by Marie Hall
Mingan and Celeste were deep in talk when they finally made it to the bench and dropped down beside them.
“So we made it.” Eve glanced at Mingan. “Good to see you.”
He nodded, a distracted frown on his face. “Yes, you too, Eve.” He patted Celeste’s sleeve in a farewell gesture then marched off.
She frowned, casting a quick glance at Cian, his face a mirror reflection of her own. “Oddly dismissive. What was that all about?”
Celeste shook her head, a worried gleam in her moss-green eyes. “Rumors been flying about a murder.”
“Murder? What murder?” First she’d heard of this.
“Vampire. Found this morning staked to a cross. Body burned beyond recognition.”
Shocked, she blinked. “When?”
Lootah stood, spreading his arms wide and quieting the crowd with a glance. “The meeting will come to order.”
It was like a light switch had been turned off. A crowd of hundreds instantly fell silent. The delegates spoke for the groups for one reason. You respected them enough to listen.
Hard thing to command in a room full of predators.
Brown eyes full of knowledge and centuries’ worth of sorrow landed on Eve’s face for the briefest of moments. In the eyes, she read truth. The rumor of murder was rumor no more.
“I’m sure you’ve all heard by now that Indigo, of the clan thrive, was found dead this morning.”
Instantly buzz exploded through the room.
“Indigo,” she hissed and looked at Cian.
He frowned. “The vamp in the alleyway two nights back?”
Her eyes grew wide and she nodded.
“Not that I ever cared for that hothead much, but ohmygoddess.” Celeste shook her head. “The turd’s gonna hit the fan now.”
“Quiet!” Iah shot to his feet, quelling them all to silence. “Thank you, Lootah, but I think I can take it from here.”
Lootah nodded and sat.
“Indigo was killed in the most despicable of ways. Strapped to a cross and roasted to cinders by the sun. How could this have happened and no one noticed?”
He pounded his fist on the table. A wicked gleam filled his black eyes. She could feel his rage simmer just below the surface and everyone leaned forward a tiny bit, breaths indrawn and waiting on tenterhooks.
“Her death was an earmark human killing.”
The room broke into a violence of voices. This was big news, one that held many connotations.
For one, the shaky pact between normal/super relations. Supers were given the right to live out in the open, in freedom, without fear of retribution. The law stated that no human should come to harm at the hands of the supers and vice versa.
In her heart, she knew this would irreparably damage the fragile peace between supernaturals and normals.
Iah pointed to a vampire dressed all in black. “Mia, is this not so?”
Mia stood, her pale, perfect skin gleaming, her rich sable hair caught up in a severe knot. Her face lacked the lines and wrinkles of the elders; she was youth personified. But it was the eyes, the malachite gaze that gleamed with the eternal mark of age, that gave her away. This was an elder. Well past her four hundredth year.
“Yes.” The gravel of her voice reverberated through the room and brought chills to the back of Eve’s neck.
“This is an outrage!” Another vampire toward the rear of the room jumped up and shouted, punching his fist through the air. “One that must be dealt with swiftly and fiercely. Lest all normals forget who’s really the weaker of the two.”
“Aye!”
“Yeah.”
“…lest they forget.”
The room erupted in an ear-piercing chorus of voices, several of them vamps, but a few weres, or even witches. Eve clamped hands over her ears, wincing at the cacophonous pitch buzzing through her eardrums.
Their faces were angry and contorted, the ardent predators inside them demanding reparations. She knew what they thought; she could feel the resentment rolling off them. They’d lived by the rules, and so too should the normals.
Bloodbath, Tamryn mouthed.
Mia turned, a sinister smile playing on her bloodred lips. “We’ll band together and find the killers. Then we’ll do to them what they did to Indigo.”
Rage. The emotion more intense than even the sight of blood, transformed others into their Mr. Hyde personalities. Fangs began ripping through mouths, fur sprouted from knuckles. The room grew heavy with tension, like a rubber band seconds before it snapped.
