Dark Debt

by Chloe Neill

  I let her help me pull it on, and when we’d managed to ensure that everything was nipped and tucked in all the right places, I checked the mirror.

  For Reed’s party, I’d looked wealthy and glamorous in my demure black gown.

  Tonight, I looked sexy and dangerous. It took a moment of staring for me to grapple with that, accept that the striking and seductive woman reflected back was actually me.

  “That,” Helen said, “is a Sentinel of this House.”

  And it had only taken humans, a vampire, and a year to get me there.

  Helen pressed diamonds into my ears and ensured that the thigh holster was snug and secure.

  “One more thing,” she said.

  “No more diamonds.”

  She gave me a bland look, offered an earpiece.

  “Ah,” I said, and fitted it into my ear. “Test,” I said quietly.

  “You’re live, Sentinel,” Kelley said back to me, stationed in the Ops Room. “What’s your ETA?”

  “Four minutes. I’m about to walk downstairs.”

  “Roger that. I’m going to cue Ethan looking very, very jealous.”

  That sounded more fun than it should have.

  * * *

  The House’s large backyard had been turned into an homage to spring. White canopies fluttered over tall urns of white flowers, and a string quartet played music on the back patio. A tent was set up near the square French garden, the water gurgling beautifully in the background. White paper lanterns created a stunning glow, adding to the ethereal look and the sense of rebirth. The event was about a fresh start for the Houses, but it was also about a fresh start for Ethan, a break from his past, or at least from a monster who’d attempted to assimilate it.

  I’d always wanted to make a delicious entry, an adolescent dream of walking into the room and having all heads turn toward me.

  Tonight, I wasn’t an awkward teenager, but an adult. I wasn’t trying to get the curly-haired quiz bowl captain to notice me—I was baiting an old, powerful vampire. And I wasn’t walking into a gymnasium or cafeteria decorated with glitter and paper to look like Paris or Rome, but a majestic white garden full of fragrant flowers, and vampires in glamorous dress.

  I imagined Helen was behind me critiquing every motion and Ethan’s life was on the line, and took the demilune stairs from the patio to sidewalk. I was the only one, at least as far as I could tell, in red, and stood out among the Cadogan black and demure dresses. There was absolutely nothing demure about my dress, my expression, or now that I thought about it, the walk Helen had taught me.

  Heads turned as I took the paved path toward the tent. I surveyed the crowd with an even stare, met Helen’s gaze, watched as her satisfied smile spread and she inclined her head in approval. I could hear the whispers around me, the questions and comments of vampires in demure gowns and tuxedos, wondering at the Sentinel in red who’d stepped into their midst.

  They probably believed I looked like a woman begging for a man’s attention. Good, since that was exactly what I’d been trying to do. And if our luck held, he’d show.

  I searched for Ethan, found him near a table beneath the canvas, champagne flute in hand. His tuxedo was trim and immaculately tailored, his hair pulled back in a short queue. He looked absolutely magnificent, like a wicked angel hoping to sway a human or two to his very convincing side.

  His gaze raked my body like a spurned lover, and I swallowed back a bolt of lust. I wasn’t supposed to be lusting for Ethan, or at least giving in to it. We’d broken up.

  He gave me a rough perusal before looking away, turning to the woman who stood before him, a brunette with a glossy bob of dark hair, her curvy body tucked into a sleeveless black dress with a flared skirt and black Mary Jane–style shoes with stiletto heels. His hand was on her nipped-in waist, and jealousy stronger than any I’d ever known bolted through me.

  If she didn’t have a hand on his arm, and I wasn’t filled with a completely irrational bout of jealousy, I’d have appreciated how gorgeous she looked, and how perfect his snub had been.

  I reminded myself to compliment her later. As for now, I gave her a scathing look before turning away, giving my back to both of them . . . and laying into Luc.

  “Margot?” I whispered. “He invited Margot as his date to the Investiture? She’s my chef.”

  Luc guffawed through the earpiece. “She’s the House’s chef, Sentinel, and she was Ethan’s chef first, in any case. And he knew you’d get a kick out of that. And it makes the performance so much more real.”

