Rhoswen turned to take Carling’s glass and place it on the tray, her expression the blank smoothness of the perfect servant. Both Niniane and Carling watched as Rhoswen placed the bandages in the fireplace and lit them with a taper. They watched in silence as the small flame flared and died.
Freed from pain and lethargy, Niniane’s thoughts arrowed back to Tiago. He had to be worried about her, unless he had some way to track the direction of the Djinn’s transport. She didn’t have any idea about Tiago’s capabilities as a tracker, other than Dragos always swore Tiago was the best at what he did. It was possible Tiago already knew she was safe with Carling (and she was, wasn’t she?).
Maybe Tiago was relieved to be rid of her. And why wouldn’t he be? He had made it clear from the moment he arrived that he considered the whole trip to be a pain in the ass. She bit her lip as she fought the urge to squirm.
Whether he was relieved or not, she knew the obsessive nature of a Wyr sentinel. She had been taken on his watch. He wouldn’t rest until he got her back, which meant—
She sucked in a breath as certainty settled into place. He didn’t know where she was.
“I’m sure Tiago has learned his lesson,” she said to Carling. With an effort she kept her voice steady and devoid of all urgency. “Now I would like to let him know that I’m with you and that I’m all right.”
A shadow of ugliness crossed Carling’s lovely features. The Vampyre said in a smooth voice, “Why don’t I just send one of my attendants with a message?”
Niniane looked at her. “Because we both know he might be too distracted to listen to anything your attendant might say. Then you could continue to take your revenge on him for blowing off your earlier message.”
“Distracted,” said Carling, dark eyes glittering. “I like that.”
Whatever else might be communicated, one overall particular message was coming in loud and clear. You ignored the Vampyre Queen very much at your own peril. Carling wasn’t going to budge on this unless she was pushed.
Niniane sighed and said, point-blank, “Give it up, Carling. You and I have a terrific chance right now to develop a good alliance. It’s been a long time since you’ve had a good alliance with the Dark Fae. But it isn’t going to happen if you insist on tormenting Tiago with my disappearance—or if you insist on tormenting him for any other reason.”
“How interesting. You would put a potential Nightkind–Dark Fae alliance in jeopardy over one bad-mannered, bad-tempered Wyr.”
Niniane tapped a finger on the arm of her chair. It wasn’t wise to lose your temper with the Vampyre Queen either. After a moment, she kept her voice measured as she said, “I will remind you that Tiago followed me to Chicago after I went missing, and he saved my life. This is after the Wyr provided me with shelter and protection from my uncle Urien for almost two hundred years. Don’t force me to choose between you, because you won’t win.”
Carling gave her a faint smile and conceded the point. “Fair enough.”
Something crashed nearby. This time Niniane couldn’t control her jump. She heard a sharp shout down the hall, a growl, and another booming crash. It sounded like a door had been slammed off its hinges. The Vampyre turned her head toward the hall. Carling remarked, “Apparently choosing a method of communication with your Wyr has become a moot point.”
TIAGO! Oh gods, no. He couldn’t attack the Vampyres or, with the mood Carling was in, she might very well have him killed.
Niniane bolted out of her chair and ran to the suite door. Somehow Carling was right beside her, long graceful fingers curling around the door handle. It seemed to take the Vampyre forever to open the door. As soon as she could, Niniane slipped through the opening and darted into the hall.
She took a mental snapshot of the scene in one horrified glance.
A heavy fire door lay on its side against a wall thirty feet away. Tiago’s massive figure filled an open doorway that led to a stairwell. Three male Vampyres stood in a semicircle in front of him, each one a beautiful, lethal weapon. The blonde Vampyre Rhoswen had positioned herself between Tiago and her mistress. Several humans stood in open doorways, and some of them had guns. All of the guns were pointed at Tiago.
And Tiago—he was something out of a nightmare. He had weapons: a sword strapped to his back, guns in holsters. He had partially shapeshifted, a clear indicator of a Wyr caught in some kind of extreme emotion such as fear or rage. The bones of his face were alien, shifted into wrongness. His chest, arms and legs were wider and rippled with muscles where muscles weren’t supposed to be. Talons tipped his powerful hands.
