by Lauren Dane
“Will you at least keep me updated?” he asked her with a great deal of restraint.
“Yes, of course.” She needed to check in with him more than she was willing to think on deeply. That reconnection was part of her by that point. And she liked it.
“You’ll tell me if you need me. In any way.” Though he didn’t point a finger at her she knew he thought it.
Rowan managed to withhold an eye roll because she was charmed and it was sexy and sweet but she didn’t have time to let him get her all gooey right then. “Yes, yes. Now go be a Vampire please. I have stuff to do. We came here first like you wanted.”
He frowned. “It was best I see where we’d be living and for you to pause, perhaps have a meal and rest before you get started again.”
“I’ve been doing nothing for ten hours trapped on a plane. I’m on a hunt. That’s my job, remember?” She resisted pacing, but only barely.
Having nothing to argue with by that point, he snarled and jammed his hands into his pockets. “Fine. I’ll be checking in with you over the evening. Please reply to my texts.”
“When I get the chance I will. I’ll see you later.” She ducked close to kiss him but he grabbed and held on.
“I mean it. I’ll come for you if you ignore me and then all your friends will see the big bad Hunter getting in trouble with her husband,” he murmured in her ear.
“Yeah? They’ll see you get your ass handed to you,” she replied.
He snorted as he set her back from him. “There she is. You’re down a person, would you like one of mine on loan?”
That was pretty much the last thing she wanted. “I have other resources I need to pull into the plan. So thanks, but no.”
Like she hadn’t done this on her own for years and years?
He sighed. “You will eat. Even if it’s just one of those energy bars or some fruit. I know your Goddess agrees with that.”
She had some in her bag anyway so it wasn’t as if she was letting him boss her around. Too much. “Okay.”
He looked her over carefully. “I find it suspicious when you agree. But I’m opting to hope you understand how much better I’ll feel if you take care of yourself. If you won’t do it for yourself, do it for me. Now, walk me out. I’ll find my own way to town.”
Once he’d disappeared like a toothy superhero who drank blood, she headed to the garage where her car waited. David didn’t need to be told twice. He tossed her bag in the trunk and strapped himself in.
“I brought you coffee.” David indicated the travel mug sitting in the cup holder.
“Kiss up,” she said, taking a sip. How he knew where to find coffee and make her some in the time they had since they’d arrived wasn’t something she questioned anymore.
“I also put some of the energy bars you tolerate in the glove box.”
She looked at him from the corner of her eye. He probably overheard Clive talking, or maybe he too was going to bug her about eating. Swell.
“Where to?” David asked as they headed toward her former apartment on the Strip.
“Home,” she told him, glad the sound of the engine dulled the edge of emotion in her voice. She needed to hold it together. Needed David to understand she was in control. He was someone she needed to protect and guide. The last thing he needed was her fear or her doubts weighing him down.
On the way, David made some calls and a sense of home settled. A sense—despite the grief—that she was where she was supposed to be. Normalcy in its own way. Once they arrived, she avoided the valet stand and headed to the parking garage and a space out of the range of cameras.
David fell in at her side, slightly behind as she’d trained him. She didn’t need to tell him anything, he assumed her rhythm, his attention focused on points all around. Gaze shifting as they headed to the elevators to the residential towers.
Brigid stirred in her belly. Adding Her strength and magic to Rowan’s. This was her house. Her ground, damn it. These sorcerers had no right to be there. Had no right to have stolen life the way they had.
“I want to take the secondary elevator. We’ll get off a few floors below ours and walk the rest.”
David nodded and took up at her side as she keyed the elevator on. No one with any magic had been in that elevator car. At least not recently. Just normal humans without murderous intent.
It wasn’t that she thought there’d be anyone left inside the apartment. No, Rowan knew they were long gone. Knew too that the apartment and the building itself had been secured by Clive’s Vampires. These sorcerers were dangerous and worse, they hadn’t been stupid very often. Still, if those responsible for killing Carey were careless enough to be upstairs in her apartment, or if they’d left any evidence she could track them down with, she’d be just fine and dandy lopping their heads off for it.
Four floors below her penthouse, they got off the elevator to take the stairwell. Here, there’d been Vampires. Their particular magic seemed to coat things like a fine layer of dust. When she concentrated more, using some of the techniques her friend Genevieve had shown her in London—had it only been days before?—Rowan was able to recognize the signatures of Clive’s top security people.
Must have been when they got called in to help the night Carey had been killed. Less than two days before.
She paused, falling back a little to let Brigid examine the service entrance straight ahead at the top of the stairs. No traps that She could sense.
It was locked but opened easily after she used her keycard. And still they stood, quiet, waiting.
The death hit her, wrapped around her senses and squeezed tight when she and David stepped into the hall behind the dining room.
She growled before she even knew she wanted to. Blood stank up the air, along with all the other things that happened to the body when it died. That Carey would be reduced to this stench filled her with outrage and renewed her energy.
