There were a dozen fancy cars already slotted into the parking lot and the unmistakable form of Algerone Lamonia swept inside, past the guards. He smiled genially when he spotted us and waved. Then he disappeared from sight.
“Shit!” I hissed.
Dominic put on another burst of speed. The guards had either been told to let him in, or were too stunned by our unorthodox appearance to do anything. Dominic mounted the stone steps into the building, jostling me. Pain shot down my spine with every step.
He sprinted down a long, tile hall toward the back room, following the sucking aura of the vampire as it retreated further into the building.
Dominic barreled toward the last set of doors in the hall. I was clutching at him, white-knuckled with pain. My control was slipping, and with it, my iron grip on the demon inside of me. I was growing warmer with every passing second as the rage and helplessness fed its power.
Dominic set me down just as we reached the end of the hall. He parted my bathrobe, seized a Glock from the pouch that Landon had strapped onto me, and kicked the door in.
The room beyond was probably a conference room. It was hard to tell. It was nicer than any conference hotel room that I’d ever been inside. The carpets were plush, the drapes a rich burgundy color that offset the golden wallpaper nicely. The table was probably from the 17th or 18th century and was beautifully crafted. At the head of it stood a pair of familiar faces.
One was Findlay. He had a deep purple bruise on one side of his face where Geoffrey had hit him. He stood a little to the side, merely a shadow compared to the woman he flanked.
Sienna Vogel was a work of art. As in, she resembled a beautiful, but cold and rather stiff statue that one might find in a museum. Her platinum blonde hair had been pulled into a tight chignon. There wasn’t a wrinkle or spot on her blue pantsuit. Her fine-boned face was set in lines of harshest disapproval and her green eyes shone with undisguised contempt from behind her thick, cat-eye spectacles.
Beneath her gaze, I felt like something that the proverbial cat had dragged in. There was the distinct sound of weapons being cocked behind us. It seemed like there had been more guards in reserve. I didn’t glance back to see how many automatic weapons were pointed at my back. I was sure that I didn’t want to know.
“Finch.” Her tone was so arctic that even Dominic flinched. “What are you doing here?”
“Stopping this,” he said. “They’re here to hurt you, Miss Vogel.”
“He is here to sign a treaty with the Trust,” she snapped. “A treaty that has been in the works since before Catalina’s accident. House Lamonia has agreed to ally with us in order to bring down House Grieves.”
“That’s complete and utter horse shit,” I snarled. “You can’t trust them, Sienna. You know that.”
“We must do what we can in times of war,” Sienna said calmly, steepling her fingers together, as though she was my damned teacher, about to impart a lesson. “And you are dangerously close to violating your parole, Miss Valdez. I can have you executed if you make a move toward the dignitaries from House Lamonia.”
Ashby, Algerone, and Arabella sat on the left side of the table, in dark suits and sunglasses. Arabella looked about ready to dance a jig, in a sequined black dress lined with scarlet. Ashby was smirking at me. But it was Algerone’s look of triumph that sent me over the edge.
“What do they get in return, huh?” I demanded. “What on earth could they possibly want?”
“Peace, Iron Heart,” Algerone purred. “We live in a more civilized time now. There is no need for killing any longer. House Grieves must be dealt with like the rabid dogs that they are.”
I had to hand it to the guy. He made it sound plausible, and I knew his game. Sienna would see it as a move on a chessboard. She didn’t trust the vampires any more than we did. But to her sharp, pattern-oriented mind this would seem like a turf war. It made sense for Lamonia to wipe out Grieves. They were bitter rivals.
The rage spilled over and I jammed a hand into my robe, seizing a single-action Browning from the pouch. I hadn’t even raised it before the unthinkable happened.
Findlay pulled a gun from the inside of his coat pocket, pressed it to the back of Sienna Vogel’s head, and pulled the trigger. There was a split-second of awareness in her expression before the bullet tore out through the front of her face and lodged in the table beneath her.
