Lilith hit the locks the second the car door closed behind me. “What. The. Fuck.” And she turned on me, horrified. “What the fuck?”
I pointed wordlessly to the road, trying to catch my breath and straighten my head. “Drive.” The doors wouldn’t do shit against a baby vampire.
And that wasn’t a baby.
She did, accelerating abruptly. The car lurched and my heart did too, but it was just her driving, totally understandably erratic. I fumbled at my phone and found my contacts, finally. Taig. Taig.
It rang forever. When he answered it with a half awake, “Rory?”
I felt no relief at the sound of his voice. “Found your vampire nest,” I told him, trying to put the panic aside. “And the ancient.”
“Are you safe?” he demanded. “Where are you?”
Laughter bubbled in my chest and I crushed it. “Getting the fuck out of here. Meet us. Somewhere.”
“Where are you?” he repeated, the words simultaneously deadly calm and an absolute order.
I didn’t even mind. “Shipping container place, near the Westgate. You know—fuck. Address, Lilith. No—it doesn’t matter. We’re almost at the freeway.” But, holy shitballs, that thing could move. I had no doubt whatsoever it could catch us in a car if it wanted to. “Somewhere quiet, Taig. So I can explain.”
He was silent for a moment. “I’m about half an hour from you. Come to mine.”
“My place is twenty,” Lilith said, through chattering teeth. “And it’s charmed. Tell him to come to mine.”
“I heard her,” he said. “Send me the address. I’ll be waiting. For God’s sake, Rory, be careful.”
I hung up on that utterly ludicrous request. As if there was a single thing I could do against that level of power. I sat back and shut my eyes, listening to the roaring of blood in my ears.
He’d killed them.
There was no question. It fit too neatly. Explained it too well.
Who in the ever-loving fuck was he, and why is he taking out vamp nests?
And, on the back of that. Why had he let the woman go? Because if you’re powerful enough to take on that many vampires without them having an opportunity to lift a finger, you were more than powerful enough to kill one vulnerable woman.
Or two witches.
“Can Vince get information on clients?” I asked Lilith, trying to remember what she’d said about his resources.
She braked abruptly for lights, her breathing still a bit quick. “Vince can get information on everything. If he doesn’t like his job.”
I resisted the urge to remind her he’d given us all up to the vamps. It wasn’t his fault. Without charisma protection, we were all just putty in their hands.
“We should talk to him.”
She shot me a hard look. “He’s been through enough.” Her hand was white knuckled on the wheel, but when we got a green she took off smoothly. “How about you talk to O’Malley and I talk to Vince.”
I opened my mouth to object, then closed it. It made sense. I didn’t like it, though. I didn’t like being out of the loop. I’d been out of the loop today, and look where that had gotten us.
I shook that thought off. It wasn’t Lilith’s fault there had been a random, ridiculously powerful vampire there staking out the competition. But all I’d needed was one vampire. Just one. To send a message to Tobias. To make him think Dierdre was in danger, to make him come to the party. I scrubbed my hands over my face.
Exactly how I was going to make it work I still wasn’t sure. And it didn’t matter, because every single vampire was dead.
I drew air in deep and reached for patience. “Okay, so, I’ll see Taig at yours, then? And catch you when you get back.”
“Uh huh.”
I tried not to look while she pulled into the left-hand lane to do a hook turn. The whole thing made me feel out of control. I couldn’t deal with a fucking hook turn right now.
“It’s going to be super awkward to call him, you know.”
“Taig?” I asked, surprised.
“Vince.”
“Oh.” From my limited interactions with our ICT guy, they all seemed pretty awkward. But he was only at our coven part time, so I hadn’t worried about trying to get around the bloke’s painfully obvious social anxiety. “Want me to do it?”
“No.”
I held up my hands, surprised by her vehemence. “Hey, not going to blackmail him.” Although I’d considered it, briefly.
“You’re like a dog with a bone,” she said, flatly. “And I don’t want you…gnawing on him. I love you.”
It stung, a bit, but I tried to understand. “Okay. It’s fine. You’re right.” I hadn’t been at my finest recently.
“Sorry if that was unkind. It wasn’t supposed to be.” She let out a long breath. “Hells, Roars. That’s not what vampires are supposed to do.”
She hadn’t even seen the inside of the container. “No,” I agreed, grimly. “No, it’s not.” Especially not when there was still light. Not enough light to be a true danger, sure, but enough that it should’ve made him cautious.
He hadn’t been cautious. He had been curious.
My stomach was starting a rebellion and I had no time for it. I jumped out at the lights near Lilith’s apartment to save her navigating the parking maze and bolted through the misting rain. Taig was near the door in the scant cover, huddled low in a windbreaker. He looked like he’d just done a double shift and the information barely touched me. “I don’t have her keys,” I realized, out loud.
