by TA Moore
“Took thought you were the one who kidnapped him,” he spat out. If it was revenge for Madoc’s use of that raw, old name, it worked well. Something hollow opened inside Madoc and sucked everything into it—anger and smoke and any words that could have cut Pally back. Was this what heartbreak felt like, he wondered idly. Every other time he’d lost someone he had anger to feed the pain into, something to stoke and let consume him.
This just felt empty.
“You lie,” he tried out on his tongue.
For a second, Pally looked thickly delighted with his cruelty. Then he scrubbed Solomon away with a pass of his hand and plastered on regret. Madoc wondered with a flicker of malice, before he was sucked down into the emptiness, if Pally knew which emotion was the real one.
“I don’t think he believed it,” Pally said carefully. “Even ‘thought it’ was just my cruelty, but he feared it. How could he not, Madoc? When you fear betrayal, you don’t care if it was a stranger.”
“My first love feared I was a monster,” Madoc rasped out. “Everyone knew what I was, but when people in our town sickened and died, it was Gwynn who whispered to people about how I went out late at night. He told the priest how I’d seduced him. He told them where to find me.”
It seemed only fair, after all, to give Pally a secret for a secret. Although he looked as though he’d rather not hear this one.
“Madoc, I—”
“Don’t be sorry. He paid the price,” Madoc spat. “After they’d done with me, they burned my poor stupid love alive, just in case. A lot more people died after that.”
It turned out that Madoc had been wrong. The anger was still there. It just needed a moment to regroup. He welcomed the taste of burned apples in the back of his throat and thought about all the times he’d imagined what he’d have done to Gwynn if the mob hadn’t turned on him next.
In the back of his mind, he remembered how often he’d thought he’d have forgiven the stupid bastard anything if he’d just been there.
“There’s a difference,” Pally said quietly.
“Really?” Madoc sneered. “What? That Luke at least knows how to end me properly.”
Pally looked at him as though he were an idiot. “That someone he knew sold Luke to a monster that tortured him for a year. That he can’t even use his own name anymore, because that’s who it happened to. He can’t even trust his own memories, never mind anyone else. Yet he was still brave enough to even think he could trust you? Trust any fucker? When you still chew over a centuries-old betrayal as if some inbred Welsh farm boy had any idea what he’d cost you both with his fear? You weak bastard.”
That wasn’t the gentle justification that Madoc expected. He spluttered at Pally for a second.
“He was the baker’s son,” he said stiffly.
“All the fucking difference, then,” Pally said with a sneer. It was disconcerting to hear him swear so casually. He usually chose his words carefully, a mannered facade between him and the coarse-tongued Solomon. “Do what you want, Madoc. Remind everyone that no one can stop you from being a fucking bastard. Prove to Took that he was goddamn right not to trust you. There will be plenty of people willing to pick up his pieces.”
“Like you?” Madoc asked harshly. “You were never his type.”
The sharp, hard-edged grin was all Solomon. “I can be fucking convincing when I put my mind to it, Madoc. He might be worth the effort.”
He slapped the lid of the laptop down before Madoc could snarl a reply. Madoc was left with the scratch of the idea that Pally might have a point, and a ball of rage in his chest that he couldn’t unleash on anyone with a clean conscience. Sometimes he missed being Elizabeth’s collared bastard. There had never been any end of people to work his anger out on.
How many of them had deserved it, a quiet voice in the back of his head asked.
The answer was “not many.” Madoc already knew that, but it didn’t help quell the sick heat in the pit of his stomach.
“Fuck you too, Paladin,” Madoc snarled in frustration as he threw his phone at the ground. It shattered against the carpet-sheathed metal, bits of glass and plastic ricocheted across the floor and embedded in the soft leather of the seats. It was too petty of a tantrum to actually spend any of the dark, sullen energy that settled in his muscles, but it would have to do.
He locked his hands behind his head to thwart the urge to break anything and flexed his fingers against the back of his neck until he felt the ache of tender skin where Elizabeth’s fangs had dug deep. When had Paladin… had Solomon, of all people… grown a fucking heart?
