My gaze jumped back down to Kevin. I did a quick scan of his body to find that his soul had completely left him despite the fact that we still had more than an hour before the sun finally rose on this nightmarish night. I couldn’t feel his soul in the room with us. Kevin had died.
“Take him to Archie. Tell him—” I started, then caught myself. The coroner wasn’t mine to command. He was a friend that did me favors for the protection of my people. “Ask Archie to cremate the body immediately.”
“What about…?” he asked, his eyes moving over Barrett and Cooper, who was hovering just behind his brother’s shoulder.
“I’ll be fine. Barrett won’t be strong enough to attack me for another couple hours, and Cooper knows that if he takes a single step toward me I’ll set him on fire.”
Knox was still frowning when he picked up Kevin and carried him out of the room, shutting the door behind him.
I sat on the arm of the sofa and looked at Barrett. We had been friends since he was only twelve years old. I had known his father, his grandfather, and his great-grandfather. I had worked with each of them to maintain strong ties between the nightwalkers and the lycanthropes. I was unwilling to lose everything we had gained during those years tonight. Unfortunately, it meant putting my good friend in a very awkward position.
“Tomorrow night I go to rescue a nightwalker that has been kidnapped. The naturi will pull everyone back in an effort to end my life. And I will do everything within my power to wipe out as many of them as I possibly can. Not long after that I will go to Peru to fight them again, to preserve the barrier that has blocked the naturi horde from the rest of the world. Any remaining naturi in Savannah will follow me.”
“But what about when you come back?” Barrett asked.
A small laugh escaped me and I smiled at him. “There’s only a slim chance that I will survive Peru and return home again. But if I do, it is unlikely that the naturi will follow me. I like to think that if I return to Savannah, it means that we won and the remaining naturi have been scattered to the wind. They won’t dare to take me on again.”
Barrett shook his head, looking down at his open hands where they rested between his knees. “I’m sorry about this, Mira. We’ve been friends a long time. I hate what the naturi have ruined between us.”
“Yes, this damage may never be repaired,” I agreed. A lump grew in my throat as I stared at him. He looked so defeated, and it wasn’t over yet. “I won this battle, Barrett. It means you at the very least owe me a boon.”
His head snapped up and he straightened in his chair. “Are you going to ask me to leave Savannah?”
“I had thought about it, but that wouldn’t solve my current dilemma.”
“I thought that’s why you sent that Gromenko to me. He’s obviously the Alpha from another pack. You want him to take over the Savannah pack.”
“I never considered that. Nicolai is here for his own protection. It has nothing to do with you and your pack. It’s between me, Nicolai, and another nightwalker. It will never extend to the rest of your pack.”
“But we have to protect him if he’s attacked,” Barrett countered.
“No, you don’t, and we both know that you wouldn’t. You’ve never accepted him, never welcomed into the fold. You and your people wouldn’t raise a finger to help him if he needed it. I’m no fool, Barrett. Nicolai is fully aware that I’m the only one that has his back.”
Barrett looked away from me, shame eating away at him. He had created an outcast of Nicolai because of his own lack of security. “He doesn’t belong with us.”
“Only because that’s how you want it to be. But that’s your choice. I’m not here to tell you how to run your pack, the same way you won’t tell me how to manage my nightwalkers. What you do with Nicolai is your business, but you have to understand that it is my duty to protect him from all threats.”
“So he is to come between us as well. Isn’t it enough that we have the naturi between us?”
“Nicolai will only come between us if you let him,” I said, rising to my feet. “Besides, we have other problems to discuss. My boon. From you, I simply want the truth.”
His brow furrowed and a frown pulled at the corners of his mouth as he again shifted in his chair. “I’ve never lied to you.”
“But you would have a very good reason to lie to me now. I want to know how deep your betrayal of me has gone. How deep the betrayal of your people runs against nightwalkers.”
