Heart Blade: Blade Hunt Chronicles Book One

by Juliana Spink Mills

  Ash started the motor and turned the truck around. The waves of dizziness started up again and he began to sweat as they reached the main road. Del gave him a worried glance.

  “Will you be okay to drive?”

  He gritted his teeth. “I’ve got this.”

  But before long he was forced to pull over at a gas station. He rested his head on the steering wheel, cradled in his arms. “Del, let’s just go back to the cabin. Please?”

  “Your father—”

  “Can wait,” he interrupted, clenching his teeth as a fresh wave of vertigo swept over him. “It can all wait. I can’t do this.” He didn’t add the words he was thinking. I don’t want to do this.

  Del was worrying at her lip with her teeth. “Fine. We go back to the cabin. Tomorrow, if you’re better, you drop me off on the way so I can hitch a ride out of here, and you drive home. And if you’re not better, I’ll find somewhere to call your dad from. Agreed?”

  “All right. Agreed.”

  “In that case, I’m going into the gas station store for aspirin. And milk.”

  She was trying to get a smile out of him, and he gave her a weak grin. “I’ll come with you. I’m not leaving you alone.”

  The rain came down in icy ripples. Ash parked over by the store, where the roof gave them some scant protection from the storm. They picked out a few things: soda, crackers, aspirin. Milk. When Ash paid, the elderly man at the counter eyed him up shrewdly, his gaze going to the bruise on Ash’s cheek. “Not looking so great, son. You all right?”

  “It’s just the flu,” Ash answered. He pointed at the medication on the counter. “That should clear it up.”

  “I guess.” The man hesitated, as though he wanted to say something else, but instead he just shook his head. “You should rest. Drink plenty of fluids. That’s what my wife always tells me.”

  Del smiled. “Your wife sounds very wise. Don’t worry, I’ll take care of him.” She took the bag and they left. The wind had picked up and the rain lashed out sideways. By the time they got in the truck they were both soaked. Ash was shivering again. He drove back to the cabin slowly, the storm and the fever distorting his vision. This time he parked the truck properly under the lean-to. Del retrieved the key and they made it, safe and dripping, into the kitchen.

  She ran to grab a towel. “Strip. Now. You need to get out of that wet stuff.”

  He was too sick and too tired to argue. He stripped down to his underwear and took the towel she handed him. Her cheeks were pink. She gave a discreet cough. “Um. I’m going to get our bags.”

  By the time Del got back with their stuff, he had the towel around his waist. She had stopped blushing. She dug through his stuff and handed him some sweats and a vaguely clean t-shirt. Then she grabbed her own stuff and went to dry off and change in the bathroom. By the time she returned, he’d settled back on the sofa.

  He watched her bustle around for a while, fussing over the damp floor, the groceries she’d retrieved from the back of the truck, their bags. She fetched him a glass of water and a couple of painkillers, and then returned to the kitchen. He could hear her running the tap and starting up the propane stove.

  “Del? What are you doing?” he asked.

  “Making you some tea.”

  “Will you come and sit down when you’re finished?”

  She appeared by the entrance to the kitchen alcove. “Yeah. It’s just, I feel so useless seeing you lying there. I need to do something.”

  “You are doing something. You’re here with me. That’s enough.”

  She disappeared and then walked back with two mugs of tea, the scent of peppermint and honey drifting in her wake. Del placed a mug beside him on the side table and sat.

  “Ash, you know this isn’t going anywhere, right? You and me? You know you’re going to have to go home eventually. And I’m going to have to disappear.”

  He took her hand and she let him. Suddenly it was all too much: the feel of her, the smell of her skin; the curve of her cheek and the silver glimmer of her one demon eye as she watched him. He wanted to kiss her again so badly it scared him. He could see his own desperation mirrored in her face, and he leaned toward her. But she put a hand on his mouth.

  “No,” she said. “We can’t let this happen. Because we can’t have it, we can’t keep it. We both know that. And if I let you kiss me now, it’ll be too hard to let go.”

  It hurt that she was right. It hurt more than the witch’s fire. It was a different sort of pain, but a deeper one. He kissed her fingers instead, where they pressed into his lips, and then turned away to drink his tea.

