by D. N. Hoxa
Oh, great. Just…great.
“Look, it doesn’t matter, okay? You’re right, the spell could have killed you,” I forced myself to say. “But it didn’t. Everything else can be managed. Whatever happened, it’s not your problem anymore. Now, we need to do something about your wards to make sure nobody can break them again, something strong—Prime magic.”
We could buy wards. They cost a lot of money, but it would be worth it.
Mal began to laugh, but it sounded like a bear growling instead. “What about my signature? It will be all over the Chalice and the soul, all over the grave of whomever they summon. The Guild will find it eventually. They’ll find me!”
Oh, God. I wanted to tell her that she was wrong, but she wasn’t. The Guild had Mal’s magic signature. It had gone to her records when she was a kid, before they Nulled her. There was no doubt that they could find out Mal had done the spell if they found the grave.
“We’re not gonna let that happen, okay? The Guild won’t find anything.”
“Yeah, Mal,” Jamie said. “We’re gonna find whoever did this and we’re gonna destroy that Chalice. Right, Sin?”
“Yes, absolutely. Right now, you need to rest and get your strength back.”
“You were right!” Malin said, shaking her head, her eyes squeezed shut. “I should have never done it. All that greed suffocated me! I should have controlled myself. I shouldn’t have—”
“Hey, listen to me!” I cut her off. “You’re going to be okay. Nothing’s going to happen to you. We’ll figure this out.”
“But—”
She was cut off again—this time by a knock on the door.
Everybody froze. Even Uma’s tail that had been moving from one side to the other by Jamie’s feet stopped in the air. Slowly, I brought my finger to my lips to tell the girls to keep quiet. They looked ready to pass out.
Pulling my stolen dagger out of its brand new sheath made just for it, I stood up.
I took a step toward the hallway and released my magic to search for the essence of whomever was behind the door. I’d been trying to make a habit out of this for the past two weeks. I had more than enough power to search an entire building around me, so I’d figured, why not use it? Not like anyone could feel it—but I could feel them.
And I felt two people standing by the door. One of them was weaker, a Level Two, and his essence almost glowed yellow, like a werewolf’s, but the other’s was a blinding white.
It was also one I’d felt every single night except last night for two straight weeks. He came to my apartment building, and he stayed in the hallway right outside my door every single night. He never knocked. He never called. He just stayed there until I fell asleep.
I grabbed the handle of the door and opened it before I could think straight. There was a chance that I was wrong, that it was some other vampire’s essence, because I had used my Talent so rarely that I had no idea how accurate it was.
But it hadn’t fooled me. In front of me was Damian Reed in all his glory.
“Hello, little thief.”
My knees grew weak instantly. The way my body responded to the sight of him, to the sound of his voice, scared me more than a hundred maneaters coming to eat me alive.
“What are you doing here?” I asked when I found my voice and was able to tear my eyes off his face. The man that stood beside him was shorter than him, maybe an inch taller than me. He looked in his late forties, with blond hair sprinkled with grey and clear blue eyes. Of the two, he was the only one who looked surprised to see me.
“We’re working. Tracking someone, to be specific,” Damian said, his eyes moving down my face, stopping on my lips. My stomach did a flip instantly. It was impossible not to analyze him, his colorful eyes and his skin…dotted with brown on the left cheek.
Wait a minute…
“It’s almost noon. Why are you outside?” I said when I remembered—he was a vampire. Vampires didn’t do well when the sun was up. They grew weak, and if they stayed in direct sunlight long enough, their skin turned brown—just like his had.
Damian smiled like he could see right through me and read my damn mind.
“Don’t worry about me, little thief. A little sun isn’t going to melt me down,” he said. “May we come in?”
Damn it, I fell right into that. I shouldn’t have cared that he was out in daylight. What he did was none of my fucking business, so why hadn’t I just kept my mouth shut?
