Ashes Reborn

by Keri Arthur

  “Until we get a little more detail, it’s hard to do anything about it.”

  “Yeah.” He rubbed a hand across his jaw. “Why don’t we grab Rory’s food and get back—just in case he’s the reason for the bad sensations.”

  “No one knows where he is, so I doubt it.”

  Even so, I finished off my tea and quickly rose. The drive-through queue had tapered off by that time, so it didn’t take long to get Rory’s burgers as well as a couple extra for the two of us. I might have already eaten, but my stomach was still demanding more. It was just as well my metabolic rate ran far hotter than a human’s; otherwise, I’d have been the size of a house.

  As we headed out, I added, “It might be worthwhile to leave the van—and your phone—here. I don’t want to risk anyone tracing us to the cabin.”

  He nodded and jogged off to the van. I climbed into my car and drove over to pick him up, then swung back onto the road that would take us to Trawool and the cabin.

  Jackson was silent the entire trip, but I could feel the tension in him. Whatever he was picking up, it was growing in intensity. I parked in front of the door again, then grabbed the bags of food and hurried up the steps.

  The heat once again surged over me as I opened the door and stepped inside. Rory was not only unharmed but also awake.

  “That was quick,” he said. Though he sounded brighter, I could still feel the tiredness—the weakness—in him. Refueling was not happening at any great speed, which was frustrating. Not that there was anything he could do about it—it was just the way things were playing out with this rebirth.

  “That’s because I’m well aware how grouchy you get when you don’t get fed in a reasonable time frame.”

  A smile tugged his lips. “Says the woman who once threatened to cinder me if I didn’t present chocolate immediately.”

  “A statement any reasonable woman would understand.” I squatted down beside him, then unwrapped one of the burgers and handed it to him.

  “Jackson didn’t appear?” He took a bite, then closed his eyes, his expression one of utter bliss.

  “Jackson did,” Jackson said as he stepped into the room and closed the door. “Fuck, is it hot in here, or is it just me?”

  “It’s hot.” I continued on to the small kitchen table, depositing the rest of the food on it before shrugging off my coat. “And I won’t object if you strip off.”

  “I will,” Rory muttered. “Keep your pants on, mate.”

  Jackson chuckled even as he stripped off his jacket, then began rolling up his sleeves. “Never fear, I have no intentions of giving you an inferiority complex when you’re still so new to the world.”

  Rory snorted. “Dream on.”

  Jackson pulled the chair away from the table and sat down, but his grin quickly faded as my phone rang. “Who’s got that number?”

  Tension ran through me, especially after his recent comment about something feeling off. “No one but you and Rory.” I pulled the phone out of my pocket and glanced at the screen. The number was a familiar one. “It’s okay. It’s a rerouted call from the office.”

  Jackson’s relief was palpable—and said plenty about the tension still riding him. “It’s probably one of our other clients, wondering why in the hell we’ve failed to give them progress reports in recent weeks.”

  “Probably.” I hit the CALL ANSWER button, then placed it on speaker so he could hear it.

  For several seconds, the only sound coming from the phone was whisper-soft breathing.

  “Crank call,” Jackson muttered. “Hang up.”

  “I wouldn’t advise that,” a pleasant and unfortunately familiar voice said, “because that might have dire consequences.”

  Sparks danced across my fingers, and it was all I could do to control them and not melt the phone. And this time it had nothing to do with Jackson and everything to do with anger. And if I was being honest, more than a little fear.

  “What do you want, Rinaldo?”

  “You know what I want,” he replied, his tone urbane and ultrapolite. “And you have not been holding up your end of our bargain.”

  “I’ve been calling you every fucking night,” Jackson growled.

  “Yes, but your reports have been scant when it comes to information.”

  “Hard to give what we haven’t got,” I bit back.

  “If that were true—and it isn’t—then perhaps I might be inclined to forgive.”

