scowl appeared on the face of the stranger with the scales. "We'll not be taking orders from criminals, but I suppose you should know who's bringing you to justice. We're Keepers, as I'm sure you could tell. My name is Craig Heartscales, this is Miko of the Fujiwara clan." He gestured at the woman. "And this is Florence Swansong," he introduced the other man who took a little bow.
"We didn't do anything that would require Keepers wasting their time on us," Talon said, clearly unimpressed by what he was seeing. "I'm sure you have better things to do."
"We'll be the ones who decide what we waste our time on," Heartscales responded. "If you surrender peacefully, we will not have to use force." His hand went to his side as he said that, as if readying himself to draw a weapon. I glanced over at Talon, Aldrich and Caspar, but none of them made a move to attack. I understood why.
I might not have known much about Keepers, or who these people were, but even with my weak senses, I could feel the magic in the air that surrounded them. Not as strong as it was around Vlad, but still enough to make me freeze in place when I thought about moving closer. The invisible aura that hung around them made me want to draw back, retreat up the stairs, watch them from a distance like a small animal hiding in the bushes while a predator passed by.
"You will pay for what you did to Klaus," the feathered man, Florence, announced, his eyes glowing yellow.
"I don't know any Klaus," Talon responded.
"We know you were at the scene of his death," Heartscales said. "We traced the magic that brought you here."