With a cry of rage and pain, I let loose, firing as many bullets into Algerone Lamonia as I could. If I could kill the undead bastard, maybe the trip hadn’t been wasted.
I was only dimly aware of the fight going on behind me. The Trust guards had opened fire. At me, at Dominic, or at Findlay, I wasn’t sure. Dominic’s malleable silver shield spread to cover the entire doorway, but not before one of the stray bullets hit me between the eyes. And for the second time that day, I collapsed to the ground.
I was dead before my head had a chance to settle on the plush conference room carpet.
chapter
25
I WOKE SHIVERING AND WET. Gooseflesh strained every inch of bare skin. My stomach pitched to and fro with the motion of the surface beneath me.
I was almost afraid to open my eyes and discover where I’d been shoved now. The last time I’d died, I’d woken in what amounted to a nest of vipers and told that I was going to end the world. It had to get better from there, right?
Still, I gathered what clues I could from my surroundings before gathering the courage to look around. The surface beneath my face was hard and radiated so much cold that I decided that it must be metal. Only metal captured so much of the surrounding temperature and projected it back so thoroughly. It didn’t have the gritty texture of stone, and her searching fingers located what was unmistakably a seam lined with rivets.
The air smelled of salt and the sea. There was the low drone of sound from a speaker not far away and if I concentrated I could just make out the high, pompous voice of a newscaster.
“Tragedy strikes today in Hamburg,” the woman said, layering her voice with patently false sympathy. “Trust representative Sienna Vogel was assassinated by a pair of terrorists opposed to the alliance with American Vampire Council member Algerone Lamonia…”
The words sent dread sluicing down my spine and I finally dragged my eyelids open, peering at my surroundings through bleary eyes. I was lying face down on the deck of a ship. It was a huge thing straight out of a history book. An ironclad. How I’d gotten onto it or how it had been stolen from storage, I had no idea.
A boot connected with my ribs, sending me a few feet across the slick metal deck.
“I tried to wake you nicely, Iron Heart.” The familiar voice wormed its way into my ears like the most insidious of melodies. No matter how much I’d like to forget it, I couldn’t.
“Ashby,” I growled. “What the hell is going on here? Where am I?”
Ashby knelt beside me, giving me a look at his crisp uniform. It was a military uniform from an earlier century. American or possibly British. It was impossible to tell in the dim light and through the layer of foul-smelling fog that hung over us. His smile was a white slash in the darkness. Even my new, acute senses couldn’t make out much more than that in the gloom. It was like the sun had been swallowed by the vapor all around us.
“Sorry, I just can’t help but hit snooze when I’m recovering from a case of death,” I quipped. “Answer, me Ashby. What’s going on here?”
My hands were bound, but I pushed myself into sitting position and Ashby helped me the rest of the way up. He held out an arm for me like he was a gentleman about to escort me to dance. I got the impression that it wasn’t a request. I slid my arm into his and he hummed his approval.
“You, my lovely girl, have given us more than we ever dreamed. We were originally going to have an insurgent from House Grieves spark the war, you know. But your little incursion was so much better.”
He motioned to a small screen propped against a railing. It showed the same
reporter I’d heard showing scenes of destruction within the conference room. It looked a lot worse than when I’d died in it. The table had been destroyed. The walls had been swiss-cheesed, and more than one vampire had been sacrificed to make the scene look convincing.
“Disgruntled members of the Trust, Dominic Finch, and Natalia Valdez are thought to be behind this heinous attack. Both are still at large and there is a substantial reward for their capture.”
“You won’t get away with this, Lamonia,” a voice snarled from the darkness. My unbeating heart seemed to unclench at the sound of the voice, and I sucked in a breath of relief.
Dominic’s strong, sturdy frame emerged out of the darkness. He was being strong-armed by a pair of vampires that could have been at home in a WWE line-up. Without his wand, his weapons, and the advantage of surprise, there was no way he was getting out of their grip.
Ashby’s chuckle still made my blood heat. Damned bastard. I was going to rip out his voice box before I killed him. “But we already have. You performed most admirably, Tempest. We would never have been able to so masterfully bring the Trust to heel without you.”
