The vampire from before recognizes Natania immediately when she enters the bargaining room. A scowl forms on his lips, but he waves Natania inside and they settle back into the same corner as before.
"What are you seeking?" the child-bodied vampire spins in his stool, looking utterly impatient.
"I'm looking for a book, a leather bound tome with a sun symbol on it. It was taken from a family killed by Stefan Duvall years ago. The one who hired him was a witch."
The child hisses. "The Collector." He says the word like a title.
Natania narrows her eyes. "You know who it is."
"That information is worth more than your debt, more than all the blood in your scrawny little body."
Natania gives him a pointed look. "You're calling me scrawny? You're stuck in a ten year old's body." He hisses with rage. Natania rolls her eyes. "You owe me information, so you have to give me something. Where is the book?"
"Held by another." The blood bound smiles, showing sharp fangs. "They don't talk to the beast bound."
"Where?" Natania growls.
"The Hall of Fate."
She's never heard of it before, but the bound refuses to give Natania any more information without more blood. She doesn't trust him not to overdo it again, so she leaves with the information she has. Figuring Vincent will be able to answer the rest of her questions.
She borrows a phone and calls Vincent in one of the booths of silence.
"Hello?" Ray answers the phone after a couple rings.
"Shouldn't you be dead by now?" Natania complains. "Give me Vincent."
"Always a pleasure, Natania." Ray practically purrs in her ear and Natania flinches away from the phone.
A moment later, Vincent's familiar voice is on the line. "Yes, little wolf?"
"What is the Hall of Fate?" she asks, diving right into it.
"It's a library of sorts, run by a coven of native supernaturals." She knew that meant the human variety, seers, witches, sorcerers, necromancers. "They don't welcome any of the created."
"What about humans?" Natania asks.
Vincent sounds amused. "Your human could probably enter. If she passed the trial."
"What does that mean? And where is it?"
"Go and find out," he says with a laugh. "It's said that if you pass the library's trial, you will receive the information you seek the most. But you could not enter." He gives her the location, not that far from here. Natania commits it to memory.
"Thank you."
"My pleasure. Anything else?"
"What do you know about the Collector?"
There's a long moment of silence. "What have you got your little paws into now?" Even Vincent sounds a bit unnerved.
"It sounds like that's who we're looking for."
Vincent sucks in a breath. "End this now Natania, that is not someone for child wolves to contend with."
"I'm not a child," Natania snaps. "Just tell me."
Vincent says nothing.
"I'll be better prepared if I know what I'm jumping into," she points out. "You know we're going to go looking regardless of what you say."
YOU ARE READING
Trial of Fates
WerewolfAfter two years on the run, Natania, a werewolf, gets captured by traffickers. There, she meets Gretchen, a human on the hunt for her family's killers. After escaping their captors, the two form an unlikely partnership, as Gretchen's hunt takes her...