David didn’t speak, only checked over the space efficiently at her side.
Rowan took refuge in gathering evidence. Each piece she found would enable her to fight back against whoever was responsible. Bit by bit she could break down what she was doing, lose herself in the details instead of thinking about Carey and the life he had ahead of him. Days he’d never live.
The blinds in the guest room Carey had converted into his office were closed. It was dark anyway, but the gloom couldn’t hide the spatter on the wall and desk.
Old blood had a certain scent and a murder always held the spice of betrayal and surprise. Part of her was glad Carey hadn’t known this was coming. That when he’d made the call to congratulate her on her marriage to Clive it had been from love.
And still, Rowan would never get rid of the mental image of his face, right at the very end. The knowing in his eyes. Terror and pain and regret. And no small amount of rebellion. That final bit helped her along. Though he knew he was about to die, he hadn’t totally given in.
She shoved it away. “They came in via the freight elevator,” she murmured, tracing her way from the guest room to the back of the apartment. The magic swam there, cloying and ugly.
Kneeling, she placed her hand, palm flat, against the floor just outside the elevator cage. Rage flowed into her that wasn’t her own. Unfamiliar magic used by the intruders. And yet there was something there, a flavor, a taste that seemed reminiscent. Rowan couldn’t place it. Not yet.
Yet. Rowan had no doubt she’d eventually figure it out. Rowan had a lot of experience, but the Goddess had millennia worth.
“It feels wrong here.”
Rowan stood to look at David, waiting for him to continue his thought.
“I know now that I’ve been lying to myself. Telling myself that maybe it wouldn’t be that bad. That us living here would be shaking a fist at the mages who killed Carey. It doesn’t feel like our house anymore.”
He
deserved her response because it wasn’t home and it wasn’t safe but she didn’t want him to lose that thread of hope that was essential to not allowing the job to eat you alive.
“One of the things I find most difficult to get past is that I still need to tell myself it won’t be as bad as everyone else thinks. And sometimes that hope gets rewarded and it gives me something to hold on to when things don’t work out. Because that happens too.” Rowan paused a moment. “Hope isn’t a weakness. Just don’t lie to yourself when it means your life.”
He pulled himself together, clearing his throat and standing taller. He gave her a sweet smile. So sweet it hurt a little and she realized that too was a price she willingly paid.
“Thank you,” he said before he clearly put aside his emotion and focused on the scene with a Hunter’s eye.
Pride warmed her belly as she went back to work.
“The magics used here would have been very expensive. Even I know that. Genevieve will be helpful when it comes to unraveling all this spellcraft. I’m no expert but I do know whatever they used broke through our wards and those were top of the line.”
“Will we sell it then? Rent it?” David asked of their former apartment.
“The first thing will be to cleanse it. It’s not habitable this way. But yes, eventually it’ll need to be sold. It’s not mine. This is Hunter Corp. property.”
“Which means someone at HC gave them information about how to get in,” David said.
People they’d trusted had made this possible. Had been part of a plot that had ended with the death of one of their own. “At the very least yes. It most certainly looks that way.”
“You’ll find them.” A statement.
“The ones I haven’t already killed, yes.” Then she’d kill them too. Humans betraying other humans to these mages had seemed unimaginable just a year before and yet it was her reality. “Where is Carey now?” She couldn’t bear to say body.
“At a funeral home about a mile from here.”
“What does his will say about what he wanted done?” All employees of Hunter Corp. had documents stating whatever their preferences were for what happened to them after they died. She needed to update hers now that she was married but that wasn’t a conversation she wanted to have with Clive any time soon. He was touchy enough about the danger she lived with as it was.
“Carey’s will states he wanted to be cremated and to have his ashes scattered in the desert.”
He had no contact with his birth family. Not for years. He only told her why the summer before. He’d come out at fifteen and his father and brothers had beaten him bloody and kicked him out.
He’d never gone back to his hometown. Never had any communication with them from that day forward. She’d hired him when he’d been just twenty years old and he’d been with her ever since. A decade of unwavering loyalty. A decade of friendship. He’d known who she was and had accepted her anyway. He’d been family.
“Then that’s what we’ll do.”
David took her hand, squeezing it as they stood side by side in the kitchen she’d loved so much.
David was hers too. Her valet who’d been so nervous around her at the start he’d blushed every time she’d said a bad word. Now, years later, he’d grown up. He still blushed from time to time, but he was brave and smart and canny and he needed her right then. Needed her to be in charge and to vanquish his demons.
This had been his home too. Carey had been his family too. He was losing as much as she had—more because he had a normal life growing up, this sort of thing never happened to him until he came into her life—and she needed to remember that.
In fact, she needed to remember that now that Carey was dead and she couldn’t stop it, her next best option was to do her job and hunt down the shitlords who did this.
She’d make it hurt, when she found them. A Lot.
They’d signed their death warrants with this. Everything they depended on or loved would be her target. She would burn it all down while they watched. No quarter. No mercy.