  “Oh, for fuck’s sake—”

  “I told you what would happen if you failed to play by my rules, so you will now pay the promised price.” Rinaldo paused, and I could almost envision his cold smile. “Or rather, your precious friends now will.”

  CHAPTER 2

  Jackson’s face went white. But Rinaldo wasn’t quite finished with us yet.

  “Be at the Carlton Gardens tonight at three,” he said. “That gives you enough time to view the damage you’ve done first. Oh, and if you contact PIT, there will be further consequences.”

  The call ended, and Jackson immediately snatched the phone from my hands. He punched in some numbers, and after a few seconds the phone began to ring.

  And ring.

  Fuck.

  I hoped with all my heart that it didn’t mean Shona was hurt or dead. She was one of Jackson’s lovers and the security specialist who, via the simple act of allowing us into an apartment to search for the missing research notes, had ended up with Rinaldo’s death sentence hanging over her head. I hoped it was simply a case of either her being unable to hear the phone or of the phone itself being out of range or dead.

  Please, god, don’t let her be the dead one.

  I raked a hand through my hair and met Jackson’s flat stare. Though there was very little in the way of emotion to be seen, the heat of his fury and fear washed through me like lava. “You should go—”

  “You should both go,” Rory interrupted. “It could well be a trap of some kind. You need to protect each other’s backs.”

  “But you’re not strong—”

  “I’ll be okay,” he cut in again. “I have the fire and the burgers to fuel me, and then I’ll sleep. And you don’t have to be here to watch me do that.”

  “I know, but—”

  “Stop arguing and just go.”

  “Fine.” I thrust up. “Jackson, I gather you know where Shona lives?”

  His face was grim. “Yes. And if he’s hurt her . . .”

  If he had, there wasn’t a whole lot we could do. Not immediately, anyway. I doubted he’d personally turn up for the meeting later; he’d have to know how angry we’d be, and how dangerous that could be.

  I walked over to Rory and bent down to drop a kiss on his cheek. “I’ll be back by sunrise.”

  He nodded. “Kick some butt for me.”

  Jackson was already out the door. I picked up my coat and followed. “We should grab your phone on the way through—”

  “We can’t afford to waste the time it’d take—”

  “What we can’t afford,” I cut in, “is risking anyone getting Rory’s current location via the GPS on my phone. Which means I can’t ring PIT.”

  I jumped into the car, started it up, then flattened the accelerator. Dust and stones sprayed out from the rear tires as the car launched forward.

  “Why the fuck would we want to ring them?” he snapped. “Especially after Rinaldo’s warning?”

  “Because Shona wasn’t the only one whose life was threatened the night we raided Rosen’s apartment.” Rosen had owned and run Rosen Pharmaceuticals, one of two private labs hired by the government to help find a cure for the virus. He’d been murdered by one section of the sindicati, but, unfortunately for the rest of us, he’d been infected by the virus, and had subsequently risen and come under Luke’s control. Whether he was still around and sane now that Luke was dead, I
had no idea. PIT was leading the cleanup of the remaining infected and really didn’t believe in sharing that sort of information. I swung the car onto the main road. “The security guard’s life was also dependent on our good behavior, remember? We can’t be in two places at once, so, like it or not, PIT has to be informed.”

  Jackson swore and scrubbed a hand across his eyes. “I’d forgotten about the guard.”

  “He doesn’t deserve to die just because Rinaldo thinks we’re not holding up our end of the deal.”

  “Which we aren’t, given we haven’t handed him all the notes we found.”

  “But how does Rinaldo know that?” Frustration bit through my voice. “Especially since we haven’t told anyone—including PIT—about either the USB we found in the locker or the suitcase notes we photographed but didn’t give anyone.”

  “He’s an exceptionally strong telepath—”

  “Which means fuck all when neither of us can be read,” I said.

  “De Luca’s get were there when we found the suitcase of notes, remember.”