“Damn it,” he breathed out. Then he pulled a face at the shape of the words on his tongue. “Damn me, then. Fair enough.”
He kicked the broken phone with his foot, cracked glass splintered under his sole, and he stalked back down the plane. As he passed Waring, the boy leaned warily away from him. Madoc stopped and looked down at him.
“When you tried to get into Took’s head, he saw your secrets,” Madoc said. He kicked Waring’s foot to make sure the young man paid attention. “Did you see his?”
The shadow of a haunted expression crossed Waring’s lean, on its way to handsome, face. It would have to be answer enough.
“You can trust him,” Madoc told him. It wasn’t a question, and it didn’t need an answer. “If you tell him where to find your friends, or whatever they are to you, we’ll do our best to help you. Hold your tongue, and whatever happens is on you. I think that will hurt you more, in the long run, than whatever the magic does to you.”
He left Waring to think about that under the VINE pilot’s watchful eye, while he went to find Took. There had been a time he’d hunt Elizabeth’s enemies from one end of the territory to the other. If he couldn’t find one awkward vampire in the middle of a Nevada town, he would take himself under The Salt to rot.
And when he found him? Madoc weighed that question as he loped across the pocked runway to the flimsy wire fence. No answer immediately occurred to him.
Chapter Seventeen
GABRIEL TOOK the phone and looked at the photo of the dead man on the screen as he took a sip of straight scotch from a grubby tumbler. It wasn’t, Took supposed dourly as he sat back and tried to ignore the itch of eyes on the back of his neck, as if the Hound had to worry about germs.
The lore said it was easy to pick out a werewolf. They were bestial in appearance and behavior, stank of raw meat, and could barely control their appetites, whether it was lust or gluttony. Of course the lore came from VINE and had been written by vampires. Gabriel’s palms weren’t hairy, his eyebrows didn’t meet in the middle, and if his eyes shaded too much toward yellow, it wasn’t beyond human norms. The outward betrayal that Gabriel was anything but human was the glimmer of eyeshine as he looked up, the bar’s fluorescent lights reflected green from his pupils. As a kid, Took had just thought he was a human with a quick temper, less volatile than a lot his friends’ parents who just drank away the full moon.
Took wondered what it was that gave him away as a vampire—other than the fact he’d bared fang in a dick-measuring contest outside.
“Don’t get cocky,” Gabriel said as he looked back down at the phone screen. “Harry out there isn’t a Hound, he’s barely a Hunter.”
There were plenty of Hunters who’d argue with the order that Gabriel put that in. Took let it stand as he picked up the beer he’d ordered. The narrow neck was cold against his fingers as he lifted it to his lips.
“I worked that out when his arm came out of the socket like an overcooked chicken wing.” Took took a swig of beer. At least he knew no one had spat in it, since watering it down could only have improved the taste. “Do you know him or not?”
Gabriel put the phone down and pushed it back across the table. The Hunter from Charleston stared blankly out of it, black hole in his forehead like a third eye. “What’s it to you?”
“He tried to kill me.”
“He’s a Hunter,” Gabriel said. “The only thing
wrong with that sentence is that he only tried, not succeeded.”
It shouldn’t have stung. Took expected nothing else, yet some adolescent part of him still wanted to dance for Gabriel’s approval. Family knew you too well. It made it easy for them to find the quick and dig in. Of course, the opposite was true too.
“Well, send a Hound to do a Hunter’s job,” Took drawled as leaned back. “And what can you expect but for him to piss on the carpet?”
Gabriel glanced at him and then at the photo. “If I’d sent a Hound after you, Luke, you wouldn’t be here to ask questions.”
“He had the ink.”
That made Gabriel scowl. Hunters might be happy to have a werewolf to send into a firefight, but few wanted to drink or train with one. The werewolves had made a virtue of exclusion and stuck with their own and their wannabes, if the dead man had been a Hound, then Gabriel would have known.
“You sure?” Gabriel asked with a small tilt of his chin.
