by Tanith Frost
Another pause.
We’re already on our way in. Do you have a car? We should be at the gas station outside Arnold’s Cove in less than two hours. Irene wants to see you.
I show Daniel the message, and he nods.
I’ll be there.
Daniel scans the messages again over my shoulder. “You want to take backup?”
I frown at him. “I know you don’t like them, but they’re trustworthy. They’re not going to hurt me.”
He shrugs. “Until a few minutes ago, they thought Maelstrom abducted two of their members. You don’t think there’s a chance they’ll take you as insurance to make sure we help get them back?”
“Daniel, they witnessed the entire year I spent abandoned at the sanctuary. They know exactly what I’m worth to this clan if it comes to that. And anyone I take for backup can only make the situation worse.”
He winces, but nods. There’s no point fighting me on this one.
“Besides,” I add, “you need to go get Odette and Imogen.”
“You’re right, I know. I just don’t like it.” He fishes a set of keys out of his pocket. “You’d better get ready to go, then. Take Ryder’s car and meet us at your trailer at the rift. I’ll ask Padma to loan me her car so they’ll still have the van when they need to move.”
He stands as I do, though he’s moving a hell of a lot more fluidly than I am. I take the keys from him, but he holds on to my hand.
“You’re sure about all of this?” he asks. “Not the werewolves’ trustworthiness, but everything else. The fire, the magic?”
I squeeze his fingers before I pull away.
I’m sure about the idea.
It’s the execution I’m worried about.
Violet’s pacing by the highway when I pull into the parking lot, shoulders hunched against the wind, working off whatever energy has been building in her since they left home. Her golden eyes narrow against my headlights, and she holds her arm up to block the glare. She can’t possibly see who’s driving, but she follows me to a parking space beside the building.
I cut the engine and step out, and she looks me over. The tension in her face makes me think she wants to start a fight. Then I catch the shadows against the skin beneath her eyes. And when I inhale, I smell fear, though it’s cold and stale, something she’s been living with for a few days at least.
“What’s going on?” I ask. “Tell me about the missing werewolves.”
She pulls off her grey toque for long enough to pull the fingers of one hand through her thick, dark curls, then tugs it back on against the cold. “There was Derek. I think you met him once or twice. And do you remember Jerome? Big guy. Not a fan of vampires.”
She could be describing half the members of Alvin’s pack, none of whom had any interest in spending time around me during my time at the sanctuary. A lot of them were once members of Silas’s pack, but their former alpha’s trust in me was entirely negated by the fact that I was there when he died, and I couldn’t save him.
Or it’s just the old bad blood. Maybe I read more into it because I spent so much time blaming myself.
“You’re sure they didn’t go home?”
“Derek had just arrived two nights ago,” Violet says, crossing her arms. “He was due to change, so he wouldn’t have left. No one would under any circumstances without telling their alpha, anyway. We are capable of running a tight ship without your supervision.”
“Okay, but—”
She holds up a hand. “Let me finish. Someone saw a quartet of vampires knock Jerome out and throw him into the trunk of a car. They didn’t recognize the vampires, but there was no question of what they were.”
I swallow hard. “I swear they weren’t ours.”
“And Irene’s willing to take your word for it, but that still leaves us with a problem.” She narrows her eyes. “More than one by the sounds of it. What the hell do you mean, zombies?”
“It’s a long story. They’re basically mindless, dead humans who are still walking around. Soulless, too, as far as we know. Aggressive toward vampires, maybe people as well. I thought Lachlan had sent them here alone, but he and the other vampires must have followed later. We went out after them, which is how I know our guys weren’t around to kidnap any of you.”
Violet bares her teeth. “Let me get this right. Your clan falls down on the job of exterminating us, so another comes in to do the job for you?”
I feel Irene before I see her—fire, warm and somehow carrying a feeling of solidity and certainty that I can only envy. She appears around the side of the building, carrying two coffee cups in her hands, walking slowly and carefully as if a wrong step might break her.
