by Sierra Dean
“This, I believe they say, makes us even?” His strange accent made the sentence seem exotic.
I nodded, my head wobbling loosely like a rag doll’s.
“I hope your kind will have no further need of my services,” he said to Sig. “I helped you only as a favor to the girl’s grandmother. We are done now.”
“For now,” Sig agreed.
The witch narrowed his eyes at Sig’s turn of phrase.
“You may release her.”
The witch looked at the black depths of Daria’s pupils. She gnashed her teeth at him. Unmoved, he straightened the lapels of his suit with casual defiance, as though vampires threatened him regularly.
I wouldn’t worry too much about vampires either, if I could turn into a bird at a moment’s notice and fly away.
“I have told you what this one…” he indicated Daria, “…has confessed. Now you wish her to be free from her bonds?”
“We deal with traitors our own way.” This came from an altogether surprising speaker. Juan Carlos came around the same corner of the house Sig had. With him was Brigit, who looked uncharacteristically grim. “She is our concern now.”
“As you wish.” The witch spoke the words with the same tone I’d used to invite Noriko to her own funeral. He snapped his fingers, and in a flash of sapphire light and a puff of smoke, he was gone.
“He can teleport?” Brigit asked.
Only I seemed to notice the tiny wasp that emerged from the cloud. It buzzed once around my head before it disappeared into the trees. Sneaky witch.
Once the shock of the magical display had shaken off, Daria became aware the spell had been broken. Her instinctive reaction was to continue her attack against me, which Nolan recognized because he took a step backwards. But Sig had placed a warning hand on Daria’s shoulder. All he needed to do was squeeze and she stopped.
“This fight is over, old friend,” he said, his voice heavy with a sadness that surprised me.
She looked up at him, her face almost instantly restoring to its former sweetness and beauty.
“Sig, whatever she has claimed, it’s a lie. She will protect her beloved warden at any cost. She is disloyal.” Her voice was so earnest, her face so committed to the lie, I almost believed it myself. “I would never betray the Tribunal. I have been loyal to you for centuries.”
I almost choked on her ingratiating words, but I didn’t defend myself.
Sig’s hand tightened on her shoulder, and she winced. Juan Carlos had come to stand beside Sig, and I could see him clearly now. The twisted grimace that marred his once-handsome face was now set in a tight frown, and for once it wasn’t focused on me.
If anyone here would be willing to believe her lies, it would be him. But his rage was all for her, and she could see that.
“We heard everything you said, Daria. The witch delivered your confession to us.”
“He is her puppet,” she sputtered. “He did it for her.”
“No,” Juan Carlos said, grasping Daria by the face and drawing her in close so they were nose to nose and all she could see was his cold eyes. “You have betrayed us.”
Her bottom lip quivered. I’d never seen a vampire approach tears. “I didn’t betray you.”
“To betray the Tribunal is to betray me.”
“Don’t you understand? He has too much power. I did this to restore balance,” she pleaded.
“You did it to seize power,” Sig interjected. “You didn’t want to divide my power, you wanted it for yourself.”
Daria kept her eyes on Juan Carlos, and he pushed her face away in disgust.
“Death is too kind for her,” he said to Sig.
Sig had released Daria and was standing with his back to her, looking down at me. Gently, he placed a finger under my chin and raised my face to get a better look at me. Just one touch, and the coiled springs inside me that had been prepared for another fight fell loose. My whole body felt like a sack of broken, disjointed pieces I didn’t know how to put back together. I sagged, and he caught me.
“She hasn’t got long,” he told Juan Carlos. “We need to get her to the Oracle.”
Brigit skirted the group and took me from Sig, propping me up effortlessly. The Tribunal leader turned back to Daria.
“You sought to hurt me by attacking that which I hold dearest?” He hauled back as if he might hit her, and she flinched. “It wasn’t enough you planned to kill me?”
“Her death would weaken you,” she said meekly.
