They are our allies. We will help them in their time of need.” Warin gave his brother a stern look. “Not to mention once the witches have been disposed of, no doubt the skinwalkers will come for us. And for Liv.”
Aleric grimaced. “They’re fucking witches, Warin! Let them annihilate each other—whoever’s left standing will be weak enough to pick off with ease.”
“You don’t know these skinwalkers, brother. They have fed from Ancient blood,” Warin said, his voice patient. “And if what Liv was told is correct, their master will not rest until he has overthrown me.”
“Not to mention, Raven’s my friend! Joana’s my friend! They got into this mess because they aligned with us. We’re helping them!” I snapped. I hadn’t told Warin everything Dennis had said—I hadn’t mentioned he’d left me a note, because that would mean I’d have to tell Warin about my powers. And I hadn’t mentioned the ramblings about his soulmate, because now… now was so not the time to try to unpack what that could mean.
I glanced at Aleric. Or what it meant that he knew the name of this Thea, when Warin did not.
Later, once we’d saved my friends, there would be time to get to the bottom of it all. But not now.
“We’re not helping anyone.” To my surprise, it was Aleric, not Warin. “You need to stay out of this—far, far out.”
“She has to come with us,” Warin said. “We cannot leave her behind—it could easily be a ploy to pull us away so she’s vulnerable.”
“I’ll watch over her,” Roy said. He was standing at the other end of Warin’s study, arms crossed over his massive chest as he kept an eye on the gathered vampires. Besides Aleric and Warin, Carina was also in attendance, as were five male vampires. I vaguely recognized a couple of them from the first time I visited Warin’s home, and from his meeting with the other Ancients. They were his Guard—vampires he tasked with upholding the law of his territory and the security of his home.
“Thank you,” Warin said. Then he turned to his Guard, face solemn. “We go to war tonight, against skinwalkers who have drank the blood of an Ancient. These beasts will not be easy to kill. We need the witches for this fight—and so we will all need to put away our prejudice for the time being. I know we have centuries of mistrust to feed our mutual hatred, but tonight… we need each other. Do not disappoint me.”
The other vampires nodded in begrudging agreement. None looked happy, but they understood their place in this, and above all else, they trusted their Lord.
I too trusted Warin, though I was hardly thrilled about being left in the car. As Carina and the others turned to leave, Aleric cast a long, hard look my way before lifting his gaze to Warin.
“Be careful, brother,” he said, to which Warin nodded so solemnly, it must have been some kind of vow.
Aleric retreated with the others and Warin turned to me, his face a grim mask. “I only wish to keep you safe, Liv,” he said at my sour expression. Not that I wanted to be in the middle of this fight, anyway, but it still felt a lot like being sidelined. “I have only your best interests at heart.”
“I know,” I told him, taking a step forward to lay my hand over his chest. It was unnerving, his lack of pulse, but I knew that didn’t matter in terms of what he felt for me. There was nothing but warmth, love, and desire in there, despite how cool he was to the touch. “And Aleric’s right. Please—be careful.”
Lifting my hand to his mouth, Warin folded my fingers down and kissed my knuckles. It was such a formal, yet intimate gesture that it spawned butterflies in my stomach and fire in my cheeks.
“After all we’ve done, I can still make you blush,” he mused, his lips tipped at an amused slant. “You amaze me, little one.”
“I’ll amaze you even more if you come back to me,” I promised, and Warin blew a laugh through his nose. But the moment couldn’t last, and all tenderness melted from his face like candle wax in the face of a vengeful flame as he turned and headed out with the rest of his Guard.
“C’mon,” Roy said from behind me, “the vampers’ll be all right. Worry about yourself.”
But that was just it. Where Warin was involved, I couldn’t bring myself to care about my own safety—and that, I realized as Roy led me out to the car, had been the case from the very start.
By the time Roy pulled up our Lexus in front of the shop where I’d last confronted Kevin, the butterflies in my stomach had turned to pure bile. I curled up against the tinted window, cradling my midsection as if holding onto it would somehow stem the tide of nausea threatening to rise. There wasn’t just tension inside our car—it spilled out over the world outside too, the air tight and charged like the moments before a storm.
