[Victor]A few moments later, the buzzer on the front gate rang out. Echo let me go and answered it. The realization of what was about to happen hit me before she hit the button.“Hello?”“Is this what you require?” Rhett asked over the intercom. “May I come in?”I pursed my lips together. I couldn’t let Echo know I thought that was funny. She looked upset with him and I didn’t want that directed at me as well. “Let him in,” I told her. She sighed and pressed the intercom button. “Please come in.” Before she could open the gate, there was a knock at the door. I stepped back and let Echo get the door. The sun was still up and I didn’t want to risk injury. Rhett stood at the door. He grinned at me as if he could sense my amusement. He then looked pointedly at Echo. I glanced over and she was looking at me with raised eyebrows. Realization set in that our mate bond made her able to sense my emotions. She knew. If I could have blushed, I would have. I didn’t want her to realize my sense of humor could be so simple. It wasn’t very vampire-esque. “Please join us for dinner,” I said to Rhett. He looked over at Echo, then back to me. “Am I going to be hit if I accept, or hit if I don’t?”I looked at Echo. She frowned. “I won’t hit him,” Echo muttered, then went off to the kitchen. “That’s a pity,” he said with a shrug.Rhett stepped into the house and closed the door behind him. He walked over and stuck his hand out. I looked at it, then looked at him and raised my eyebrow. “I don’t have to touch you to hurt you, Victor. I’m being friendly,” Rhett told me. I accepted his hand and he shook my hand firmly. This man was very confusing. Sometimes he was abrasive and antagonizing. Other times he was friendly and congenial. I’d been amused when he flirted with Talia. In the last few months, I’d heard more stories about him and his behavior. No one would ever be able to pin him down. He was ever-changing. It seemed like my Solus Amor had some instinctual response to him that no other supernatural, except Harmony, had to him on first meeting. When I had returned from the first meeting, Echo told me she didn’t like him. She had come to the meeting briefly to drop Harmony off. While she was there, she apparently used her ability to see inside people. She said that Mrs. Layton didn’t like us and wanted us gone. She couldn’t get a reading on Rhett and that bothered her. They were the two people she said she didn’t like. The other witches were fine. It was only Mrs. Layton and the warlock that made her uncomfortable. Grayson came downstairs after I had led Rhett into the living room. I didn’t want him in my office until after the meal. We were supposed to be allies in our fight against the anti-goddess cult. He was my sister-in-law’s tutor. That didn’t stop the wariness I felt. I needed to get to know him better.When Grayson came into the room, he eyed Rhett. Grayson had never met him, but he had heard his brother and Echo’s sister complaining about him. Neither one of them seemed to like Rhett all that much. “Rhett, allow me to introduce Grayson Padua. He is the brother of Alpha Trent, and Echo’s other husband,” I said. “Grayson, this is the warlock Rhett. He is assisting us with the cult issue.”Grayson approached Rhett with his hand out. Rhett stood and shook his hand vigorously. They exchanged pleasantries and sat down. I knew Grayson was assessing Rhett in his own way. “So, Rhett, what brings you by? I thought you were training Harmony in the afternoons.” “I was, but she is getting close to having her child. She needs to focus on that at the moment. I don’t want to accidentally be there when she pops the little beast out.” Rhett shuddered. Grayson frowned at him. “I hope you’re not calling it a beast because it will be a werewolf.” “Heavens, no. I’m calling it that because it’s male,” came the reply with a grimace. I stifled a chuckle at Rhett’s comment, but Grayson didn’t find it amusing. He glared at Rhett and opened his mouth to say something, but Echo interrupted him by announcing dinner was ready. We all made our way to the dining room.Echo pointed Rhett to the seat at the other end of the table before coming to sit on my left. Grayson sat next to her. Wendell came out and started serving. She brought me my food first, since it was very little. Next, she brought a plate for our guest and the plates for Echo and Grayson. Wendell went back into the kitchen to have her own dinner and we started eating. Rhett seemed to be truly enjoying his meal. I wondered how often he had food he didn’t have to prepare or that wasn’t reheated from a can or frozen packaging. None of us knew very much about Rhett. Lila, Marius’ wife, had dated him over a hundred years ago. She said he flirted with every woman he saw, even if she was with him, and that he didn’t condone the things she did for power. As a dark witch, Lila had done a lot of questionable things for power, but never used the innocent or children. It was one of the things that she connected with Marius on. He might be called ‘Death’ and considered the most deadly of the entire vampire high council, but he never harmed the innocent. Everyone had a place where they drew a line. I wondered where Rhett’s was. As we ate, Rhett’s eyes flicked around the room, taking in everything. He seemed to be looking for something, or someone. His gaze lingered on Echo for a moment too long, and I felt some discomfort at it. I quickly pushed it aside. He must be curious about her being able to resist his magic earlier. “So, Rhett,” I said, breaking the silence. “You’re a warlock. How did you get into that line of work?” Rhett chuckled, taking a sip of his wine. “It’s not really a line of work, Victor. It’s a calling and a curse. Unlike other supernatural beings, I wasn’t born this way. I was running away from home when I