Wrath & Bones (The Marnie Baranuik Files Book 4)

by A. J. Aalto

  The hotel stank of burnt sugar, and it took me a full minute of standing at the lobby doors to adjust. Harry had no trouble adjusting to the presence of so many immortals in one place due to long practice, but I could feel him bracing for it before we went any further. It wasn’t just the undead; the ripe waft of DaySitter Talent was a distinctly green smell, and though I never noticed it when I met one or two of them, the combination of so many out-of-towners here was overwhelming. I glanced over at Golden, but if her mundane nose noticed at all, she wasn’t showing it. She hadn’t slept well on the plane, and jetlag was double-teaming us with more than half a dozen time zone jumps, which meant that it was nighttime here, though I had to check my watch to confirm. Despite it being something like midafternoon by our bodies' reckoning, hers was telling her to try for some more shut-eye. She slogged into the hotel and to the desk, flipping open her ID and — purely by habit — her FBI badge. Harry paused to look back at me, his long black coat brushing his boots as he swayed. I felt the weight of his mind probe mine subtly, a gentle, fact-finding push.

  “How does my sweet lady?” he asked, concern creasing his brow.

  “I’m okay, Harry,” I said, nodding as rapidly as I was blinking. My lungs didn’t want to haul air. “Just need a second to take it all in. I didn’t know it would be…” I nodded again, lost for words.

  His eyes softened around the edges. “Take only as much time as you might require, ducky. I will take care of the minor details of our stay and Ms. Golden’s.”

  I tried to soothe my fluttering pulse by focusing on only one couple at a time, one DaySitter and their immortal, aiming my gaze down hallways and up to the ceiling and off to the lounge area. It was useless. Most of them had arrived well before us, not only from the New World but from far-flung corners of Europe, Africa, and Asia; in the time they’d spent gathering in Norway, their scents had combined into a heady miasma that made me feel like I was drowning in an invisible toffee factory. Across the floor above walked something that might have been hundreds of years old, but might also be shielding the greater amount of its power, and which might have been thousands instead. I tried to home in on it, appraising the void, the yawning chasm that marked an immortal; its footsteps paused and I had to wonder if it felt me. “It,” Marnie? I felt a worried frown dent my brow. When did you start referring to vampires as “its”? And fuckity fuck, why are you using the V-word? There was only one person on this planet who made me forget myself like that, and when my thoughts and words ran unchecked, I always knew who to blame. But he wasn't here. He hadn't even answered the phone. He was probably sitting in our office in his sexy-pants jeans with his arms bulging under his shirt-sleeves as he ate a sandwich or something, while I was miserable and buried in the sugary reek of revenant power and jetlag, missing my espresso maker and the way his eyes lit up when we joked with each other. He was fine and I was scared. Some badass I was turning out to be.

  I let my focus drift from the ancient revenant upstairs to the familiar one at the check-in desk, who was trying hard to ignore a little flutter of dread in his belly; it was a very particular sort of dread: positive, certain dismay. Harry tilted his head near to Golden, who nodded gratefully and went directly to the elevator, ignoring my questioning looks. She looked wan and exhausted. Harry kept his back to me while he discussed the weather with the concierge. I wasn’t fooled for a minute; something was bothering him. I waited to become acclimated to the constant onslaught of psi, like being thrown into cold water and hoping I'd be able to float and warm up before getting cramps and sinking. And that's what it felt like – trying not to drown in a torrent of the Blue Sense.

  All around me, bellhops treated dry-cleaned funeral shrouds as they might ball gowns, and people who might be thirty or three thousand brushed past me. It was the dark blush of evening, what Harry sometimes called undertide, when revenants stirred back to life to join their mortal attendants. Some DaySitters would sleep all day, as my Grandma Vi had, to spend the night awake with their partner. Some would be having dinner in preparation for nestling down to sleep after giving their Cold Company an evening feed, watched over by the protective eye of their immortal partner. An ancient creature silently roared from sleep above me to the right, causing that side of my face to crumple and my shoulders flinch as though the ceiling had suddenly burst into flame. Creature? This wasn’t good; I couldn’t spend the next week or so curled in a ball under a bed, and if I called any of them “it” or “creature” while I was beyond the Bitter Pass, I was liable to get my throat opened for it.