“Betrayal?” Cooper demanded, taking a step toward me. I cocked one eyebrow at him in warning, and he took a step backward again. “We’ve never betrayed you or the other nightwalkers.”
I looked back down at Barrett, who was watching me with angry eyes. “Tonight you offered to hand me over to the naturi. We have all vowed to not aid the naturi in any way. You seemed more than willing to break that vow tonight,” I said, crossing my arms over my chest against the chill that was creeping into my frame. The warmth I had gotten from his blood was starting to fade, and the sunrise was growing close. I would need to leave soon if I hoped to find sanctuary against the sun.
“I—I—I didn’t mean it like that,” Barrett stuttered, growing ghostly pale.
“We’ve never willingly sided with the naturi,” Cooper argued. His right hand rested on his brother’s shoulder and squeezed. “We’re not traitors.”
“Give me the truth, Barrett. Would you hand me or any nightwalker over to the naturi?”
“No!”
“Would you order someone from your pack to hand a nightwalker over to the naturi?”
“No!”
“Would you hand Nicolai over to the naturi?”
“No! No! No! I wouldn’t do anything that would help the naturi. I wouldn’t side with them no matter what was being done. I know, Mira, that they are at the root of our problems. They are not a solution.”
“The naturi aren’t our only problem,” I said, causing some of the anger to leak from Barrett’s frame. “This past summer I asked you to retrieve evidence from the Daylight Coalition database, evidence that could expose me as a nightwalker. I never asked you about that, but I’m asking now. Was the evidence retrieved as I requested?”
“Yes, of course.”
“Was it destroyed?”
He was silent.
So I thought. I’d feared that his people had downloaded the information, wiped the Coalition database clean, and kept a copy for themselves. A little insurance for a rainy day. Well, it was raining now and I couldn’t afford to be fighting the Coalition at the same time I was fighting the naturi. The Daylight Coalition was a group of humans who took it upon themselves to hunt down and destroy anything that wasn’t human. We all believed that included all the races, but so far their focus has been exclusively on nightwalkers.
“You’re not willing to betray me to the naturi, but you have no problem betraying me to the Daylight Coalition,” I snarled at him.
Barrett shoved to his feet and managed to remain standing. “I haven’t betrayed you!”
“Then destroy the evidence. We’re in this together—against both the naturi and the Coalition. We’ve all promised to watch out for each other against the Coalition. What have I done to earn this animosity?”
“Nothing. I—I was just trying to protect my own people. You’re powerful, Mira. You’re an unstoppable force, feared across all the continents. What if you suddenly decided to turn on my people? How would I protect them?”
“So you chose the Coalition? So you came in here tonight and threatened to hand me over to the naturi? Until now I had no reason to turn on the lycanthropes. I handed you Nicolai, who is important to me, because I trusted you to watch out for him.”
“I’ll destroy the evidence!” Barrett quickly said. He reached out to take my hand, but I took a step away from him, unwilling to bear his touch at that moment.
Since taking his blood, I had been in his thoughts, reading his emotions without his knowledge. He was telling the truth. He was also
terrified I would report him to the other packs that he was potentially making deals with both the naturi and the Coalition. He was on thin ice and we both knew it. I had never wanted to put him in this position, particularly since the Coven already tried to make a bargain with the naturi. Our hands certainly weren’t clean. However, I still needed Barrett’s assistance.
“I believe you,” I murmured, wishing I could give him some other kind of reassurance, but I wasn’t feeling too forgiving at the moment. “But I have one last request.”
“Name it.”
“Someone among the lycanthropes has already begun to deal with the Coalition.”
“Are you sure?” Cooper inquired, his brow furrowed in confusion.
“While I was in London, I ran across a witch and a lycanthrope traveling with a member of the Coalition. They both attacked Tristan and me. They could have walked away, but didn’t. They had chosen a new side. I want you to look into what’s going on.”
“I’ll see what I can do,” Barrett agreed.
“The lycan was called Harold Finchley. I want to know who his pack was. I want to know if there are others like him. I want to know if we’ve been betrayed.”
