“I think so. He seemed to have burned to death.” There were winces, a couple of hushed exclamations.
“Why him?” Becky—average height, sharp features, short auburn hair—asked.
Shaun said, “He didn’t want to use that stuff you gave us. He didn’t think it would work. I don’t think he even opened the jar.”
That didn’t surprise me, but it made me sad. “He didn’t trust me.”
“I think he didn’t believe there was a situation he couldn’t fight his way out of.”
My inner self diverged. I wanted to hang my head, shed tears, apologize. Because I was sorry. Maybe I couldn’t have kept him alive in spite of his own stubbornness, but I was the one who brought this down on us all.
I couldn’t react that way. Wolf couldn’t. I couldn’t let my back slouch an inch. I had to keep my gaze up. I had to be strong and not show a bit of weakness, or none of them would trust me.
Not that any of them ought to be trusting me, but I couldn’t think that, either.
“What are you going to do about it?” Becky asked.
A death called for vengeance. Or at least justice. If nothing else, stopping the thing that did this meant it wouldn’t happen again. That was all I really wanted. Now, if this had been a rival pack of werewolves attacking us, we’d have known what to do. But this demon was invisible, untrackable. My confidence sounded hollow.
“I’m in contact with someone who might be able to stop this thing,” I said. “He seems to know exactly what to do. The bad news is he’s a vampire.”
“It always comes back to the vampires,” Dan said.
“Yeah, that’s exactly how they like it,” Shaun answered. “What kind of deal are you going to have to make with this guy?”
“I don’t know yet. I’m meeting with him and Rick tonight. I won’t give up our autonomy, but I have to do what I can to keep us all safe.”
“You could try keeping your head down,” Dan said.
A few huffs of agreement answered, as well as a short laugh. Not keeping my head down had gotten me in trouble with the old alphas. And look where that had gotten me.
“Good advice to follow there,” I said, glaring at him. He ducked his head and glanced away, like a good lupine subordinate. “You guys want the old management style back, I’ll step aside and leave you to it.” That came out more angry than I meant it to.
Nobody said anything. Score one for my side.
“The potion works,” I said. “Use it. Know that I’m doing something. I’m not going to let this slide. Any questions?”
“Let us know if there’s anything we can do,” Shaun said.
“Thank you.”
Gaze down, Shaun came over, nodded at Ben, squeezed my hand, then continued on to the other cars. Then came Becky, Dan, and the five others, one by one, all with their gazes lowered, all giving me a brief touch to show that yes, we’re still a pack. I tried to reflect comfort at them. Yes, this is our territory, and we’re going to be all right. We watched as they drove away.
That left me and Ben, masters of the territory, leaning against the car, side by side, touching along the lengths of our bodies. We could lend each other our backbones. It was a beautiful day to spend in the woods, one of those fall days where the temperature spiked and drenched the world in golden sunlight. I breathed deep, taking in the rich forest air, chilled by the mountains around us. The air itself made me want to run. I let out the breath with a sigh.
“That went well,” I said with false cheer.
Ben snorted. “If Shaun ever decides he doesn’t like you, we’re screwed.”
“Yeah, well, that’s why it’s so important we get New Moon back up and running. Give him a stake in keeping us around.”
“That almost sounds like a plan,” he said.
I leaned my head on his shoulder. “Maybe I could call the Band of Tiamat and ask for terms of surrender.” I could guess what they’d be: return to Vegas, allow myself to once again be tied to the altar of sacrifice for their insane little cult. Let them kill me.
Ben pulled away to look at me. He was frowning, worry creasing his brow, making his laugh lines deeper, making him look older. Hazel eyes studied me. And it was weird, because I’d have expected him to get angry, defiant, to say something cutting and sarcastic. But he just looked tired.
“No, you can’t,” he said without passion. Just clear statement of fact. “I won’t let you.”
“I can. You’d do it, too, if it meant making all this stop.”
“It’s not like you to just give up.”
“How do you know? I used to give up all the time.”
He smirked. “I’m glad I didn’t know you back then. I like you stubborn.”
