There was a knock at the door and we both paused.
“Bloody fucking hell,” he muttered, reaching to adjust his impressive erection. “Come in!”
Mark, the butler, entered the room. I squeaked and turned my back to him, hiding my erect nipples against Hellion’s chest.
He stroked my back and said, “Mark, what is it?”
“I’m sorry, sir, ma’am. I didn’t realize you’d come home together. Is everything to your liking?”
“Sure,” I said, uncomfortable with the fact that this strange man was catering to my every need. I just wasn’t cut from the stock that expected the custom service, or butlers, that wealth could buy. My family had been the servers, not the served.
“There’s nothing to be uncomfortable with, Maddy,” Hellion whispered. He turned my chin to face him, and I jerked away from him, stepping out of his arms.
“Give us a minute, Mark.”
The butler left the room quietly.
“What is it, love?” he asked.
Good question. “I feel like I’m failing everywhere and fitting in nowhere. A few weeks ago I was engaged to another man, and this morning I find myself post-coital cuddling with another whose expressed intent had been to see me dead. What is it with me, Hellion? I’m floundering like a drowning woman, and people are dying because of it.” I slapped a hand against the wall and thumped my forehead against the cool plaster. I felt his arms come around me and I sagged into him, needing just for a moment to be supported. He caught me, just as I’d counted on him to do.
“Maddy, you’re new at this—” he began.
“And that doesn’t mean jack shit to each and every dead woman’s family,” I countered.
“Families who have no idea you exist.”
I jerked and realized that that was probably the biggest rub. I was fulfilling the prophecy without even trying, walking between the worlds of the mundane and mythological, a foot in each reality and a place of belonging in neither. I rubbed my forehead, the worry lines feeling like little mini-ridges under my fingertips.
“Do you want to talk to Tyr?” he asked.
“It might help,” I answered. “But I’ll save it for tonight when I hit the sack. For now I need a shower and my own clothes.”
“Of course. I’ll just run downstairs and see what we’ve missed in the last night. I need to take care of some business anyway.” He turned me around and I went slowly, slipping my arms around his waist and laying my head against his chest. His voice rumbled under my ear when he spoke. “Don’t hold yourself accountable for the murderer’s actions, Maddy. We’ll catch him, or her, and we’ll see justice meted out.”
I nodded, feeling inexplicable tears building in the back of my throat. I pushed away from him gently and turned for the bathroom.
“Maddy?” he called.
I shook my head and kept going. Any more empathy and I was going to begin to unravel, and right now I needed to keep it together. I had a murderer to stop in a world that, as Hellion had said, didn’t even know I existed.
I wandered downstairs after my shower and found Hellion in the study poring over the letter that had been delivered to him before we’d left for the Council meeting.
“Anything new?” I propped a hip on the edge of his desk.
“Nothing.” He sighed, leaning back and pushing his hands through his thick, blond hair. His black eyes were flat with frustration, and he stared at me carefully. “Have you had any new thoughts on it?”
“I’m wondering about the blue thread.” I reached over and picked it up, rolling it between my fingers. It was silky but heavy, almost like embroidery floss. “Do you think it could mean it’s from the blue dragons?”
Hellion shrugged. “I wondered the same thing, but it seems too obvious.”
“Maybe.” I sniffed the thread and smelled nothing in particular. “Think back to the note. They refer to me as the traitorous Mary Stuart. Could be that they’re English, or of English persuasion. That would rule out the leaders of the weyr.” My chest constricted. Bahlin. “Who does that open up, in particular?”
“You’re thinking in modern terms, Maddy. What if the killer actually knew Mary Stuart?”
I blanched.
“He knows her, thinks she turned traitor to her family, and ended up getting what she deserved. That would be right in line with what the blue weyr has been to you: potential family, then you turned traitor—”
I made a noise of protest and Hellion held up his hand.
“—you turned traitor and sided with someone outside the family, someone from foreign soil. It could very well be the blue weyr, Maddy.”