“I’ll find out.”
“We’ll find out,” Cooper corrected, coming to stand next to his older brother.
“Good. You handle the Coalition and I’ll get rid of the naturi. Now get out of here. I need to rest.”
Barrett nodded and allowed his brother to lead him out of the nightclub and out into the slowly dying night. I slumped onto the sofa the moment they were outside the club, the last of my strength seeming to drain from my body. Sunrise was but an hour away. I had just enough time to catch a taxi back to my home outside the city. I’d endured enough blood, pain, and betrayal for one night.
Nine
It was a couple hours after sunset the next night before I was able to meet up with Danaus. Dawn had been too close when I finally left the Dark Room the previous night to try to see him. Besides, I still had to make sure that Tristan was comfortably settled and healing before I climbed into bed myself at daybreak. There was simply too little time to handle it all. The only cold comfort I did find before succumbing to the dawn was that Amanda would be safely out of the hands of the naturi during the daylight hours. They might have her body, but her conscious mind was beyond their reach, making torture worthless for at least a few hours.
But they were waiting for her when she awoke tonight. I heard her screams in my mind when I woke at sunset. Reaching out with my powers, I found Amanda was to the south of the city, out in the marshes. I connected with her mind long enough to discover that she was on an island. By what I could quickly pick out of her thoughts, I was willing to bet that she was being held out on Blackbeard Island. Knox and Tristan had been sent ahead to procure us a boat. It was my job to convince Danaus to come along for the hunt.
However, standing on the front porch outside my town house, my hand on the doorknob, I was beginning to wonder if I would be able to convince him to join us in this insane venture. It was obviously a trap. The goal of the naturi was to get to me, and I was willingly walking into it because the bait was one of my own. Common sense said that the naturi would kill Amanda either before I arrived or just as I set foot on the island. I had little hope of actually saving her. The risk I was taking didn’t make sense, and yet I felt that she was one of my own. I had offered her entrance into my family and couldn’t turn my back on her now because it wasn’t convenient to my own plans.
Unlocking the front door, I strolled in through the foyer, but my footsteps quickly dragged to a halt when I sensed that Danaus wasn’t alone. There was a woman with him. My teeth clenched and my hands balled into fists as I forced myself to step into the front parlor. Both he and the pretty blond woman jerked to their feet at the same time as I entered the room, their low conversation falling silent.
“I’m sorry,” I apologized snidely, my dark gaze leveled on the hunter. “I didn’t realize that I had left you with enough time to go out on dates. Apparently, I hadn’t properly explained the seriousness of the situation in which we find ourselves.”
“She’s not a date. This is the earth witch I told you about,” Danaus said. “She’s agreed to help you.”
“Hi!” the woman exclaimed. “I’m Michelle French, but you can just call me Shell, or Shelly. That’s what all my friends call me. Except my dad. He calls me Seashell when he thinks he’s being funny.”
It was all I could do to keep my mouth from falling open during this exuberant introduction. She was the epitome of perky, with her upbeat attitude and sunny disposition. Even her clothes shone, a pale yellow shirt and white shorts. I was willing to bet that she’d been a cheerleader during high school, maybe even through college.
“Yeah,” I drawled while dragging my gaze back to Danaus, who was looking at me levelly. Shelly was not the type of person either of us typically associated with. Most of our encounters were with other dark creatures that understood our world revolved around the basic tenet of kill or be killed. “Can I have a word with you in private?”
“Oh sure,” Shelly said in her sweet, chipper voice. “I’ll just run upstairs to my room and finish unpacking while you and Danaus talk.” With a bounce in her step, Shelly swept by me and skipped up the stairs to the second floor. I waited for the bedroom door to close before I opened my mouth.
“Have you lost your mind? Where the hell did you get her?” I snapped, shoving both my hands through my hair.
“Charleston,” Danaus simply replied, further fueling my anger when he refused to elaborate.
