Only, she hadn’t smelled the telltale scent of witch on him. Nor on his brother. How odd!

“Your mother was a witch?” Kimberly echoed.

Wesley held up his hand. “A good one, but not a powerful one. Only a few spells and potions. She used her powers mostly to heal people, to help, you know. She was a good woman.”

“And you? Do you do spells?” Kimberly pressed on, clearly fascinated.

He shook his head, and Yvette thought she could see regret in his face. “I don’t have any of her powers. Neither does Haven. That’s why I couldn’t sense that this woman was a witch. That’s why her trap worked. She lured me close and then imprisoned me.”

Yvette wrinkled her forehead. How was it possible that none of a witch’s children inherited her powers? At the very least at her death, her powers would have had to channel into some vessel or other. She knew enough about witchcraft to know that little fact. Was Wesley hiding the truth? Yvette calmed herself and reached out with her mind to feel his aura … She sensed nothing in it that would indicate he was a witch. She inhaled, his scent mingling with that of Kimberly … It was different from a purely human scent. Not witch. Not human. Something in between.

She shook her head and felt her stomach growl at the same time. Maybe her hunger for blood was screwing with her. Or the effects of the potion that had knocked her out were still lingering. When she’d been in the limousine with Kimberly, the girl had clearly smelled human. One hundred percent. And when Yvette had been pressed against the wall by Wesley earlier, she’d taken in his scent—then it had been entirely human.

Fuck, she needed blood or her entire mind would get fuzzy and unclear. Already now, she was losing her sharp senses.

“She said she knew where I could find some vampires to kill,” Wesley continued and tossed Yvette a sideways glance. She simply shrugged. What else was new? Rome wasn’t built in one day either. Teaching the pup that not all vampires were bad would take longer than that.

“Why do you kill vampires?” Kimberly asked, her voice carrying the innocence of her years.

Defiance and anger flared in Wesley’s eyes. “Because a vampire killed my mother when I was eight.”

Yvette looked away. She could understand his hatred. But she couldn’t condone the killing of innocent vampires. There was no use in telling him so, however: she wouldn’t change his attitude with her words.

“I’m so sorry,” Kimberly whispered.

For a moment, there was silence in the room so thick it had weight: an expectant heaviness to the air that pressed down, making it hard to draw a breath. But then Wesley seemed to have himself under control again. “When Bess captured me, she sent a message to Hav. She blackmailed him into kidnapping you and told him that she’d free me if you were brought to her. He had no choice.”

Kimberly nodded. “What does she want with me?” There was a trembling in her voice now. Instinctively, Yvette took a step toward her. With a sideways glance, Kimberly made a motion indicating she was okay.

“I don’t know. I wish I did.”
Nine

Haven felt the stinging pain as the whip sliced through the skin covering his abdomen. A punch in the gut his trained muscles could have absorbed easily, but the biting ends of the leather whip were another story.

“I wouldn’t need to do this if you were as accommodating as your little brother,” Bess, the witch, cajoled.

“Fuck you!” If she wanted to get inside his head, she’d have to slice him open. Simple as that.

“You should reconsider. The more you resist, the more it’s going to hurt.”

Haven’s eyes drifted around the room, trying to learn what he could about her. This time, he wasn’t in the living room she’d invited him into the first time. This latest torture chamber looked and reeked of mold and sweat, blood and tears. She’d tied him to a wooden scaffold with vines that had wrapped around his arms like rope guided by invisible hands. Whatever powers she held, she was strong. Much stronger than his mother had been.

From where—or what—she drew her power, he couldn’t figure out, but once he could discover the source, maybe he could destroy or at least weaken said source. From the little he remembered from this mother’s craft, he knew that every witch’s powers were anchored somewhere. If he could find that anchor, he could start to rock the boat.

“What do you want?”

“Your compliance.”

“Not gonna happen.” He spat at her feet, underscoring that he wasn’t the compliant sort of guy.