DECEIVED

Unturned – Book Three

Rob Cornell

Table of Contents

Title Page

Dedication

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Chapter Thirty

Chapter Thirty-One

Chapter Thirty-Two

Chapter Thirty-Three

Chapter Thirty-Four

Chapter Thirty-Five

Chapter Thirty-Six

Chapter Thirty-Seven

Chapter Thirty-Eight

Chapter Thirty-Nine

Chapter Forty

Chapter Forty-One

Chapter Forty-Two

Chapter Forty-Three

Chapter Forty-Four

Chapter Forty-Five

Chapter Forty-Six

Chapter Forty-Seven

Chapter Forty-Eight

Chapter Forty-Nine

Chapter Fifty

Chapter Fifty-One

Chapter Fifty-Two

Chapter Fifty-Three

Chapter Fifty-Four

Chapter Fifty-Five

Chapter Fifty-Six

Chapter Fifty-Seven

Chapter Fifty-Eight

Chapter Fifty-Nine

Books by Rob Cornell

About the Author

Copyright

For Michael and Alex. Thanks for letting me sit at the cool kids table.

Chapter One

“That’s impossible.”

My heart felt like a rock in my chest, suffocating my lungs, choking me, blocking my blood flow. I felt my eyelid twitching, and I swore I was going to drop to the floor from an aneurism. My face would mash against the hotel’s thin carpet. I would die with the smell of a thousand footsteps jammed up my nose.

But I had to pull it together. For Mom. Because what she was saying didn’t make any sense, yet she seemed to believe it with her every fiber.

She sat on the foot of the bed. I crouched to her eye level, put my hands on her shoulders, and stared into her wet and horrified eyes. Threads of her long gray hair stuck to the tears on one cheek. An intense heat rolled from her into me, her magic energy sparked by emotion. Sweat ran from my temple and tickled my ear.

“It was a dream,” I said, each word measured, with an emphasis on the last.

She shook her head. Her mouth opened and closed, but all she could manage was a creak like a rusted hinge from the back of her throat. While the only light came from the hotel’s parking lot, filtered through sheer curtains, I could still see the color blanched from her face. And I couldn’t hear much of a breath from her.

I swallowed and forced in a deep breath despite the rock caught behind my breastbone. Then I sat next to her, put my arm around her, hugged her tightly. “You did not kill Dad. Get that out of your head right now.”

She closed her eyes and pressed a fist against her mouth, her knuckle smashing her top lip. A sob puffed against her hand despite her effort to hold it in. But maybe it wasn’t the sob she wanted to hold back. Maybe she felt a scream coming on. From the look in her eyes, I thought it was a definite possibility.

I squeezed her more tightly against me. I didn’t know what else to do, how to defuse the ticking bomb inside of her that threatened to obliterate her. Not a literal, or even magical, bomb. But the emotional explosion would be almost as deadly. A cold worry filled me that whatever terrible nightmare she’d had might knock her back into the fugue state she had suffered for three years.

I had to pull her out of this.

Had to.

Had.

To.

I shot up from the bed and dashed into the bathroom. I hated to let her out of my sight, but if I didn’t do something soon, it wouldn’t matter. I cranked on the faucet. The water had a faint, coppery smell at first before it flushed whatever gunk had collected in the spigot. A short glass with a paper cover sat beside the sink. I snatched it, flung the paper aside, and stuck the glass under the stream. I held it there until the water overflowed and ran over my hand. I had the faucet cranked to cold, but the water hadn’t yet made it past luke warm.

I growled, dumped the glass with enough force to splash the mirror. I waited with my hand under the faucet until the water turned chilly against my palm. Every second that passed added an extra beat to my heart. It didn’t feel like a stone anymore. It felt like a paint shaker on full speed.

I filled the glass again with as much clumsiness as the first time. I spilled a trail along the floor as I rushed back to Mom.

She hadn’t moved. Her wide gaze stared at nothing. Her fist still pressed against her mouth. The heat of her magic had doubled in the time it took me to fetch the water. So I felt like a member of the fire brigade with a pail of water when I splashed the full glass into her face.

She shrieked like the Wicked Witch of the West right after Dorothy doused her and set her to melting. When she jerked back, she nearly lost her balance and rolled off the edge of the bed. But she threw out the hand that she had clenched to her mouth and planted it on the mattress to catch her fall.

Then her gaze swung my way, still wide, but with shock instead of horror. Her eyebrows drew together, and the way she looked at me sent a stab of guilt through my belly.

It had done the trick, though. Once she got past the initial surprise of a cold dash of water in her face, she regained a bit of composure. She wrapped her arms against herself and shivered, still gaping at me. The water across her face looked like a sheen of sweat.

“I’m sorry,” I said.

“I…” Her shoulders lifted as she slowly inhaled. She held her breath a second, then exhaled through pursed lips. “It wasn’t a dream, Sebastian. I never fell asleep.”

I’m sure she believed that, but it was past two in the morning. That would have meant she had lain awake for at least three hours. She must have dozed at some point in there without realizing.

“You still don’t believe me.”

“Of course I don’t. Why in the hell would you kill Dad?”

“I don’t know.”

“See?” My voice cracked. If I didn’t believe her, why was I getting so worked up? Over a dream?

She bowed her head and folded her hands in her lap. A lock of her damp hair made a narrow curtain between us, obscuring her eyes. She quivered as if caught outside in the October chill in nothing but the nightgown she wore. “I used a spell,” she said. “It took so much energy. Twice as much as I would have needed. And he…he sat there. He smiled at me. And he cried. And then I killed him.”

