Dark Debt

by Chloe Neill

  He walked to the front door, opened it. We stepped into a tidy home with 1970s décor, heavy on the oranges and ochres, with tweed furniture and shag carpeting.

  The house smelled slightly musty, like a vacation home just opened for the season. Since winter had only just begun to break its hold on Chicago, that might not have been far from the truth.

  “It’s dark out,” I whispered now that we were inside, using the agreed-upon code to activate the earbud, but heard only static in response. We must have been too far away for a signal, which meant not only did we not have weapons, but we didn’t have any way of communicating with the House.

  Technology, I thought with a curse, really, really hoping Mallory was having better luck with magic.

  “This way,” the guard said, and we followed him into a living room. “Stop.”

  The guards with guns stood at our backs. The first guard gestured us to spread out our arms. He patted me down, then Morgan, and when he was satisfied, began moving again.

  We walked past a kitchen with avocado-toned appliances, into a den with a sunken floor dotted with throw pillows. The house had been updated by someone since the mobsters had used it, but not in the last forty years.

  The guard took a passageway to an outbuilding, and when the guards with guns looked at us menacingly, we opted to follow him inside . . . into a very recently updated game room. Bar on one end with a few high-top tables, a pool table in the middle, arcade-style video games along the wall.

  Jude Maguire, shirtless and bearing a placket of bandages below his ribs, leaned over the pool table.

  I cursed silently. And since I hadn’t injured his ribs, I guessed the Circle had been pissed about our little Streeterville outing.

  “Mr. Maguire,” the guard said. “They’re here.”

  Jude looked up, glanced at us, then looked down at the table again. He aimed, released, and the balls sailed across the table with a crack of sound.

  There were three other men in the room, in addition to the three guards who’d accompanied us. All of them were thick-necked and broad-shouldered, and the air vibrated from the volume of weapons they carried.

  One of the other men stepped forward for his turn, and Jude stepped back, held his cue like a pike, crossed one ankle over the other.

  “They cause any trouble?” Maguire asked.

  “No, sir.”

  Sir? Since when was Jude Maguire a “sir”? He was muscle, not leadership. Leadership didn’t put itself in the line of fire, in clear view of the public. And it certainly didn’t get broken ribs after a failed operation. But that hardly mattered now. Nobody in the room argued, and we weren’t exactly in a position to do so.

  The second player made his selection, sent a couple of balls spinning ineffectually before giving up the board to Maguire again. He walked around the table, checking angles.

  “We’re ready for your demands,” Morgan said into the tense silence.

  “Our demands,” Maguire repeated, then pulled back the cue, snapped it forward. The ball ricocheted across the table, hit the bumper, then sailed into the diagonal pocket. He rose, looked us over. “Your former Master borrowed a lot of money from us, asked for a lot of favors. And you don’t want to pay us back.”

  “I’m not here to argue about the debt. I’m here to resolve it.”

  Maguire handed the cue to the man closest to him, walked toward us. “Are you? Are you in charge? Because what I see here is a man begging for relief. Begging so hard he brought a girl with him.” Maguire stopped a few feet away, crossed his arms, gave me a slow and salacious look. “A girl I didn’t finish the first time around.”

  I barely managed not to growl, but didn’t bother to hide the fangs and silvered eyes. “Just for the record, you won’t be finishing me now, either.”

  “Just get on with it,” Morgan spat out. “What do you want?”

  Slowly, Maguire shifted his gaze back to Morgan. “We’ve already told you what we want, and you apparently sent children to do a man’s job. We wanted King, and we wanted him dead.”

  “Why?” Morgan asked.

  “Because—that’s all you needed to know to perform your task, which you failed. That means he’s in the wind.”

  “I won’t kill for you,” Morgan said.

  “That’s pretty obvious.” This time, Maguire slid his gaze to me. “What would you do for her?”

