Wicked Hour

by Chloe Neill

  Fortunately, I now knew a vampire, a Master, a physician. I needed his help and hoped he’d be willing to give it.

  “I need Ronan,” I told Connor. And hoped he could see the apology in my eyes.

  * * *

  * * *

  We waited until she stopped drinking, which took only another minute. She detached from my arm and fell back, limp; Connor scooped her into his arms and began to move through the woods.

  That he wouldn’t let me carry her, despite the fact that I was fed and healing and he was still injured, was an arrow through my heart. Like he didn’t trust me not to do her further harm.

  He didn’t speak, and the silence between us seemed to stretch and strengthen.

  She’d survive, I told myself. That was what mattered—that the destruction the clan was wreaking wouldn’t claim another victim. And if Connor and I—the bond that had grown between us—didn’t survive, I’d have to live with that. But that didn’t stop the stutter of my heart or the pain that pierced it.

  * * *

  * * *

  Connor didn’t need the trail to find his way back to the resort, and we made it back in ten minutes. There were shifters everywhere. Nervous, waiting, staring at the column of smoke, or attending to the injured shifters who’d limped their way back from the battlefield.

  Cash and Everett were notably absent.

  There were gasps as Connor walked past them, ignored them, and took the girl into Georgia’s cabin.

  “Get Ronan,” he said to Georgia.

  His voice was entirely alpha now and brooked no argument. And Georgia made none, at least aloud. But the grim set of her eyes when she looked at Carlie, then shifted her gaze to me, was more than enough.

  Connor placed the girl on the sofa. Protectiveness—a sharp tug of it I hadn’t expected—pulled me back to her. I went to my knees in front of the couch, rubbed my hands over my face.

  “How long does it take?” he asked.

  I opened my eyes and looked at him, saw pain and worry etched on his face, and hated that I’d put it there. “If you mean the transformation, three days.”

  Assuming she didn’t die along the way, but I couldn’t bring myself to say that aloud. I had to believe this was going to work.

  I cleared my throat, tried to push through the knot of emotions that tried to strangle me. “You said she lived with her grandmother. You might want to check on her, if you haven’t already. Let her know Carlie’s . . . alive.”

  Georgia came back in. “Ronan is on his way. He’s not far from here.” She looked at me. “What happened?”

  “There was a party at the Stone farm,” I said. “On the other side of the woods. We were at a firepit and heard screaming. We all took off and found the fight—creatures attacking the humans at their party—and fought them.”

  “Creatures?” she asked.

  “We’ll get to that,” Connor said, gaze on me. “Keep going.”

  I nodded. “I was fighting one of them, and I went down. She tried to save me. She hit the beast, and it went down, but came up again and dragged her into the woods. It was fast. I followed it, eventually got close enough to throw my dagger. I hit the beast, and it dropped her and kept running. She was hurt, so I had to let it go.”

  I swallowed hard. “It ripped her abdomen open. She was nearly gone when I got to her. Her heart—”

  I could hear the echo of her heartbeat again, a soft and fading whisper.

  I shook my head, made myself meet his gaze. “Her heart was stopping. She wouldn’t have survived if I’d tried to move her. So I began the process. I bit her, took her blood, and gave her mine. And then you came.”

  The only heartbeat I heard in the following silence was mine.

  “Someone needs to check on her grandmother,” Connor said finally, his face and tone carefully schooled.

  Georgia frowned with confusion, but nodded. “We’ll check on her. Make sure she’s all right.” She looked at Connor. “Are you going to tell me what the hell it was?”

  “Unknown canids,” Connor said. “Four of them. Not actual wolves, not shifters. They were bigger, taller, leaner. Walked upright. And not wild animals; they were supernatural. They were magic. They’re what attacked Beth,” he added. “And killed Loren.”

  Georgia blinked, as if trying to translate words she didn’t quite understand. “Magic. You’re talking about a curse? A spell?”

