Even the greenest recruit fresh out of the police academy would instantly identify these wounds. The spread of the gashes, the pattern, the size of the gouges, all of it was unmistakable. Mulradin had been murdered by a shapeshifter.
“There is no proof that this was done by a member of the Pack,” I barked. “You employ shapeshifters in your goon squad.”
Claire rocked back and forth. “Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God.”
“Let’s not jump to conclusions,” Ghastek said.
Hugh pointed at him. “You—be quiet. The Pack claims dominion over all shapeshifters in the state. They bear full responsibility.”
“Don’t bring my people into it,” I said. “I’ll make you regret it.”
“I love it when you make threats,” Hugh said.
“You’ll love what follows even more.”
Ghastek kept looking at Hugh, then at me, at Hugh, then at me.
“I can’t wait, baby,” Hugh said.
Only Curran called me baby. He was goading me.
“You killed him!” Claire screamed, her voice shrill. “You killed my husband!”
Hugh stepped to her. His voice turned gentle. “They did. Look. Look at him. Your husband suffered before he died. Don’t you want to do something about it? Don’t you want to make the animals pay?”
Claire’s face went white. She grabbed at the metal bracelet on her arm.
“Stop!” Ghastek’s voice snapped like a whip.
Hugh spun to him. “It’s his will. Let it happen.”
Ghastek took a step back. “It’s our city. I have discretion.”
“Not anymore,” Hugh said, met my eyes, and winked.
You sonovabitch. This was exactly what he wanted: a big ugly public incident from which there was no return. We could come back from killing vampires—they were property. But we were already accused of murder. If we took down any of the People now, with Mulradin’s body on the table and his grieving widow out of her mind, the entire city would turn against us. They didn’t love the People any more than they loved us, but if Atlanta had a chance to be rid of either one, the city would take it. Hugh would have an excuse to declare a war against the Pack and be celebrated for it.
Claire ripped the bracelet off. It pulsed with red, and the ceiling burst.
Six vampires dropped into the room. For a fraction of a moment they froze, three perched on the table, three on the floor, their eyes glowing pools of scarlet hunger. Emaciated, hairless skeletons wrapped in hard ropes of muscle and clothed in rubbery skin, no longer human, no longer sane, and always hungry.
Ryan shot forward, his arms opened wide. The vampire eyes dimmed. His face shook with strain. He was trying to hold them and his hold was slipping.
“Retreat!” I barked.
The shapeshifters on both sides of me streamed to the back door, all except for two renders. A thud announced the door flying off its hinges as someone kicked it free.
Hugh spun around and hammered a punch to Ryan’s jaw. The big man’s eyes rolled back into his skull, his face went slack, and he crashed down.
The vampires shot forward like rabid dogs with snapped chains. One—large, female, and recently turned—lunged at Hugh. Five came sailing through the air at us, their eyes bright ravenous red, free of any navigator’s restraint, their minds like open sores, oozing undeath. Five. Too many.
The People fled through the front door. Ghastek stopped, his face twisted.
I grabbed the five vampires with my mind. It was easy. So shockingly easy. The undead went limp in midleap, falling rather than jumping.
Behind the table one of Hugh’s men stepped forward, fit, his hair a short dark stubble, two guns in his hands, and fired point-blank into the female vampire’s face. The bullets tore into the undead, chewing through the dried flesh.
My renders moved as one. Sage on my right yanked a vampire out of the air, before it could even hit the ground, and twisted its head off with her huge monster hand armed with leopard claws. The werewolf to my left disemboweled the second bloodsucker. I pulled the next pair to them.
The female vampire kept pushing forward, against the stream of gunfire. The man kept firing, his carved profile cold. Bright puffs of red mist shot out of the back of the vampire’s head as bullets tore through the brain and muscle. The top of its skull disintegrated. The undead paused, turned slightly, unsteady on its feet, and I saw the wall through the gaping hole where its brain used to be. The vampire took another halting step and sank down, limp, its limbs twitching.
Hugh laughed.