“In his armpit,” Took said. “I couldn’t tell you how old it was off the top of my head, but it wasn’t raw. He’d had it on him at least a few months. He wasn’t a wolf.”
That was something Took hadn’t been sure of until now. He’d never smelled a werewolf before, not as a vampire. His childhood memory of what Gabriel smelled like was of whiskey, blood, and clean sweat, but now he could smell the sour, wet-fur stink of the curse on him. He’d have noticed that in the morgue.
Gabriel scowled. “And he wasn’t one of my Hounds. I don’t know him,” he said. “Some groupie who thought our mark would get him jobs, let him coast on my reputation. Does it matter? It doesn’t look like he’ll do it again.”
“I shot him in the foot,” Took said as he reclaimed his phone. “His associates finished him off. If he got that so he could tell them he was a Hound, then they don’t have much respect for you.”
They stared at each other for a second, and then Gabriel sat back. He slung his arm over the back of his chair. The glass of scotch tapped against the wood. It wasn’t that he didn’t see the trap Took had set, he just admired the setup.
“What if they knew he wasn’t?”
“And they let him get away with it?” Took said. He shook his head. “That shows even less respect.”
“I’m not sure that quite tracks,” Gabriel said. “But not a bad effort. I tell you what. If you give me a truth, then I’ll give you one.”
“Flip it,” Took said.
“A lie for a lie?”
Took shook his head. “You first.”
Gabriel pursed his lips in a shrug and waved his glass at Took in agreement. “Ask.”
“This guy wasn’t the sort who’d come up with something like this. He wasn’t smart enough to come up with it on his own, or stupid enough to think the Hounds would let him get away with it. So who did he work for?”
It took a moment and a slow sip of scotch before Gabriel decided to answer.
“I don’t know.” He raised one finger from the glass to quiet Took before he could say anything. “If I knew, I’d put a stop to it. If I had a strong hunch, I’d throw a few punches and see what shook out. As it is, all I have are stories about people who call themselves the Hounds of God, not Gabriel, and use my mark. Whoever they are, they back it up enough they aren’t questioned, but aren’t any dog I’ve collared.”
“Who?”
“Your turn.”
Took exhaled. He suspected he wouldn’t enjoy this game.
“Ask.”
“VINE?”
Gabriel had never been one to use a lot of words when one would do. It wasn’t just a tendency to the laconic, but because people tell you more if they make up the question themselves.
Why VINE when he’d been raised to be a Hunter? Why the Biters when he could never be bitten? Lycanthropy wasn’t inherited—although the offspring of a wolf was more likely to turn than die if infected—but whatever original sin a child inherited from their wolf parent inoculated them against vampirism. Or, Took poked at the sharp end of a tooth absently, that was how it was meant to work.
“I’m not cut out to be a plumber,” Took said. “And I’m not pretty enough to marry for money.”
Reluctant humor slanted one of Gabriel’s rare, crooked smiles. It looked weary. His smiles always did, as though they’d already seen the pratfall.
“I don’t know,” he said. “There’s someone for everyone, or so I fear. Word on the street is that you’ve slummed it with the cardinal.”
“Nice try,” Took said. “You’ve heard stories about these new Hounds. Like what?”
“They’re better, faster, stronger, and they’re house-trained,” Gabriel said. He finished his whiskey and set it down on the table. “Not like us. They do the job and lick the boot of whoever loosed their chain. They haven’t quite worked up the balls to come West yet. Unlike you. The local Hunters going on about them, about how they might not need me anymore, pissed me off enough that I tracked some of them down a few years ago—”
“You came back East?”
“Is it against the law?”
“Kind of.”
Gabriel shrugged. “I grabbed one of them after they led a raid on some sucker and her bloodbag down in Gainesville. Put a few pointed questions to him but didn’t get anything. He just mouthed fucking scripture at me, like any god is going to take time out of their day to intervene for some Southern idiot. He wasn’t a wolf, though, I could smell that. I lost my temper in the end and figured if he wanted to be a Hound, he should get some teeth.” He shrugged and glanced over Took’s shoulder to give a slight nod to someone. “After that, suddenly they were a lot more careful.”