He looked over my shoulder. “Where is she?”
“Long story.” I glanced around grimly. The pizza place over the road was terrible, but any port in a storm.
He stopped me with an arm over my body before I could steer us in the direction of the light and noise from the greasy shop. “It’s public.”
“And?”
He shot me a withering look. “Come on, Rory. Vampire one-oh-one? Private property is protective.”
“All right, Detective Arrogant,” I muttered, falling into step beside him. Darkness had fallen and the hairs on the back of my neck were still up. “Fuck.”
“I’m going to assume we’re not in immediate danger,” he said, the words clipped.
“Who fucking knows.” He’d just vanished. Not a flicker. Not a shadow. Just…gone. My skin crawled.
His stride lengthened and keys came out. “Get in.” Car lights flashed. Locks clicked.
I didn’t argue, just climbed into the passenger seat and let out a long, shaky breath. “I think I’m in the wrong line of work.”
“Well, you’d be a shit beekeeper, with the way you go stirring up trouble.” It hurt. The guilt, the shame. I wasn’t—I just couldn’t, right now. I reached for the doorhandle.
“I’m sorry,” he said, quickly, through his teeth. “I’m sorry, Rory.” I paused, for a moment and tried to think. But I couldn’t. I could only feel. One raw bundle of nerve endings, that was me. “I’m rattled and I was a shit. I hurt you and I regret it. Next time I’ll let you know I just need a minute, or take a walk.”
I swung my eyes on him, studied his profile.
He’d done a shit-ton of communication courses. Or a lot of therapy.
Something about that knowledge made me feel just a little better. “Don’t be a dick.”
He exhaled slowly. “I try. Sometimes I have to work harder than others. But I’ll try harder.” He shook his head a little. “I can just do some laps. Cars are almost private property.”
“Almost doesn’t count,” I admitted, tiredly, feeling myself deflate. “And you know it.”
“Yeah.” He shrugged. “I’ll drive you home. Can’t be that long a story.”
But I wasn’t going home without talking to Lilith. “Yours is closer.”
“You want to be alone with me?” he asked, bluntly.
The look I sent him was, I hoped, pure venom. “Look, mate, I’ve got bigger problems right now than how you’d look with my legs draped over your shoulders, okay? And so do you.”
He didn’t say anything. Maybe he had nothing nice to say. But he turned on the indicator and watched the traffic for a gap. I wasn’t offered his phone to turn on music. The wipers, the hum of the traffic around us, were our mood music. And it wasn’t a light mood.
I couldn’t sleep with him. I didn’t need the complication of anyone else right now. Getting my own head straight was enough.
But I needed the wonderful sexy arsehole.
“I’ve been doing long hours and no housework,” he said, flatly, as we pulled up.
I braced myself as we left the car. His eyes were everywhere, his hand hovering somewhere in the vicinity of my shoulders as I was ushered up the stairs and down a hall. I don’t know what he thought he was protecting me from when I was the one packing all the legal weaponry, and a shit-ton that wasn’t, too.
When he opened the door the smell of Indian hit my nose. Shoes had been kicked in some semblance of a pile beside the door. A pile of bottles, rinsed and ready to be recycled, sat on the end of his bench. Passionfruit fizzy drink. The man must drink his weight in it. Some empty boxes were in their general vicinity, just chilling, waiting. His bin was full of takeaway containers.
“There’s no moldy dishes,” I said, looking around. “No piles of laundry. No bongs.”
He shot me a look that seemed actually insulted. “Moldy dishes? What do you take me for?”
I shrugged, decided not to tell him some of my wilder stories. “Single guy who works dog hours.” I tossed aside a jumper on an armchair and found a book, a young adult fantasy thing with a clown on the cover. I threw it onto the coffee table, too, then flopped down in the space I’d cleared.
He didn’t ask if I wanted a coffee, just went into the little kitchen area. “So. Talk.”
“This is between you and me.”
“No promises.”
I felt a twist in my gut. Rejection? Betrayal. It was betrayal. No wonder it hurt. “Okay.” I stood. “Thanks for the ride.”
“Trust goes both ways, Rory.” He hadn’t even looked up, was scooping up coffee. “Since when did you need to tell me when to keep my mouth shut?”
I could’ve told him right then and not been far wrong. Anger simmered in my veins. Why was he suddenly so pissy? “Is this about the other night?” We’d sorted that out, hadn’t we?
“Last night. I don’t know. Is it?”