  His get—vampires who’d undergone the blood ceremony with De Luca, and who subsequently owed allegiance to his lair on turning—might have been, but I doubted they’d paid too much attention to our reasons for being there. Not when their sole intention had been to kill us in retribution for De Luca’s death—a death we weren’t responsible for, as much as I might have wanted to be. That honor belonged to Frank Parella, a sindicati general and De Luca’s factional opposite.

  And while some of his vampires might have been present when we’d found the research notes at Denny Rosen Junior’s place, they’d been arrested and carted away by the time we opened the case and discovered just how important its contents might be. While some of the notes had been virus related, for the most part they’d dealt with a rather startling discovery—James Wilson, who’d been working for Rosen Senior’s pharmaceutical company and who was one of the two scientists leading the charge to find a cure for the virus, had isolated the gene he believed responsible for vampirism and thought it might be possible to reverse the process.

  If that was true, it was a discovery that could be worth billions to whoever held the information. And while neither of us had any intention of holding it to ransom, we also had no intention of letting it get into the wrong hands—such as those of the sindicati or Rinaldo.

  “Yes,” I said, somewhat impatiently, “but we did hand over the unrelated notes from the case.”

  “We handed those over to whoever got to our office first, whether that was Rinaldo or Parella,” Jackson all but growled. “Maybe Parella got there first, and that’s what has pissed Rinaldo off.”

  “Maybe.” We’d certainly taken a risk by making that play, but we’d done it in the hope that either Parella and his vampires, or even the werewolves—whom we’d also notified—might catch Rinaldo in the act of retrieving the notes and take the bastard down for us.

  I guess we should have known he wouldn’t be caught so easily.

  Jackson scrubbed a hand across his eyes. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t be biting your head off when we both agreed it was our best option.”

  “Well, not exactly.” I gave him a somewhat grim look. “I was the one who gave that ultimatum to Rinaldo. You agreed to it only after the fact.”

  And if my impulsive action had caused Shona’s death, I would carry the guilt of it throughout this lifetime. But if there was one thing I’d learned over my lives, it was that good people sometimes paid the ultimate price, even if they were not directly involved in whatever fight or war was being waged.

  Which didn’t excuse what I’d done or ease the guilt in any way.

  We reached Seymour in record time, and, after Jackson had retrieved the phone from his old van, he made the call to PIT. Neither of us knew the security guard’s last name, let alone where he lived, so the only chance he really had of survival was for PIT to access his firm’s employment records for those details and then get there first. Had we had that information, I suppose we could have called the cops rather than PIT, and technically wouldn’t have breached Rinaldo’s warning. But would he care about technicalities? Somehow, I doubted it. Besides, I wasn’t about to send ordinary cops up against his men, not after they’d revealed themselves to be rather trigger-happy the one time we’d confronted them.

  “Why didn’t you tell them Shona had also been threatened?” I asked once Jackson had hung up.

  “Because she’s my responsibility, not theirs.”

  And vengeance would also be his, his expression suggested, if the worst-case scenario eventuated.

  I sent the car hurtling down the freeway, but even though I egged every ounce of speed I could from the engine, it still took more than thirty minutes to get to Craigieburn. The instinctive part of me that dreamed of death was screaming we were going to be late. I just had to hope this was one of those few times that part of me was wrong.

  Shona lived in one of the newer estates in the area, which meant that—at this time of night—there wasn’t much activity, especially as there didn’t appear to be many other occupied houses in the immediate area.

  “It’s number twenty-four, down at the end on the right.” Jackson’s voice remained flat and empty. But I could still feel the emotion he wasn’t showing—he was a volcano on the very edge of eruption. “She moved here only a few months ago. If she’d stayed in her rental in Carlton—”

  “More people might be dead.” Because if Rinaldo was intent on a kill, being in a more heavily populated area certainly wouldn’t have stopped him.

  But Jackson knew that as much as I did.

