A necromancer I might be, but blood magic was the extent of my experience with corpses. Once you got into chewing, gnawing, or otherwise munching on the dead, I was out of my comfort zone.
Skirting the snackish gwyllgi, I hit the sidewalk. “Let’s go, uh, see where he got that.”
The cloak vanished from Linus’s shoulders, and I heard Boaz exhale with what I suspected was relief.
“We should return to Woolly.” Linus fell in step with me. “It’s dangerous for you to be on the street.”
I pinned the back of my wrist to my forehead. “Good thing I have a big, strong potentate to protect little ol’ me.”
A smile wanted to curl his lips, but he forced them into a flat line. “You can take care of yourself. You’ve more than proved that.” He skated his fingers down my arm. “But there’s a difference in you looking for trouble and it finding you.”
“Make you a deal. We figure out where the rest of Hood’s snack came from, and then we’ll go home.”
“I’ll take that deal.”
“Goddess,” Boaz breathed from behind us. “Hood did all that?”
A blocky SUV sat with all four doors standing open. The back tires had been gnawed until they flattened into rubber puddles on the asphalt, and teeth marks punctured what remained of the rear bumper. The vehicle’s occupants, who lay in pieces strewn across the sidewalk and onto the lawns of nearby houses, appeared to be vampires.
Thank the goddess for the evacuation order. Otherwise, we would have had some explaining to do.
“This was a nice ride for the goon squad.” I stepped over random appendages to reach the driver’s side with its buttery-leather seats stained crimson. “They could have stolen it. Plenty of empty vehicles to choose from.” On car lots and in driveways. “But why split into two teams? It’s a minimum-security facility, but still.” I rifled through the contents of the dash and searched the floorboards. “And why leave their transportation a street away when every second counts?”
Boaz rubbed his jaw. “Looks like these guys sent the muscle ahead then played lookout.”
“Grier.” Linus crouched over a body missing everything south of its rib cage. “This complicates matters.”
One of its severed arms crooked on the asphalt, still gripping a crossbow.
“They found us.” I looked at him. “Again.”
Understanding dawned, and Boaz paid closer attention. “These are the archers who hit the Cora Ann.”
“Yeah.” Among their many and growing accomplishments. “Looks that way.”
“This doesn’t fit,” Linus murmured as a second crossbow was discovered beneath a dismembered torso.
“I don’t see assassins caring about Volkov one way or another,” I agreed. “Two teams?”
“One dispatched after we left the safety of Woolworth House and the other…” Cold, hard onyx filled his eyes. “A source tipped them off where and when to be in order to confront us and protect Volkov.”
“Why can’t just one villain be after us? Or even multiple villains united under one banner? It would be so much easier to keep track of them.” Volkov. Lacroix. Odette. Eloise. “What if we offered them matching T-shirts with a catchy slogan so identifying them was easier?”
The maniacal laughter is free, but the hits cost extra.
Come for the vengeance, stay for the finger sandwiches.
I make evil look good.
The edge of exhaustion creeping into my voice must have tipped Linus off, because he bundled me in his arms before it hit me how tired all this made me. After Atlanta, I was still running on fumes.
“I’m okay,” I breathed against his chest, my fingers tightening in the fabric at his spine.
“No, you’re not.” He kissed my temple, as if sensing the headache waiting to pounce. “But that is okay.”
Laughing softly, I nudged him back before I decided to burrow in and never leave. “Let’s finish this.”
“We need to test their weapons.” Linus bent and started gathering samples. “The previous assassins always used poison. If these vampires were part of that unit, their knives would have been treated.”
“I wish we had thought to test—” Geez, I really was slow on the uptake. I never thought to wonder what else might be stuffed in that duffle bag along with our would-be assassin. “You brought the Atlanta vampire’s crossbow with us to Base Four.”
“I did,” he confirmed. “The initial tests confirm the presence of wraith’s bane on the arrowheads.”
