by Leeah Taylor
Tossing the newspaper down, Damien went to the bookshelves behind him and started scanning. The shelves stretched from one side of the office to the other, filled floor to ceiling with books from all genres across several languages. A book might take his mind off all the bad shit swirling in it. He stopped on a French title and reached for it on the shelf above his head.
The walls shook, books fell from the top shelves over him, just as the floor rumbled beneath. Damien grabbed to the back of the chair to steady himself with his heart plummeting to his feet. Screams from outside reached up to the office. Another jolt shook the building, and the windows looking down into the streets shattered. More screams echoed off the buildings outside.
He staggered to the window, and in the distance, just where the Falls met Sterling, a shock of bright blue electricity sparked across an invisible wall.
“Shit.”
The barrier.
Another shock wave rocked through the city and Juleps rumbled underneath him. More books rattled on the shelf before hitting the floor. One more wave of blue power surged over the invisible wall of magic.
“Shit.”
The possibility was always there that one day either the magic ran out or maybe, just maybe, she’d come back and do it herself. Panic rippled through him.
“Fuck.”
Damien ran out of the office, and a thundering boom shook the city. The sound reverberated through the old building, and he stilled, holding to the banister. He waited and then took the stairs down two at a time, cursing under his breath.
“Ollie!”
Chaos erupted around as staff herded out the entrance. Chairs and tables were overturned. Lights flickered on and off.
“What the hell just happened?” Ollie asked.
Damien swallowed. “I think someone just took down the barrier.”
Fuck, this wasn’t supposed to be possible. Not without her. Would she really do this to us? To me?
Ollie’s mouth fell open. “That’s a pretty powerful someone.” Realization flickered in his eyes, mixed with a broken longing Damien didn’t want to focus on. “You’re not thinking it was—”
“It sure as hell better not be her.” Damien bit out. “Secure the bar, we need to get to Val Valena.”
Ollie nodded before heading for the cellar to assess the damage of the premium liquor and the foundation of the bar.
“And find our brother!” he yelled.
5
Damien
Hysteria blanketed the city, his city, and spilled out into the streets with crowds of frightened locals and tourists. Fury coated his veins as the shock wore off. It better not be her. Glass covered the sidewalks from blown out car windows and shop fronts. The fire department blocked the roads, and the sheriff had his officers spread out, trying to keep people calm. They were failing.
“We will never get through these crowds.” Ollie rolled down his window. “Michael?”
The sheriff didn’t hear him over the roar of questions and panic. Frantically trying to settle the terror-controlled crowd.
“Sheriff Kordall!” Ollie yelled.
Michael Kordall turned with a scowl. Blazing hazel eyes stared back at them. He was a well-built man, young to the Frosts, in his early thirties. The corners of his lips pulled down further as he stalked over to the truck and ducked into the window with dozens of questions lit up in his hard glare.
“You wanna tell me what the hell happened? Is this a magic thing?”
Damien motioned to the crowd blocking the street. “Get these people out of my way and I’ll find out.”
“Is this a Council matter?”
Damien didn’t appreciate the tone in the sheriff’s words. “Well, it’s certainly a family matter,” he gritted out with his patience wearing thin.
“Damien—” Michael pushed.
“Do your job and get these people out of the streets so I can do mine.”
The sheriff looked like he wanted to say more but must have thought twice because he backed away from the vehicle.
“Let’s get these people out of the road. Let this truck through.”
The sheriff glared as he got on his radio and ordered the streets cleared. Had to be a shit job being at the bottom of the food chain. Powerless. A human.
Damien sped down the street towards the bridge to the Falls, the sidewalks crowded with confused citizens who had more questions than he had answers. Not sure he wanted the answers.
The lone street of the Falls mimicked Sterling. Instead of humans filling sidewalks, most of them were witches. Throwing annoyed glances at him as he drove by. Whatever story the sheriff spun to cover this up, the witches would know better. Georgia didn’t have earthquakes, and only one thing could shake this city like it had.
Magic.
“It will take thousands just to get this all cleaned up,” Ollie said, assessing the damage.
The bill was the farthest from Damien’s mind. Money would fix the damage, but it wouldn’t fix the barrier if it came down. He had a decision to make. Find the only person who could fix it or prepare to go to war with the werewolves.
He’d rather go to war.
Why didn’t we extend the barrier to the Falls? Why didn’t we protect it all?
Louisa came to mind, and the way she’d fought them tooth and nail to stop Juliette from putting the barrier up to begin with. She didn’t share in the Frosts’ hatred of the wolves. Hadn’t condemned them for how they reacted to the attempt on Juliette’s life by the wolf alpha, Adrian Night.
Of course she was against it. Louisa wanted Juliette dead too, but she’d never get her own hands dirty.
Witches died that night in her attempt to stop them from casting the spell. Vampires died trying to stop the witches. The barrier went up anyway. A compromise kept the barrier from extending to the Falls and Val Valena. Only Sterling city limits, to the bridge, were granted the protection of the barrier.
It was their only option to avoid the war Louisa always seemed dead set on having.