  Harry’s distress overpowered mine, but he stubbornly refused to look back at me. I Felt with my empathy past the obvious undead danger coming from every possible angle in the hotel, trying to pinpoint the specific source of Harry’s disappointment. I let my suspicions take me down the hall a few feet to peek into the dark, empty lounge area. A bored waitress leaned against the bar. I couldn’t imagine why there weren’t at least some people in the bar, fortifying themselves against the miserable cold with a hot toddy or Irish coffee or at least a mug of hot cocoa with a splash of something stronger in it. I decided that I could go for something like that myself, but had only taken a half step in that direction before stopping in complete disbelief.

  There was only one lonely dude hanging at the bar. The back of his head looked decidedly Jerkface-like, and the broad shoulders even more so. I marched over and growled at the back of his head and until he turned around.

  “What the hairy fuck are you doing here?” I demanded.

  “Nice to see you, too,” Batten said, turning on his barstool, his face lighting up. “I’m not really here. Officially.”

  I pointed vaguely behind me. “Harry asked Golden to be our Second.”

  “So I heard.”

  “Are you stalking me?” Then I had a darker thought. “Are you here to stalk revenants? You nitwit! They’ll murder you. You’re already a fucking goner. Just a flayed, mangled spray of brains and guts and tendons drooling blood on the snow, that’s what you are.”

  “I feel the same about you, babe,” he said.

  “I mean, you’re clearly…” I flapped one hand at the edge of his rolled sleeve, where the curve of his bicep advertised strength, and swallowed hard, momentarily at a loss for words of warning. “You know.”

  “Is this the part where I flex and your clothes fall off?”

  “No.”

  “Too bad. Kinda like that part.”

  “This is the part where I remind you, lest you’ve forgotten, that you’re no match for ancient revenants.”

  He plunked a finger on his right pectoral to remind me of the hundred and eight hash marks there, a scoreboard of all his revenant kills to date.

  I shook my head. “These things break guys like you with one finger. You saw what Malas can do.” I heard myself refer to revenants as things again and let out a huff of frustration.

  Batten put his beer bottle down on the bar, dark blue eyes dancing with amusement. “First, thanks for the vote of confidence. Secondly, I’m not here to hunt.”

  I blinked. “You’re not?” I blinked again, not believing him, but not able to Feel him, since he was a null for my Talents. I took a stab. “You’re here in case we need rescuing?”

  “Do you need rescuing?” He held up a hand. “Sorry, stupid question. But since I won’t know where you are, that would be tricky.”

  “If you’re not coming beyond the Bitter Pass, why are you here?”

  “You wanted me here?” he reminded me, but it came out like a question.

  “Then we changed our mind,” I said, noting the plural with a grimace.

  He nodded and tried again. “I missed you?”

  I glared at him.

  “It wasn’t cold enough in Colorado so I thought I’d give Scandinavia a try?”

  I took a slow, cleansing breath in through my nostrils and let it out slowly.

  He threw his hands in the air in an I-don’t-give-a-fuck motion. “Thought I’d park m
y ass in Norway and drink beer while you guys go north.” He calculated my reaction to that tried again. “Northeast?” Pause. “Northwest?”

  I propped my hands on my hips. “I’m supposed to buy this as a vacation?”

  He grinned around the neck of his beer bottle, sipped, and then lifted it in a toast in my direction. “Gonna taste-test my way alphabetically from Aass to Ringnes.”

  “Ah!” Harry swept into the bar, politely pretending to be pleased upon noticing our guest, his voice deceptively genial. “Welcome to Norway, Mr. Batten.”

  Since he was no longer with the FBI, for the first time in their history Batten couldn’t correct him to “agent.” His jaw twitched in a stress clench. “Thanks. Seems like nice country.”

  “Does it indeed?” Harry brought his gaze to settle directly upon Batten’s, and though his eyes did not bleed to warning chrome the way they once might have, the threat of a serious immortal mindfucking was heavily implied, and Batten was forced to look away. Satisfied that his superiority was still evident, Harry said crisply, “If there is anything I can do to make your stay in Norway more pleasant, you will of course let me know, and I shall attend to your wishes post haste.”