“What happened to him?”
“My turn,” Gabriel pointed out, almost gently. “But since you asked so nicely, it didn’t take. Sometimes it doesn’t, although he died worse than most. I was tempted to give him the silver stroke myself just to shut him up, but you know my rule—survive and all is forgiven.”
Took could feel the puzzle in his head. It was almost there, all the pieces lined up in order. He just needed to poke the right one into place and it would all fit together. He was so close it made his fangs ache.
“Stronger, faster, better,” he said. “Was he?”
“Than me? No,” Gabriel said. “Than he should have been, a lot.”
“And he definitely wasn’t a wolf?”
Gabriel paused and frowned as he took a drink. A man—or wolf—of few words needed to find the right ones. “Couple of my people who’ve crossed paths with them—the Hounds, not the dogs—say that they are. Or might be. They’ve got the smell, but they don’t have the eyeshine. Like someone bit them and they never turned. This one, though, he wasn’t. Not a vampire either. I would have figured him for a Goat, but the only bite on him was mine. Didn’t stink like one either. So I figure, who’s more likely to be right? Everyone else or me? It’s me and they aren’t wolves.”
Except he’d made it a point to say that some of them might be, that people who should know thought they were. That meant Gabriel wasn’t going to claim this as his problem, but if someone else wanted to clean it up, he’d point it out to them.
Wolves that weren’t exactly wolves. Lost dhampir children. A sorcerer who’d bound his own tongue.
It was right there. Took knew the answer was right in front of him, but he couldn’t quite reach it. And time was up.
“My turn,” Gabriel said. “When are you going to learn not to always take point?”
There it was.
Gabriel meant it as a threat. Took’s grin caught him off guard, but that was the—well, part of the—answer Took was after. Now he had the who and the where. All he needed was the rest of the why… besides the obvious.
“When are you going to learn to duck?” Took asked. He swung the bottle around in a fast, hard arc. The heavy base connected with the side of Gabriel’s head. It dented the fine bones of his temple in and then shattered. Gabriel’s eyebrow split in a welter of blood that dripped d
own his cheek to his jaw, and he slumped backward as his brain rattled around his skull.
Took didn’t expect it would last. He kicked the chair out from under him and spun around to punch the broken bottle up into the face of a bearded, blond werewolf who grabbed at him with long, muscle-heavy arms. The shards of glass dug deep into the soft meat of his cheek, and then Took twisted his wrist hard.
The blond howled as Took shredded his face—most of the left side hung loose in long strips of ragged, raw steak—and staggered backward. It would heal, but not cleanly. Took grabbed the guy by his bloody shirt and threw his weight against him, the burly square of body a serviceable shield as Took charged the door.
A wiry girl, her blonde hair teased up like a wolf’s ruff, lunged at him from the side. She swung two knives in a practiced, crisscrossing pattern that flicked out to nick at his forearms and face. Actual training meant Took couldn’t just bull his way through. He had to alter his plan instead. He grabbed one of the knives in his hand as the girl slashed at him. The blade caught on his palm and slotted between his middle and index fingers.
The pain throbbed up his arm and into his throat, but he ignored it as he smashed what was left of the bottle against her head. The dregs of beer matted into her hair, and Took used his grip on the knife to yank her close enough to headbutt. Her nose popped like a crumpled plastic mug and blood sprayed over Took. He gagged in surprise. Her blood tasted acrid and had a bitter, herbal bite to it.
He pulled his gun while she lurched backward, eyes glazed as she shook her head. A hard blink was enough to focus her, and she tensed as she shifted her grip on the knives for another attack. Took shot her in the throat. She shrieked—or tried to around the open flap of her throat—and stumbled backward as she tried to plait the shreds of her throat together with her fingers.
Rule number one for fighting things that healed faster than you—messy and upsetting was sometimes a better choice than what would be a kill shot on a human.
Bones crunched behind him and flesh ripped as the body underneath it decided to be something else. Five minutes. That was how long it took for a werewolf to finish the change. Less for Gabriel.