Rowan ached to be doing something. The violence inside her burned, churned through her veins. Realistically, Hunting was quite often a lot of this sort of thing. Waiting, looking, puzzling through things. But it felt like she was betraying Carey by not just killing his murderers already.
Brigid seemed to heat through Rowan’s body until it nearly hurt before She ebbed her presence back a little. A reminder most likely that Rowan could only do her best and that she would prevail but she had to be patient.
Rowan hated being patient.
After a long pause, David spoke again. “I can feel Her more,” he said, meaning Brigid. “Something shifted in you just now. It’s good. Like the moment it happened some of the darkness all around receded.”
Every year Rowan’s bond with the Goddess she shared a consciousness—and sometimes a body—with strengthened. And ever since her thirtieth birthday two years prior, those changes had come more readily and at a much greater speed and intensity. A well of potential seemed to wait just beyond her reach and then suddenly she’d notice something new and powerful she was able to do.
It was thrilling and terrifying at the same time and all Rowan could do was hope she used her abilities the way she should and not let it go to her head.
“Gonna be honest with you here. What’s coming is bad. Worse than we’ve seen so far. We’re going to lose more people before this is over.” The words hurt as they tore from her. She wanted to protect everyone she cared for.
But it’d been a long time since she’d understood that was impossible. Sometimes people close to her got hurt. Killed. She hated failure, but that was the very worst sort of failure. Not being able to protect those she loved had been a way of holding herself away from others. To keep from loving anyone she could lose.
She’d failed at that too. No matter how hard she’d tried to hold people back, to stop herself from making friends and creating an intentional family she’d ended up with them anyway. And now her life was full of people who’d ended up being her family. The scrappy band of weirdo paranormals in a life she could no longer imagine without them. Even if it made them vulnerable to love her.
Some of them—like Clive—had simply insisted on being in her life until she’d relented. David had been sent to her by Hunter Corp. at a very young and impressionable age. She hadn’t wanted him to serve her. Hadn’t that entire first year but had grown to respect and love him. And at that point, he was such an important part of her life and her calling she didn’t know what she’d do without him. He was good at his job and in a decade would be even better. Having him at her back was a benefit and would continue to be.
He was human, and in all of Rowan’s years, she’d never been so aware of just the sort of danger he was in because of that. And, sure Clive was nearly impossible to kill and had plenty of skill and ability. A badass in his own right. But he wasn’t immortal. Rowan had killed his predecessor and all manner of big bad Vampires. He could die in the right circumstances.
She couldn’t be everywhere at once. Even if she could, none of the stubborn assholes she loved would tolerate it. They were all independent, willful creatures who did what they wanted.
Rowan would be working on a way to accept that until the day she died, most likely.
The inescapable truth was that every step she’d taken since she’d left the Keep at sixteen had brought her there. Each year the aspects of the Goddess—the threefold nature of her gifts: inspiration, smithcraft and battle, and healing—manifested themselves in different ways.
She hadn’t always known why one thing or the other would happen. Why there’d been such a bloom in her healing and calming influence when she’d had to do a lot of violence just to keep the world going.
Still, she’d simply accepted that you couldn’t get a straightforward answer from goddesses or sages and that she just
had to trust that it worked out the way it was supposed to.
She knew one thing for certain. “Brigid is readying me for war,” Rowan said at last, her palm pressing against her stomach.
David nodded. “We’ll be ready.”
Chapter Three
Rowan needed to do several more things before it got any later. There was nothing left to do at her apartment so she urged David toward the stairwell they had come up with a wave of her hand.
“I have stuff to do. Let’s get this show on the road.”
“Can I pack a few of my belongings?” he asked. “Or, well, I guess I assumed we’d know somehow that it was—” David broke off as he stood taller and took a deep breath, getting himself back under control.
She shook her head. “I’m sorry, no. Until I can be sure this place and everything in it is safe, I can’t risk bringing it back to where we’re staying right now.”
He nodded. “Once I said it, I realized. I apologize. I’m off my game.”
Rowan snorted. “Dude. Someone has been trying to kill us nonstop for the last several years. We’re all off our game. It happens. Then you deal, just like you did.”
“What else do we need to do?” he asked her as he paused. “Shall I lock the entrance foyer?”
She’d swept through earlier and hadn’t as she’d left. Off her game, indeed.
“No. I’ll do it. I’m the one who left it unlocked. Take the stairs down six floors and then get the car, please. I need a ride.”
“You’re trying to go off and do something on your own. At least let me know what’s up so I can help if necessary.” He brushed a hand down the front of his shirt and sniffed.
“I’d just gotten all that British off you!” She growled. “Being around Clive has gotten it all over you again.”
David rolled his eyes, which nearly made her laugh. But he didn’t look so panicked now and that was the plan. Though, it was true that Clive’s starched stiff upper lip thing had brought it out in his fellow Brit.