“This is not your fault, Jenna.”
“I know I didn’t turn Carmine into a monster, I know I’m not the one committing the murders, but I had the chance to make sure she was dead. I knew what she was, what she was capable of, and yet…” I closed my eyes, drawing a deep breath in through my nose. “I still let her go. I didn’t make sure she was really dead. I never trusted Kypherous before, so why did I suddenly trust him then?”
“Nobody blames you for this. You did what you needed to and you survived. None of this is on you.”
“Then why don’t I believe you?”
“I’m sorry I wasn’t there for you, if I could—” His cell phone started to ring, cutting him off.
“Saved by the bell.”
Grey slipped the cell phone from his pocket and moved away as he pressed it to his ear.
When he returned, his expression was solemn. “We need to get back on the road.”
“What’s wrong?”
“Alex’s team was just attacked.”
“By Carmine?”
Grey shook his head as he gathered the remains of the food. “Vampires, presumably hers.”
I glanced at the sky and the grey clouds that drifted overhead. “Grey, it’s daylight, what the hell were they doing attacking in broad daylight?”
“I have no idea but if they’re doing this during the day, what’s going to happen come nightfall?”
Whatever Carmine had planned was big, but why now, and why Whitby?
I climbed into the SUV and closed my eyes. Running over everything I knew about the witch left me with none of the answers I needed.
As we left the slip-road and got back onto the motorway, I wished for the car to move faster as my stomach flip-flopped. The feeling of apprehension grew with every mile closer to Whitby we travelled. It wasn’t my imagination. Carmine definitely knew we were coming, and the attack in broad daylight was just a taste of what would come. I’d never known her to do things by half-measures and this would be no different.
I could only hope that when I did track her down, I would be alone. Sophia might have threatened me but that didn’t mean I was going to listen to her. Carmine would die by my hand. I wouldn’t fail again.
Chapter 27
“They came out of nowhere,” Alex said, pressing the almost melted bag of ice against the side of his swollen face.
It had taken us a further two hours to get to Whitby, even with Grey ignoring every speed limit, and it had still been too slow.
We’d found ourselves in the centre of a shit-storm as soon as we arrived. Carmine obviously wasn’t messing around and her initial attack had taken Alex and his team by surprise.
Alex stood in the centre of the small conference room that belonged to Division 6. It had been at one time a bank, but after a turf war between the vampires and fae had broken out in the seventies, the building had suffered extensive damage. Rather than just repair the damage and return it to the financial institution it had once been, the powers that be deemed it necessary to turn it over to the preternatural investigative force. The vaults in the basement were apparently particularly effective at containing rogue preternatural creatures, having been lined with both iron and silver, along with the obligatory steel that ensured it was robust enough to withstand most attacks.
On the drive in across the moors, Whitby had looked peaceful, the sea a glimmering sapphire as the backdrop. But the picturesque town held a much darker secret.
This area of Yorkshire, with the rolling moors carpeted in heather stretching into the surrounds and the North sea at its back was a hot bed of activity for supernatural creatures that called England home. They were all drawn here to the rugged open countryside and Whitby was the siren song in the centre of it all, calling them home.
And now that I was here, I could believe it.
There was a crackle of electricity in the air that sent tingles of energy racing over my skin, beckoning my power to the surface.
“We landed on the West Cliff. Everything looked clear and then bam, they were on us.”
Wincing, Alex leaned against the long mahogany table that dominated the room. Even with his ability to heal faster than most preternaturals, some things, like bruises, took longer. His right eye was bloodshot, the skin surrounding it turning a nasty shade of purple and under the fluorescent lighting it looked almost black.
“How many dead?” Grey appeared calm, almost unaffected, but I knew better. It was just another of the masks he wore, a facade to cover his true feelings on a situation. What others would miss, the slight tightening around his mouth and eyes, I saw immediately. The more he tried to hide it, the more obvious it was to me. Like a signpost pointing directly to the truth of his emotions. He couldn’t hide from me, at least not like this.
“Three,” Alex said. “We didn’t take any of the vampires down.”
His words hung in the air and I struggled to form a response.
“She killed three Division 6 operatives and no one managed to bag one of the vampires?”
“Like I said, Grey, they came out of nowhere. We didn’t stand a goddamned chance against the bastards.” There was a passion and vehemence to Alex’s words that I wasn’t used to hearing.
“How many vampires,” I asked, finally finding my voice and cutting off Grey before he could launch into the obvious tirade that sat on the tip of his tongue. Killing three Division 6 operatives was no joke, only a veritable army would manage to do so much destruction in such a small space of time. How could Carmine have accumulated so many new vampires without anyone noticing?
“Seven.” Alex hung his head and I dropped back against the wall.
“Seven bloodsuckers!” Grey exploded, his face growing pale as he pushed away from the wall and crossed the floor to where Alex stood still leaning on the table.
Shit. I’d thought by finding out how many vampires they’d faced I could get a clearer picture of what we were up against.
“You’re telling me you allowed seven already dead scum suckers to get the better of our team?”
