The King (Games We Play Book 2) Read online

  THE KING

  Games We Play, Book #1

  LIZ MELDON

  The course of true love never did run smooth.

  A Midsummer’s Night Dream

  William Shakespeare

  Copyright 2016 Liz Meldon

  Published by Liz Meldon, Amazon Edition.

  License Notes

  Thank you for purchasing this ebook. This book remains the copyrighted property of the author and may not be redistributed to others for commercial or non-commercial purposes. If you enjoyed this book, please encourage your friends to purchase their own copy from their favorite authorized retailer. Thank you for your support.

  PLEASE NOTE

  The King is the first full-length book in the Games We Play duology. Its prologue, The Fool, takes place roughly four months before chapter 1. The Fool is a 20K novella which can be downloaded for free through Liz Meldon’s website. The second book in the duology, The Queen, will be available for purchase in 2017. Email subscribers will have exclusive access to ARC sign-ups when an ARC is ready for distribution.

  Acknowledgements

  Thank you to my many betas who helped change a somewhat weak rough draft into what it is today. You guys were tough but fair, and I forever appreciate your candor.

  I feel that cover art is incredibly important for self-published authors, so a great many thanks goes to James (Humble Nations) at GoOnWrite.com for his beautiful work.

  Much thanks go to my editorial team: Monica (@JMWEditor) and Phoenix Bunke. These two basically make sure my rambling is coherent and logical by the final draft. Authors would be nothing without their editors. It goes without saying that my friends and family have been wonderfully supportive.

  To Levi, my love, who made sure everybody was logical and rational in a romance—thank you.

  Many, many thanks to my twitter tribe of fellow writers. I wouldn’t get through all this work without you.

  A shout out to my parents who are probably twiddling their thumbs a little while I get this whole writing career sorted out. Thank you for years of support and love. Again, sorry I write smut instead of primatology research papers. This is more fun.

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  Prologue: The Night of the Masquerade

  Chapter 1: Payday Frights and Delights

  Chapter 2: Boys

  Chapter 3: Rooftop Rendezvous

  Chapter 4: That Dream Where You’re Standing in Front of the Class Wearing No Pants… Yeah, That, but Worse

  Chapter 5: I Like You, But You Suck at Your Job (Subtext)

  Chapter 6: Too Much Family Time

  Chapter 7: Dead Rats

  Chapter 8: Rome Wasn’t Built in a Day

  Chapter 9: White Girl Wasted

  Chapter 10: Nobody Likes a Tattletale

  Chapter 11: We’re Bad at This

  Chapter 12: Keeping Enemies Closer and All That

  Chapter 13: Kiss in the Rain (Bucket List Item #3)

  Chapter 14: Unmet Expectations

  Chapter 15: Safe Choice is an Oxymoron

  Chapter 16: Wearing My Big Girl Pants

  Chapter 17: Finally

  Chapter 18: The Talk

  Chapter 19: It’s Going Down in Donovan Town

  Chapter 20: Boys 2.0

  Chapter 21: Yuletide Letdown

  Chapter 22: BRB Emotionally Shattered

  The Queen: A Prologue

  About the Author

  PROLOGUE: The Night of the Masquerade

  “Oh my god, I’m so sorry.”

  Gerald closed his eyes as lukewarm beer spilled down his back. He deserved this. He deserved the tittering idiot behind him and the soaked shirt. If he’d gone out the back door like every other chump who worked at the bar, he could have avoided this. But no. It was ladies’ night and he wanted to scope out the crowd before leaving at the end of his shift.

  Instead of gorgeous girls falling all over him, he suddenly had a wet back and a rising temper. Like he didn’t stink enough of alcohol after tending bar for the last four hours. Now he got to walk home smelling like he’d drowned in the stuff.

  Hands balled into fists, he turned slowly. The culprit was some slim thing with a glazed expression, giggling through her apology as her friends stood by. Summers in Harriswood were both a blessing and a curse, and had been that way for years—centuries, by Gerald’s standards. Tourists flocked to the city for the bustling nightlife and the picturesque campsites in the surrounding hills. While the surge of humans every June meant that he landed more shifts at the bar, but he also had to deal with more shit.