Here we go again, I thought, and stepped aside to let them in. What else was I supposed to do? He was here for two minutes and I was already acting like an idiot. I was a grown woman, for God’s sake. I should have been able to control myself better.
Focus, Sin, I said to myself and closed the door, then led them through the short hallway and into the living room, where Mal, Jamie, Uma and Kit were all staring with their eyes wide open.
“It’s, um…it’s Damian,” I told my friends.
Mal widened her eyes at me, and I could almost hear her thoughts. Why did you let them in?
Well, I couldn’t very well tell him to leave, could I?
Yeah, I could. I should have, in fact.
“Ms. Arnon, Ms. Taylor, I apologize for showing up like this at your door,” Damian said, but he wasn’t looking at the girls. He was looking at the living room—the torn furniture, the drawings on the floor. Kit ran to me and climbed up my leg lightning fast, squeaking in anger. I didn’t think he liked Damian very much.
“Did you call him?” Mal asked in a whisper, and I almost choked on my saliva.
“No! Of course not. I didn’t call anyone,” I told her. “But he’ll tell us why he’s here now, won’t you, Damian?” I didn’t want Mal even more freaked out. The sooner he could explain, the sooner she’d stop looking like she was going to pass out.
“This is my friend Nikola Rivera,” Damian said, nodding at the werewolf, who looked so pale all of a sudden, like he was exhausted. “We’re searching for someone—a vampire—and Nikola was able to trace her scent back here. I would have called, but I didn’t know where we were going until we reached the building.”
“She was here,” his friend said, looking at the walls of the living room. “I can still smell her.”
“Who are we talking about?” I asked him. Mal had already said that there was a vampire woman in here the night before. It seemed we were going to find out who she was sooner than I expected.
“Her name is Helen Marquez,” the man said. “She’s my mate.”
What the hell?
“Your mate almost killed my friend,” Jamie said, holding onto Mal’s hand, sitting beside her on the couch.
“Was that what happened here?” Damian asked, waving his finger at the ceiling. “Did she attack you?”
“Yeah, she did. They all did,” Mal said, her voice dry. She could barely keep her eyes open.
“Hold on a second,” I said with a sigh and went to my friends. “Mal, you need to go lie down, okay? You really need to rest. Jamie’ll come with you.”
“No, I want to know what’s going on,” Mal insisted, but Jamie pulled her up by the arm.
“Sin’ll talk to them. She’ll tell us all about it later. Right now, you need to sleep.”
“It’ll be fine, I promise. Just sleep.”
Malin didn’t like it, but she knew she wasn’t going to be able to stay awake long enough for this conversation to be over. Jamie practically carried her into the hallway and into her room. Uma followed them, but Kit stayed with me, tail wrapped securely around the back of my neck.
“I’m very sorry,” the werewolf said, offering me a small smile. “I didn’t realize you were Damian’s friend when I brought him here.”
Friend? Was that what I was, Damian’s friend? Because I didn’t want to be his friend.
“It’s okay. Why don’t you take a seat and start from the beginning?” I told them and waved for the couch. Damian preferred to stand, and so did I. At least the werewolf took a seat.
“Nikola and Helen are friends of mine from a long time ago,” Damian said. “Helen disappeared from their home in Florida a few days ago, and he tracked her here. We think she might be in trouble of some kind.”
“I don’t think you’re right. She was here last night, terrorized my friend, and made her do a spell for her and her friends,” I said.
“I’m very sorry,” Nikola said, shaking his head. “This is unlike Helen, but I’m sure there’s an explanation. I’m going to make this right, I give you my word.”
Well, fuck. Even his eyes had lost their shine since he came in here. The man was in some serious pain.
I looked at Damian. What the hell was happening?
“Helen seems to be working with the same people who spelled the humans last night,” he said with a sigh, almost like he didn’t want to believe himself.
“What?”
“We were there before the spell was activated, but they got away,” he continued.
I shook my head. “Why would anybody do something like that spell?” It was the question I’d asked myself all night.
“We don’t know,” Damian said.