This couldn’t happen. Somebody had to stop it. She glanced toward the delegates. They each wore calm looks, hands crossed in their laps, and none looked ready, or willing, to break up the angry crowd.
Heart racing, adrenaline surging through her veins, Eve jumped to her feet. “No! You do not understand.” No one stopped talking. “Stop,” she shrieked, “and listen!”
That caught the group’s attention. It was a rippling tide of faces turning to stare at her, an eerie silence filling the hall. Iah frowned. The room grew tense with expectancy. “Enlighten us, then, witch.”
“Indigo killed a human that night.”
“Lying witch. She would never!” Mia screamed, her green eyes narrowing with ire.
Cian stood, standing so close to Eve they shared body heat. She was grateful and her heart gave a tiny flutter in response. He gave her the strength to plow on.
“I arrived at the scene to hear her feed off the dying man.”
Mia’s nostrils flared as her fists clenched by her sides.
It was unnerving to have so many eyes on her, boring holes into her. One wrong move and she’d come under attack by the full weight of all the others within.
“Are you certain this was Indigo?” Iah asked.
“Yes. I saw her with my own eyes. She was high off blood.”
Iah snapped his mouth shut. Eve knew what she’d just done. She’d put the blame square on the vamps. The humans had retaliated, but the fangs had struck first. Very, very bad mojo. The truth was the vamps had broken a sacred pact. The innocent victim suddenly was not so blameless.
“How can we trust your word?” Mia pointed a violet-painted nail at her. “You’re a known normal lover. Michael, was it?”
She sucked in a breath. Fury boiled through her veins. Cian placed his hand on the small of her back, rubbing soothing circles into the flesh.
“Because I was with her that night.” Cian’s voice cracked through the room. Her knees shook; it was a surprise no one noticed them clacking together. She leaned slightly into him.
The voices started back up again. There were cries of shock and confusion, but mostly anger. The ceiling rattled with the high-pitched vibrations of so much noise.
“Enough!” Edlyn made her way to shaky feet. “We shall investigate this matter further. Until then, there is to be no retaliation.”
“NO! You’ll believe a witch’s word over mine?” Mia was shaking, not only from anger but something else, something deeper and more powerful. This wasn’t just anger; it was primal and debilitating pain.
Eve frowned, remembering her own pain when Michael had died.
“I demand justice for her.”
“Sit down, Mia,” Iah snarled and exposed the bright ivory of large fangs.
“Screw you! Screw everyone one of you damn delegates. I won’t take this mortal’s word over what I saw last night. If you won’t give me justice, then I’ll do it myself. Who’s with me?” She turned, holding out an arm. The heavy silver armband she wore and the power radiating from her reminded Eve of the Valkyrie of legend. A maiden warrior of death.
A small band of vamps, weres, and even one witch toward the front of the room jumped to their feet.
“Good.” she smiled.
“Weres, step down,” Lootah growled, gray fur ripping from his forearms and face. “I don’t care what you do, Mia, but my cubs go nowhere.”
Two weres surrounding Mia dropped their heads and began to tremble. A
third stood defiant, head held high. Low rumbling vibrations coming from the back of his throat.
“Surely he doesn’t mean to challenge Lootah right now,” Celeste breathed, casting a worried glance to her sisters.
Eve was spellbound. She couldn’t rip her gaze away from the train wreck unraveling before her. The gatherings had always been peaceful, a promise of mending the past and looking toward the future. Everything was falling apart before her eyes.
A sinking feeling of despair filled the pit of her stomach.
The room overflowed with kinetic energy, a whipping, lashing torrent of rising anger. The pink-haired, punked-out were hissed and crouched into a fighting stance, transforming instantly to grizzly. A massive ten-foot bear replaced the man.
Lootah turned fully wolf, jumping onto the table, yellow fangs exposed and dripping saliva, muzzle pulled back, and an angry snarl twisting his face. Lootah should have looked puny compared to the bear, but he was the alpha and the entire room knew it. It was the way he carried himself. Head high, tail sticking straight up like the handle of a pitchfork.