  Like this. Like the warm beer trickling down his back.

  “Are you sorry?” he demanded. She blinked, as if stunned he hadn’t accepted her half-assed apology because she was a pretty girl. “Are you really?”

  Her voice was easy to hear over the thumping music, though a human might have needed to lean in to catch her muttering, “Yeah, actually… Sorry.”

  Shaking his head, he headed for the door, cutting through the tightly packed crowd, then nodding to the vampire who worked security at the front.

  “See you around, bud,” Gerald said, clapping the vamp’s arm. Wyatt waved without looking, too busy dealing with the sidewalk hecklers trying to negotiate the building capacity. It was nice, even briefly, to feel the cool skin of another vamp. Humans could be so stifling sometimes, with their heat and their clumsiness and their… Well, their everything. They were overwhelming. If the general population knew how many vampires lived among them, they’d probably hand out medals for how much restraint most of them showed.

  Then again, not all vampires were so successful at restraint—hence the hunter Leagues. Scattered across the country, humans banded together to combat the “vamp problem.” Gerald always scoffed at the thought. Vampires weren’t going anywhere anytime soon, not after centuries of survival in the Americas. The lineages in Europe had even grander, more longstanding histories.

  Since Gerald wasn’t so fortunate as to be a part of the larger, powerful local vampire clans, it might not have been the best idea to live in such close proximity to the local league. But he had lived here since the late 1890s and didn’t plan to relocate anytime soon. He’d watched Harriswood grow from the safety of his little house by the lake, and he had as much a right to live and work there as anybody, hunters included.

  All he had to do was keep his head down, feed outside of town—or with Claude Grimm’s clan, who had a deal with a blood donor clinic in Trent—and be a contributing member of society. Hadn’t had a single issue with a hunter yet.

  Gerald’s aversion to the sun made it difficult to get a weekly nine-to-five job, which was why, as much as he complained about tending bar, he was grateful to find any after-hours employment he could. But the descendants of the head vamps? Fuckers could walk around in the sun all they wanted. Grimms. Donovans. Warwicks. Belmonts. Hewitts. Reyes. All the local bigwigs, who were apparently attending some snooty masquerade at the Banesview Hotel tonight, came from a pure line of vamps who were sun-tolerant. Meanwhile, the lesser clans were stuck in the dark, wishing someone like Shane Donovan had turned them instead of some other unimportant asshole.

  It was hard not to be bitter sometimes. Those guys were the original outcasts, tainted by bloodlines resistant to sun exposure, a mutation, a genetic defect that had once made them seem more like the physically inferior humans than true vampires—until it became more and more apparent that it was a humans’ world and vamps were just living in it. Suddenly that defect had the former outsiders running the show.

  After walking for about ten minutes, leaving the club neighbourhood and entering the business district, Gerald realized he was being followed. His tail was pretty good—pr
obably a seasoned hunter—but Gerald liked to think he was better. Switching up his usual route, he cut across one-way streets, behind buildings, and through courtyards. He planned to get through another night with his record intact: no tangling with hunters for him. He hadn’t broken any local laws. He wasn’t hunting some scantily clad, inebriated barfly. Gerald was being a good boy. The hunter was the one out of line, if anything.

  Unfortunately, his shadowy follower was never far behind. Each time he thought he’d given them the slip, there they were, stalking him at about a ten-foot distance. This was fucking harassment.

  Teeth gritted, Gerald crossed the street and made for one of the dingy alleys between two corporate buildings. Footsteps followed, and he hurried by stench-ridden garbage bins and metal doors with no handles, then ducked behind the corner of the building on his right. A large paved lot sat behind the two high-rises, perimeter marked by a chain-link fence. Beyond that was a row of pristine townhouses. Human homes. Most vampires didn’t live in the city if they could help it. As part of the Sorrows Clan, a clan of six vampires who allied most closely with the Warwick family, Gerald wasn’t required to live in some huge manor with his clan leader in the countryside like the vampires who belonged to the bigger clans.