“Aiden could have killed me last night when he had the gun to my jaw,” I argued.
“For all his tough talk, he’s just a boy. And he had his orders to return you to Bahlin.”
I thought about it, rubbing my temples at the developing headache. Could it have been Aiden? Was it that simple? Somehow I doubted it. Aiden was angry, and he’d lost his father and his sister, but he wasn’t a killer. The opportunity to take me out last night and then change the story of the surrounding circumstances convinced me he wasn’t my focus. Shaking my head, I stood and walked to the sideboard to pour up a neat whiskey. I raised my glass and offered Hellion a drink. He nodded but came to retrieve his own. I took a generous sip and it burned going down, the artificial warmth spreading immediately into my torso and arms and making me relax slightly.
“He’s just not the right focus, Hellion. I’m sure of it.”
“What about Bahlin’s mother? She’s arguably lost the most in this, and she stands to have her family scrutinized closely due to the murders. Could she want to take you out?”
“Undoubtedly,” I said. “But not for that reason. I could be considered indirectly responsible for the deaths of her husband and daughter. That would make her want to kill me. But I don’t know that she’s the type to act on it personally. She’s been in power, or related to those in power, too long. She’d find someone to do it for her.” The thought sent chills up and down my spine despite the effects of the alcohol. If someone had been hired to take me out, I was working against someone I wouldn’t recognize. I sighed and walked over to the sofa, sinking down into it and setting my drink on the side table.
“And Imeena?” Hellion asked, rolling a pen back and forth in his fingers as he watched me.
“Imeena is a possibility. The attacks are at night, no trouble with the brutality, she’s got the strength and she’s definitely got the motivation. I just don’t know that she’d waste the blood. And her sense of smell—wouldn’t she be able to determine if it was me before killing?”
“I’m not sure every vampire has a distinguishing sense of smell. Yes, they can smell blood and hear heartbeats and such, but we’ll have to ask Darius about the general improvements they undergo after the rebirth.” Hellion walked over and sat beside me, setting his drink with mine. He opened his arms to me, and I was struck by the kindness of the gesture. He was offering me the choice to seek comfort, not assuming I needed to.
I pushed off the back of the sofa and crawled into his lap.
Hellion held me close, breathing in and out with slow, deep breaths that ruffled my hair. “ Tá grá agam duit, my Madeleine,” he whispered. I love you.
I nodded, unable to answer him. My heart seemed to have lodged itself in my throat, bound equally by joy and fear at Hellion’s profession of feelings.
His arms tightened around me then released me, and I crawled out of his lap to stand in front of him. “When will Darius be here?”
Hellion stared at me, his eyes pulsing, before answering in a soft voice. “He should get here later this evening. As fast as he is, it will take him a bit. Two hours after dark, I’d assume.”
“Let’s—”
“I don’t expect you to answer me right now, Maddy.”
I looked up sharply.
“But I do expect you to answer me someday.”
I nodded, mute with fe
ar. I couldn’t speak.
Hellion smiled gently. “There’s nothing I can imagine that’s more important than hearing the words from you, but I won’t push you. You’ll come to me willingly or I’ll not have you at all. You understand this, right?”
I shrugged so stiffly it must have appeared I was cast of stone. “What do you mean ‘not at all’?”
Shaking his head, he rose to stand in front of me. I instinctively reached up and smoothed his hair back from his forehead. He dropped his forehead to mine and laid a light kiss on my upturned face. “I won’t coerce you and I won’t push you, but I also won’t hide my own feelings. You’ll come to me or you won’t. If you don’t, then we’ll have nothing between us but the physical, and that’s not enough for me. So consider that, Maddy. I love you, but I’ll not tolerate heartbreak just for the sake of suffering some emotion.”
“Sounds sort of like you’re pushing,” I stammered.
“No. Don’t misunderstand this. There’s a difference between pushing and honesty. I’ll give you honesty. Don’t ever doubt that.”
