My shot caught him between the shoulder blades and he dropped like a stone. From the sound of things, I’d punctured a lung.
I took a few steps forward, waiting to see if he was playing possum.
Ewan’s final exhalation was soft and then the gurgling sound died away. His toothpick went rolling across the floor toward his fallen charge.
I buried my guilt and stalked toward the girl, gun hanging loosely at my side. She wasn’t armed and even if she had been, I doubted she would know how to use it. If the girl was any sort of threat the council would have decided that only one protector was necessary.
I was less than a foot away from her when something cold and thick was jammed into the base of my skull.
“Don’t. Move.”
Dominic’s voice was thick with fatigue and rigid with dislike. Gooseflesh erupted along my arms.
“Drop the gun, Nat. I don’t want to shoot you.” He shoved me forward until my face was pressed against the drywall. I gripped the gun tighter.
“How the hell did you get out of that stuff?” I hissed.
“The same way I did last time you lobbed it at me. Nat, put the goddamn gun down before I shoot you.”
“Not going to happen, Dom. There’s more on the line here than my life. They found a cure for Cat.”
“They?” Then he seemed to put it together. “The vampires. God, Nat. Killing them without sanctions was bad but this...”
My face was mashed against the too-warm drywall but I just knew that he was shaking his head, glaring at me with that look of bewildered condemnation.
Elle scrambled to her feet clutching her injured side. Tears slid down her cheeks and she whimpered.
“I thought she was here to help us.”
“I thought she was too. But I guess I was wrong. Drop the damn gun. Now.”
I flung my elbow back into his ribs, hard. His grip on me loosened and I squirmed out from beneath the muzzle of his sidearm.
He could have used that split second of confusion to kill me. But he didn’t.
“You don’t have to do this, Nat,” he said in a low, cajoling tone. “I meant it. We can get you back into the Trust.”
“After killing Ewan? Doubtful.”
Saying it aloud hurt. My chest ached. He was my friend once, and I’d freaking shot him. And I was here to kill a girl who hadn’t even reached drinking age. When had my life flipped upside down?
“Come on, Nat. Drop the gun. Don’t make me shoot you. You can come with us. We’ll talk it out.”
I shook my head slowly. “This isn’t some freaking fairy tale, Dom. What do you think is going to happen? I thumb my nose at the biggest vampire house in America and leave my sister exposed to whatever they’re planning to do to her? Your child prodigy wipes out the demi-humans and then you and I...what? Go gallivanting off into the sunset? It’s not going to happen, Dominic. It’s sick. And you’re a hypocrite. I don’t care how black and white you think it is. The world isn’t full of brave knights and dastardly villains. It’s a series of choices. And I’ve made mine.”
Dominic’s lip curled in disgust. “Is that what they told you, Nat? That she’s engineering a plague?”
“She’s done it before.”
“Yes. Under duress and the threat of death from the vampires. She escaped them eventually, thank God. Think, Nat. Use that big, beautiful brain of yours for once, instead of acting on impulse. Who’s been trying to eliminate the wolves for centuries, hm? Because it wasn’t us. Elle isn’t working on a plague. She’s creating a cure.”
My grip slackened on the gun as I processed his words. Could it be true? Declan had been absolutely certain she was rotten.
I didn’t have long to think about it. Something huge and fast-moving smashed through the door to the room. There must have been service tunnels beneath the hotel, or he’d never have been able to burst in during the daytime like this.
Elle shrieked again and staggered a step toward Dominic. The shape resolved itself into Geoffrey. He clutched a dagger in one hand and bared his fangs at my erstwhile lover and his charge.
“Finish it, Iron Heart. Or I will.”
I stepped between them. I needed a freaking minute to think. Who was telling me the truth? Dom or Geoffrey? Did it matter either way? They would kill Cat.
Dominic read the resolve on my face and sudden tears glistened in his eyes. “Don’t.”
The CZ 75 felt heavy in my hand. Dominic had drawn too, holding a Sig that I’d made for him in one hand. It was enchanted for speed and explosive impact. And it rarely missed.