“Is that how they are in Charleston?”
“Sweet and happy is not a crime, you know.”
“It is in our world. Why did you bring her here?”
Danaus sat back down, watching me pace back and forth through the room, weaving between the sofa and the coffee table. “You said that you needed someone to teach you how to use earth magic. She can do that.”
“She’s an earth witch?”
“She’s an earth witch and one that hasn’t sided with the naturi. That type of earth witch isn’t easy to find, particularly when your name comes up. She’s willing to help you.”
A snort escaped me as I paused in my pacing to face him, my arms folded over my chest. “I find it hard to believe that she will be able to help me.”
“And I find it hard to believe that she’s willing to help you,” Danaus lectured, pushing to his feet again and coming to stand directly in front of me. “Outside of Savannah, you’re seen as a walking pestilence. Savannah has become a war zone and no one is willing to come here. But she was, so I would get off your high horse and give her a chance.”
“This isn’t about my ego, you ass,” I snapped. “It’s about her getting killed in the first five minutes of being here. It is a war zone, and she’s not equipped to handle something like this. I don’t want to worry about watching over her when I’ve got bigger problems to worry about.”
“What’s happened?” Danaus demanded, ready to put aside our argument and jump back into the business of surviving.
“Tristan and some others were attacked late last night by some naturi and lycanthropes. Two were killed and Amanda was taken hostage. She’s still alive and being held on an island out in the marshes,” I explained, then paused, looking away from him. I couldn’t look at him when I continued. “I have to go get her.”
“Mira,” Danaus murmured, but when he spoke again, his voice was hard and firm. “You can’t do this. It’s a trap.”
“I know it’s a trap!” I exploded, more frustrated with the situation than I was with the hunter. “Do you honestly think that I don’t? Of course it’s a trap, but I can’t leave Amanda to them. She belongs to me. She is a member of my family and I have sworn to protect her. I have to go after her.”
“And if you die, we’re all damned. We won’t be able to reseal the doorway between the two worlds. The naturi will escape and they will kill us all.”
“I have no choice,” I whispered.
Danaus gripped my shoulders with both hands and gave me a little shake, forcing my eyes back up to his face. “You have a choice. You can choose to walk away from this. You have to choose between saving one nightwalker and saving all nightwalkers.”
“This is more than saving just one nightwalker,” I said, stepping backward out of his grasp. “This is about eliminating all the naturi within my domain. A number of lycanthropes have been killed during the past couple of months because of the naturi. Nightwalkers have died. It has to stop. I have no doubt they’ve pulled back to the island, where they’re waiting for me. We can kill them all tonight, cleansing the area before we leave for Machu Picchu.”
“Machu Picchu?”
I nodded, a frown pulling at the corners of my mouth as I sat on the edge of the sofa while Danaus returned to his seat opposite me. “Jabari appeared last night with Nicolai. The Ancient said that the next sacrifice is to take place on the night of the equinox, and that it is to be at Machu Picchu. Naturally, we are being dispatched.”
“Naturally,” he grumbled, resting his elbows on his knees.
“Come with me, Danaus. Help me rid my home of the damned naturi. Barrett and his pack have lost enough because of them. So have my people,” I said. I knew it wasn’t my best argument. Danaus would be happy to see all of my kind wiped out, but right now we were the best defense against the naturi, who were infinitely worse than nightwalkers. The problem was that I couldn’t do this without him, and we both knew it.
Danaus gave what sounded like an unhappy but affirmative grunt. He would be happy to leave me to this suicide mission to save one nightwalker when we both knew I should just walk away. But I couldn’t. Jabari, Tabor, and Sadira saved me years ago from the naturi’s clutches. Sure, it was because they all wanted to control me and use me as their own personal weapon, but I didn’t know that at the time. All I knew was that someone came to save me. Amanda deserved that now, and I wasn’t about to abandon her. And neither would Danaus.
Dawnbreaker dd-3 Page 8