  “You look amazing in that dress, but you’re turning absolutely green.”

  I turned to find Mallory and Catcher behind me, both wearing amused expressions. Mallory’s dress was Grecian in style, a long skirt of draped fabric gathered in gold clips at the shoulders and a thin gold belt around the waist, The fabric was vibrantly blue, which matched hair that curled around her head in a loose updo, a gold-ribboned headband holding it in place. At least I wasn’t the only one wearing color.

  Catcher wore a black suit over a white button-down, no tie, the top button unfastened. He looked sexy and a little rough around the edges, like a race car driver.

  “I’m not jealous. I’m envious. There’s a difference.”

  “You know he can hear everything you’re saying right now, right, Sentinel?” Luc asked with no little amusement. “He has an earpiece, too.”

  When Ethan grinned down at Margot, a smile probably meant for me, I didn’t much care. “Then he’ll hear me warn him: Touch her again and lose a finger,” I said sweetly.

  Mallory grinned. “Merit doesn’t like other people touching her things.”

  “Any sign of Balthasar?” I asked.

  “Not yet,” Catcher said.

  “Damn,” Mallory intoned, amazement in her voice. “Are there any ugly vampires?”

  I glanced in the direction of her dreamy smile, found Jonah walking toward us, eyes on me. His auburn hair gleamed like bronze, highlighting his blue eyes, and in his dark tux, he looked like an Armani runway model.

  “Get out of my dreams,” Lindsey sang into my ear, “and into my car.”

  “There’s a lot of male sexualizing going on right now,” Luc said. “And it’s making me uncomfortable.”

  “Snark is allowed on an op,” I reminded him.

  “Check out Mallory’s boobs again,” Lindsey said to him. “You’ll feel better.”

  Mallory grinned, wiggled her shoulders for effect. She was in a good mood, which made me hopeful she’d talked to Catcher and resolved her doubts. But we’d get to that later.

  “Focus,” I said. Since Jonah kept his gaze on me as he approached, I kept my gaze on him.

  “Hello,” he said, eyes dipping to take in the gown, the lace, the skin. “You look nice.”

  “Thanks. So do you.”

  I felt the burst of Ethan’s magic across the tent. Party guests noticed, too, and began whispering, just as if we’d actually broken up. The ruse had played pretty well.

  “If you touch her,” said a familiar voice in my earpiece, “you’ll lose something more precious than a finger.”

  “Take a breath, Sullivan,” Jonah intoned, his gaze on me. He slid his hands into his pockets, and I braced myself for the worst, for him to ask me to return the saints’ medal he’d given me to mark my RG membership.

  But his tone was utterly bland. “Any sign of Balthasar yet?”

  I surmised he was still angry, whether at me, the RG, or the circumstances.

  Since I was utterly in the right, I kept my tone flat and businesslike. “Not yet. But we believe he’s a vampire by the name of Julien Burrows who once knew Balthasar. Like Balthasar, he was imprisoned by the Memento Mori, but he escaped and disappeared.”

  “That’s new.”

  “Hot off the presses,” I said. “Jeff found the link a
little while ago.”

  “The Masters are here,” Ethan said through the earpiece. “Let’s begin the ceremony and see if that draws him out.”

  * * *

  They gathered on a dais at the end of the tent—three Master vampires in tuxedoes, all of them handsome beyond any human measure or level of appropriateness.

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” Ethan said, “thank you for joining us here tonight. We come to begin a new tradition, to celebrate the Investiture of the Chicago Masters into the American Assembly of Masters.”

  “Hear, hear!” shouted voices across the crowd of vampires, who filtered into the tent to hear the ceremony. None of them were Balthasar.

  “Just as our American forefathers did nearly three hundred years ago, we have relieved ourselves of interests that didn’t align with our own, men and women who sought to keep their power intact at all costs and to the detriment of the American Houses. Tonight, we celebrate the beginning of a new era.” Ethan raised his glass of champagne. “To Cadogan, to Grey, to Navarre!”

