by A. Vers
The hunter said nothing.
I jerked my chin at Ames, who gave me wide eyes and shook his head.
Great.
A vampire with a conscience.
The man started to shake, and I knew he was laughing. I balled up a fist and slammed it into his gut. His eyes flew wide and he caved inward, choking.
Ames let him fall to his knees on the dock. I looked at him. “What?” the vampire asked. “I cannot just attack a human. It is unfair for him and illegal for me.”
I threw my hands up in annoyance. “Fine. Pick him back up.”
Ames bent to grab the hunter. He scrambled out of reach and kicked out, taking Ames in the gut with one hard booted kick. I dove for him and my hands grasped his jeans. But he was already climbing to his feet.
“Intruders!” he yelled. “Intruders—”
A whirl of dark hair and violet light stopped before him. Morgan raised her knee and slammed it into the hunter’s groin. The man buckled, gagging as his delicate bits were shoved into his throat by vampire strength.
“Morgan,” I said, trying not to laugh. It was neither the time nor the place, but she had spunk.
She pressed her hands to her hips. “He was getting away.”
I walked to her and slid my hand into her hair. Palming the base of her skull, I bent my head and kissed her full lips. She lifted onto her toes. Her lithe frame pressed all along mine and my blood heated, pounding swiftly in response.
A pointed cough sounded behind me.
I kissed Morgan again.
Another cough.
Pulling away from her, I glowered over my shoulder at Ames. He held the hunter in his grasp, one long fingered hand clenched deep into the man’s neck and the vampire’s expression bordered on homicidal. “If you are done …”
My lips curved. “Hardly. But we are on a bit of a time crunch.”
He gave me a foul look as I sauntered over to the hunter in his grasp. “Here’s the thing,” I told the man. “I need to know where Beth is and someday you may need the ability to have kids. So why don’t you save both of us a lot of trouble and just tell me where she is.”
The hunter glowered at me. “Even if I knew where she was, I don’t ever want to birth a welp that will turn into a brat like you.”
“I am adorable,” I said with mock indignation. Ames looked like he sucked on a lemon. I ignored him. “So if you don’t know where Beth is, who would know?”
“Ask your pal Airgid,” the hunter snarled. “He was the last one with her.”
I rocked back. “Airgid? Why was he with my— I mean Beth?”
“No damn idea. After you and your fang girlfriend took off, she was the first one he questioned.” He tried to straighten in Ames’ hold, but the vampire didn’t let up. “He left not long after you did.”
My mind whirred.
Had he put two and two together? I had been told all my life that I favored my mother. Had Airgid seen it? Was he able to guess our connection?
I nodded at Ames. He clenched his fingers over the male’s pulse points, cutting off blood flow. It took seconds of that steady pressure and the hunter was out cold. Ames lowered him to the dock.
“Now what?” Morgan asked as she approached.
“Now we look for Airgid,” I said. “And I have a theory I know where to find him.”
We stood in the overgrown hedgerows just outside the abandoned farmstead. It seemed I was right in my thinking.
A dark SUV was parked between the barn and the trees, the interior empty and the sleek black metal barely visible thanks to the shadows around it.
Airgid had come back to the one place he expected us to return to. And if it hadn’t been for Ames appearing, it would have been mine and Morgan’s last stop on the way out of town.
Ames tracked his gaze over the empty house and then glanced at Morgan. “You were staying in there?” No doubt his vampire senses could smell the mildew even from the trees.
Morgan flushed a delicate pink. “It was not so bad.” Her lilac eyes rested on mine. “Cozy, almost.”
I didn’t even try to hide my smile.
Ames was far from amused, but he didn’t remark on it further. “Well, he’s here. How are you wanting to proceed?” he asked me.
“I’ll go in,” I said. Morgan stiffened. I peered sidelong at her. “You can hear if there is any trouble, but Airgid doesn’t want you. He wants me. I’m going to give him more than he bargained for.”
