Josh pursed his lips and ran a hand through his tousled hair as he looked down at the floor. The longer he thought, the tighter his expression became. He didn’t have an answer, and I couldn’t tell him anything more without putting his life at risk.
I only just stopped myself from reaching down and flipping his coffee table across the room. Control, I thought, taking a slow, ragged breath. At the bottom of my exhale, I noticed on the table the copy of the drawing I’d seen there the other day, a sketch of three mystical books. A memory nagged at me.
“Is she okay?” Josh asked, distracting me. His voice was thick with concern.
I nodded, drawing out my phone. “She won’t return my calls.” I dialed once more. A few rings later, it went to voice mail.
“She’s upset,” Josh said. “Eventually she’ll calm down and she’ll understand it wasn’t intentional. If she can describe what she experienced ….” His voice trailed off under my glare. Rather than challenge me, he retrieved his phone from an end table and called her.
I watched with anticipation as he waited through the rings. After a moment, I knew she wouldn’t answer him, either. She’d assume he was calling on my behalf. At the moment, I doubted she’d talk to anyone. Judging by the anxious look on his face, I knew I was right.
“Go to her,” I said as Josh pocketed his phone.
“I will.”
“Now,” I insisted.
He frowned. “She’s upset,” he said carefully. “If I show up now, or the rest of the pack just happens to converge on her, she’ll know it’s you trying to smother her. Give her some time and space to process what happened.”
“Then I’ll go myself.”
He stepped in front of me as I walked toward the front door, reaching out to grip my arm. I instinctively flinched from his touch, drawing a wide-eyed look of surprise and hurt from my brother, until he remembered why and took a step back. I took one more deep but ragged breath. He was right. Confronting Sky was only going to drive her further away. In my emotional state, it was also dangerous, but I couldn’t just wait for her to confront me about what had happened. I’d nearly killed her. I needed her to understand that it was an accident. I couldn’t force her to talk to me, but I couldn’t just wait for her, either.
Without meeting Josh’s gaze, I said in a strained voice, “Go to her when you think it is appropriate.”
He nodded. “In the meantime, I’ll keep working on a solution for you.”
I was halfway to the door when he said with an accusatory tone, “It would help if you told me everything you know about the magic.”
I hesitated in stride, but only for a moment before I walked out the door without answering him.
As I approached my BMW, I felt a sudden dizziness. I paused, steadying myself, but the moment quickly passed. As I reached for the car door, I saw a man in a cheap blue suit staring at me from the copse of trees across the street from Josh’s driveway. Blood covered the chest of his white dress shirt, but he seemed unaffected as he stared at me.
“Are you in need of assistance?” I called to him.
He didn’t answer.
First glancing about for signs of trouble, I walked toward the man, then stopped in the middle of the street as I recognized Caroline’s father, Dennis.
Impossible.
“Was it worth it?” he asked from the side of his mouth, his dark glare unblinking.
Had Michaela lied? Had Dennis escaped? Both seemed unlikely. Something about him wasn’t right. I sniffed the air, expecting the smells of cheap booze, cologne, and blood, but found only the scent of pine trees and recently cut grass. As I started toward him, he turned and walked into the copse. By the time I reached the trees, he’d disappeared from sight. I burrowed through the dense foliage trying to pick up his scent, which was inexplicably absent.
Had I imagined him? I slowly massaged the stress from my temples, then returned to my BMW.
I sighed in relief as I turned onto the winding, secondary road that led to the pack’s retreat. We kept a number of homes in various locations, but the retreat was our primary gathering place. In times of trouble, it was our fortress.
After parking in one of my reserved spots in the garage—leaving my M6 next to my white Audi R8—I walked inside, intending to change and hit the basement gym when Sebastian called me into his office. Winter and Gavin were already there. I closed the door behind me and waited, ignoring his perpetual scowl.
