Dark Legacy (House of Winterborne Book 1)

by Luanne Bennett

  I reached for my face and felt the heat coming from my skin, and for a second I couldn’t remember what I was doing. But the fog quickly cleared when I glanced back at the painting. “Yes. Call downstairs, please.”

  With the blanket pulled back over the canvas, I got to work on the boxes, trying to get the image of the painting out of my mind. I felt ashamed of the strange feeling of pleasure it brought me. It was normal, I told myself, knowing that perfectly decent people were affected by the taboo in unexpected ways. And since I’d killed my first vampire the night before, I’d probably had some kind of subconscious reaction to the painting.

  The rest of the morning was spent opening boxes and examining a collection of Civil War artifacts. The sale would draw every serious collector in the country. These weren’t your average artifacts. They were museum-quality relics that would spark bidding wars.

  I glanced at the time when someone from the shipping department knocked on my door, realizing I was supposed to meet Jules downtown in twenty minutes.

  “I’m sorry about the mix-up, Ms. Winterborne,” he said as he went to grab the paintings. “It won’t happen again.”

  “You need to be more careful, Miguel,” I warned gently. “Make sure they get to the right office this time.” A recent hire, Miguel was the son of one of our managers. Winterborne’s was one of the most reputable auction houses in the world. Misplacing a pair of valuable paintings would leave a dark stain on the company’s impeccable reputation. My mother would have given him a warning like I did, but Cabot would have had him fired.

  On my way out, I locked my door and handed the list of cataloged artifacts to Kerry so she could arrange to have them taken down to the vault. Then I called for my car.

  Edward was leaning against the door with a magazine in his hand when I walked outside. Handsome with a million-dollar smile, how he’d ended up driving for the Winterbornes was a mystery. He’d been on the family payroll since as far back as I could remember.

  “I have a lunch date in the Village,” I said as I climbed in. “Sixth and Greenwich.”

  We arrived twenty minutes late, and I headed inside the small Italian eatery where Jules was seated in our usual booth near the back. A well-kept secret from tourists, it was unlike a lot of places in the area. This one was a no-frills family restaurant with some of the best pasta in town, but if you wanted a glass of water, you had to ask for it.

  “It’s about damn time,” Jules said, popping an olive in her mouth. “I got hungry and ordered an appetizer.”

  I slid into the booth and grabbed a menu. “Sorry. Got sidetracked.” I couldn’t decide between a salad or pasta. Cabot could call at any time to summon me for a hunt, so food choices had suddenly become a critical decision at every meal. Since vampire hunting required a reasonably empty stomach, I decided to stick with a salad.

  Jules was staring at me when I looked up. “So? How did it go?”

  The waitress stopped at the table to take our order. As soon as she walked away, I began. “Do you want to hear about the guy or the hunting expedition?”

  “What guy?”

  “The one I met at the club Friday night.”

  Her mouth went still for a second as she stopped chewing her olives.

  “Oh, that’s right. You were too drunk to notice.”

  She leaned against the wall and lifted her foot on top of the bench, tossing her olive back into the bowl. “Now you’re just starting to piss me off.”

  “I thought he was just some guy trying to pick me up,” I continued. “He was gone when I came out of the bathroom, and you were so buzzed I didn’t think you’d care to hear about it.” I shrugged and got on with it, conscious of the time and not wanting to take a two-hour lunch. “Then he decided to show up on my terrace the other night.” I omitted the fact that he’d shown up for the first time Friday night, because that would have sparked a whole new conversation about why I hadn’t mentioned it to her when she dropped by Saturday.

  “You live in the penthouse, Morgan. How the hell did he get up to your terrace?”

  “With his wings, of course,” I said with a lyrical lilt.

  She looked at me like I was speaking a foreign language.

  “He’s a shifter, and his name is Hawk for a good reason.”

  “Jesus,” she whispered, closing her eyes and sinking deeper into the booth.

  “You know, like an actual… hawk.”

