by Sierra Dean
If Marcela and her boys didn’t heed my warning, I would make them rue the day they crossed me.
I was good at a great number of things, but violent and bloody revenge was where I truly excelled.
“And why should we let you go? If you’re such a threat to us, why shouldn’t we kill you where you stand?”
I glanced to Clementine. “Can you show them what it really means to manipulate someone?”
She smiled, and I was a little frightened by the malicious gleam in her eyes. “No mercy?”
“No mercy.”
She focused her attention on the table closest to us. A man with his hair pulled back in a limp brown ponytail was staring at her as if she were the second coming of Helen of Troy.
“Hi, gorgeous,” she cooed.
As she spoke to him, I could see the others shaking off their stupor. It seemed her vocal thrall was either all, or one. She could cast a wide net or reel in a sole fish, but not both at once.
“Hey,” he said, his voice dopey and love drunk.
“Do you have a knife? Big boy like you should have a real big knife, right, sweetie?”
He nodded and slid a huge hunting knife out of the sheath on his leg, and set it on the table like a prize for her.
“Pick it up,” she said.
I was reminded, chillingly, of a similar interaction I’d had with Sig a week prior. We’d been sitting in my living room, and he admitted his role as my great-grandsire—the originator of my vampire bloodline—gave him incredible power over me. He’d demonstrated this by making me put a gun to my own head with no will to resist.
That Clementine could do the same thing made me exceptionally nervous over the kind of abilities she would grow into as she aged. If she were to live long enough to become a council member, she would have the vampire world at her fingertips.
The man obeyed her, lifting the knife with a solid grip on the handle.
“Now, I want you to stab yourself in the hand, please.” She requested it like she was asking for a favor, with the sweet, wide-eyed innocence of a child. He didn’t even blink, merely held the blade for a moment, then thrust it downward, cutting through his own flesh and bone until the knife settled into the wood surface of the table. Blood beaded around the cut, but with the knife sealing it, there was little mess.
All around us the spell was cast off, and the men came back into themselves, including the man who had just stabbed himself.
He stared at his hand like it was attached to someone else entirely, and once the realization of what he’d done sank in, he screamed. The sheer volume of his cry gave me chills, but I didn’t let my uneasiness show. Instead I ignored the newly drawn guns and the men who had clambered to their feet.
“Sundown.” I glared, feigning a calmness I didn’t feel.
“We’ll see,” Marcela said coolly.
And beyond all reason, she let us walk out.
Once we were back on the sidewalk, I let out a sigh of relief. There was no way we should have been able to leave the bar with all our limbs intact, but somehow it had happened. We were still alive, but so were they. The only benefit that had come from our meeting was having faces for four of the necros. Marcela and her boys accounted for a small chunk of our troubles, but knowing who they were meant four fewer mystery villains to hunt down.
I would have preferred to kill them now, but it wouldn’t have worked. Someone aside from them would have ended up dead, and that was a risk I couldn’t take.
I matched my stride with Clementine’s. “That parlor trick back there, do you think you could do it on a larger scale?”
“If you’re asking if I can control the actions of a whole room of men at one time, the answer is no. I can subdue maybe forty or fifty, like you saw in there, but I can only manipulate one at a time. Potentially two if they were really weak-minded. Or children.” She shrugged apologetically, and I tried not to think about whether or not she’d tested her theory about children.
So much for the idea of using her to turn the biker gang against their masters.
“Well, the subduing thing is helpful, at least. Thanks for that, by the way.” I wonder if Holden had known how useful she would be when he’d gone looking for her. Someone had known she was a tough cookie, otherwise she wouldn’t have been made the gatekeeper at Havana.
“Glad to be of service.” She skipped forward to meet up with the rest of the crew, barely seeming to mind that we had just spit in the face of our own certain death. She was an odd one.
“What happened?” Desmond asked, coming forward to greet me.
“No one is dead. Yet. There are four necros in there, and I’m pretty sure one of them is the de facto leader. Her and her boy toy anyway. She was calling all the shots, and none of the boys were too bothered by her.” Realizing I still had my sword drawn, I re-sheathed it and nodded to Tyler. “Walkie the rest of the group, and let’s get the hell out of here before they change their minds about letting us walk.”
“Why did they let you walk?” Reggie asked. I tried not to take offense at his incredulity.
“Secret gave them an ultimatum and a fairly showy display of power.” Holden had joined us now, standing between Clementine and me so I was a buffer between him and Desmond.
“What did you do?” Des asked.
“Oh, you know me. Big threats, flashy sword. Clementine did all the hard work.”
The blonde vampire smiled at the compliment and did a small curtsy. “Though I be but little, I am fierce,” she quipped, putting her own spin on Shakespeare’s famous quote.
“Funny. That line always reminded me of Secret,” Tyler said, clipping the walkie back on his belt.
I almost blushed.
The three absent members of our party came around the building, and once we were again eleven strong, I started walking. I wanted everyone present to explain what I’d learned about the Hands of Death. More importantly, however, we were running preciously low on moonlight, and I needed to get myself and the vampires somewhere safe.