“There’s a reasonable explanation for this, I know it. My Helen doesn’t do things like this, not anymore. We just have to find her,” Nikola said, and it almost sounded like he was begging me. “If I could talk to your friend when she wakes up and ask her some questions—”
“There will be no need for that,” I cut him off. Nobody was going to talk to Malin right now. “I can tell you what they were doing here. They wanted my friend to put a soul summoning spell into a Moon Chalice.”
Nikola narrowed his brows in confusion, but Damian looked positively shocked.
That’s because he knew. He already knew what I’d done. I looked at the floor.
“A soul-summoning spell? Why…why would Helen want to summon a soul?”
“Maybe it’s not her,” I offered. “She was here with three others—one of them a ghoul.”
“Did they hurt her?” Damian asked, his face an expressionless mask all of a sudden.
“They did.” Not directly, but they made her do the spell, when she’d just gotten back her Talent hours ago. It could have killed her. God, I’d been a fool to agree to this. If I hadn’t, Malin wouldn’t be in this situation right now.
A phone vibrated, but before I could check mine, Damian had his in his hand and put it to his ear.
“Yes?”
I had no idea who it was and I couldn’t hear shit—but the werewolf did. He narrowed his brows again, then brought his hand in front of his eyes.
“Thank you,” Damian said and disconnected.
“What? What happened?”
“Someone broke out of the Judicum last night at ten-fifteen p.m.,” he said in almost a whisper.
The Judicum Prison was the supernatural prison within the New York Shade, and it was basically impenetrable. Nobody even knew where it was. The Shade wouldn’t lead anyone to it, or at least that’s what we were led to believe. Until now.
“A distraction,” Nikola said and the words hit me smack in the face.
Holy shit, he was right. All those humans had been terrorized because somebody wanted to break out of jail?
“Who? Who broke out?”
But Damian shook his head. “I’m going to make a quick call.” He turned around and walked back toward the door.
Awkward silence stretched in the living room. I wanted to go check on Mal, but I didn’t know Nikola Rivera at all. He was Damian’s friend, but he wasn’t mine. It was a better idea to just stay here and not leave him on his own.
“So how do you know Damian, Ms…?” he said, trying but failing to hide the panic I could see in his eyes.
“Just Sin is fine,” I said. “We, um…well, we worked together. A few months ago.” That was as close to the truth as I could get.
“Sin? What an interesting name,” he said. “What did you and Damian work on?”
He was gonna make me sweat. “It’s complicated,” I said because I had no idea what else to tell him. I just wished Damian could come back sooner.
But the werewolf laughed. “He is a complicated man.”
“How do you know him?” I said, just to make sure he wouldn’t get the chance to ask me more questions.
“Emanuel Onti and I grew up in the same Pack, though he’s much younger than me. They found us some fifteen years ago, when we were living in Georgia, looking for some information. Helen and I helped them.”
That was certainly a better answer than the ones I’d given him.
“Why would Helen disappear and work with the people doing this?” I wondered out loud. She was his mate. He had to know more than he was sharing.
But he shook his head. “I have no idea,” he said. “My Helen is mostly a peaceful person. She has a bad temper, but she’s kind and good-hearted. She wouldn’t do something like this, not unless she felt like she had no other choice.” I could feel the pain in his voice like it was mine to feel.
“I’m sorry,” I said before I realized it. His sadness tugged at my heart, and I didn’t even know the guy.
“That’s okay—we’ll find her,” he said. “There’s nobody in this world that Damian Reed can’t find.” He stood up. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to be on my way.”
Wait! I wanted to say. If he went, so would Damian, and I wasn’t ready for him to leave yet. Not because I’d missed him or anything, but because I needed to know what was happening. I needed to know how to find Helen and her friends and get back that Moon Chalice before it was too late for Malin.
But before Nikola reached the door, Damian stepped inside. They nodded at one another, the werewolf walked out of the apartment, and Damian came toward me, looking at me like an animal about to devour his prey.
