by Sierra Dean
“No shit,” I replied.
Holden and Desmond both thought I was commenting on Desmond’s explanation, and I let them go right on thinking it. Better that than both of them staring at me like a freak for talking to my inner beast.
“Are you okay?” Holden asked. “Do we need to…subdue you?”
My wolf growled at him, but her warning came out of my throat, and I had to admit it sounded pretty scary even from human lips. I’d like to see him try.
“N-no,” I stammered. “It’ll be fine. Just give me a second.”
“Now do you see why we can’t have you with us?” Holden said to Desmond. “Imagine if this happened with the wrong people around? How can we explain one of our Tribunal leaders snapping at people as if she were a rabid dog?”
My wolf growled again. She was less than thrilled by Holden’s choice of words.
“You’re the one pissing her off now, bloodsucker.” Desmond crossed his arms and sneered at Holden, proving the vampire brought out the worst in him. “Maybe you shouldn’t be going either.”
“You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”
“Oh my God, would the two of you please shut up and give me a second?” I covered my ears with both hands and thought soothing, happy thoughts. Things a wolf might enjoy. Frolicking through meadows. Chasing fluffy bunnies. Anything to distract her from the maelstrom of testosterone across the room.
They zipped their lips, but the loaded glares kept zinging back and forth like invisible bullets. I stepped between them, taking the packed Coach weekend bag out of Holden’s hand and turning my back to him so I could face Desmond.
“Des, I love you.” I cupped his warm chin, scratching his stubble until I got a grin out of him. Leaning in close, I planted a kiss on his lips and on each corner of his mouth. “I want you to come. I wish you were with me all the time, I hope you know that.”
He offered a tight smile, telling me he didn’t completely believe what I was telling him. “Okay,” he said, which wasn’t the same as a yes.
“And when I come back, I promise I won’t leave your side again for months.”
Holden scoffed audibly behind me.
“Sure,” Desmond replied. Apparently Holden’s dismissive noise was more credible than my actual assurances. Who could blame him, though? It’s not like I’d been the most reliable girlfriend in history.
I’d almost married someone else.
“At least she told you she was leaving this time,” Holden offered.
Helpful.
Chapter Eight
“No.” I crossed my arms and gave Ingrid a venomous glare, taking several steps away from the cargo hold of the small jet.
Heat from the running engines added to the sweaty summer air, making me extra hot, but just one glance inside the cargo area was all it took to fill me with cold dread.
Holden was sitting on the edge of the space, his legs dangling down and an all-too-bemused expression on his face. He seemed to take great pleasure in seeing me uneasy.
“I don’t understand the problem,” Ingrid said, as humorless as a schoolteacher speaking to an insolent child.
“You can’t lock me in the trunk.”
Sig’s daytime servant sighed, rolling her eyes, and cast a help me glance upwards. She was built like a farm girl, sturdy even in her small stature, and although she was human she projected a clear don’t mess with me vibe to all the vampires she encountered. Her long straw-blonde hair was in pigtails, making her look like a teenager. A seven-hundred-year-old teenager who was used to getting her way.
And she currently expected me to listen to her directions.
The cargo hold was in the tail of the plane, accessible through a pitifully small door. Given the slight size of the jet there wasn’t a lot of need for a larger compartment. But it was big enough for two coffins.
Not. Fucking. Happening.
I didn’t care what Sig was expecting from me, I wasn’t climbing into a coffin.
“No.”
Standing on the tarmac at Teterboro Airport in New Jersey might not have been the most ideal place to have an argument about being shipped in a coffin, but we’d been left on our own for the time being, and I was assured our human pilot was in the know. The benefit of a private jet was we could avoid a larger airport and a lot of the questions that went along with transporting coffins.
Coffins I would not be traveling in.
“This isn’t optional.” Ingrid tapped the metal ladder leading up to the cargo hold.
“Why can’t we lightproof the interior?”
