Midnight Marked

by Chloe Neill

  He must not have expected much from me, because the fact that he hadn’t knocked me out seemed to infuriate him. He came at me again like a linebacker, hands out and ready to move me back across the line.

  Both hands on the katana’s handle, I sliced diagonally, leaving a stripe of blood across both hands. He howled, fisted his hands so blood ran down his wrists, and aimed an uppercut at my jaw. I turned the blade to the side, whipped the steel against his flank, and when he was a step beyond me, kicked the back of his knee so he hit the ground.

  He rolled to get up again, but I was faster. I put a boot on his chest and the katana’s point at the throbbing pulse in his neck.

  I’d had it there for only a moment when a voice rang clear behind me.

  “Kitten, I’m going to have to ask you to move that sword.”

  • • •

  Gabriel Keene had walked into our war zone.

  I glanced back at what had remained of the gate, found my grandfather assembling and organizing CPD teams. Luc was also there, his shirt ripped and bloodied, pointing to spots where the House had been attacked, where the shifter had tried to destroy us. They’d let Gabriel in. But why?

  Before I could even think to warn Ethan, he flew across the yard, slammed Gabriel to the ground.

  “You son of a bitch!”

  They rolled once, then twice, before Ethan flipped him over, pounded a fist into Gabriel’s jaw. Gabriel’s forearm deflected some of the blow, but not much of it. Ethan’s fist still knocked pretty hard, sending Gabe’s head flying back. Gabriel roared, as much in insult as pain, and kicked up, sending Ethan flying into the grass ten feet away.

  Ethan wasn’t deterred. He scrambled to his feet, made another run at Gabriel, who’d climbed to his feet again.

  The shifter on the ground tried to take advantage of the chaos, slowly lifting his head, probably hoping he could roll out from under my katana.

  I snapped my gaze back to him, pressed the point farther into his neck. “I can see you moving, moron. And given what you’ve done to our House, I doubt running to Gabriel is going to help you much.”

  “This is the second goddamn time your people have attacked our House!” Ethan said, touching the back of his hand to his face, drawing back blood. “This time, you’re going to pay for it.”

  “Hold on a goddamn minute,” Gabriel said, rising and spitting blood. “I didn’t authorize this attack or request it. I don’t know what the fuck it’s about.”

  “Look at my House, Keene! Look what your people have done!” Ethan stepped toe-to-toe, and there was war—and worse—in his eyes. “She was in the front room, Gabriel. The front goddamn room. And if you had hurt her, a split lip would be the least of your concerns.”

  Gabriel changed tactics, raised his hands. “All right,” he said. “All right. I didn’t know anything about this. Your Sentinel, who looks to be healthy at the moment, has a sword pointed at one of my soldiers. Can we ask him what the hell this is about?”

  I nodded toward the shifter. “He had the gun, was screaming about vampires taking out shifters.”

  “May I?” Gabriel asked, and I glanced back at Ethan for the all-clear.

  When Ethan nodded, I lifted the katana.

  That made the shifter brave. “Bitch,” he said, and would have crawled to his feet had Gabriel not put a boot in his balls. His face turned green; he turned to his side, moaning.

  “His name’s Kane,” Gabriel said, crouching in front of him. “What the fuck have you done, Kane?” Every word was bitten off like a bitter pill.

  “They’re killing us.”

  Gabriel’s eyebrows lifted. “Caleb Franklin wasn’t killed by this House.”

  “Killer was a Rogue, paid by Cadogan.” Kane squeezed his eyes shut, probably as pain rolled through him. “Same Rogue did Kyle Farr tonight.”

  “Farr’s dead?”

  “Fucked up,” Kane said, opening eyes that had gone watery with pain. “Vampire fucked him up.”

  “We paid no Rogue, or anyone else, to harm anyone,” Ethan said. And yet we knew a Rogue who’d murdered, and probably wouldn’t feel much reluctance about lying.

  “What did the vampire look like?” Ethan asked.

