Of course Cabot had to comment. “I think he’s worried about his queen.”
“As I should be. And so should you,” he added, which wiped the sneer from Cabot’s face. What was with these two? “Besides, it was either me or Michael.”
Was Cabot insane? “Michael? You’re kidding me.”
There were only two mortals in the circle—me and Ethan. Michael had no obligation to serve yet, and he wasn’t even close to reaching majority. He’d die out there without someone protecting him during the entire hunt. A hindrance more than a help. What was the point?
“You won’t throw Michael to the wolves,” I said to Cabot. “Not as long as I’m queen of this clan.”
The room buzzed with murmurs. Not since my mother had someone spoken to him so bluntly, but Michael was more important than Cabot’s bruised ego.
James hijacked the awkward conversation. “What did the Flyers say?”
Cabot backed down and pulled his eyes away from mine. “They found a hive.”
I took a seat next to Jakob, the one person in the room I could trust more than all the rest, and glanced at all their stunned faces. Even Jakob seemed surprised. “What’s a hive?”
“Just what it sounds like,” James said with a satisfied grin. “The mother lode. The nest.”
Cabot clarified it for me. “It’s where they live. A large cell of them anyway. We’ve been looking for this particular one for some time now.”
“And every time you find it, half of them escape and start a new hive,” Jakob said.
Cabot gave him a look. Calm, measured, filled with contempt, it was hard to read. “Perhaps you can rejoin us permanently and grace us with your tracking skills.”
Jakob bit his tongue, and I began to wonder why he’d really left the Circle. That was a conversation I planned to have with him very soon.
“Where is this hive?” I asked.
“An old theater in the South Bronx. It’s been closed for decades. The Flyers believe there’s an underground room where they sleep.”
“I think it’s called a basement,” Ethan said, slouching in his chair with his eyes glued to his phone.
I thought Cabot was going to wipe the smirk right off Ethan’s face. “Since you’ve so wisely identified this basement, I’ll let you go first when we get there so you can find it for us.”
Ethan shoved his phone in his pocket and sat up. “I just meant—”
“We’re entering a war zone tonight,” Cabot continued. “The room is buried underground, and the Flyers haven’t been able to figure out how the Walkers are getting in and out of it.”
“No door?” Jakob asked, his brow raised.
Cabot shook his head. “They go in, but they don’t come out. When the Flyers swoop in to investigate, the place is empty.”
When no one asked the obvious question, I decided to. “How do they know the Walkers are underground?” I got chills envisioning sleeping vampires hanging upside-down from the rafters. “Is there an attic?”
“Don’t forget what the Flyers are. They’re animals. They can hear and smell them belowground, and that’s all the confirmation we need.”
Olivia stood up and nudged her brother. “Let’s get moving. I have a date when we’re done exterminating these fuckers tonight.”
Exceptionally beautiful and intelligent, Olivia plowed through men with a vengeance. Mortal men were her favorites. They didn’t stand a chance when she set her sights on one of them. After playing with tonight’s conquest, she’d move on to a new one tomorrow, and the day after that. Her twin was just as ravenous with women. If my uncle Samuel were here, I was certain he’d put a stop to all the carnal carnage.
We headed out the same way we had the night before and walked straight through the wall of a building on the other side of the back alley. As we stepped through the travel portal and exited at our destination, the East River was the first thing I saw, with Rikers Island in the distance. I kept looking overhead to see if Hawk was circling the sky—or that traitorous crow that had a dagger waiting for him if I found out he killed Monoclaude.
A few blocks west, we spotted the theater. Like the night before, Olivia and James headed inside first while the rest of us waited for Cabot to give us our orders.
“You were kidding about me going down into that hellhole first, right?” Ethan asked Cabot.
Cabot didn’t bother to reply. Instead, he studied the building for a minute. “Head down the alley on the left but stay outside until someone gives you the all clear.” As Ethan started to head across the street, Cabot grabbed his arm. “I mean it,” he growled. “We can’t afford anyone going commando tonight. Wait for a signal.”
