by Tanith Frost
“Probably better if she can ask me questions directly.”
“Sure.”
We pass the address Daniel gave to me in our hurried conversation and park around the corner. Neither of us has a coat or other protection, and though the sky remains overcast, my skin is tingling and burning by the time we cross into the backyards behind a row of unassuming townhouses and count our way down to the back door of the one we’re looking for.
We have to wait a few seconds before anyone answers our knock. They’ll have been waiting for us, but they’ll also want to be sure we weren’t followed. Clark enters first, turning sideways to slip past Ryder down the narrow hallway. I follow, and Ryder closes the door behind me and locks it. Every window in the house is covered in curtains, offering darkness so welcoming it feels like an embrace.
“Holy shit, Aviva,” Ryder says softly.
“It’s probably not as bad as it looks,” I lie. It’s definitely worse. Sitting in the car for a few minutes gave me a chance to recover a little, but my muscles have stiffened, reminding me of the strain that came on top of injury. “I just need to rest.”
“Like hell that’s all you need,” Ryder mutters. “I’ll clear out the main bathroom for you and find a first aid kit. If you need help with—”
Daniel appears at the end of the hall. He stands still as stone as he takes me in—stretched-out shirt, blood-soaked hair, bruised and unable to stand up straight. If he’s ever seen me in worse shape than this, it was on the night I died… and even that was really just the one wound.
This is the part where Daniel is supposed to remember that he’s my team leader. He needs to check my wounds and get me back on my feet, but more than that, he needs information on what I saw, what’s happening under the city right now, how I got out, what he should pass along to Miranda while I’m getting myself patched up. Anything less would be irresponsible. Anything more, shameful.
He slips past Ryder as if he doesn’t even see him, his gaze locked on my eyes, and reaches for me, taking my face gently in his hands, touching his lips to mine. I lean against the solid support of his chest, letting him bear a little of my weight. It hurts to be touched. The jolt of pain from my split lip is like an electric shock, and the stabbing ache in my chest confirms that I have at least one broken rib. I don’t care. Nor do I care that Ryder is still here, seeing all of this, recognizing that this display isn’t rooted in anything as acceptable as the sexual desire he and I shared not so long ago—I’ve never looked less appealing, and neither Daniel nor I have the energy for that sort of thing at this time of day. There’s something shockingly immodest about the nakedness of Daniel’s energy in this moment, revealing not just himself, but the relief, the fear, the anger, and everything deeper that’s driving him.
He rests his forehead against mine. “I left you.”
“You did your job. I wouldn’t have been any better off with you there, believe me.”
“I know. But I still wouldn’t have forgiven myself if…” He looks closer at the wounds on my face, then pulls my hair back and examines the cut that arcs over my scalp. His expression hardens. “Lachlan?”
“And Bethany. I have so much to tell you. They’ve got… everyone. I tried to use Erimentha to finish them off, but I couldn’t stay to make sure. I heard Bethany yelling, but Lachlan was close to the door, and he had the codes—” My voice is trembling. I pause and take a deep breath, resting my head against Daniel again. I’m going to leave bloodstains on his shirt. I doubt either of us cares. My time in the archives flashes through my mind, and for a few seconds, it’s as if I’m experiencing it all again—Penelope’s sacrifice, the screams, the energy.
The ease with which I took down enemies who should have been so much stronger than me.
Ryder is still here, leaning against the wall, arms crossed. He looks a little amused. “I’ll just get the shower started for you,” he says. “And I hereby retract that offer of assistance. I need to get some sleep, anyway.”
“Thanks, Ryder.”
Daniel leads me up the stairs and into a small bathroom with a deep tub. The hot water is running in the shower, filling the room with steam, and a white canvas first aid kit sits on the counter. Ryder’s gone already, but I hear his voice behind one of the three other doors on this floor, speaking with one of the humans.
