Midnight Marked: A Chicagoland Vampires Novel

by Chloe Neill

  I watched him, tall and rangy, select a pool cue, test its weight, and check its flexibility. A pair of vampires rose from their seats near the bar, wandered over to say hello. Blond hair tucked behind his ears, the cue he’d selected in hand, Ethan shook the vampires’ hands, then introduced Catcher. They chatted as Catcher racked the balls, and they prepared to play.

  “Will Catcher throw a fit if he loses?” I asked. He was the generally grouchy type. I liked him very much.

  “Catcher thrives on moderation and reasoned action.”

  I snorted. “And Ethan is humble and operates the House as a democracy.”

  “So we’re both full of shit,” she said, then cast her gaze toward her well-toned husband. “If he loses, it serves him right for challenging a vampire in his own place.”

  “Maybe not the wisest move,” I agreed.

  “Anyway,” she said, scooting closer, “I’m glad they’re gone. Now we can talk.”

  Given the drama of the last few weeks, I assumed she had bad news about evil or magic, and prepared myself for the worst.

  “I’m afraid the sex is going to become stale.”

  Colin arrived with fresh drinks—a Manhattan for Mallory, another G&T for me. For one last, peaceful moment, I squeezed the lime into the glass, licked lip-puckering juice from my thumb. And then I took a drink, put the glass down on the table again, and did what I had to do. I invited her to talk to me about sex with Catcher.

  “Why do you think it’s going to become stale?”

  She leaned toward me, arms folded on the table. “I mean, I don’t know. We’re married, and it’s good. It’s really good. And frequent.”

  I knew I’d regret it, but couldn’t help asking. “How frequent?”

  “At least daily. Sometimes more so. We’re naked a lot,” she said matter-of-factly.

  “I would guess so.” And I was doubly glad I didn’t share her town house anymore. Mallory owned the place, and I’d been her roommate before I moved into Cadogan House. When Catcher moved in, there’d been a lot of naked canoodling in the public areas, including the kitchen. I, for one, hadn’t needed to see Omelet à la Catcher’s Naked Ass. “So, it sounds like things are fine right now?”

  “They totally are. I guess that’s the part that worries me. It’s just, I love who we are right now. And I know part of being married is becoming ‘comfortable’ with each other. I just don’t want us to become so comfortable that we’re basically just roommates or something. I want to keep that spark alive.” She looked over at him, her eyes shining with love—and a little glazed with lust. And Catcher was alpha male in and out, front and back, and all the way through to the other side.

  “Yeah, I don’t think that will be a problem,” I concluded.

  “I mean, we can’t keep our hands off each other. That’s why we were late,” she said, winging up her eyebrows.

  We’d picked up Mallory and Catcher in one of the House’s enormous black SUVs, since Ethan’s personal vehicle—a sleek black Ferrari—had been destroyed in a car chase with one of Reed’s cronies.

  So they’d been at it while we were sitting outside on the curb, completely unaware.

  “Well,” I said after a stiff drink, “even if the pace, let’s say, does slow down, being comfortable with each other is awesome.”

  I glanced at Ethan, who was standing on the other side of the table, cue in hand like the pike his Swedish countrymen might have used. “Having someone get you is pretty amazing.”

  “He does get you, and that’s important.” She grinned. “But you can’t tell me Darth Sullivan doesn’t show you his ‘Dark Side’ regularly.”

  “You’re ruining Star Wars for me. But to your point, yeah.” I grinned. “He’s plenty skilled with his, you know—”

  “You’re trying not to say ‘lightsaber,’ but you really want to.”

  “I really do.” I waved my hands for finality. “Let’s just say he’s got one and he knows how to use it.”

  “Katana. Broadsword. Saber.”

  “We were supposed to be discussing Catcher,” I reminded her. “And since I’ve seen his, ahem, broadsword plenty of times, I can verify he’s got one. I think every relationship has its ups and downs, its arcs. Sometimes rampant nakedness while a girl is trying to prep her damn ramen noodles.”