Stubborn. Right. I had to keep being pigheaded. But being pigheaded was so much work.
“I’m going to remind you that you said that the next time we have an epic argument.”
He looked heavenward and sighed like a martyr.
I said, “Maybe I could call the Band of Tiamat, offer to surrender, get them to call off the attack—then escape their clutches at the last minute and destroy them from the inside.”
“That’s more like it,” Ben said. “But I’d still like to come up with a plan that doesn’t involve the word ‘surrender’ at all.”
Still working on that . . .
Rick and I had arranged to meet early at Psalm 23 so we could decide what to tell Roman. After what had happened today, I wasn’t in the mood for talking to either one of them, but I had to. If Roman could stop this thing, stop anyone else from dying, I’d pay nearly any price. Rick could be damned. More damned than he already was, anyway.
I must have looked awful when I arrived at the club and made my way to the corner table where Rick was sitting, hands folded before him, waiting. His eyes widened when he saw me. Not a good sign, if I could startle Rick.
“What’s wrong?”
The headache behind my eyes came in waves. The aspirin I’d taken an hour before hadn’t helped.
“This thing raised the stakes,” I said. “It killed one of my pack.”
“Oh, no. When? How?”
“Last night. Burned to death, from the inside.”
“I’m very sorry,” he said, softly, sincerely. “Sit down. Can I get you something? A drink?”
The vast catalog of possibilities gleamed behind the bar, but I couldn’t face that kind of escapism at the moment. “Just coffee. Thanks.”
Rick called the order to the bartender, and a steaming mug arrived a moment later. I clung to the warmth and breathed in the fumes. The sensations anchored me.
“We can’t tell Roman no,” I said. I’d been practicing this speech. I couldn’t let Rick turn Roman away. “I need his help. I don’t have time anymore to figure this out on my own. I can’t let it kill anyone else. It’s my job to protect the pack—I took on that responsibility, and I’ll do whatever I have to to keep them safe.”
Rick turned away, and my stomach sank, because it meant he didn’t agree with me. He was going to argue with me. He wasn’t going to let Roman stay and help.
“Rick, please—”
“Anything. Even if it means giving up your freedom? The pack’s freedom? My freedom?”
I glared. “What are you afraid of? Why does this guy scare you so much?”
“I’m not scared,” he said, too quickly, too defensively. “Maybe paranoid, as you like to say. But Kitty, look at what’s happening. It’s too convenient. He knows too much. You said it yourself: What if this is a con game? What if he’s working with the Band of Tiamat? What if all this is his doing, for the express purpose of coming here and gaining a foothold? Getting control over us? I won’t let him take this city from me.”
“This isn’t about you. Why do you vampires always think it’s about you?”
He arced a brow and glared back at me. “I’m going to tell Roman no. I’m going to tell him to leave town. We’ll stop this thing on our own, Kitty.”
“How? Do you have any idea
s? Know anyone who can do a good exorcism? Because I don’t think you do.”
He had the grace to bow his head, because I was yelling now. A week’s worth of stress had piled up and burst out. The bartender—human, normal, she may not even have known what Rick was—glanced our way, then went back to wiping down the bar.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
I wiped away angry tears that had leaked out. Crying was the last thing I wanted to be doing right now. “You have to protect your own little empire, I understand that. But I keep wondering what that means to you. You’re practically immortal. When you protect yourself and your people, you’re protecting something that could last for centuries. I won’t live for a fraction of your years. So do you look at the rest of us and think, well, we’re all going to die in a few years anyway. Do we all seem expendable to you? Disposable?”
“Kitty, no. It’s not like that.”
My turn to look away.
He leaned forward, like he was going to say something else. Explain to me how vampires saw the world, once and for all. But he looked up.
Roman had arrived.
Tonight, along with his overcoat he wore a button-up shirt, black, something soft and rich, probably silk, and tailored slacks. Touchable clothing. He held his hands folded in front of him and quirked a wry smile.