  “I think I should get some more sleep.”

  She patted her lap. “Lie down.”

  He set a cushion on her legs and lay with his head on her knees. She pulled a blanket over him, and he let his eyes drift shut. Outside, thunder crashed as the storm gathered momentum. Inside the cabin, it was safe and warm. Her hand stroked his hair and she began humming something, a pretty tune with a haunting lilt to the chorus.

  “That’s nice,” he whispered. “What is it?”

  “I don’t know,” she answered. “Maybe something from my past, my human life.”

  “It sounds old.”

  “It does.” She hesitated, as though she had something to add. But in the end she just went back to stroking his hair. “Get some sleep.”

  Ash let go and a wave of exhaustion carried him away.

  Chapter Thirty

  Jude

  Jude Raven closed the door of the games room before answering his cell phone. “They what? Well, I can’t help that. I stuck to my end of the bargain. I gave you their location. As far as I’m concerned, I did my part.”

  “Your part? Elias is dead!” the witch shouted. Jude’s lip twitched in amusement. It was good to hear the witch’s cool façade cracking. Everyone cracked at some point.

  “I’m sorry for your loss. I fail to see why it concerns me,” he told her.

  “How do I know you didn’t set me up?”

  “I have no interest in destroying your coven. I have an agreement with the Baroness.”

  “Yes, and I’d like to know exactly what that agreement is,” the witch answered suspiciously.

  “Feel free to ask her,” Jude answered pleasantly. There was a silence on the other end of the line. And then the witch hung up abruptly. Jude shook his head. This was why he didn’t like to deal with underlings. Livia Reis, now, she was a force to be reckoned with. No wonder her only rival at Court was Shade. Even the High Baron himself was nowhere near as powerful. He’d had an interesting meeting with the Baroness a while back.

  “Get me leverage over Shade,” Livia had said. “Name your price.”

  “All I want is your support,” he’d answered.

  “For what?”

  “You’ll know when the time comes,” had been his reply. She hadn’t liked it, but she’d struck the deal. She’d underestimated him, of course. People always did.

  He wondered if Adeline and the Scion’s boy had returned to the cabin. He hadn’t imagined they’d get away from the witches. Adeline was just a useful pawn he’d been willing to sacrifice for the long game. But now he could use her to draw Diana out instead. He found the cabin on his satellite map and zoomed in. There. The end of the stolen truck stuck out from the ramshackle garage at the back of the house.

  Moments later, Theo walked in. Jude minimized the map. “Do you want something, Hunter?” he asked, politely.

  Theo set his hands on the Ping-Pong table, leaning right in so his face hung right over Jude’s workspace. Jude didn’t react. That’s what you did with the big predators: you kept calm and stayed still.

  “Do I want something?” Theo’s voice rang out. “Of course I want something. I want results, that’s what I want. I want the Pietrowicz girl, and soon. That should prove to the Lady that I can lead this pack, even with Diana’s defiance. And I want Adeline, too. That just might get Diana to crawl out from whatever rock she’s hiding und
er. Where’s Camille, anyway? Useless!”

  Jude remained impassive. “I should have something for you soon.”

  Theo gave him one last glare. “See that you do.” He stalked out of the room, slamming the door behind him. Jude grinned. Theo had been stressed out ever since Diana took off. His usual Mr. Sunshine persona had been smashed to bits as he strode around berating the pack. Jude was fine with that. The more Theo unsettled the other demons, the quicker he played into Jude’s hands.

  Of course, he had figured Theo out years ago. He was surprised Diana hadn’t. Too trusting, that one. Too easily attached to others. She should have listened when Shade talked, really listened. And she should have listened even harder to what Shade left unsaid. Jude was a good listener.

  “Diana, Diana,” he muttered, shaking his head. “You couldn’t just die when you were supposed to?” It had been a shame to get rid of her. She was clever, and fair. But Jude had no intention of staying in anyone’s shadow. Plus, baiting Theo and leading him along had been so easy, it would have been a waste not to use him.