“I got it.” Ethan yanked his arm away. “Take it easy, man.”
My brother was smart, but smarts and wisdom are two different things, and Ethan could be impulsive. I was perfectly happy letting Cabot rein him in and call the shots during the hunt. At least for now.
Cabot motioned for me to go with Rebecca.
“Morgan can come with me,” Jakob said, my given name sounding foreign coming out of his mouth, testament to the grave nature of tonight’s hunt.
Cabot got that snide look on his face again, the same one from earlier. “You want to question me about my decisions for a hunt, do it back at the house. Besides, I need you with me.” He reached out and shoved me toward his wife. “Move.”
I hesitated and glanced at Jakob. He nodded for me to follow her, and I knew he’d have my back once we were inside.
When we reached the theater, Rebecca made a beeline for the steel steps of the fire escape that led to the second floor. She took them silently two at a time, like the cat that she was, not bothering to look back to see if I was behind her.
When we reached the top, she pressed her back against the wall and craned her neck to look through the broken window. Then she nodded for me to climb through first. “Don’t cut yourself,” she whispered, motioning to the jagged glass protruding from the frame. It wasn’t out of concern for me. Blood would bring the Walkers out like hungry wolves.
She followed me inside and headed across what looked like a concession area for the second-floor mezzanine. After all these years, there were still empty popcorn boxes and candy bar wrappers scattered around the floor.
I heard what sounded like a plastic cup being crushed under the weight of a shoe. Rebecca yanked me back against the wall and clamped her gloved hand over my mouth. A shadow appeared in the archway leading to the balcony, and Ethan stepped through it and charged us with his knife raised in the air. He stopped a few feet away when he realized it was us.
As she continued to muffle my mouth and use me as her human shield, I almost bit into her glove. When I finally broke free from her, I gave her a knowing glare that made her look away.
“Where’s Cabot and Jakob?” I whispered to Ethan.
He pointed toward the roof. “The place is empty,” he whispered back. “Start looking for a door.”
After checking the mezzanine for visitors and finding none, Rebecca headed down the left staircase while I followed Ethan down the right. I didn’t care what Cabot said, I was sticking with my brother.
The main floor was eerily quiet. Rebecca was already working her way across the wall at the other end of the theater, looking for a hidden door in the paneling. I started on our side while Ethan walked ahead and did the same halfway down. The old paneling was still in good shape. Filthy, but solid. It was a shame to waste such a beautiful old building to house Night Walkers.
They met up at the front row while I continued making my way down the wall toward the halfway point where Ethan had started. When I glanced over at them, they were on top of the stage and heading for the back.
“Shit,” I hissed under my breath, suddenly feeling very vulnerable when they disappeared behind the old curtain that was literally hanging by threads. Cabot, Jakob, and the twins were nowhere in sight either.
Cabot eventually came through the archway and walked down th
e aisle toward me. “Don’t waste your time,” he said, his voice hushed as he placed an unlit cigarette between his lips. “It’s not in the wall. It’s got to be somewhere backstage.”
“Why do you do that?” I asked. “With the unlit cigarette?”
His brow arched as he muttered around it. “So we don’t get killed.”
“I’ve just never seen you smoke before.”
He took it out of his mouth and stuffed it in his pocket. “That’s because I don’t.” Then he headed across a row of seats, barely fitting between the narrow gap, motioning for me to follow.
I headed down the next row, moving with more ease than he had. As I turned down the main aisle to catch up to him, I heard a sound above me. When I looked up, I almost shrieked but caught myself before blowing everything to hell. Olivia and James were hovering overhead, pressed against the high ceiling. Despite managing to keep my mouth shut, I stumbled and grabbed the edge of a seat, twisting my ankle as my foot crashed through a rotting floorboard.
James descended from the ceiling and landed next to me. “Can you move it?”
“I think so.” I applied pressure to see if my ankle was injured. That’s when I felt something soft move under my foot.