  She cringed and waved her hands back and forth in front of her face, stopping me before I could continue. “God, your family is fucking weird.”

  “Sorry. I know you didn’t sign up for this shit when we met in high school.”

  She snickered and swung her foot off the seat. “Are you kidding me? I mean, I know you guys are… out there, but I love your family’s shit. I just worry about you.”

  “You don’t have to. I’ve seen him a couple of times since then, including last night right after the hunt. If he wanted to hurt me, he would have already tried.” I exhaled and slowly shook my head. “I like him, Jules. A lot.”

  “Speaking of the hunt,” she said with a cocky grin. “Did you kill one?”

  “As a matter of fact, I did.”

  “Seriously?”

  I stared at the table as I thought about the Night Walker pinning me to the wall with that blank look on his face. The knife felt like an extension of my own hand as I sliced his head off and watched it roll across the floor. The sensation it gave me felt so right and so wrong at the same time, kind of like how I felt when I was staring at that painting this morning.

  “Yeah,” I said, still looking down at the table. “And you know what? It felt good.”

  The waitress set my plate down, snapping me out of the memory of last night. When I looked back up at Jules, she was waiting for me to continue. “Does that make me evil?”

  She took a bite of her pasta without taking her eyes off me. “I think it makes you human—and honest. Seriously, Morgan. You’ve been through a hell of a lot lately, what with your mom and everything. I think you’ve earned your right to a little depravity.”

  I picked at my salad and laughed. “Only you could find a legitimate way to defend depravity, Jules.”

  She glanced at the bracelet on my wrist. “That’s nice.” Then she did a double take and grabbed my arm. “It matches the ring.”

  Without thinking, I yanked my arm away and knocked her glass over in the process, splashing red wine all over her clothes. “Don’t touch it!” I growled.

  The look on her face was one of anger and surprise, letting me know I’d crossed a line. “What the hell, Morgan?”

  Yeah, what the hell?

  Chapter 17

  Edward took me home at seven o’clock. My feet were on fire, and all I wanted to do was get out of my shoes and have a glass of wine before settling in with the journal.

  After I’d apologized profusely to my best friend for snapping at her like a lunatic at lunch, we’d dropped her off at her shop and I’d gone back to work. I don’t know why, but I wanted that bracelet off my wrist as soon as possible, and the clasp wouldn’t budge. I thought I’d have to break it, but it mysteriously dropped from my wrist when I pulled a pair of pliers from my desk drawer, a handy tool in my profession.

  “Michael is looking for you.” Jakob said, glancing up from his book when I walked into the lobby.

  “I know. He left me a couple of messages.” He’d called me twice while I was in a meeting that afternoon. “I’ll call him later.”

  The elevator door opened, and Michael was standing inside.

  “Perfect timing,” he said, grabbing my arm to pull me in. “You weren’t ignoring me, were you?”

  “I was in a meeting when you called.” I stepped inside and reached for the penthouse button, but he beat me to it and pushed the button for his floor instead. “You’re coming to my place for a little chat.”

  “Michael, please,” I groaned, knowing we’d end up discussing his latest boyfriend problems for half
the night.

  “We need to talk, Morgan.” By the look on his face, I could tell it wasn’t his love life. Something was seriously wrong for him to sport such a grave expression. “And don’t argue with me.”

  We got off the elevator and headed inside his apartment. As a bachelor, Michael had one of the smaller units in the building, without four extra bedrooms and all the unnecessary space. His walls were covered with overpriced contemporary art mingled with his own paintings, which often bordered on the bizarre, reminiscent of Salvador Dalí or Leonora Carrington. But as a former culinary student, he did have a large kitchen with all the tools any chef would die for—a professional range, an enormous refrigerator built into the wall, and stainless steel countertops. He even had a marble-slabbed work area for his obsession with confections that required quick cooling of chocolate and spun sugar creations.

  I followed him into the kitchen and sat down at the island while he grabbed a box from the counter.

  “Try this,” he said, handing me a chocolate ball. “I’ve been experimenting with chipotle.”