My original plan had been to herd the whole group to my apartment, but I now saw how foolish that idea was. With four vampires and myself in the mix, there was no way we’d all be able to comfortably wait out daylight in my tiny place. Calliope’s realm would have been a good alternative, if not for Genie and Desmond. Werewolves were prohibited in Calliope’s home, and I’d broken her rule a few too many times to think I’d be able to get away with it again. No matter how bad things were out here.
Genie had also proven to be less than stable with her power when she shifted—explosively so—and the transition from our world to Calliope’s was hard on the most controlled shifter. It wasn’t worth the risk to try.
“Where are we going?” Desmond walked alongside me, a few paces ahead of the rest of the group. Given the tone of his voice and the fact he was moving on autopilot, I was fairly certain he knew where we were headed.
“You’re not going to like it.”
“Do I need to remind you I’m not the one with all the Lucas issues?”
He wasn’t trying to be hurtful, but his words hit me like a sucker punch all the same. We’d had an argument about Lucas before leaving Louisiana. After Desmond had proposed, we’d gone to my uncle, Callum, for his blessing. I’d hoped that would be the end of the ordeal, but Callum had explained I was still married to Lucas in the eyes of the pack. In order to marry Desmond I would need Lucas to declare I was no longer his. It wasn’t an ideal situation.
“You think he’d be receptive to a divorce right now?” I joked, hoping to keep the mood light.
Desmond offered me a tight smile. “‘Hey, Lucas, New York is on fire and the dead have come back to life. How do you feel about me marrying Secret?’”
“You’re right. It’s not the best pitch.”
As far as inopportune conversations went, now was a terrible time to talk about our wedding. But the truth was, I wanted to think about anything other than the current situation. I had to believe Desmond
and I would come through this, and we would have our opportunity to be together when all the dust settled. Maybe it was selfish of me to focus on that, but I felt the universe owed me something positive, considering all the crap I’d been put through.
“Maybe wait until after he’s agreed to help us before you ask,” Desmond suggested.
“Aren’t you the one who claimed he was more reasonable than I gave him credit for?”
“Yes. But you can’t deny you two bring out the worst in each other.”
Desmond’s brother Dominick had said something similar to me last time I’d been with Lucas, and it was a harsh truth. For two people who had been destined by fate and a metaphysical soul-bond to be together, we couldn’t have been more poorly matched. Lucas was selfish and obstinate, and I was too willful and independent to make an obedient queen.
And he would always put matters of the pack before me, which was his job as king, but he did it often enough it became detrimental. He didn’t know how to delegate tasks to others and kept the weight of the whole pack firmly on his shoulders.
He was one of the youngest pack kings in a century, next to Callum, and I think he felt the burden of proving himself too much. His father had been beloved, and it was an awful lot to live up to.
Damn, was I starting to empathize with my shitty husband?
The end of the world was giving me some unsettling perspective on things.
Rain Hotel, where Lucas lived in the city, was a few scant blocks from the vampire council’s headquarters. I was tempted to tell the vamps in the group to go to ground there, but I didn’t know if I’d see them again if I did.
Since Lucas and his father both recognized the wisdom of catering to a supernatural crowd, all Rain Industries hotels were set up with light-safe curtains. It was a lesser-known perk, but something that became a big selling point if exposure to the sun would burn you into a pile of ash.
It took us about twenty minutes to walk from the Dirt Hog to Rain Hotel, and by the time the glossy black façade of the hotel appeared, I was feeling the drag of sunrise. We still had some time, but the blackness of night was starting to peter out, replaced with a lighter blue-purple shade. Soon the sun would peek her head up over the buildings, but by then we’d be safely tucked away.
I hoped.
The front glass doors of the hotel were shattered, but when we stepped into the lobby, we found the place abandoned. Several vases of flowers had been knocked to the floor, and the check-in desks had been ransacked, but apart from that the place was untouched.
If the hotel had been compromised, though, it meant the guestrooms might not be secure. I’d hoped we could spend the night in the regular suites before approaching Lucas, but it looked like our best shot at safety would be going to the king himself.
“Do you have your card?” I asked Desmond.
It had been quite some time since Desmond had lived under the same roof with Lucas. A rift had formed between them thanks to me, and it had never healed properly. The former best friends now only spoke and saw each other when it related to pack business.
Or business-business, I supposed, since Desmond was the head of one of Lucas’s architectural firms.
Desmond pulled out his wallet and withdrew a familiar-looking Rain Hotel keycard. I had an identical one buried in a drawer at home somewhere. I didn’t know if my code still worked, but Desmond’s certainly would.
“This is going to be a tight squeeze.” He held the door open and ushered everyone inside.
Eleven grown adults all wedged into a cramped metal box was enough to set my claustrophobia going haywire. I breathed deeply and kept my eyes shut as Desmond entered his personal access code and the elevator whirred to life.
Wait.
“How the hell is the elevator still working?” I asked, wondering how it had only occurred to me as strange once we were already in it.