“The stock are all okay?” I ask, noting how tired Daniel looks. I definitely win the prize for physical injuries, but he’s had a rough night, too, and I doubt all of it is due to the escape or his concern for me.
“They will be. I did what I could to help Padma, but I’m not trained to do what she does. She’s got them calmed down and has erased memories of what happened, but when there are so many of them, it’s hard to make them believe a cohesive story of what did happen—especially when we can’t separate them. I mostly helped with clean-up, catching anyone who started to remember and convincing them it wasn’t worth thinking about.”
“Any sign of Eric?”
Daniel shakes his head. “Didn’t make it out. Did you… Genevieve?”
A lump blossoms in my throat. I squeeze my eyes shut against tears, but I can’t hold them all back. “She’s gone. She was defending the stock, and—”
And there’s nothing more to say. It doesn’t matter how it happened. She’s gone. Talking about it won’t bring her back.
I lean back against the counter and let Daniel help me undress, peeling blood-stiff fabric away from wounds, revealing the ruin of my body. I can barely lift my arms over my head.
Yet I’m here. I made it out of the archives. Lachlan didn’t stop me. Bethany didn’t, either. Or the Tempest soldiers.
I’m weak. They were weaker.
I step into the tub and turn back to Daniel, who’s preparing bandages and creams that will do little that time and power won’t do for me on their own.
“It weakened them,” I say, raising my voice to be heard over the water. “Remember how my fire strengthened you when you’d been away from it? How it works for me?”
“Like how you think it works for all of us, sure. Other powers making ours stronger.”
I step under the spray and wait for him to come closer so we can hear each other. Water washes over me, stinging my wounds but bringing relief to aching muscles, flowing down the drain, stained deep pink with my blood.
“Lachlan and the others haven’t developed the means to deal with it,” I say. “There’s nothing in them that knows how to offer protection. I don’t know how long it will take them to adapt, but as of right now, it’s not only that other forces make us stronger—they also make them weaker.”
A slow smile begins at one corner of Daniel’s lips, quickly spreading as the full meaning of the idea sinks in. “How sure are you?”
I reach for the soap, lather it in my hands, and pass them gingerly over my body, noting the bullet wound in my side, the broken ribs, the bruises I can’t see on my face. I honestly don’t want to. My enemies fought hard.
“I don’t think I’d be here right now if it weren’t true.” It hurts to say it, but it seems right. Even if I were at full strength, a kick to the head shouldn’t have taken someone as strong as Lachlan down, even temporarily. I should have been trapped there, left to meet Erimentha’s claws while he made his way out. “It wasn’t much harder than fighting humans. Now, that was with a strong source of a power that they’d never encountered. The effect probably isn’t as great over the rest of the island, no matter how different it is from what they’re used to. But the enemies in the club seemed easier to take down when I let my fire rise, too.”
“So there might be other anchors we could use to weaken them besides the bird.” Daniel reaches for a bottle of expensive-looking, all-natural shampoo and reaches in to gently scrub my hair, careful to avoid the long cut. The soap and water sting, but it feels good to be clean.
It’s not exactly what I’d have wished for if I’d known I was going to be in this situation with Daniel again, but it could be w
orse.
We patch up my wounds as necessary—plastic strips to keep my scalp closed, bandages over the hole in my side to catch seeping blood, salves and ointments for everything else—and Daniel tells me to head down to the basement while he calls Miranda.
When I’ve eased my body down the stairs, I find a sofa bed pulled out down here already, facing a large flat-screen television and three game systems with at least fifty games, plus the most intensive, heavy-duty anti-glare glasses I’ve seen outside of sun protection gear.
Nice to know that even vampires who play by the rules give in to temptation and act against their own best interests sometimes.
I crawl onto the bed and rest my head on one of the pillows. Falling asleep isn’t a good idea—not when Daniel could be down at any moment to tell me Miranda wants to speak with me. But I’m already drifting when I hear his footsteps, then feel him lying down behind me.