After a nod from Sebastian, Gavin laid three photographs on the end of the Alpha’s desk and gestured to them. His gray eyes watched me closely as I stepped forward to examine the images of three young women, each of them eerily similar to Sky in appearance, with oval faces, full lips, and wavy mahogany hair. All three of them were dead. Two of the photos I’d seen before, but the third was new. My jaw clenched as I resisted the urge to punch my fist through a wall. It wouldn’t be the first or the last part of the house to suffer from all-too-common violent outbursts. A portion of the pack’s annual budget was set aside for unanticipated structural repair and furniture replacement, but Sebastian’s office was out-of-bounds. He’d never declared it so, but the pack had made it an unwritten rule.
“The Lost One has killed another one,” Gavin said heavily, referring to the vampire Quell. “He’s a threat. I think we should treat him as one.”
Kill Quell, you mean. Since they’d first met, he and Sky had shared an inexplicable bond. When Ethos had staked Quell a few months ago, Sky had intervened, feeding him with her own blood to stop the reversion. It shouldn’t have worked. For as far back as our histories remembered, were-animal blood had never been able to sustain vampires, but somehow she was an exception. I understood she felt a sense of obligation to him, but were-animals didn’t feed vampires.
The thought of her presenting her neck to him sickened me. I did my best to swallow my anger. I’d come to the retreat to set my temper aside and regroup. The last thing I wanted was another of her problems to solve. Killing Quell would be the simplest solution, assuming Demetrius didn’t take offense and start a war. It would be one more thing Sky would never forgive me for, one more time I’d been forced to save her.
“I agree,” I said, surprising Gavin. I explained to Sebastian, “He is unable to control himself, and he’s escalating.” Murderers always followed a path of progression, their crimes growing bolder and more gruesome. Natural killers, vampires were amoral and driven by a powerful bloodlust, but Quell was unique. From the moment of his creation, he’d seen himself as being above feeding on humans, or perhaps he’d simply despised them. Instead of indulging his natural instincts, he’d chosen instead to feed from the Hidacus, a rare plant with a bloodlike juice—until Michaela had destroyed his plants and forbidden him from obtaining another.
While the plant had offered sustenance, it had only been through a sheer act of will that he’d suppressed his bloodlust. But with his plants destroyed, he’d had no choice. When he fed at all, he’d often killed his victims—except when he’d fed from Sky. Somehow she’d remained immune to his bloodlust, for the moment at least. So of course she’d volunteered to become his food source, predictably to save others. After a warning from Sebastian, she’d tried to help Quell find a volunteer he could feed from without killing. So far, she was oh-and-three. Had Dr. Baker not intervened, there would’ve been a fourth victim.
He was no longer just Sky’s problem. He was the pack’s problem. We couldn’t have a vampire feeding on one of our own, and we couldn’t have him wantonly killing humans, either. Despite their cruelty, the vampires were aware of the risks of exposure and did their best to hide their activities. Most of the time they fed from the members of their garden—human volunteers who for some deranged reason gained satisfaction by submitting to the vampires. Other victims were often left dazed, confused, and weak from blood loss, but alive.
The only reason Quell could stop himself from killing Sky was that he claimed to love her. I stifled a chuckle. Vampires approximated love, a we
ak semblance of a remembered emotion that belonged to their former lives. At least his claims of love were protecting her, for the moment.
I scowled at the photos. Eventually, look-alikes weren’t going to be enough for him.
“Why should we solve Demetrius’s problems for him?” Winter said.
Gavin bristled. “If he can’t control his own, it’s up to us. It wouldn’t be the first time we’ve put down a rabid vamp.”
Sebastian sighed, then looked to me. “Sky needs to learn to clean up her own messes.”
Over the last two years, Sky’d become a capable fighter, proving herself on the field of battle against Ethos, but she wasn’t prepared for a one-on-one fight with an experienced vampire. As Demetrius had once pointed out, Quell’s distaste for human blood had nothing to do with the idealization of humans. On the contrary, he despised them.
“He’ll kill her,” I stated.