“But, Ryder—”
“I know,” I said, silencing her. I could see the worry in her pretty eyes, the tightness of her mouth. “You two can be back up. But only if there is no other choice.”
“Okay,” Ames said, but Morgan was still shaking her head.
I gripped her face between my hands and she stopped. “Please wait here. I don’t want you getting hurt again.”
Her eyes darted.
Ames clicked his tongue, breaking her focus. “Sorry,” he said, not sounding like he was sorry at all. “But if I had to endure more, my head was going to explode.”
“I could only hope,” I muttered.
His gold eyes gleamed. “What?”
“Nothing,” I said as I climbed to my feet. “Absolutely nothing.”
I pushed through the trees and slipped into the shadows just beside the house. Pressing my spine tight to the old siding, I peered into the window of the main room. The glass was so grimy and the space so dark, it was an impenetrable blackness beyond the sill.
Ducking, I moved along the wall to the back room where Morgan and I had stayed. The room was just as dark. I gripped the sash and heaved upward.
The swollen wood slid up with a soft squeal. I waited a beat, then ran back the way I came toward the back door.
Soft steps sounded in the house.
Maybe it was being around vampires so much, but humans were loud creatures. Even the stealthiest of us all made noise. Our breathing, our steps. The creak of older joints and the thump of our hearts.
No wonder vampires and shifters could pick us off easily.
I waited until the steps halted and climbed onto the porch. The door was closed, but not locked, my makeshift alarm cast to the side.
Airgid wanted us to come in.
I opened the panel a crack, just wide enough to see, as my heart thundered like it would burst through my ribs.
The kitchen was quiet, empty. But as soon as I squeezed through the narrow gap, a creak sounded in the hall. I shut the door with a click so soft it seemed like a mechanical whisper in the dark.
A shadow moved beside the doorway, the inky darkness broken only by a pitch figure that was more substantial than the gloom it hovered in.
I stopped breathing, waiting for him to step into the kitchen.
Surely that click had been louder than I thought. It seemed louder.
The figure kept going. I sagged into the door. My exhale was tremulous. But it wasn’t fear that sped my pulse. It was the hunt.
For all I had told Morgan, hunting was in my blood now. It was when I felt most alive. Hunting and kissing her.
I pushed from the door and slunk to the counter. My boots scrubbed the old linoleum. I debated strongly on taking them off.
One of the dull kitchen knives sat on the towel still, the black plastic handle half melted from someone’s carelessness.
I plucked it from the gray fabric and held it at my side.
I was not above wounding Airgid to get Beth away. And he had to know that.
If he figured out who she was to me, he had to know I would come. How could I not?
The hall was empty as I slipped through the archway. The room across from it was too. I took a step and stopped, listening. Silence beat like a drum in my ears.
Indecision warred as my eyes alighted on the air mattress Morgan and I had shared. I glanced down the hall and dove into the room.
Lifting my pillow, I reached into the end with the hole I had made, plucking out the ring from the secondhand store. My finge
rs closed over it. It was the one thing I refused to leave behind. I shoved the ring into my pocket and walked out.
Sliding my boots instead of walking, I traversed the weak floor, staying close to the wall. It kept anyone from sneaking up on my back, and the floor was more solid close to the bands that supported the wall.
I peered around the corner into the main room. The space was empty, but the door leading up to the attic was open.
I gripped the knife tighter.
Of course it was.
Stepping into the room, I walked to the open door and leaned next to the sill. Soft voices trickled down the derelict steps. I raised my foot.
White mist swirled out from the stairs, spiraling up my leg and around my body. I backpedaled fast. The mist stopped. I stared into the dark corridor as the plume began to build into a softly pulsing cloud.
The spirit glowed with an arcane iridescence. But it came no closer.
Nor could I get around it.
Cursing under my breath, I flapped my hand at it, trying to shoo it in one direction or another. It rose and fell in place, bobbing like a sentient puff of smoke. I hung my head.
