by Chloe Neill
It was unnerving enough that we were descending farther and farther into the earth, that each step layered more rock and dirt above us; I shouldn’t have considered the consequences of Vincent making even a single wrong turn, of our becoming lost and hopeless together in an eternal darkness. But we couldn’t go back, so we had to hope he’d find the proper way forward.
I brushed dangling spiderwebs away from my face, became fairly certain I could feel all the tunnel’s spiders running across my shoulders, had to consciously force myself not to obsess about the possibility.
Think of it this way, Sentinel. You’re getting a very unique tour of Colorado.
I’m going to need a vacation from my vacation. Don’t you have a place in Scotland? I’m going there. For a week. Alone.
He touched my back in solidarity. Forward progress, Sentinel. That’s all you have to do.
Sometimes, even that felt overwhelming.
***
We walked for nearly an hour, following Vincent down one passage, then another. We stopped descending, had begun to move slightly uphill, which gave me hope we’d eventually find the surface of the earth again.
The darkness, the similarity, of each yard of tunnel was discombobulating. I’d lost my sense of direction five minutes into the trip and, but for the slope in the floor, would have had no idea of our bearing. Our nervous magic accumulated in the damp darkness, so it felt as if we traveled in a cloud of anxiety.
There was a low rumble above us, around us, behind us. Dirt fell from the ceiling like confetti, and Damien held up a hand to halt our progress. We froze, just as we had the first two times bits of the tunnel’s roof had sprinkled down like rain.
But this time, the rumbling didn’t stop. It seemed to grow louder, gathering momentum like a ghost train bearing down upon us.
I caught sight of Damien, looking up, then back. “Move!” he boomed, and we all surged forward.
“Go!” I said, gently pushing the vampires ahead. “Run! Keep moving!”
Behind me, Nessa screamed, and I turned back just in time to see her go down, clutching her ankle.
“Nessa!” Ethan called, and dodged back to help her, dropping to one knee to get her onto her feet again.
And then the ceiling simply opened.
A monsoon of dirt and stone poured through as though the planet itself was collapsing inward. The force of it knocked me back and away, and filled the air with dust and rock. I covered my face with the hem of my shirt to filter out some of the debris, but still coughed in long, racking spasms.
It took an eternity for the air to clear again. And when the beams of our flashlights finally penetrated the darkness, they illuminated a passage blocked by an enormous spill of rocks and dirt.
Ethan and Nessa were gone.
Panic twisted in my gut, and I scrambled over pillow-sized rocks and hillocks of dirt toward the barrier, toward them. “Ethan! Ethan! Answer me!”
I called his name aloud, screamed it over and over again, repeated it in my mind.
But for all that, he didn’t answer.
He’s a vampire, I reminded myself, trying to keep terror from shutting down my body, my mind. He’s immortal.
Until he isn’t, said the competing voice with the mocking tone of a mean-tempered child.
Maybe the rocks were just too thick for psychic communication to travel through, said the nicer voice. Maybe they’re heavy in iron or something and it interferes with the transmission.
“It doesn’t matter,” I murmured to myself, probably sounding as hysterical as I felt. “It doesn’t matter.”
The only thing that mattered was getting him out. I moved to the pile, began kicking away rocks on the ground to make a clear place to stand. And a clear place to dig.
“We should come back for him,” Cyril said, gesturing to the open end of the shaft. “The entire tunnel could collapse, and then where would we be? Nessa’s a killer anyway.”
I froze, slowly lifted my gaze to him. That, I decided, was the last straw. The final insult in a trip that had become an unmitigated disaster. How many times had we been threatened because we’d offered to help these people, and they didn’t have the courage to do the same?
“Oh, fuck that,” I spat out.
All heads turned to me, and I had a slender moment of enjoyment when Damien’s eyes widened like dinner plates with pleasure. “You have quite a mouth on you,” he murmured.
“Just wait,” I muttered, and leveled my gaze at Cyril.
