by Kelly Meding
"You have incredible timing," I said.
"Where have you been? We've been trying to reach you guys for hours."
"Long story. Where are Gina and Shelby?"
"Searching a few blocks from here. Astrid put three quads out when you'd been out of contact for four hours after Baylor called in the meet up at Lincoln Street. Where's everyone else?"
"Not far."
"Wounded?"
"Yeah." Baylor's death and Milo's injuries stuck in my throat. I couldn't make my tongue form the words.
"Let's go, then," Kyle said. "We can clean up this trash later."
Leaving six goblin corpses in the middle of the street, untraveled or not, wasn't good policy, but I didn't have the mental focus to argue the point. Kyle drove, while I rode shotgun and gave directions. Tybalt called Kismet, who knew where the old police precinct was.
Kyle navigated the narrow alley that led into the rear parking lot, and Shelby pulled in right behind us. Even though Kyle and Shelby were both on the list of Therians I mostly trusted, their proximity after the events of the last few hours had my hackles up. They weren't the enemy, though, and I had to stop from giving Shelby a hairy eyeball he didn't deserve.
"Christ, Stone, what's going on?" Kismet asked as she climbed out of her Jeep. She made a gesture at her throat. "What happened?"
Mine was probably bruised from that stupid collar. Wyatt had to have heard the vehicles, but he hadn't opened the door yet. Explanation time was now or never.
"We were ambushed on Lincoln Street," I said.
Kismet's eyes went wide. "The message for you was a set up?"
"No, that part was actually kind of helpful." I explained Horzt and his gifts, the ambush, waking up in our cells, and Vale's demands. Cold fury swept over Kismet when I told them about Milo; I couldn't even look at Tybalt. I glossed over our escape, Vale's escape and skipped straight to cold-cocking the sniper and my quest for help. "Tybalt and Kyle saved my life."
"Sounds like," Kismet said. She narrowed her eyes. "What aren't you telling me?"
I swallowed.
The door swung open. Wyatt stepped out into the sunlight, and I was grateful for his appearance. She shouldn't have to hear this from me.
"Adrian's dead, Gina," Wyatt said.
She spun to face him. "What?"
"He was shot by the sniper. None of us saw it coming."
"But…" The single word made her sound so small, so unlike her blustery, powerful self.
Wyatt came down the steps and folded Kismet into a hug. I turned away from the sight before their joint grief unleashed my own. I didn't have time to grieve for Baylor right now. Too many things were left undone.
"Where's Milo?" Tybalt asked me.
"Inside with Marcus," I replied.
Proving himself to once again be a man of impeccable timing, Marcus appeared in the doorway with Milo in his arms. Despite the fact that Milo was five-foot-seven and weighed at least a buck-fifty, Marcus held his weight he might a child half his size. Marcus turned a fierce scowl on the new arrivals, a protectiveness in his face and stance I'd never seen before.
"And still in need of medical attention," Marcus snapped, as though he'd been part of our conversation.
Milo's shirt hid the majority of the bruises on his back, but his legs were nearly solid purple and definitely swollen. Tybalt let out a string of impressive cuss words that cut through Kismet's grief and got her attention. She pulled away from Wyatt with a gasp.
"Put him in the back seat," Shelby said. He opened the rear passenger door of his SUV.
"We need to update Astrid and Rufus," Wyatt said. "The Danes have to be warned."
"Vale made a grave error by not killing us all when had the chance," Marcus said as he walked past.
"Agreed," I said. "but he also has two things that we need. The scroll and the cure. If he realizes they're valuable to us, he'll try to bargain."
"The only thing I'll trade him for is a quick death versus a slow one," Wyatt said.
"Once word of Vale's treachery is out to the Clans, he'll have few places to hide," Shelby said. "The Elders do not suffer fools, nor will they sympathize with Vale's attempts to cheat in the course of Riley's succession to Elder."
"Good," I said. "Vale gambled on Marcus giving up the mansion security codes and he lost. He's overconfident, and he rabbits at the first sign of real trouble. Now that we know his game, we know what to expect."
"So what's our next move?" Tybalt asked.
