Biting Bad: A Chicagoland Vampires Novel (23 page)

“This is awful,” she said, putting her head on my shoulder. “They were really nice. They had grandkids—both of them. They were talking about soapbox derby cars, how crappy their entries usually were, but how they had big plans this year.” She swiped at tears beneath her lashes. “Stupid soapbox derby cars. Totally lame.”

I put an arm around her, the sentiment bringing a new wash of tears to my eyes. “I talked to them a little during my shift. They seemed like good guys.”

“They were,” she confirmed. “Good guys. And not worthy of this end by that goddamn narcissistic GP nightmare.”

We looked back at the spot where Ethan had killed Monmonth, his body removed but the snow stained by blood.

We stood silently together, sharing our grief. A few minutes later, the cops walked back through the gate, the ambulance drove away, and the investigators snapped their final photographs.

Ethan and Scott walked back to us.

“They’re calling Monmonth’s death self-defense,” he said, and I felt a vise loosen around my heart. “Considering the violence already done by Monmonth, and the fact that he attacked you, they don’t anticipate the prosecuting attorney will want to press charges.”

“What about the other GP members?” I asked. They’d split at the sound of ambulances and police cruisers.

“They have private jets,” Scott said, “and enough money to get them into the air, law enforcement be damned. They won’t stop flying until they reach London.”

Ethan put a hand on my shoulder. “It’s freezing out here. Let’s go back inside.”

—

We moved back into the House, and Ethan called the vampires to the ballroom. Members of Grey and Cadogan stood alongside one another, sharing a moment of silence for Angelo and Louie, who’d given their lives in protection of the House. The swelling sense of worry was tangible, the magic that flowed from the roomful of vampires heavy and despondent.

When the ceremony was over, we returned to Ethan’s office. The room was utterly silent, the mood and magic grim. In another time—perhaps in the era Ethan had been made a vampire—the mood might have been different. Vampires reveling in their victory, sharing mead and women and song in honor of having vanquished a foe, instead of mourning their losses and dreading the repercussions.

The Grey House guards, Scott and Jonah among them, stood in one corner of the room. They undoubtedly discussed their future, and the ramifications of our actions on their lives as GP vampires.

Our concern was just as great. The GP already thought us enemies. Although their act tonight—or at least the act of Monmonth’s faction—had been one of naked aggression, there was no telling how Darius would react.

Ethan had already tried to call, but he hadn’t been able to get through.

One thing was sure: Of the seven members of the Greenwich Presidium other than Darius, Cadogan House was now responsible for the deaths of two of them. Harold Monmonth and Celina Desaulniers, both treacherous and egotistical, had taken on our Houses. Both had lost, giving their lives for the challenge. Yes, they’d both been the aggressors, but would that matter to the remaining members of the GP? Would they find Monmonth’s death justifiable, or yet another act of treason on our part?

The Grey House group disbanded, and Scott stepped forward. “The events that transpired tonight were our fault, and I am sorry for it. I think, considering the circumstances, it’s best we accelerate our search for alternative housing. We’re simply putting you at too much risk.”

“The events that transpired were solely the work of Harold Monmonth and his cronies,” Ethan countered. “Neither your House nor your vampires had anything to do with it. We chose to let you stay here, and Harold chose his response of his own free will, and apparently without the consent of the GP proper. You bear no responsibility for that.

“But as for your vampires and their best interest, that is a choice only you can make. You are welcome to bed here as long as you need. But I understand your desire to find a home.”

“They may seek retribution,” Scott said.

“They may,” Ethan agreed with a nod. “That is up to Darius or, more likely, an incestuous cabal of the remaining GP members.”

I glanced up at Ethan. “This may sound cruel, but the faction that supports Darius might be appreciative of what went down tonight. They might be glad Harold’s no longer a factor.”

“They might,” Ethan agreed.

“That’s who?” Scott asked. “Darius, Lakshmi, Diego?”

“At most,” Ethan said. “They’re the only ones left.” He shook his head ruefully. “We’ve saved Lakshmi’s and Darius’s lives,” Ethan said. “That helps, although I don’t presume their loyalty. Diego came to us when Darius was kidnapped, which suggests he sees us as an asset.”

“That’s three to three,” Scott said. “Assuming Darius gathers the will to act.”

I yawned, putting the back of my hand over my mouth to cover it up.

“Let’s call it a night,” Ethan said. “We can look at this with fresh eyes tomorrow.”

“There’s still pizza in the kitchen if anyone missed dinner,” Malik said.

Everyone in the room looked at me.

“Seriously,” I said flatly.

“Yes,” most of them said.

“Apparently I’ve become predictable.”