  Maguire’s gaze snapped to something beside me, and I pivoted, lifted a hand instinctively to duck the pool stick one of Maguire’s goons was yielding like a club. I wrenched it away from him, shoved the blunt end into his gut, pushed him backward until he bobbled and hit the ground on his ass.

  Stick in my hand, wielded like a weapon, I looked back at Maguire. “I don’t need anyone to kill for me.”

  He put a hand on his chest in mock apology. “I guess I misspoke. We don’t want him to kill someone for you. He’s already fucked that up. But you, we can use. There are plenty in Chicago who want you alive, and who’d pay a pretty penny to keep you that way.”

  “Using me to get King isn’t a very good idea.” Given Maguire’s sudden sneer, we’d guessed his plan accurately.

  “Even assuming my grandfather knows where he is, he won’t give him up. He won’t negotiate, even for me.” I wasn’t one hundred percent confident my grandfather would make that choice, but I was pretty certain. He was an honorable man, and believed in duty.

  “I’m willing to take that chance,” Maguire said. He gestured, and the man I’d pushed back barreled forward again. I gripped the pool cue, angled, and struck, intending to box his ears. But this time, he knew the blow was coming. He ducked to dodge it and aimed for my lower body, trying to grab me. I jumped backward to avoid him, my arms wide to keep my balance . . . and just within reach of two more humans.

  One grabbed the pool cue. The other grabbed my arm, twisting it backward and nearly doubling me over. I kicked backward with the opposite leg, caught his knee. He bobbled, but retorqued my arm, sending shocks of bright pain from fingers to shoulder. I hit my knees hard, my arm high and awkward behind me.

  “A little help here,” I said, trying to wiggle myself free without dislocating my shoulder.

  “Little busy,” Morgan said quietly, and I glanced his way. Maguire had an enormous handgun, nothing you’d want to meet in a dark alley, aimed point-blank at Morgan’s head. That, I guessed, would be the kind of shot that even a vampire wouldn’t survive.

  “Let her go,” Morgan said, hands in the air. “You don’t have any argument with her.”

  “You’re wrong there, but then you weren’t part of our escapade yesterday. You were in your House, nice and comfortable, while your vampire was assaulted on the street. Just like Celina would have been.” Maguire’s smile was mocking. “Point being, you aren’t really in a position to make demands.”

  Maguire had done his research, knew just where to push Morgan’s buttons.

  “Neither are you, if you think her family will give you anything. Her father’s an asshole, and her grandfather’s a cop. She’s right; he won’t give up King, even to save her life.”

  Maguire lifted a shoulder. “Once again, that’s a risk I’m willing to take.”

  “You’d be bringing the wrath of the entire CPD down on the Circle, on you.”

  He laughed haughtily. “You think the CPD can touch us? There is nothing that’s happened in this city for ten years that we haven’t approved. That includes your father’s little pet project.”

  I might not have liked my father overmuch, but that didn’t mean I wanted him involved with the Circle. “Stay away from my family.”

  “That’s quite impossible, since your family keeps jumping into my business. You may be immortal, doll, but we’re connected.”

  “We?” I asked, and Maguire’s expression darkened. “You mean you aren’t running this little shit sh
ow yourself? Color me surprised.”

  His eyes flashed with fury, and the man behind me offered the punishment, twisting my arm harder. I winced, but kept my eyes on Maguire.

  “I don’t respect a man who doesn’t fight his own battles. And speaking of which, if you’re truly a ‘Circle,’ where’s the rest of your gang? Is it these guys? Because . . .” I glanced around, tried to look patently unimpressed.

  The man behind me wrenched my arm again, this time maneuvering it up, forcing my head down, my cheek to the sticky wooden floor, littered with dirt, crumbs, and probably worse.

  “You like to run your mouth,” Maguire said. “A pity, since I bet it could be used for so many other more interesting things.”

  “Tell me about Balthasar.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “We know the Circle’s paying for his condo. Why?”

  “You think I have anything to do with that freak? No. He’s not my idea. He’s fucking nuts, is what he is.”

  Stay down, Morgan said, his gaze still steady on Maguire.