  Silently he waited, pressed against the brick wall, listening for the sounds of his target. He wouldn’t kill. Unlike some in the Harriswood area, he didn’t delight in senselessly butchering hunters, even when they were out of line. Now, if the guy swung first, all bets were off.

  But the footsteps had stopped all together. The usual hum of city nightlife tickled his ears, but the sound of his stalker’s pursuit had vanished. Gerald frowned, eyebrows slowly knitting together as he pushed off the wall. Was the hunter also paused and waiting, listening for sounds of movement?

  Had they reached a standstill?

  The longer he listened, the more he realized he couldn’t even hear the hunter breathe. They’d been moving at a good pace—the guy ought to at least be panting a little. Vampires had the better deal when it came to that kind of stuff, as it required a lot of effort to make him gasp for air. Humans? Sometimes just a smouldering look got them going.

  Shaking his head, Gerald ran through his options once more. It was time for this creep to take a long nap—and wake up at sunrise in the alley with a splitting headache. Gerald was missing his late-night shows. His footsteps were silent, soundless after years of careful practice, and he came to a stop at the edge of the building. Careful not to let the hunter see him, he waited, counting to five in his head before he attacked.

  The stake impaled him on three.

  Straight to the heart—a solid hit. It came out of nowhere. No warning. Just agony. Now he gasped, pain radiating through his limbs. Eyes wide, panicked, the golden-haired vampire staggered back, fingertips trailing over the unfeeling brick in an effort to steady himself.

  To no avail.

  Down he fell, knees buckling and hip slamming into the concrete as he toppled onto his side. He panted like a fish out of water, vision fading in and out of focus. There was no moving the stake. No surviving it. So deeply embedded in him, all his vampiric strength proved useless.

  He’d heard all the tales: a stake to the heart meant a slow, painful death. Beheading was more civil, kinder. Thick cold blood gurgled up his throat and spilled over his lips. The viscous liquid inched along his chin and down his neck as he rolled onto his back.

  Seconds later, his attacker stood over him—a woman. Statuesque. Beautiful in the moonlight. She had an axe in hand, and Gerald groggily deduced beheading was still an option.

  “Do it,” he hissed, the pain spreading like wildfire, like he was burning from the inside out. He wanted it to be over. But in the same breath, he was starting to feel cold. Beneath the flames, ice lapped at his altered organs, his hardened bones.

  His eyes narrowed when she smiled. In the right light, she would be exquisite, but now, all he could look at were the fangs poking out from beneath her top lip. Beneath the ruby red lipstick. Two points. Sharp—like his.

  “Y-You’re not…” He swallowed hard, fire exploding behind his eyes now. The worst headache he’d ever experienced in four hundred years of life. Gerald licked his lips, stained with dark blood, before he gasped out, “…not human.”

  His last words.

  His attacker cocked her head to the side and raised her axe, smirking.

  “No,” she remarked casually, her voice as lovely as her eyes. “I’m not.”

  And then the axe fell.

  CHAPTER 1: Payday Frights and Delights

  “So that’s three-twenty for the last two weeks.”

  Delia tried not to make a face as Arthur, friend and League accountant, handed over an envelope full of twenties. She wanted to argue this couldn’t be all she’d made in two weeks on the job—but then recalled she’d had an awful lot of TV marathons recently, plus that very drunken girls’ night at Jimmie’s with Ali. Not exactly a lot of delinquent vamp hunting going on. Begrudgingly, Delia stuffed the manila envelope into her purse, not wanting to count the cash that would go straight toward rent in front of the man responsible for giving it to her.