“At least something is,” Jonah said, walking toward the office door. “I’m going to have a slice, then head upstairs, unless you’d like to talk, boss?”

But Scott shook his head. “Get some rest. We’ll reassemble at dusk.”

Jonah opened the door, offered a salute to everyone in the room, and headed into the hallway. The rest of the Grey House vampires followed, with Scott at the rear.

“We’ll talk,” he said, and Ethan nodded.

“The same order goes for the rest of you,” Ethan said, glancing around the room. “Get upstairs, get some rest. It’s been a long night.”

“Too long,” Luc agreed, and everyone filed out.

When the room was empty, Ethan put an arm around my shoulders. I leaned my head against him, breathing in his cologne, which for biochemical reasons I didn’t understand, always calmed me down.

“You’re all right?” he asked. He’d been asking that often lately.

“I have no idea.”

“Nor do I, Sentinel. So let us say nothing. Let us just be.”

—

A few minutes later, I headed upstairs alone; Ethan begged off for a few minutes to try Darius again and close things down in his office.

In my room, I discovered Margot had found our new digs. Several white taper candles in silver candlesticks glowed on the bureau and nightstand, and a small silver tray—smaller to actually fit on the limited bureau space not already filled with candles—held bottles of sparkling water and wrapped chocolates.

Six minutes later, I was on the bed with a clean face and pajamas, when the door opened and Ethan walked in.

“Honey, I’m home,” he said, jacket slung over his shoulder. His hair was loose around his face, and he looked weary and not a little depressed. He hung his jacket over the closet doorknob. Silently, he began unbuttoning his vest.

“How are you?” I asked.

“I’ve been better. I’m looking forward to oblivion.”

The sun was on the rise, and a coherent response escaped me. But it was unnecessary. Ethan slid into bed beside me, his body warm and ready.

“Yes,” I said. And that was the end of all thought.

Ethan found me, prepared me, and took my body for his own, lust lingering with exhaustion, with sweat, love made tangible by palms and calves, with the curve of his spine and the apple of his shoulder, with my breasts and his fingers.

Love sparked and dissipated like sparks in the wind, and the sun rose high in the sky.

But night came again, because night, like death and taxes, was inevitable.

GROWING PAINS

I
woke achy, but the pain in my back, at least, was reduced to a dull throb. The benefits of vampire healing couldn’t be overestimated; the benefits of two adults of above-average height squeezing into a twin-sized bed could easily be overestimated.

But while the accommodations forced us to sleep like sardines, it was difficult to argue with an arrangement that put me skin to skin with a sexy blond vampire.

I was wrapped around him, naked from our predawn lovemaking and chilly. Cadogan House was many things, but warm it was not.

“Sentinel,” Ethan said.

“Liege.”

He trailed fingers down my back. “Considering our positions, I think we can dispense with the formalities. Happy Valentine’s Day.”

Despite having made the plans, I’d completely forgotten about Valentine’s Day.

“Happy Valentine’s Day,” I said. “I’d actually forgotten.”

“I didn’t,” Ethan said, “but I think a postponement is in order, considering . . .”

Intellectually, I knew he was right. If I was going to celebrate the miracle of my relationship with Ethan Sullivan, I wanted to do it correctly. I didn’t want to be worried about whether rioters were going to attack my House and kill my friends, or the GP would send a herd of chimeras to destroy the House in retribution for Monmonth’s death. I wanted to sit with Ethan and watch the sun rise over the lake, not rush back to the House out of fear we’d be burned to ash if we tarried too long.

In short, I wanted to be human. And that was not in the cards.

When I didn’t answer, my disappointment keen even if totally irrational, Ethan explained.

“We can’t afford it,” he said. “Not considering what happened last night with the GP, and what might happen tonight. The rioters are still out there. I want Valentine’s Day to be special, not a dinner in which we’re worried the entire time about what might be happening here.”

I was quiet for a moment. “Do you ever wish you were still human?”

Ethan paused, as if choosing his words carefully. “Are you wishing you were human, or that your life was simpler?”

I used one of his tricks. “Yes,” I said, picking both answers. “I’ll call and change the reservation. Give us a cushion of a few days. Maybe things will be less psychotic by then.”

I pulled myself away from him, then climbed out of bed and walked to the bathroom.

“Where are you going?”

“To take a shower and get ready for the night,” I said. “Because as you pointed out, there are likely nastier things around the corner.”

—

I showered, brushed my teeth and my hair, then pulled my hair into a ponytail and then a topknot.

When I emerged from the bathroom, Ethan was gone, as were his watch and cuff links from the nightstand. He’d dressed and gone downstairs, without even time for a good-bye.

It was quite a beginning to Valentine’s Day.