“You have one man on the inside,” I snapped. “Findlay isn’t going to win you the approval of the entire Trust. We’re still fragmented. You can’t get any of them to agree to anything.”
He wagged a finger at me. “That’s where you’re wrong, Iron Heart. You see, with their own members seeming to plot against them and a media frenzy pushing for justice, their need for good press will out. They need to present a united front. They won’t oppose a bill that is put forth for the seeming good of humankind.”
I ground my teeth. Put that way, it was hard to argue with. The Trust was notorious for bending to the will of the current political climate. With the eyes of the world upon them, they wouldn’t vote down the bill that would ensure the safety of humans and demi-humans. The war with House Grieves would accomplish two things. First, to rid themselves of a hated enemy with the tacit approval of the world’s governments. And secondly, to act as sleight of hand while they accomplished the real goal–the destruction of their oldest and most dangerous foe.
Which meant there was only one place this hunk of metal could be floating toward.
“Wolf Isle,” I whispered. “You’re taking us to wolf isle.”
Ashby patted my head. If he’d had a cookie, he’d probably have shoved it into my mouth for being such a smart little girl. I scowled at him and resisted the urge to test out my new fangs on his smug face.
“Astute, Iron Heart. Yes, we are about to dock. If the three-day time limit of your curse continues, we estimate it will take about a month for the demon to take root fully and reignite the atolls.”
My stomach pitched again. I only had a month to live. And how much of that time would I be me? How long could I keep a hold of my humanity?
The ship came to a shuddering halt. I still couldn’t see much past the fog.
“Do try not to get eaten,” Ashby said cheerfully, leading me to the edge of the boat. Then he picked me up, hoisted me above his head, and chucked me over the side.
For a few seconds, I was airborne, hands scrabbling through the empty air, trying to find purchase. And then I landed hard, my mouth and nose filling with wet sand. The shore of the island tried to suck me down and the tide lapped at my toes, trying to yank me out to sea.
A moment later a shape landed a foot away from me. Dominic’s swearing was less vehement that it might otherwise be, as the impact had knocked the wind out of him.
Before Dominic or I could get our wits about us, the ship backed away from shore.
“Well that was a disaster,” I muttered, watching the ship retreat. It was night already, and the moon and stars flickered in the navy sky. The dark blue waters erased the horizon.
“Why is it that when I get involved, things go from bad to worse?”
“I suppose you’re just gifted,” Dominic said. He found a piece of broken glass and cut through his restraints, then helped me with mine. When I was free, his hand sought mine in the darkness. Our fingers twined together and a flash of warmth chased away the worst of the water’s chill. If I had to be trapped on an island full of deadly, deranged wolves, he’d be the one I’d want at my back.
“Maybe they should start calling me the Cursed,” I mused. “Or the Damned. Damned Iron Heart has a nice ring to it, doesn’t it?”
Dominic laughed. “Maybe. Come on. We can’t stay here. The vampire was right about one thing. If we stay put we’ll be eaten. The wolves in the last stages of the disease can’t help it. They don’t resume human form and they lose their human minds. They’re just rabid dogs at that point.”
And then a growl split the air, raising more goosebumps on my skin. The primal part of my mind that had evolved to fear the dark and the predators in it shrieked like a little girl as a pair of glowing eyes emerged from the fog, almost four feet off the ground.
A wolf the size of a cart horse prowled toward us, teeth bared. Its muzzle was coated in fresh gore. It had killed recently. Then it threw its head back and howled. A dozen others joined the harmony. We were surrounded on all sides, with the ocean at our back and vampires waiting offshore to kill us.
The lead wolf lunged, going straight for Dominic’s throat.
The End
chapter
1
HAVE YOU EVER TRIED FIGHTING a werewolf in a terry cloth bathrobe? Trust me when I tell you it is both difficult and demeaning.
We’d been dumped on this Godforsaken island not three minutes ago, and already something was trying to kill us. That had to be a record.