My recent history with Bahlin led me to believe that every oath could be broken, but I didn’t want to fight with Hellion so I just nodded. “Okay.” I stepped back and turned toward the clock. “So we’ve got about three hours before Darius shows up?”
Silence. I kept my back to him so he could have a minute to either strangle me or compose himself. “That’s about right,” he finally said. “What would you like to do?”
“I’d like to leave the testing of the hair for later. I think it’s best if we use the daylight to visit the sites where we know the girls have been killed, at least locally. We can look at the approach, the places someone could hide, the lighting—things I don’t have a freaking clue about but that I’m willing to take a stab at.”
He winced.
“Sorry. Bad pun. Unintentional, but still bad.”
Hellion reached for my hand and I reached back. It was the most I could offer. We headed for the door.
We started at the Pemberton because it was closest to Hellion’s home. The sidewalk had been washed down well by the daily rains, but there were still slight rusty-looking stains on the concrete. My stomach plummeted, and I fought to hold on to the remainders of my lunch.
Feeling like a complete fool, I looked over our single page of notes that covered all the crimes. According to this, police believed the woman had been walking toward the hotel entrance. She’d been taken down at the valet entrance, located between street lamps on a relatively dark side of the building. The only immediate sources of light that had been available were security lights along the side of the building. The killer would have been able to steal up behind her with ease, but had she turned at the last moment—before the killer could either hide or reach her—she would have seen the killer’s face without difficulty.
I stood facing the entrance and had Hellion walk down the sidewalk, ducking into doorways and moving as quietly as a large man can. It was surprisingly easy to see how she might have been snuck up on in the dark.
“So what do you think?” I asked as he made his way up to me.
“She would have been far enough from the entrance, and it would have been dark enough between security lights, that no one would have been likely to see anything. If you add supernatural abilities of cloaking or stealth, she never knew anyone was there.” He looked as disgusted as I felt.
“She never had a chance,” I repeated, frustrated. “Is there any way you can trace the magic that might have been used?”
“No, sweetheart. Magic fades like a scent on the air. So after this long, there’s no way to know what was here with any certainty. I would if I could.”
I reached out to him and we grasped each other’s hands, the sensation of being anchored in each other a comforting one. “It’s all right. I’m just floundering here, hoping for some quick fix to the problem and knowing it’s not going to happen.” I took a deep breath and nearly had to chew the London air to get it down. There was something to be said for the Irish countryside.
I took my hand back and walked down the sidewalk, looking for something, anything, that would give me a damn start on this nightmare of a case. Lying in the crevice between sidewalk and street, its color darkened from rain and grime, was a long piece of blue thread. I snatched it up and held it out triumphantly to Hellion. I had no idea what to do with it, but it was a start.
“What do you want to bet it matches the blue thread that bound the hair in the letter?” I asked.
“Chances are good you’re right.” He held out his hand and I gave him the thread. He mumbled something, and the grime and dampness disappeared, leaving only the vibrant blue thread in his hands.
“You’re pretty handy with this stuff. Can you handle red wine stains?” I teased.
“Funny girl. It’s all elemental—water, dirt, cotton thread—or it wouldn’t have worked.”
I thought about what he said. Elemental. “So if it had been man-made…”
“I’d have had to get the Tide pen just as you would have,” he responded dryly.
Shaking my head, I reached out and took the thread back, wrapping it around my finger to make a small bundle before shoving it in the pocket of my jeans. “Let’s try another site. Maybe the one…maybe the one near Bahlin’s.” His name hurt to hear, and I did my best not to show any emotion, but I’m pretty sure I failed miserably.
Hellion said nothing, just held out his hand to me and said, “I’ll drive.”
We rode the short distance to the park near Bahlin’s apartment. The back of my neck felt hot and my stomach hurt. If we ran into him, I was pretty sure I’d just walk away, but only if I could keep from running. Cowardly? More like self-preservation. Scanning the area for any sign of the blue weyr or their leader, I crawled out of Hellion’s coupe and began walking swiftly for the park. “Do you know where she was found?” I called out over my shoulder, never breaking my stride.