“She doesn’t want to talk?” I ask.
“She’s decided that telephone communication might not be secure.” He pauses. “I get the impression we were right to be concerned about the clan’s ability to monitor our location that way, and that there might even be bugs in clan-issued phones.”
“I knew it. So what, are we heading out to her?”
“First thing tonight. Clark’s taking first watch today, then Ryder, then me.”
I don’t object to the exclusion. Sometimes teamwork is about everyone getting what they need, not making sure everyone gets treated the same, and today I need to rest more than anyone. I let my fire rise and feel it moving through me, irrevocably bound to the void, strengthening it as it heals my body in its miraculous fashion.
Daniel doesn’t touch me—he knows after seeing my injuries that there’s no way he can without hurting me. But when I roll over and rest my head on the crook of his shoulder, he adjusts his position to make me more comfortable.
I meant what I said to him earlier. I am glad he didn’t come back into the club with me. He was needed elsewhere, and I’ve seen how Lachlan uses love to hurt humans—I don’t care to think how he’d use it against enemies like us. I was better off on my own. But now that it’s over, I feel stronger for having him here.
Trust no one is good advice.
But that doesn’t mean it’s always right. I’ve trusted others. It hasn’t always ended well, but it’s been necessary. Daniel. Trent. Edwin and Lucille.
Genevieve, who never wanted to fight but was willing and capable when the need arose.
The loss of her breaks my heart, and for a few moments, the grief threatens to drag me under. But that sadness shifts, slowly at first, to anger. My fist clenches around the fabric of Daniel’s shirt, but he’s asleep. I’m alone with my rage, which only burns hotter when I lift my head for long enough to look at him—my partner, my love, who Lachlan tried so hard to destroy.
Lachlan hasn’t always pulled the trigger, but he’s been behind so much of what I’ve lost—what this clan has lost. And for what? For power? For his insecurity, his belief that if he doesn’t benefit from something then no one should have it? For his insistence that he shouldn’t be bound by limitations that affect every other being on the planet, and that whoever is strongest should be allowed to shape the world to his liking no matter what the cost to others?
Fuck that. Fuck him. I’ve tasted that poisonous way of thinking, and I understand its allure well enough… and I know it’s wrong. I’ve been telling myself so far that that’s why I’m fighting him—because I want a better world for everyone than what he’s offering, that I want to protect this clan and its freedom.
And I do. But fuck that, too.
I rest my head again on the cool, hard curve of Daniel’s shoulder, inhaling his scent, letting that comfort combine with my pain to remind me of all that I’ve suffered and how much I still stand to lose.
Resistance isn’t enough. Neither is saving the clan and keeping it safe from this threat.
This is about more than ideals now, or heaven or hell, or power, or freedom.
It’s personal.
And if it’s the last thing I do, I swear I’m going to see Lachlan burn.
20
The hardest part of waking up at Ryder’s house is knowing that we have stock upstairs. I just fed last night, but the stress, injury, fear, and subsequent healing have left me feeling depleted already. Not weak, but if I’m being honest with myself, some fresh blood would go down really good right now.
The blood of a frightened human, in particular. God, I’m salivating. But orders are orders, and no one feeds unless we’re at our greatest need.
All the more reason to see this thing finished.
I force myself out of bed and wince as I gently prod the most damaged parts of my body—the bullet wound, the cracked ribs, my scalp. The void made progress on healing me while I slept, but my muscles are stiff and everything aches.
Daniel enters, carrying a cup of coffee. “Good evening.”
“Evening. Is that for me?”
He hands the mug over, and I drink deeply. It’s something, anyway.
“Well?” I ask. “Any news?”
“Besides the fact that Tempest has control of the city, half of our clan is imprisoned, our forces are still scattered, and we’re basically fucked?” He looks up at the ceiling as though deep in thought. “No, nothing new.”
“It’s not over yet.”