“That would be all well and fine, but how would we get you off the plane in Los Angeles? In daylight?”
I looked from Ingrid to Holden, and my vampire wasn’t helping. “It’s not so bad,” he told me.
“You sleep in a queen-sized bed with Egyptian cotton sheets. What the fuck do you know about being in a coffin?”
His cheeky smile faltered. “I know what it’s like to wake up in one and claw your way out, not knowing where you are.” His mouth formed a thin line, and he appeared paler than usual.
“Oh, Holden, I didn’t—”
“You couldn’t have known.”
I was familiar with Holden’s sire, Rebecca. She seemed too evolved to bury her new vampire children in the ground, but what did I know? One of her spawn had turned into a psycho, though, so perhaps she needed to revisit her methods. A fifty-fifty ratio between functional and fucked up wasn’t the best track record.
“I’m sorry,” I said, feeling it was important for me to say, though I wasn’t sure if I was sorry for what I’d said or about what had happened to him.
“It’s fine.”
“Excellent. Wonderful. Glad we’ve all shared this lovely, touching moment, but can you please get up there?” Ingrid grabbed me by the elbow and pulled me towards the ladder. She was surprisingly strong for a mere mortal thanks to the strength she borrowed from Sig.
“I—”
“If you think by my saying please I’m opening the floor to further discussion, you’re sorely mistaken.”
“I’m not used to traveling in the same space as my luggage.”
“Funny,” Holden said. “With someone who carries around as much baggage as you, I’d figure you’d be used to having it with you wherever you went.”
“Ha-fucking-ha.” But his rejoinder made any other arguments I had for Ingrid die on my lips. “I want to state, for the record, I don’t like this plan.”
“You have. Many times. And there’s no record, just a very annoyed aid to the Tribunal leader. So get up there.” She released my arm and tapped the ladder again.
“Okay. Fine.”
Holden twisted backwards into the hold to make room for me, and once inside we were forced to crouch low in the narrow space with barely enough room for our bags, coffins and bodies. If we weren’t going into the metal boxes, it would be impossible to lie down.
“Why are you being so difficult about this?” he asked, once we were alone. “You’ve traveled in worse.”
“Not willingly.”
His strained expression softened, and he placed a cool hand under my chin, tilting my face up to better look at me. “You seem scared,” he whispered.
“I am scared,” I confessed, relieved to say the words out loud.
“What has the big bad vampire hunter spooked?” He shifted closer so his knees framed mine and he was able to take both my hands in his. “You can’t actually be afraid of being in there.”
He raised both eyebrows when I swallowed hard. “Maybe.”
Holden squeezed my hand but barely succeeded in suppressing a snort.
“It’s not funny.” I swatted his hands away.
“What’s the big deal?”
I knocked on the top of the metal casket, and it bonged in response, the echo from within making the pit of nerves in my gut tighten like a fist. “It’s a six-hour flight from New York to Los Angeles. Do you remember what happened to me in an elevator? Holden, I c
an’t even take the subway.”
His quiet snickering stopped. Vampires didn’t mind small spaces as a matter of survival. Most of them didn’t spend their daylight hours in a coffin. It was passé now, considering how many options there were to keep the sun out. But as part of the evolutionary process, they didn’t tend to be upset by cramped quarters.
Werewolves, on the other hand, weren’t so awesome with being cooped up. They liked to run and be out in the open. Being crammed into a tight metal box was not the same as being out in the open.
Holden’s grasp on my phobia took root, and he brushed a strand of hair behind my ear, guiding me gently toward the coffin until we were both sitting on it. We still had to hunch down because of the low ceiling, but at least we weren’t crouched on the floor anymore.
“Okay, I know you’re freaked out, but consider this—sunrise is in less than an hour.”
“Yeah.”
“And once the sun comes up, you’re out. Totally out. You won’t have to worry about anything because you won’t be conscious.”