She’s lost at least twenty pounds over the past few months, and she wasn’t a large woman before. Her greying hair is pulled back from her face, revealing the dark circles around her eyes and the sharp cut of her cheekbones.
She looks like a skeleton. She looks like she’s dying.
“I suspect that if this enemy clan had come to finish us off,” she says softly, “they wouldn’t have started by abducting a mere pair of us. We’d all be gone by now.” She stands in front of me, hands trembling slightly as she hands a coffee to Violet. “Isn’t that so, Aviva?”
“I suspect it is. If they took those guys, it was for some other purpose.”
Violet takes her hat off and sets it on Irene’s head, pulling it low over her ears and forehead. Irene doesn’t seem to notice. She’s got her eyes on me.
I let myself take her in as I couldn’t the last time I saw her, before I had their power and my own working together. My void-given gifts of perception have been sharpened by fire, and I can read so much more now. Not only the blunt force of her power, but how it’s changed by her… and her blood. Her life. I let myself feel that, too. I swore off werewolf blood after the incident with Silas, but that doesn’t mean I wasn’t tempted during my time at the sanctuary. Even tonight, I’ve had to fight the urge to take blood from Violet—a fight I’m so accustomed to that I hardly notice it anymore unless I’m half-starved.
But I have no desire to feed from Irene, who feels as drained as over-used stock. No chance of a satisfying meal.
My throat tightens, and I look away.
“You mentioned we might be able to help each other,” Irene says. “I’d like to hear why. Quickly, if possible.”
“As it happens, our interests might align with yours.” I spent the drive going over what I’d say to them, and now I toss it all aside. Missing werewolves mean a lot of pieces are falling into place, and within a few minutes, I’ve explained, as well as I can, about our conflicting powers, my situation, and how fire seems to weaken enemies who have eradicated it—and them—from their territory.
I never told them the whole story about me, Silas, and the fire we shared—the full truth that I now realize I owed to them.
“So this Lachlan wants what you claim to have?” Irene asks.
“That’s my theory. I didn’t know he actually had access to fire and werewolf blood until Violet mentioned it.”
Violet looks as if she’s going to puke. “He’s using our blood to make himself stronger so he can wipe the rest of us out?”
“You. Me. Your packs. My clan. Anyone who stands in his way. And once you’re gone, he’ll continue his plan to rid the world of the light, no matter what the cost to humans.” I look to Irene, who’s shaking harder than before. “Should we get in the van to talk about this?”
“No. Finish what you need to say, make your offer, and we’ll decide how to proceed.” Irene pinches the bridge of her nose and closes her eyes. “You said this… this scar on your power happened to you when Silas died. Do they know that?”
I hesitate before answering. “They didn’t know until last night. I might have let it slip.” Violet turns away with a muttered profanity. “If I’d known…”
Irene’s eyes are cold. If she feels any worry or anger, she’s hiding it well. “So maybe now he kills one of them
after feeding. Maybe it works, and he becomes like you. Where are we then?”
“Royally screwed,” Violet mutters.
I can’t disagree. “But even then, that’s just him. He doesn’t trust anyone else enough to share that power with them—and that’s if he still exists at all. There’s a chance he’s gone.”
“We should be so fortunate,” Irene sighs. “So what is it you want?”
I take a long breath as I consider how to phrase this. “We need fire to weaken our enemies. We need werewolves with us when we take back the Inferno.”
“Absolutely not,” Violet says, but Irene holds up one hand to quiet her. Violet glares at her pack leader. “You can’t seriously consider this. Odds are that Jerome and Derek are dead already. We’d be putting the rest of our packs in danger for nothing.”