When Niniane appeared in the hall, Tiago’s dark, savage face turned to her.
His eyes.
Their normal obsidian color and sardonic expression were gone. They blazed with white fire.
Niniane whispered, “Call off your people if you want them to live.”
“My people will do their job,” Carling said.
The Vampyre sorceress had lost her habitual amused detachment. Instead she stared at Tiago with a combination of anger and fascination. She also shimmered with vitality, her skin, eyes and hair more lustrous than ever.
After one quick, incredulous glance, Niniane dismissed the enigma that was Carling. She turned back to the tableau. Tension trembled in the air like the shiver of an avalanche before it crashed down a mountain range. She held a hand out and tried to smile at the monster down the hall as she walked toward him.
“It’s okay now, Tiago,” she said. She tried for gentle and soothing. Instead she got scared and shaky. Crap. She forced a false sense of conviction into her voice. “Listen to me. Everything’s okay.”
The monster’s blazing gaze fixed on her. Tiago started toward her, and the avalanche came down.
The dark-haired Vampyre nearest Tiago moved to attack so fast he was a blur. If Niniane had been human, she might have missed it.
Tiago’s enormous fist pistoned. He punched the Vampyre, whose body shot through the air and slammed through a wall. Tiago kept moving forward.
The other two Vampyres attacked. Tiago grabbed one. He spun on his heel and threw the Vampyre into the stairwell. With a wicked slash of fangs and talons, the third Vampyre leaped on him. Crimson blood spurted from wounds that appeared on Tiago’s face and neck.
A blinding white-hot sear of flame flashed out of Tiago’s eyes. Every light in the hall exploded as the lightning bolt struck the third Vampyre in the chest. The Vampyre flew back fifteen feet and slid along the ground to lie motionless. Thunder exploded in a rolling boom. It sounded like a rocket launcher had been fired in the hall. All the while, Tiago continued to plow toward her, an unstoppable juggernaut.
The humans armed with guns chambered rounds. They were far too slow for this kind of fight. Niniane would have called them cannon fodder except they were in addition to the Vampyres who were already occuping Tiago’s attention. So many stood against Tiago, including Rhoswen, who hung back and stood in readiness to protect her mistress. Then there was the immovable object, Carling, the king cobra of the nest, who watched the conflict and waited in the background with all of her considerable venom at full strength.
Tiago against Carling. If those two came head-to-head, if they actually fought each other, neither would stop until one was dead. Between the two of them they could raze Chicago to the ground.
No.
For the second time in one day, terror mowed down her reasoning skills.
She didn’t think. She didn’t calculate risk or odds. She acted.
She flung herself forward and shrieked, “STOP!”
Niniane may not have much in the way of size or strength, but as a Dark Fae, she was slippery-fast. She was much faster than any of the humans. She was certainly faster than Rhoswen, who flung out a hand to stop her but acted far too late.
At her scream, Tiago spun from the fallen Vampyre. She leaped for him with her arms outstretched, blindly trusting him to catch her. She caught a blurred glimpse of that monstrous savage face a
nd the white blaze in eyes, which were overcome with astonishment. He snatched her out of the air and whirled to place his body between hers and the others. One tremendous hand covered the back of her head as he jammed her face into his chest.
She grabbed fistfuls of his shirt, still wet from her earlier outburst of temper. The ferocious engine in his chest hammered against her cheek. His heavily muscled arms wrapped tight around her. He shoved her against the wall and covered the top of her head with his.
He sacrificed his ability to fight in order to protect her.
She had time to think, no, this wasn’t what I meant. This is a unilateral disarmament.
They’ll kill him.
She opened her mouth to scream.
Then in one of the most beautiful voices in the world, and one of the deadliest, the king cobra spoke a quiet foreign word filled with Power.
Everything stopped.
EIGHT
A nearby broken light fixture emitted a fitful buzzing. Other than that, the hall was filled with total silence.