  Theodore Raven was deliciously pliable. Jude had been discreetly suggesting the takeover for years. Now he had every intention of finishing the game while the pack was still in upheaval.

  He turned back to his laptops. Each ran a different search. One held the rental car trail. On another, he was tracking traffic cameras. The third displayed emails.

  He spared a quick glance toward the door, making sure it was shut. Outside, savage sheets of rain lashed against the windows. He minimized his email and pulled up the banking info he was working on. Over the past six months he had broken into the account of every single pack member. Most demons had decades, centuries even, of investments carefully set aside. It was one of the first things you learned when you were Gifted: demon economy 101. There were infinite ways to steal, lie, and threaten your way into a small personal fortune. Also, many pack members worked within Shade’s lucrative criminal empire. The drug operations alone were worth about as much as a small country. Jude himself owned a cool million already, even though he was one of Shade’s youngest.

  Now he carefully programmed the last few withdrawal instructions. All that time spent preparing the groundwork was finally going to pay off. Jude grinned at the screen, one heel bouncing against the floor. He felt a heady rush of elation. The big day was finally here.

  At midnight, the accounts of every single member of the East Coast Hunt — barring Shade’s alone — would quietly empty into a chain of transactions that led to his own offshore account. If things didn’t work out, he could replace it in an instant. Or keep it, and blame the hack on the Guild. He hadn’t yet decided which option would be Plan B.

  “Calm down,” he muttered to himself, stilling his foot on the floor. Excitement led to mistakes. He cracked his knuckles and went back to work.

  It was fun being the overlooked one in the pack. He knew that by demon standards he was unremarkable. He was slender, and of average height. He had gray eyes. And dark blond hair that bordered on brown in tone. Hardly outstanding. You could consider it a curse. Or you could consider it a blessing, depending on how you saw it.

  Jude liked to count it as a blessing.

  Of course, he was well aware why Shade had chosen him. Once, not long after joining the pack, he’d tracked down his human identity. DNA was such a handy tool in the digital age. He’d been impressed. Early graduation from high school, halfway through a Master’s degree in Computer Science when he’d been arrested for hacking federal accounts at the age of seventeen, and a brief stint under house arrest until he’d “disappeared” a week before his eighteenth birthday.

  In one of his few human memories, Shade sat by his bedside. “I have a proposition for you,” she’d said. And then she’d held a pillow over his face until he stopped breathing. “You’ll bring my pack into the new millennium,” she’d told him later, after she’d Gifted him. And he’d do it, too. But he’d do it his own way. He grinned again at the computer screen as he typed in the last withdrawal commands.

  Now, if only he could get hold of Diana, he had a chance of getting rid of both her and Theo in one clean sweep. Because the truth was, he already had a location for both Adeline and the priest. The priest thought he was so clever with his little hidey-hole in the woods. But Jude had found the property, completely by chance, a year ago while he was running that little side investigation on Guild safe houses.

  As for Adeline… Jude allowed himself a little smirk of satisfaction. Recruiting Jordan Bradford from among the sentinels had been a stroke of genius. Jordan had a chip on his shoulder the size of a boulder, and it hadn’t taken long to find out what he wanted. He wanted the same thing Jude himself did: a place at the table. At first, Jude had let Jordan think he was the one in control. The all-powerful sentinel, with a demon informer on a short leash. “All Scions have their spies,” Jude had said at the time. “Let me be your first. You’ll build up your own network and become invaluable to your Chapter.”

  And then Adeline had stumbled straight into Jordan and his cousin. Unplanned, unimagined, and absolutely perfect. “This is your chance,” Jude had told him after the Scion’s boy had run off with Adeline. “This will discredit your cousin completely. Now think, Jordan. Where did he go?”

  Jordan’s tip about the cabin had been a hot one, and easy to confirm. Military satellites were such handy things for finding people, once you’d narrowed the search grid. But Jude had his own agenda, and leading Theo by the hand to either target wasn’t on it. The timing had to be perfect.

  “Come on, Diana, take the bait. Check your voicemail!” he muttered. All he needed was for her to take a break from running and make one lousy little call.