An uneasy feeling tingled through my limbs. Archers firing on the Cora Ann with brass-tipped arrows. Vampires chasing us through City Market, their arrowheads dipped in wraith’s bane, a poison designed to take down Linus. Daredevils rappelling down buildings and busting through windows. And now this.
The former Grande Dame, Abayomi Balewa, had admitted to hiring the assassin in the Lyceum, but she hadn’t taken credit for the archers.
Eloise had teamed up with Balewa under the guise of Angie Dearborn, but hiring assassins, archers in particular, made no sense when they had wanted to sacrifice me for my blood.
There was only one other possibility, but I couldn’t believe she hated me that much. After what she did to Linus, I had been made brutally aware Odette was ruthless, but the child in me who had loved her struggled to believe, even after everything she had done, that she would put a price on my head.
“We’ll figure it out,” Linus promised, reclaiming the cooler. “Are you done here?”
I scanned the area one last time, then we returned to the street outside the facility housing Volkov.
“What do we do about our friend Rue?” I stared at the frilly curtain in the window. “Her bad attitude paved the way for this delightful interlude. Coincidence?”
“No such thing,” Boaz drawled, reaching for his phone. “Give me a sec, and I’ll arrange transport for her.”
“No, I’ll put in a call to Mother.” Linus cut his eyes toward Boaz, expecting a one-liner no doubt, a jab below the belt, but none came. “Volkov will be secured and then relocated, and Rue will be detained in a cell at the barracks until we can spare someone to interrogate her.”
Hood lounged on the sidewalk, gnawing on a femur in plain sight, which told me he had cased the neighborhood while he waited on us to finish with Volkov and determined it was free of humans who might raise an alarm. When he spotted us, he spat out his chew toy, trotted over, and shifted before sliding behind the wheel.
I caught him digging between his teeth with a fingernail. “Need a toothpick?”
“I can manage.” He finished the task then cranked the van and pointed us toward home.
“You keep interesting company these days.” From this angle, Boaz wore a pinched expression. “I don’t think I realized just how interesting until this little ride along.”
A text notification pinged Linus’s phone and saved me from defending my choice in friends to him of all people.
“Bishop matched the signature to Eloise,” Linus informed me, but he didn’t look happy about it.
That ought to be good news. “What’s wrong?”
“The form was filed months ago.”
“Severine was alive and well then. So was Heloise for that matter.”
Unless they held breathing against me, the Marchands had no right to a grudge at that point.
“The authentication process takes time, weeks depending on the Athenaeum’s backlog, but it doesn’t explain why Severine would allow Eloise to act on her behalf. She was being tutored by her grandmother, which would have granted her certain liberties, but Severine was willing to disinherit your mother, knowing she had born a goddess-touched granddaughter, to preserve the family name. If Severine decided to let lifetimes of accumulated Marchand knowledge go, even out of spite, I believe she would have overseen the transaction personally.” He lowered his phone. “The collection is an heirloom. Marchands have bled for that knowledge, bred for that knowledge. It’s as good as blood to her, or it was.”
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Rays of hope speared through me before I could pinpoint their origin, and I reached for him.
“The letter. The one Johan delivered. It matched the signature, remember? That means Severine didn’t write it.” The bright spot was lost to an eclipse when the larger implications hit me. “Eloise must have written it.” I ran calculations in my head. “The date on the slip. Check it.” I wet my lips. “I bet it was around the same time as my release from Atramentous.”
Linus bent his head and started typing. “I’ve sent him the date.”
“You knew it off the top of your head?” Granted, I had tried to put as much of that dark period in my life behind me as possible, but I couldn’t have given you an exact day I walked out of there. Detox from the drugs had left me shaky and my brain a foggy mess. “How do you remember this stuff?”
“The woman I had loved for half my life was being released, so yes. I committed the date to memory.”
“Well, when you put it like that.” I invited myself into his lap and wrapped my arms around his neck. “You’re adorable, you know that?”
“I am the night,” he said with a straight face. “Fear me.”