For a moment it seemed the whole world had gone still. Niniane pressed her face against the warmth of Tiago’s broad chest. She concentrated on the powerful rhythm of his heartbeat. She felt his ribs expand as he drew in a breath.
Then he released her. He pulled his sword and one of his guns. She pulled his second gun from its holster as he turned away. He let her take it. He ordered her telepathically, Stay behind me.
And let him get shot to pieces right in front of her?
Oh phooey! she snapped. She hopped out from behind to stand at his side. It earned her an infuriated growl.
Carling stood not five feet in front of them.
Drywall dust floated in the air. It lent a hazy dreamlike quality to the strange scene. Rhoswen stood unmoving in the center of the hall. The Vampyre who had first attacked Tiago was frozen in the process of crawling back through the hole where he had slammed through the wall. Another Vampyre lay sprawled on the floor, his chest singed black. The third male Vampyre had not reappeared from the stairwell. Eight humans dotted the hallway, each one held stationary by Carling’s Power.
Five guns were still trained where Tiago had stood just moments before. He nudged her gently with the back of one hand and moved sideways with her until they stood several paces to the left.
Carling mirrored their shift down the hall in a loose-limbed prowl, her hands relaxed at her sides, an elegant and barbaric woman in bare feet and Chanel suit. She regarded Tiago with her head cocked, her lovely dark almond-shaped eyes bright with interest. Her earlier anger and its accompanying disfigurement of cruelty appeared to have vanished as if it had never existed. And, Niniane noted with a surge of baffled irritation, Carling looked even more radiant than ever.
“You would have sacrificed yourself for her,” Carling said. “Interesting.”
Niniane rolled her eyes. Carling was too strange. She gave up trying to figure out what made the old Vampyre tick. Instead she turned her worried attention to Tiago.
The slashes on his face were already healing. He was no longer the monstrous Wyr caught in midshift. His bones had settled into a more familiar shape, and the terrifying hot white blaze that had taken over his eyes had darkened again. But lightning still flickered at the back of his black gaze, the muscles in his arms were cut with rigidity and his Power felt razorsharp, held in readiness for battle.
He exhibited a roaring disinterest in conversing with Carling. He said in Niniane’s head, I want you to move toward the stairwell. Do it now while she has her people in stasis.
She took in a slow, deep breath and cast a leery glance down at the huge weapon she had pulled from his shoulder holster. It was a large-bore .50 Magnum Desert Eagle. It probably fit the width of Tiago’s hand quite comfortably. In her much smaller grip it looked and felt like the hand cannon it really was. She had fired large-bore handguns before. They always knocked her on her ass unless she braced herself back against something. She found the gun’s safety and clicked it on.
She said to Carling, “You created this mess. What are you going to do to fix it?”
“What, indeed.” Carling lifted an eyebrow, turned her head to the side and said, “Rhoswen, make sure the guns do not fire.”
The blonde Vampyre flowed into smooth motion as if she had never been frozen in time. She moved from human to human down the hall, taking their guns, ejecting clips and placing them on the floor.
Niniane never took her attention fully away from Tiago. She was already braced when he lowered his head and gave her a goaded look. He bared his teeth at her in a classic sign of Wyr aggression. She put her hand on his forearm. She could feel the current of tension jumping through his body like a live wire.
He was incredible. His outside appearance was scary enough. Inside, his Power was barely held in check by the uncertain leash of his temper. She had heard that he called the lightning when he lost his temper. She had not realized he contained the lightning. She felt like she had been given the merest glimpse into the vast unseen landscape that lay cloaked inside him.
Raw emotion flickered in his dangerous face, and her heart melted.
I know, I’m sorry it’s hard, she whispered gently in his head. She stroked the hot skin of his forearm with a light touch, then she slipped his gun back into its holster underneath his arm. I didn’t do what I was told again. But Tiago, I am supposed to become a monarch. I can’t take orders and I can’t just run.
If she had not been touching him, she might have missed the slight ragged edge to his indrawn breath. Her heart melted further.
