by Chloe Neill
Neither was especially comforting.
“And how are you going to get to her without her noticing?” Mallory asked. “She’ll see a SWAT team coming.”
“The sorcerers will handle that,” Wilcox said. “They’ll arrange for cover for our folks, and neutralize Sorcha when she arrives.”
“And who will be protecting Merit and Mallory?” Ethan asked.
Lane made a sarcastic noise. “You’re saying they can’t protect themselves?”
“I’m saying they should not be thrown to the wolves with no regard for their safety.”
“We’re a little more worried about the safety of every other citizen in this city, Mr. Sullivan. All three million of them.”
“And what’s two lives in exchange for so many?” Ethan asked. “I wonder if your math would change if she’d demanded someone you loved.”
“But she didn’t, did she?” He glanced at Mallory and me. “This is a supernatural problem with a supernatural solution.”
Ethan took a step forward, teeth bared, and Lane flinched back instinctively. Probably his first smart move of the night.
“Say that again to me,” Ethan said. “Tell me again this is a supernatural problem. Show that ignorance one more time, and I will . . . educate you.”
There was little doubt his education would be fierce and physical. Sensing the same thing, the mayor held up a hand. “I understand your concerns, Mr. Sullivan. And I don’t take with negotiating with terrorists.”
“All evidence to the contrary,” Ethan muttered.
The mayor’s brows lifted. “While I am willing to give your people some leeway considering the circumstances, do consider in whose office you are currently standing.”
Ethan didn’t respond, but only a human could have missed the angry energy he pumped out like heat shimmering on asphalt.
Evidently satisfied with his silence, she looked at me. “We need a solution to this problem. You and Ms. Bell are that solution. We cannot allow her to destroy Chicago if a solution exists.”
“She won’t stop,” I said. “This won’t appease her.”
“Of course she will.” Lane stepped forward, arms crossed. “She’s been silent for four months. She heard about the wedding, became enraged, and used her magic accordingly. Or do you think it’s a coincidence the river froze the day after your wedding?”
That thought hadn’t even occurred to me, because Sorcha simply wouldn’t care. I thought she might have interrupted the wedding for the purpose of causing us pain—not because she cared whether we were married. We were irritants to her. Tools to be used. Nothing more, nothing less.
“She wasn’t silent because she was happy or growing a conscience,” Mallory said. “And she didn’t suddenly snap because Merit made it into the Tribune. Again. She’s been working on her magic.” She pointed to the window. “Case in point. This isn’t a card trick, and it’s not something you just whip up with a few pretty words. Sorcha’s an alchemist. That takes times, preparation, and practice.”
“And you are absolutely certain what type of magic she’s using? What she intends to do with it?”
Mallory had no response.
“Precisely,” the mayor said. “You can presume she’s planning something magical, but until you have something concrete, it remains supposition. For now, we cross the bridge in front of us—a very concrete deadline—using the tools at our disposal.” She settled her gaze on us. “I realize, ladies, that we are asking a lot of you. But you’re both longtime residents of Chicago. You were born here, raised here. Your friends and families are here. Consider what you love about this city, and whether the risk is worth saving it.”
When all else failed, go for the guilt.
She glanced at me, at Mallory, surmising we were the deciding votes here. We looked at each other, nodded.
The mayor was visibly relieved, which meant she really thought this plan had a chance of working. She sat back in her chair, which creaked beneath her. “Good,” she said. “Good.”
“We’ll prep for the op at the planetarium,” Wilcox said. “Oh four hundred hours. We’ll tell her the delivery will take place at oh four thirty hours. That gives us time to grab her, and you time to get somewhere dark before the sun rises again.”
“We’ll be there,” I said.
That gave us four hours to come up with a plan that didn’t suck.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
GIRLS ON DEADLINES
Catcher and Ethan were both furious. They managed to hold in their anger in the elevator down to the ground floor, until we walked into the dark street, empty of cars.
“I believe we all have things to say,” my grandfather said. “Perhaps we could find someplace warm to say them?”
Ethan gestured to the small hotel across the street, its front entrance squeezed between a chain doughnut shop and a shoe store, the windows dark in both of them. “They’ll be open despite the weather,” he said, “since they’ll already have guests in the rooms.”
We nodded silently, trudged through unplowed snow—thicker here than in Hyde Park, probably because we were closer to Towerline—and into the lobby.
The reception desk was empty, but light and sound blared from a small room beside it. Canned laughter echoed out from a late-night sitcom.
We dusted off as much snow as we could, walked to a seating area on the other side of the room. The hotel was small, the lobby prettily decorated but showing signs of wear—chipped baseboards, threadbare furniture, worn floors.
My grandfather took a seat first, gestured to us. “Why don’t you four talk through what you need to talk through, and then we’ll discuss the details?” Nonplussed by the possibility, he pulled out his phone, began scanning the screen. “I’ll just do a little reconnaissance.”
We left Mallory and Catcher to their own conversation. I was going to have a hard enough time dealing with Ethan; I certainly didn’t need two alpha males in a single argument.
