Moonlight—Season 2: Chapter 10

Josef POV

Mick had been in the interrogation room with Lance for over an hour. They didn't do anything, just stared at each other. Beth stood next to me, slowly shaking her head back and forth.

"What is it?" I asked, not turning my head.

"He shouldn't have chosen me," she said.

"Are you kidding?" I laughed. "He would never have forgiven himself if anything had happened to you. Coraline's his past; you're his present and future as far as he's concerned."

"But she almost died."

"She knew Mick would choose you. She knows him, and she's seen you together. Coraline wouldn't have allowed anything but."

A banging signaled Mick's anger limit snapping. He threw the chair he was sitting in across the room. It bounced off of the wall and landed next to Lance's own. We hadn't tied him up. What would have been the point? Nothing could hold a vampire. But Lance knew that Mick would gut him if he tried to escape.

Mick shifted into his vampire form.

Mick POV

I threw my chair across the room, missing Lance's head by a few inches. Not that that would have made much of a difference to him. The man who, by blood exchange, was my brother sneered at me.

"What's the matter, St. John?" he asked. "Blood not settling well?"

"You will tell me everything I want to know," I told him, leaning across the table in full vampire form. "I'm not going to play games with you."

"Games? Who said anything about games?" Lance laughed. "You don't seem to understand the risks."

My nostrils flared, but this didn't appear to bother Lance in the slightest.

"These little risks you think are relevant aren't," I curled a lip, trying to look menacing.

Trying to look anything besides pitiful to Lance was, while a valiant effort, futile.

His eyes flickered between boredom and amusement. This was nothing but a game to him, and we both knew it. Whatever he had up his tailored sleeves, it couldn't be good.

"What's the matter, Mick?" Lance smiled. "Don't you believe me?"

"No."

"That's a pity," Lance checked a fingernail.

I eyed him warily. "If you're trying to be intimidating—"

"Dear St. John, I don't need to try to be anything. I am vampiric royalty—I can be anything I want to be."

"You may think so," I felt my hatred for him reach a boiling point, "but everyone is coming to see you for who you truly are. You can't hide behind your façade anymore, Lance. This is my city, and you've become just one more thing walking the earth like the rest of us."

That struck a nerve. Before I knew what had happened, Lance had left his seat and thrown the table that separated us against the wall. Nothing stood between us, and Lance had brought out his fangs.

"If it weren't for this thing, St. John, you would not be what you are!"

"You're sister saw to that, not you—and this conversation has nothing to do with her."

"You're a Royal Blood now, Mick St. John!" Lance roared at me, all composure gone. "We. Are. Vampire! Superior to the humans we have stemmed from!"

"How?" I bellowed back. "How are we so different, brother"—venom dripped from the word like blood from the fangs of a new vampire—"Our accelerated speed? Our enhanced hearing? Why did you release that list of vampires?"

Lance paused, muscles tensed as if ready to strike at me. A look of confusion flickered across his face before it became an unreadable mask again.

"I assure you, I have no idea what you are talking about."

"Oh, really? Then how else would the government have gotten a list of every single vampire?"

"In case you didn't read through the papers carefully," Lance pulled out a copy of the list, "my name and those of my brothers grace these pages as well."

I grabbed the papers from him and scanned each page.

He was right.

There, in black and white, where the names of every royal vampire. Each name had a small crown stamped in front of their name.

Mine had a faded stamp.

One look at Lance confirmed my growing suspicions.

"The humans know the vampire hierarchy."