by Chloe Neill
“With strategy and manipulation?”
I bit back a snicker, but even Ethan didn’t disagree. “All things considered, yes.”
We walked together to the portico situated in the junction between the compound’s circular and linear buildings.
Astrid opened the door before we reached it, her lean body draped in tented linen that flowed to her ankles. She smiled, opened her mouth to greet us, and then caught sight of Damien. Her eyes silvered immediately, and she bared her fangs and hissed.
Damien, unflappable, watched the reaction with flat eyes.
“Astrid Marchand,” Ethan said calmly, “meet Damien Garza, a member of the North American Central Pack. He is here on behalf of Gabriel Keene, the Pack Apex, as an emissary of diplomacy.”
Astrid, one hand on the doorjamb, was obviously flustered and not entirely sure she should allow a shifter over her threshold. She paused, eyes fixed on Damien for a silent moment, probably seeking permission from Vincent to let us in.
“Come in,” she finally said, and stepped back.
“Emissary of diplomacy?” Damien murmured as we stepped inside.
“It got us in the door,” Ethan pointed out.
The retreat’s interior was as unique as the exterior. The first room, a large foyer, had a Spanish tile floor, paneled walls in alternating shades of avocado green, orange, butter yellow. The walls bowed in front of us, the sides disappearing from view into hallways to other parts of the building. The rectangular portion of the building was a long lobby space, dotted with potted trees and backless leather benches in primary shapes. A circle and triangle here, a circle and square there.
“Good evening.”
We turned back, found Vincent and Nessa walking together down the hallway. Nessa had taken up her friends’ fashion and wore a blousy ivory tank and long, wide-legged trousers in a chalky blue, the same homespun fabric Astrid and Vincent wore. Her dark mane was braided loosely across one shoulder. She looked, I thought, less a vampire than a goddess, but I wondered if goddesses had ever looked so sad.
“Good evening,” Ethan said, then gestured to the building. “This is an impressive structure.”
Vincent nodded. “The building was created as a corporate retreat center. The business failed, and we were able to obtain it at minimal cost. Many of our vampires find us because they are escaping unpleasant situations. We try to give them a safe and lovely place.” He gestured toward the linear building, and we followed him toward it.
“We find living communally, without the presence of humans, gives us a chance to truly be ourselves.” The sound of trickling water blossomed, grew louder. There was a fountain that ran down the middle of the space, a small spout that poured a thick and gleaming stream of water into a narrow canal through the bricks. The canal was lined with cloudy blue-green glass, the water gurgling as it moved through the channel to the other end.
“Very nice,” Ethan commented, clearly sensing that Vincent was seeking compliments. “And how many residents?”
“Thirteen of our fifteen present members.”
When they began to discuss potentially applicable NAVR regulations, I glanced around the building, caught familiar streaks of blue and green in a painting on the opposite wall.
I walked toward it, squinted at the long and straight brushstrokes, the light gleam of varnish, the aged cracking of oil paints used to render a luminous valley landscape. Although the angle was slightly different, it was the same scooped valley, the same familiar crags of mountain on either side.
I glanced back at Nessa, smiled. “This looks familiar.”
Nessa nodded, pleased I’d realized it. “It’s a Barrymore—the same artist as the painting at the guesthouse. He traveled through Colorado in the 1890s, did nearly one hundred landscapes, including these two of Elk Valley.”
“You’re a collector?” Ethan asked, joining us.
Nessa looked back at him, sadness pulling at her eyes. “Actually, no. They were Christophe’s paintings. He had a great love of art, and he’d bought them in the hope he and Fiona would be able to build a larger home. We had them restored, Taran and I.”
Ethan nodded, and his voice softened. “Are you ready to return to the house?”
Nessa nodded shakily. “Yes. I mean, no, of course I don’t want to see where he—where Taran—was killed. I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to live there again. But if my going back can help . . .”