I stepped aside and pretended that the floor was just the most magical piece of work I’d ever seen.
“Did you un-null Malin, little thief?” he asked, standing in front of me like he didn’t know that I needed to be farther away from him to function properly.
I moved again with a flinch. “Yeah.”
“How did you find the spell?”
“Malin found it in her mother’s grimoires. It’s not a spell for Nulling exactly, just something they used in the old days to break very powerful curses or foreign magic in a body. It used to kill whoever it was used on fifty percent of the time, but Malin’s mother modified it so we knew it was safe.” We didn’t. I had a strong suspicion Malin had lied about that part just to make me feel like I wasn’t putting her at risk.
“When?” Damian asked. There was no judgment in his voice.
“Just last night. I was still here when the spell broke out,” I said, then bit my tongue. I was in the habit of telling him everything I knew about anything he asked, and I had yet to find a way to keep my tongue in check.
“I wonder how they found her,” he said, leaning his head to the side, as if trying to make me look at him. And I did. Even with the brown mark that looked like someone had spilled coffee on his skin and it had dried, he still looked like a fucking god. His dark hair that almost looked pitch black was in every direction, like he hadn’t bothered to use a comb when he woke up, and his eyes still made me feel like I was staring at outer space every time I looked at him. It didn’t help that he was dressed in a dark grey suit—which should have looked too much at that time of day, but he still managed to pull it off somehow. Definitely unfair.
“There was a ghoul. He said he could smell the necromantic magic in the apartment, then on Mal,” I said when I was able to speak again. “Is that really possible?”
“Absolutely. If you know a scent well enough, you can pick it up anywhere—just like Nikola. I would never be able to track Helen’s scent anywhere in the Shade, but he can pick her up without trouble, even hours later,” he said. “Just like I could smell you all the way down the street before reaching the building.”
I swallowed hard. Distraction! My brain demanded. �
�Why are you out in daylight, Damian?” Such a lame effort, but it was the best I had.
“Because I need to find Helen. She and Nikola helped me when I needed them. I have a debt to pay.”
“Then I’m coming with.”
He wasn’t surprised at all. In fact, he grinned. “You don’t have to, little thief.”
“No, I do. If the Guild catches them first and they find that Moon Chalice, it’ll have Malin’s signature all over it, and I can’t let that happen.” What I didn’t say was that it was my fault. If I’d resisted, if I’d trusted my gut and not let Mal and Jamie talk me into this bullshit, she would have been okay now.
Damian nodded. “Then I’ll call you tonight.”
“Okay.” I would be waiting.
He stood there for a second longer, looking at me like he wanted to say something—something more. Something that didn’t have anything to do with what was happening right now.
And I wanted him to.
But he didn’t. He turned around and disappeared down the hallway and out the door.
I let go of a long breath as Kit jumped off my shoulder, complaining. I could almost understand him. He said, I’m sick of your shit, Sin, and he was right. I was sick of my shit, too, when it came to Damian Reed.
And now that he wasn’t here, I could think straight. I could remember why I was angry at him in the first place, why I hadn’t opened the door to talk to him when he came to my apartment. It was because he’d lied to me. I was an Alpha Prime, which seemed to be a fictional term according to all the books Malin had loaned me, and he’d known. He hadn’t told me shit—and then he’d accused me of lying to him, too.
Yeah, I was right to be mad, and the next time I saw him, I was going to remember it, damn it. Sooner or later, I was going to have to control myself when he was around.
That decided, I went to check on Malin.
Chapter Seven
Lucas called me at seven-thirty that evening. I was still at Malin’s together with Jamie, and it sucked to have to leave. Malin insisted I tell her when Damian called because she wanted to help. It’s my mess, she said, and she really meant it. Like hell I’d call her, but I did have to leave. I had a job to do and people depended on me. After that, eventually Damian was going to call me, and we’d go looking for his friend. And the Moon Chalice.