The bear charged, his burly body crashing against the table. The other delegates scattered. Everyone knew better than to interfere in pack business. You didn’t do it. Period.
Lootah, for all his age, was spry and agile, gracefully sailing over the bear’s head and snapping his fanged jaws into the bear’s furry hind leg.
The bear howled, manically swiping his paw through the air and twisting around, but his bulk brought him crashing to the ground. Lootah moved so fast, Eve hadn’t even seen it. One second he was piercing the thick hide of the bear, the next his taloned paw was pressed against the bear’s throat, his muzzle mere inches from a life-sustaining artery.
Lootah transformed his head to a man’s. It was unsettling to see that on the body of the wolf.
“You will listen to me!”
She waited on bated breath. The rise and fall of the bear’s chest and tension still flowing from out his body made her think he might try to attack again, but in the end the bear conceded, shifting to man and turning his head aside. Shamed. Size had been no match for speed. Lootah still had many years left as delegate. And Eve could only hope that whoever challenged him for alpha dominance in the future and won would have as keen a mind as he did.
“He may have authority over the weres, but he does not decide our fate!” A gothed-out vamp—wearing a spiked collar and black face paint—yelled, crowding closer to Mia’s side. Several other vamps, who’d earlier been sitting, now stood and gathered around the lone female figure.
Edlyn held up her hands, and the amethyst amulet hanging around her neck began to glow deepest purple. “Please, brethren, heed Lootah. Do not ride into the night with your fury and hate and sever the weakest ties we have to our human counterparts.”
Vampires and weres both stood. A shuffling mass of bodies coalesced into one tight unit of discontent and angst. Fury was so evident in the faces of some, they began to push and claw at those not of their kind.
Eve’s heart picked up in cadence, pounding like a solid block of stone against her chest, threatening to rip a hole. Cian sidled close. The body heat off her sisters crowded her from behind. Things were getting ugly. And the sad truth was that in some ways she sympathized with the self-disgust of cowing to those inferior to them. Could the normals not see that it was the supers, and not human words of war or death, that kept the so-called thieving murderers in line?
Iah nodded, his obsidian hair swinging behind his back. “The witch is wise. Knowing what we know, we can only pray the death is satisfactory to the normals and that they will not choose to rescind the order of peace. We broke the pact first.” The melodic strains of his Egyptian accent filled the room with a mesmerizing resonance.
“Pathetic!” Mia spat. “Is this what we’ve become? A pack of mindless drones, willing to take handouts from the normals?” Her voice cracked and she took a deep breath. “I won’t. I can’t do it anymore.”
Iah clenched his jaw, pain glittering in the depths of shadow-filled eyes. “If you leave now, you will be dishonored and an outcast. A pariah to the clan. You’ll have no name. Is that what you want?”
Eve wanted to cry. Mia had snarled at her, sure. But the woman was grief stricken. Anyone short of a blind man could see that. What she felt Eve understood keenly. This was the loss of a lover, and her madness would make the decision.
Tears that refused to fall glistened in the vampire’s eyes. “It is.”
With those words bedlam exploded. It was like a dam had broken loose. Monsters who’d bottled up all that hatred toward their lot suddenly had a figure to emulate, model themselves after. Those that had barely toed the lines of polite society before now wanted war. Dominance.
Weres turned on witches. Witches on vamps.
She cursed and gripped her amulet. “C’mon, now! We need to leave.” A jetting stream of ruby light shot from her amulet, encasing all four of them in an iridescent lined shield.
No matter how much she might sympathize and in some ways revile the normals, she was in no mood to be drawn into a battle that was sure to leave her a bruised and bloody mess.
Rumors of another Great War had been around for centuries. Everyone was always gloom and doom when it came to the supernatural state of affairs. And this gave her a sickening feeling of anguish in the pit of her stomach.
Everywhere they looked shuffling, shifting bodies pounded in on them, attempting to draw them in. Hands grabbed for her but bounced back when they touched the shield. Bursts and crackles of searing orange light shot out from Tamryn’s fingers. One shot hit a werepanther square in its nose. It howled and screamed a frightening mix of human and monster that only a panther could make.