Yeah, yeah, your flunky knows how to squeeze the trigger. Bite me. I pulled the last undead toward the renders. A single person sprinted from behind me to the table. She leaped over the vampire corpses and landed by Mulradin’s body. Desandra. Damn it.
The renders tore into the last vampire.
The man with the guns turned and I saw his face. His stare punched me. Nick. Dear God.
“Desandra!” I snarled.
Nick sighted Desandra and fired. The guns roared, spitting bullets in quick one-two bursts. Desandra jerked, spun around, and ran straight for me.
The renders dropped the last two vampires to the floor. Desandra shot past me into the doorway. The renders closed in, blocking me from the People’s view with their bodies. I turned and sprinted out into the hallway. The last thing I saw was Ghastek’s face from the other doorway. He looked like a man who had just witnessed the start of a war.
The hallway was deserted. Twenty yards away, at the end of the hallway, the moon shone through the shattered windows of the sunroom. Jim stood to the side, snarling as the shapeshifters leaped out the windows one by one. I jogged to him, the two renders covering my exit.
“Run!” Hugh thundered, his voice chasing us. “Run to your pathetic castle! You have until noon tomorrow to give me the murderer or I’ll end you! If I see you in our territory, I’ll kill you!”
I wanted to turn around and break every bone in his body before I cut his head off. He’d killed my stepfather, destroyed Aunt B, and broken Curran’s legs. He would pay. I turned back toward the room. If I just killed him . . .
“Consort!” Jim called.
If I killed him, the shapeshifters would pay for it for years. And I had no sword. Argh.
I forced my way through the fog of blinding rage and ran to the shattered windows. Hugh expected me to enter the People’s side of the city. This wasn’t a warning, it was a dare.
The broken sunroom windows loomed before me. Three stories, a big fall.
Jim grabbed me and leaped through the broken window. My stomach jumped into my throat. We landed on the ground and he dropped me on the pavement. I hit the ground running and jogged to our cars.
Jim thrust the key into the car door.
A vampire plunged from above and landed on the Jeep’s roof. The insane red eyes glared at me. I grabbed its mind with mine.
Before I could do anything else, a weremongoose shot into view, red fur standing on end, the pink eyes with horizontal pupils looking demonic. Claws flashed. The vamp’s head went flying one way, its corpse the other. I jerked the door open and slid into the passenger’s seat. Jim shoved the key into the ignition, and Barabas dropped into the seat behind me. The engine purred.
The magic wave hit. Wards ignited on the walls of Bernard’s, glowing pale green. The engine sputtered and died.
Damn it all to hell and back.
Jim swore.
It would take fifteen minutes of chanting to warm up the car and start the engine that ran on enchanted water. Every second we delayed, the People’s reinforcements would be getting closer. We had to get the hell out of here and get to Mt. Paran Bridge before this incident grew any bigger.
• • •
I JUMPED OUT of the vehicle and slid Slayer into the sheath on my back. “We go on foot.” I turned and ran, not looking back. A moment and the two renders drew even with me. Behind me Jim called, “Form a line. Sarah, point. Rodriguez, rear guard.”
>
We ran out of the parking lot.
“I can carry you!” Demon-Barabas offered from behind me.
“I’m good.” As long as they didn’t run at full speed, I could keep up. I wouldn’t be able to do it for very long, but I wouldn’t have to. Mt. Paran Road was a mile and a half away. That was where Jim’s backup waited. We would regroup and then I’d make Hugh regret ever finding Atlanta on a map.
4
THE COLD AIR burned my lungs. Around me trees crowded the road. Plants loved magic; it spurred their growth like supercharged Miracle-Gro, and the trees around us looked decades old, their limbs braiding into a single mass of branches.
My muscles felt warm and loose under my clothes. We’d been running for nine minutes and the shapeshifters on all sides of me seemed no worse for wear. For them, this was jogging pace. For me it was a fast run.
In my mind I killed Hugh d’Ambray for the fourth time. Fantasy wasn’t as satisfying as the real thing, but thinking about sliding Slayer into his chest made me run faster.