  “I don’t know.” He paced to one end of the living room, then back again. “What about dire wolves?”

  Georgia’s brows lifted nearly to her hairline. “Dire wolves. As in prehistoric animals? Mammoths and saber-toothed tigers and cavemen? I know they existed, and they’re extinct,” she said, frowning. “My father was obsessed with wolves, had a big book, and he’d show us pictures of the types of canines around the world. Everything from dire wolves to Chihuahuas.” She tried for a smile, but it didn’t stick. “Dire wolves moved on four legs, not on two.”

  “Yeah,” Connor said, running a hand through his hair. “I don’t know what they are, or how they are, but I don’t know of anything else that’s big enough. Not that has existed before. Maybe this is something new. Either way, they’re clan.”

  Georgia’s eyes went wide. “No.”

  “Yes,” he said simply. “Based on the scent, on the magic, they’re clan. They’ve done something to themselves magically, made themselves bigger, stronger. But still clan. They attacked Beth. Killed Loren. Nearly killed Carlie.”

  Georgia shook her head, as if that might clear away some of the confusion. “I don’t understand any of this. Who would do it? Or why?”

  The who and why, I thought, were beginning to piece themselves together. This started with Paisley, and it would end with her.

  “We’re working on that,” Connor said. “And we’ll figure it out.”

  * * *

  * * *

  It took ten minutes for Ronan to burst in, two vampires behind him, all of them changing the air in the room. Georgia’s mouth pinched into a hard line, either unhappy with the vampire or the fact that he was in her house.

  Ronan ignored us, kneeled beside Carlie. He pulled back her lids, scanned her eyes, then put a hand on her wrist to check her pulse. “What happened?”

  I told Ronan the same story I’d told Connor and Georgia as Ronan made his examination. Silence fell when I’d finished the retelling and he finalized his work. Then he looked at me.

  “How long did you feed her?”

  “Minutes,” I said. “Ten maybe? I fed her until she let go.”

  “How long since you stopped?”

  I had no idea how much time had passed. It felt like hours, but guilt and worry had pulled time, stretched it. I looked toward the windows, found the sky was dark. “I’m not sure.”

  “About twenty minutes,” Connor said.

  Ronan nodded, rose, looked at me. “After the initial feeding, there’s a period of rest followed by supplemental feedings over the three days. So you accidentally did the right thing.”

  His voice was hard now, tinged with admonishment, but his words still had relief moving through me.

  “She’ll be all right?” Connor asked.

  “We don’t know that yet. Not all survive the transition, particularly when the vampires making them are not old or strong enough.” He looked at me. “You are not a Master. You don’t have the experience or the skill to do this.”

  “You may have missed the part of the story,” I said, barely managing to control my tongue as guilt burned off, replaced by anger, “where I either bit her or I let her die.”

  “Don’t imagine yourself a savior,” Ronan snapped out. “She may die anyway, and there will be more pain in between.”

  I moved closer. “I did what had to be done in the moment. I’m experienced enough to know that giving her a shot at life was better tha
n letting her die. I won’t apologize to you for that.” If Carlie demanded an apology, that would be different. But I’d have to worry about that later.

  “I’m also experienced enough to know that she needs to be with you—with vampires—during the transition. Not here. I called to ask for your help. Do you want to help, or do I need to find someone who will?”

  There was condescension and irritation in his eyes now. He didn’t think much of me, and he thought even less of my request for help. But one of his vampires came forward, probably at his telepathic order, and picked up Carlie.

  “Come with me,” Ronan said, and turned for the door.

  “Find Alexei,” I heard Connor say to Georgia behind me, and he followed me out.

  FIFTEEN

  Of course he has a limo,” Connor muttered as we slid into the long white vehicle parked outside Georgia’s cabin. It was an Auto, a woman’s voice requesting in sultry tones that we please take our seats and engage the safety belts.

