There is a large desk to the right, the city as a backdrop beyond it. To the left, there is a larger conference table that can seat ten. Before that is a cozy seating area with two black leather couches facing each other. I head to one of the couches, and Sysco sits beside me. Harry hardly takes his eyes off me as he sits across from us.
“I know we haven’t known each other that long, Harry,” I say, diving right into it. “But I’ve come to consider you a friend. I feel like you can be trusted. Am I right in that?”
Harry is ever the picture of cool and collected, and that doesn’t change. He just blinks at me, composed. “I guess you, Ares, and Sysco are about as close as I have to friends. If you’re asking for trust…” he hesitates, mulling over what he’s about to say. “I can’t promise blanket statements for every single action. But based on what I know of you, our past history, yes. You can trust me.”
I nod just once. I swallow, gather my courage, and begin. “This started with Ares,” I start, carefully wading into the deep end. “Something is wrong with him. And it led to… what you’re seeing.”
So, together, Sysco and I explain what has been happening with Ares. His odd behavior. His disappearances. Harry listens, affirming that he has noticed the oddity of Ares’ action as well. I share the details; what I’ve seen, considering Ares and I live together. I tell Harry about the phone call I received when Ares needed me to pick him up in Queens and that he had no idea how he’d gotten there.
I see things clicking into place as we explain.
Sysco explains what happened after Ares left their meeting last night. How he tailed Ares, how Ares intentionally tried to lose him, like he was being sneaky.
And we finally reveal how Ares killed Luciano.
How Gio figured it out.
How he arrived at Hunt house. How he gutted me, intending for me to die.
And I confess Florence’s decision. What she’s been studying. How she used me as a guinea pig. And everything I’ve experienced in the last few hours since waking.
I explain that I’m the first Made vampire.
“And that brings us to tonight,” I say in a big exhale, feeling mentally exhausted, doing this twice in just a few hours since it happened.
“Tonight?” Harry asks, the first true show of any kind of shock. “Lana, how long ago did this… transformation happen?”
My eyes flick up to the clock hanging on the wall. “Well, Gio first gutted me about six hours ago, but from when I woke up after the injection to now? It’s been about… three hours.”
“Holy shit,” Harry says, and I’ve rarely heard the man curse. “You really are something different. You’re so… calm. I think I killed three people the first twenty-four hours after I Resurrected.”
“That’s what I said,” Sysco says, with that slightly manic smile of his. “Fucking crazy, isn’t it?”
I turn my thoughts internally once more, evaluating if I feel the desire to tear into any necks.
Nope.
“I feel fantastic. No thirst. Just… great,” I say, getting a little tired of explaining this part. “But Harry, I think you understand why we’re putting a lot of trust in you with all this information? This is potentially dangerous. For extremely obvious reasons. And not just dangerous for me or for Florence.”
“For the whole damn world,” Harry finishes for me.
I nod. “This doesn’t have to be some paradigm shifting event. It’s just me. Florence was desperate. But she’s not looking to do anything else with it, not any time in the near future. It’sjust me,” I emphasize every word. “So, I hope we can just move past this part. Harry, we need your help with Ares.”
“I haven’t seen him or heard from him since our meeting,” Harry says. And I’m so damn relieved when he leans back on the couch and crosses one ankle over the opposite knee. It’s as if I can see his acceptance of all this crazy.
I nod. No contact is exactly what I expected.
“We’ll be searching for him,” Sysco explains. “When we find him, we’re going to knock him out, and then we’re going to need to contain him.”
“You want to use my vault,” Harry concludes immediately.
Sysco nods. “No safer place in the city to keep him until we can figure out how to fix him.”
“Of course we can use it,” Harry says, and I breathe a little breath of relief. Not that I expected him to say no, but this all just could have gone so fucking sideways. “But it doesn’t do us a whole lot of long term good if we can’t figure out what, or who, broke Ares. Have you run a timeline on it all yet?”
“Honestly, not really,” I reply. “It’s all been such a whirlwind, and we only realized there was actually something wrong lessthan twenty-four hours ago. I’ve been a little preoccupied in the meantime.”
Harry stands and crosses to what looks like a giant TV to me, but he presses a button, and it gets this weird, gray glow. He retrieves a marker from a drawer and writes TIMELINE across the top. It’s some kind of fancy, glowing whiteboard.