“Perhaps not nothing.” There’s a hungry look in Irene’s sunken eyes now as she looks to me. “When I started this journey, I expected to approach Miranda with questions and accusations, with no power to get answers she didn’t wish to give. When you told Violet that others were responsible, I despaired, thinking that I’d now have to lie before Miranda with my belly exposed and my tail between my legs, telling her we needed help—from vampires.” The disgust she feels at this idea is clear, and I don’t fault her for it at all after what she’s been through over the past few decades. “But now you need us. Now we’re in the position of power.”
Violet doesn’t look pleased. “We volunteered to come out here because Irene knows Miranda better than Alvin does. We didn’t know there were outsiders involved, and we didn’t come here to fight.”
I glance over her shoulder and nod toward the familiar faces that have appeared in the shadows—I’m better acquainted with Sabrina and Sasha than with the other three females and hardly know the four males who joined the pack after Silas’s death, though I could come up with their names if pressed. “No? You brought a lot of bodies for a little chat.”
Violet scowls. “I said we didn’t come to fight. Didn’t say we weren’t prepared for it should it become necessary. We’re not as stupid as you think we are.”
I choose to take that you as vampires and not me, personally. Violet knows I don’t think anything of the sort.
“We’ll return with you,” Irene says. “We’ll negotiate, but Miranda should know we’ll walk away from anything less than absolute freedom for werewolves in this territory. No vampires watching over our shoulders. No more tracking our children from birth to watch for signs that they’re like us, and no more making human mates disappear if they become a threat. From tonight onward, we take care of those matters ourselves.”
I nod. “I was expecting as much. I can’t make any promises on Miranda’s behalf, though. It’ll be a big risk. The members of her council might try to talk you down to—”
Irene’s teeth flash, and for a second, she’s a wolf in human form. “No interference. No control. We weren’t consulted when vampires made your secrecy laws, but we have as much natural desire to uphold them as you do. You deal with your kind. Let us deal with ours as we should have from the beginning.” The heat goes out of her eyes, and her shoulders slump.
Violet whispers something to Irene—all I catch is “too much.”
Irene straightens again. “This is my legacy, Violet. This is what I leave behind. Freedom. Don’t try to take it from me.”
She turns and walks toward the lights at the front of the store, motioning for the others to follow her. Even in her relative frailty, there’s dignity in her bearing and strength that flows far deeper than her physical form.
“So there,” Violet says quietly, smiling down at the cup in her hands.
I laugh, glad to break the tension. “I’m glad I’m not the one who has to negotiate with her. I hope she knows I’m all for this. I just—”
“Yeah, yeah. She knows. But you’re still a vampire. You can’t help that, and we can’t help remembering. It still feels like we’re doing something unnatural here, doesn’t it?”
I remember the constant battle that raged within me before void and fire united. I wanted to rip myself in half at times, and I never knew which half wanted it more. That’s what they feel in my presence—what Violet feels now, what Irene felt every night I spent among them. It probably feels fresher now after my absence.
“Maybe it is,” I say. “Maybe we’re never going to get along. But we can exist together. We can work together toward what’s best for all of us. Irene helped prove that back at the sanctuary. I’ll never forget what she did for me.”
Violet scowls. “Don’t talk about her like she’s dying.” An engine starts up on the other side of the building. “Guess I’m riding with you. Sounds like you’ve got a lot to fill me in on.” She gives me a hard once-over. “What the hell happened, anyway?”
“Long story.”
“We’ve got time.”
We climb into the van, and I put my glasses back on and start the engine.
“I’m sorry about Jerome,” I say as I’m waiting to turn onto the highway, the lights of the wolves’ pale brown cargo van reflecting in my rearview mirror. “But I’m glad you’re here. And that Irene brought reinforcements.”
“Yeah.” Violet leans back and looks out the side window, chewing the skin at the edge of her thumbnail. “She’s a hell of an alpha. Every one of us would follow her to the gates of hell if she asked us.”
“But?”
She looks back at me, and something in her eyes makes me shiver. She’s looking at me not like a known ally or even what humans might call a frenemy, but as if I’m some kind of monster she doesn’t understand at all.