  When I bit into it, the soft filling spread across my tongue like silk. The pepper ignited in my mouth in a burst of heat that quickly melded with the sweetness of the dark chocolate before I could run to the sink for water. “Wow,” I said, licking my lips to capture every drop. “That was amazing.”

  “Good, isn’t it? I was thinking of selling the recipe.”

  Not that he needed the money, but Michael had found a way to capitalize on his culinary training without having to set foot in a commercial kitchen. He sold his recipes to high-end restaurants, often getting paid by the hour to develop something specific.

  “Well, you have a winner there.”

  “Yeah, it’s brilliant,” he said, handing me the box. “Take them. I made extra.”

  I set the box on the counter and got on with it. “So, what did you want to talk about?” I was eager to get this over with so I could go upstairs and unwind after my long day.

  The intense way he was looking at me was making me uncomfortable. Michael was uncomplicated, rarely dampening my mood, but this evening was one of those occasions. Before I could press him to get to the reason he’d dragged me in here, he turned around and pulled a plate from the refrigerator. Another experimental recipe, I assumed.

  “Hungry?” he asked.

  “Not really.”

  He slid the plate toward me and handed me a fork. “Try it anyway.”

  I indulged him, hoping it would get me out of there quicker than arguing about it. “What is it? A salad?” Not his usual exotic fare, but still a work of art on a plate. I stuck my fork into a bright red medallion and held it up. “Pickled beets?”

  “No,” he said as I took a bite and began to chew. “It’s my interpretation of beef ceviche.”

  The taste of raw meat filled my mouth, gagging me as I ran to the sink to spit it out. “You asshole!” I snapped at him after rinsing my mouth with water from the faucet. I’d sworn off red meat years ago, and he knew it. “Why did you do that to me?” I wiped my mouth with the dish towel before turning around to glare at him.

  “I guess I just wanted to see if my sister was back.”

  I continued to stare at him like he was crazy. “What the hell is wrong with you, Michael?”

  “I think a better question is what the hell is wrong with you?”

  “Me?”

  He ran his hand over his head and blurted out a humorless laugh. “You don’t remember any of it, do you?”

  “Jesus, Michael, what are you talking about? What am I supposed to remember?”

  He grabbed the plate and walked over to the sink with that strange, concerned look on his face again. “I woke up in the middle of the night and thought I saw you sitting in the corner of my bedroom.” While he shoved the food down the garbage disposal, my mind worked frantically to process what he was saying. “Of course I had to be dreaming, so I turned over and went back to sleep. I woke up a few minutes later and found you in here, eating that meat, only it hadn’t been sliced and marinated yet.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said, my defenses rising.

  He turned around and pointed to the spot where he’d just fed me that vile salad. “You had a raw beef tenderloin in your hands, and you were gnawing on it like an animal. Jesus, Morgan, you were eating it with your bare hands! I cleaned you up and put you to bed in the spare room, but you were gone when I got up this morning.”

  What are you doing, Morgan?

  I was hungry.

  I almost fell over when my dream came rushing back. “I was dreaming,” I whispered. “It was only a dream.”

  He took me by the shoulders and shook his head. “No, it wasn’t. You scared the shit out of me.”

  My brow tightened as I frantically tried to reconcile what had happened the night before. “Maybe it was,” I said, nodding. “I must have been walking in my sleep. You remember. I used to do it all the time when I was a kid.”

  When I was five or six, I used to sleepwalk and take the elevator down to the lobby in the middle of the night. I was tall enough to reach door handles and elevator buttons. If it hadn’t been for the lock requiring a key on the front door of the building, I would have been strolling around Central Park in my nightgown. More than once, someone in the building had forgotten to lock their front door and had found me sleeping on their sofa in the morning.

  Michael gave me a weak smile. “You had your first hunt last night. Maybe—”

  “That’s right!” I hadn’t talked to him since, so he didn’t know about my first kill. That could make anyone have bad dreams and do strange things. “I killed my first Walker last night. It probably messed with my head.” I tried to convince myself, but I was anything but confident that my strange behavior was a fluke.