Dammit.
A creak sounded near the top of the stairs and I ducked back behind the open door, heart in my throat. The spirit faded back into the Ether, leaving the area pitch once more. Sure steps descended one plank at a time. A figure passed beside the crack and a tall male form stepped off the last riser into the main room of the house.
Airgid.
He kept going, delving deeper into the dwelling.
I waited three very long heartbeats to make sure he wouldn’t return immediately before racing up the attic stairs.
The room was in shambles, as it had been several nights before. I navigated the boxes and mildewed fabric. Soft light formed in front of me and this time I did not hesitate.
“Where?” I whispered to the small spirit.
It darted through the maze, leading me toward the rear of the low hung chamber.
At the back of the room, tied to the frame of the old day bed, her head lolled to one side, was Beth.
I raced to her side and palmed the side of her face. Dried blood matted the thick hair at her temple, but her breathing was steady in the quiet. She stirred with a soft groan at my touch. “Shh,” I whispered. “It’s Ryder. Come on. I need you to wake up.”
“Huh …” She lifted her gaze and her eyes widened with fear and guilt. “No. You can’t be here.”
I didn’t answer. My eyes scanned her wrists and the heavy rope keeping them to the wood headboard. I laid the knife over the thinnest piece and started to saw through her bindings.
“Ryder,” she breathed. “You have to go. I told the girl to get you far from here.”
“And if you think I’m leaving you tied to a bed, you’re delusional and a deserter.” My words were harsh, I knew it. But all the anger of the last twelve years was boiling inside me, and she was the closest target.
“I had no choice,” she pleaded. “Just like you have no choice now. You need to leave me here. Get out and run far away.”
The first strand snapped, freeing one of her arms. I went to work on the other. “I’m not doing this for you,” I told her. “I’m doing this because I refuse to live with that weight on my shoulders.”
Her dark eyes were heavy as she stared up at me in the dimness. I couldn’t look in them. Not for long.
The second rope frayed, then broke. With a hiss, she lowered her arms and sat up. The spirit darted in, whirling around my head.
She jolted back. “What the hell?”
I held up a hand. “It’s okay. The house is haunted, but the spirit is friendly.”
Her eyes glued to the weaving apparition. “I’m getting too old for this shit,” she muttered, rubbing her wrists.
I glanced at the ghost and then back to the stairwell. “Keep watch,” I said. It bobbed again and took off out of my line of sight.
I moved to Beth’s feet and pressed the blade to the loop. The stairs creaked at the other end of the attic and my hands stilled.
Beth shoved at me. “Go. Hide.”
Swearing, I raced to the shadows beside a heavy looking hutch as she laid back, gripping the broken bits of rope. It wouldn’t pass close inspection, but maybe it would be enough to keep Airgid complacent.
His soft steps rounded the stack of boxes that made up the narrow aisle toward the bed. In the dimness, he was even more solemn than usual. “Awake, I see?” he said to Beth.
She glowered at him, and it was the same expression I had seen for years when I looked in the mirror. “Why are you doing this, Chris?”
He leaned against the wall with a sigh. “You know why,” he told her. “I deserve to know him and so do you.”
Her expression twisted. “You deserve nothing. And do you really think this is the way to make it happen?”
“He isn’t exactly giving me a choice.” Airgid turned his head away, staring back toward the stairs. “I knew the moment I saw him that he was so very much like you. Just as bull headed. But also just as strong.” He peered at her. “He is a hunter, Annabeth. Regardless of your worries, that crackpot husband of yours trained him, anyway.”
“Leave Paul out of this,” Beth said, her tone hardening. “I know he thought he had a reason. But you didn’t give me a choice, either.”
Chris’s blue eyes sharpened. “I raised you the best I could, Annabeth. And I warned you that Paul wouldn’t be able to handle the boy when you returned to the fold.”
My heart stopped beating and I stared at them both from the shelter of the shadows.