We stood in the elevator bank, the doors of three of four elevators opened like maws waiting to be filled.
Ethan paced to one end of the short hallway, then back again, his gaze focused on me like a predator scenting prey. “You will not hand yourself over to a monster.”
“Ethan—”
But he took a step toward me, emerald fire in his eyes. “I am your husband, and your friend, and your lover. And I am also a soldier. I am a vampire. I am a monster, in no small part.” The emerald shifted, transmuted to quicksilver—one element battling another. “And if I must show them that in order to protect you, I will. Should it come to that, God have mercy on their souls. Because I will have none.”
“You know that I have to do this.” I lifted my chin. “And you know that I can do this.”
“She will kill you.”
“She will try. I won’t let her. Mallory won’t let her. She’s a supernatural, just like the rest of us. And she is a narcissist.” I lowered my voice, trying to make him understand. “She will destroy Chicago if she gets the chance, Ethan. Even if worse came to worst, my life is a small price to pay for that city.”
“There are other options.”
“Name one.”
Heat flared in his eyes again, and he took a step backward, put distance between us. “I want to both throttle you and lock you away.”
“You could try it.”
He looked back at me, eyebrow arched imperiously, a challenged king. “You think I couldn’t best you?”
We’d fought each other before, battled too many times to count. We’d both won battles, lost them. But that didn’t matter now. I walked away, giving myself some room, then looked back at him. “I know you’re torn, and I know why, because I know you.”
His face was still drawn with irritation, but he lifted his brows.
“On the one hand, I’m your family, your life. You love me
, and you’re drawn to protect me. That’s who you are. And on the other, I’m your Sentinel, and your partner. You know that I’m skilled because you trained me, and you wouldn’t have allowed any other result. And you’ve helped me be brave, and that makes you proud.”
He still looked irritated, but I thought that was because he knew I was right. And I was.
“That’s our dynamic,” I said. “That’s our life. You’re going to be proud, and you’re going to be worried. And the same goes for me, because if you’d had your way—and the voting hadn’t been rigged—you’d be King of All Vampires, and I’d have to worry about coups d’état and assassinations.”
A corner of his mouth lifted. “If the voting hadn’t been rigged?”
“Obviously it was rigged. You scored higher than Nicole, and you saved her life. Little wonder, since she’s the one who set up the voting in the first place.”
He just stared at me.
“Did you think I hadn’t figured that out?”
“You never mentioned it.”
I shrugged. “I didn’t want you setting yourself up for assassination. But look at the evidence—vampires decide to leave the Greenwich Presidium and she wants to be their leader, so she sets up an ‘election’ that pits you against her. And yeah, you have enemies, but enough to decide to vote her, a weaker vampire, into a position of authority? No. She wins, which is what she wanted all along. But she made it look like a democratic process, and then says the vote was close. So everybody thinks the vote was fair and that she was the democratic choice. She wins both ways.”
Something flashed in his eyes. “She rigged the votes. She was required to hold the electoral data, which we obtained. Jeff analyzed it for me.”
“And didn’t spill a word to us.”
Ethan smiled. “He’s good and reliable.”
“So she stuffed the ballot box.” I nodded, thinking it through. “We’d wondered how it was done.”
“We?”
“The guards.”
Ethan blinked. “Luc knew?”
“Of course.” I smiled at him. “You hired canny vampires, Ethan, unless you forgot. And to come full circle, you’d have been head of the GP, and I’ve have worried about you more. Instead, I worry about you the usual amount, and I know you’re capable of handling yourself—at least when you aren’t stepping in front of stakes for me.”
“Well worth it,” Ethan said, inching closer and wrapping his arms around me. The tension had left his body, but the magic still prickled. “You are uniquely skilled at diffusing my anger. Malik, as well, but with a very different energy.”
“I should hope so, as your wife and his would likely object.” I leaned up, pressed my lips to his. “I love you, Ethan. And I appreciate that you worry, that you’re concerned enough about me to do so. I won’t tell you to stop—as that wouldn’t be fair. But we have a good team, and you’ve trained me well. The rest of it—life, immortality, safety. None of that is guaranteed, even if I was House Librarian.”
He chuckled. “You’d have grown bored, Sentinel. Books should be your respite, not your prison.”
It had taken time for me to understand that was true, but I understood it now. “You’re right. And kicking bad-guy ass is so much more satisfying. If we’re going to survive, if Chicago’s going to survive, we have to do what scares us.”
“Last night, a lot seemed to scare you.”
“Yeah, it does. But that’s life, right? Isn’t that what you taught me? To be scared, but do the thing anyway?” I paused. “This doesn’t change anything about our conversation last night. If anything, doesn’t it prove I was right? That we’d bring a child into a world that’s not only dangerous for her, but everyone she cares about?”
“I could throttle your father,” he said, teeth bared. “I could throttle him for what he did to you.”
“The fact that you were assassinated in front of me doesn’t help.”
He growled, put a hand on my chin. “I intend to have you both.”
I didn’t mean to smile, didn’t mean to make light of the fire and emotion in his eyes. But the sheer “alphaness” of it tickled me. “The child isn’t even here yet, and you’re already overprotective.”
