Dark Debt

  Hands on my hips, he pulled my body toward him as he devoured me. I fisted my hand in his hair, called out his name as pleasure hit me like a shock of lightning.

  “Ethan.”

  Again, Sentinel. His mouth and hands continued to taunt and torture, until I wasn’t sure I’d be able to keep standing. He didn’t stop until I’d climaxed again.

  “Knees,” he ordered. And I gratefully complied, lowering quivering thighs as I situated my body atop his.

  Ethan stripped himself of clothing, rocked his body upward, seating himself firmly inside me, then growled deep in his throat, a rumble strong enough to vibrate the bed beneath us.

  He raked his gaze along my body, from strong shoulders to breasts, abdomen to thighs, to the junction where our bodies were joined. I loved watching his eyes, watching his silvered irises cloud with lust and arousal, watching his face go utterly blank when pleasure rocked him, hearing his possessive and primal groans. Ethan was undeniably gorgeous at any time of day, waking or sleeping. But when the veil of desire covered him, he was magnificent.

  His lip curled with focus, his hands found my hips, long fingers squeezing my hips as I began to move, savoring the sensation of his body around mine, within mine, both of us becoming more than we’d been, because we were together. His hips lifted to meet mine, eyes narrowed, contorted with pleasure. Perhaps, I thought, I’d give him something to see.

  I cupped my breasts, nipped my lip between my teeth coquettishly, watched his eyes widen in surprise, delight, arousal. His hips moved faster, pushed upward as I rocked above him, spinning my hips and watching as his eyes darkened. Sweat gleamed across his chest, his breathing harsher, faster, as his pace quickened further. I took his wrist, lifted it to my mouth, touched my tongue to the spot above his rocketing pulse.

  “Merit,” he said hoarsely, and, as his body rocked upward, I bit.

  * * *

  We lazed in bed, lying beside each other for a little while longer until Ethan glanced at the clock, sighed. “We need to get moving. The party starts in two hours.”

  It took me a moment to remember what he was talking about, that we’d promised my father attendance at Reed’s party, and that I was going to have to wear a dress and fancy heels. I’d need to figure out a way to carry my phone and, if not my katana, a dagger.

  I’d also need to check in with Luc and, in case he hadn’t already heard, update Jonah, the captain of the Grey House guards, about Balthasar’s appearance.

  Jonah was also my partner in the Red Guard, a secret corps of vampires who kept an eye on the Masters and the reigning council, now the AAM, to make sure they didn’t infringe the rights of Novitiates. We hadn’t spoken much since Nicole’s GP revolution, as we’d both been busy helping our Masters with the transition. And, frankly, I’d been stung by RG comments that if Ethan had gained control of the GP, I was too enamored to keep an eye on him. I wasn’t looking forward to rehashing the love-makes-girls-dumb argument.

  “How long is the line?”

  I picked up my phone, scanned for Luc’s now-nightly announcement for the number of vampires who’d requested an audience with Ethan. Ethan was the only Chicago Master who’d agreed to provide an audience to Rogues, vampires who weren’t affiliated with a particular House. That drew a lot of Midwestern vampires to Cadogan’s gate.

  “Only seven tonight,” I reported back, and sent Luc the party details while I was thinking about it.

  Ethan sighed. “I still won’t be able to get to them all.”

  “If you don’t, they’ll come back. And there’s a safe house if they need shelter in the meantime.” We wouldn’t house all the vampires who showed up at the door, so Ethan and Malik had established a boardinghouse down the block where traveling vampires could safely seek refuge while they waited for an audience with the Master.

  I put aside the phone, glanced back at Ethan. “Balthasar.”

  “That isn’t a question.”

  “It’s a topic of discussion, which you’re avoiding.” I wrapped the sheet around myself, rose to sit on my knees so I could see his face, which was unreadable.

  “Is the sheet really necessary at this point?”

  “It will keep us from getting distracted.”

  “I can see you naked without getting distracted.”

  “That’s not exactly a compliment, and quit changing the subject.” I put a hand on his. “You haven’t had a chance to talk about it—about him, about what happened—since it happened.”

