“We have another traitor,” Helena told Loraven without preamble. Of all the other Elders, he was the one she trusted the most, given the situation. It was a reasonably safe bet. He was an elf before he was a vampire, and had strong ties to his former people and Underhill. If anyone was going to be angry about Josef’s attack on the city’s Others, it would be him. Ivan sat beside him, uncomfortable to be alone with two powerful vampires, but willing to trust her, at least this far. “The headquarters we attacked was an ambush. There were a great many hunters there, all dead, I am pleased to note, but the place was rigged to explode. It was luck that let us escape, not planning.”

She would have preferred to have Owen and Teucer with her, but Teucer had agreed to stay with her coven during this meeting, and Owen was human. A human with Other blood, but still a human, and still a hunter.

“We knew that was a possibility,” Loraven said quietly. He sat back in his chair and ran a hand through his hair. His Coven had seen heavy fighting as they worked to get Others out of the city, or into coven-holds where they could be protected. “I assume you have gone through your own, already?”

“I have, but I mean to do so again, with more care,” Helena acknowledged the possibility of a traitor in her own ranks without a flinch, although the thought broke her heart. “I keep close sire-bonds for a reason, and most of my Coven are mine, or Children of mine. Also, and I am sure you understand why I have not disclosed this to the other Elders as yet, my sire has come to aid us. None of mine will be able to lie to him.”

“Imagine that should be meaning something to me?” Ivan said dryly. As always, he had a tumbler of vodka in his hands, but Helena wasn’t fool enough to think it blunted his teeth any. “Why should I care who your sire is?”

“My sire fought at Troy,” Helena said. She timed the revelation just as he was taking a drink, and had the singular pleasure of watching him couch vodka out his nose. “Yes, you should care that he has come.”

“We will discuss your heritage should we survive this,” Loraven muttered to Helena, who couldn’t help but laugh. “Teucer?”

“Teucer. You know each other?”

“We met somewhere around the fourteen-hundreds. I paid a visit to Ajax Coven. Incidentally, is he calling his Coven in? We could use the help.”

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“They’re rallying. If we cannot contain this threat to our city, they will contain it before it goes further,” Helena explained. She would have felt better with the might of Ajax Coven to back her own West-River Coven, but no. It would be better still to know that even if they failed, Ajax Coven and the covens of her uncles would come down, far less subtle than the smaller Covens of her city, and far more powerful. “But I hope it will not come to that.”

“Right,” Ivan said, apparently recovered from snorting his vodka. “So. Traitors? Thought you bloodsuckers were more careful than that?”

“We usually are,” Helena admitted resentfully. “I have my guesses as to who it is, but we can’t risk an accusation until we’re a great deal more certain, lest we drive another of our few allies into the arms of our enemies.”

“Are you sure it’s not your human?” Ivan was careful to keep any judgement out of his voice, but Helena understood his concern. Thy were old enough to know how effective it was to convince an enemy to take in a spy if they were sent over, bloodstained and apparently beyond doubt.

“I am,” Loraven spoke up, much to Helena’s surprise. When he saw her raised brow, he explained. “The night you brought him to the council, he allowed me into his mind. I ensured he was not a spy while I was there.”

Helena should probably be annoyed on her lvan’s behalf, since Loraven probably hadn’t asked permission to look so deep. All the same, what was done was done, and there was no point in quibbling over it now. It was a comfort to know that Owen’s loyalty was sound, and she would take that as a gift she hadn’t expected.

“Always getting into people’s heads,” Ivan muttered, but he trusted Loraven more than he trusted most vampires. “Right. So the human is clean. We have an older vampire helping and backup in case we all get slaughtered. How do we root out the traitor?”

“That’s the easy part,” Helena said with a smile as her thoughts turned to Teucer. “We use a Trojan Horse of our own. The three of us, we tell a different story to each of the elders about what happened, and see which one reaches our enemies. That will reveal the traitor, and we might have a chance to finish this properly, once and for all.”

“Right,” Loraven agreed, and claimed his own glass of water-clear vodka from the table. “We had best get our stories straight. I assume they will be all the same, but for a single detail, that we have as little conflict as possible?”

“My thought exactly, and I know just the detail,” Helena shared, and raised her glass to them. The only ones who know what we found before the explosion are Owen, Teucer, and myself. Who is to say we didn’t find information that the fire was supposed to consume before it was lost?”

“You’ve been learning well from your sire,” Loraven approved with a chuckle as Ivan snorted and refilled his vodka from the bottle on the table. “So, what information did we find that will drive our enemy to action?”