Winter shrugged. “If we kill him for her, she’ll just find another vamp, or maybe a stray fae, to take in.”
“She won’t learn anything if she’s dead,” Gavin added.
Sebastian considered for a moment before announcing his decision. “So far, each of us have survived our mistakes, but we’ve known many were-animals who haven’t. We’ll do what we can to help Sky, but this situation is her creation. Whether or not she survives to learn from the experience is up to her.”
Until she realized that Quell was already dead, she was in danger. She was stubborn, and she believed that there was something redeemable in him. It wasn’t in her nature to give up and turn her back on someone she cared about, even a vampire.
I suppressed a growl as I left Sebastian’s office. I’d already failed Sky twice in less than twenty-four hours. While I couldn’t directly ignore Sebastian’s instruction and proactively kill Quell, I could put someone close enough to Sky to intervene when he finally broke and tried to kill her. If we killed him in the act, there would be no retaliation from the vamps.
I spent the next few hours working out my frustrations in the retreat’s gym, interrupted more often than I cared to admit by glances at my phone. At this point, I’d settle for an angry text telling me Sky never wanted to speak to me again. Anything was better than silence. On several occasions, I found myself dialing her number and disconnected before the call went through.
Josh was right, I reminded myself. Pressing her would only make her angrier. Eventually she would respond to him, if not me. I just needed to be patient.
I alternated between cardio and weights until I exhausted myself. After a shower and a meal, I went to work reviewing the various intelligence reports that had come in over the last week. We kept tabs on a number of potential problems, most of which would likely never materialize, but it paid to be proactive. When that was done, I remotely logged in to my work files and buried myself in contracts until I finally tired enough to sleep.
CHAPTER 5
Friday morning, I woke at sunrise and checked my phone. Still no word from Sky. After another long workout, I showered and dressed for work. Once in my Audi, I started the engine, but remained parked in the garage as I stared at my phone in the dash holder. Calling her was as much of a mistake now as it had been the previous day. Even if she answered, I couldn’t expect much; it was too soon for forgiveness, but she might at least hear my explanation. After several minutes of internal debate, it occurred to me that she might answer a number she didn’t recognize as mine. I retrieved a burner phone from the glove box, the one designated for Webster Fields. She didn’t answer that number, either.
Irritated, I returned the burner to the glove box. On my own phone, I opened the tracking app Stacy, my legal assistant and part-time hacker, had installed for me. A stealth version of the same program was running in the background on Sky’s phone; as long as it was on and able to obtain a signal, I could track her location. After a moment, a street-level map appeared with a blinking blue icon. Not recognizing the neighborhood, I zoomed out until I realized that she wasn’t in Chicago. She was in Virginia. My stomach balled in worry as I recognized the small, historic town. I’d driven through it a few months ago, just before Ethos had launched his attack on the pack; the Nunes family lived just a few miles outside of town—Sky’s family, the one I’d warned to never contact her. I guess they didn’t get the message.
Zooming back to the street view, I saw Sky was in a coffee shop, which gave me some relief. If she was with the family, she was at least in a public place, for the moment.
From my brief encounter with them, I doubted their intentions toward Sky were altruistic. They’d known who and what I was, and what I’d do to them if they contacted her. The question was, what did they want from her that they felt was worth my wrath and the enmity of the Midwest Pack? It could be the Aufero, but I doubted they’d risk contacting Sky without doing enough research to know that it was in Marcia’s hands.
What else does she mean to them?
Closing my eyes, I relived every word, every visual detail from my previous visit with the family until I remembered Senna, the young woman who looked so much like Sky, sweeping a pair of old books from the family’s dining room table. I’d barely had a chance to notice the runes and ancient symbols on the covers, but the titling had been unique. I’d seen those books recently, in a drawing on my brother’s coffee table.
I called Josh, who waited several rings to answer. I was sure he did that to aggravate me.
“I haven’t talked to her yet,” he greeted with an annoyed tone.