I drew a breath to shout at him and felt it turn to stone in my lungs. I walked over, my feet heavy, and fell down on a stool. “Not from where I’m sitting.”
He nodded. The smell of coffee filled the air. “Okay. Well, from where I’m sitting, you’ve copped some pretty big hits recently.”
He leaned on the bench before me. “I get that. I’m not looking to hit you in a tender spot. I’m having a hard time keeping it together right now. If you’ll recall, yesterday you ran into a magickal inferno three times. That cost me to watch.” He shrugged a little. “No point denying it. And it was still in my brain, last night. So, I didn’t make good choices tonight, and I’m sorry.”
I scrubbed my hands over my face. I couldn’t do this now. Another example of me not thinking things through and somehow managing to not completely ruin everything. That shame wasn’t useful right now. “Okay, look, we’ve been polite, we’re good. I don’t know if I should be apologizing to you for last night. But, fuck. Vampires, Taig.”
He turned and finished the coffee making ritual as he said, “I don’t need an apology. Except that I might not be able to wear that tie again without getting hard.”
I couldn’t help the smile that tugged at my mouth at the thought of him choosing his wardrobe to avoid that particular problem. “Sorry, not sorry.”
“Yeah, same.” He slid a coffee over to me then went to the fridge and pulled out a bottle of the passionfruit sugar water. “Want?”
I shook my head and watched as he poured a measure of it, then drew in a deep breath, visibly bracing himself as he said, “Vampires.”
“So,” I began, warily. “It occurred to me that we’re running in circles and people are dying.”
The slight arch of his brows, the way his eyes narrowed fractionally, told me he knew exactly where I was going.
Did I deserve that annoyance? Fuck, who knows. I stood and followed him back to the seat I’d cleared as he sat his drink down and fell down on his saggy old couch. “I’m not that predictable.”
“No,” he agreed, dryly.
I picked up the paperback, tossed it at his face and was shocked when he caught it one-handed. The grin he shot me was as lazy as his catching hand was fast. I let it go. “Long and short of it. Angel’s lackeys are working with vamps. Amor wants Dierdre. I figured I’d lure them out by sending a message, via vamps, to indicate she’s in danger. My terms, my turf.”
His brow furrowed. “Why would the ex believe a message you sent via vampires?”
“Because I’d murder them if he didn’t.”
His face was blank. “I see.”
It wasn’t a huge flaw in my plan. I waved it away. It sounded bad when I said it like that, but it had potential. The point wasn’t the plan, it was a bunch of murder, not done by me.
By the time I’d finished describing what I’d seen, his eyes were cold and his mouth a hard line. “And now we can’t do anything with this information, lest we get you, Lilith, and her source in trouble.”
“Yeah.”
“Okay.” He took a pull of his drink. That shit was pure sugar. I was kind of tempted, actually. But the coffee he’d made me was pretty good. “Why would an incredibly powerful vampire kill a bunch of other vampires—at least one of which was likely a centurion—and not you?”
I shrugged. “Dunno. Want to visit him and ask?”
Taig set down his drink very deliberately. “No.”
I shrugged again. “Okay, that’s fine. Look, I can report it anonymously—”
“You can’t visit him,” he said, quietly. “Rory. I’m dead serious. This isn’t a time when you can,” he waved a hand. “Smash through some barriers. This guy is a nuke.”
I raised my brows and made no attempt to hide my irritation. Heavy-handed Taig wasn’t my favorite incarnation of the man. “Oh?”
“From what I hear, his paperwork was submitted while he was staying in Hollywood. He got approval. He didn’t book a plane, Rory. He didn’t jump a rift. He walked. And he got here in one night.”
I tried to juggle that information so it could somehow make sense. “That’s, what, a twenty-hour flight, plus the oceans he’d have to cross?”
“Greene did the math while we were shooting shit the other day.” He held my eyes, grim and deadly serious. A chill went down my spine. “That’s faster than the speed of sound. Significantly. And he sustained that.”
That didn’t really mean much to me. I had no idea how fast average vamps moved. Who tracked that shit? Especially when the subject matter was so prone to eating the tester. “Got it. He’s badarse. That’s already registered.”
“Has it? Because you just invited me to speak to him. And I don’t think you meant a video conference.”
I shrugged and looked down at my coffee, feeling sick. “It’s all I’ve got.”
“Right now,” he agreed, quietly. “But something will come up. We know where Tobias and Amor are. We’ll get them.”
The idea rolled around in my head, heavy and slick. “The teams are still dark, aren’t they?”
He didn’t look away. I respected that. But his expression softened, a little. “Yeah.”
I stood and cradled my coffee close, but I couldn’t feel the warmth of it. I paced in front of his big television. Anxiety hummed low in the back of my brain. I checked my phone, but there was nothing from Lilith.