  “He’s not here to spelunk my womanly cavern,” I assured Harry.

  Harry’s eyes narrowed with displeasure. “Precisely what does the hunter want, one wonders?”

  “Could go for some king crab,” Batten suggested. “Got a hankering.”

  “When we get to our quarters, do ring room service for your friend, my pet,” Harry ordered, wiggling his fingers imperiously in my direction.

  “My friend?” I said.

  Harry took a sweeping, lingering look at me as though he was judging something, once again letting his gaze fall on Batten’s face. There was a long beat, during which Harry calculated and evaluated like the apex predator he was. I smelled burnt sugar and the bartender suddenly remembered that she had a lot of glasses to wash elsewhere. New Zealand, maybe.

  The corner of Harry lip twitched upward. “You haven’t a clue why you’re here, Mark. My heavens, how fascinating. There are certainly names on this invitation that have drawn you to the hunt, and, as usual, you follow my pet like a kitten chasing a bit of string—“

  “Hey!” It wasn’t the first time I’d been called names, but I’d never been called an inanimate cat toy before. I wasn’t about to stand for it. “I am, if anything, a rat. A big, fat, juicy – no, that’s not better. Then again, rats are smart.”

  Harry continued as if he hadn’t heard my objection. “Did it ever occur to you, my cold cook, that some of these names might have been added specifically to draw you like a shark to chum? That perhaps the hunter is the hunted? Do be careful, Mr. Batten. My pet would be quite disappointed to lose you to the fang.”

  I had to agree with that one. “It’s really not safe for you to be here. I should never have suggested it.”

  “Your being here does present something of a quandary,” Harry said. “I cannot in good faith let you follow us, and I cannot leave you here unattended to ride tantivy into ruin.”

  Batten snorted. “Some of us don’t need a babysitter.”

  Point: Batten, but it was an offside shot at Harry’s arrangement, and at me. I made my hey-you-jerk face.

  “It would be imprudent to continue as planned,” Harry said, more to himself than to us. “The Bitter Pass is a treacherous place, and to travel beyond to the Skulesdottir with an unprotected mortal, especially a vampire hunter...” He tongue-clucked his dismay. “What if he were drawn to the Olmdalur? Oh, taking him to Felstein. Shruff and cinders, what then?”

  Batten and I exchanged a glance; Jerkface shrugged. “What do you suppose we do with him? Should we drag him along?” I asked Harry, jabbing a thumb at Batten.

  Harry huffed. “Good heavens, how absurd. Only, we left him at home for a reason, my dove, and I am thoroughly vexed that you have forgotten.”

  “Should we leave him in Hammerfest? Seal him in bubble wrap and duct tape and shove him in a closet?”

  “Ducky! Do be serious.”

  “Would you come with us if I can arrange it?” I asked Batten, ignoring Harry’s long noise of disgust.

  For a moment, I thought his answer would be a resounding nah. “Suppose if I do, I could ask you about this Bitter Pass.”

  “But you suppose wrong,” Harry snapped, and then turned to me. “As always, you and your friend will be told only what you need to know, when you need to know it, and if you imagine that I will stand for any mischief, nonsense, aggravation, or shenanigans whilst we are beyond the Pass, you are sorely mistaken, DaySitter.”

  I objected with a squeak. “I don’t indulge in even half of the shenanigans that occur to me. And I'm completely out of malarkey.”

  To that, Harry narrowed his eyes. “I am greatly displeased with your malapertness.”

  “Yeah.” I nodded understandingly. “I've always thought my malapertness could use some work.”

  Harry slapped a hotel key-card into my hand. “Regardless of what you learn, what you see, and what you hear, you will follow my lead and do exactly as I instruct. Mind my words, MJ, you will keep this cold cook of yours on a short leash.”

  The notion of Batten in bondage gear popped unbidden into my mind, and I worked very hard to keep it off my face. Harry wasn't fooled for an instant. His eyes narrowed in on my twitching lips and he warned, “Only, he must remain on his very best behavior for the duration of this trip.”