“You wanna know where I’d like to be right now? Enjoying a glass of wine with my boyfriend on a terrace. But I’m not, am I? No. I’m down here in a goddamned den of spiders big enough to have college degrees and pensions because your community can’t grow the fuck up.”
When Cyril opened his mouth to object, I leaned in, stuck a pointed finger in his face. “No. You don’t get to talk. You’re an immortal who’d leave a man behind. Nothing you have to say is valid. Now, shut up and get to work, or get the fuck out of the way.”
For a moment, magic and tension joined the dust and dirt in the air. And then, wordlessly, Vincent moved beside me, looked over the rock fall, pointed.
“Smaller rocks on this side, boulders there. I say we work on the smaller, leave the larger; they’ll add stability, reduce the chance of another fall.”
I nodded, my relief so sharp I nearly burst into tears. “That sounds reasonable to me.”
We formed a bucket line. Vincent and I pulled rocks from the pile, passed them off to vampires from his crew. Cyril stood some feet away, an arm around ribs that may very well have been hurting, and looked at me with anger layered over insult.
His feelings didn’t much matter to me. But the fact that he was more than willing to accuse Nessa, one of his Clan members, of being the killer and leave her festering underground for the rest of eternity moved him right up my suspect list.
If she was dead, the blame could be easily tossed her way, and who’d be the wiser?
Vincent, on the other hand, I hadn’t given enough credit. We moved rocks for an hour, and he worked without so much as an irritated grunt despite air that was far from fresh, disconcerting rumbling above and around us, and fingers raw and bleeding from digging through jagged rocks.
“You love her,” I quietly said, breaking companionable silence.
Vincent’s smile was melancholy given form. “She loves another. That’s my particular cross to bear.”
Had it been? I wondered. Or had it been Taran McKenzie’s?
“Perhaps,” he said after a moment, “you’re thinking that would give me ample motivation to kill Taran.”
I looked back at him with surprise. “Actually, yeah.”
Vincent lifted a rock flat as a pancake and half as big as a microwave, handed it to the vampire behind him. His burden lifted, he put one hand on his waist, wiped the sleeve of his other across his forehead. “I think you’d be right about that. But you’d be missing the crucial part.”
“Which is?”
“This,” he said, gesturing at the rocks and dirt. “The fact that we’re running from Taran’s people. We are in the midst of a feud. Suspicion for Taran’s death would fall immediately on us, including Nessa. Especially Nessa, since she was closest to him. I’m a vampire, Merit. I am capable of murder. But killing Taran would hurt her, so I wouldn’t do it.”
“And it’s that simple.”
Vincent nodded. “For me, it is.” He leaned forward, plucked out a rock, then another, tossed them away. “For me, it is,” he repeated, quieter now.
I moved one more rock, and a shaft of light and dirt shone through a slit in the cave-in. Fingers—amazingly, miraculously—forced their way through.
“Ethan!” I said, reaching out, touching them, squeezing them. “You’re all right? Is Nessa okay?”
The half second it took him
to answer felt like an eternity.
I am here, Sentinel. A bit worse for wear, but here. And I’m going to Scotland with you.
I hiccupped a half sob, half laugh, that was one hundred percent relieved.
***
We dug through the rest of the rock, careful to create an opening only just wide enough for Nessa and Ethan to squeeze through. The more stone that remained, the more stable the structure would be. Or so we told ourselves.
Ethan helped Nessa through the tunnel, then followed her through. He was filthy when he emerged into the beams of our flashlights. Blood dripped from a cut at his temple, and he held his left arm carefully. But he was whole, and he was alive.
“A mild concussion,” Damien diagnosed as he looked Ethan over. “Broken arm. Two broken ribs. Plenty of contusions. You’ll heal soon enough; faster if I could make you shift.”
“Why would that matter?” Vincent asked, the question as remarkable as it was sad. It was telling that a man engaged in a centuries-old feud knew so little about those he feuded against.
