Read Broken for Free Online Page A

Polly—had not entered the sexual, bloody fray, although Mihas kept gesturing to them.
    Smart birds, Lilly thought. They were withholding. She knew that, since Claudia had been the one to raise them in her own sub-Underground, Mihas had not yet tasted of this freshest crop. Their blood would be a treat for him, unlike the older, already used schoolgirls, or even the other young vampire recruits from the streets who didn’t have Queenshill breeding.
    As if these other viewings weren’t enough to keep Lilly occupied, she turned her attention to a third: a monitor showing recorded images from Highgate Cemetery, which was terribly near the main Underground. Recently, she had been constantly checking the footage to see if there had been any suspicious activity, if there had been any troublemakers like the ones who had engaged the schoolgirls in a conflict on the Queenshill campus only a few nights ago.
    She especially kept her gaze peeled for the woman with the long, dark brown braid whom Lilly had encountered in Southwark, in a flat above a pub. Lilly had intended to detain and question her, but unfortunately the interview had never come to pass, since the woman had managed to stave off Lilly, impressing her with mind powers in the form of mental punches, plus trained fighting skills. But this didn’t mean Lilly wasn’t going to find the woman again.
    She smiled, recalling when she’d impulsively kissed her opponent. Lilly was definitely going to find her, and she would bet heavily that it would be in Southwark.
    But, at the moment, the custode was primarily playing a hunch about the cemetery, and she directed most of her attention toward it. She suspected that if the mind-powered woman’s group did equate to trouble, they would be skulking about near the main Underground, just as they had on the Queenshill campus, which had housed Claudia’s sub-Underground before the vampires had needed to desert it.
    As she worked, a groan sounded from a corner of the cavelike room.
    “Up and about?” she said to her older brother, Nigel. Last night, he had attempted to interfere with Claudia’s ouster, and he had even almost put a stop to Lilly’s best-laid plans to clean out the Underground, starting with that particular vampire. But Lilly had knocked Nigel out with the judicious use of pressure points. Afterward, she’d used her tuner to persuade him into an uninterrupted rest for the night. Poor dear had needed it after what he’d been through.
    She could hear her brother standing, then gaining his bearings, yet she kept on with her labors. Due to the tuner, he wouldn’t recall a lick of what had transpired since his mind had been wiped of any superficial memories regarding their confrontation. Hopefully, he would remember what had occurred with Claudia, but nothing beyond that. In fact, she had tuned him to believe upon awakening that he had been sleeping in his quarters and had only just sauntered into this monitor room.
    And, indeed, he muttered, “Claudia?”
    “She’s off and away, remember?” Then Lilly smoothly added a lie. “I went after her whilst you stayed behind and minded the monitors. Both of us couldn’t go running off. One of us always remains here to protect.”
    “Yes, that’s right.”
    Good. He wasn’t questioning. The mind-tune had worked.
    Lilly paused the Highgate recording and spun around in her chair. Nigel was in the shadows and, for a moment, with his face muted, she imagined that he was her other brother, Charles, who had been mysteriously killed on the job, causing her to be activated, though she was merely a female. Yet, she had been the only available Meratoliage within this generation who had been of age to serve and protect these vampires.
    At the thought of Charles, whose body had never been discovered, an ache stretched through the right side of Lilly’s chest, where her heart beat. The unusual positioning was an anomaly that every member of the family endured owing to the