“And your death will weaken us all,” Sig replied.
“Show mercy.”
“Why? You have shown none.”
“I meant to spare her.”
“Only when she could not be killed!” Sig bellowed. It was the first time I’d ever heard him raise his voice, and it chilled me to the marrow. I leaned my face into Brigit to shut it out. “You only thought to keep her alive because you realized she might prove some further use to you.” He grabbed Daria by the throat and lifted her off the ground.
Even though she didn’t need to breathe, she strained against him, kicking futilely at the air and clawing at his hands while his grip began to crush her windpipe. His skin was a patchwork of bloody ribbons when he threw her to the grass.
“You will be confined until a suitable punishment is agreed upon.”
Juan Carlos nodded his smug agreement. No one had ever explained confinement to me, but I’d always gathered it was considered a fate worse than death. Daria was apparently among the group who believed this.
“No,” she screamed. “I won’t go.”
“You don’t get to make those decisions anymore,” Juan Carlos taunted. There was something hauntingly sad in his countenance.
“Kill me,” she begged, her words directed to Juan Carlos, who turned away.
“No,” Sig said, his voice flat and emotionless.
She got to her feet, faltering on the grass in her heels, and continued to look imploringly at Juan Carlos, holding her hands out to him as if begging for something. When he showed her no sympathy, she swung back to me. There was nothing human about her face.
“This is all your fault.”
“Okay,” I whispered, still leaning against Brigit, blood seeping out of me from the multitude of wounds covering my body.
My acceptance of her accusation enraged her more. With more speed than I would have thought she still possessed, she ripped me free of Brigit’s hold. My ward attempted to pull the feral vampire off me, but Daria was of a singular purpose now. She wanted to die and she was going to take me with her.
She tried to latch on to my neck, but I’d come to expect this as the first move for any blood-frenzied vampire. I smashed my elbow across her face, and her neck snapped to the side. She was still pushing on a forward course, and the momentum of my hit caused her to trip on her high heels.
This was why I’d learned to always wear flats to a fight.
Her feet tangled with mine, and she grabbed hold of me, taking me with her as she tumbled down the hill. When we stopped, my head was against Noriko’s thigh and the sword was still in my hand. Daria had already found her footing and was standing over me with a victorious leer.
“You want to die?” I asked.
She said nothing and darted in for the killing bite instead. I was anticipating it and was already swinging my arm upward before she dove. The two motions came together with the precision of a well-oiled machine. Her neck fell through the path of the sword, and when her body came down on top of me, her head was watching from a few feet away.
I lay gasping, unable to find the strength to push her dead weight off me.
“Help,” I croaked.
It was Nolan of all people who got to me first, pulling the headless corpse off me and lifting me from the ground as if I were weightless. He was joined by the three vampires, and Juan Carlos checked on Daria’s body to ensure she was dead. He seemed satisfied.
“Sorry,” I told him.
“Why?”
&nb
sp; “You didn’t want her dead.”
Juan Carlos smiled, and I wished he hadn’t. It reminded me of looking at a demented jack-o’-lantern. His joviality was more sinister than his seriousness. “It no longer matters. You’ve done the job we asked of you as a council, and I believe we can consider your warrant fulfilled.”
Sig watched our exchange and tried to take me from Nolan, but the boy refused to hand me over.
“She promised to protect me,” Nolan explained. “The least I can do is the same for her now.”
Sig looked surprised by the boy’s courage and didn’t argue. After this, I would have to stop thinking of Nolan as a boy. I sagged in his arms.
“Holden is safe now?” I asked to no one in particular.
“Yes,” Sig confirmed.
“Okay,” I said, smiling, and then the world slipped into darkness.
Chapter Thirty-One
Three weeks had passed since my trip to Rhinebeck, and August had come to New York City.
The air outside was steamy hot and out for blood. News reports were discussing a wave of brownouts, and people by the dozens were succumbing to heat exhaustion. But in my apartment below street level, with a newly installed air conditioner humming away under its full power, I was satisfied to wait out the heat.