“No. Not entirely.” He sits next to me on the bed, elbows resting on his knees. “We’re working out arrangements for meeting with Miranda. Ryder and Padma are going to stay here with the stock—we can’t risk letting them go home yet. Clark offered to drive us out, but I told him you and I have things to do. I’ll get a ride home and pick up my car. Assuming, of course, that you agree it’s time to take Odette and Imogen out to meet with Miranda.”
“Absolutely.” I drain the rest of the coffee and pretend the dregs are bitter blood. “If we’re fucked, it’s time to bring in every secret weapon we can get our hands on. About your car, though…”
“What?”
I take a long breath before I speak again. “It was sort of my escape vehicle when I left the city to come find you. And I might have… sort of abandoned it by the side of the road outside Bloody Bight.”
“Sort of as in…”
“Completely. In the woods.”
Daniel rubs a hand down over his face. I think he’s upset until he sits up straight and turns to me, the creases beside his eyes betraying his amusement even as his mouth maintains its stern line. “I suppose I’ll forgive it. I mean, it’s a high price to pay for you saving yourself from extermination here and then coming to rescue me from certain oblivion, but—”
I punch him in the arm, though the movement hurts me. He laughs and catches my fist in one of his big hands.
“High price,” I mutter.
He just smiles at me in a way that says he’d pay that price a thousand times over.
I did the right thing.
I clear my throat and look away. “Odette and Imogen will be useful if Miranda accepts their help with protections and such. And the magic might help otherwise. Erimentha’s power had quite an effect on Tempest’s vampires. I don’t see why magic would be any different. They’re not used to anything but light and the void.”
“Funny how we seem to be able to adapt to everything else, but light—the one thing we can’t use or destroy—will still harm us.”
My stomach turns. “Yeah. Guess that one’s an effective weapon against all of us, no matter what we do.”
Gideon’s voice passes through my mind, smooth and confident. I’ll see you soon.
My fingers tighten around the coffee mug. Not yet, you won’t.
“We need more than them, though,” I tell him. “I think magic will weaken them, but I can’t be sure, and I’m not willing to leave that to chance. I am certain that fire works against those that haven’t been exposed to it.”
Daniel leans forward again, his hair falling forward ov
er his eyes. “You want to contact the werewolves?”
“It’s time I did, anyway. Some of the things that Lachlan said…” I give my head a quick shake. “Point is, their presence could be an asset. Tempest is bad news for them, too. We’re the lesser of two evils.”
Daniel looks at me with one eyebrow arched, clearly thinking what I’m trying not to—that we’re not that much less, really. But he hands me his phone. “I’ll just go see about borrowing another vehicle, then. Good luck.”
I wait until he’s gone, then compose my message, enter Violet’s number from memory, and send.
V? It’s A. Did you make it out okay?
Her reply is almost immediate.
Where the hell are you?
She’s got a smartphone. Her typing’s quicker than what I can manage on this flip phone with its nine-digit keyboard. I have to keep this short.
I’m back in town. I have a lot to tell you. Made it to Tempest, got out, but didn’t stop invasion. They’ve taken the city.
A few seconds later, she replies.
Fuck. Hang on.
Daniel returns as I’m waiting, and I hand him the phone so he can read over the messages. Violet’s reply comes in as he passes it back.
So your clan isn’t responsible for the two werewolves who went missing from Alvin’s pack a few nights ago?
It feels for a second as though the floor has dropped out from under me as I struggle to remember exactly what Lachlan said while my mind was so rattled. Something about having tried to get what I have… which Bethany knew had happened after I fed on a werewolf and took his power along with his blood.
“Motherfucker,” I whisper.
No, not us. Anyone who was on duty in that area was pulled off to join teams hunting zombies.
I can almost feel the hesitation before she answers.
Are you shitting me right now? Because I’m serious about the abductions.
No shitting, V. I wish I were. I need to talk to you about all of this. We might be able to help each other. But not this way. It isn’t safe.