He wasn’t even sure he could find Juliette. Five years ago, she disappeared, and he hadn’t been able to track her down since. She was either dead or didn’t want to be found. He needed it to be the latter. What she did boiled his blood from the inside out, but that didn’t change anything. He needed her to be alive because knowing her light was out there was what kept him from giving into his darkness and getting lost to it.
Damien pulled off the main street of The Falls onto the dirt road that steadily climbed up to Sterling Point, home to Val Valena.
“Anything from Lucien?”
Ollie checked his phone. “Still nothing.”
Damien tightened his grip on the steering wheel until his knuckles went white just to keep from hitting it. Lucien going missing, without a clue to where he went, and out of nowhere an attempt to bring the barrier down. Something didn’t add up.
When the road ended at a grassy clearing, Damien parked the truck and reached over to open the glove box. He pulled out one of two handguns, and Ollie arched his brow.
“You expect that kind of trouble?” Ollie asked.
Damien wasn’t taking any chances. If this involved the wolves, then he wanted at least a chance against them. Their bite wouldn’t kill him, but it sure as hell would put him at a dangerous. The wolfsbane-coated bullets were just an extra layer of protection.
“I don’t have my crossbow,” he said, his weapon of choice. “Not looking to nurse a werewolf bite today.”
Ollie nodded, grabbing the other gun. “I hear that.”
They got out of the truck and walked the short distance up to Val Valena. Damien kept a cautious eye on the woods surrounding them for any sign of movement like wolves. Or witches.
The tall, wrought-iron gates to Val Valena, came into view and he knew something was wrong.
“Where are the guards?” Ollie whispered.
Edging closer and taking in the surroundings with an eye in every direction, Damien saw where his guards were
. Two laid bloody on the ground on either side of the gates.
Exactly why he wanted the gun. He moved fast. He had strength. But so did wolves.
Hot bile rose in the back of his throat and threatened to spill out on the ground. These were his men. Like an extension of his family. Loyal to him and his brothers.
He sighed, crouching down beside one of them, and tilted the vampire’s head to the side. Half of his throat was missing, and his belly was gutted.
“Wolves,” Damien spit out.
Ollie cleared his throat as he put distance between himself and the bodies. “Seems like.”
“I had five men up here. See if you can find the other three then meet me inside.”
Damien stalked to the gate and pulled it open. Rage blazed through his veins. Someone would pay for this. A life required a life. By his count and assumption, five lives to be exact.
The air changed when he stepped over the threshold, hotter and thicker than just a foot outside the cemetery. Magic sparked around him. Decades of unused power had come to life with the attempted spell.
He paid special attention to the dozens of rows of headstones and headed towards the entrance to the catacombs. Tall grass and weeds overran most of the property. Many of the stones were cracked and crumbled from age. Most illegible. Some dated back generations long before him, his father even. At least six hundred years.
Witches, vampires, and werewolves alike were buried in the ground. Val Valena wasn’t for the humans. It was a final resting place for anything with magic in their blood, body, or bones. Giving power to the altar down in the great room in the catacombs.
A mausoleum in the center of the cemetery protected the entrance to the catacombs. The door was ajar, and Damien stayed alert. He strained to hear any signs of life, but only the birds sang back at him.
With the gun raised in front of him, he pushed the door to the mausoleum the rest of the way. He was ready for anything, or anyone, to come jumping out at him but nothing did. The stone door in the floor leading down into the catacombs was open.
“Shit,” he muttered.
He kept the gun up and descended slowly. The air grew colder the further down he went. Fucking hate it here. He stared down the long path leading down to the Great Room. Tension pulled tight in his shoulders as a memory took hold.
She’d weighed nothing when he carried her out, cradled to his chest. Safe where she belonged, even when he didn’t understand why he felt a blanket of territorial rage consume him. But he made a powerful silent promise to himself that night to protect her. From everyone. From himself.
She was broken, and he wanted to fix her, and yet there was a fierceness in the way she watched him as the rage of her first thirst overcame her. Like she might fix him instead when he didn’t even know he needed fixing.
I have to get her out of my head.
Cold stone rooms passed by as he made his way towards the room at the end of the path. He slowed at his family tomb, Frost proudly carved into the stone wall, their mother and father inside. And one day, when he finally met a foe he couldn’t defeat, he’d be laid to rest beside them.
Rather be burned and ashes tossed in the bay.
Pushing the memory of his own mortality out of his mind, Damien entered the great room. Lit candles lined the stone walls at even intervals.
Fuck.
Six stone coffins formed a circle in the center of the room with six generations of Marquis and Greaves Regent bloodlines inside. Juliette’s mother was one of them, and despite her betrayal, the crazy bitch still got her place in the Great Room. In the center was the stone altar.
He looked over the ingredients left behind. Familiarity washed over him. A puddle of dark crimson blood covered a map of Sterling. It followed the lines representing the barrier surrounding the city. Earth, likely from the five points representing Sterling, was mixed with the blood.
“Shit,” he mumbled.
This was bad. No doubt wolves were crawling all over his city. He rubbed a hand down his face. It better not be her. It couldn’t be her.
“What’s wrong?” Ollie met him at the altar. “Oh, well, that can’t be good.”