In the weeks following Daria’s death, my only contact with the council had been through Brigit. She told me that when she awoke in her shower and remembered her dream, she’d called Sig and relayed my message. While he would have been right to doubt a three-month-old vampire who claimed to have spoken to me in a dream, he had already received word from Christof, the witch. Christof, it seems, had received a fairly insistent phone call from a certain werewolf lieutenant insisting the witch owed restitution to a half-breed by the name of Secret McQueen.
Sig and Juan Carlos picked up Brigit, who refused to tell them where she was going unless she could come with them. The three were met en route by the witch, who relayed to them the confession he’d been able to overhear when I broke the window.
Brigit had driven Nolan and me back to the city in my car, and I hadn’t spoken to Sig since. Nor had I heard from Holden since Juan Carlos pardoned him. My sleep had been peacefully blank.
Plus, I had a new roommate to distract me from any concerns I had about the council. A roommate who was currently trying to annoy me to death.
“Where is it?” I demanded, digging through the fridge.
Since Desmond had moved in, my fridge had filled itself with strange things like vegetables and milk. My freezer was packed with frozen steaks and burger patties. My cupboards had spices and peanut butter in them. Plates and cutlery were being used. The kitchen smelled daily of cooking food.
“Where is what?” Desmond’s innocent voice replied from the living room. He was teasing me. I could tell by his tone he knew exactly what I was talking about.
“You know what.”
He appeared in the doorway. “Tell me why you need it, and I’ll tell you where it is.”
“It’s brand new,” I whined, shutting the door and opening the freezer.
“Cold,” he said, then laughed at his unintentional joke and decided to take it all the way. “Freezing.”
“Hilarious.” I slammed the door and stomped into the living room.
“Seriously, why do you need it?”
“I just want to know where it is.” I knelt on the floor and looked under the couch. Rio’s bright eyes reflected back at me.
“Breow?” she said.
“No. Not you.”
“Purrrrrrr,” she said.
I grabbed her by the scruff of the neck and pulled her out. She purred in my arms while I petted her absently and stalked around the apartment. I heard the hall closet open and ran out of the bedroom still clutching the cat.
Desmond was holding my brand new SIG P229. He had the gun in one hand and the cartridge in the other.
“Now you know where it is.”
I tried to act nonchalant, which lasted all of two seconds before I placed Rio on the floor and jumped for the gun. He knew it was coming because he held it out of my reach.
“Gimme.”
“Shrimp.”
We’d been having this same fight for over a week. I thought I was ready to go back to work, and I knew Keaty would be thrilled to have me return. Nolan had begun to work for him in the meantime, and though the boy was a much more suitable student than I had been, I also knew Keaty needed me.
Desmond, on the other hand, loved to point out that my wounds from the silver katana were still healing, and he as Queen’s Guard decided it wasn’t wise for me to go back to work just yet.
I kept scrambling for the gun until I managed to irritate the healing scar on my ribs.
“Ugh.” I stopped fighting for the gun and placed a hand on my side. “Fine.”
“Don’t make me start hiding it outside the apartment,” he threatened.
“Don’t make me drain you in your sleep.”
He pfft’d at me and angled me back to the couch, leaving the gun on the hall table for the time being. I had to admit, once I’d gotten used to having Desmond here, I remembered how pleasant it was to have someone next to me when I woke up every night. It was different than living with Gabriel had been, because with Desmond I could keep blood in the fridge and he wouldn’t find it weird.
Though I liked Desmond’s presence, I had played up my annoyance with Lucas a little longer than I should have. I told him I would accept a live-in guard, so long as it meant Lucas didn’t make any further decisions about my life without discussing them with me. He’d agreed on the condition I had to become a more active part of the pack. We were trying to work things out, but Lucas and I were like gunpowder and a lit match. Sparks flew whenever we were together, and it wasn’t always for the good.
