A/N: It's back! Sorry about the delay (has it really been three months?), but I put this aside to get one of my other stories finished and I didn't think it would take as long as it did. :/ Anyway, here's chapter 14! (For future reference, I post story updates on my profile.)

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It took everything I had to keep myself from freaking out when Jasdero and Devitto came into the room. They were supposed to bring the blackmail material we had on Suman, not his daughter. I had specifically ordered them to leave her alone; kidnapping children was low, even for the Noah. I could only gather that one of the inner circle had overridden my authority.

It was possible that the twins had simply ignored me; they were the most unpredictable people I had ever met, and they had no moral compass at all. They were the type of vampires that gave the rest of us a bad reputation. It wasn't implausible that they would ignore a direct order from a vampire that was more than fifty years their junior.

But while it was possible, it wasn't exactly probable. The twins were not very bright, and I doubted that they had the brains to have come up with this by themselves. Someone had to have told them to do it. That they did it against my orders meant that it had to have been someone above me who gave them that order. There were only six vampires above me: the Earl and the inner circle.

I was relieved when Lenalee finally ran from the room. I wished she'd done it before she had witnessed the kidnapping, but things were about to get much worse, and I was thankful she wouldn't have to see that. But what I was most thankful for was her absence. She had such an effect on me that I worried constantly about breaking my cover in situations like this when she was around.

I ignored Jasdero and Devitto as they tormented Suman, and turned my focus on the other Noah. None of them were paying attention to me, and I could see from their expressions that I was, somewhat, right: I was the only one who hadn't known that the kidnapping was going to happen. The cop in me wanted to challenge them, but I knew it was pointless. I wasn't in the inner circle yet, they were still testing me. My opinion only mattered if I was asked or if the Earl's life was in danger. Any protest I made would only get me in trouble.

So instead, I focused on the little girl. Getting her out of here was my priority; I couldn't let a child be harmed on my watch. The trick would be doing it in a way that wouldn't make the Noah suspicious of me.

Quickly formulating a plan, I kept my voice firm as I barked out an order. "Road. Go find Lenalee and bring her back here."

Her sadistic giggling stopped as she turned a questioning gaze on me. I stared her down and she turned to Sherril, who nodded once. "Do it, Road."

The spiky haired girl was gone in the blink of an eye. Sherril raised an eyebrow at me, but didn't ask the question I knew he must have been thinking. I guess it was a good thing that he had caught me trying to scare Lenalee off earlier. He had to have figured out that I was planning on having Lenalee take Suman's daughter from the room; that he had told Road to do what I wanted must have meant that he approved of my choice.

The next two minutes felt like hours. It took everything I had to remain impassive as I waited for Road to come back with Lenalee; ignoring the twins was becoming increasingly difficult.

When Lenalee walked through the door, she was obviously scared out of her mind, but she hid it well. I forced myself to hide my concern for her and started barking orders again. "Jasdero, Devitto. Back off."

I glared at the twins until they backed away from Suman and Jamie. The black haired man turned his crying face on me. My stomach twisted in knots as I watched him grow even more terrified as I approached him and his daughter. His expression didn't change as I squatted down in front of them.

I forced my glare into a sweet and innocent smile, the one that made me look completely harmless, and I tapped the little girl on the shoulder so that she'd turn to face me. "Hey Jamie. This is my friend Lenalee." I gestured for Lenalee to come closer, praying that she'd do it without questioning me. "She's going to take you to get something to eat, ok?"

Jamie looked up at me and hugged her teddy bear tight. "But what about Daddy?"

Fake smile still glued on my face, I made what was going to happen sound as innocent as possible. "My friends and I have things we need to discuss with your daddy, so he has to stay here. He'll come join you as soon as we're done."

"Ok." The little girl smiled brightly as she turned and kissed her father on the forehead. Then she took Lenalee's hand.

I saw the relief fill Suman's eyes as he realized that Jamie wasn't going to witness whatever happened next, and I couldn't let that happen; for my plan to work without breaking my cover, he had to remain terrified of me. Acting on instinct, I quickly stood and caught up with the two girls. I caught Lenalee's waist and pulled her into a kiss, knowing that the public display of affection would terrify Suman: his daughter wasn't in the care of the waitress; she was in the care of my girlfriend.

With Lenalee so close to me, I could no longer avoid looking at her. She was keeping it together, but I could tell she was scared and confused. I wanted to calm her down, but I had a part to play. I leaned closer and whispered in her ear, choosing my words carefully as I knew the other vampires would be able to hear me. "Take her to the kitchen and have Jerry make her something. Keep her calm, and don't let her out of your sight. Road will come check on her in a little bit."

