by LeAnn Mason
“Why not just silence us?” I asked. I didn’t let my hand drift down to my hip again, but if my mother thought of turning off my abilities, why hadn’t the vampires?
He snarled. “Because there are others who would use you. We need a permanent fix.”
“Use me?” I chilled a little. “What others?”
“Such a young thing. You think there is only one vampire horde in this world?” He snorted delicately. “The others… they are older. They didn’t see the danger of banshees, only the potential. Stupidly, they brought them into their homes.”
“Why?” I shifted the dagger. Standing here talking so long was making my palm sweat, but it was useful information… assuming he wasn’t lying to me. But why lie when he planned on killing me?
“Why? Because, you simple girl, we drink blood. From humans.”
“Isn’t that like cannibalism?” I blurted out. “You were human before you died.”
He ignored me, but his nostrils flared. I was getting to him. I had talent like that. “Some of us...” He twisted his wrist. “Some of us get carried away. Bloodlust is a hard thing to fight.” His eyes drifted past me to the druid, and I realized I’d interrupted his feeding. He might have kept going if I hadn’t walked in. “If we go too far—” his eyes drifted back to me, accusingly, “— the harbingers show up.”
“Which you don’t want,” I finished, understanding. “Because then you get found out and reaped.”
His knuckles cracked as he turned to face me. “Exactly, little banshee. So, you, like your parents, need to die. Now, do you have any other questions or can we—”
I pounced.
It was to his detriment that he reminded me of his former crimes. I screamed with rage, those devastating moments blooming anew in my mind, that heart-crushing moment when I realized my dad wasn’t coming back, that I was an orphan, that he’d met the same fate as my mom. I’d sobbed into the musty motel room in which I’d been waiting alone for over a week before packing myself up — and leaving most of their effects behind as I’d been instructed — and moving on without them.
As anticipated, the cockiness was the vampire’s weakness. He’d assumed I’d listen politely to his full monologue. But screw that. In my version of the story, the villain died. Immediately. He got his just penance for all that he’d done to fuck with my life, not to mention who knew how many others. I wasn’t going to stand for it.
If I was the last fucking banshee, I was going to do everything in my power to keep my race alive. My parents had obviously sacrificed themselves trying to keep me safe, keeping me ignorant, moving me around constantly, teaching me.
This pale dead-dicked asshole wasn’t going to add me to his kill count.
“Don’t move, Ms. Grey.” The cold voice — a new one — had my head cranking over my shoulder for the briefest of seconds, trying to assess the danger to my six. A man in a trench coat with a glinting badge at his hip had me at gunpoint. Red and blue lights flashed through the front door to the druid’s dwelling, which I’d left open.
Not a vamp, but another enemy. I was surrounded.
But when I looked back, the vampire had vanished. “Shit! Come back here! Come back here, you bastard, and face me!” Swiveling around, I could see nothing in any of the kitchen’s crevasses or the adjoining rooms.
“I said, don’t move!” said the guy who now had my full focus.
I huffed, but the fucking vamp was gone, and I’d just sworn to myself to do my best to stay alive. That meant not getting shot for defying legal orders. My hands raised slowly, the dagger still prominent in one fist.
“Very good, Ms. Grey. Or whatever pseudonym you’re using at present.” A smile curved the man’s mouth. “I finally got you.” His green eyes flicked to the body I had been skirting around in pursuit of the vampire. “And red-handed at that. The Shrieking Killer — finally brought to justice.”
Fuck me. I’d thought supernaturals were my only problems these days.
14
“You have the right to remain silent, though you seem to lack the brains to do so. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. Do you understand these rights as I have read them to you?” The cop spewed in a tone that was far too eager for my liking.
I’d been frozen in shock and disbelief when he’d appeared. His gloating Miranda speech didn’t break me loose from petrification either, but when he started forward with a pair of glinting silver handcuffs pulled from the small of his back, I finally thawed, backing away.
The rush of several additional officers through the door, spreading out in every conceivable direction, halted my breathing yet again. The well-oiled team moved swiftly through the house, calling out “clear” every so often, their sounds moving further away.
Looking around the no longer intact abode, I searched for the team of harbingers I assumed waited in the wings. Was that who the cops were searching for? Were they aware of supernaturals? Of the function of the Harbingers of Death?
Can’t be. Get a grip, Aria.
I saw no one as my eyes flitted to light on every possible nook and cranny I could fathom, but no.
Panic really set in as the cold metal clamped painfully around my wrists, pinching the skin in its chilled teeth and forcing my shoulders together. I’d wanted to forget this particular feeling and everything associated with it, but it all came rushing forth.
Just like the lessons.
Where there is death, there are harbingers. Created solely for this purpose, the Harbingers of Death will be there. No soul left behind.
Seke’s words, the organization’s mission, ran through my mind. And with my new realization that hellhounds may be in abundance, it made me wonder...
It’s worth a shot!