In the rearview, Roy’s eyes flicked to my face. “Won’t be long now,” he said.
I nodded mutely, afraid that if I said anything, I’d throw up.
“Didn’t get a chance before, but I guess now’s as good a time as any,” he continued, eyes shifting to the coven’s safehouse. “But thanks. For savin’ my life back there. With your—”
“Warin can’t know,” I interrupted him, one worry traded for another. The last thing I needed, that any of us needed, was for Warin and the others to think I was in league with the witches somehow. Even if I kind of was. They were my friends, after all, and I’d summoned a small vampire army to defend them. I’d been brokering deals between the coven and the Night Lord of Chicago for a while now, and I’d even hidden the extent of those terms from Warin in favor of keeping my abilities a secret.
I chewed my lip until it stung. Couldn’t I be loyal to both? Why did I have to choose a side in their stupid feud?
“I get it,” Roy said, lifting his hands in a disarming gesture. “Heard ‘em go on enough about witches to see why you’d wanna keep it under wraps. Your secret’s safe with me.”
“Thank you, Roy,” I murmured, my attention still fixed on the safehouse.
He nodded in my periphery. “Least I can do, after you sent that skinwalker ass over teakettle.”
“About that…” I turned to him finally, curiosity winning out over concern. “How’d you do it? Withstand my magic, I mean. It didn’t affect you like it did Dennis.”
When he chuckled, it made the whole car vibrate. “Ain’t you been listenin’? I got giant’s blood in me, girl. Literally. And giants are as close to immune to magic as most creatures get.”
I blinked at him. “Really? So it just… doesn’t work on you?”
“Pretty much,” Roy said with a shrug. “‘Course, it did sting some, and I think you singed my eyebrows a bit.” He brushed a finger over the tail end of his brow demonstrably. “But then, I’m not a purebreed, am I?”
I smiled a little, then turned to the window again. “You know what they say about mutts, though.”
He nodded knowingly. “Yeah. They make the best dogs. I’m sure your boyfriend would agree.”
I went to tell him that wasn’t what I meant to imply, but judging by Roy’s smirk, he already knew that.
The door to the safehouse opened, and I sat up so hard and fast I bumped my head into the roof.
Carina was the first out, dusting off her clothes and adjusting the sleeves of her blazer with a look of vague disinterest. A few Guardsmen followed her, and then Aleric, but my heart didn’t resume its normal rhythm until Warin filled the doorframe, a scowl on his face.
He said something to the others, then headed straight for the Lexus. Roy rolled down the window on my side.
“They’ve been moved,” Warin said. “But they definitely were there.” He scrutinized me for a moment before adding, “There were signs of a struggle.”
The bottom of my stomach dropped out. Joana could probably handle herself, but Raven? It was so easy to imagine her broken and bloodied, maybe worse. Too easy.
I sat back in my seat, trying to clear my head as Warin reached through the window and took one of my hands. “We’ll find them, Liv. I promise.”
“Yeah,” I mumbled. But what state would they be in when we did?
His gaze softened, as it always did around me. “Do you have any idea where they might have gone? Where the skinwalkers might have taken them? I know you and your friends from the shop were close, and then… there is the matter of your boss…”
“He didn’t say anything to me about his plans,” I told him, looking up into his face. “I mean, he ranted about some things, but nothing that would hint at where he’d be stashing a collection of witches.”
Warin sighed. “I will make inquiries. But you must understand, getting answers at this stage may take a while.”
I closed my eyes. “And that’s time they might not have.”
Warin didn’t answer me, but he covered our joined hands with his free one.
I sat, thinking. Mostly I thought of what Raven and Joana were going through. The pain they must be in, and the terror. I thought too of Dennis, of his betrayal, not just where I was concerned. He had betrayed all of us.
We’d trusted him. He’d spent months, if not years, cultivating that trust. All so he could take advantage of it in the end. Every kind word, every smile, every morning where he brought donuts and coffee to the shop—it was all a long-con. Our whole relationship had been based on nothing but deception.