Clearly, I wasn’t the only meme addict in this relationship.
“Nah.” I nestled against him, feeling my first laugh break free. “I’d rather cuddle you.”
“You’re murder on a reputation,” he chided, voice thick with amusement. “Potentates aren’t cuddly.”
“I beg to differ. You’re a potentate, and you’re quite cuddly. Why, I could probably—”
“Please stop.” Hood turned on the radio. “I have a full stomach, and it’s turning.”
“You and Lethe are just as bad.” I harrumphed. “You’re worse now that she’s pregnant.”
Hood narrowed his eyes at me in the rearview mirror, but he didn’t contradict me.
A call had Linus shifting my weight to one side so he could lift the phone to his ear. This close I heard both sides of the conversation, but I tuned out Mary Alice and Linus while they discussed the terms and conditions for borrowing the artists.
Nestling back against him, I let my hormones cool while I turned this new information over in my head.
Linus finalized his arrangements just as things were starting to gel for me.
“Whoever took the initiative,” I said, “it looks like the Marchand collection is now part of the Athenaeum. How do we find it? And how do we gain access?”
Two things the Grande Dame hinted were impossible feats.
“You want access?” Boaz twisted in his seat, his face gone pale. “Grier, no.”
“Boaz,” I sighed his name. “You can’t keep trying to protect me from everything.”
“You don’t understand. I’m an Elite. I’ve transported books for the Athenaeum, and I’ve done my time guarding its doors.”
The reminder drew me upright. “You know where it is.”
“Yeah.” He scrubbed his palms over his scalp. “You can’t go there, Grier.”
A creeping sense of dread crawled over me. “Where is it?”
Battling loyalties played across his face, but he exhaled, “Atramentous.”
“Atramentous.” I heard my voice as if from across a great distance. “I have to go back.”
Back to the damp, the mildew, the quiet sobs, and the smell. Goddess, the smell. Unwashed bodies, urine, feces. Death.
A whimper lodged in my throat where I could almost taste the dank atmosphere. No matter how hard I swallowed, I couldn’t clear my airway. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t…
The world dropped out from under me, and even with me in his arms, Linus couldn’t catch me.
* * *
The scents of fresh dough and sugar set my stomach rumbling, and I cracked open my eyes to find Lethe holding a donut an inch from the end of my nose.
“I told you this would work better than smelling salts.” She cast a smug grin over her shoulder. “Since I’m an excellent best friend, I’ll even let her eat it.” She looked back at me and mouthed, “No, I won’t.”
Rolling my eyes at her wasn’t happening just yet. I was still too woozy for that. “Help me up.”
Clamping the donut between her teeth, Lethe clasped hands with me and tugged until I was vertical on what I realized was the couch in the living room at Woolworth House. “Where’s Linus?”
“He was interrogating Boaz, but that was a while ago. You’ve been out for a couple of hours.” She took another bite. “He told me to let him know the second you woke.” Tilting her head back, she yelled, “Linus. She’s awake.”
The boards groaned beneath the couch, and Woolly’s presence bumped me in gentle inquiry.
“I’m embarrassed,” I told the old house. “Otherwise, I’m fine.”
The instant my brain put two and two together, that to view the whole collection rather than check out one title at a time I would have to visit the remnants of the Great Library, shelved in the basement at Atramentous, it got four, and it was lights out.
“Do you want a donut?” Crumbs flew when Lethe spoke. “I can grab you one.”
“Where did you get them?”
“An angel of mercy set them on a sorting table.” She licked her fingers. “I was told they were for whoever wanted them, and I’m a whoever, and I wanted them.”
“They were for the sentinels working the barricade, and the volunteers helping out here.”
“I’m a volunteer.” She attempted to look affronted. “I’m helping out.”
“You’ve also eaten three dozen already.”
Pulling on a frown, she cocked her head at me. “What’s your point?”
“Lethe,” I began, hoping to win her sympathy. “There’s something I have to tell you, about Midas.”