  Kane moved to sit up, huffing through his teeth. “You know what he looks like. He’s one of yours. He said so.”

  “Kane,” Gabriel said. A request, an order.

  “White. Dark hair. Lean. Muscles.” He moved a hand across his jaw. “And had a beard. Big, thick beard.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  FACTS OF WAR

  Gabriel let CPD corral the shifters into a corner of the yard. They lay facedown, hands on their heads, while Catcher, my grandfather, the SWAT team members watched them. The SWAT men and women had weapons in hand, and they looked as though they were daring the shifters to move.

  There’d been seventeen of them. They’d come to the House in the Humvee on the lawn, two more parked outside it. It had taken two vehicles to pull off the gate—proving that no system was foolproof.

  The House looked like an apocalypse had rolled through. The entryway was a disaster. The front doors were gone, and most of the front windows had been blown out. The stone was pockmarked with bullets. It hadn’t looked this bad since the last time the shifters attacked us. That had been Adam Keene’s doing. And for that and other sins, he hadn’t lived to talk about it.

  Gabriel Keene would have much to answer for.

  Kane had been gathered up, deposited on the other side of the lawn away from his friends or minions, whoever he’d gotten to follow his crusade.

  Ethan and I stood around him, katanas unsheathed and at our sides. Gabriel stood in front of him, his anger unmasked, hot waves of furious magic spilling through the yard like an angry tsunami.

  “We were at Bill’s Eat Place,” Kane said.

  “Where’s Bill’s Eat Place?” Ethan asked.

  “What does it matter?” Kane asked, frustration ringing in his voice. I imagined from his perspective we were ignoring the obvious.

  Gabriel crouched in front of him. “I told you to answer whatever questions he asked you. You don’t answer his questions, and I’ll turn your ass over to Sullivan and his Sentinel right now, and let them decide what to do with you.”

  Kane turned his brown eyes on me. I let my eyes silver and my fangs descend, and showed them off.

  “Wrigleyville,” he said. “It’s in Wrigleyville.” He looked back at Gabriel, as if that might make the horrifying specter of me disappear. “We were having drinks, and Kyle Farr and me went out to the alley to piss. We finished up, and I’m going back inside. I look back, and Farr’s squinting at people down the alley a little ways. Sups. They start walking toward us—vampire and another guy—I didn’t get a good look at him.

  “Kyle starts walking down the alley toward them. I’m thinking he’s going to confront them, and I’m up for some action. They get closer. I can see the vamp, but the man hangs back, stays in the shadows. Then he whispers something, does some abracadabra. Draws this symbol in the air, and it glows like neon.”

  “What kind of symbol?” Ethan asked.

  Kane shrugged. “Nothing I recognized. Some kind of shapes. Square or triangle or something? I don’t know. Anyway, soon as he did that, Farr got this faraway look in his eyes. And then he starts whaling on me. I’m like, what the hell, man? I give him a punch of my own, but he just keeps coming. And the entire time, the vamp and sorcerer—I’m figuring that’s what he is at this point—they’re just standing there with this symbol just glowing. And every time the sorcerer moves a finger, Farr does something else. He just keeps coming and coming and wailing on me.”

  Gabriel shook his head. “That’s not possible.”

  Kane pulled down his shoulder, showed a jagged wound that I hadn’t put there. “Absolutely possible. Absolutely happened.”

&nbs
p; I felt the sharp shock of Ethan’s magic. He’d been under the control of a sorcerer once—brought back to life by Mallory when she’d been under the influence of black magic. She’d tried, and failed, to make him a familiar, but the magic had left a temporary link between them, one that allowed her to work through him and feel her emotions. This sorcerer was using alchemy, but the power sounded just as disturbing.

  “Anyway, Kyle keeps coming and coming, and I finally get him on the ground. By this time, Twitch has come out of the bar, and Rick, and all those guys. They see Farr on the ground and these sups down the alley, and I say, let’s get these guys. The vampire says he also took out Franklin and we can thank Cadogan House because they paid for both.”