  Ethan looked away. “Is there anything to say?”

  “Well, he tried to seduce me in front of you, so we could start there.”

  As predicted, that got me a flaming glare. “It wasn’t seduction. It was magic.” But his tone belied his words.

  “So it was. And a betrayal either way.”

  Ethan blew out a breath through puffed cheeks.

  “You don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to. But things get a little tense between us when we let things stew.”

  His look was flat. “Why do I have a sense you actually mean ‘me’ when you say ‘we’?”

  My responsive look was even flatter. “Blackmail.”

  “Irrelevant.”

  “Since Nicole attempted to blackmail you about Balthasar, I think that makes it pretty freaking relevant.”

  Ethan growled, pushed his hands through his hair, linked his fingers behind his head. “I’d like him to respect the fact that I intentionally separated myself from him, and perhaps take a graceful walk into the sun. But there is little chance of that.”

  He looked at me. “I don’t worry about myself. I worry about you, and I worry about this House.”

  “Mallory and Catcher are here.”

  “For any direct trouble he might try to cause,” Ethan agreed. He lowered his hands, linked his fingers across his abdomen. “But if he tries to re-create his little European kingdom here? If he treats humans in Chicago like he treated Persephone and the others?” He leaned forward, a line of worry between his eyes. “Consider, Merit, the storm that would rain down upon us, upon vampires.”

  He was right; I hadn’t even considered the damage Balthasar might cause by leaving a trail of blood and bodies across Chicago. Our relative peace with the city was short-lived, and we’d only just managed to keep the torches-and-pitchforks types at bay.

  “Damn,” I said.

  “Exactly.” He sighed. “But we’ve done all that we can for now. Your grandfather is alerted, and he’ll advise the mayor if necessary.”

  Mayor Diane Kowalcyzk wasn’t keen on vampires, but we’d helped the city once too often for her to use us as the political lightning rods she preferred. And since Chicago had more vampire Houses than any other city in the country, we had the largest AAM contingent. That made Diane even more interested.

  “And your plan? Are you thinking about disavowal?”

  “I’m considering it. But I can’t shake the fear he’d act out. I want to talk it through with Malik and Luc when we have time. Which isn’t right now, since we have a real-estate mogul to entertain. Let’s get moving.”

  “Do we have to go?”

  “Yes. And there’s probably breakfast waiting outside our door, if that’s any incentive.”

  Of course it was. I slipped on a robe and opened the front door, found breakfast, newspapers, and Luc’s daily security reports awaiting us.

  I picked up the tray and closed the door. Ethan gestured me forward as if awaiting service. “Darth Sullivan desires breakfast.”

  I shook my head, placed the tray on the farthest corner of the bed. Someone had to keep his ego in check; might as well be me.

  Ethan grumbled but reached for the paper and a mug of coffee. I grabbed a bottle of blood and headed for the closet to grab jeans and a T-shirt.

  I wasn’t getting into a dress until it was absolutely nece
ssary.

  * * *

  When we were dressed, I followed Ethan downstairs to the House’s foyer, where a small reception desk had been installed to handle the waiting vampires. It was currently staffed by Juliet, a red-haired House guard who looked delicate but was as fierce as they came. Supplicants sat on benches installed across from the table.

  Juliet glanced up, nodded at Ethan. “Sire.”

  Ethan nodded at her, then glanced at the vampires—three women, four men—who waited for him.

  They were a sociological sample: a variety of shapes, sizes, colors, nationalities, finances. Among them, a very tall, broad-shouldered woman with short hair and a square face. A man of average height with dark skin and darker hair, casual clothes, and a worried expression. A blond woman I’d have described as handsome in a sleek blouse and pencil skirt. Their reasons for waiting were probably also different, but they were unified in the hope that Ethan could solve their problems.

  They began to rise when they realized Ethan was approaching, but he held up a hand. “No need. Please stay seated. Unfortunately, I have an engagement this evening, so my availability will be limited. But if I cannot see you tonight, Juliet will help you find shelter.”