“You don’t understand.” There was a whiny note in Alex’s voice. “It was as though they materialised out of thin air.”
“I don’t care if they materialised out of your arse, you allowed seven vampires to murder three of our own. Christ, Alex, what were you thinking? I thought you were more competent than this?”
“Grey,” I said softly, placing a hand on his arm. His body quivered with tension as though all the anger and frustration he’d been dealing with was slowly rising to the surface. And maybe it was. Grey had been acting more than a little odd lately. And he had mentioned that he’d thought the wight had done something to him, to his power.
“Don’t protect him, Jenna.” He whirled around to face me and the urge to take a step back washed over me but I pushed it down without a second thought. I’d see him in Hell before I’d allow him the satisfaction of making me nervous.
“The lads nay wrong,” the male voice cut through the tension, the heavy Yorkshire accent giving me pause, and it took a moment for my brain to scramble together the pieces.
“And you are?” Grey was direct, to the point of rude, something I’d never seen from him before. If there had been any doubt in my mind before about the pressure and stress he was under, seeing him react to the stranger left me without any.
“Jack Barker,” the intruder said, holding his hand out toward Grey, which Grey ignored. He was tall, painfully so, his clothes hung from his frame as though they’d been bought several sizes too large for his gaunt body. His brown hair was as lank as his body and I noted the way he tucked a stringy strand of it behind his ear almost self-consciously. It was the only indicator in his demeanour that suggested he wasn’t as laid back as he was pretending to be.
A cheeky grin curled the corner of Jack’s mouth, making him look much younger than I’d initially thought, and he shrugged his thin shoulders as though physically brushing off Grey’s rebuke.
“You’re
a right bit of a grumpy arse,” Jack said, addressing Grey before he switched his attention to me. “Is he like this all the time?”
Without waiting for me to answer, he ambled into the room, his eyes sliding over the charts that covered the walls. Jack paused in front of the stack of Division 6 files left in the middle of the conference table. He raised his hand, scrubbing it over the day-old reddish stubble that covered his jaw.
“There’re a few things ye need to understand before ye go waltzing in here and upsetting the applecart.” His tone of voice suggested we were having nothing more than a pleasant conversation, but his words said otherwise.
“Just who do you think you are?” Grey bristled, pulling himself up to his full height, which, though considerable, wasn’t enough to bring him to eye level with the newcomer.
“I told ye who I am, have ye got cotton wool stuffed in them lug ‘oles of yours?”
Power prickled across my skin and I sucked in a sharp breath.
“Look, everyone is getting too far off topic here,” I said, stepping between the two men. Grey stared daggers over my head at Jack who was at that moment looking me over with a bemused expression on his face.
“I’m not off topic,” Jack said. “If ye’d put a better leash on him”—he jabbed a finger in Grey’s direction—“I could tell ye why you’re bringing three of your people home in body bags.”
I placed a hand on Grey’s chest, a physical warning for him to hold back. He pushed against me, leaning into my hold so that my palm was flattened against his body, directly over the place where his heart sat. It hammered against his ribcage and I half expected it to beat its way straight out through his ribs. At my touch, he glanced down at me as though seeing me for the first time. I held my breath, waiting to see if he would shove past me but, instead, the fight drained from his eyes and he stepped back, drawing an unsteady breath in through his lips.
“That wasn’t so hard now was it?” Jack said and I rounded on him. It was one thing to tell us where we were going wrong but another thing entirely to attempt to goad Grey into a fight.
“Quit the antagonisation bullshit,” I said. “Spit out whatever it is you think you know about this case.”
The bemused smile remained on his face but his eyes hardened as they narrowed.
“We’ve been dealing with the preternaturals a lot longer than you’ve been alive, lass,” he said. “Trampling in here is upsetting the delicate peace we’ve managed to secure with the vampires.”
“One,” I said raising a finger, “you have no idea how old I am, so let’s not add patronising to the long list of bullshit you’re currently peddling, and two, this peace you’ve built isn’t worth shit when the vampires are murdering humans with impunity.”
“They don’t take more than they need,” he said, “or at least they didn’t used to.”
I stared at him, suddenly unsure if I’d heard him correctly.
“Wait a second, you’re saying you know they’ve been committing murders but you’re fine with it so long as they don’t take too many?” Alex cut in, asking the question that hovered on the tip of my tongue.
“Aye,” Jack continued on, seemingly unaware of what he was admitting to. “What do you expect us to do? We’re outmanned and outmatched by the bloodsuckers. The more we try to police ‘em, the more of our own we lose. What they did to ye today, that was just a warning, a shot across the bow, if you will.”
“A warning shot suggests what they did today was harmless, murdering three of our people was not harmless.” Grey’s measured tone took me by surprise. He’d been so angry just moments before and now he was behaving like his outburst never happened. His shifting emotions were giving me a headache.
“Look, I get it, you’re upset, but you don’t know how things work up here. Ye come up here all high and mighty but things are different here. The creatures we’ve got beating down our doors aren’t some soft-bellied ghosts or ghouls.”