“That drawing I saw on your coffee table. What is it?”
“What does that have to do with anything?”
“What. Is it?”
“I’ve been researching the Clostra.”
I let my head slowly drift back against the seat. The Clostra was a set of three powerful spell books. Together, they were one of the protected objects.
Josh continued, “The drawings are a representation of the covers, but I’ve no way to know if they’re accurate.”
I swallowed hard before answering. “Pretty damn close. I’ve seen two of them.”
“Ethan, where—”
“There’s no time to explain,” I said, massaging the stress from my forehead with the fingers of one hand as I held the phone to my ear. “We’re leaving for Virginia just as soon as O’Dowd can file a flight plan. I’ll meet you at the airport.”
“Okay,” he said.
Aidan O’Dowd was a charter pilot the pack kept on retainer. We didn’t use him often, but we paid him enough for him to be ready in an emergency. If he was out of the area on a charter, he had a network of pilots that could provide immediate and discreet service.
The moment I ended my call with Josh, I texted O’Dowd, “911.”
Next I started to dial Sky’s number, then hesitated. Once she realized I’d interfered with her efforts to find her family, I doubted she would heed my warning. More likely, I’d drive her toward them. Cursing, I pocketed my phone, then returned to the house.
I found Sebastian at the kitchen counter, eating the prior evening’s leftovers. “The Nunes family have two of the Clostra books.” He already knew about my previous visit. “They have Sky, as well.”
He calmly wiped the corners of his mouth with a napkin, then dropped it onto his plate. “Is there a connection between the two?”
“Yes, but I don’t know what. I’ve already put O’Dowd on alert. Josh will meet us at the airport.”
He nodded, his expression determined. “Then let’s go.”
Within minutes, we were in a black SUV as I drove us toward the small, private airport just outside of Chicago. Halfway there, I received a text message from O’Dowd.
“Fueling now. How many?”
I gave my phone to Sebastian, who answered. “Three en route. Returning with four, possibly more.”
The drive to the airport was tense and quiet. I cursed myself for ever visiting the family in the first place. If I hadn’t, they’d likely have never learned about
Sky. I’d practically laid out a road map for them to find her.
We passed through security quickly, then drove to the hangar, where we found Josh and O’Dowd waiting for us outside his Gulfstream G650ER jet. At our approach, O’Dowd took a final drag from his cigarette, flicked the butt to the ground, and pressed it into the concrete with the toe of his shoe.
Josh greeted me with an inquisitive look while O’Dowd shook Sebastian’s hand. A moment later, we were inside the jet.
By design, the Gulfstream sat nineteen passengers, but O’Dowd had modified his jet to suit the needs of his mostly corporate clientele. Several of the seats had been removed to accommodate a modest oak desk bolted to the floor at the center of the cabin, along with two chairs on each side. The remaining eight seats lined the sides of the cabin in pairs, with generous spacing.
“Ethan,” Josh started as I buckled into a seat next to him.
“Not until we’re airborne,” I said brusquely.
He continued to stare at me until I finally turned to meet his gaze. “You’re in my space,” he said.
Admittedly, I was large enough that even with the generous spacing of the seats, the tip of my elbow just reached over the armrest of his chair—only just. He answered my scowl with a wan smile. With an exaggerated sigh, I drew my arm away from his chair and closer to my side.
Drawing my phone from my pocket, I checked the time: four o’clock. Updating Sky’s location with the tracking app brought a snarl to my lips. She was on her way out of town, heading directly toward the Nunes family home, and we were about ninety minutes away from landing in Virginia, with a half hour drive ahead of us. Suppressing a growl, I called ahead to the airport to arrange for an SUV rental to be waiting for us on the tarmac when we disembarked from the jet.
Next I called my fixer, Marion James.
“Ethan,” she answered with an amused tone. “I thought I might hear from you soon. It’s been months. What can I do for you?”
“Living room,” I said softly, aware of Josh listening next to me. “There are some holes to patch, as well.”
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