  A few looked worried or perturbed by the delay; the rest seemed to be in awe of Ethan.

  “Sire,” they said in more or less unison, and Ethan smiled in acknowledgment before turning toward his office. That was where we’d have parted ways had we not seen Helen waiting in the doorway of Ethan’s office, two garment bags in hand.

  She was surveying Ethan’s office when we reached her, her gaze stopping at the broken bookshelves. “I hadn’t noticed these last night. It seems Malik did not exaggerate.”

  “Balthasar did not employ his best manners,” Ethan said.

  Helen placed the garment bags carefully across the couch, then stood ramrod straight again and looked at Ethan.

  “You know that I normally do not speak out of turn. But with him in town, and sorcerers in the House, that seems a recipe for trouble.”

  “And if I told you the sorcerers were helping keep the House safe from Balthasar’s tantrums?”

  She paused. “Then I’ll get the staff started on the repairs.”

  “I appreciate it.” When she left the room, Ethan glanced at his watch. “I’m going to do what I can with the supplicants before getting dressed. You wanted to check in with Luc?”

  I nodded. “I’ll go downstairs, give him a few minutes to harass me about being overly fancy and missing tonight’s training.” That brought a smile to my face. “Oh, I forgot about that. No Luc90X tonight. Maybe dating a big shot does have its privileges.”

  “Since I am the big shot, and you’re Sentinel, you could probably skip that training altogether.”

  I pointed a finger at him. “Don’t tell Luc that. He likes to play boss, and you’d break his heart.” I shrugged. “The training’s good for me, and it does give me a chance to hang out with Lindsey.”

  It was much more fun to be part of the guard group, even if not quite one of them, than to stand alone as Sentinel.

  “In that case, talk to him, and make it snappy. Our interlude this morning put us behind.”

  That interlude had been his idea, but considering how much I’d enjoyed it, I let it go. “I can read a clock. I’ll meet you in the apartments.”

  Unless I came up with a really good reason to avoid the thing altogether.

  * * *

  Cadogan House had four floors—three aboveground, which held offices, gathering spaces, the library, and the vampires’ individual rooms; and a basement, which held the training room, the arsenal, and the Operations Room. The latter was Luc’s personal kingdom, a high-tech room with security monitors, computers, a giant conference table, and several vampires at his disposal.

  Tonight, it also held a giant tin of popcorn with the seals of the three Chicago vampire Houses stamped in gold on an azure background.

  “Nice,” I said, reaching over the table and grabbing a handful. “I hope we’re getting licensing fees for this.”

  “But of course,” Luc said. While the guards sat at computer stations along the edges of the room, monitoring security, doing research, Luc sat at the end of the table in jeans and cowboy boots—like Helen, an exemption from Cadogan’s black-suit policy—his ankles crossed on the table as he perused the day’s Tribune.

  The headline on the front page, which faced out, was jarring: MASTER MEETS MAKER above a photograph of Ethan and Balthasar facing each other. The opportunism was clear in Balthasar’s eyes. The concern clear in Ethan’s.

  “Glad to see they aren’t encouraging him.”

  Luc grunted, folded the paper lengthwise, then horizontally, and set it on the table. “Reporters love a good story.” He tapped the folded paper. “That’s a damned evocative one.”

  “Yeah,” I agreed. Too evocative—too emotional—for my tastes. “Did every outlet pick it up?”

  Luc gestured back to his desk, where a pile of folded papers had already been reviewed. “Across the world. We’re the hot new dysfunctional family.”

  Lindsey rolled her office chair toward us, used red nails on the tabletop to pull herself to a stop. Her blond hair was pulled into a high bun, and she’d paired her suit with eyeglasses with trendy black frames that she didn’t actually need. But she pulled off the “saucy librarian” look.

  “Babe,” she said to Luc, “you sound whiny.”

  “I’m entitled to be whiny,” Luc said. “And don’t call me ‘babe’ on duty.”

  Lindsey gave me a long-suffering look. “If I had a quarter, am I right?”