  It took me a moment to adjust to his voice in my head, but it’s not like I could have moved anyway. What?

  Stay down. I’m moving in three . . . two . . . one.

  With blurring speed, Morgan dropped his arms, crossed them, pulled something small and flat from his jeans pockets, wrenched them out again. I dropped my head as something whizzed millimeters above it. There was a cry, and my arm was free.

  Pain shot through it from shoulder to wrist as circulation returned and nerves pulsed. I ignored it, pushed past it, jumped to my feet while looking to see what damage Morgan had done.

  Maguire and the man who’d grabbed me had small discs—plastic throwing stars—extruding from their chests. They must have missed them on the pat-down.

  They were screaming with pain, gripping with slick and bloody fingers at the barbed coins, trying to pull them out.

  “Get them, damn it!” Maguire yelled, even as he stumbled backward into a chair, still groping at the missile. “And don’t kill them. We need them alive.”

  The rest of the muscle rushed forward.

  I didn’t waste time. I jumped onto the pool table, darted across green felt, and jumped down again to the case of pool cues on the opposite wall. I grabbed two.

  “Morgan!” I yelled out, and jumped onto the table again, just missing the outflung arms of one of the men who’d sat quietly during the rest of Maguire’s little show. They must not have been the first string.

  “Clear!” Morgan said, and I tossed a cue to him. The man tried to grab my boot; I kicked him in the face, bone and cartilage crunching. He yelped, covered his face with a hand, and stumbled back, making room for the next one. He’d thought to bring a cue, swung it at my shins. I jumped to avoid the first swipe, hopped onto the table’s wooden edging, flipped onto the floor again, and brought the broad end of the cue around, nailing him in the shoulder.

  The thrill of the fight—the flood of adrenaline—rushed through me, dampening doubt and sharpening my movements, my focus.

  I knocked one man to the floor, but another followed him, as if emerging from the house’s crevices like a scuttling insect. He’d grabbed his own pool cue, and swung it at me like a hitter who’d pointed to left field.

  I brought up my cue to strike, and he shattered it with enough force that it reverberated down my spine. With a thunderous crack, my cue splintered in half, and I instinctively turned from the sound and shards of flying wood that I really, really hoped weren’t aspen—the only wood that could reduce me to ash if well aimed.

  The man cursed with victory, reset for another swing, this one higher—and aimed at my head.

  I didn’t wait for it to land. I dropped the broken cue, pivoted into a kick that nailed him in the side, and jerked the cue from his hands.

  “Bitch,” he said, and I flipped the cue into the air, caught it backward, and nailed him between the eyes with the blunt end.

  He teetered backward, fell atop a table, and both of them crashed to the floor. We hadn’t killed any that I could see, but we’d incapacitated some of them, at least for a little while. Maguire was still maniacally clawing at the disc. For all his ferocity, he didn’t handle his own injuries very well.

  “Damn,” Morgan said, chest heaving beside me. “You’ve gotten better.”

  “Yeah, I have.” I tossed the cue to the floor, gestured toward the stairs. “Let’s get the hell out of here.”

  * * *

  We went out the way we’d come in, running back down the passageway and into the house, then out the front door again.

  “Ethan,” I said into the earbud, “if you can hear me, we need an evac, like, yesterday.”

  Between bouts of static, I caught the intermittent words “mechanical” and “delay.”

  “I didn’t catch that. Repeat: We need an evac right now.”

  I caught “helicopter” and “broken.” The rest of the response was only garbled static.

  “You are fucking kidding me,” Morgan said.

  I didn’t think so.

  “We’re gonna have to find another way off the island,” I said as gunshots echoed behind us. I looked right, left, found a path that led away from the concrete pad down toward the shore.

  “There,” I said as voices began to sound behind us. I ran toward the path, began to half jog, half hop down the dirt- and rock-covered path, Morgan’s footsteps behind me.