Lenalee nodded at my words and I hoped she understood what I meant by them. By volunteering someone else for guard duty, I was both confirming to the Noah that my girlfriend and I weren't plotting anything, and telling Lenalee not to do anything stupid; she'd ruin everything if she tried to intervene.

I watched the two girls leave, and then I turned back to face the room. Suman was once again completely terrified, and the reactions of the inner circle didn't escape my notice; I was in for another lecture about being soft when this whole thing was over. At least, like Sherril earlier, they weren't openly contradicting my decision to send the girl away.

Focusing my attention on Suman, I tried hard to remember what the rest of my commands were. "As I said, Mr. Dark, you have no choice but to cooperate with us. You-"

"Please! Don't hurt my baby girl! I'll do whatever you want, just leave her out of this!" At a nod from me, the twins each grabbed one of Suman's arms and hauled him to his feet. Then they dragged him from the room, still crying and begging for us to spare his daughter.

I watched the door close behind them, intentionally standing with my back to the rest of the room so that I wouldn't have to see the faces of the other vampires as they started the lecture I knew was coming.

Instead, Tyki collapsed in a fit of what could only be described as giggles. That was not even close to what I was expecting his reaction to be. I turned around and scowled at the vampire on the floor. It took a moment for him to regain enough control to actually speak to me. "Oh man, Shounen! You should have seen the look on that guy's face when you kissed the waitress! I've never seen someone get so scared by a PDA before! He looked ready to wet himself!"

I wasn't the only one frowning at the man's outburst. Sherril was giving his brother his 'I can't believe we're actually related' look. "Tyki. Get ahold of yourself. And give me my money."

Tyki's mood instantly turned sour as he pushed himself off the ground and shoved a wad of bills into his older brother's outstretched hand. Watching Sherril count the money, my frown deepened. "What's going on?"

When neither Tyki nor Sherril answered my question, Wisley stepped in. "We knew you would object to using the girl to manipulate her father, so we didn't tell you that that's what was happening. The rest was a test. Those two had a bet going as to whether or not you'd pass."

"So?" When they just stared at me, I rolled my eyes at them. "Did I pass?"

"With flying colors." Sherril smiled at me.

I allowed myself to relax a little; there was no lecture in my future for this. I had apparently done exactly what they expected me to do.

Suddenly, there was an explosion. The blast came from right next to me, and should have been deafening. I should have been engulfed in heat and blasted with shrapnel. Instead, it all just passed through me as if I wasn't really there.

It took me less than a fraction of a second to realize that I was having a vision of the future.

Glancing around, I took in everything I could. I was in some sort of office space. The room was a mess from the explosion, objects were strewn everywhere and there were injured people all around me. Some were sheltered by desks and cabinets, but several people lay dead in the open area in the middle of the room, and I could make out the remains of at least two vampires. I wandered among the wreckage, searching for any clues I could find as to where I was and what had happened.

My heart nearly stopped as I recognized one of the injured women. The middle-aged blonde was screaming in pain, her legs pierced with shrapnel and bleeding profusely. She was an FBI agent, the head of a local white collar crime task force, Klaud Nine.

And as I realized who she was, I realized where I was. I'd done a lot of surveillance here over the last few days; I knew it well, but the destruction from the explosion had thrown me off. I was standing in the Fifth Street Branch of the First National Back.

But what had exploded?

I turned my focus in that direction, picked my way through the debris, and managed to find the source of the blast. A charred body lay splayed out on the ground, its torso missing completely. Someone had had a bomb strapped to their chest.

But who...?

My psychic power answered the question before I finished thinking it: Suman Dark. The Noah were going to use him to blow up the bank.

Why?

The vision faded as I asked the question. My power couldn't tell me reasoning, only what was going to happen.

I returned to my senses to find myself collapsed on my side on the tiled floor. It took a moment to collect myself, the scent of smoke still lingering in my nose. I sat up carefully, clutching my pounding head.

I hated visions like that one, I always felt like crap afterwards. The ones where the events were happening within minutes were easy to handle, but the ones that were further away were just so draining. Add in the intensity of this one, and it wasn't all that surprising that my head felt like it was going to split open.

I heard someone say something, but it was like I was underwater; everything was echoing, and I couldn't make out the words or even tell who was speaking. The words were repeated as whoever it was helped me to my feet and into a chair. Catching the word, "Shounen", I was able to determine that Tyki was the one helping me.