Vincent touched her hand. “If it’s too soon—”
Nessa smiled politely but firmly. I guessed she and Vincent had had this conversation before. “It’s necessary. But thank you, Vincent.”
We were walking toward the front door when magic prickled my neck. Since Damien and I both stopped short in the hallway, I guessed he felt it, too.
There were guns, sure. But their magic was dwarfed beneath a bigger and heavier magic, like an ocean of deep blue water resting on grains of sand.
Damien and I exchanged a glance, nodded.
“Everyone else stay here,” I said, and used a pointing finger to warn them into place while we jogged back to the circular part of the building, where windows flanked the front door.
Sentinel?
Shifters, I told Ethan, glancing through glass to see Niall and a few of his closest friends. Men and women this time, most of them young, with lean bodies and eyes hungry for violence.
Ethan ignored the request to stay back and stormed forward, magic rolling off him like boiling water. “Gabriel was supposed to handle this.”
“He will,” Damien said without hesitation. “They must have been on their way before Gabriel left.”
“Or he’s meeting with Rowan, and Niall wasn’t happy about it.” I gestured through the window. “Rowan’s not out there.”
“So we have Rowan talk to him, and they walk back into the woods. I’ll call Gabe, make that happen.” But when Damien pulled out his phone, he swore. “There’s no signal out here. We’re too far away from anything.”
Ethan looked at Vincent, who’d joined us. Vincent shook his head.
“We don’t have a phone line. We normally find it unnecessary.”
I was beginning to find Vincent unnecessary, much like the rest of the Marchands and McKenzies.
“Fine,” Ethan said, hand on the door. “We go outside, and we talk to them. We remind them there’s a law enforcement investigation under way. Me, Merit, Damien. Everyone else stay here.”
“I’m going with you.”
Ethan looked hard at Nessa.
“I’m not going to cower in that house while they accuse me of murder.”
Ethan glanced at Damien, who shrugged.
“Fine,” Ethan said, and looked at Vincent. “Stay here and keep the rest of your people calm.”
Vincent didn’t argue and seemed to have no qualms about staying inside.
Ethan opened the door and slowly walked onto the stone patio beyond it, Damien and I behind him, Nessa at the rear. I rued the fact that I’d left my sword in the car. But then again, this was just supposed to be a pickup.
Ethan crossed his arms, kept his stare bland. “Didn’t we just do this yesterday?”
“Nessa killed our cousin,” Niall spat. “We have evidence.” Without taking his eyes off us, he gestured behind him. “Come here, Darla.”
Darla walked forward. Jeans hugged her very thin legs, and a black T-shirt seemed almost blousy on her thin frame. Her hair was pulled into a ponytail, and her eyes were bright and held that same predatory gleam as Niall’s.
She pulled a sheaf of papers from her pocket, extended them to Ethan.
“What is this?” Ethan asked, unfurling and perusing them.
“A divorce petition,” she said, narrowing her gaze at Nessa. “She was filing for divorce. She was going to leave him.”
Divorce papers, Ethan silently
confirmed to me, before handing the papers to Nessa with an obvious question in his eyes.
“Where did you get these?” Nessa demanded, but Darla ignored her, casting back an ugly sneer. “You’re not denying it?”
Nessa swallowed, gaze flicking from the papers to Ethan. “It was months ago. We had a rough patch. I couldn’t get him to talk to me; he was so absorbed in his work. I was frustrated, and I talked to a lawyer. But we got through it. We started talking again. Prioritizing our relationship. Things were getting better, so I didn’t pursue it. I focused on fixing my marriage.”
Darla looked entirely unconvinced. “That doesn’t explain the fight you had with him at school three weeks ago.” She looked at Ethan, clearly believing he was the one she needed to convince. “She screamed at him, right in front of the library.”
Whatever Ethan thought about the admission, his expression stayed neutral. He glanced at Nessa, whose eyes had gone very, very wide.
Her gaze flew to Ethan, pleading in her eyes. “It didn’t mean anything. It was just an argument. Just a stupid disagreement. I swear to you—things were getting better.”