  Insulting the guy who doled out her pay was at the bottom of her priority list—though she was probably one of the few hunters who thought like that. From what she gathered, most didn’t actually talk to Arthur when they came by on payday, which she could understand to some degree. The guy didn’t exactly radiate sunshine and rainbows, but somehow Delia had ended up in his good books when she first started working five years earlier. They’d been work pals and platonic lunch dates ever since.

  “Well, so much for eating this week,” she said, shooting him a crooked grin as she straightened up. Arthur raised an eyebrow from behind the glass surrounding his teller booth.

  “Oh, come on, it’s not that bad.”

  In all honesty, she kind of felt sorry for the guy. Sure, as a vampire hunter one’s life was constantly in danger, but poor Arthur had to sit in a bulletproof glass box counting money all day every day in the deep, deep basement of the Harriswood Library, headquarters of the local vampire hunting league. No sunlight. No windows. Just a computer screen, florescent bulbs, and the occasional jerk coming by to yell at him about budgets or paycheques.

  “Well…” She shrugged helplessly as he stared at her. Sure, his job was probably mind-numbing, but at least Arthur had a reason to save for the future. No direct contact with vamps down here. “I don’t know. They never really assign me any of the cool cases.”

  And not for lack of trying to sweet talk scheduling on her part. Delia had been hugging the lower-middle tier of Harriswood vampire hunters for longer than she cared to admit. But then again, the last time she went out on a limb to get the High Council’s attention, she had ended up having a vampire snack on her neck at a masquerade.

  Fortunately, the Fool, now known to Delia after some research as reclusive and gorgeous clan leader Claude Grimm, had only sampled her neck once at the Banesview Hotel’s secret vamp-human masquerade. A vampire’s bite spread their infection, but the symptoms lay dormant until bite number three. So, while the sun didn’t bother her nor did she crave a pint of B-negative, Delia’s dreams lately had been absolutely riddled with Claude fucking Grimm. Never in her life had she dreamed so much about a guy—but that’s how it went with the first bite. The vamp would haunt your subconscious for life.

  Which was, of course, just fantastic.

  While Delia’s first instinct had been to alert her higher-ups that she’d been compromised, Kain had talked her off that ledge. If she told she risked being labeled a traitor and banished—or worse. So Delia covered the marks with concealer and her long brunette waves and kept her mouth shut.

  Thus far, Claude had popped in and out of her life at random, never staying too long—mostly because Delia could lose him in a crowd or hide in a public bathroom until he left. He’d never been invasive, but rather loitered at a distance, sometimes with other people, so
metimes alone. Now that she knew him…intimately, Delia figured she simply recognized him more. Despite his tiny League file, most of which was buried in a password-encoded file that no one but the High Council could access, Claude seemed to enjoy social outings in town.

  He wasn’t physically threatening. Harmless, actually. Possibly infatuated. But in a very real way, Claude Grimm was a threat, because she still wasn’t sure she could trust herself around him—regardless of the fact that the thought of him infecting her with vampirism usually set off her temper.

  If only her dream-self felt the same way. Dream-Delia was all slinky outfits and perfect hair and come hither eyes and oh yes, Claude, fuck me harder—it was a nightmare.

  “You know,” Arthur said, leaning back in his perfectly tuned ergonomic office chair, arms folded behind his head. She tried not to let her eyes flit to his pit stains. “I really think you could be doing so much more. You’re a smart person. Totally competent. You need to go for it. Make some noise. Get the assignments you want.”

  The compliments made her smile awkwardly, so she rolled her eyes in an attempt to look unaffected. “Thanks, Mom.”

  “I’m serious.” He twitched when something vibrated noisily in the breast pocket of his mustard button-up, but ignored it. “You should try to get on that big vamp-on-vamp hate crime.”

  Her eyebrows shot up. “The what?”

  Arthur rolled forward, beckoning her closer and lowering his voice. With a soft sigh, Delia crouched a little to put her ear to the window.

  “All these other idiots talk like I’m not even here,” he told her, “like I’m some inanimate ATM. The other day, a few of the older guys were talking about some decapitated vamp they found in the business district a few months ago. Behind that big bank building, I think.”