  The trail, narrow and rutted, ran up and down through a forested area, with switchbacks as tight as bobby pins. The forest was silent around us, whatever animals might have scampered in the dark smart enough to stay still while the predators roamed around them.

  The path opened up almost instantaneously, shooting us onto a rocky, sandy shoreline where water lapped in the dark. There was an ancient picnic table, the remains of a circular fire pit surrounded by rocks. Maguire and his cronies—or Capone and his—had enjoyed a picnic or two on the Lake Michigan shoreline. Unfortunately, there was absolutely no sign of a boat.

  “Shit,” Morgan said, propelling out of the trees behind me, grabbing my body for balance as he nearly ran straight into me. We fumbled, separated, looked around, saw nothing but trees and water.

  “There has to be a way off this godforsaken island,” I said, scanning left and right, but the shoreline was dark.

  We couldn’t outrun these guys forever. They knew the island better than we did, and the sun would be up soon enough.

  The darkness seemed to suddenly contract, to close in around me, as if I’d been shoved into a room without doors, a room with a barred window. Like a man with a key to unlock my head were standing beside me, and his words were in my ears again. Our business is not done.

  No, I thought, trying to stem the rising panic, the memory of Balthasar that seemed right on the edge of swamping me. There was always a solution. I just had to think, had to slow down and think.

  Crap, I thought as my vision began to spark around the edges. Panic attack.

  I grabbed Morgan’s arm as my heart began to thud. The air was chilly, but a cold sweat broke out, peppering my skin with clamminess.

  “What the hell are—oh, shit, are you okay?”

  My throat felt snug as a straw, my head beginning to spin from lack of oxygen.

  “Hey, breathe. Breathe, Merit. In, out. In, out.” He mimed the motion, then walked me to the picnic table. “Sit,” he said, but cast a nervous glance around him, waiting to hear humans running through the trees.

  But why should they be in a hurry? This was their island. We were the interlopers here, and apparently with no exit.

  “This isn’t a big deal,” Morgan said, squeezing my hand. “No need to panic. This is just a minor setback. There’s another way out of here, and we’ll find it.”

  I followed his breathing, caught
the rhythm of it, forced myself to breathe on counts. In, one, two. Out, one, two. Over and over again, until my heart began to slow its frantic pace.

  “You can’t be afraid of the dark, you know. That’s not a thing a vampire can even have.”

  He was trying to make me laugh, and I chuckled in spite of myself and my racing heartbeat. “Not afraid. Just—a memory. A bad one.”

  “Then you need to replace it with a new one,” Morgan said, looking down, up, around as if he might find a replacement on a nearby shelf.

  “Ah,” he said, his gaze on the sky. “Look up.”

  “What?”

  “Look up,” he said, and tilted my chin upward.

  It was as if the moon had exploded and spilled its light across the sky—stars sprinkled the dark canvas like diamonds, the cloudy Milky Way gleaming among them.

  I’d seen a similar sight in our few nights in Colorado, when the universe had flung open its arms to us. It was majestic, and it made me feel small in the best possible way.

  “There is always light,” Morgan said quietly. “The stars are always shining, even if we can’t see them.”

  He was the last person I’d have expected to hear something that philosophical from. And it helped.

  A dog barked nearby. “We’ve got to go,” he said.

  “Wait,” I said. “I have an idea. Just give me a minute. Keep an eye out.”

  I closed my eyes, tried to slow my beating heart, tried to listen to the darkness for an idea, a suggestion, the hint of an escape plan.

  My heartbeat thudded in my ears, and I focused past it, strained for sound. It took precious seconds, but I finally heard the soft scampers of animals in the woods, the hoot of an owl, the rhythmic slap of water against the shoreline.

  And there, in the back of the sounds, in the darkness, the squeak and groan of metal, just as rhythmic.

  I opened my eyes again, stood up, looked in the direction of the sound.

  “There,” I said, and as he followed behind, I jogged down the shore until I saw it: a metal dock, about twenty yards away. It floated on booms that squeaked with each soft wave.