  He studied me for a few seconds. “Maybe. You should sleep down here for a few days just in case. I’m a little worried about you.”

  I got up to leave. “I appreciate the offer, but I’ll be fine.”

  After convincing him that I wasn’t losing my mind, I went upstairs to the penthouse and headed straight for the conservatory, ignoring Otto’s greeting as it echoed off the walls. Something was definitely wrong with me, and I prayed Monoclaude could help me figure it out before I ended up in Michael’s kitchen again. Or worse, Cabot’s. The whole clan would know about it if Rebecca caught me rummaging thought her refrigerator in the middle of the night.

  The conservatory was hotter and muggier than usual, but the orchids loved it and rewarded me with a heady fragrance. I was barely inside when I heard a strange sound.

  “Monoclaude?”

  My shoes slipped on the wet floor as I headed toward the back where the conservatory ended and Monoclaude’s world began. I took them off and continued in my bare feet as the sound of the waterfall grew louder. When I reached it, there was no sign of him anywhere.

  “I know you’re here,” I said, trying to hide the feeling of dread getting stronger by the second. “The crow is gone, so you’re all I have left.”

  It was too quiet. The birds and insects that usually made themselves known in the distance suddenly went silent, and the water cascading over the rocks began to trickle and come to a stop.

  “Monoclaude!” I called louder. “Jesus, frog, you’re scaring me!”

  Something caught my eye near the edge of the pond. I crept closer, shaking my head as I recognized what it was.

  “No,” I whispered, dropping to my knees near a heap of shattered stone. I gathered the pieces into a pile, trying to fit Monoclaude back together. “We can fix this,” I kept repeating.

  A loud sound came from somewhere in the orchid room. Something had either fallen or gotten knocked over. “Who’s there?” I yelled.

  I let go of the pile of stone and stood up to head back toward the door, the energy in my hand growing hotter from my fear. Slowly I crept toward the thicket of ferns that separated the conservatory from Monoclaude’s rea
lm, each step making my heart beat faster. Then the lights went out.

  “Show yourself, coward!” My fear dissolved as my rage took over.

  A tall shadow raced across the conservatory wall, blocking out the snow-white blooms that glowed from the moonlight shining through the glass. The door swung open, and a fog filled the terrace as a cloud of moisture escaped.

  When I reached the entrance, there was nothing there. The terrace was empty, but I caught a glimpse of something trapped in the hinge of the door. It was a shiny black feather.

  Filled with rage, I ran to the wall and searched the sky. “You want out?” I yelled. “You’ve got it.” I reached inside my shirt and ripped the chain from my neck, hurling the alchemy pendant into the wind. “I’ll hunt you down and kill you for this!”

  I stood there for a few minutes, looking out over the park, catching my breath and letting my racing heartbeat settle. I didn’t know what to do. Monoclaude was gone. If I’d come straight home instead of going to Michael’s apartment, I might have prevented this.

  My phone rang, distracting me from all my grief and guilt.

  “Get dressed,” Cabot said when I ran inside and answered it.

  “For what?”

  “We’re going hunting tonight.”

  “Good,” I said. “I need to kill something.”

  Chapter 18

  When I got off the elevator and stepped into council chambers, everyone was already there, including Jakob.

  “Why are you here?” I asked, surprised to see him.

  In true control-freak fashion, Cabot answered before Jakob could even open his mouth. “Tonight’s hunt will be challenging, so we’ll need every hand we can get, and Jakob used to be one of the best.”

  “Used to be?” Once a master always a master. Cabot’s comment was an insult.

  “Cabot’s right,” Jakob said. “I laid down my seal a long time ago. I’m only here for you, Mora.”

  “Me?”

  The snicker coming out of Cabot’s mouth almost set me off, but I held my tongue for the sake of a smooth hunt. Nothing like a fallout with a teammate right before jumping into the arena.