  “To Cadogan, to Grey, to Navarre!” they repeated, and clapped wildly for their Masters while I scanned the crowd for danger.

  “Anything, Sentinel?” asked Luc through the earpiece.

  “Nothing at all,” I responded, covering the answer with my champagne glass. “Maybe the ceremony’s too ceremonial. Maybe he’s biding his time.” But for what?

  Ethan handed the microphone to Scott. “We have vowed,” Scott said, “to protect the vampires of our Houses, to support their happiness, their freedom. We reiterate those vows here, and now, and pledge that our membership in the Assembly is intended solely to foster those goals. We pledge to reject any action, any resolution, that would harm our vampires. We pledge to keep our vampires’ interests at the forefront of our minds in all decisions.”

  Scott passed the microphone to Morgan. “We take these vows here, before you whom we serve, before the Novitiates we have made, before our colleagues and friends”—he looked at Scott and Ethan—“before the other Masters with whom we share this city, because if we cannot hold the city safe, we have failed not just our vampires but each other.”

  Morgan and Ethan shared a long and intense look before Morgan turned to the crowd once again. “We make these vows to you, our Novitiates, tonight. May our Houses eternally prosper, may we eternally serve, and may our vampires enjoy eternally good health.”

  “Hear, hear,” Ethan said, and the vampires burst into applause again.

  And still there was no sign of Balthasar.

  * * *

  Another hour passed, and I was getting more nervous. Mallory, Catcher, Jonah, and I noshed on puffs of this and slivers of that, and scanned the crowd surreptitiously for some sign of him. But he wasn’t there. And maybe he wouldn’t be.

  I sighed. “Maybe he isn’t coming. Maybe this was too obvious, too much a trap.” Maybe, I feared, I’d gotten it wrong from the beginning, and this wasn’t the way to do it. Maybe we’d have to call him out.

  “Some ops require patience,” Catcher said, and I looked at him.

  “You’ve been talking to my grandfather, haven’t you?”

  “I work with him. When am I not talking to your grandfather?”

  A valid point.

  I stood up. “I’m going to take a stroll around the grounds. If he’s here, or watching, maybe that will pull him out.”

  “Be careful,” Jonah said. “Luc, you got eyes?”

  “All cameras on and functioning. I don’t see him anywhere out there, but that doesn’t mean he’s not in a shadow we can’t reach. Watch yourself, Sentinel.”

  “I will,” I promised, and played the role. I imagined myself a spurned woman forced to watch her lover dance, smile, chat with another, a woman who wanted space from the betrayal, the emotions.

  I kept my chin lifted, but sadness in my eyes, and slid a final glance at Ethan as I stepped out of the tent and onto one of the paths that wound through the lawn. I crossed my arms as if chilled, as if vulnerable, while the music faded behind me.

  It had been the perfect ploy.

  As I reached the side of the House, and before I could call up a dramatic tear, he stepped out of the shadows, looking discomfortingly handsome in a lean black tuxedo, dark hair falling across his face. “You are quite a sight, chérie.”

  And now it was my turn. I pushed down fear and revulsion, the panic that snatched at my chest with skeletal hands, and I made my voice breathless. The raven bracelet kept his glamour at bay, but he didn’t need to know that. And I could still feel it swirling around me, so it wasn’t hard to feign vulnerability.

  “What are you doing here?”

  “I am watching his cruelty, and thinking of you. Does it pain you to watch your lover touch another woman? To know that you’ve lost him?”

  I looked away. “I don’t care what he does.”

  “Oh, chérie, I can see the pain in your eyes.” The man who would be Balthasar moved a step closer, the magic stronger, vibrating around me as it tried to penetrate my defenses. And the figurative probably wasn’t far from the literal there.

  I caught the scent of bay rum, felt my gorge rise at the memory of his hands on my body, pushed it down again.

  “Would it pain him, do you think, to watch me touch you?”

  He took a step forward, lifted his hand to my face. I let my eyes go soft, let him caress the backs of his fingers against my cheek, and worked not to show my disgust.