A werewolf the size of a carthorse lunged for Dominic. On instinct, I leaped forward, seizing its tail and yanked hard. The wolf’s inches-long canines snapped closed mere inches from Dominic’s throat.
The wolf let out a yelp as I dragged it backward several feet. Its front claws dug deep furrows in the sand. If I’d been up to the full strength that my newly acquired demon supplied me with, I should have been able to throw it into its fellows, knocking them on their hind ends like so many bowling pins and laugh while Dominic and I beat a hasty retreat.
As it was, I barely had enough strength to keep the thing from stalking forward to put an end to my reluctant partner in the madness.
“Nat, watch out!” Dominic shouted.
I’d reacted on instinct to preserve his life. My primal hindbrain clued me into the problem about three point five seconds before the two werewolves that had accompanied the leader plowed into me, knocking me on to my ass. The wet surf gave easily beneath my weight and I slid several feet on my back before the wolves descended on me.
I got a good look at my attackers before they went for my throat. Neither were quite as big as the leader, but they didn’t miss the mark by much. If either were under three hundred pounds in their wolf forms, I’d eat my bathrobe. It was hard to see much through the fog around the island, but the larger of the two looked like a monstrously large timber wolf, while the other resembled the red wolf species more closely. My death must have been worse than I thought. I hadn’t been this muddled the last time I’d resurrected. I barely had the sense to scramble away from their snapping jaws. The gray wolf managed to sink one elongated fang into the crook of my elbow.
I cocked a fist back and socked it right in the snout. Something crunched, and I prayed it wasn’t the bones in my hand. I’d never tested my newfound super-strength against a werewolf before. Who’s to say they weren’t a tougher customer than the vampires?
The gray wolf danced back a few steps, lifting its paws up in a gesture of bewildered pain as if it couldn’t quite believe I’d had the gall to break its nose. It let out a sound that was caught between a whimper and a whine.
A pang of sympathy coursed through me before I could lock it down. These wolves weren’t evil. They weren’t the boogeymen I’d been trained to fight when I’d become an enforcer with the Trust. Hell, they probably didn
’t deserve to get shipped here. It wasn’t their fault they’d contracted a horrific disease. The plague that the vampires had forced Elle to engineer three years ago was like rabies, the black death, and the common cold all rolled into one uber germ. It was highly infectious, stole your reason and your ability to control yourself, and ultimately killed you.
Even now I could see the oozing sores, the necrotic flesh. If we hadn’t been pitted against them, they’d probably be dying anyhow. The wolves had fur falling out in patches and there was a feral gleam in their eyes. They might have been good people once. But now they were dangerous animals, unable to be reasoned with. And I’d just drawn the blood of one of their pack members. Shit.
The red wolf surged forward and, faster than my eyes could track it, a paw the size of a dinner plate knocked me senseless. My head hit the sand so hard it bounced. The wolf’s snarl sounded like the crack of thunder in my ear. I braced for the worst.
And then the werewolves reared back, heads swiveling once more to face Dominic. A rock bounced off the back of the red wolf’s head, landing with a dull thunk on the shore.
“Come on you mangy mutts!” he shouted at them. “You want a fight? Pick on someone your own size.”
I bit back my instinctive reply to his show of machismo. Though I wanted to claim that I was probably the bigger badass, what with having a line straight to the powers of a primordial demon, I wasn’t performing at my peak. So I let him toss another fist-sized stone at the werewolf attacking me while I regained my feet.
What was I supposed to do here, exactly? I had no weapons. I’d been trained in a couple of martial arts, but I doubted Judo was going to do much against a wolf that was two or three times my body mass and a head taller than me. Martial arts usually hinged on the fact that your opponent was upright and had at least a modicum of human intelligence.
I shifted my weight to my back foot for balance, so at least I wouldn’t get knocked onto my ass again. As I did so, something poked me hard in the thigh. My unbeating heart was entirely motionless in my chest, so it couldn’t actually leap at the sensation. But from the shape of it, it must be…
Agent of Magic Box Set Page 20