“Shifting heals shifters,” I said. A shifter’s transformation from human to animal form—a magical whirlwind I’d been lucky enough to witness—had the side benefit of healing any wounds suffered in human form. The reverse, oddly, wasn’t true.
“Thank you,” Ethan said. “Perhaps,” he said, nodding toward the darkness on the other end of the shaft, “we should focus on the present and get the hell out of here?”
“That,” Damien said, “is my kind of plan.”
***
Another fifteen minutes of moving and the shaft took a sharp upward turn. It was tough going, but we kept walking, with quiet footsteps and occasional grunts when we slipped in dirt or tripped on unseen rocks.
Slowly, gradually, the tunnel ahead of us began to softly glow.
“Moonlight,” Ethan said quietly said, his relief obvious at seeing something so familiar. “That’s moonlight.”
Seconds later, we burst into the world, as if the earth had found us lacking and spit us out again.
We emerged onto a small plateau scooped from a hill at the head of Elk Valley. The view was nearly worth the trouble. Moonlight poured into the valley’s basin, collected there, illuminating meadows and trees and the silver ribbon of the stream.
“It’s a beautiful place to be so full of hatred,” Damien said.
Vincent nodded. “It is,” he said, his words grim. I hoped he was taking stock, considering whether more drama, more deaths, more close calls, were worth whatever Pyrrhic victory the McKenzies and Marchands had hoped for.
Ethan sighed heavily, put a hand at my back. “If cats have nine lives,” he quietly asked, “how many do vampires get?”
“That’s a question for the ages,” I agreed, glancing at him. “How’s your arm?”
He gently lifted it up and down, winced at the action. “Sore, but no longer as sensitive. I suspect the bone is knitting.”
“You need blood,” I said, equally relieved and disturbed that I was giving the instruction, not receiving it.
“What do we do now?” Nessa quietly asked.
“On it,” Damien said. He pulled out his phone, must have had some success getting reception. With military precision, he put in the request.
“Gabe, use my GPS ping and send the vehicles. We need an evac.”
***
By the time we trekked down the hill to the nearest road, the vehicles were waiting—several trucks and several shifters.
Gabriel leaned against one of them, arms crossed. He kicked off as we approached, looked us up and down, taking in the dirt, the mud, the scrapes and blood.
Ethan took several determined steps toward him, magic filling the air with an astringent buzz. He was pissed, and all his frustration, fear, pain, and fury were spilling now.
“I thought you intended to get your people under control,” he spat.
Gabriel uncrossed his arms, and his shifters’ expressions turned wary. “My people? You’re going to want to watch your tone, Sullivan.”
“Your people shot at us and, when that didn’t work, attempted to burn us out of the Marchands’ retreat because they believe Nessa killed Taran. We had to resort to a decrepit mine shaft for escape, were nearly killed in a cave-in. They’re members of your Pack. That makes their actions, their attempts at murder, your responsibility.”
Magic flashed across us and swirled in Gabriel’s eyes. “You wanna take a shot at me, Sullivan? You think you can land one?”
Ethan’s eyes flashed silver. He leaned forward. “Never, ever forget who we are, or take that for granted. You are an Apex. I am a Master. We may be allies, but I am not a member of your Pack. You are not my alpha.”
For a long moment, they stared at each other, two prime predators facing down, bodies stiff and alert, fists clenched and ready for battle.
They could have gone for it. They could have thrown down then and there, pummeled each other into the dirt to prove their superiority.
But wasn’t that precisely the problem in Elk Valley? That both shifter and vampire, convinced they were in the right, had refused to communicate, to discuss what had happened to Fiona and Christophe—had probably refused to cooperate in finding her—and the anger and fear had festered over generations. They’d been too entrenched in their own positions, too convinced the other was the enemy, to consider any other possibility. That’s precisely why we stood on a gravel road in the Rocky Mountains, tired and dirty and screaming at each other.