Was this why Warin and his brethren hated witches? Was Dennis an outlier, or a symptom of a more systemic problem running throughout the witching world? It wasn’t as if he was the first witch I’d run into who’d tried to harm me. There were the other skinwalkers, of course, and Kevin was an absolute dick, and then there was—
My train of thought came to a sudden halt, and I sat bolt upright again. Warin made a noise of concern, but he needn’t have worried, because I’d had an epiphany. I knew exactly where my friends had been taken.
I turned to him, clutching his hands. “The slaughterhouse. Where everything started. Where I met that witch who tried to make me tell him about you. That’s where they are, Warin. I’m sure of it.”
Warin regarded me for several long moments, his eyes searching mine. The level of my certainty and determination must have been reflected there, because at length he nodded firmly, gripping my hands right back.
“Then that is where we will go, my love.”
The first time I’d arrived at the slaughterhouse, I’d gotten a bad feeling. Some sixth sense had twanged like a guitar string pulled too tight, and all I’d wanted to do was run.
Now, that feeling was amplified a thousandfold. Roy pulled us up into the back lot at the same time Warin and his Guardsmen were slipping in through the back, as silent and dark as the shadows.
“There they go,” Roy said, his eyes fixed on Carina heading up the back. As second-in-command, it was her job to both protect the other Guards and the Night Lord himself. “This is bound to get messy.”
It was already a mess—the skinwalkers had made sure of that. Nothing they’d done had been clean. Whoever was pulling their strings might have intended to be more subtle than this, but if that was the case, they’d picked the wrong minions to do their bidding. They were sloppy. Forces of sheer destruction. Sure, Dennis had been calculating, to some degree, but in the end, it seemed they all went the same way: absolutely bat-shit crazy.
“How do you think they’ll do it?” I asked Roy. “I mean… you’ve seen them do this before, right? How does it usually go?”
Roy shifted, leather seat creaking in protest. “It’s usually a massacre. Occasionally, a vamp gets hit, maybe even taken out, but… for the most part, what you have to look forward to is a lot of blood. And it ain’t usually theirs.”
I was both disturbed and comforted by that fact. But the skinwalkers had left us no choice. If there’d been any other way, I would’ve been the first to champion it. It wasn’t like I hadn’t defied Warin before, and even Aleric, who at times was so much more terrifying than his brother was.
But they’d tried to kill me, over and over again, and now they had my friends—true innocents in this fight. It had to end here. Now. After what they’d done to me, I was almost sorry I couldn’t be a part of it.
Or maybe I could. Not that I wanted to be in the middle of the actual fray, but…
I unbuckled my seatbelt and leaned forward. “A massacre sounds like a pretty effective distraction, doesn’t it?”
Roy narrowed his eyes at me over his shoulder. “What are you on about?”
“I mean…” I nibbled my lip again. “I mean that if the Guard is busy fighting the skinwalkers, and the skinwalkers are busy fighting the Guard, then maybe we could sneak in and free the coven. Get them out of harm’s way.”
He stared. “Have you lost your mind? Do you know what Warin would do to me if you got hurt—if he came back to this car and so much as a hair on your pretty little head were out of place? No, Liv. It’s a bad idea. Too much could go wrong. I can’t promise I’d be able to protect you, and since that’s my job…”
I opened my door before he could lock it, squirming out of reach as he lunged for me. Roy was big and strong, but I had agility on my side.
“Hey!” he barked at a stage whisper. “Get back here!”
“I’m going,” I told him through the open car door. “One way or the other. Either you’ll be there to protect me as best you can, or you won’t.”
I slammed the door shut before Roy could sputter a reply. Halfway up the back stairs, I heard gravel crunching behind me, as well as a low, furious grumbling about how maybe it was time for him to retire and settle down.
The door was already open. The Guard had seen to that. Carefully, I opened it, and was overwhelmed by the stench of decaying meat.
I gagged, hard, pressing a hand to my mouth and nose. Roy put his hands on my shoulders and said into my ear, “If you’re gonna do this, you’re gonna have to be prepared to see and smell a lot worse.”