With Desmond it was different.
I sat on the loveseat, and he knelt on the floor in front of me, pushing up my dress to look at the scar. I no longer tried to stop him when he did things like this. One, he was only trying to help, and two, I sort of liked it.
His warm hands brushed over the snow-white scar running in a three-inch line below my fifth rib. On my back the scar was only an inch and a half long and almost completely healed. A similar mark trailed ten inches down my forearm. They were all getting better, but with the aching slowness of silver wounds it felt almost like healing at a human pace.
I would never take my speedy recovery skills for granted again.
All the glass cuts were only memories, and my eyes were back to normal again. I had looked like a human punching bag/pincushion the day after the incident, but the smaller wounds healed within a day.
Seemingly satisfied I hadn’t ruptured the scar, he bent down and kissed the white mark. A telling shiver thrilled through me. He must have felt it, because his eyebrows rose and a dangerous smile was on his lips. We hadn’t had sex since the night of my fight, owing to the precarious manner in which I was healing. I’d been willing, but he didn’t want to risk hurting me.
I ran my hand through his hair and gave him my best seductive smirk.
“Are you sure?” He was already starting to second-guess it.
“Desmond.” My voice was loaded with heat. “You’re not going to kill me.”
He rose on his knees, hands seizing my face and pulling me in for a soul-jarring kiss. It was the kind of kiss long-lost lovers share when decades of time have passed since they were last together. He buried his fingers in my hair, and I held him close while his tongue explored my lips, gently at first, and then finding them willing to open for him, he deepened the kiss with a breathless intensity.
His cheeks were rough, having not been shaved in days. I dragged my fingernails against the short hairs, then down his neck, over his back and to the hem of his shirt, which I tugged upwards and off.
He broke away from the kiss to allow for the shirt to be removed, then reclaimed my mouth as he pushed me backwards on the couch. He held my thighs firmly, pus
hing my legs upward, and his fingers trailed with teasing lightness down the outside of my thighs, before backing up as he raised the skirt of my light cotton sundress.
I was so interested in touching his skin my fingers fumbled stupidly with the fly of his jeans, until I was able to release the snap and lower the zipper. Without hesitation, I slipped my hand inside and cupped his erection within my hot palm. He growled against my lips, lowering his mouth from mine to let his teeth graze my neck. This brought a gasp from me, and he teased my pulse with the flick of his tongue.
I clawed at his back, and he arched his hips against my grasping hand. I released him, which made him bite down harder on my neck. Ignoring his protests, I pushed him backwards off me, and before he could question why, I climbed onto his lap, hiking my dress up so I was nestled against the hard length of him.
I looked down, smiling, and kissed him again while I rocked my hips against his. Reaching one hand in between us, I released him from his underwear. He pushed my panties aside with rushed, deft fingers. Neither of us was interested in wasting time undressing. I raised up on my knees enough that he was positioned below me, then lowered myself onto his shaft with a painfully slow restraint that made his head roll back against the couch and a low moan escape his throat. I went as low as I could, until he was lodged as deep inside as I could take him, then I began to lift up again, but he grasped my hips and held me.
He was looking right at me, and what I saw in his eyes made my heart pound.
He released me so he could brush a strand of hair off my face, and he drew my mouth to his for a kiss that was almost too delicate, given our current position.
“I love you,” he whispered against my parted lips.
My pulse quivered, and my heart beat faster than I’d ever felt before. It was what I’d wanted to tell him before I left that night, and what he’d told me not to say. Now my words were coming out of his mouth. I stared at him dumbly, robbed of my ability to speak. Any movement threatened to take me out of the moment by reminding me what we were in the middle of doing.
“I love you too,” I said when I was finally able to form words.
He smiled, kissing me softly, his hands brushing over the bare skin of my arms, making me shiver all over. When he held my waist again, the rhythm had changed into something slower and more deliberate than our previous frenetic efforts. We were building towards a perfect finish when the first knock came.