Carling spoke another foreign word. Her Power pulsed in the unnatural stillness. Down the hall, humans jerked in surprise and cursed to find themselves disarmed. The Vampyre Tiago had thrown into the stairwell raced back into the hall and slowed to a stop, his gaze locked on his mistress. The lightning-struck Vampyre twitched and groaned as his rapid healing resumed.
A feral growl sounded behind Niniane. It came from the Vampyre climbing through the hole in the wall. His glowing red eyes focused on Tiago, his long fangs distended. Tiago swept Niniane behind him with one hand as he shifted to meet the threat.
Carling said in warning, “Cowan, stop.”
The Vampyre launched with a hiss at Tiago. Tiago flowed into a defensive posture, sword held en garde.
Carling blurred. She caught hold of the Vampyre by the back of his neck. Her beautiful face was winter-cold, dark eyes twin shards of ice. In a move so fast Niniane couldn’t track it, Carling tore the Vampyre’s head from his body. The Vampyre’s body fell to the floor. Carling looked down into the face she held between her hands. The Vampyre’s mouth worked, as if he would say something, to plead for his life or to scream. Then his head and body crumbled into dust. Carling brushed her fingers together. She murmured, “He was always such an impetuous child.”
Niniane stared at the small pile of dust on the floor that used to be a thinking, reasoning creature. She stuffed her fingers against her mouth. Tiago shifted, holstered his own gun, put a heavy arm tight around her shoulders and hauled her against his side. She leaned against him, rested her head on his chest and closed her eyes. She wanted to crawl into that hidden country inside of him.
A noise from the stairwell made her jump. She made a muffled noise against Tiago’s shirt and his hold tightened on her.
The Dark Fae Commander Arethusa stood in the stairwell doorway, along with Hughes and a couple of the hotel security staff. They stared at the wreckage in the hallway, at Niniane and Tiago, and at Carling.
Niniane cleared her throat. She forced herself to say in a calm voice, “Everything is fine now. Scott, the bill for repairs on this should go to the Elder tribunal.” If the tribunal had an issue with that, they could take it up with Carling. Elder politics tended to be hard on architecture and the general population. Niniane looked at Carling and silently challenged her to deny it. Carling curled a nostril, but as her Vampyres had been the ones to initiate an actual attack, she kept sil
ent.
Hughes nodded and backed into the stairwell. His expression was a study in horrified dismay.
Niniane’s gaze met the Dark Fae Commander’s hard stare. Arethusa had the tall, lean build that was typical of most Dark Fae, but instead of giving her a willowy look, her leanness was coiled with long muscles that gave her a pantherlike grace. Her black hair was pulled into a tight queue at the base of her neck, and her large gray eyes and angular face were cold with censure as she regarded Tiago’s arm around Niniane’s shoulders.
The Commander said, “You meddle where you do not belong, sentinel. Release the Dark Fae heir now or face the consequences.”
Niniane’s temper spilled over. She straightened and stepped away from Tiago, her hands in fists. “That will be enough, Commander,” she snapped. Arethusa’s gaze swept up to her face. “Please inform Chancellor Aubrey and Justice Kellen that I will meet with the Dark Fae, along with Councillor Severan, in the penthouse in two hours.”
“Your highness—” began Arethusa, her gaze turning flinty.
Niniane said between her teeth, “I am not having a good week, Commander. It is not a good idea to try my patience right now because at the moment I don’t have any. That will be all.”
The Dark Fae Commander’s mouth tightened as her gaze flicked back to Tiago then to Carling, who lifted one slender eyebrow. After a moment Arethusa gave a curt nod and stepped back from the doorway.
Niniane concentrated on getting her breathing under control. She focused on a mote of drywall dust dancing in the air. She growled, “Now I am going to take a shower. I am going to put on some real clothes, and I am going to calm down. Does anybody on this floor have a freaking problem with that?”
No one replied. Okay, fine. She took that as a no. She nodded to herself and headed for the stairwell.
The leashed lightning that was Tiago shadowed her. She had just stepped into the doorway, when Tiago said, “Just one thing.”
The rich, strong sound of his voice shocked her. She realized he had not spoken aloud since he had appeared. She swiveled.
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