  “Always.” I pointed toward the glasses, the hairdo. “What’s this?”

  She smiled, shrugged. “Just trying something a little different. I’m going for intellectual femme fatale.”

  “And you’re pulling it off,” I said. “We’ll be heading to Reed’s within the hour, so I wanted to check in. Any word about Balthasar?”

  “No,” Luc said, “but the door’s good and warded. He won’t be able to get in or out.”

  “How’d they link it to him?” I wondered.

  “Used a piece of wood from the office bookshelves. Residual magic, apparently. You know Mallory’s into forensic magic?”

  I nodded. “Yeah. How are the Novitiates taking her involvement?”

  “There are grumbles, of course. Concerns about trustworthiness. But considering those are matched against concerns about Balthasar, most are chill.”

  “Where’s he staying?”

  “Condo on Michigan near Grant Park. We aren’t sure which unit—we didn’t follow him in past the lobby. We’re looking through real-estate records to confirm the owner, and we’ll keep eyes on him twenty-four-seven.”

  “What about his backstory?”

  Luc leaned forward, tapped the touch screen built into the tabletop, and an image flashed onto the large wall screen behind us—a spreadsheet marked by black and green boxes.

  “That’s impressive,” I said. “What is it?”

  This time, Luc tapped a button on the conference phone.

  “Yo,” said a familiar voice after a moment.

  Luc smiled. “Jeff, Merit likes your spreadsheet.”

  Jeff Christopher was a shape-shifting white tiger in the body of a lanky computer genius and, along with Catcher, one of my grandfather’s employees.

  “My spreadsheets bring all the girls to the yard. Hi, Merit.”

  “Hi, Jeff.” I glanced at Luc with amusement. “You’re giving orders to the Ombuddies now?”

  “Requesting their assistance in our time of great need,” Luc corrected, bringing his hands together prayerfully.

  “Being bossy,” Lindsey corrected with a grin, rolling back to her computer station at Luc’s arch look.

  It occurred to me that over the co
urse of the last year, we’d become a strange and wonderful team. The Ombuddies, Cadogan House, the sorcerers, with occasional help from other supernaturals. Most of them friendly, all of them with unique strengths that contributed to a pretty weird, but wonderful, whole.

  “I’m short on time tonight,” I told the team members, “so tell me about whatever this is.”

  “So,” Jeff began, and I could practically hear the smile in his voice, “we’ve begun the fact-checking process. Given the importance, we decided to be systematic about it, so we created this timeline.”

  “Green entries are verified,” Luc said. “Black entries need to be. Red entries, if there were any, would be falsies. No falsies yet.”

  I nodded, gestured to the green entries. “What have you verified so far?”

  Luc gestured to the beginning of the timeline. “We’ve started with Persephone’s death, and Balthasar’s not-quite death and capture by the Memento Mori. There was definitely cult activity in Spitalfields. In our particular case, men who wanted immortality and, ironically, didn’t care who they killed to get it.”

  Luc switched the image on-screen to a small gold disc. MEMENTO MORI was engraved around a center skull. “It’s a signet ring,” he said, spinning the picture so the band was visible. “Each member got one.”

  “Anything specifically about Balthasar being one of their captives?”

  “Nothing we’ve been able to dig up so far,” Jeff said. “But the Librarian thinks he’s found some of the group’s research materials. They’re held by a private collector, but there’s a library in London that has microfiche of the pages. Some of them are online.”

  The Librarian was Cadogan’s aptly nicknamed research and book specialist. He worked in the House’s extraordinary two-story library. I was green-eyed with envy for the job. Although ass-kicking definitely had its moments.

  “The Librarian has reviewed some of them,” Jeff said, “and we’re working on getting copies of the entire archive. He’s found some general mentions of vampires, but no names.”

  I glanced at Luc. “I’m surprised the GP didn’t jump on that—a cult torturing vampires.”

  “I doubt this popped onto their radar,” Luc said. “This wasn’t a large-scale operation, but a cult in a very poor neighborhood.”