Since I was inevitably a vampire tonight, I walked down the hallway to the small, second-floor kitchen and snagged a bottle of blood and a bagel studded with raisins and topped with crunch streusel. I ate at the counter, reading through the announcements pinned to a small bulletin board along one wall. This news was surprisingly chipper: pearl earring found, owner wanted; small TV for sale; video games for trade.

I finished the blood, but managed only a few bites of the bagel. I was still discomfited by what had gone on last night, and my appetite hadn’t come back. I also wasn’t exactly eager to get started with the night, so I stood in the kitchen for a few more minutes, just in case my hunger fired back up.

It didn’t. I was actually too stressed to eat.

I tossed the rest of the bagel, wiped my hands, and made for the stairs. I needed positive news and action. I needed progress, because I was beginning to feel like a drug dog that hadn’t sniffed out a dirty suitcase in a while.

I walked to Ethan’s office to check in before I left, but his door was closed.

Normally, I’d have knocked in warning and gone in. But there seemed a pretty good chance he was on the phone with people significantly above my pay grade and my interruption wouldn’t be welcome.

Before I had time to wonder if I should eavesdrop, Jonah emerged from the cafeteria at the other end of the hall, a glossy red apple in hand.

Excellent timing,
I thought. I walked toward him, gesturing back toward Ethan’s office. “What’s going on in there?”

“I don’t know. I assume Ethan’s talking to the GP. Why?”

I shook my head. “Just being nosy.”

Jonah crunched on the apple. “You’re dating him. Don’t you two pillow talk? Can’t you seduce all the secrets out of him?”

“Who am I, Mata Hari?”

“You’re Mata Hari enough to manage to snag the Master of the House.” He lifted his eyebrows teasingly, then took a final bite of the apple before chunking the core into a small, decorative wastebasket on the other side of the hallway. He nailed the shot, which made sense, considering Grey House’s athletic bent.

“You are hilarious, you know that?”

“I do,” he said. “But seriously. Isn’t there some kind of boyfriend-girlfriend privilege you can use to find out what’s going on?”

“If there was, logically, it would mean he could tell me, but I couldn’t tell you.”

“Then my idea was poor,” he said, crossing his arms. I could see the amusement in his expression slide right into concern. He might joke around, but he, too, was worried about the closed-door meeting.

I glanced around the hallway, ensuring we were alone. “Times like this make us perfect candidates for the RG, you know. We’re suspicious by nature.”

“And vampires are conniving by nature,” he said. “Especially Masters. Or they wouldn’t be Masters. Hey, isn’t it Valentine’s Day? Don’t you two have big plans?”

“We did,” I agreed. “At least until the city went boom.”

“And the GP went bust,” Jonah grimly responded.

Without ado, the door opened.

Ethan stood on the other side, gazing at Jonah and me like a schoolteacher who’d just caught two naughty children in the act of disobeying orders. Predictably, he shot up an eyebrow and gave me a visual dressing-down.

“Sentinel.”

“Liege,” I said properly, with a little head-bob for good measure. “We were just discussing business.”

“Interrogation techniques,” Jonah added. “Methods for extracting information from unwilling subjects.”

Ethan looked dubious about the explanation. “There’s no need for torture,” he said, pulling the door open farther.

Nick Breckenridge, tall, with cropped dark hair, blue eyes, and the body of a rock climber, stood in the middle of Ethan’s office, Scott beside him.

Nick wore a button-down shirt and jeans, with a tweed blazer over it. He carried a small reporter’s notebook in one hand. The look was more professorial than I’d usually seen him, but he managed to pull it off. He looked like a very popular professor—the Indiana Jones of the journalism set.

“Nick,” I said, walking in at Ethan’s subtle nod. “Long time no see.”

“Merit,” he said, giving me an efficient once-over. It was journalistic inquiry, I knew, not interest, that made him check me out. We’d had our ups and downs, and although I assumed from the “Ponytail Avenger” story that we’d recovered from the blackmail incident, we definitely weren’t bosom buddies.

“Nick, this is Jonah,” Ethan said, “captain of the Grey House guards.”

Nick reached out and shook his hand, and I saw Jonah’s eyes widen—just for an instant—in surprise.

Like the Keene family, the Breckenridges were members of the North American Central Pack, although they didn’t advertise their supernatural affiliations to many. I guess Scott, who did know, hadn’t mentioned that to Jonah.

“Nice to meet you,” Jonah said. “I hear you’re doing a feature on the riots?”

“Their impact on Chicago’s supernaturals, yes.” He looked at me. “You’re well?”

“I am, thank you. How are your brothers? And your parents?”

“They’re well, thanks.”