He couldn’t shoot me. No matter what, he couldn’t shoot me, right?
I lowered the gun. I couldn’t shoot him. Not now. Perhaps not ever.
“Dom...I…”
Geoffrey’s arms clamped down on me, holding my arms to my sides. My body rebelled, cringing away from the coldness of his skin, the sucking emptiness of his aura.
“Hand the girl over, Finch. Or I’ll tear her throat out.
Dominic glanced down at the girl tucked beneath his arm and then back at me, agony playing across his face for a second.
“I’m sorry, Nat.”
A sound like a thunderclap rang through the room. I was lifted off my feet and tossed feet into the air, taking Geoffrey with me. Even with the wards, the force of our dual impact cracked the drywall.
Elle’s mouth was open in a cry of horror. I couldn’t hear it over the loud ringing in my ears. My chin came to rest on the pulpy ruin that was my chest. I registered a shard of white rib bone jutting through the sparkling fabric of my dress, dripping blood before the pain plowed into me like a semi.
A scream lodged itself in my chest, battering around the space where my lungs should have been. I couldn’t draw in enough air. Dom grabbed the girl and ran out of the room, while Geoffrey was still pinned behind me. My vision blurred, but as I sucked in my dying breath, I smiled with relief. At least one of us would make it out alive.
Geoffrey’s pained groan sounded in my ear.
“I was hoping we could do this as planned, Valdez. But with your hesitation and failure...well, now you’ve forced us to play hardball.”
Black spots danced across my vision and the last thing I heard before blissful black oblivion rose to embrace me was his last, ominous pronouncement.
chapter
16
“WELL HELLO THERE, SLEEPING BEAUTY,” a husky, familiar voice murmured near my ear as I stirred.
I’d been lying supine with my head cradled in Geoffrey’s lap. I didn’t really want to contemplate how long he’d been holding me like that, nor what horrors the vampires might have put my body through while I was unawares. It wasn’t like necrophilia was going to phase them much, was it?
“It’s about time,” Arabella’s voice sniffed from a little further off. I craned my neck and saw her perched cross-legged in the peacock chair in the corner. “Algerone has been a terror for the last few days.”
Moving my limbs felt like swimming through pudding, slow and heavy. My emotions felt strangely muffled, like they were being filtered through a thick pillow. I knew that I should be screaming my head off. Furious that Dominic had shot me. But the lance of betrayal that should have doubled me over wasn’t there. I did want to knock a few of his teeth loose, but that was about it.
“What’s going on?” I rasped. “I feel...strange.”
Geoffrey exchanged a glance with his sister, and a small smile curved his lips. “It will until you’ve had a chance to adjust.”
“Adjust to what?”
“To your new life, of course.”
That finally elicited a reaction. The bone-deep fear of becoming one of the undead had been with me since I’d first encountered them as a teen. It was a silent, unspoken rule among mages that none of us would ever allow it to happen to each other. Dominic had promised me he’d kill me before he allowed me to come back as one of them.
No, no, no, no. I
ran my tongue over my teeth, biting back a scream when I found that the canines were longer than they should have been. Oh, God. One of them had done it. They’d turned me into a monster.
The taste at the back of my mouth? It was blood. I’d thought, at first, that it had been mine, leftover from my horrid, choking death as I’d tried uselessly to drag air into lungs that were no longer intact. Who had done it? Why?
Geoffrey caught me at it and grinned. “You really ought to see yourself, Iron Heart. You look magnificent. Death becomes you.”
I shot off the couch, hands scrabbling at my ribcage. My lungs felt whole but when I pressed my hands to my chest, all I felt was slippery, inappropriately expensive fabric and the rather average assets I had to work with. There was no hole. No pulpy mess where a large caliber weapon ripped a hole in my heart. But I noticed something else.
There was no heartbeat, either. I slapped two fingers to my throat, feeling around for a pulse that wasn’t there, no matter how frantically I searched.