  Mallory snorted into her drink. “They aren’t good for you anyway. Too much sodium.”

  “I’m immortal,” I pointed out.

  “You are that,” she said. “I hope you’re right. Do you think you and Darth Sullivan will be able to keep the spark alive six or seven hundred years from now?”

  Immortality wasn’t something I thought about often, mostly because I couldn’t really imagine it. Ethan had been alive for nearly four hundred years. He’d seen war, violence, famine, and empires come and go. Assuming I stayed away from the business end of an aspen stake, I could see all that and more. But the expanse of time wasn’t something I could easily wrap my mind around.

  “I don’t know,” I said honestly. “I can’t imagine not wanting him, but immortality is a long time.”

  “And if he proposes?”

  He’d hinted about it enough, preparing me for its inevitability, that “if” was really a conservative estimate. “When he proposes,” I said, “and if I say yes, then the decision is made. The deal is done, and there’s no going back.”

  I smiled at that. Immortality intimidated me; commitment did not.

  “Good,” Mallory said, then clinked her glass against mine in a toast. “Let’s drink to commitment. To the grouchy-ass men we love, who really should worship at our feet.” She grinned wickedly. “And do, when the incentive’s right.”

  “I feel like we’re getting dangerously close to naked Catcher territory again.”

  “We’re only territory adjacent,” she said with a wink. She put her glass down, looked at me for a few seconds. She smiled softly, as if she knew all the world’s secrets.

  “What?” I asked.

  “Nothing. Just thinking about how much we’ve changed. Vampires, sorcerers, two sexy-as-hell and utterly egotistical men. An awkward adjustment for you, and a detour into darkness for me. And yet here we are, having a drink and preparing to go see the Cubbies.” She clinked her glass against mine. “I’d say we turned out pretty good.”

  I couldn’t argue with that.

  • • •

  Ethan came out strong from the break and nearly ran the table. It was an inadvertent cue bump by a Novitiate who’d had a little too much to drink that spoiled the plan. The Novitiate was apologetic, but what was done was done. Her slip gave Catcher control of the table, and control it he did. He called each shot, nailed each shot, and when he was done, left Ethan staring at the wreckage.

  Or so Catcher told the story. Given that his ego nearly matched Ethan’s in size and strength, I guessed the truth was somewhere in between.

  When we’d wrapped up and were prepared to (finally!) head to the stadium, Colin refused Ethan’s money and tried to shoo us out of the bar; Ethan, ever strategic, managed to slip bills to Sean on the sly. He preferred to pay his debts.

  We emerged into the glorious spring night, the crowd bristling with energy and the sheer joy of being outside after a hard Midwestern winter. And, of course, the possibility of destroying the Cardinals on our home turf.

  Ethan held my hand as we followed Catcher and Mallory through the crowd to the gate. Our seats were on the third-base side, which had been my favorite spot for an afternoon of baseball.

  Ethan glanced back at me, green eyes glowing. I didn’t think he was much of a baseball fan. Maybe it was vicarious excitement, because I was probably elated enough for both of us. Or maybe he was pumped about the free flashlights. Because I certainly was.

  Are you ready for this, Sentinel? Ethan asked silently, using the telepathic link between us, fo
rged when he’d made me a vampire that night a year ago.

  I smiled back at him. I am bursting with excitement.

  He took my hand, and we walked down the street just like two humans, a couple on their way to a night at the ballpark.

  Mallory stopped short and turned back toward us, her expression tight, her gaze focused on something behind us. People grunted and cursed as the stream of people was forced to divert around her, and then us, when we reached her.

  “Did you feel that?” she asked.

  “Feel what?” Catcher said, looking around to find the threat she’d seemed to identify.

  “Something magic. Something bad.” Without another word, she began walking away from the stadium. We fell into step behind her, dodging through the stream of fans headed into the stadium as we moved toward Temple Bar.

  But she passed the bar, kept going until she turned in to the wide alley that ran beneath the trestle that held up the tracks for the Red Line.