Darla either wasn’t convinced or didn’t care. “You’re not one of us. You never were, and you never will be. He could have done so much better than you, and we all know it. You couldn’t even give him children.”
I winced at the shot, and the bolt of magic—horrified and grief stricken—that burst from Nessa. She jolted forward, and Damien wrapped an arm around her waist to keep her from launching off the patio toward the shifters.
“You little bitch. I didn’t murder my husband! I loved him, and he loved me.”
“He was one of us!” Niall said. “He should have stayed with us. This is precisely what happens when shifters stray from their kind.”
“He’s dead, and now there are even more bloodsuckers in the valley,” Darla said, looking at me and Ethan. “Taran didn’t want you here, you know. He didn’t want her to let you stay here.”
“That’s not true,” Nessa said, but the expression on her face said it was at least a little bit true. “He was just busy and tired. He didn’t want to deal with company.” Tears streamed down her face. “I thought it would be fun to have you stay—that we could all go out together, just like a normal goddamned couple.” She sobbed in Damien’s arms, looking utterly miserable . . . and to my mind, utterly innocent.
Ethan looked at his weeping friend—a vampire being comforted by an honorable shifter—and then back at Niall and Darla.
“I don’t pretend to know what was between Nessa and Taran. Their relationship was their business and their concern, and certainly none of yours. You’ve brought nothing here today that suggests this woman killed her husband. You’re eager for a fight—that’s clear enough—but you’re looking in the wrong place. We’re on our way to talk to Sheriff McKenzie. If you’ve got evidence you think he needs to have, you’re welcome to bring it up with him.”
Niall made a dubious sound. “You know where talking gets you? Nowhere fast. We’ve talked and talked and talked some more”—he made talking motions with a hand—“and we’ve lost good people along the way.” His eyes hardened. “Talking does nothing. Trials do nothing. Jail does nothing. It’s time to put an end to it.”
“I notice Rowan isn’t here,” Ethan said. “Does he disagree with your approach?”
“Rowan is kissing Gabriel Keene’s ass. Neither one of them has anything to do with this.”
“Oh, I suspect Gabriel would disagree, but we’ll let him tell you that.”
“Enough fucking talk.” Niall pulled a handgun, aimed it at Ethan. “You give her over, and the rest of you can go.”
Even that was an obvious lie. He won’t let us go, I quietly said. He wants blood on the ground.
Ethan kept his gaze steady on Niall. “I’m afraid we can’t do that.”
“Then suffer the fucking consequences.”
Shifters, a dozen more, emerged from the perimeter of trees, filling the air with the buzz of magic and anger. Half were in human form, with very large automatic weapons. AK-47s, if I remembered Luc’s weapons training accurately. A single bullet wouldn’t kill a vampire, but the sheer firepower in all those magazines would do some pretty serious damage.
The other half dozen shifters were their own weapons—they were in animal form, large, sleek mountain lions, golden ears flat against their heads, fangs bared in warning. They padded forward on feet big enough to knock me down, strong enough to keep me there.
I felt a pulse of magic from Damien as he stared them down. He was a wolf and ready to change, ready to play dog-versus-cat with these war-loving shifters.
But Niall’s crew had other ideas. At his signal, they raised their weapons.
“Bullets versus immortality,” he said. “Let’s see which wins.”
5
We opted not to be shot. With blurring speed, even as we heard the first explosions of bullets rushing through barrels, we moved back inside, sought safety behind the stone as shots pummeled the front door, ripping fist-sized holes in the wood and sprinkling bullets across the floor.
Ethan glared at Vincent, who stood across the room, shock clear on his face. But Ethan had no more patience for shock. “Is this what you’ve sowed over the course of a century here? Hatred and violence?”
“They’re shooting at us!”
“Because they were taught loathing and war,” Ethan’s voice wavered with fury. “Damn you all for poisoning these children.”