  I switched off the engine and headlights, and allowed the car to coast down the slight incline. Shona’s house was opposite a rather wild-looking park and in between two streetlights—very handy for vampires intent on no good. The house was one of those ultramodern, dark brick and concrete constructions that seemed so popular of late. A Mazda sat in the driveway, and light peeked through the blinds shuttering one of the large front windows. At first glance, nothing seemed out of place. It certainly wasn’t the battlefield I’d been expecting.

  Maybe we had gotten here in time.

  Maybe Rinaldo had gone after the less obvious target.

  And maybe tomorrow the fae would gain wings and start flying just as they did in fairy tales.

  I pulled on the hand brake to stop the car, avoiding the giveaway flash of red that would have come from the taillights had I used the main brake. If there were vampires here, it’d be a wasted effort, as they’d hear our heartbeats the minute we got close to the house, but it was always better to be safe than sorry. Especially when we had no idea exactly who—or what—we were going up against.

  I climbed out and walked around to the passenger side of the vehicle. The night was eerily quiet. Nothing moved, and there was little in the way of sounds. Even the rumble of traffic from the freeway, which was usually audible from quite a distance on still nights like this, seemed muted.

  Can you sense anything?

  No. Jackson paused. It’s situations like this that make me wish I were an earth or air fae. You got any weapons stashed in the car?

  No. I hadn’t exactly intended to get into a firefight when I’d hired the damn thing, not when I had Rory to look after. How would either be an advantage right now?

  Earth fae can sense the presence of others by their weight on the earth, and air fae can hear the whispers of breath on the wind. He paused. Sweat beaded his forehead, but I wasn’t entirely sure it was caused by the effort of communicating silently. Mind speech might remain difficult between us, but I suspected the sweat had more to do with the fury and fear that burned inside of him. Shall we split?

  I hesitated. It made sense to split up, but I was reluctant to do so, if only because he’d need me close if those inner fires got the better of his currently tenuous control.

 
I’m okay, he said, obviously sensing my concern. It won’t get away from me.

  Not until he had someone to unleash on, at any rate. But I kept that comment to myself and motioned to the right. I’ll tackle that side.

  He nodded and moved toward the car that sat still and empty in the driveway. I scanned the front windows as I went right, but there wasn’t much to see other than the sliver of light lining either side of that one window. The other two also had blinds down, so if someone was inside, they’d have as little hope of seeing me as I did them.

  Car is locked, but the hood is warm, Jackson said. She hasn’t been home long.

  Meaning if the vamps had attacked Shona, they’d been here, waiting for her.

  I grabbed the top of the fence that divided the front yard from the back and pulled myself up, pausing at the top to scan the nearby area. No shadows, no dogs, and no sense of the werewolves who should have been here.

  Fire briefly flickered across my fingertips, tiny sparks that spun into the darkness and quickly disappeared. I flexed my hands as I dropped to the ground, trying to ease the tension. This time, it was all mine, not an overflow from Jackson. I walked to the first of three windows situated along this side of the house and, my back pressed against bricks still warm from the day’s sunshine, carefully peered inside. The room beyond was filled with boxes, some of them emptied, some of them still sealed with packing tape. There was no evidence of anything out of place or, indeed, any sort of fighting.

  Maybe Rinaldo had been bluffing. Maybe he only intended to make us fear the possibility of death. But even as that thought crossed my mind, I dismissed it. Everything we’d learned about the man—and that was little enough—suggested he wasn’t a vampire who pulled his punches.

  Besides, if everything was okay, why hadn’t the werewolves appeared, asking us what the hell was going on? Baker—the alpha wolf of the city pack—had given them orders to protect Shona against any sort of attack, and that should have meant they’d at least question us.

  I continued on, repeating the process with the next two windows. One was a study with a computer sitting on a small desk, and the other an empty room. I ducked past the last window and moved to the end of the building. The small yard beyond was empty and silent. I risked a quick look around the corner—and saw a small paved area, a large sliding door, and, closer to me, a laundry door.