“Want to talk?” he offered, gently.
“No.” I took a fortifying swallow of coffee. “You don’t go dark for this long. They’re dead.”
“You don’t know that.”
No, I didn’t know that. But I knew what it looked like. What it felt like. The smell of fear, sweat, and death. The desperation. The slow, creeping retreat. The shifting extraction points. The shattered charms. The sleepless nights.
Taig was a brilliant detective, but he wouldn’t understand that. He hadn’t been there.
“They’re calling teams from all over Australia,” he said, quietly still. “And specialists. Assembling people for a major assault.”
My heart twisted. That wasn’t unheard of, but it wasn’t done lightly. Aside from anything else, the financial cost was huge. And they couldn’t plan for this push. Their intel was bad, otherwise they wouldn’t have had two teams go dark.
He hadn’t mentioned it, but it must’ve been in the works for a while. It took time to pull everyone from everywhere. He hadn’t told me.
Another thought occurred to me, a darker one. “How many teams have they sent?”
Hesitation, now. “Four,” he admitted.
I couldn’t breathe around the sudden lump in my throat. Four teams. Forty magi. If even half of them didn’t walk out…
“That’s more teams than we have in the state.”
“Yes.”
I ran my hands through my hair and found another pin. Brutally, I yanked it out. Fucking pretty hair. Fucking bullshit. “What kind of specialists?”
He picked up his drink again and swirled it.
My heart sank. “They’ve contacted you.”
He lifted the glass and drank it like it was scotch. “Yes.”
I paced away from him. I didn’t need to ask what he’d said.
He wasn’t Retrievals.
He was amazing. Great. Good at his job. Quick on the uptake. Knowledgeable. But he wasn’t Retrievals.
And he’d be torn apart.
My heart ached. Afternoon sunlight. The cacophony of black cockatoos and splintering bones. I could lose Nic and Taig both in one fucked up day. And I might not even be there for them, at the end. “They haven’t contacted me.”
“You’re too close,” he said, quietly. “Conflict of interest.” I whirled, lifted a finger, and he held up his hands in surrender. “Isn’t my call, Rory. I put in a word for you. You know I always do. And I believe the words I put in, too.”
The anger flooded out of me and I fell down in the chair, defeated.
He was going to die, and I was left sitting here, worrying, wondering, and wishing for a plan D.
He let out a long sigh, scrubbing a hand over his face. “I wish they’d let you come.”
I wished they hadn’t asked for him. But I couldn’t tell him that. I looked down at my knees, helplessness a weight on my chest. I breathed and wondered how my ribs didn’t creak under that crushing pressure.
I remembered Amor on her knees, surrendering. The way they’d been about ten seconds away from being ripped to shreds.
He was too good for that end.
“You’re waiting on Lilith, right? You never told me what she’s up to.”
I considered lying. Instead, said, “Following up with our source.”
“Okay. I heard the job this morning was pretty smooth, considering.” He picked up the book beside him, shifted it onto the armchair. “But you must be beat. Sit down. I’ll put on some bubblegum for your brain. If you fall asleep, I’ll throw a blanket over you.”
I wavered. Curling up beside him, putting my head on his shoulder, sounded good. More than good.
He’s going to die.
“I’m not going to take that sad look you’re giving me personally,” he said, around a yawn. “But I gotta say, I liked Velvela a lot more before he made you second-guess everything. Shit. I shouldn’t have said that out loud.”
A glimmer of humor snaked through me. I didn’t know if I wanted to laugh or cry. Because it wasn’t Beo I was thinking about. “Are you on an adrenaline dump, O’Malley?”
“Mm.” He sank a bit lower. “I reckon. Why fight it?”
Though I was kind of tempted to see what I could nudge him to do in that weakened state, I didn’t. Witch of the Week. “I’ll let you go get some rest. Sorry to lump useless information on you.” I needed to get my head on straight, get a new plan.
“No information is useless information.” He blinked, then straightened. “Don’t go out there. It’s dark.”
I glanced out the window. It was, indeed, dark, and freezing cold too. “I can see how you made detective.”
“I’m too tired for snark. I’m serious, Rory. I’d put money on you any day of the week up against pretty much anything, but why borrow trouble? You get injured when we need you…”
He was right, but it didn’t matter. If I stayed here, I’d end up curling up to that promise of warmth, of care and maybe even love. I’d drink that shit up and I’d be gone.
And I was just starting to find myself.
I finished the coffee and set the cup down. “Thanks, Taig,” I said, as gently as I could. “I’ll text you when I get home. Don’t wait up.”