But instead of the gaping emptiness I’d expected, there was still magic within me. It didn’t feel like my own. I’d become intimately acquainted with the sensation of my own magic. It was cold and steady, like steel. What moved within me now was hot, wild, and dangerous, like the slide of molten rock beneath the earth. It felt like power might burst from me at any moment.
That couldn’t be right. The Trust had been dealing with the undead since its inception. Vampires had no souls and therefore couldn’t have magic. That meant that one of two things. Either we’d been wrong, and the vampires had powers beyond what we knew. Or, and it sounded like desperate pleading even to me, I wasn’t really a vampire.
Even as I examined that anomaly, a more pressing concern drove me toward the back wall, where a long, gilt-framed mirror had been propped, seemingly for my benefit.
The woman in the mirror barely resembled me at all. I was too pale, for one. My eyes had changed too, darkening from hazel to a black so deep it was difficult to tell the iris from the pupil. That wasn’t normal. Wasn’t I supposed to be preserved as I was for all time? I swore I saw something that looked like stars, dancing in the depths of those black eyes. But when I blinked, they’d disappeared.
A dab at my lips revealed the cherry-red color to be lipstick, not blood. Thank Christ. And when I smiled...oh God. I had fangs. Not just one set, either. The canines and bicuspids both turned down into sharp, tapering fangs. That wasn’t normal either. What was I, some sort of uber vamp?
Rather than contemplate that horrifying possibility, I took stock of the rest of me. I seemed to have all my limbs and, while stiff, they did move when I told them to. Someone had changed me out of my bomber jacket, tank top, and jeans and into a lavender and creme frock that would have been at home on the cover of a Regency novel.
“Who the hell dressed me?” I griped. “This thing is ridiculous.”
Geoffrey’s chuckle tickled the back of my neck and I cringed away from him on reflex. Arabella let out an almost cat-like hiss.
“Dear Bella was turned in that gown. It was one of her favorites. Algerone insisted you be dressed appropriately for your rebirth. It is such an important occasion, you know.”
“Reborn as what?”
“You know what, Iron Heart.”
“Bullshit.”
It sounded weak, I had to admit. There was plenty of evidence to support the fact that I’d been turned into the one thing I hated most. The strange, muffled cadence of my emotions. The pale skin, the lack of a heartbeat. Fangs.
Geoffrey offered me an enigmatic smile and said nothing more. I tried a different tack.
“What happened after I was attacked?”
“After your lover shot you,” he corrected mildly. “After that, he fled and took the girl with him. We phoned in a mage we had on retainer in Belize. Certainly not at your skill level, but he was able to catch you at the moment of death until we could gather the proper artefacts required for your rebirth ritual. When it was done, I retrieved your corpse and Bella tracked them as far as Mexico city before she lost the trail. Our reports put them somewhere in the Everglades at the moment.”
A knot of tension eased in my chest and I found it easier to breathe. Dominic was still alive. Strange that I should feel relief. He had shot me after all.
I didn’t have much time to contemplate my fickle emotions, though. Whatever new senses I’d inherited as a part of my rebirth, allowed me to sense the thunderous mass of dark energy that was quickly approaching the door. My hand twitched toward a side holster that wasn’t actually there. No doubt Geoffrey had stripped that off me as well.
Algerone Lamonia swept into the room in his full regalia. His coat was black this time, fringed in what I suspected to be gold filigree. His broad chest was puffed out in indignation and he’d drawn himself up to his full height. It was impressive. At nearly seven feet tall he must have towered over the men of his day. Dominic was the tallest man I knew and even he looked shrimpy next to this guy. The soft beauty of Algerone’s face was somewhat marred by the murderous expression on it.
“Treacherous snake,” he hissed at me, baring his fangs. They didn’t seem any less impressive to me now that I had my own.
“Howdy,” I drawled. “Want to tone down the aura of evil there Emperor Palpatine? You’ll scare the locals.”
If he caught the reference he didn’t seem to find it funny. The force of his power buffeted me and there was a miniscule portion of me that wanted to bow to it. I refused to acknowledge the brush of his aura along mine and glared back defiantly.