A few more seconds passed, and I had returned to myself, though my head was still pounding horribly. I looked around to see all of the Noah staring grimly at me; even Road's usual playful smirk was gone. They all knew that I had just had a vision. Sherril broke the silence. "You saw the bank, didn't you? What happened?"

"I don't know." It was an honest answer, as I had yet to make sense of what I'd seen. "What's supposed to happen?"

My question was met with silence. Even with knowing that I had seen something, they still didn't want to tell me what was really going on. I pinched the bridge of my nose. "Look, we've been over this before. I know I'm not part of the inner circle yet, but if you insist on keeping me out of the loop on this, then I can't help you. I can't tell you what goes wrong if I don't know what right is supposed to be."

The silence continued as I waited for them to decide whether or not they could share the truth of what they were planning with me. Sherril finally spoke, like I knew he would; my information was too valuable to pass up. "The bank robbery is a farce. Some of our accounts are through that branch of the bank, and we've noticed suspicious activity on them: someone has been feeding the information on those accounts to the Feds. We've been using Suman to smoke out the rat; manipulating his career to get him into a position where we'd have the access to find the rat's identity. Now that we've found it, we're going to make an example out of him."

By blowing up a bank?! It took quite a bit of restraint to keep myself from expressing my disbelief out loud. But if their goal was to keep others in line, they were succeeding: I was more afraid for my life than I had ever been before.

That would explain why I saw Klaud in my vision though. If the guy leaking information didn't know that he was dealing with the Noah, issues at a bank would go through the white collar division rather than organized crime.

I needed to get this under control quickly. From what the Noah just told me, I'd witnessed the events exactly as they were supposed to happen. I couldn't let them blow up a bank full of people just to make a point. Fortunately, they had come to accept my visions as a sign that something was going to go wrong. All I had to do was play that up. In this case, that would mean lying to them about what my vision was. Then all I would have to do was make sure that neither the lie nor the real vision came true.

"And you trusted the twins with that?! No wonder everything gets so bloody messed up!" I groaned and ran a hand through my hair. "Walk me through what's supposed to happen."

It was more or less what I thought: they were going to use Suman to rob the safety deposit boxes as planned, (they may as well make money out of this whole ordeal), and then they were going to arrange for him to get caught red handed by the rat, and blow them both up.

"Isn't dealing with rats my job? Why did you leave me out of this?!" It wasn't that hard to pretend to be upset over that, as I actually was upset over it. "Ugh. Never mind, there's no time for that right now. I've got to go stop the twins from leveling the entire block."

Tyki's hand on my shoulder stopped me from standing. "You're too soft, Shounen. Let someone else handle the twins."

I growled at him. "I can handle the twins. That's why they're under my command and not someone else's."

"Allen." My focus snapped to the Earl as he addressed me. Whatever decision he made on the matter was final. I prayed that luck would be on my side and I'd actually be able to go change things. "Do whatever it is you have to do. But remember: we want Suman and the rat dead. There will be no tolerance for your pussyfooting around this time."

"Yes sir." Fuck, now my hands were tied. It was going to be a whole lot harder to do this if they expected people to die.

I swayed a little as I got to my feet. Damn. I didn't think that vision had taken that much out of me. I was going to need to feed soon. Hopefully I could get this handled before that happened.

It surprised me when Tyki addressed me instead of letting me leave. "Shounen. Your human girlfriend is in the kitchen."

I blinked at Tyki. Of course I knew where Lenalee was. Why did he feel the need to tell me? And why had he called her human?

My obvious confusion earned laughter from the Noah. Tyki's tone when he spoke next was clearly meant to make me feel stupid. "You need blood, right? There's no need to go off all half-cocked and do something stupid when you've got a free meal right here."

I made an annoyed gesture at him and then I strode purposely out of the room; pretending that I was going to do exactly what he was suggesting.

There was just one little problem: I had never fed off Lenalee before. She still wasn't ready for me to bite her. I wanted to respect that and wait until she was.

But now the idea of drinking her blood was in my head. And at a time when I actually needed to feed. If I asked and she said no, I could end up biting her anyway. There was also the issue of her personality: she was just too nice. If I came to her needing blood, it was entirely possible that she would let me bite her even if she wasn't ready for that yet.

I needed to decide quickly. Thinking about this was only making me thirstier, and I had more pressing matters to attend to.

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Edited February 2017