“May I sit?” he said. We were both staring at him like idiots. Rick hadn’t heard him approach. His vampiric sixth sense hadn’t warned him that Roman was here—maybe because my blubbering had distracted him.
Quickly, I straightened and took a sip of coffee, pretending that nothing was wrong.
Rick gestured, offering Roman the empty chair opposite him. Roman sat.
“Have you had a chance to discuss my offer?” he said.
“I’m afraid we can’t accept.”
“You can’t accept,” I muttered. Unable to look at either one of them, I turned away and glared at a spot a foot out from my face, which I tried to keep a mask.
Roman acknowledged my addendum with a very slight tilt of his head.
“You don’t trust me?” he said, to Rick.
“Of course not,” Rick said. “Not unless you want to tell me how you’re connected to the Band of Tiamat.”
I rolled my eyes at the assumption Rick was making. Roman remained inscrutable.
“I understand,” he said. “But you realize you have very few options here.”
“So you say.”
“What does our esteemed alpha werewolf say about this? She has a greater stake in this than you do.”
“She might, but I don’t trust—”
“I can speak for myself,” I said, glaring at Rick. “To be honest, I think I’m up shit creek. But if Ricardo here says we can handle this without you, who am I to argue?” That came out snottier than it probably should have, but I was in no mood to be polite.
“You aren’t very diplomatic, are you?” Roman said, sounding amused.
I agreed with a tight-lipped smile. “You know what the worst part is? We know this is revenge against me, but it’s not just coming after me. It’s about pain and chaos, so it’s going to kill my pack one by one. It’s going to destroy the places I love, and the people I love, until I have nothing left. And that’s evil.”
Roman glanced at Rick, as if to say that was all the explanation we needed. It was all the explanation I needed—I’d do anything to stop this thing in its tracks—but vampire politics trumped my own issues, apparently.
“I can’t let you stay in my city,” Rick said.
“Very well. If that’s where you stand, I can’t argue,” Roman said. I wondered how I was going to chase after Roman and beg him to help me behind Rick’s back. I wondered what I could give him that Rick couldn’t.
Roman stood, businesslike, without hesitation. He wasn’t going to waste his dignity by trying to talk Rick out of his decision. “It was good to meet you both. You have such interesting reputations.”
I almost giggled at that. “That’s what everyone says.”
He held his hand out for Rick to shake, but Rick didn’t. Instead, they held a minutelong staring match. I couldn’t tell who broke contact first, because I was the one who blinked. One moment they were locked in a battle of wills. The next, Roman was holding his hand out to me.
“Kitty,” he said.
I did shake his hand, because maybe Roman was only trying to be polite. The pressure of his hand was firm, steady. Not unpleasant. Not challenging. Just polite. Then he let go, gave us one last smile, and was gone.
I found a slip of paper palmed in my hand.
I curled the hand into a fist and pretended not to notice. Sitting there, my hands on the table in fists, Rick must have thought I was very angry.
“Kitty, I’m sorry,” he said again, and would keep saying, as if that made everything better. “I’ll do everything I can to help, you know I will.”
“Everything except letting in the one person who claims to know how to stop it.”
“If I let him in, if he gained a foothold in Denver, we’d never get him out again. You know that.”
I did. Part of me, a big part, agreed with Rick. Roman was a stranger, therefore untrustworthy. Who knows what havoc he could wreak here in the long term?
“But you wouldn’t even listen to him,” I said.
Rick sat, not really looking at me, his jaw taut, body braced. This hadn’t been easy for him. Him becoming Master vampire of the city hadn’t been any easier than me becoming its alpha werewolf. We were floundering. Which meant he couldn’t, under any circumstances, give an inch to someone like Roman. Rationally, I understood, but I wasn’t being particularly rational about this.
“Kitty—” he said, starting another round of apologies. I held up my hand to stop him.
“I understand, Rick. Really I do. I need to go check on my people. We both need to work on stopping this. Without outside help. So, I’m going to go.”
He bowed his head, acquiescing.
I left the club, not knowing if we were still friends. Not knowing if we’d ever be able to talk to each other after what he’d done, and what I was about to do.