  “Mallory!” Catcher called out, and we darted after her into the alley.

  The smell of death—overripe and cruel and undeniable—spilled out from the darkness. Something had met a very ugly end here.

  Or someone, I realized, glancing at the body on the ground.

  CHAPTER TWO

  BAD BITE

  The man was young, maybe twenty-five or twenty-six. He had rough, tanned skin, brown eyes, and deep lines around his mouth. His body was whipcord lean beneath jeans and a T-shirt, and thatchy brown hair stood in mussed spikes on his head.

  Magic still lingered in the air above him like heavy fog waiting to settle. And it carried with it the faint sense of animal.

  He was dead . . . and a shifter.

  His face was horribly swollen and bloody, his hands ripped at the knuckles. But that wasn’t the worst of it. The left neck and shoulder of his T-shirt was saturated with blood that had drained from the puncture wounds on his neck. More had spilled on the ground around him.

  He hadn’t just been killed. He’d been murdered . . . by one of us.

  I felt a sick twist of guilt. The North American Central Pack was our ally and many of its members were our friends. But they wouldn’t take kindly to the death of their own by one of ours.

  A second man in jeans and a dark, long-sleeved shirt burst out of the alley, ramming into Mallory and throwing her to the ground. In that fraction of a second while he stumbled forward, he turned toward me. There was something familiar in the scent and magic that surrounded him, but nothing I could place. The bill of his cap shaded his face, showed only the thick, dark beard above pale skin. And the scent of the blood he’d stolen still clung to him.

  The moment passed. The vampire—the apparent murderer—caught himself with a hand on the sidewalk before bolting to his feet again and taking off.

  I didn’t stop to think. I tore after him, heard Ethan fall into step behind me, his footfalls light and fast.

  The vampire darted through the alley across the street, disappearing into shadow. He was twenty feet in front of me, but when the alley dead-ended, he dodged into the street and the glow of overhead lights. He darted between buildings with rooftop views of Wrigley, and then onto Sheffield on the stadium’s east side.

  Music blaring in the bars around us, Ethan and I kept pace with each other, our gazes on the perpetrator, who still trailed the magic of the murder he’d wrought.

  I doubted any Housed vampire would take out a shifter on the street, at least not one from Chicago. He was most likely a Rogue, a vampire who lived outside the House system. Or maybe a vampire from another city on some kind of mission to take out a shifter. Either way, there’d be hell to pay with the Pack.

  We dodged through a group of girls in pink Cubs T-shirts, one of them wearing a veil. Probably a bachelorette party, and from the curses they hurled after us, they’d been partying for a while.

  The vampire neared the intersection with Waveland. He glanced back to check his lead, nearly ran into a group of guys and girls heading across the street from bar to stadium.

  “What the hell?” yelled one of the men, tall and skinny with shoulder-length cornrows, neatly sidestepping to avoid getting mowed down by our runner.

  “Sorry!” I offered as we slid through the gap he’d created.

  We need to cut him off, Sentinel. He killed and he ran, and I doubt he’ll stop.

  No argument there. I mentally pictured the neighborhood, tried to guess where he might go. But since I didn’t know him—or where he’d come from, or where he was going, or what kind of transportation he might get into—I really didn’t have anything to go on. He’d been in Wrigleyville, and he’d done murder in Wrigleyville. And now, with two vampires on his tail, he was probably hoping to get out again.

  Right, Ethan said as the vampire turned and dodged back toward the El.

  Maybe he’d taken the Red Line to get down here, and was planning to take the same route home again.

  Stay on him, I told Ethan, and dodged across the street. If I could make headway, I could cut him off before he dodged into the alley again.

  “Cubs hats!”

  A man stepped in front of me from out of nowhere, wearing a column of stacked baseball caps on his head, a dozen more hanging from his fingers. “You need a Cubs hat?”

  He was enormous. A red-and-blue-clad wall of a man. “Not tonight, pal,” I said, and tried to pivot around him, but instead we did the awkward left-or-right dance as he swung his hats back and forth, tried to get a bite.