The timing couldn’t have been worse. We were at less than half strength and Curran was gone. Hugh was a planner. He never left things to chance. Either he had a really good intelligence source within the Pack, which would be in line with his highly placed mole on the Pack Council, or he’d engineered this whole thing, which meant Gene and his Iberian wolves were in Hugh’s pocket and Curran had walked into a trap. Fear squirmed through me. I picked up speed. The shapeshifters accelerated with me.
Curran could handle himself. He wasn’t exactly a shrinking violet. If they were dumb enough to try to trap him, he’d come home to me covered in their blood.
Behind me an undead mind flickered into range. This one wasn’t loose. Someone was piloting it. Another vampiric mind joined the first. Then another. An escort to the border. How thoughtful of the People.
The vampires drew closer. I glanced over my shoulder and saw them, three nightmarish shapes, loping in a jerky but fast gait down the road.
I sprinted, squeezing every drop of speed out of my legs. The road turned and I saw the Mt. Paran Sinkhole, a football-field-sized gap like a giant’s mouth half-open in the ground. The sinkhole had been born during a strong magic wave, and Northside’s wealth made sure that a single-lane bridge had been built over it almost overnight. The moonlight bathed the stone railing and the six shapeshifters waiting on the bridge with three familiar-looking Jeeps.
One shapeshifter stood in front of the others. His jacket was off. He leaned forward, his dark eyes fixed on the vampires behind us with a cold predatory expression, his muscular body coiled like a compressed spring. I used to call Derek “boy wonder,” but “boy” no longer fit. He was nothing but hard muscle wrapping bones connected with sinew. His body might have been nineteen, but his eyes under the dark eyebrows were thirty-five. Well, I did tell Jim to put someone solid in charge of the backup unit.
A second shapeshifter perched on the bridge’s stone railing to the right of Derek. The light of the moon slid over his face. The bane of my existence. Figured.
Derek and Ascanio. As long as they were separated by the length of a football field, they got along just fine. Getting them into close proximity to each other was like bringing a lit match into a house full of gas fumes. It’s a wonder the bridge didn’t explode under the pressure.
The distance between us and the vampires shrank. The undead were gaining. The air turned to fire inside my throat. A moment and we pounded onto the bridge. A white line drawn in chalk crossed the stone—the border. We cleared it.
The leading bloodsucker was so close, if we stopped it would be on us.
Derek shot past us like a bullet out of a gun.
I glanced over my shoulder. The vamp stepped over the chalk line. Derek leaped and kicked the undead. His foot connected with the vampire’s head. The impact knocked the abomination back twenty feet. It fell, sprang back up, froze, and trotted back to the rest of the living corpses waiting for it on the sidewalk.
I kept moving past the line of shapeshifters, slowing to a walk. I really wanted to bend over but I was on display, so I forced my body to remain upright. Breathing is like riding a bicycle. You never forget how to do it, and eventually my body remembered that it too could breathe instead of biting the air and swallowing it down in great big gulps. I walked on, past vehicles, until the bulk of the Jeeps hid us from the bloodsuckers’ view. The rest of the group followed me.
My mind finally processed what had happened at the Conclave. Hugh d’Ambray had come for me. Everyone associated with me had just acquired a big target on their chest. He would kill them one by one or a dozen at a time, whatever it took. My memory replayed Hugh’s voice. “It’s his will. Let it happen.” My father had targeted the shapeshifters before, but never so openly. Roland knew I was here, and he’d sent Hugh to break the Pack’s back and pry me loose while he was at it. The thing I’d been dreading had come to pass. My friends would die because of me.
Acknowledging it was like dunking my head into a bucket of cold water.
It wasn’t supposed to be this way. In my plans Curran was always with me. In my plans we stood together, we fought together, and we did it on our terms. Instead Curran had disappeared into some Appalachian wilderness, and I was stuck here, with a murder on my hands and fifteen hundred people to keep alive. I was the Consort. I had a job to do. I had to quash this war.
I would have to take it one step at a time. Step one: find the killer.
Jim matched his stride to mine. “What the hell was that back there? You almost let him goad you into walking right back to him.”