“Maddy? Slow down, sweetheart. He’s not here.”
My pace faltered, and I stopped. “Are you sure?” I asked softly.
“I’m positive. He’s been seen at his family’s home in Scotland since he tried to enforce his claim to you.”
“Are you sure?” I asked again, a little more firmly. “Because I’d hate to have to brawl in the streets.” I smiled at him, trying to soften the blow my initial fear had caused him.
Hellion’s lip twitched and finally broke into a grin. “I’d like to see you brawl.”
Remembering Clay and the price he’d paid for forcing his hand, I looked away and shook my head. “No, you wouldn’t. Trust me.”
Hellion took three large steps, caught me by the elbow and spun me around to face him. Crushing me to his chest, he spoke to me quickly and quietly in Gaelic. I had no idea what he was talking about, but I nodded my head as if he made sense. He released me and stepped back, holding me at arm’s length. “Let’s check out the park and go home.”
I nodded and twin tears rolled down my cheeks. I swiped at them angrily, scrubbing my face and breathing deeply, blowing out through my lips. Enough feeling sorry for yourself, Niteclif. Life sucks and then you get dead, one way or another. It was tough talk. I needed it.
The sun was setting. Shadows crept toward us with the unspoken malicious intent of swallowing us and the light as a whole. People think darkness descends from the sky but it doesn’t. It creeps out from under trees and bushes, the shadows growing dense and dark at the same time. Small animals were bedding down for the evening to avoid the night’s predators, and foot traffic along the path was quickly thinning out as the mundanes followed the eons-old primal instincts to get inside to the safety of home and hearth before dark fully set in.
We walked wordlessly through the park, sticking to the path, all the way to the point where the girl’s body had been found. It had been seven days since she’d been killed. With the human traffic in the park combined with the foraging of animals, I didn’t anticipate finding any
thing in the way of clues. I was right. But the setting was suspiciously like the hotel in that the lamp’s light was spaced out just far enough to provide shadowy hiding places between the yellow glow of the gaslights. There were plenty of ways the killer could have approached and hidden, approached and hidden, until she, or he, was close enough to move in for the kill.
“Maddy?” Hellion called.
I jumped and spun around, instinctively throwing my hand to my throat. Knowing the things that went bump in the night were real and, on occasion, interested in my jugular, made my reaction more a defensive move of self-preservation. I could feel my heart thundering beneath my fingertips.
“What?” I hissed, forcing my hand down to my side and taking a deep, shaky breath.
“Step over here, love.”
I strode toward him as if he hadn’t just scared the ever-loving shit out of me.
Stepping into the halo of light, I noticed for the first time what he was pointing at. There were deep gouges cut into the ground about twenty feet off the path. They appeared to have been dug by a set of vicious tines or claws. The dirt had caved in at the edges with the passage of time and rain, and the grass was yellowing, but the ground had yet to heal its wounds. I bent down and ran my fingers along the dirt but there was no divine revelation; it was just disturbed earth. The gouges were also well concealed enough that the average path patron wouldn’t have seen them.
“What do you make of this?” I asked.
Hellion shook his head, staring at the ground. “I suppose we could take a sample of the dirt and see if it reveals anything back at the house.”
“What’s so special about the house? And what’s dirt going to ‘reveal’ anyway?”
Hellion stuck his hands in his pockets and stared at me in disbelief, shaking his head as if to rid himself of my ignorance. “I’ll be able to spend some time—private, uninterrupted time—and cast a couple of revelation spells. The dirt is organic and, therefore, belongs to no one, so it shouldn’t be magically warded in any way. Whatever scored the earth will have left a physical imprint behind, a sort of psychic, or metaphysical, signature. Does that make sense?”
Wrath: The Niteclif Evolutions, Book 2 Page 16