Gabriel seemed to realize that truth, and his dawning grin broke through the tension. “Thank sweet Christ Chicago’s vampires never cause trouble, Sullivan. Oh, wait—isn’t that why you needed a vacation in the first place?”
The tension faded from Ethan’s face immediately. He might have been pissed, but Gabe had a solid point. “Fuck you, Keene.”
Gabe’s smile widened, and he clapped Ethan on his broken arm. “Fuck you, too, Sullivan.”
I believe that’s what most called a compromise.
***
The shifters drove us back to the guesthouse where Orangesplosion waited, now slightly less orange than she had been. The Pack had gone back to the retreat, found the McKenzies gone—replaced by volunteer firemen—and Orangesplosion intact. Her paint was singed from proximity to the flames, but our katanas were safe inside.
We took turns in the shower while Nessa found suitable clothes for the other Marchands, ensured they had blood and food.
I was one of the last to shower, and I scrubbed hair and skin until I was certain I’d gotten rid of any arachnid trespassers. But I guessed I’d probably feel the creeping of tiny feet over my back for a few nights yet.
When I was clean and I’d shaken out my leather jacket half a dozen times to unburden it of any final creatures, I found the living room full of shifters and vampires. They didn’t speak to each other, but they weren’t at each other’s throats, either, which was something.
I walked into the kitchen, found the leaders of the various cabals in there.
“You look cleaner, Kitten.” Gabriel and Ethan sat on stools, blood and beer in front of them.
“I may never feel truly clean again,” I admitted. “I am, however, ready to get the hell out of Dodge.” I glanced at Ethan. “Are we ready to go to the house?”
“We are, and I share your sentiment exactly.”
Gabriel rose. “I’ll go with you this time. Damien, babysit the children, will you?”
Damien grunted but knew when to hold his peace.
***
The main house was apparently far enough away to necessitate vehicles. So we walked outside and climbed back into the trucks—Gabriel, Ethan, and I in one; Vincent, Nessa, and two more NAC shifters in the other. The rest of the vampires and shifters stayed at the guesthouse. There was no point in having all of us contaminate t
he crime scene.
After a drive through bumpy darkness, Gabriel pulled into a long, sweeping drive, the main house situated perfectly at the end, so guests could watch it grow larger as they flew down the driveway.
It was an obvious parent of the guesthouse—the same mix of steeply pitched roofs and heavy logs, of stone and glass, but on a substantially larger footprint. If the guesthouse would have made a lovely home for a big family, the main house was undoubtedly a mansion. Nessa and Taran had plenty of money.
The cruiser was parked in front of the house, Tom and a deputy reviewing paperwork as they waited. We pulled up beside it and climbed out into the night again.
“Hello,” Tom said, voice careful as he looked over Gabriel.
“Gabriel Keene,” Ethan said. “Apex of the North American Central Pack. Gabriel, this is Tom McKenzie, the sheriff.”
Tom nodded. “Of course. Good to meet you.”
There was no apparent recognition of Gabriel’s authority in his voice. Just a little uncertainty, as if he wasn’t entirely sure of his steps.
Gabriel inclined his head, and there was plenty of chastisement in his eyes.
“Well,” Tom said, looking at the rest of us, “glad to see you’re all in one piece. We saw the smoke, got the call when the fire department hauled out.”
Ethan didn’t pull his punch. “Considering the McKenzies attempted to burn us out, yes.”
Tom just stared at him. “Burn you out? The department didn’t say anything about arson.”
“They brought torches,” Ethan blandly said. “You may find Niall and Darla are surprised we’re alive.”
Tom blinked. “Niall and Darla? She’s just a wisp of a thing.”
“She’s strong enough,” Ethan assured him.
“They think I killed him,” Nessa said. “They learned I’d had divorce papers drafted, and she saw a fight Taran and I had at the college. She thinks I killed him in anger.”
Tom’s eyes darkened. “You were going to file for divorce?”
“We were working it out,” she said, and sounded as exhausted as I felt.