“If any harbingers are here, tell Seke what happened!” I screeched as the cop pushed me forward, ahead of the returning law enforcement squad that coalesced behind my new captor. They coerced me away from the random HD team I’d not yet met, couldn’t now see, and wasn’t entirely sure was actually there. “Tell Seker in the HDPU!” I bellowed one last plea to the invisible supernaturals, hopefully, waiting in the wings during this episode of Arresting a Banshee.
“Shut up. Don’t make me bag-and-gag you. Lock up your crazy while you’re in my presence if you don’t want more trouble,” the cop threatened as he steered me down the front steps and out to the array of squad cars haphazardly parked.
We headed to the only unmarked unit, a dark blue sedan that looked like a normal car, excepting all the hidden reds and blues flashing from various places like the headlights and front grille. In fact, the blacked-out windows looked too dark to be legal.
Go figure.
“I haven’t done anything. Why am I under arrest?” My mind reeled as I dropped into the back of the car, pushed none-too-gently onto the seats that were probably stained with too many various fluids to count.
A shiver of revulsion crawled up my spine, and I rerouted my thoughts. “How are you here? How do you know me? How did I get here again?” The last I mumbled disbelievingly to myself as I tweaked my position enough that I wasn’t entirely uncomfortable.
Don’t get caught.
It was several more minutes before the — officer? Detective? — slid into the driver’s seat. As an ambulance arrived and an empty stretcher was rolled without hurry into the house, he went about getting out of the driveway without paying me any mind.
Apparently, the car ride wouldn’t be for answers. It would be a time for reflecting… reflecting on how it all went wrong again.
Seke couldn’t push through the precinct fast enough to calm his racing heart. He prided himself on his composure and level head — having had millennia to perfect it — and it had all gone out the window the moment he had met that girl.
Normally, he would cringe at the stench of stale coffee, sweat, and more than a little desperation, but not this day.
Shadows thickened in his wake, and people moved aside like he was Mos
es and they the Red Sea. It didn’t matter that they were authority figures and this their proverbial house. They were smart enough to realize that he was a fight they didn’t want to take on, let alone one they couldn’t win, even if they didn’t know that he wasn’t human.
“Do not say another word, Miss Grey,” he barked, finally breaching the last barricade between him and his quarry: Aria.
His gaze landed on the silver-haired banshee who had haunted his thoughts for weeks despite his best efforts to purge them… and her. To move on as his team was trying to do with Jessica. The vise gripping his heart finally released; it had been clamped tight since the local unit had given him Aria’s shouted request as she’d been hauled away by the police — again. Well, really, it had been twisted into a knot since he took Cole’s advice and asked the director for Aria’s current location so that he could reassure himself she was okay. He’d been told she’d left. Then, he’d found out she was very much not okay.
Her rounded ice-blue eyes burned through him, warming him with their intensity. Even the many piercings adorning her face were a welcome sight as they glinted their greetings like flashing neon signs. He recalled the slight tang of metal on his tongue as he’d tugged her lip and its accompanying ring into his mouth.
A warmth bloomed in his chest that he didn’t want to give a name to. He’d missed her. He wanted—
“Miss Grey has not indicated her request for a lawyer, Mr…?” The law enforcement officer questioning her fished for information.
Seke needed to focus on the job at hand. There would be time for him to admonish her for her foolish behavior — or savor the sight of her — after she was no longer in jeopardy. He switched his attention back to the interviewer, settling back into calm and collected. “Seker. And I do believe that she has, or else I would not have been informed to seek her out at this location. Now, what grounds do you have to hold her?”
“She’s a person of interest in an ongoing investigation.”
“Oh, I see,” Seke answered drolly, the tone implying he had already found a flaw in their procedure. “And is she being charged with something?” It was a rhetorical question. He knew she had not; otherwise, she would already be booked and shuttled off to jail… much like the last time.
“This is just a friendly conversation,” the man said easily. “Trying to get a bead on things.” He kept his composure, not even changing his reclined position. Not a newbie. Seke would bet he wasn’t even local but a Fed.
Damn it, Aria. What have you gotten yourself into now? “Something of federal concern, it seems? Do tell, Agent…?”
That got a quirked eyebrow and even a smirk. “Lowe. Well done, Mister Seker. Correct, we are investigating a string of deaths across the country. Murders, actually.” The false pride was thick in Lowe’s sarcasm. The agent aimed to catch Seke’s eye again.
Hoping to get a reaction? Not likely.
“And what does Miss Grey have to do with any of this? I can assure you she is no murderer.” It was true, and Seke knew that for a fact, but he had to toe a line of truth. He could not divulge too much.
Humans had no idea the supernatural existed, could not fathom the truth of the fantastical beings they shared the world with. The fact made their little heads explode, so instead, those who spewed forth anything resembling such were labeled as insane. It was just as well; the supernaturals did not want to be acknowledged anyway. Fear would drive the humans to do crazy and stupid things, forcing his kind to retaliate.
Neither side could afford a war, so the easier thing to do was to let the humans be blind to the existence of other.
“There are several instances where a woman was heard screaming at the victim at the time of death.”
“Is that all you have? That is very thin,” Seke retorted, contempt both in his tone and expression.
“Some instances have audio.”
“And?”