  Gabriel worked his jaw in obvious frustration. “And did he say why Cadogan House would pay him to kill a shifter?”

  Kane slid his gaze to Ethan. “Because Sullivan wants control of the city, and he’s proving to you that he’s in charge.”

  And wasn’t that ironic, coming from Reed’s minion?

  “Where’s Farr?” Gabe asked.

  Kane finally looked regretful. “Don’t know. That symbol disappeared, and so did they. When we looked back, he was gone.”

  They disappeared him? Ethan asked silently.

  Or convinced him to walk away, I said. Or worse, convinced him to go with them.

  “And so you came here,” Gabriel said. “With Humvees and automatic weapons.”

  “We protect our own.”

  Gabriel sighed. “I’m sure you believe you were protecting the Pack, Kane. Unfortunately, you’re protecting it from the wrong people. You got played.”

  “No, but they said—”

  “And they were lying. The vampire you saw is the one who killed Franklin, but Cadogan House didn’t do it.”

  “They were there when it happened.”

  “They were there after it happened because they’d been going to a goddamn night game. And instead of leaving our man where he was, they chased the vampire and got shot in the process.”

  Kane looked suspiciously from Ethan to me. I almost showed him my bullet wound, but decided I wasn’t going to justify my existence to a man so ready to believe the worst of us.

  “But the vampire said—”

  “You got played,” Gabriel said again. “You attacked innocents who’ve been trying to find Caleb’s killer. And when you had a chance to take him down, you were dazzled by magic and let him go.”

  Kane deflated like a balloon, like all the piss and vinegar and righteousness leaked out of him at once.

  “Haul him up,” Gabriel said to Fallon and Eli Keene; Gabriel had called them into action, probably because he knew they were trustworthy. “Put him with the others.” There was sympathy and disappointment and anger in his voice.

  They escorted Kane to the holding area for the other shifters, stepping over broken and bloody pavement to get there.

  “Tell me the rest of it,” Gabriel said, watching his men. Ethan glanced at me, nodded. This was my story to tell.

  “We think Reed has two main players—the sorcerer and the vampire. We don’t have an ID for the sorcerer. We believe the vampire’s a Rogue”—I paused—“and we know he’s the Rogue who attacked me the night I became a vampire.”

  Gabriel went very still. “Last night—your fight on the train. That was him.”

  I nodded.

  “You’re all right?”

  I nodded. “I’ll do.”

  He watched me for a long, silent moment. “I told you, when he killed Caleb, that I wanted him. I’d say you’ve got a claim, too.”

  I nodded. I could admit I wanted my chance at the Rogue.

  Our deal done, Gabe looked at Ethan again. “And we don’t know anything about the sorcerer?”

  “He belongs to Reed,” Ethan began, “knows alchemy, and doesn’t like to be seen.”

  “And apparently has the ability to control a shifter, to make him fight like a damn marionette.”

  “Is Kane trustworthy?” Ethan asked.

  Gabriel made a rough and ragged sound. “I wouldn’t have said no before tonight. But what kind of judge am I now?” He put his hands on his head, turned around, and looked back at the House. “We’ve wrought destruction here tonight.” He glanced back at Ethan. “But there may be worse coming. It was alchemy? What he saw?”

  “The symbol the sorcerer drew could have been alchemical. But there’s nothing we’ve translated so far about controlling shifters.”

  Ethan glanced at me for confirmation, and I nodded. “Nothing in the parts we’ve been able to translate. But we’re still missing some glyphs.”

  “It may not just be shifters,” Gabriel said. “He’s not known to have any specific animus against us. We may have been the unlucky ones they’ve tested this on. The rollout may be larger.”

  “But the purpose might be the same,” I said. “Not just controlling supernaturals, but using them to fight.” Just as they had with Farr.

  “You’re talking about an army,” Gabe said. “A supernatural one.”

  “We don’t know how long he’s had this in the works,” I said. “But he knows we’ve been watching him, and that he’s been connected to the Circle. He wants control of the city. Supposedly wants to bring order to it. More likely, he wants to unify his kingdoms. The Circle’s got plenty of guns and money. Supernaturals would make a fine army.”