“I need you to find Curran. Hugh hates him and he likely knows exactly where Curran is. Best-case scenario, Gene is keeping him away from here. Worst case, it’s a trap.”
Jim bent toward me. His gaze met mine. “Hey. Look at me.”
I looked.
“Curran will be fine. He’s got this. They would have to have sent an army to North Carolina in order to bring him down. I have people watching Gene’s territory. Nobody came in or out.”
That’s right. Jim would have someone watching them.
“Hugh will try to fuck with your head. Don’t let him. Do your job. You’ve got fifteen hundred people depending on you.”
“Awesome pep talk.”
“If you want a pep talk, get yourself a cheerleader. Did you recognize the crusader with Hugh?”
“Yes.” I’d recognized Nick, alright. I saw him shoot Desandra.
“Why did we run?” a man demanded behind me.
I stopped and pivoted on my foot to face him.
It was one of Jennifer’s bodyguards. In his early twenties, he was large, with a head of wild blond hair, athletic. His eyes shone yellow, catching the moonlight. His lips trembled, baring his teeth. Right, all the lights are on and he’s exhaling aggression with every breath. Adrenaline junkie. Bad choice for a bodyguard.
“We had the numbers on them. We could’ve taken them.”
“Make him sit,” I told Jennifer. “Or I will and he won’t like it.”
Jennifer’s expression was blank.
“We look like fucking cowards,” the blond snarled. “We should’ve . . .”
Desandra shot forward, grabbed the blond by his throat, and slammed him on the stone surface of the bridge. His back slapped the rock. Desandra’s voice was a ragged snarl. “Do not question the Consort! Do not shame your clan in front of your alpha!”
The blond gasped, trying to breathe.
One does nothing, the other does double. I didn’t know who was worse.
Desandra pulled the blond up to his feet and stared in his eyes, her face an inch from his. “Look at me.”
The man stared at her, his face shocked.
“Jennifer is lenient. Search my face; do you think I’m lenient?”
The blond swallowed. “No, Beta.”
“Do you want me to demonstrate that I’m not lenient?”
“No, Beta.”
“When y
ou earn the right to question the Consort, you can speak. Until then, when she gives you an order, you shut your mouth and obey, or I’ll rip out your tongue. I had it done to me once and it takes six months to grow back. Are we clear?”
The blond nodded.
“Enough,” Jennifer said.
Desandra opened her hand and ducked her head at me. “Our apologies, Consort.”
“I don’t need you to apologize for me,” Jennifer said. “Watch yourself.”
Desandra’s spine went rigid for half a breath, then relaxed so fast I would’ve missed it if I wasn’t looking for it. She shrugged, looked down, and purred. “I’m sorry, Alpha.”
I didn’t have time for their games. “We have less than eighteen hours until Hugh d’Ambray and the People attack the Keep. Once war starts, it will be difficult to stop.”
The People and the Pack had never seen eye to eye, and both sides had plenty of idiots who thought they had something to prove.
Desandra shrugged off her jacket and turned her back to a male wolf. He pulled a knife out and sliced her back open. She bared her teeth for a tiny second. The bullet was probably still in her body.
“We have to prevent the war,” I said. “Mulradin’s body, thoughts?”
“The killer’s a shapeshifter,” Jim said. “Not a bear. They tend to crush. The body had punctures consistent with canine or feline teeth.”
“I agree.” I looked at Jennifer. I needed a consensus, because none of them would like what I was about to say. “What do you think?”
“It’s possible that it was a shapeshifter,” Jennifer said. “Someone outside the Pack. I can’t imagine any of our people doing it.”
“I got a good whiff of the body. It’s a wolf,” Desandra said. “One of ours.”
“You’re lying!” Jennifer spat.
Desandra shrugged. “Why would I lie? I recognize the scent. I smelled it before a couple of times, at the Keep and at the clan house. It’s not someone who is at the Keep often, but I know the scent and it’s one of ours.”
Anger and hate clawed at each other on Jennifer’s face. “Why are you doing this? What could you possibly gain from this?”
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