stopped to camp in the wrong clearing in the forest. The dark spirit inhabiting that patch of land wanted to kill me for trespassing but offered me a deal. And here we are, three hundred years later.” “Like how vampires are powered by dark spirits?” I asked. He shook his head. “No, because I’m not dead. If the spirit left me, I wouldn’t become a corpse like you would. I was entirely human back then and all I wanted was to be free of my family and the way they used and controlled me.” Rhett had a distant look in his eyes. Echo stopped eating and stared at him. He sighed deeply and shook his head. “They’re long dead now, and you took care of my brother’s descendants, so I don’t have to worry about them having a foothold in my home territory anymore.” “I took care of them?” I asked. “Your little battle with the hunters last May. The Hearne family was my family. I was Reginald Hearne when I was human.” I was shocked, but, as I looked at him, he did look a little like the man I had later found out was Mitchell Hearne, the father of the girl who tried to shoot me and ended up hitting Echo. Looking over at my wife, her hand rested over the scar on her chest where the bolt of ash wood had struck her. If her heart had been in the proper place, Echo wouldn’t have survived it. “You were related to Melissa?” Grayson asked. “That was the name of the girl. I wasn’t involved with the family, as you might guess, and I don’t blame you for taking their lives. They would have done the same to you. My family had been hunters for generations before I was born and they were not wiped out by you erasing one branch. Don’t worry. I don’t sympathize with them. I wasn’t good enough to be a hunter, so I became what they hated... supernatural,” Rhett replied and returned his focus to his food. The atmosphere in the room was heavy as we all contemplated Rhett’s words. I refused to feel guilty for the Hearne family’s death. As Rhett had said, they would have done the same to us. It was the way of the world we lived in. Sometimes they won and sometimes we did. It was a struggle we all had experienced for centuries. I regarded him as more dangerous than I previously had. He wasn’t just a powerful supernatural, but he was raised learning how to kill supernaturals. His family had been the primary planners for the attack on us. They were well-educated on killing vampires as well as shapeshifters. No one in my house would have been safe if they had attacked here. ‘He’s afraid. Not of us, but of someone connected to us. I can’t get a very good read on him and something inside me doesn’t like him, but I can feel that much. I think he can be trusted, but I don’t want to be his friend.’ Echo told me in our mental link. “I’m sorry about your loss, even if you didn’t like them, and if I’m not sorry we killed them,” Grayson told him. Rhett shrugged. “They would have tried to figure out how to kill me if they ever found me. Even if they knew who I was. I was a traitor to them, but they betrayed me first, so I don’t really care.” Rhett’s statement made me wonder if there was anything he did care about. He seemed to be a man without loyalty or love, driven only by his own desires and goals. Even his deal with the dark spirit was based on his need for freedom, rather than any deeper purpose.That was one of the things that Lila had warned us about. She told me Rhett did whatever he and his darkness thought was most entertaining. They dated, but it was only until his darkness became bored with her. She didn’t want to stay with him while his darkness thought of ways to make it entertaining for them again. We continued our meal in relative silence. Rhett didn’t seem eager to chat. Echo wasn’t as stiff around him as before. I knew she connected with him when he said he was used by his family. She had been used by the people who kidnapped her. He didn’t go into detail about how his family of hunters had used him, but I didn’t think he would willingly reveal that. Once the meal was over, I invited Rhett into my office while Echo went off with Grayson. They were going for a walk to help her calm down and get away from Rhett. It would help her to get some space from what was irritating her. Rhett sat in one of the chairs on the other side of my desk and crossed his legs, leaning the rest of his body back and to the side, giving the impression he was sprawling. It seemed entirely consistent with his personality and the image he was trying to project. “How can I help you, Victor?” Rhett asked. I hadn’t given him permission to call me by my given name, but I wasn’t going to say anything. It could be uncomfortable for some people to call me ‘Master’ if they weren’t one of my people. It wasn’t worth the hassle. “Have you heard about the creature that has been feeding on homeless humans in town?” I asked. “Of course what about it?”“Two of my vampires found it feeding on a man last night. They fought it off and managed to damage it. When Sybil, the female vampire tried to pull out the creature’s spine, she removed a root-like vein instead. Dennis, the male vampire, said the creature was spongey as if it had rotted, but was strong like it still had some sort of muscles. There was a firm hunch on the creature’s back. The face seemed like a twisted human face. Have you ever heard of anything like that?” I asked. “The person it was feeding on. What was it eating from them? Was it flesh, organs, bones, brains, blood?” “It was blood. The creature has drained almost a dozen homeless humans at last count,” I replied. Rhett leaned forward, his expression betraying his curiosity. “I’ve never heard of anything like that. It sounds like a hybrid creature, but I don’t know what it could be mixed with. Can I see the vein that was removed?”“I’ll be right back,” I said, and left to get the thing for him.