Thrall of the Vampire King (Blood Fire Saga Book 4) by Bella Klaus (elon musk reading list .txt) 📕

Compared to a childhood like that, being left on Aunt Arianna’s doorstep didn’t sound quite so bad.

“Macavity?” I asked.

His ear twitched and he made a little sound in the back of his throat, indicating that he was paying me his full attention.

“Did you see a jar beneath those bushes?”

Macavity nodded.

I inhaled a deep breath but kept my voice casual. Any sign of excitement and the cat would use my desperation against me in the upcoming negotiations. “Could you roll it out, so I can take a look?”

Resting his front paws on my chest, he drew back with his eyes narrowed. I clenched my teeth. Not that I’d had many pals when I was growing up, but I’d seen enough human television to categorize Macavity as one of those over-curious friends who always asked why when you only needed them to just say yes or no.

“Why’s it taking so long?” Hades snarled.

Macavity’s left ear twisted in the direction of the sound. My heart sank. Great. Now he would want to know who was speaking.

I trusted Macavity not to tell anyone what we were doing, and that wasn’t just because he didn’t speak English, but voices carried, and we were so close to putting Hades back together again.

An idea dropped into the front of my mind. I reached into my pocket and extracted the sandwich. “Want some of this?”

“Hellcats eat meat,” Hades drawled, sounding as though I knew nothing about felines.

“This one has eclectic tastes.” I tore the paper casing and opened up the package, releasing the faint scent of chicken.

“He seems like any other avaricious hellcat to me,” Hades muttered.

Macavity scrambled down to the sandwich, trying to stick his nose in its box.

I held it out of reach. “Get me that jar, and you can have everything between these slices of bread.”

“Meow!” He reared up and pressed his paws on the crook of my arm, trying to pull the sandwich to grabbing level.

“I’m serious, Macavity,” I snapped. “No jar, no mouthwateringly delicious chicken.”

Hades groaned.

I ignored the incorporeal Demon King and focussed on Macavity. He climbed down from my lap and settled on the ground, staring from me to the sandwich. The challenge in his green eyes seemed to say that he wanted to see if this chicken was worthwhile before he went to the effort of retrieving the jar. Never mind that I’d caught the bloody cat rooting around beneath the fennel’s dense foliage.

“Macavity,” I said in my firmest voice. “Don’t act like you’ve never eaten Marks and Spencer chicken. No samples.”

“This is ludicrous,” Hades muttered.

“Meow!” Straightening, he glanced in the direction of the trees.

My heart sank. How much did I want to bet that there was a juicy bird up there that was far less effort to catch than earning a few pieces of sandwich filling? I separated the slices and picked out a piece of chicken and set it on the lawn. “Just one, alright?”

Macavity gobbled it up before peering up at me with a gleam in his eyes that said he wanted half the payment upfront before he even considered doing the job.

My stomach rumbled, making me sag. I separated the slices of bread, picked out bits of chicken, and tossed them on the ground. The clouds thickened, and the sun dipped lower in the sky, casting the garden in gloom.

If I had crawled under the bush and not tried to bribe Macavity, I would have gotten the jar and the sandwich.

“You’re pathetic,” Hades muttered.

I pursed my lips. Not everyone was a cat lover.

“Careful.” His voice rose several octaves, sounding hurried. “A group of men are running toward us. If they see that jar, all three of us are finished!”

Chapter Twenty-One

I knelt in front of the giant fennel plant, my heart beating loud enough to muffle the wind. Sweat broke out across my palms, making the sandwich box I was holding slip a few inches. I tightened my grip, stopping its contents from spilling onto the grass.

“How far away are these men?” I whispered to Hades.

“They’ve just stepped onto the lawn,” he replied. “They’ll be with you in about forty seconds.”

I tilted my head to the sky, trying to think. By now, the sun had dipped below the horizon, casting the London skyline in a purple haze. A licorice-scented wind swirled through my hair, cooling down my mounting sense of panic.

Had Kresnik called them to approach me because I was getting too close to the jar of ashes or was this about something else? My throat thickened. Healer Calla had probably complained to someone that I had healed Aurora, and now some busybodies were going to confront me about undermining Kresnik’s punishment.

I shoved those speculations aside and forced myself to focus on at least looking innocent.

“Macavity?” I whispered.

The cat must have heard the urgency in my voice because his head snapped up. All traces of playfulness vanished, replaced by a sharp attentiveness that eased a little of my anxiety.

Meeting Macavity’s gaze, I said in a low voice, “Some bad men are coming, and I don’t want them to think we’re trying to get to the jar. Can you pretend you’re begging for food?”

“It doesn’t need to pretend,” Hades muttered.

Ignoring the invisible demon, I continued plucking out pieces of chicken from the sandwich and tossing them onto the lawn. Macavity batted a fallen piece with his front paws before gobbling it up.

“Oi,” said a gruff voice from above.

My spine stiffened. I turned my head and stared up into the face of one of the guards I’d met earlier, who had been encouraging Brother David to eat ashes. This one was tall and thin like Jonathan but with strawberry-blond hair that bordered on orange.

Behind him were two shorter men with broader frames, whose black hair, sallow faces, and flame-red hair marked them as brothers and probably demon hybrids. They had also been standing around the fire.

“What are you doing?” asked the man in front.

“Playing with a cat,” I said. “What’s that to you?”

His gaze dropped to Macavity, who