I walked to my car, about three blocks away, before daring to look at the scrap of paper in my hand. It had a number and street marked on it, about a mile away, toward Capitol Hill. Looking around, I took a deep breath of air, trying to catch the cold scent of vampire. To see if Rick had sent anyone to follow me. I didn’t sense anything. I drove to the address Roman had given me.
It was on the corner of a block of run-down houses. Cars crammed the curb on both sides, making navigating the two-way street difficult. This late, though, no one else was out and about. I had to park a block away, slipping into a spot on the curb in front of a driveway. It was late, and I didn’t plan to be here long. I hoped no one would mind.
Roman found me before I could backtrack to the location. The address was just a landmark, not a destination.
“I wasn’t sure you’d meet me,” he said, approaching me on the sidewalk.
“It’s like you said, I don’t have too many options.”
“What will Rick do when he finds out you’ve gone behind his back?”
“I don’t know,” I said. I took a deep breath. “I don’t really care. He’s not in charge here—we’re supposed to be partners.”
“You assumed he’d say yes. That he’d do what was necessary to help you.”
I looked away. I didn’t want to go so far as to say I’d assumed, but I’d definitely hoped. Whatever my bravado, Rick wouldn’t be happy about me talking to Roman like this.
Roman gestured for me to join him, and I fell into step beside him. We walked along, at midnight, in a part of town that really wasn’t meant for walking late at night. But we were a couple of monsters, confident that anything that might try to bother us simply couldn’t.
“The demon killed one of your wolves,” he said. “The police are involved. What are they saying about it?”
“Spontaneous h
uman combustion,” I said, smirking.
“I’m constantly amazed by the explanations people will come up with to avoid the obvious, when they can’t conceive of the obvious.”
“Demon?” I said. Even me, with my experience, questioned it. I kept trying to draw a line around what I believed, what supernatural, legendary tales I was willing to buy. I kept having to shift that line outward. “Like, heaven-and-hell, fire-and-brimstone demon?”
“That word encompasses a wide variety of phenomena.”
“So it could be anything,” I grumbled. I crossed my arms tightly, frustrated. Roman had a brisk, no-nonsense stride, like he had someplace to be and wasn’t about to dawdle. I had the feeling he took leisurely strolls through gardens the same way. I could keep up with him without too much trouble, letting my strides go long and wolflike. I wanted to pace. Like going back and forth inside a cage, staring out.
“This one’s very specific,” he said. “I guarantee, even if you knew what it was, you don’t have the ability to defeat it. I do.”
“How very convenient for us both,” I said flatly. He acknowledged the sarcasm with a smirk.
“Now that I’m dealing with you alone instead of Rick, I’ll need other arrangements.”
“Other payment,” I said. “Since I can’t give you vampiric permission to stay here. What do you want from me?”
He only glanced at me, not turning the focus of his attention from the path in front of him. A man with a mission. My senses were taking in everything, the hum of tires on the street the next block over, music coming from an upstairs window, the claws of a dog tapping on the sidewalk as it trotted away from us. The scents of garbage, a car leaking oil, grass and vegetation drying up in the autumn weather. The touch of a very faint wind changing direction. I was ready for anything, from any direction.
Roman only needed to know what was right in front of him. He was unconcerned.
He said, “Your loyalty. That’s all.”
His words were chilling. This was such a little thing, after all. So easy to say yes, since it didn’t cost anything right now, but it was so open-ended. He could ask for anything later on. To vampires of certain ages, of certain sensibilities, who carried ancient values into the modern era, certain words—hospitality, honor, and loyalty—had weight and depth that they’d lost for someone like me, who had grown up in a rootless, disposable modern culture. The old meaning of hospitality wasn’t about napkin rings. It held that you were responsible for the total well-being of anyone you sheltered in your walls, that you were obligated to help someone who came to you and asked. Honor touched on the core of one’s very identity, which when lost was nearly impossible to recover. And loyalty. Fealty. The word called to mind knights on bended knee before their kings. For someone of that mind-set, to break such a vow was to break the world.