He looked at my shocked face, and without a word he yanked my foot out of the floor. A pale arm reached out from the splintered hole and grabbed at my leg. As I fell and backpedaled, James grabbed me around the waist and flew back up to the ceiling, giving us both a bird’s-eye view of the horror below.
The hole in the floor began to widen, and all I could see was a soup of ghostly limbs squeezing through the small break until the floor burst into a cloud of splinters. The room filled with the sound of hisses as the Night Walkers began to wake up.
“Jakob!” I screamed, spotting him on the second-floor balcony. “They’re in the floor!”
He jumped down, landing in the aisle about ten feet away from the hole. “Fuck.”
Olivia flew across the room and disappeared behind the ragged curtain. A second later, Cabot, Ethan, and Rebecca appeared on the stage while the vampires continued to crawl through the floor. More appeared between the rows of seats. The “doors” were everywhere, nothing but loose planks. The Night Walkers were sleeping under the floor.
“We’re going down,” James said.
I glanced at the swarm of Walkers directly below us. “Down there?”
Without bothering to ease my concern, he flew across the room, over the sea of vampires, and set me down on the stage. “You do have your knife?”
Still stunned, I quickly recovered and pulled my dagger out. “How do we get out of this alive?”
He grunted a laugh. “We kill them all.”
James flew into the swarm and started hacking away. Olivia descended next to him, releasing a primal cry as she sliced heads off like a banshee on fire. Cabot and Jakob were already in the thick of it too. They’d somehow maneuvered to the top of the theater and were working their way back down toward the stage like a well-oiled machine, working as a lethal team.
Jakob kept glancing at me with a look of fear in his eyes. Not for himself but for me.
While I stood there contemplating where to jump in, something came up behind me and knocked me to the ground. I rolled onto my back as a Walker landed on top of me, aiming for my jugular. Unable to reach the knife that had been knocked out of my hand, I shoved him back and prepared to hit him with a ball of energy. He laughed and grabbed my power hand, digging his teeth into my wrist before I could strike. I managed to reach the dagger with my other hand and jabbed it into his rib cage. He barely flinched.
As I felt myself start to fade from the pain, I pulled the blade from his ribs. The rest was a blur. All I could hear was his head hitting the floor next to mine, his face coming to a stop with his dead eyes fixed toward the ceiling.
I sat up and looked at my wrist. He’d torn it deep, the light glowing bright in the center of my palm a few inches up from the vicious bite. But the wound began to heal before my eyes, restoring my strength.
When I climbed to my feet, I spotted Ethan across the room with two Walkers trapping him against the wall. Rebecca was closer to me, her own fate in the hands of a couple of vampires. The choice was easy. I jumped off the stage and weaved my way through the carnage, dodging the corpses. With a savage swing, I let out a loud grunt and beheaded the female about to take a bite out of my brother’s shoulder. Her male companion turned and caught my wrist, twisting my arm until I howled in pain and dropped the knife. He grabbed it and raised it into the air, bringing it down hard, but I turned, letting my shoulder take the brunt of the sharp blade.
As I started to fall, a familiar face came into view. Hawk caught me and lowered me to the ground. He straightened back up, and the Walker fell to the ground next to me, his head split in two and barely attached to his neck by a thin flap of flesh.
Hawk dropped to his knees and gently rolled me on my back. My eyes focused on his face just before I spotted the knife raised above him. Ethan’s dagger reflected the light coming through the window as he prepared to bring it down on Hawk’s head.
“We have to get out of here,” Hawk said, slipping his arms under me. I shoved him away and swept Ethan’s legs out from under him, sending his knife flying into the air. He jumped to his feet before I could and caught it as it came back down. Then he turned back to Hawk to finish him off.
“No, Ethan!” I held my right hand to his chest, sending him flying back against the wall, knocking him out instantly.
Cabot, Jakob, and James were preoccupied with the Walkers on the other side of the theater. “Go!” I said to Hawk. “If they see you, you’re dead!”
He hesitated but changed his mind when he saw the fierce warning in my eyes. “Get out of here, Morgan.”
