“And what might that be,” Lash murmured.
“I can tell you where Wrath’s Audience House is. I can give you the nightly location of the King and the Black Dagger Brotherhood.”
In response to the statement, a kindling occurred deep within him, and as he felt a surge of power, he thought, maybe he’d been coasting along for a while now. Maybe that was his problem.
“And let me guess,” Lash said evenly. “You wish to exchange this information for assurances you will be put in power after I overthrow the throne for you.”
That head inclined only once. “You will need someone to rule over the vampires on your behalf.”
Lifting a brow, he very nearly pointed out that his goal was the eradication of the species. But when your enemy sought to betray his own, there was no reason to point out that he was betraying himself.
“Go on,” Lash prompted.
“I cannot believe your ambitions lie only with us. Do you not wish to take over the world? Why rule just vampires in Caldwell, when youcould dominate Earth—and indeed, to do that, you will need many armies, not merely your own. With a piece of you in each slayer, how far can you go before you are weakened? If you have vampire fighters loyal to you, then you are far more powerful.”
As his fangs descended, Lash’s upper lip twitched. “You know little of which you speak, aristocrat.”
“I know that all bank accounts have a zero point, and a fortune spread over too many heirs dwindles to nothing.”
Of course it had to be put in terms of money.
Whestmorel arched his already high brows. “If you could have killed Wrath by now, you would have. If the Lessening Society could have eradicated the vampires, it would have. Generations of this war have endured because the approach has always been the same. You against all of us. But what if there was another way. What if instead of a perpetual seesaw that leads nowhere, there was a collective effort against humans instead—”
The aristocrat grabbed for the center of his chest and gasped for air. As his knees buckled and he strained for breath, he landed face-first in the snow, his legs kicking at the ground cover in their no-doubt-handmade loafers.
Lash extended his palm and flipped the male onto his back with a surge of will. Crouching down, he locked eyes with his prey. “I could kill you right now.”
“You… won’t…” Whestmorel wheezed an inhale. “You need… me.”
“You overestimate your necessity.”
Straightening to his full height, Lash put his foot on the male’s chest and leaned his weight forward. The suffering increased, which was satisfying—to a point.
But then that strange unease percolated up once again, and the next thing he knew, he was releasing not only that set of lungs, but the grip of his will around the male’s cardiac muscle.
Whestmorel dragged in gallons of air, swallowing the oxygen and spitting it back out in clouds that reminded one of an old-fashioned Christmas choo-choo.
For a moment, Lash went into his own past and remembered growing up in what he had thought was his parents’ mansion. There had always been a decorated tree in the drawing room standing in glittering elegance the second December arrived each year. The display had not been because the human holiday was being observed, but rather because it was just another beautiful decoration to be enjoyed.
And there had always been presents, of course.
Those had been much simpler times, before he had discovered his true sire, before he had taken over the Lessening Society from his father, the Omega, before… the last couple of decades when things had neither progressed nor regressed in terms of the war. And in other areas of his life.
If one wasn’t going forward… wasn’t that losing ground, in a manner of speaking?
Surviving was not victory. Not the kind that came with the mastery and control he had always craved.
“You must ask yourself…” The aristocrat coughed. “If you eradicate all vampires, how can you rule… over the dead…”
Lash looked out toward those skyscrapers, and then he let his stare roam over to the suburban sprawl that skirted the downtown. There was so much more that he could not see, so many homes, so many towns, so many cities.
Across the globe.
“If you kill all the vampires,” Whestmorel rasped, “who will you govern. What… will you do… if you win.”
“You don’t know my plans, aristocrat.”
He injected derision into his words, but that was just to hide the truth he abruptly found himself confronting. So involved had he been on the ground floor of the war—the recruitment, the inductions, the outfitting and arming, the to-and-fro of slayers being brought into the Society and then cast back out to him as the Brothers and their fighters sent them home—that he hadn’t considered a broader strategy.