I thought of the sniper on the roof nearby, and of the address he'd given me. "I've got one place to start looking. Who's up for a trip into Mercy's Lot?"
Chapter Nine
5:50 pm
A quick phone call to Astrid divided our rather large group into three neat little units. Wyatt and Kismet were heading straight back to the Watchtower with Milo, Baylor's body, and the trussed up Bengal sniper. Marcus, Tybalt and I were going across town to check out 452 Ashmont Road. Shelby and Kyle got stuck with goblin cleanup duty.
Ashmont wasn't very far from my old neighborhood in Mercy's Lot, a narrow north-south street that eventually connected to Cottage Place about three blocks from where I once lived with my Triad partners. Number 452 was eight blocks north, in a cluster of dilapidated row homes that hadn't been new in about seventy years. Our target was one house from the end of the block. Tybalt drove past and parked halfway up the street.
"What's our play?" Tybalt asked.
"Vale isn't foolish enough to still be here," Marcus said.
I scooted forward between the two front seats. "He was smart enough to leave a sniper behind at the last location."
"You're right. However, it's likely that this house was abandoned before he enacted today's scheme."
"So front door?"
"Front door."
The neighborhood was annoyingly busy, which made sense, since we were inching into the post-rush hour evening. Residents were parking their cars or walking home from the nearby bus stop. Marcus agreed to swing around to the access alley that ran down the middle of the block, between the postage stamp backyards on our side of the block and the identical homes on the opposite street. He'd go in from behind, just in case someone was still home.
We kind of blended, since only Tybalt was wearing his typical Watch uniform. I tucked my hair around my throat to try and hide the bruise that was slowly repairing itself, thanks to my handy healing abilities. Therians healed pretty fast, too, which was the only reason Astrid had allowed Marcus to come with us. His exposure to the silver collar had left behind a low fever and blistered skin that looked only slightly less painful than it had half an hour ago.
Tybalt's earlier anger had settled into an intense precision that fueled every movement he made. We walked up the cracked stone path to the sagging front porch. The screen door squealed on its hinges. Since we weren't alone, I made a show of checking my pockets for keys, while Tybalt used an attachment on his mechanical left hand to jimmy the locks.
He went inside first. I don't know what I expected to find—rogue jungle cats brought to mind images of caves and vines—but it wasn't this clean little home full of Victorian furniture. I didn't know much about antiques, but I'd bet that the silk chaise in the living room cost more than I made in a month. Despite the exterior, the house was nicely kept and kind of…regal.
"You sure this is the right address?" Tybalt asked.
"Yes." I gaped at a stained glass lamp that sparkled with shades of red, purple and green. "Maybe the sniper got the address wrong."
"He didn't," Marcus said as he came through the kitchen and out into the living room. "Vale was here. I can smell him, as well as several others. The scents are old, though."
We split up to search all three floors of the house, from ground level up to the cob-webby attic. Not a single personal item had been left behind, but we found evidence that at least four Felia had lived here until recently. The trash cans outside were stuffed full of takeout containers and frozen pizza boxes.
"Well, this was a bust," I said, frustrated by our lack of evidence. Vale might be a total coward, but he wasn't completely stupid.
"We should leave a bug, anyway," Tybalt said. "On the off chance someone does come back."
"If nothing else, we need to check the county assessor's office and find out who owns this place. The sniper said it was bank owned, but I want to make sure there isn't a corpse out there who didn't willingly let Vale squat here."
"Agreed."
"Great." No one else was volunteering, so—"I'll go get a bug from the car."
Tybalt handed me the keys without a word.
Each official Watchtower car came complete with an emergency kit that contained basic first aid, extra guns, rope, flares, walkie talkies, and two microphones that synched up to our computer systems at the Watchtower. I fetched the small box with the mikes and hoofed it back to the house.
An angry voice made me stop on the porch, hand on the screen door handle.
"….never meant for him to get hurt." Marcus.
I wasn't generally a fan of eavesdropping, but something kept me from interrupting the conversation.