He had a point, but there was something he was missing. “What about the hour before the sun goes down?”
“Secret, I’m going to give you some age-old vampire wisdom to get you through that part.”
“I’m all ears.”
“Suck it up.”
Chapter Nine
A warm breeze roused me, calling for me to open my eyes. I cracked my eyelids and blinked back tears from the searing too-bright light of day.
My bare skin was hot, absorbing the sunshine and making me feel cozier than if I’d been wrapped in a dozen sweaters. I might not get cold often, but I still liked being warm.
I raised the brim of my obnoxiously large sun hat and glanced around, trying not to look directly at the pool. Given the brightness of the day and how still the water was, it would have been like staring into a mirror of the sun.
If my dreams were going to put me poolside in a tropical paradise, couldn’t they at least dim the lighting a little?
“Here,” said a soft, female voice. A pair of oversized sunglasses were thrust into my hand, and I accepted them, blocking out some of the glare.
When I turned to my left to see who my savior was, my heart stopped.
Brigit Stewart smiled back at me, and even in a dream it was painful to see her, especially looking so vital and gorgeous. She wasn’t as pale as I remembered her—though she’d still been stunning with her alabaster vampire skin. Now she was golden, like she had been when we first met, and her hair had sun-kissed highlights running through it.
This was the human version of Brigit, the version she could have been if Peyton hadn’t turned her to make a point to me.
Vampire or human, it didn’t matter. Seeing her thrilled and destroyed me all at the same time.
“Bri…” I couldn’t figure out what to say to her.
My dreams were a strange place to begin with, which made this that much more difficult. In the past, she’d used our connection—me as her patron, she as my ward—to communicate with one another on a subconscious level.
For a moment I wanted to believe this was that kind of interaction. Somehow I had been wrong about her death, and she’d managed a miraculous recovery. Surely that’s what this meant. It couldn’t be my psyche playing cruel tricks on me.
“You look sad. Aren’t you happy to see me?” She practically oozed warmth, her smile drawing me in.
Tears stung the corner of my eyes, threatening to fall, but I blinked them back, worried she might vanish if I turned away for a second.
“Are you real?”
“I don’t know how to answer that. I’m here, aren’t I? So I guess I’m real enough.”
“Are you alive?” I was trying to work around the elusive, often-aggravating dialogue of a dream.
“I haven’t been alive for a long time.”
“You know what I mean.”
“Do you know what you mean?”
My dreams were a fucking nightmare sometimes.
I reached out, hoping by touching her I could get a feel for what was happening. If this was a dream and not some communication from beyond the grave, I needed to know.
But if she was really there, I needed to find a way to bring her back with me. Though I understood the impossibility of that, I was still desperate to try.
When I touched her hand, her fingers turned gray and crumbled apart into dust. Her arm followed suit, caught on the breeze, and bits of her drifted onto the surface of the water then sank out of sight.
“Oh. Look what you’ve done,” she said, her voice never losing its cheerful quality.
I jerked back my hand in horror, hoping it would stop, but she continued to dissolve in front of my eyes.
“I’m so sorry.” Now the tears fell, and there was no stopping them. I wasn’t crying for the loss of her in the dream, but rather the restored knowledge she was gone forever from my real life.
“I was supposed to tell you something.” Her arm dropped away, and her chest began to crumble, exposing bits of rib before they too became ashes.
“Tell me.” I wiped away pink tears with the heel of my hand.
“The betrayal is not what you think.”
“The…betrayal? What betrayal?”
“Sometimes you misplace your trust, but then you find it again.”
“Brigit, what are you talking about?”
“You look really pretty in red,” she commented, and her gaze rested on my hands.
Instead of being covered in her debris, my arms were coated with thick blood, all the way up to my elbows, dripping down in a puddle around my feet.
“Don’t worry,” she whispered. “Someone else will clean up your mess.”
When I woke up, I was still in the box.