“You mean that he grew balls and claimed second in the Atlanta pack?
“Yes?”
“He texted me about it as soon as you left.”
Annoyed with them both, I thunked my head against the cushion. “You mean I was ravaged with guilt for nothing?”
“Not for nothing.” Her shoulders drooped when she thought about it. “He didn’t want it—doesn’t want it. But he did it. For me, and for you.”
“Where does that leave you?”
“I’m not sure.” Her eyes met mine, a curious light in them. “I’ll let you know when I decide.”
“You’ve always got a home here.” I patted her shoulder. “Both of you. All of you.”
“Thanks.”
Footsteps on the front porch caught my attention long enough for Lethe to escape into the kitchen where I had no doubt she murdered the remaining donuts before I took her up on her offer.
“I should have been here.” Linus hurried over and claimed Lethe’s spot. “I’m sorry.”
“You’re fine. You didn’t miss much.” I wiped the back of my hand across my mouth. “I’m not sure if I was drooling, or if it was Lethe. She was holding a donut to my nose, so it’s possible this is her saliva.”
A throat cleared behind me, and I whipped my head toward the sound. “Hood.”
“Here.” He passed me a paper towel with two donuts stacked on top. “I saved these for you.”
A blur streaked across the living room, and he grunted as impact drove him into the nearest wall.
Alarm spiked Woolly’s wards, the music in them a sudden crescendo that pushed me to my feet.
“You stole my donuts.” Lethe knocked him down flat then straddled his throat. Her thighs squeezed, and her rounded belly covered the lower part of his face when she leaned forward to apply pressure. “My. Donuts. Mine.”
Dreads fanned across the planks, expression dreamy, he rasped, “Damn, you’re hot when you…”
His voice petered out, and his eyes rolled back in his head. The hand cradling the donuts hit the floor, sending them tumbling under the couch for the dust bunnies to feast on. Not that it would stop Lethe from picking off the lint and eating them. She’d done it before and would again.
&n
bsp; “Grier.” Lethe clutched her stomach, but she couldn’t see all the way over it these days. “I killed him. My mate. The father of my child. And I murdered him over two donuts. They weren’t even cream filled. They were glazed. Glazed.”
Linus took one side of the distraught gwyllgi, and I took the other. We hooked our hands around her upper arms and lifted her off Hood, removing the obstruction from his airway. We sat her on the couch, where she covered her face and started weeping in great, ugly waves of misery.
Linus knelt beside Hood and checked his vitals. “He’s unconscious, but his pulse is steady.”
“Hear that?” I called over her caterwauling. “He’s alive. Linus says he’s okay.”
“He’s alive?” Eyes red, nose dripping, she sniffled. “I didn’t k-k-kill him?”
“I’ll see if I can bring him around.” Linus pulled out his modified pen. “You go calm down Lethe,” he murmured to me. “Stress isn’t good for her in her condition.”
Shoving off the planks, I crossed to her, plopped down on the couch, and hauled her against me.
“Hush.” I grimaced when she wiped globs of snot on my shirt. “He’s okay, you’re okay. The donuts are okay. Everyone is okay.”
“I attacked my mate over an inferior pastry,” she sobbed. “That’s not okay.”
Don’t blame hormones. Don’t blame hormones. Don’t blame hormones. “It must be a pregnancy thing.”
“I’m not hormonal,” she growled. “I’m just hungry.”
Few things had ever terrified me as much as realizing I cradled a pissed-off lizard-dog thing against me. Gwyllgi tended to eat people who annoyed them, and I didn’t want her primal brain deciding I was some kind of delicacy she had been fattening up for the kill through the course of our friendship.
“I bet we can find more donuts if we split up and check the packing stations.” Risking my hand and possibly my life, I stroked her hair. “We bought dozens upon dozens. They can’t have eaten them all yet.”
The reason for the leftover donuts hit me in the gut, and I sucked in a sharp breath.
How to Wake an Undead City Page 15