As Hawk’s wings sprouted, Jakob turned around. He spotted the hawk as it flew through the window and kept his eyes on it for a moment before looking at me. “Are you all right?” he yelled.
I glanced at Ethan. “I’m fine, but Ethan took a bad blow. He’s out.”
Cabot and James finished off the last few Walkers before heading over. They bent down to pick Ethan up and carry him to the stage. As I caught my breath and headed over to check on my brother, I spotted Olivia staring at me from the side door. Had she seen Hawk? More importantly, had she seen me save him?
Her eyes never left mine as I walked past her, and something told me I’d be facing the council by morning.
Chapter 19
Cabot was furious. The hunt had been brutal, and most of the Night Walkers had escaped due to our failed attempt to kill them while they slept. To make it worse, I think he blamed me for sticking my foot through the rotting floor and waking them up. To hell with him.
I had a faint scar on my wrist where the Night Walker had bitten me, but thanks to the power of my right hand, the bite was no worse than a scratch. My shoulder hadn’t fared as well, but Jakob applied a few drops of his blood to the wound to speed up the healing, so at least it no longer hurt like hell.
We’d suffered a few casualties with Ethan having a minor concussion and Rebecca getting her arm broken. But being immortal, she would heal completely by morning. I couldn’t say the same for my brother, but he was approaching his transition, which would speed up his healing considerably.
There was a knock on the terrace door when I got off the elevator and walked into the living room. My heart began to race when I saw Hawk standing outside with a relieved look on his face.
“Are you all right?” I asked him when I opened the door.
He looked at me with disbelief. “Am I all right? You could have been killed tonight.” His voice was sharp.
“This is what we do, Hawk. My clan hunts vampires. If anyone could have been killed tonight, it was you.”
Realizing it was silly to be having the conversation at the door, I held it open and waited for him to come inside, but he just stood there at the threshold staring at me. “Oh,” I said, feeling a little
awkward. “I guess I need to invite you in. I thought that was just fiction. Come in.”
I stepped back to avoid his brooding vibe when he walked inside. “It is fiction. I was just being polite. Do you enter someone’s house without an invitation?”
“Did I do something wrong?” I asked. “Because the way I remember it, you were the one about to get your head cut off right before I intervened.”
He walked past me and looked around the room. “Nice place. You’re richer than I thought.”
I ignored his comment and glanced at the conservatory, thinking about Monoclaude broken and gathered into a pile of shattered rocks near the waterfall. My mother would have known what to do with him, but I had no clue. In the morning I’d talk to Jakob.
“You want something to eat or drink?” As I headed for the kitchen, he grabbed my arm and spun me around. My instincts kicked in, and I automatically shoved him away.
He stumbled back and caught himself on the edge of the sofa. “Wow. You really are vicious. Twice now I’ve watched you wield a knife and slice off the heads on those vampires like it was nothing. It’s who you are, Morgan, isn’t it?”
“When it’s kill or be killed, yes. The Night Walkers are a threat to everyone in this city.”
For good or bad, the Winterbornes were killers. Upstanding citizens by day and assassins by night. But for some reason, the truth coming out of his mouth hit me in the gut. It was probably the look in his eyes more than anything. Last night I was straddling his lap and kissing him, and now he was looking at me like I was a coldhearted killer.
“You don’t understand what we are,” I said, trying to justify the bloodlust that lived inside me. Here I was, a woman who couldn’t step on a bug but found it second nature to cut off the heads of vampires, trying to convince the man who made my heart skip a beat every time I looked at him that I wasn’t a monster.
He took a cautious step toward me. “Then make me understand.”
“We’re Winterbornes. Hunting is what we were sent here to do.” I looked around the penthouse that the average person would never be able to afford in their lifetime. “My clan is very old. And yes, we’re rich, but we make sacrifices for that. Our Elders struck a deal with the gods centuries ago. We rid the world of Night Walkers, and in return they give us…”
Dark Legacy (House of Winterborne Book 1) Page 14