  I stared at Harry's back as he shadow stepped away, a piqued, aristocratic blur of grey flannel and shiny black Oxfords stalking into the dark hall, leaving a cold wake of his lemony 4711 cologne and snap of burnt sugar. Somewhere in a room above, one of the other revenants reacted to Harry’s frustration with a hungry keen. I looked at Mark to see if he’d heard it; Batten was studying the ceiling warily.

  He got off his bar stool, collected his leather jacket, draped it over his forearm, and followed me into the hall to the elevator. “What’s got Dead Guy crankier than usual? Thought he liked me now. ”

  “’Like’ would be an exaggeration, dude. He’s grown to tolerate you. Give him fifty years or so. He might come around in time to shed a tear at your funeral.” I watched Harry go ahead to the stairwell and felt a worm of worry in my gut. Though I usually wouldn’t snitch on anything the Bond relayed about Harry, I felt it important enough to share. “He’s scared.”

  Batten made an indecipherable noise. “What scares a four hundred-year-old immortal?”

  Ten thousand-year-old immortals? His DaySitter being a doofus? Prophecies of doom and such? An impending bespoke tailor's strike?

  Ever the hunter, Batten jumped to his own conclusions. “Revs misbehaving?”

  It was hard to smell anything but revenant power and hunger, that distinct snap-spark of burnt sugar and molasses in the air. There was a yawning emptiness in every crook and corner, chasms of cold shade where mortal souls once filled bodies, and when I focused on them, the sensation of preternatural clout ruffled my psychic feathers like the shifting winds of warring cold fronts. The other revenants on the Overlord’s invitation were sending out their signatures, young and old, weak and strong, pressing their influence out to announce themselves to their bloodkin, to warn rivals and rally allies to their side. Bluffing, too, unspoken bluffs, always deceiving, always playing games. They were also feeding, and the dormant powers that usually faded when a revenant was away from his house and the others in his bloodline, those dormant powers were coming back online.

  That was a sobering thought. Was Malas Nazaire already here, stirring his house? Was Jeremiah Prost? Was Aston Sarokhanian? Would we get answers to questions I’d long given up on answering? Would I even be allowed to ask questions? I had so many. Had Malas Nazaire been shunned by the elder Falskaar Vouras for his shameful behavior with the hybrids? Was Prost being kept in line or was he still killing? Would Aston Sarokhanian tell us if Colonel Jack Batten alive or just a pile of dry old bones in someo
ne’s dump pit? I stared out the heavy glass at the street as a plow went by, kicking a bright white tidal wave of snow onto the curb. Beyond the dark, starlit harbor, the snow-capped mountains were silent on the matter.

  “I don’t think that’s it,” I said as we stepped into the elevator. I pressed three and we waited as it hauled us skyward. “The other guests are here with us, but they’re still very aware that they’re among regular humans in this place and are obeying human law. That’s not what’s bothering Harry.”

  “He changed his mind awfully quick,” Batten said.

  “It’s the twenty-first century. Anything can happen,” I said with a shrug. “But in the meantime, nothing better happen, because I’ve had enough of this shit.”

  “He wants me around, babe.”

  “Harry does not want you with us.”

  “Doesn’t he?” Batten pressed the elevator button. “Think about it.”

  I did. Other than keeping an eye on Kill-Notch, what could Harry possibly have to gain by pissing off revenants by bringing a known vampire hunter into their midst? His own prince would be displeased, not to mention an entire house of empathic DaySitters…

  Empaths. I’d never been able to feel Batten’s fluctuating emotions, his devotions, his desires, with my Talent, even with him buried exquisitely inside me. I had to judge Batten’s intentions solely by his behavior, his words, and past experiences with him. But Harry felt Batten, and easily.

  Batten looked like he was reading my mind, which was just gratuitously unfair. “Think of any reason Tall, Limp, and Pasty might want to keep me close by?”

  Harry couldn’t feel love for me. He could feel devotion and loyalty, and did so with gusto, but love was for the living. Love was one of the many prices the undead paid for their immortality. However, Harry had hinted that he could experience something close to loving me, through his exploration of Batten’s feelings. Was Kill-Notch confessing that he had some small, budding love for me, or merely suggesting Harry wished it to be so? And would the truth be something I could handle, or something that would confuse me further?