“Find my guys?”
Ollie sighed and nodded. “Two on the backside of the cemetery messed up just like the other ones. And the last guy about a quarter of a mile into the woods.”
“Yeah, figured as much.”
These men had families. They were unconventional, but still, they were people with others that relied on them. Damien didn’t look forward to having the conversation with his men’s families.
Ollie pointed to the spot in the center of the blood. It was darker than the rest, almost like it had caught fire.
“Maybe it didn’t work.”
“What makes you think that?” He couldn’t make heads or tails of it, but he suspected Ollie would.
Ollie raised his brow. “Well, unlike you, I do spend time with witches. They actually like me.”
Of course, they liked him. Might even be a few that believed they loved him. He let most of them drink for free, and despite the laws, he took anyone, witch or not, to bed. Sterling’s little sex king. And it didn’t matter what was between the legs either. He loved for the heart, and he fucked for the pure bliss of it. Damien didn’t really care who his brother slept with. He just wished it didn’t include the witches.
Damien rolled his eyes. “On with it.”
Ollie gestured to the dark mass in the center of the blood. “It’s simple. When spells work, they don’t catch fire. Look at the edges of the map; they’re all burnt to hell. Whoever this was obviously knew nothing about the barrier spell. Not like you or I do.”
“Knew enough to have the proper ingredients,” Damien said.
Ollie narrowed his attention to the blood. “Are you thinking that’s Juliette’s blood?”
His heart fumbled in his chest.
He pinched the space between his eyes. “Don’t say her name.”
“Okay fine.” Ollie gave him a pointed look. “But still.”
Damien touched to the blood, staining his fingers with the cold substance, and brought it to his lips. He hoped the memory of her scent was enough to taste her essence too. He’d never given himself the chance or the permission to taste her. Ollie grabbed his hand, eyes twisted in horror. He looked like he was about to gag.
“Dude, really?”
“Well, how else am I going to tell if it’s hers or not, Oliver?”
“You never even tasted her though.”
Damien rolled his eyes, shoving the bloody fingers toward him. “You wanna do it then?”
Ollie feigned a gag. “It’s old and cold and—”
“You’ve done worse.”
“That’s different. That’s fun.” He smiled too proudly. “That’s just disgusting.”
Was he serious right now?
“We drink blood from blood bags. Those are cold and technically old.”
“Yeah but that’s preserved and when warmed to a perfect ninety-nine point two is…”
Damien threw his hands up. “Oh my god, why are we having this conversation?”
He tasted the blood before Ollie could go on pointlessly. A bitter, stale taste spread over his tongue, and it tingled to the back of his throat. It made his stomach roll, and he gagged.
Ollie shrugged, crossing his arms with his signature smug smirk.
“Screw off, Ollie,” he bit out. “I have no idea whose it was, but that’s disgusting. And not because it’s old or cold.” It didn’t taste like blood. Just tainted by the spell. “I don’t know, Ollie. This looks a lot like the spell worked.”
“Why’s that?”
He sighed. “Because it’s an exact replica of what the altar looked like when she did it.”
Ollie frowned. “You think the wall came down?”
He nodded. “Yeah, I do.”
Feet shuffled behind Damien, and he twisted around with the gun raised. Lucien froze. He glanced at the altar and back
at them like a deer caught in headlights.
“Where have you been?” Damien demanded.
Lucien hesitated. “There was an issue at the docks with a shipment—”
“Wrong, Xavier called this morning with the all’s well from the docks. Try again.”
His brother’s lips formed into a firm line. Probably trying to conjure a better lie. “I spent the day with Chelsea in Pearson.”
Damien considered it. Lucien probably rushed out of the house to beat him out of bed. If he didn’t, he would have had to face a firing squad of questions. Where was he going? With whom? Why? When would he be back?
He had no reason to believe that Lucien did anything else. “Well, it looks like someone just brought the wall down and half of Sterling with it.”
“We should call a council meeting,” Lucien said. “Immediately.”
Oh, there was going to be a council meeting and some hefty accusations made. Someone would be held responsible.
6
Damien
He looked down into the bar from the second floor. Juleps had seen some packed nights, but he’d never seen it this full. The bar and the lounge upstairs were brimming with people. The “earthquake” had knocked out power and water across several blocks. Juleps and the church block were mostly unscathed with minimal structural damage.
And the expensive premium liquor downstairs that Ollie cursed about for twenty minutes.
By the time they made it back to Sterling, Ollie was on the phone coordinating with the church to feed and house as many people as they could until the power was restored. He had arrangements made with every big box store in the area to deliver pallets of water until it was restored.
Damien had to hand it to him. When it mattered, Ollie knew who to call to ensure Sterling had what it needed. For being such a pain in the ass he pulled his shit together when it mattered, and this city needed him.
Looking over his shoulder, he caught a glimpse of Lucien brooding in the office. He was trying to make sense of the mess of books everywhere. Every couple minutes, a string of curses came from the office as Lucien organized the books back into whatever system he insisted on. He had his ways, and Damien found it best to steer clear of him when he was in a fit of discord.