He didn’t elaborate; I guess he wasn’t up for chitchat.

“How’s the investigation going?” I asked.

“Fine. Disturbing in certain ways. Enlightening in others.”

“I think this story is going to go a long way toward educating the public about vampires,” Ethan said. “You’re doing us a profound service.”

Nick nodded, by all appearances unmoved. “I’m here to tell the truth. I think I’ve got what I need from you,” he said, looking at Scott. “If I could talk to some of the displaced vampires?”

“Sure. I’ll take you upstairs. We’re looking for temporary housing. We’ve got a line on a building, but we’re hoping they’ll negotiate a little more on the price.”

Those prophetic words spoken, and before Nick and Scott even reached the door, chaos broke out in the hallway.

“You fucking asshole!” screamed a vampire whose voice I didn’t recognize. We rushed into the hallway, where two guys—one of whom wore a Grey House jersey—were tumbling around on the hallway floor, absolutely whaling on each other.

“What in God’s name?” Jonah said, trying to reach into the fight to pull the men apart. He got an elbow in the eye for his trouble, which only incensed him more.

Note to self: Do not piss off the captain of the most athletic vampires in the city’s most athletic House.

Jonah let out another curse, then reached in again and grabbed the jersey-wearing vampire by the scruff of the neck and hauled him out of the fray.

He landed eight feet down the hallway, bouncing on his ass for good measure.

The other vampire, a young member of my Novitiate class named Connor—and a very brief fling of Lindsey’s—jumped to his feet, ready to join the fray.

“Connor!” Ethan yelled out. There was magic in his voice—his ability, as a Master, to call the vampires he’d made. Obediently, as if returning to the Pack and the alpha male, Connor bared his fangs at Jonah and the Grey House vamp, but slunk back against the wall, and behind Ethan.

Jonah dragged the other vampire to his feet and was glaring daggers at him, daring him to move from that spot.

“I am going to ask this one time,” Ethan said through gritted teeth, “and one time only. Connor, what is this about?”

“That asshole started in on our House, that we’re a House of rejects.”

“Bullshit!” called the Grey House vampire. “You were bragging about drinking, you egotistical little prick.”

“I wasn’t bragging,” Connor said, chest puffed aggressively. “I was stating a fact. It’s not my fault you get yours from bottles.”

That was the wrong thing to say. The Grey House vampire surged forward, but Jonah used his body to keep him back.

“Enough!” Scott shouted, the second time that word had been used to quell violence in Cadogan House in the last twenty-four hours.

He strode to the Grey House vampire and stuck a finger in his face. “We are here because they have offered to shelter us, notwithstanding the risk we posed. A risk that obviously was valid, considering what happened last night.”

“They brought the heat themselves,” the vampire said. “If not for them, none of this would have happened.”

“Last night,” Scott said, his fierce eyes on his young Novitiate, “the GP indicated by its actions that it was our enemy. These vampires stood up for me, and for you, and for our House. I don’t give a shit if Ethan Sullivan punches you in the face himself. You are a Grey House vampire, and you will show honor!”

“Honor!” Jonah shouted, pounding a fist to his chest. A half dozen Grey House vampires who’d gathered at the ends of the hallway did the same, shouts of “Honor!” ringing through the hallway. Goose bumps lifted on my arms at the display.

Scott having said his peace, it was Ethan’s turn to discipline. He looked at Connor and offered a glance so full of anger—and worse, disappointment—that it made
me
feel bad. I thanked my lucky stars I wasn’t on the receiving end of it.

“I am mortified,” Ethan said. “Furious, disappointed, and mortified. They are guests in our home. And whether you condone their behavior or not, they are to be treated as guests. Is that clear?”

“Liege,” Connor quietly murmured.

“I didn’t hear that,” Ethan gritted.

“Liege,”
he said again, this time with conviction.

“Malik’s office,” Ethan directed, and Connor disappeared down the hallway.

“Upstairs,” Scott echoed, gesturing toward the Grey House vampire. “The rest of you get back to it,” he said, and the hallway cleared of vampires.

In the silence, we heard the scribbling of a pen, and we glanced back to the office doorway. Nick Breckenridge stood there, scribbling furiously, notebook and pen in hand.

Ethan sighed, and looked at Scott. “I suppose we asked for a story about the riots’ real, unscripted effects.”

“You get what you ask for,” Scott agreed.

“Unfortunately,” Ethan said, glancing at Scott, “I think it might be time to reconsider the offer on that building you found.”

Scott nodded. “I think you might be right.”

Nick followed Scott, Jonah, and the Grey House vampire upstairs, leaving me and Ethan alone in the hallway. He rubbed his temples for a moment before stepping back into his office. I followed him.