Vincent swallowed hard, the feud’s undeniable cost now shredding the door.
And then a new light began to flicker through the gaps in the wood, the narrow windows around it. I risked a glance, sucked in a breath.
The shifters hadn’t brought just guns—they’d brought torches, and they were lighting them in a daisy chain that moved from one shifter to another, creating a circle of fire. The shifters in feline form prowled around them impatiently, eager for action. One of them screamed, a high-pitched sound so much like a human’s cry it raised goose bumps on my arms.
“Jesus,” Vincent said, taking a step back.
“You want to kill our kind?” Niall called out. “But you’re too cowardly to face us? Fine. You can die as you deserve—by fire!”
“Jesus,” Astrid said. “They mean to burn us out.”
“And salt the earth afterward,” I said, glancing at Vincent. “Tell me there’s a back door here. A way out.”
Vincent stared at the shifting shadows on the floor, cast by the threatening firelight. “There’s—I can’t just let them take our home.”
“They aren’t here for shits and giggles,” Damien said, looking back at us. “There’s a time to fight and a time to retreat. This would be the latter.” He looked at Vincent. “How do we get out?”
Silence for a moment, and then, “The basement. There’s access to one of the mine shafts from the basement. We can follow it out and up.”
Astrid’s eyes were huge and dark. “You want us to travel through a mine shaft?”
“Have you got a better idea?” Vincent shot back.
“Our options aren’t many,” Ethan pointed out. Sentinel?
I’d rather fight, I admitted, then glanced through the window, watched shifters lay torches against the circle’s wooden exterior, waiting for the spark to take. But we’re outnumbered and outweaponed, and I don’t think the Marchands would be much help.
Agreed, Ethan said, exchanged a nod with Damien, and looked at Vincent. “Let’s go to ground and hope the earth lets us out again.”
***
Vincent called out the remaining vampires in the building, and we climbed single file down a narrow staircase to the basement. Vincent hurried to the back of the room. With Damien’s help, he pulled furniture and plywood away from the back wall.
“This is all my fault,” Nessa murmured, wrapp
ing arms around herself. “This is all my fault.” She looked at Ethan. “I could turn myself in. Confess. Stop this.”
“Did you kill Taran?”
“No!” her answer was quick, sharp. “Of course not.”
“If you didn’t kill him, this isn’t your fault. Turning yourself in wouldn’t assuage their hatred; it would likely get you killed, and it would preclude the sheriff from finding the real killer. I cannot imagine the pain you’re going through, but do not waste emotion that should be spent on Taran”—he pointed toward the stairs—“on assholes like that.”
I’m mentally applauding you, I told him.
I’m glad someone is. This may get worse before it gets better.
I’d been a vampire long enough to know that was nearly inevitable. The feeling didn’t diminish when Damien and Vincent revealed a dark hole that sloped downward into darkness, a cannula into the bowels of the earth.
I didn’t care for the metaphor or the reality.
“Flashlight,” Astrid said, and I glanced over, took the flashlight she’d extended.
“Thanks,” I said, flicking it on and off to ensure it worked and I wouldn’t be stuck in the ground without light.
Damien peered into the hole. “You got a map?”
“Just memory,” Vincent said, a flush rising on his pale cheeks. “I was fascinated by mining when I was human and found—as a vampire—I enjoyed the peacefulness. I used to walk through them for the darkness, the quiet.”
Something large and heavy boomed above us, shaking the basement and sending a puff of smoke down through the stairwell.
“Let’s go,” Ethan said.
One by one, the beams of our flashlights bobbing in front of us, we moved into darkness.
The passageway was roughly square, beams pressed into the ceilings and walls at intervals to keep the tunnel—made variously of stone, packed earth, and loose rock—from caving in and burying us all. The air was cool and smelled of moist and metallic earth. It sloped gently downward and occasionally split off into other directions. It was just high enough to walk in, but we all had to duck to avoid striking our heads on the overhead beams.