The mask of anger dropped incrementally.
“Does it matter that I said I wouldn’t hand you over to her?”
I put a hand on his cheek. “I’m not anyone’s to be handed over, or to be accepted. Mallory and I are volunteering for an op that might end Sorcha’s reign tonight. That’s not an opportunity I intend to pass up. And look at it this way: We are inherently more capable than the mayor and her cabal of bureaucrats.”
“So I shouldn’t consider you prey—I should consider you hall monitors?”
I grinned at him. “Exactly. But minus the teacher’s-pet overtones.”
“I believe we’ve just crossed into some personal territory.”
“Possibly.” I smiled at him. “Now that we’ve gotten the ego and bravery parts done with, can we talk about how truly and terribly bad this plan is?”
As expected, Ethan smiled, just a little. “It’s truly and terribly bad.” He leaned down and moved his mouth over mine, a whisper of a kiss. “I love you.”
“I can tell,” I said with a grin. And then yelped when he pinched me.
“I love you, too, you tyrant.”
Ethan snorted, took my hand. “That’s Darth Sullivan to you, Duchess.”
I just shook my head.
• • •
The hotel’s clerk had some questions about why vampires had gathered in her lobby. Because of that, because of the fact that we wanted to be out of downtown, and because we had better snacks at the House—or maybe that was just my reason—we headed back to the House to get into the nitty-gritty.
And because this fell under the banner of actual operational planning, we choose the Ops Room for our HQ.
Jeff came downstairs with bottles of beer in hand. “I’m not sure of the appropriate beverage for a freezing night in August before you mock surrender to a crazy sorceress. IPA? Lager? Red wine?”
“Blood works,” I said, and snagged a bottle, grimacing only a moment at the label. How, exactly, did one bottle blood that was “shade grown”?
It didn’t matter. I popped the cap, took a drink, appreciated the sudden and fulfilling comfort of it. Blood to a vampire, I thought, like mother’s milk.
When we were gathered around the table—Luc, Lindsey, me, Ethan, Catcher, Mal, my grandfather, and Jeff—we ran through our understanding of the magic she’d created thus far: alchemy, Egregore, and heat sink—used for some purpose we hadn’t yet figured out, but she probably intended to use it against us.
“The plan,” Luc said, pointing at the downstairs whiteboard with a laser pointer no one should have let him have, “is not great. Northerly Island isn’t a horrible choice for this particular op. The line of sight’s pretty good, and it gives you a bit of a buffer between magic and residential areas. On the other hand, there are only so many land forces you can line up on the island itself if she escalates. And we will be pushing it very, very close to dawn. We’re going to need evac options, but we’ll get to that.” He looked at Mallory. “The people Baumgartner has lined up?”
“None are strong enough to counter Sorcha.”
“Bigger issue,” I said. “We’re assuming she really wants Mallory and me. Isn’t it just as likely this is a showcase for whatever magic she’s been working on? A way to force us to watch it? To be the forced audience at her little magical display?”
“It is,” my grandfather said.
“Or to get us away from Cadogan House,” Luc said.
“I’ll talk to Grey, Greer,” Ethan said. “Maybe I can convince them to offer vampires to protect the House while we’re gone, just in case. As to the rest of it—the risks—the plan is what the plan is,�
�� Ethan said. “The mayor won’t change it now.”
“Agreed,” my grandfather said. “She’ll be preparing a statement, if she hasn’t issued one already, about how she’s working with us on a plan for the cool and collected handling of the situation.”
“She’ll probably hint that she intends to turn Merit and Mallory over,” Jeff said. “She’s savvy, or Lane is. They may be smart enough to lead Sorcha into believing they really are going to hand you over.”
I looked at Mallory. “If you were Sorcha, would you really believe it? If she said she was demanding we offer ourselves in sacrifice?”
“The demand is what the demand is,” Mallory said with a shrug. “The fact that she made it says she at least has a hope the mayor will pull through. Her arrogance helps—she thinks she’s scared the city senseless, so they’ll have no choice but to act. And she already sees us as Goody Two-shoes, although probably incompetent ones. Even if the mayor didn’t make us, she’d expect us to show up like sacrificial lambs.”
“The question, for us, is how we deal with that,” my grandfather said, leaning forward and linking his hands on the table. “How we layer our plan atop the mayor’s.”
“The floor is open,” Ethan said. “And no idea is a bad idea.”
“We could call in vampires,” Luc said. “Request the Houses send people out, surround the island to help in case she pulls something, and make sure she can’t get away.”
“After the puff-of-smoke trick she pulled at Towerline, she may not leave on foot,” Catcher said. “And more people means more casualties if she does pull something.”
Not a comforting point.
“We don’t know precisely what she’s planning until we know it,” Mallory said. “In the meantime, we plan for what we can. If Sorcha’s working alchemy, knocking out her crucible would be a good start, if it’s there.”
“Northerly Island is within the wards,” Catcher said. “So she can’t arrive magically without our knowing it.”