I swallowed the next urge to retch and nodded weakly. Then I pressed through the door, puddles of standing water tinged with blood sloshing beneath my feet as Roy and I crept into the dark.
We began our journey in the chamber I’d visited before, the one where the slaughterhouse workers hung and bled the dead animals. Several carcasses were dangling from meathooks still, abandoned for other pursuits, it seemed. I pulled the collar of my shirt up over my nose, content to inhale the scent of my own fear, rather than the stench of old death around me. If Roy was bothered by it, he showed no signs except to pull his gun from the back of his pants and click the safety off.
A low, eerie hum echoed around us. So did every one of our footsteps. And, at least in my own ears, my heartbeat.
“Let me go first into the next room,” Roy demanded as we approached the hall. I nodded to him. I’d let him take point. Even though I could feel my magic thrumming beneath my skin, you could never go wrong hiding behind a man with a gun.
We didn’t have to go far, though. As Roy scanned the offices for signs of life, a weak, rhythmic thumping drew my attention to the boiler room.
I tugged on Roy’s sleeve and pointed. He listened, then pushed ahead of me, wrapped his hand around the knob, and tugged it free from the door as easily as I might pull a ticket for the deli counter.
The door swung out. Two familiar faces, and three unknown, stared up at us, eyes wide.
Raven stopped kicking the wall. Behind a silver swath of duct tape, she said something that might have been my name.
“We’ve got you,” I promised at a whisper, eyes filling with tears of relief as I stooped to begin seeing to the witches’ bondage. Their wrists were all cinched tight with two layers of zip-ties. Joanna’s fingers were a deep purple at their tips. “Roy—do you have a knife?”
“Do I have a knife?” he snorted, as if the question were absurd. He plucked one from his jacket pocket, flicked it open, and—
The wall outside the boiler room exploded in a cloud of plaster. An inhuman howl went up from inside the new hole a skinwalker had made in it, followed by a wet gurgle.
My jaw hung slack. Roy shrugged and said, “One down, too goddamn many to go.”
“I’m so sorry,” I said to my friends as I tore the duct tape from their mouths. In the meantime, Roy set about freeing their hands, though he eyed them warily each time he did so.
Raven winced when the tape pulled, then wiggled her nose. “Shit, it could be worse. I needed an upper lip wax, anyway.”
Another crash, this one more distant, blew debris down the hall. An animal snarl rippled in reply. Roy abandoned Joana’s hands to peek out past the door frame.
“They’re takin’ the fight out into the hall,” he said grimly. “The skinwalkers are on the retreat.”
“Good,” Raven hissed, spitting on the ground for emphasis. “Bastards.”
“We gotta hurry,” Roy continued. “C’mon, let’s—”
A hot lance of pain tore through my shoulder, and for a moment, I thought I’d been shot. I screamed, clutching at an invisible wound somewhere deep in my bones. My vision blurred as a second wave of agony rolled up my spine, and I doubled on myself, one arm hanging uselessly at my side.
“Liv!” Roy bellowed, trying to turn me toward him, but moving even an inch hurt. “Liv, what’s wrong?”
My lower lip split, blood gushing down my chin from it and my nostrils. I was so small in Roy’s massive hands, and I thought maybe I was safe too, but that illusion was quickly dispelled as my knees and elbows cracked like I’d just slammed face-first into the floor.
“I don’t know!” I whimpered, pulse hammering, tears streaming down my face in cold trails. “What’s happening to me?!”
Fingers curled around the door frame from the opposite side. Roy pulled his gun, aiming it at the bloodied face which appeared next.
Kevin. He was dragging himself along the floor, leaving a thick trail of blood behind him. One of his arms was clearly broken, tucked against his body on the same side as my own injured arm dangled.
Joana began kicking at the wall now, and she didn’t stop until I braved my own pain enough to free her from the duct tape across her mouth. As soon as I did, she shouted, “Warin! No! You can’t hurt him! Kevin’s still part of the coven!”
And that was when I knew. When I understood why I felt like I was dying.
It was because Kevin was dying. And Joana’s curse still linked me to the coven.