“So what do you suggest, then?” I asked, realising arguing with the man was utterly pointless. And perhaps he was right. It didn’t feel right to admit those feelings, even inside my own head, but we really didn’t know what we were stumbling into. Carmine was dangerous, utterly unstable, but if there was one thing she was good at, it was survival. Her surviving Kypherous’ attempt to kill her was testament to that. So it made sense that whatever had brought her here to Whitby had to be powerful. As unstable as she was, Carmine was playing a game and she was the only one who really knew all the rules. If we didn’t figure it out soon, many more would die before she would be satisfied.
Jack turned his charming smile on me. “Aye, at last, someone ‘round here has their head screwed on.”
The tension began to climb in the room once more and from the corner of my eye I watched as Alex flexed his fists.
“You’re going to have to meet with the vampires,” he said. “More precisely, you’ll have to meet with their representative.”
My stomach flipped over. It couldn’t be this easy.
“Her name isn’t Carmine by chance, is it?”
Jack’s smile faded as the colour left his cheeks. “We don’t speak that name ‘round here,” he said softly, as though he half expected the witch to overhear him, despite the fact that we stood inside a heavily warded building. “You’ll no doubt see her but she’s not human and the representative has to be a human, that was one of the stipulations.” I shot a curious glance at Grey. Just what the hell had we stumbled into here?
Sophia had failed to mention just how different things were up this direction. I’d always thought being near Stonehenge meant a higher concentration of preternatural creatures. And the fact that I’d never been lacking something to hunt, or a case to stick my nose in where it didn’t belong, had seemed to bear that fact out. Now I wasn’t so sure.
“But you know who she is?” I didn’t use Carmine’s name again but Jack knew who I was talking about all the same.
“Things changed when she got here,” he spoke carefully, his words considered. “The balance of power shifted and we haven’t managed to bring it back our way.”
“And if I wanted to meet with her and not the representative for the vampires, how would I do that?”
Jack stared at me in horror. “You don’t go looking for her… That’s like placing yourself in the mouth of the shark. No, if she wants ye, she’ll find ye.” I started to answer him but he cut me off. “Those who do meet her don’t come back all there so I wouldn’t be so hasty to ask for a face to face.”
“What do you mean, don’t come back all there?”
“It doesn’t matter,” he said. “I’m just rambling now. We can get a meeting set up between you and the representative… It might take them a few days to make a gap in the schedule but—”
“That’s not good enough, Jack,” I said. “We’ve got people dead and…” I sucked a breath in through my nose. He’d just admitted to me a few moments before that they too had a number of victims, and while he might not feel the need to demand recompense for the loss of lives, I did. “We need to see them tonight, this can’t wait.”
“Well, it’s just going to have to,” he said. “Curfew’s coming up shortly and we’ll have to get you situated in your accommodations before that happens. Unless you want to lose another few of your people to the vamps and the other things ‘round here.”
He cocked an expectant eyebrow at me but I bit my tongue. The arguing was getting us nowhere, he clearly wasn’t going to budge on the subject, so in a manner of speaking, I was going to have to be the bigger man. Not that I had any intention of skipping off to bed. Especially when every time I closed my eyes, I could see a parade of all the victims so far dancing along the inside of my eyelids. Simon’s pleading, Officer Bhatt’s terror-filled eyes, and the lifeless body of Ms. Rowanberry. I’d let them all down, I wouldn’t let it happen again.
“I’ll get ye set up in the B&B down the road,” Jack blathered on, utterly oblivious to the look I shot Grey o
ver his shoulder.
“Sounds great,” Grey said, managing to sound positively pleasant.
Jack gave a short nod of his head, clearly satisfied with our sudden agreement and he turned to leave. Pausing in the doorway, he looked the three of us over once more.
“I am sorry about your loss,” he whispered, his eyes darting to the side as though afraid of being overheard. It wasn’t the first time he’d reacted this way and it didn’t leave me with a comfortable feeling. “But the folk ‘round here aren’t to be trifled with. They’ll chew you up and spit you out, quick as they look at you.”
He left, closing the door softly behind him, leaving us to stare after him.
“Did you understand any of that?” Alex asked, sounding more than a little irritated.
“Sounds like they’re working for the bloodsuckers in this place instead of working to keep the peace,” Grey quipped back.
“They’re terrified,” I said quietly, drawing the curiosity of both men.
“Terrified?” Grey echoed, glancing back toward the door as though at any moment, the answers he was seeking would waltz through it.
“This is their life, Grey,” I said. “They know what it’s like to live side-by-side with Carmine and her vampires. I really don’t think their fear is unwarranted.”
“Look, I know you’ve got a history with her but that’s no excuse to let the superstitions and paranoia of this guy get to you.”
“Don’t patronise me,” I said through gritted teeth as I turned to face Grey head on.
“I’m not…” There was no denying the surprise in his voice.
“Yes, you are, from the very start of this case, you’ve been holding back, hiding things from me because you’re afraid I can’t handle what’s going on here. You think I’ll let my past history with that bitch get in the way of me doing my job.”
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