"Yeah, well, plan unsuccessful," Tybalt snapped back, as furious as I'd ever heard him sound. "Vale nearly killed him, and not because he's part of the Watch, but because of you."
"I care for him, Tybalt."
"I know you do, but he's been hurt enough, Marcus."
"Hurting him has never been my intention. You know that. I would never purposely cause him more pain."
"Not on purpose, no."
"What would you have me do, then? Push him away after what just happened?"
"No! Just…make sure you know what you're risking before you pursue this."
"I know what I risk. My entire family could turn their backs on me."
A jolt of surprise shot through me. Intellectually, I understood that Milo and Marcus had grown closer, had even flirted a little. There was also the kiss. Now everything was starting to fall into place and I could see the shaky ground their fledging relationship stood upon. And how Milo's life had already been put in serious danger because of it. Hearing that Marcus could lose the support of his family surprised me—Felia were intensely loyal to their blood.
Love made us do insane things sometimes, though. I'd have taken on the entire Clan Assembly last month if they'd ordered Wyatt killed because of his Lupa infection.
"Do not let your experience with Astrid cloud your judgment of my feelings for Milo," Marcus said. "The two things are not the same."
"No? A Felia and a human in love? My feelings for Astrid nearly destroyed the both of us six years ago."
"And she's never stopped loving you."
Oh boy. I was really overstepping by not announcing my presence, but I was mesmerized by the information being fed to me about my friends. I started to reach for the screen door handle.
"It doesn't matter how Astrid and I feel about each other anymore," Tybalt said in a cold voice. "The Watchtower is more important than us. The city needs this, and we need to focus on the problems at hand, not our personal relationships."
"I'm sorry, Tybalt, but I won't do that. You know how short a Therian's life span is."
"Yeah, I do. You've got ten years left if you're lucky."
"We all have ten years left, if we're lucky. How many of your Hunter friends have died in the last four years?"
Footsteps slammed in my direction, and I barely got out of the way before Tybalt shoved through the screen door. He didn't look at me as he stalked down the walkway to the sidewalk. In an odd way, I saw both sides of their argument. I'd already died (twice), and so had Wyatt. So many of us had come close to death, and multiple times. We didn't know if we had ten days, ten months, or fifty years left to live. And as much as my job gave me a sense of purpose each day, my love for Wyatt fueled me when things seemed impossible.
I fought for the tiniest chance that we'd have a happy ending one day. Hope was an extremely powerful thing. Without it, my life was too damned bleak.
When had Tybalt lost all hope for the future?
#
The conversation I'd overheard stayed with me on the drive back to the Watchtower. Marcus's comment about all of us maybe having ten years stuck with me, and it returned my thoughts to Phineas. We hadn't heard a word from him since his disappearance five weeks ago. He'd gone off to find out if any other Coni or Stri existed in the wider world, or if he, Aurora, Ava, and Joseph were truly alone.
A simple text saying "I'm still alive" would be nice, just to alleviate the fear that he'd gotten in over his head. While he'd saved my life several times, I'd also returned the favor and saved his. I missed him and his no-bullshit way of framing things so I could better understand them. Phineas was one of my very best friends, and he only had ten years left.
No, thinking that way did none of us any good. Especially not considering the high-risk job we did, protecting the city and keeping the dark races in line. Adrian Baylor's death today had only proved that no one knew when their time would be up—I'd never expected to outlive Baylor. Like Wyatt, Kismet, and Rufus, he'd always been around, steadfast and strong.
Now he was dead.
The mood at the Watchtower was somber. A third of Cerberus was dead, and the Felia who killed him was locked up in our jail waiting for the Clan Assembly to make a decision on his fate—which I found out when I walked into Ops that evening.
All of the remaining Triad Handlers—Wyatt, Gina, Nevada, Morgan, and Rufus—were in one corner of Ops, talking and quietly mourning their collective loss. Wyatt caught my eye when I entered. I shook my head so he knew we hadn't found anything.
"The house was a bust," I told Astrid. "We left a bug, though, in case someone comes back."