  It was late at night by the time Diana rang her voicemail. An alert popped up on one of his screens, and he quickly checked her number. She was calling from a cell registered to a Herbert Spencer. Stolen, no doubt. He picked up one of his own phones, a burner, and walked out into the cool dark to call Mr. Spencer’s number. The rain had softened to a drizzle, though distant flashes of lightning and the wind that whipped around his legs promised renewed fury later.

  “Diana? Jude here. I have a message for you.” There was silence on the other end. Jude spoke quickly. “Wait! Don’t hang up. Theo has no idea I’m contacting you.”

  “All right. What is it?” She was curt, her voice tense.

  “I’ve found Adeline.”

  Another silence, shorter this time. “Where is she? Does Theo know?”

  Jude smiled. Come on, little fly, into my web. “He doesn’t know yet,” he said, his voice low, conspiratorial. “She’s close. Between here and Hartford. I’m texting you the GPS coordinates right now. Hang on to the phone in case you need to reach me, okay?”

  “Is she safe?” she asked, so quiet it was barely a whisper.

  “Yes. She’s with the Scion’s son.”

  Diana hung up without another word. Jude typed in the coordinates and sent them to her.

  Now that he had Diana’s number, it was easy to pinpoint her location. She was moving fast; she must have stolen a car. Probably the unfortunate Mr. Spencer’s. She was close to the young Raven, maybe twenty minutes away.

  Just before midnight, Diana’s cell signal merged with the cabin’s location. When it did, he wrote down the coordinates on a piece of paper and shut down his laptops, after wiping all history of his financial dealings. Then he knocked on Theo’s door, keeping his voice low and respectful.

  “Hunter? Sorry to wake you, but I found Diana. With all the trouble she’s caused, I thought you might like to take care of this personally, before the pack awakens.” Gently does it, he told himself. Don’t overdo it, don’t let him feel the push. Theo opened the door and took the paper Jude held out, looking unresolved.

  “She’s not far,” said Jude. “Maybe twenty, twenty-five minutes by car. You could finish her off before anyone even stirs.”

  Theo was still wavering. Probably imagining some gran
d, public execution. Jude chuckled, painting his voice with just the right hint of excitement. “I can’t wait to see their faces when you announce the news over breakfast. The dark hunt. The last battle in the dead of the night. The traitor’s death.”

  Theo finally took the bait, eyes gleaming in anticipation. “Yes, I can picture it. It will be a story worth telling. And then no one will contest my leadership. Ah, I’ll enjoy making her suffer.” Theo was talking to himself now, and he looked at Jude and blinked as though he’d forgotten he was there. “And the other matter? The priest?”

  “Working on it. I should have something for you by the time you get back.”

  “Make sure you do. Oh, and Jude? Keep this to yourself. I want to present it as a done deed. I’ll bring back the shards of her soul blade for the pack.”

  “As you wish, Hunter.” Jude bowed formally as the door shut in his face.

  It wasn’t long before he heard Theo’s souped-up SUV roaring off down the driveway. He glanced at his watch: midnight. That silence? It was the sound of ninety-two bank accounts emptying into his very deep and anonymous pocket. Not just the demons in the lodge, but every half-demon pledged to the East Coast Hunt. Now for the next phase of his plan.

  He made sure he still had the direct number for the police department programmed into his burner phone. It was the police station closest to Adeline’s location. He had a little surprise in store for Theo. It had taken him all of ten minutes to turn the Hunter into one of the FBI’s most-wanted felons. He’d enjoyed every second of it.

  Jude activated the general call button on the lodge speaker system. As the pack of sleep-befuddled demons poured into the dining hall, he met them, standing on a table for visibility.

  “Our new pack leader has left on a Hunt of his own, tracking down the blood traitor Diana. He left me orders that if the Pietrowicz girl was found, we should proceed without him. He will meet us there. The Hunt feeds tonight, my brothers and sisters.”

  A wave of cheering followed Jude out the door, and he rode that wave all the way to the parking lot. He watched the excited faces as they milled around, unquestioning, waiting for his next orders, and thought to himself, Mine, all mine.