  I finally managed to slip around him, but the effort had slowed me down. The vampire darted across the street and into the shadows under the tracks again. I hit the shadows only seconds before Ethan . . . and nearly too late to hear the engine race. The driver’s door still open, a beat-up Trans Am barreled toward us. The door slammed, the vampire’s face shadowed in the vehicle, but I could see—and sense—perfectly well the handgun that pointed out the window.

  I moved with only instinct, and without thought.

  “Move!” I told Ethan, and turned in front of him, pushing him to the ground as the shot rang out, the sound slapping off brick and concrete and steel. Tires squealed as the car jerked forward, turned onto the street, and screamed into the night.

  I rolled off Ethan. “Are you all right?”

  “I’m fine,” he said testily. “You stepped in front of me.”

  “I will always step in front of you. You named me Sentinel.”

  “In the larger scheme, not my wisest decision.”

  I wasn’t going to argue with that admission of fallibility, even if I disagreed with the sentiment. “You can’t take it back now. I’m finally getting good at it.”

  “Jesus, Merit.”

  “What? Are you hurt?” I didn’t see blood, so I looked around, then back at Ethan. “Is he back?”

  “No,” he said, with silvering eyes that shone in the dark. “You’ve been shot.”

  “No, I haven’t.” I glanced down at my arm, saw the crimson rivulets that flowed down my arm and now pooled into my open palm. Adrenaline faded, and I felt the spear of fire that lanced through my biceps.

  “Damn it,” I said, my vision dimming at the edges. The world began to spin, but I gritted my teeth. I was a goddamn vampire, and I was absolutely not going to pass out. Not after chasing a murderer and taking a bullet for my Master.

  “It looks like I took another bullet for you,” I said.

  Ethan grunted, ripped off the bottom hem of his shirt, and pulled a handkerchief from his pocket. He folded and pressed the handkerchief to my arm, then used the hem to secure the handkerchief in place and create a make-do bandage.

  “Ow,” I said when he secured it a little more snugly than he should have. Fast healing was one of our better biological advantages, but we still felt pain, and this hurt like a son of a bitch.

  “You did that on
purpose,” I said as he tucked the ends of the fabric into place.

  “You did that on purpose. It’s your fault you got shot.”

  “Technically, it’s the vampire’s fault. And I’d still rather be shot than listen to Luc harangue me because I let you get shot.”

  Ethan just growled. He was so adorable in ultra-alpha protective Master mode, with his blond hair and green eyes, and a slightly murderous expression on his face.

  I frowned. “I think blood loss is making me loopy.”

  “Well, this isn’t exactly how I thought the evening would go, either.” The bandage assembled, he sat back on his heels, brushed the hair from my face. “Could you try not to get shot again? I believe this is your third time.”

  “Fourth,” I said, wincing as pain waved across my arm. “And I promise to try not to get shot again. Because it really does hurt.”

  He leaned forward, pressed a soft kiss to my lips. “Steady on, my brave Sentinel.”

  Brave . . . and slightly bullet-ridden.

  • • •

  Ethan grabbed water and aspirin from a corner store, which he administered as well as any experienced nurse.

  We waited until my dizziness had passed; then we walked back toward the alley. Mallory and Catcher stood beside a peeling pier that supported the tracks, staring down at the body. Humans had already begun to gather on the sidewalk, trying to get a glimpse of the man on the ground.

  Catcher’s eyes narrowed in concern at my bandaged arm. “What the hell happened to you?”

  “Vampire, Trans Am, handgun.”

  “He shot you?” Mallory said, horror on her face.

  “That was the handgun part. And I’m fine. Nurse Sullivan fixed it up.” Nurse Darth Sullivan, I thought, wondering if he’d pulled the fabric tight enough to cut off my circulation completely. But since I didn’t think I was playing my best snark game at this point, I kept the insult to myself.

  “Are you all right?” I asked her.

  She showed me her skinned elbow. “And sore rump, but otherwise fine. It’s not every day you get elbowed by a murderer.”