“Sit down, Miss Valdez.”
“I’ll stand.”
Algerone’s lips pulled back even further and his fangs lengthened.
“I insist.”
Before my eyes could even track what he’d done, his booted foot slammed into my chest with the force of a wrecking ball. I was launched off my feet and sent tumbling through the air. I landed about six feet away on another settee, and helpfully propped up by Arabella.
The wood protested, nearly snapping in half beneath my weight and the force of the impact. The cushions attempted to expel me bodily and drop me to the floor before they settled unwillingly with me on top of them.
I sucked in a painful breath and fought the urge to scream. I didn’t need to do much more than a cursory check to know that he’d broken my sternum. He crossed the room in the time it took me to recover from the sudden shock. His hand shot out, lightning quick and he wrapped long, elegant fingers around my throat, applying just enough pressure to let me know that he could crush my trachea as well, if I pushed him. It might not kill me, but it would effectively silence me.
For the good of my long-term snarking ability, I remained silent.
“As satisfying as it would be to tear your throat out this very instant, we’re going to give you another chance to finish the job you failed. We’ve extended your life, for now.”
“Yeah, I’m super pumped to have joined the gang,” I wheezed past the pressure of his fingertips. He tightened his hold, his nails digging crescents into my flesh. Blood beaded in his wake. A nasty smile curled his mouth.
“Such impudence, even now. I’ve flayed humans for less than the treachery you perpetrated.”
“Don’t act like such a saint, Lamonia. You lied to me about the girl. I don’t know why you’ve blacklisted her, but she’s no terrorist.”
His cool blue eyes grew even more glacial as he considered me. His fingers dug into my skin another few centimeters until blood ran in rivulets down my throat, collecting in the dip of my rapidly healing collarbone.
“That is none of your concern. You will repay the insult you have dealt us.”
“So this is what? Revenge? I’m supposed to take Tristan’s place?”
He chuckled. “As lovely as it would be to turn you and watch that light leave your eyes for good, you need to at least ape your humanity for our purposes. You still live.”
“Um, I call bullshit. I don’t have a pulse, Lamonia.”
“But your soul remains, after a fashion. The mage we summoned told us it was absolutely vital to the success of the plan. But I didn’t want you to get any ideas about double-crossing us again. We’ve installed a few failsafes. First, and most importantly, is a timer. Your soul’s tether is tenuous. Only we have the ritual that will connect it permanently to your body again. From now on, you are leasing your life from us. You have exactly three days to complete your mission and check in; fail at either task and death will be swift, no matter where you hide. Each second you remain on this earth is at our discretion.”
“You said failsafes, plural,” I said, trying to distract myself from the horrifying picture he was painting. Most distressing of all, it meant a mage of significant power was working for the vampires. He had to have a lot of juice to manage the dark magic it would take to summon a soul from the ether and tie it to a corpse. Especially a corpse as mangled as mine. It was like necromancy, a practice that was looked upon about as favorably as becoming one of the undead. What the unknown mage had done was essentially frankenstein my essence into a shell no longer meant to house me. It would have side effects, no matter how well it had been done. That was probably why the average range of emotion felt muted to me.
But that wasn’t the end of it. If I wasn’t a vampire, there was definitely something hinky going on. The human body didn’t spontaneously sprout fangs or heal itself at warp speed.
“Yes. I have two ways to ensure your loyalty from this moment on.” Lamonia released me suddenly. I didn’t need the air that flooded my lungs, but I enjoyed it nonetheless. The lack of it made my mind panic from years of habit.
He nodded once to Geoffrey. “The Danvers’ blood was added to the mix as well. We were assured it should act as a leash of sorts. And as extra incentive to see that you return.”
“Gross. No wonder I feel like hell,” I said. “Is that it?”
“Not quite.”
Lamonia licked my blood from his fingers leisurely before responding. My stomach rolled.
Infernal Assassin- Vampire Killer Page 15