  Carlie had been laid on the limo’s carpeted floor, a vampire holding her head, and another at her feet to help keep her stable. Connor and I took seats along the reverse-facing bench, just far enough apart that our bodies didn’t touch.

  Ronan sat on the side-facing seat, one hand draped over the back as he stared out the window. His vampires stared at me. Unlike the shifters, their expressions were shielded; I guessed that was due at least in part to deference to their Master. But they couldn’t hide the bristling magic that peppered the air.

  We drove southwest, following the old main road that paralleled the lakeshore before diving inland onto a two-lane road roofed by arcing trees.

  Connor sat silently, brow furrowed, gaze on Carlie.

  I couldn’t blame him. I watched her, too, checking for sign of transformation or distress. But she was so still, so motionless, that it was difficult to imagine anything was happening at all. And that we hadn’t lost her despite my efforts.

  I knew Connor was worried about her, but it was impossible to ignore the emotional wall that seemed to be rising between us. And it wasn’t difficult to imagine why he’d constructed it. I’d hurt someone he loved—used fangs and blood against her—and dragged him into a political nightmare in the meantime. I’d become exactly the kind of liability Miranda had warned me against.

  “A little rebellion,” Miranda had called me, “because he can’t afford you.” If relationships really were a kind of math—good qualities measured against bad, benefits measured against costs—tonight would certainly have changed the balance, and not in my favor. Not as long as he sat in measuring silence.

  * * *

  * * *

  Forest bluffs gave way to rolling hills, and eventually to a shadowed house that waited on the crest of a knoll for its vampires to return.

  The house was stunning even in the dark. Pale golden stone, symmetrical with white windows, tall white chimneys on each end, and a columned portico. With no other buildings nearby, it looked like a dollhouse a child had left behind. Or maybe the site of a Gothic horror novel.

  Two Sup communities in this small slice of rural Minnesota, but their homes couldn’t have been more different. The sprawling and aging resort, hiding among the trees beside the lake, versus this castle on a hill, a stark and unavoidable mark on the landscape.

  The limo followed the drive to a covered portico at the side of the house, with more white columns and molding. One of Ronan’s vampires hopped out first, opened the door. Connor and I climbed out, and then Ronan negotiated Carlie out of the vehicle and toward the house.

  Quiet as ghosts, we followed him inside.

  The house was clad in dark wood—floors, ceiling, paneling—and the front room was home to an enormous stairway in the same wood. Light filtered through an opaque ivory dome at the top of the first landing, and dark red velvet swagged in generous loops above the windows.

  A vampire came down the stairs. She was slender, with pale skin and long raven dark hair that swirled around her shoulder in a loose braid. She wore a fitted red dress and black heels. She reached us, cast a quick glance at us before looking at Ronan. “I’ve prepared a room.”

  Ronan nodded, carried Carlie upstairs. When he passed her, the woman looked back at us. “I’m Piper,” she said, and didn’t ask for our names. “Bathroom’s just there, if you want to clean up.”

  I nodded, feeling physically jumpy and emotionally numb. I looked back at Connor, found his gaze on me, concern clear in his eyes. “I’ll be right back.”

  He nodded, crossed his arms in a way that showed off his muscles. Legs braced, he looked like a man prepared for another battle. But since two vampires followed me down the hall, I didn’t think he’d be the one who’d need to fight.

  I found the bathroom, closed the door, and shut my eyes for a moment in the darkness. The monster was quiet, exhausted, satiated by violence and blood.

  When my heartbeat began to slow to a more normal rhythm, I turned on the light, then stared at myself in the mirror. I barely recognized what I saw. My cheeks were flushed, my lips swollen, my skin pale but for the already healing scratches of battle. My eyes were still silver, and there were twigs and leaves and probably worse in my hair.

  I washed my hands and face, finger-combed my hair. And felt nearly normal when I opened the door again—if I didn’t think too much about the vampires waiting to throttle me outside it, and the human somewhere above us who might not survive the evening.