“All the Rain hotels have substantial back-up generators,” Desmond explained. “After the 2003 blackout, Lucas’s father insisted on the upgrade. A few people were stuck in the elevators then, and he didn’t want anyone else to have to deal with that kind of experience. Looks like we owe Jeremiah Rain a big thank you.”
I’d never been so pleased to hear about engineering foresight before. Hauling ourselves up eighty flights of stairs would have been exhausting. I’d have rather slept in the stairwell. And given how close sunrise was, I probably would have fallen asleep in the stairwell.
Moments later the door chimed and slid open, and we were greeted by three men with guns aimed at our heads.
Chapter Thirteen
“Whoa, whoa, whoa.” I exited the elevator first, both because I was the pack’s queen and had the most power of anyone in the elevator, and also because I didn’t want to be stuck in the cramped space anymore.
I recognized all three of the men as members of Lucas’s pack, and thankfully two of them were guys I was well acquainted with.
Dominick lowered his gun first, and upon recognizing Desmond and myself, the others did the same.
“Sorry, ma’am.” Jackson, a werewolf I’d rescued from a rogue pack several years earlier, gave me an apologetic nod.
The third wolf was a guy named Bradley whom I’d met once or twice in passing at various werewolf events. He offered a small smile and bowed politely. Jackson and Dominick, realizing they’d skipped protocol, bowed as well.
“Totally not necessary right now, guys.” I touched them each on the shoulder, bidding them to stand. I looked to Bradley first. “A few members of my party are vampires. I need you to show them to light-safe rooms, please.”
He grimaced at the word vampires but didn’t argue, bless him. Clementine, Sutherland and Reggie followed him, but Holden held back for a moment. He placed his hand on my arm and fixed me with a stern glare. “Are you sure this is the best idea?”
“Do you have a better one?”
“I can think of about a thousand other places we could have gone that didn’t involve us crawling to your ex for help.”
“Next time we’re facing death by sunrise, remind me to ask for your best suggestion then.” It hurt me physically to be short with him. But he was being a dick, and it was testing my patience. Now was hardly the best time to get into a fight, though.
“Yes, next time.” He said it as if he doubted the likelihood of there being a next time, and that made me uneasy. If we could avoid getting ourselves into life-threatening trouble down the line, that would be great. But it seemed much more likely he believed we would not be facing any future trouble together.
You made your choice, I reminded myself.
But my choice didn’t need to mean he was out of my life forever, did it? That was too unfair for words. We had been together for years before things ever got physical. Was it beyond the scope of reason we could go back to the way things were?
Even as I considered it, I knew how ridiculous it was.
We could never be the same as we were, because between then and now we had loved each other. We’d loved each other in a way that was fierce and beautiful, and those kinds of feelings changed people. The people we were now might never be able to be friends.
I had to believe, though, we could find a middle ground between friendship and love. A space we could exist in together that meant I wouldn’t need to give him up, even though I’d chosen to spend my life with Desmond.
Today was all about selfish thoughts for me, but they tended to be the best kind when it came to distracting myself from the bigger issues.
“We can talk about this later. For now, can you find somewhere you’ll be safe for the day? Please?” I touched his cheek, and he flinched.
Our healing process was off to a great start.
“Fine.”
I was well versed in the many nuanced meanings of fine, though usually it was because I was wielding the word like a passive-aggressive knife. For Holden to throw it back at me meant that he, of course, was not fine, and when we did eventually talk, it wasn’t
going to be to share our warm-and-fuzzy feelings.
As long as it meant he was still talking to me, I didn’t care.
He followed after Bradley, leaving me with the humans and the werewolves. The penthouse was three stories and had plenty enough room for everyone, even if Lucas had brought half the pack here. I wasn’t sure how many of the wolves would actually be present, given not all of them lived in Manhattan proper. Wherever they were, I hoped they were safe. Regardless of my feelings for Lucas, I cared a great deal about the pack and didn’t want anything bad to happen to the people in it.
“Jackson, can you show everyone else to a room? Des and I need to go have a chat with His Majesty.” I swear I tried to keep the sarcastic tone out of my voice, but sometimes it snuck in all on its own.
Jackson, no stranger to my bad attitude, smirked and led the humans and my sister away. The cops all looked wiped out. The past several hours had dealt us more drama and insanity than most people experienced in a lifetime. They’d seen the dead rise, and I’d watched the living fall.
I swallowed hard, chasing the memory of Keaty from my mind. The time for mourning would come, but I couldn’t face my sadness right now. I had a bigger fish to fry. Namely, I needed to have a tête-à-tête with my werewolf husband before sunrise.
We mounted the stairs behind Dominick, and he led us down the corridor to Lucas’s bedroom-slash-office. After a polite knock of warning, he opened the door and ushered us inside. “It’s Secret and Desmond,” he announced before ducking out of the room, leaving us alone with the pack king.
Lucas was pacing in front of the fireplace, his blond hair a mess, as though he’d been running his fingers through it repeatedly. He had a day’s worth of stubble growth, and the bags under his eyes were a dark, bruised purple.
“You look like shit,” I said.
“It’s nice to see you too.” He stopped pacing and gave Desmond and me a once-over. “How are you feeling?” he asked Desmond.