My heart seized as I stared into the black interior of the coffin, and in defiance of all logic I pushed out, scrambling against the velvet walls. I couldn’t stretch my arms fully in any given direction, and each time I tried to find purchase on something my hands slid off.
So, of course, I attempted to sit up.
My head thumped the roof, and I broke out in a cold sweat. Why had I let Ingrid talk me into traveling this way? How had Holden been so cavalier about the whole thing? As if being inside a coffin was no big deal.
Considering how many people wanted me dead, I’d given them a perfect opportunity to come right to me. And now what? I was stuck in the coffin, unable to tell where I was or who was waiting outside. What if I’d been buried alive?
Just the thought of it made my panic swell, adrenaline coursing through me as I clawed at the velvet and pounded my fists into the metal underneath.
“Let me out,” I screamed, my voice raspy with terror.
Something bumped against the coffin, and I went still, straining to hear what was going on. The lid creaked and lifted, filling the small space with an impossible amount of light. I squinted at first—momentarily blinded—but once I realized I had been released, I scrambled out of the coffin and shot to the other side of the room.
A boy who appeared to be no older than twelve or thirteen years old assessed me with a quizzical expression, fingering the tattered lining of the casket and nibbling at his lip with a tiny fang.
“Madam, are you quite all right?” he asked, his voice soft and carrying a French accent. “You seem to have destroyed your chamber.”
I swiped my arm across my brow to keep the sweat in check, and my gaze darted around the unfamiliar room. No offense to the kid, but a small French boy wasn’t going to put me at ease. Alexandre Peyton looked seventeen at most, and his angelic face made him very misleading. This stranger could easily be one of Peyton’s minions.
“Where’s Holden?”
The room we were in was lovely. Modern without being too cold, elegant without being too stuffy. The walls were painted a warm gray, and the furniture was accented in shades of violet and charcoal. My coffin was placed near a king-sized bed, and the rest of the room was a
suite built to invite comfort. Large chairs and couches were set in front of a slate fireplace, and beyond that was another bedroom, where I could see a coffin identical to my own.
Holden’s coffin.
The lid was open, but there was no sign of the vampire sentry anywhere, so I repeated my question. “Where is he?” When the boy didn’t answer straightaway, I switched into the French my grandmere had drilled into me as a child. “Où et Holden?”
I must not have butchered the pronunciation too badly because the boy’s smile broadened, and he began chattering away in mile-a-minute Parisian French. My grandmere was Creole, and I’d been raised in the Canadian prairie. The French I spoke was a bastardization of Quebecois and Bayou. It certainly wasn’t the soft, eloquent language this kid had perfected over a century or more.
“Désolé, mais mon français n’est pas très bon. Pouvez-vous parler un peu plus lentement, s’il vous plait?” I hoped he wouldn’t be offended I’d spoken to him in French and was now asking him to slow down.
He frowned but appeared more disappointed than irritated.
“Your accent is atrocious,” he commented.
“Isn’t it though?” I offered him a halfhearted smile. My heart was pounding, and he would definitely be able to hear it. So much for playing down my mortal side.
“How interesting.” He tilted his head to one side, eyes narrowing, and looked at me as if I were a piece of art he was having trouble capturing the meaning of. “We were told you were…unique, but I suppose I didn’t believe it until now.”
Perhaps I should have taken his fascination as a compliment, but him gawking at me just added to my nervousness. I still didn’t know where I was, or who he was. The presence of Holden’s coffin calmed me slightly, but not as much as having the actual vampire present would.
“Who are you?” I asked, trying a different tactic since he still hadn’t told me his name.
“Oh! Mon dieu, my apologies Tribunal Leader McQueen, I have forgotten my place entirely.” He did a half bow, holding his hands at the small of his back. His shoulder-length brown curls tumbled forward to cover his face briefly, and when he righted himself, I looked at his eyes. They were a lovely color of green, not the solid black of a vampire itching to feed. “My name is Maxime.”