“But, Aviva,” she says at last, “I’ve got a bad feeling about all of this.”
21
The meeting started without me. By the time I arrived, Daniel and Clark had already given their reports to the dozen vampires present. I offer my own next, though it sounds to my ears as if it’s being spoken by someone else—someone detached and distant.
This is good, though. Better than emotion as I speak of our losses at the Inferno and everything I suffered after the stock and surviving vampires escaped, how Clark and I got out, what I know about how fire and other powers—at least for now—weaken enemies not accustomed to their power being so challenged.
But now I’ve run out of words. The report is done. But the council chamber is silent.
… And by council chamber I mean the living room and kitchen of my old trailer at the rift, which almost a dozen vampires have crammed themselves in to decide on our strategy. Bet at least a few of them are wishing they’d spent the money to set me up with something better out here. The space seems smaller and shabbier than ever, the tacky sofa upholstery more laughable.
I scan the faces before me, most of them familiar. Chester has arrived, called away from his crew. Eoin, Daniel’s boss, and a few vampires she brought in with her. Jia is here, too, along with the crew of Agonites who managed to finish off their lot of zombies in time to join us here. Edwin was on her team, and I’m glad he’s here even if he’s not offering encouragement at the moment. Crawley and Ivan sit side by side on the sofa—it doesn’t surprise me that they’d see breathing down Miranda’s neck as a higher priority than helping their teams in the field.
Among them, Miranda and Daniel are the only ones whose expressions aren’t entirely closed off. I know they were all listening. It’s just not clear whether they let themselves hear me.
An unfamiliar splash of colour catches my eye—a royal blue cardigan draped over the back of the undersized green armchair. Not mine. I wasn’t the last occupant of this space. They weren’t here for long, but Genevieve and Hannabelle took over here for a time, keeping up the appearance of vampire guardianship while Taggryn monitored the rift.
My throat closes. Still no one speaks.
“It’s clear what we need to do,” I say just to break the silence.
Daniel has been leaning against the kitchen counter with his arms crossed
since he finished his own report. Now he shifts and rests his hands behind him. “I know it’s not an appealing prospect,” he says. “Few vampires care to spend time with werewolves—”
“No reasonable vampire,” Crawley mutters, raking his bony fingers through his hair.
My shoulders tighten into fists, but I keep my mouth shut.
Daniel ignores his comment. “But the fact of our natural hatred—which I believe we’ve all experienced to if we’ve met a werewolf in person—is simply more evidence of how right Aviva is. The void is reacting to a threat, and I can personally attest to the fact that we become weaker when void is not exposed to fire.”
Must be nice to be able to appear so calm about all of this even if I suspect he’s as frustrated as I am. As for me, I’m trying my best not to lose my shit on all of them, but I suspect my feelings are written as clearly on my face as the wounds that, thanks to void, fire, and rest, are already healing.
I sidle toward the chair and grab the sweater, slipping it on over the shirt I borrowed from Ryder’s closet. The faint scent of floral perfume reaches me, and for a second, it’s as though some part of Genevieve’s spirit still exists, reminding me to take no shit.
Edwin looks away. He also winced when I spoke of Genevieve’s demise. The smallest indication of pain, though not the kind he can use to his advantage. Whatever he feels now, whatever he needs to process, has nothing good to offer to him.
To any of us, I suppose.
“What exactly are you proposing?” Ivan asks me. “Pay the werewolves to work for us?”
Eoin, Daniel’s boss, is seated at one of the two chairs in the breakfast nook. She shakes her head. “You never rely on mercenaries.” She looks around. “Have none of you read Machiavelli? It’s a bad idea.”
“Unless one doesn’t have a standing army to rely on,” Miranda sighs. She’s been leaning against the wall near the door since I entered the room. It’s not a protective stance despite the vehicles running outside containing visitors—Daniel’s borrowed car with a pair of humans and the van parked farther out packed with werewolves.