  “You are agreeable tonight. Perhaps because he’s left you. Because you’re available to me.” He stepped forward, his body against mine, obviously aroused, his lips against my cheek. “Will you cry out my name?”

  And that, as they said, was enough of that. “Which name is that? Did you mean Julien or Balthasar?”

  He froze, hot magic prickling around me. I’d have sworn I felt it surge forward, and be battered back by an answering wave. His magic taking the offensive; the apotrope’s magic pushing it into retreat.

  Slowly, he lifted his gaze to mine, his eyes boiling quicksilver. “My name is Balthasar.”

  “No, it isn’t. It’s Julien Burrows. You knew Balthasar. Were imprisoned with him.” I looked at the scars at his neck. “Were probably tortured beside him. But you aren’t Balthasar.”

  Before I could move back, he knotted his fingers into my hair. “My name is Balthasar. Say it!” he said, jerking my head back. “Say it!”

  He sounded earnest. Maybe he thought the pretense was necessary if he wanted to take Cadogan House. Or maybe that was just the magic, slowly transforming whatever might have been left of the man into the one he sought to emulate.

  Whether lie or delusion, I was done being a pawn. “You are not Balthasar.”

  He yanked my hair again, reared back to slap me with his free hand. I blocked the shot with my forearm, and he dropped my hair in surprise. We broke apart, but I’d snagged the raven bracelet on his jacket. It broke open and fell to the ground.

  No longer dammed, his magic spilled across me like dark wine, and suddenly the air was too thick to breathe. I hit the ground on my knees, sucking in air as his magic, angry and biting, spun around me like a typhoon. He wanted me under his control, imprisoned by his magic, a pawn he could use.

  My instinct was to fight, to strike out and strike back, to push his magic back with magic of my own, however poor an opponent it would have been. And then I remembered what Lindsey had reminded me.

  “You’re a rock in the current,” I heard her say, either from memory or through the earpiece I still wore. “Let his magic flow around you. It doesn’t penetrate, doesn’t affect you, just moves like the breeze.”

  There on the ground, mud seeping through the knees of my dress, I closed my eyes and let my breath come softly, in and out.

  His magic advanced again, determined to cow me, control me. I acknowledged his magic, too
k its measure. It was hot, biting, and remarkably insistent. Rejection made him push harder, but I made no answer. I was sweating with the effort of not responding, ignoring every instinct to fight against the glamour that sluiced over me like suffocating water, that sought to convince and compel.

  Like a breeze, I said to myself. Like a breeze. Maybe I was no longer immune to glamour, but I was still stubborn. Those words became my mantra, and I repeated them over and over as the barrage continued.

  As suddenly as it had begun, the magic dissipated. In apparent shock that he hadn’t managed to move me, Julien had dropped the glamour, stepped back.

  I opened my eyes again, breathed deeply, and found his magic had fouled the air with bitterness.

  “Bitch,” he said, chest heaving from the effort. “You bitch. I own you, just like I own him.”

  “I’m not a bitch for saying no, Julien. You’re just an asshole.”

  Fury rolled across his face. “I am Balthasar.”

  “You are Julien Burrows.”

  We both glanced back, found Ethan behind us. His expression was utterly blank, but his body was primed and ready for battle.

  “You bastard,” Julien said.

  “I’m not,” Ethan said. “And as Merit explained, we already know who you are. We know the Circle is paying for you to be here. We know about the Memento Mori, your time with them. And we know about Reed.”

  To his credit, Julien took a step back, breathed deeply, and reassessed. He’d been discovered, his lies realized, and he looked to be considering his next steps.

  “He talked about you often,” Julien said. “How he loved you. How you were his proudest creation. How you’d betrayed him. He knew that—that you’d betrayed him. That you’d given him up to the relatives of the woman he’d fucked.” His smile was reptilian. “He never said her name. Just called her ‘the girl.’ She was human,” he said, as if the implication was obvious—that, her being human, her name wasn’t worth remembering.