Raised her?
I glanced between them, but there was no familial resemblance.
What was he talking about?
“I wouldn’t have had to leave my family if you had just left the Reads alone,” Beth snapped and the last name sparked through me. It was Morgan’s last name. “If you had just turned them over to the government, Nancy and Rex would both still be with the Horn.”
“Nancy was my flesh and blood, Beth,” Chris snapped, whirling on her. “My daughter. I hated sending her into their colony. Into their home. But she was sure she could get the evidence we needed to take the entire Read family out. And they killed her.” He turned away, his shoulders taut in the dimness.
“It wasn’t your fault,” Beth told him. “But going after Ryder doesn’t change her death. It doesn’t bring her back. It doesn’t fix what is broken in Rex.” She leaned up in her bindings. “Ryder is just a boy. My boy.” Her voice cracked. “I never wanted this life for him.”
“She has her mother’s coloring,” Chris said softly. “You had to notice.”
Beth stiffened on the bed. “It’s not her.”
“How poetic would that be, Annabeth? For your boy to fall in love with the daughter of the family that killed your sister? The very same vampires that tried to kill you?”
My hold on the knife weakened and I almost dropped it on the floor. The ring in my pocket suddenly seemed to weigh a ton. Or perhaps that was the truth as it settled on my shoulders.
“There is no way the girl is Morgan Read. No way, Chris. Thomas would never leave her out in the open. Not after so long.”
The world seemed to open up under me, swallowing my insides in ice.
Morgan.
Her parents are the ones that came after Beth?
But …
No. That couldn’t be true. It couldn’t—
I pressed the heels of my hands to my temples hard enough my head ached, grinding the handle of the knife into my flesh. It didn’t make sense. None of it made sense.
“Believe what you want,” Airgid continued. “I’m telling you now, the girl is the Read heiress. And our boy is with her.” He crossed his arms with a smug smile. “He will bring her here and I will kill Thomas’ daughter like he killed mine. And with my grandson heartbroken and lost, I will bring him into the fold and train him just like I trained you. Ryder will be the best hunter the Horn
has ever seen. He will be the perfect soldier you never were.”
Chapter 28
Morgan
Ames sighed beside me. “Well, this is awfully exciting.” I shot him a look and he scoffed. “What? He has been in there for how long? There has been no sounds. No cries for aid. I cannot even hear his heartbeat anymore.”
I worried at my lower lip as I stared at the dark house. “We should have heard something by now.”
“Perhaps they killed each other off,” Ames muttered.
“Ames,” I said, horrified.
“I won’t apologize for disliking any of this, Morgan,” he told me. “We should be on our way far from this whole sordid mess by now. Not hiding in the bushes behind an abandoned house. One that I still can’t believe you were staying in.”
“What about you, Ames?” I asked. “Have you been treating yourself to luxurious hotels with the blood money your father got from hiding all my parents’ kills?”
His gold gaze flashed. “No, I have not. I haven’t touched father’s money since we came to Lokworth.”
I fell silent.
He peered back at the house and the wind lifted his midnight hair, bringing more of his scent to me. “I renounced him the day we left for the academy.”
“What?”
“I am the bastard heir. I have no title. No ties to the Treymore name.”
“Then how have you been staying at Lokworth? You weren’t working, and the tuition is –”
“High?” he finished. His expression morphed into cool arrogance. “I worked for room and board at Lokworth. I was just careful at hiding it.”
I appraised him, noting the aristocratic lift to his nose. His dark, severe brows. “Why did you never tell me, Ames?” I asked, and could not quite keep the pleading note out of my voice. “I trusted you. And you lied. For years.”
“You didn’t trust me, Mor,” he murmured. “You tolerated me.”
My lips parted to argue and he held up one long fingered hand. “There at the end you were starting to. But I know you, Mor. I’ve been around you for years. You saw what I wanted everyone else to see and took me at face value.”