She stumbled several times, knocking into Cian’s back. He turned but didn’t stop, and grabbed her by the elbow, pulling her along faster and faster. Eve panted. The panic seized up her throat and her ability to breathe correctly. She was sweating; droplets stung her eyes, making her lose her focus and concentration. The shield protecting them from the melee grew thinner and thinner. Soon anyone and everyone could overtake them.
She happened to glance to her left and noticed a bright shock of gleaming red hair. Her eyes widened, remembering the specter of the man standing next to the demon the other night. She stopped, nearly knocking Cian to the ground. Tamryn and Celeste barreled into her from behind with loud muffled oaths. Her heart jerked violently in her chest. Between one blink and the next, he, it—whatever the hell it was—was gone.
Cian bellowed. The part of the shield he’d stood under fractured and a vampire managed to pierce his arms with bramble-thick claws. He slammed his fist into the brunette’s nose. A crimson geyser exploded on impact.
He turned and grabbed Eve’s hand and with his mass created a thin path for them to run through and out of. Cool wind slapped them in the face, bringing instant tears to her eyes. She glanced back for a split second, expecting to see the red devil behind them.
“C’mon, Eve!”
That was all the reminder she needed. Fire scorched her lungs, every muscle in her body bloated with adrenaline as she pumped her legs faster and harder than before.
“Run faster, damn it,” he yelled, practically throwing Tamryn and Celeste ahead of him and bringing up the rear.
She wanted to stop. Scream. But she didn’t. Bloodlust would soon set in with the creatures. There was only one thought hammering away at her skull: Get to safety, get to safety, get to safety. It was a running mantra her feet kept rhythm to.
Finally they reached the safety of cabs and humans. Ironic that suddenly she felt safer around the normals than she did with her own kind.
“I gotta stop,” she croaked, halting immediately and bending over, palms flat against her knees, sucking in air like it was mother’s milk.
Cian stopped but didn’t struggle for air at all. That beautiful body of his was in perfect physical shape. Damn him.
He shoved his fingers
through his hair and glanced back. “Okay. A taxi, then.”
“Thank the goddess,” Tamryn groaned, holding on to her side and wincing.
Celeste was completely white around the mouth and could only nod her approval.
Cian signaled for a cab, and when one pulled up, everyone clamored in, sitting back with a sigh and a groan.
Chapter 22
Cian paid the fare despite not having any real cash. Lucky for him, no one noticed. He’d pulled an old trick and paid with essence. The money looked real, felt real, but by tomorrow morning would be nothing more than a memory.
Eve kissed her sisters good-bye on the stoop and then turned when they headed inside, rolling her neck from side to side with a tired-hound-dog expression.
They walked in silence. Abandoned streets echoed with the sound of their footsteps. The darkened sky glittered with the light of a trillion white jewels, like a glittering sea of diamonds. The night uncharacteristically fog free.
“Thanks for being there tonight, Cian,” she whispered so low he even had a hard time catching it.
He nodded and shoved his hands deep into his pockets. Tonight had been a numbing terror for him. So many bodies. Hands reaching, clamoring, clawing like some apparition of a Hollywood horror. Then there’d been the scent, that unique odor of death, and every nerve in his body had screamed to get her out of there before the stroke of midnight. Gone before Frenzy could reach her.
He closed his eyes, sick at heart. Nightmares of this day would stay with him forever.
“Goddess, I hope the delegates got it under control. Especially Mia. I’ve never seen this happen before.” He opened his eyes as she kicked at a pebble with the toe of her boot. She was distant, faraway, and remembering. “I’m sure everything will be all right by tomorrow,” she murmured more to herself than him.
“You really think so?” he drawled.
She twisted her lips and shrugged. “No. I don’t.” She shook her head and continued to speak without blinking. “It all felt surreal, like I was watching a vision, or a premonition of what’s to come. It scared the crap out of me.”