"They aren't likely to," Astrid replied. She looked ready to explode into a fury. "The house belonged to Evan Tuck, the sniper you shot twice. His parents died of the Shadow two years ago and left it in his name. He couldn't make the mortgage payments and the bank foreclosed last month."
"He kept a neat house for an orphan." I also felt absolutely no guilt about having shot him in the leg. Both of them.
He hadn't gotten away, had he?
"Vale is Evan's first cousin, and they're all Bengals. So was the man Wyatt killed back at the police precinct."
"Peck." I blinked. "Wait, that guy's name was Peck Tuck?"
Astrid's eyebrow quirked. "Yes."
"That sucks."
"Evan also has a younger sister named Starr. She may be the other Therian scent from the precinct, and she's been reported by her employer as having not shown up for the last week."
"Do you think other Felia will shelter them, knowing what's happening with Elder Dane and Riley?"
"I honestly don't know. Vale is acting rashly and in blatant violation of both Assembly and Pride laws. I worry for the precedent he's setting among the Pride members."
"What precedent?"
She gazed around the people working in Ops, and I could almost see the ghosts of the vampire allies whose support we'd lost. "They may incite other Clans to challenge their Assembly representatives, and it could force the Assembly to pull all Therian support from the Watchtower."
I shuddered. "Worst case scenario?"
"No." She made a sour face. "The worst case scenario here is that Vale's open challenge could lead to civil war among all Therians."
"Yeah, that's definitely worse. Has that happened before?"
"According to legend, the last time we came close was when the Assembly ordered the decimation of the Lupa. Not all Clans agreed that genocide was the way to end their reign of terror."
"So Vale has himself a kind of win-win scenario here," I said as I puzzled it out in my head. "He wants the Danes out of power, and he also wants the Assembly out of the Watchtower."
"The trouble is, his methods will ensure the Tucks never regain power within the Pride. He has directly attacked Pride members and kidnapped the grandson of the Elder. He will li
kely focus his energies on the other Clans now, sowing discord from within."
"It only takes one match to start a forest fire."
"Exactly."
Hell, this just kept getting worse and worse. "Did Vale actually expect Marcus to give him the security codes to the Dane mansion?"
Astrid shook her head. "Doubtful, but he did succeed in putting Marcus in an untenable situation. If Marcus gave in, he failed both his Pride and his family. However, by resisting, he can be painted as heartless by allowing a loved one to be physically harmed."
Loved one. I should have chosen my next question with more tact, but it slipped. "It sort of outs him to the Pride, too, doesn't it?"
"It certainly verifies years of speculation. As reckless as today's kidnapping seems, Vale will absolutely benefit. Marcus will suffer the most."
"And Vale has it in for Marcus because Marcus helped capture Prentiss?"
"Yes."
I exhaled hard. "No one in this town ever does anything half-assed, do they?"
Astrid's mouth quirked. "No, they don't. Present company included."
"Does that mean you have a plan?"
"We find Vale, and we continue to deal with the goblin threat. The newest Queen targeting you is named Nessa?"
"Yeah." I'd given her a brief overview of my goblin encounter earlier. I retold it with more details, including a fun fact that had only now sunk in. "They were toying with me on the street. I had no chance against the six of them, not without better weapons. All they had to do was attack me en masse."
"Agreed."
"I want to go out hunting tonight, no mercy, like the old days."
Astrid only hesitated a few seconds before saying, "Who do you want to take?"
"Tybalt, Paul, Kyle, and Autumn for sure," I said without hesitation. Her help last month hunting down the Lupa pups had put her on the Mostly Trust list with Kyle. "And anyone else who wants to go. We used to hunt in threes, I'm thinking pairs will be more manageable. One human, one Therian."
"All right. I'll get that into the works."
"Thank you, Astrid."
At first, I hadn't known what to make of Astrid Dane. She was a small, powerful woman who looked to be in her mid-thirties, with the black hair and dark eyes of a Roman goddess and the personality of a rattlesnake. But she was incredibly smart, insanely loyal, and had a good heart when it mattered most. I could see what had drawn a teenage Tybalt to her—and what probably still drew the older versions of each to the other, even if they both seemed to actively deny it.