  By the time I made it back to the central room, Ronan stood with Piper, quietly conversing. Connor stood exactly where I’d left him, arms still crossed. The alpha being alpha, I thought, and joined him.

  His expression was still carefully blank, but anger shimmered in his eyes. He was a man riding very close to the edge of fury. I just wasn’t sure at whom he was going to direct it.

  Ronan turned to us, moved closer, hands clasped behind his back. “Take me through it again,” he said.

  So I did, step by step. From firepit to screaming, from the clan’s territory to the Stone farm, from the hell of battle to the agony of finding Carlie, alone and broken. And then I told him of the decision I’d made and what I’d done.

  “What attacked the humans?” he asked.

  “I don’t know,” Connor said. “They’re clan members affected by some kind of magic, turned into wolflike creatures that attack on two legs. They aren’t similar to any wild animals or Sups we know about.”

  “Why did they attack?” Ronan asked.

  “We don’t know that, either,” Connor said. “The Stone farm is at the edge of the clan’s territory. Maybe they believed the humans were getting too close. Maybe the magic has affected them. Or maybe they’re just homicidal assholes.”

  “Are they dead?”

  “Not that we’re aware of,” Connor said. “We hurt them, but they survived. They ran away from the resort, deeper inland and into the woods.”

  No one spoke for a long time.

  Finally, Ronan broke the silence. “This will put pressure on the communities. Ours and theirs. Yours potentially. She was changed without her consent. She was changed within earshot of humans. And she was changed without my consent.”

  “It wasn’t your territory,” I said. “It was the clan’s territory.”

  “And as Cash will certainly point out, you didn’t have his consent, either.”

  Heat began to rise again, to speed my heart and call the monster who’d already had its fun tonight. Who was getting harder and harder to push down. “I was not going to leave her on the ground, bleeding out.”

  “It wasn’t your choice to make.”

  “Wrong,” I said. “It was the only choice to make.”

  “You’re a vampire. You had obligations.”

  “To who? I don’t have any obligations to the clan, and even if I did, I kept the clan from killing a human tonight. I don’t owe you an
ything.”

  “You are in my territory.” Ronan’s voice was low and dangerous. His eyes silvered, and his fangs descended, and magic rose in the air, peppery and hot. I braced myself against the coming blow—and prepared to meet it.

  I liked and appreciated rules. I liked order. But even I knew that rules sometimes had to be bent or even broken. Exceptions had to be made, or else the rules would swallow their purpose, their intention.

  “I’d have thought better of your parents,” he said, “that they hadn’t raised you to break the faith with other vampires.”

  “How did I break the faith?”

  “She is a friend of the clan, and you didn’t have their consent. Once again, you’re in my territory and didn’t have my consent. Maybe your parents’ wealth, their status, has poisoned you. Spoiled you. But you aren’t in Chicago, and things work differently in the real world.”

  Now I was pissed on behalf of myself and my parents. “I was raised to do the right thing, and that’s what I did. Politics is second—will always be second—to saving lives.”

  “She is one life. You’ve potentially put all of us in danger. Which is more important?”

  I just stared at him. “You can’t be serious. You can’t tell me you’d have left her there, refused to help her, let her die.”

  Ronan just looked back at me. “I don’t have the luxury of worrying about one human. I have a coven to consider.”

  “Fine,” I said. “You can feel free to squander your immortality if you’d like—to not use the gifts you’ve been given. I don’t plan to.” And that included making sure she was safe from his single-mindedness. “Are you going to take care of Carlie, or do I need to find other arrangements?”

  “I care for my vampires,” he said. “That’s precisely my point.” He stepped closer. “You will not endanger my people further. You will not touch another human.”

  There was glamour in the words, magic in the push. And insult in both. Maybe he thought I’d changed her as a lark, as an opportunity to set up my own kingdom in northern Minnesota.