  Ethan glanced at Gabe. “At the risk of minimizing what he’s done to my House, if Kane’s retelling the story accurately, I don’t entirely blame him. This is as disturbing as it gets.”

  “Yeah,” Gabe said. “For you, for us, for the city.” He glanced back at his shifters. “I’m not going to object to their arrest. A little prison time might knock some sense into them.”

  Ethan nodded. “You, of course, still owe us.”

  “Acknowledged,” Gabriel said, teeth gritted.

  “You can start by arranging medical care for the human guards and preparing the House for dawn.” Ethan checked his watch. “We don’t have much time.”

  “Then I’ll need to get on that, Your Highness.” Gabe’s tone was flat, and frustrated magic seemed to swim around him as he gestured for Fallon. “And I can now worry about the shifter I’m missing and the possibility a man with an unbridled ego has figured out some kind of charm to control us. Helluva goddamn night,” he said, then gestured toward the damage to the House. “Reed wants to hurt sups, or make us look bad in the press, he couldn’t have planned this better.”

  “Who says he didn’t?” I said.

  Ethan and Gabriel looked at me.

  “I’m not saying he finagled getting your people to the bar, but the sorcerer and vampire were smart enough—and had authority enough—to take advantage of the situation they found themselves in. They play with the shifter, and then they turn the heat onto us. That keeps us from working on the alchemy, getting closer.”

  “It’s a distinct possibility,” Ethan agreed with a nod.

  Gabriel ran a hand through his tousled waves, which glinted gold under the House’s security lights. Even at night, even in darkness, Gabriel seemed touched by the sun.

  “Actually,” Ethan said with resignation, “there is something that will make us slightly more even.” He pulled from his pocket Caleb Franklin’s key.

  About damn time, I thought.

  “What’s that?”

  “A safe-deposit box key we found when we searched Franklin’s house.”

  Gabriel’s jaw clenched. “You didn’t mention that when you came to the bar. When you came to the bar,” Gabriel said again, “and berated me for withholding information.”

  “So now you’ve proven you’re both assholes,” I said.

  They both, very slowly, turned their heads to look at me again.

  “Assholes whom I respect immensely,�
�� I said, holding up my hands. “But still assholes. And that’s not an insult to either one of you. Sometimes you’re assholes because you have to be. Because that’s what’s required, and better you be the asshole than risk the people you’re supposed to protect.”

  They both watched me for a minute, as if unsure whether to yell at me or not. Finally, Gabriel relented. “What bank?”

  “We don’t know,” Ethan said, then paused before identifying the man who was investigating that. “Jeff’s looking into it.”

  “Sneaky,” Gabriel said. “I knew he continued to work with you, and didn’t object to that. I didn’t know it was about this.”

  My grandfather walked toward us. “They’d like to begin escorting the shifters out to the supernatural facility.”

  The city had renovated a former ceramics factory into a prison for supernaturals, given their special needs (like darkness) and abilities (like glamour). Had Ethan and I been formally charged, we’d probably have ended up there.

  “Do what you need to do,” Gabriel said. “They’ve got punishment coming to them, and this might knock sense into their damn heads.”

  “We’ll give you the origin story later,” Ethan said to my grandfather. “I know you’ll want the details.”

  “I would. The disagreement, let’s call it, is done for now?” he asked, looking between Apex and Master.

  “It is,” they agreed.

  “Good. We don’t need infighting right now. Not when we’re all on the cusp.”

  “Truer words,” Gabe said, then pulled out his phone. “I’ll call a contractor. I’ve got friends with connections. I’ll be sure that they have someone here at sunrise to begin the repairs.”

  “I’d appreciate that,” Ethan said. “As to Reed, he’s planning something big, and the alchemy is part of it. Farr, or what happened to him, could be, too. You want in—the investigation, the fight—you’re in.”

  Gabriel nodded. “You keep me informed, and I’ll keep you informed.”