“The sound clips have all been analyzed in-depth and concluded to be from the same voice — the same person,” Lowe continued, trying to break through Seke’s calm.
All he got was a raised eyebrow. “I can poke all kinds of holes in that.”
“One case — a death in a bar about fourteen months ago — shows video footage along with audio, giving us a face to match the scream. Now that her mugshot is on record, we’ve been able to use facial recognition to suggest that that woman bears a remarkable resemblance to Miss Grey.”
Well, that one was closer. “So, you surmise Miss Grey was there, but if she was, what does that tell you? A woman, screaming as a man died in front of her? Not that abnormal of a reaction, is it?” Seke cast Aria a quick look, winking when he caught her staring.
At least, she was being quiet. He knew how hard that was for her on so many levels. The woman had a hard time keeping her mouth shut — and not only when she was announcing an imminent death. “I do not even think you have enough to call it circumstantial.”
“I found her in the house of, and standing over, a dead body!”
Seke smiled. The agent was losing his composure instead of the other way around. The god enjoyed when that happened. It only helped to fuel his belief that he was superior to the human law and those who implemented it. “Have you determined a cause of death? Is there any indication on or about Miss Grey to implicate her involvement?” Seke placed his fingers on the table and pressed forward, making sure to catch — and hold — Lowe’s attention as he waited for the man’s reply.
“She had a knife.”
Aria’s eye roll was nearly audible, and Seke knew that a smart-assed retort was ready to spill from her tongue. Not the time. Throwing a hand in front of her face, Seke silently ordered her to back off. The question was: would she heed it?
When she didn’t say anything, or bite off a finger, he continued with the agent. “Oh, did she now? Was there any blood on it? Was that the cause of death for your victim? Do you have any actual evidence tying my client to this or any crime for which you are attempting to hold her?”
The resounding silence was his answer.
“We’re leaving. Here is my number should you need to speak with Miss Grey further. But be warned. If you come at us again without evidence, I will slam you with harassment charges so fast your head will spin.” Seke turned back to his banshee, deliberately dismissing the fuming agent. “Miss Grey.” He gestured toward the closed door and waited while Aria scooted from her chair, rising to move toward where he stood.
“Thank you, Mister Seker, and good day, Agent Lowe.” She flipped her hair dramatically, the bright teal tips flying over her shoulder and swishing to join their brethren at the small of her back. A spicy, almost cinnamon smell accompanied the action as she moved past Seke and through the door he held ajar.
Damn, but he’d missed her... especially that mouth.
Letting the door fall closed, he trailed Aria’s determined sashay back through the busy precinct and out into the brisk evening air. No sooner had she cleared the doors did her feet stop.
Seke pulled up to her side as her head tilted forward, chin resting on her chest. Her silver hair hid her face where it fell in a straight sheet over her shoulder. He didn’t like the defeat in her posture. It wouldn’t do. His protective instincts once again surged to the fore where Aria was concerned. Over thousands of years, no one had moved him the way this surly banshee could.
“Come,” he soothed, tucking her into his side.
He made his way toward the parking lot and the vehicle the local unit had brought for their use. Clicking the key fob to locate the specific vehicle, Seke amended their course when lights flashed to their left.
Aria’s continued silence worried him. The woman didn’t do silence. It was not in her nature. Literally.
He waited for Aria to enter the vehicle once he opened the door for her, closing it soundly and securely after she was seated. The resignation emanating from Aria had his spine stiffening, his movements quick but jerkier than they should have been.
S
eke, the millennia-old god of death, was flustered by the unhappiness of a twenty-three-year-old harbinger — a subordinate.
Except... she wasn’t. Not anymore.
“Thank you for coming,” Aria said gruffly once he’d seated himself behind the steering wheel. She wasn’t looking at him, staring toward her lap where her hand rubbed to the right of her pants zipper.
The tattoo. He could just see the lines and curls of the overlaid silver runes, less clean than they had likely been when first imprinted on her soft skin — undoubtedly the cause of the bind’s loss of power.
“You called. I came.” Seke left it at that, not sure he was ready to admit even to himself all of the sappy feelings between those two simple statements. He certainly wouldn’t tell her it was Cole’s idea to come see her one more time.
“But why? You didn’t have to. Hell, you sent me away!”
Her accusatory tone and sharp tongue did the opposite of their intention. That’s what he wanted to see in her: fight. She was not the meek and submissive type. He needed to remind her of that.
Not because it made him feel alive, as he had not in thousands of years, but for her benefit. He may not have been her captain any longer, but he had taught her much and still felt it his duty to support her.
“You needed the space as did the team. Tensions were high and someone, or many someones, was going to snap. I couldn’t have you fighting amongst each other.”
I couldn’t see you hurt. He didn’t say that part aloud. It was too much to admit, especially when he could see she didn’t feel the same warmth toward him.
“I’ve been thrown out of a plane, tossed around on a boat until seasick, drowned, and abandoned in a hospital. I hated each and every one of those places. I’m done.” She finally swung her eyes to meet his across the interior of the SUV. They were bright, almost electric in their intensity.