I waved a hand and began pacing. I kept shaking my head. No. No. Nononono. Nope. No fucking way.

“Where were you when this supposedly happened?”

She hitched a shoulder. “I’m not sure. Some old house. Dilapidated.”

I stopped pacing. The sudden knot in my stomach made it feel like if I took another step I might rip my guts out from the effort. Old house. Dilapidated. She and Dad had been found in a place like that. First by police after a call from some guy who had meant to squat there. Then by the Ministry when they took the issue away from law enforcement. Then, finally, by me, when the Ministry had called three days later. Only I didn’t see them at the house. The Ministry had already put Dad into their personal morgue and Mom in a magical version of intensive care.

For three days I had turned myself sick wondering what had happened to them before the Ministry thought they should bother letting me know. Then another three months of an investigation that led exactly nowhere. To this day, the case of my father’s murder and my mother’s temporary loss of almost all cognitive function remained open but unsolved.

“What is it?” Mom asked.

I had dropped into a mental rabbit hole and didn’t know how long I had stayed there. I’d nearly forgotten where I was.

I didn’t want to say anything, didn’t want to encourage this delusion of hers. At the same time, it wouldn’t be fair to hold this from her.

“You were found…the two of you…” I licked my lips, but my tongue tasted like chalk and did nothing to moisten them. “You both were found in an abandoned house on Detroit’s east side.”

Mom let slip a soft whimper.

“That doesn’t mean you killed him. If the witches’ ritual is working to bring back your memories, maybe the memories are getting mixed up with…”

“With what?”

“I don’t know. Your dreams, I guess.”

The radiator under the window kicked on with a clank and a long sigh. A warm, metallic scent wafted from its vent.

Mom ran her hands down her thighs, smoothing her nightgown against her lap. “It wasn’t a dream, Sebastian. I remember the feel of my magic pressing out from inside of me. It…it felt like it was going to split me in half. And I remember Walter’s exact expression. I remember the smell of rat piss in the corner of the room. Gods, I even remember what I said to him before I killed him.”

I didn’t want to hear this. I was tired. My abs felt like I’d done a hundred crunches from my stomach clenching after every statement out of my mother’s mouth. But I couldn’t very well tell her to stop talking. Dream or no dream, she was shaken to the core.

She stood, clenched her hands into fists at her sides, and lifted her chin like a kid standing up against a bully. “Did you hear me? I remember what I said to your father before he died.”

“I heard you, Mom. But—”

“I told him I was sorry.” She curled her lip. “Sorry. That was all I could come up with before I murdered my own husband.”

“Stop,” I shouted, my voice vibrating against the walls. “Please. Just stop.”

“How can I?”

“Do you remember anything else?”

Her gaze drifted down and to the right. She took a few seconds, then looked up at me. The glaring fake light coming through the window from the parking lot’s lamps made her eyes shine. Her expression crumbled as she broke into tears. “No.”

I went over and hugged her. She wept against my shoulder.

The radiator expelled one last chuff and fell silent.

I thought of a way to, if not comfort her, at least give her a sense of closure for the time being. I didn’t like the idea, but I liked it more than letting my mom fester in false memories.

“Why don’t I take you to the house tomorrow,” I said. “See if it jogs anything loose.”

She drew back to look up at me. Somehow her face had collected more lines, and others had deepened. The night had aged her in an hour’s time.

“You’ll do that?” she asked.

“I’ll do anything for you, Mom. Hell, I took you to a black witch coven to help you get your memories back. What’s a trip to the east side compared to that?”

She touched my cheek. Her fingertips felt like tiny flames against my skin. She had outwardly calmed, but her magic still roiled within her. “Thank you.”

I smiled. It felt tight and rigid, like the plastic grin on a Mr. Potato Head.

“Try to get some sleep,” I said. “We’ve had a hell of a month.”

I don’t know if she managed to fall asleep. I didn’t hear anything more through the open door that joined our hotel rooms.

Me? I sat awake in a chair by the window long enough to see the lights in the parking lot shut off as the sun started its shift.

Chapter Two

Houses like this one had become a cliché in Detroit. The boarded windows. The overgrown lawn. The chimney bricks fallen loose like teeth from a rotten mouth. And speaking of rotten, I smelled something dead hidden in the weeds. The path to the porch looked like a trench with the tall grass on either side of the concrete approach. Mom and I had to walk single file to keep from getting tangled up in it. The cement steps up to the porch had cracked down the middle with one half sunken a couple inches lower than its mate.

Mom led the way, but hesitantly. She clutched her wool sweater closed as if afraid the buttons might pop loose. She had braided her hair that morning, but some thin strands had already slipped free and fluttered in the breeze. She stopped at the steps and looked over her shoulder at me.

I rested a hand on her shoulder. “It’s okay.”

She pressed her lips together, nodded.

“Just watch your step.”

I held her arm on the way up, so engaged with helping her, I nearly twisted my ankle when I stepped on the uneven crack.

The paint-stripped boards of the porch grunted under our weight and had a spongy feel. Much as I didn’t want to rush her, I tugged on Mom’s elbow and pulled open the cockeyed frame of what used to be a screen door. The less time we tested the strength of the porch, the better.

The smell of more dead things hung trapped within the house, the scent stifling. My throat instinctively closed against the bile that threatened to bubble up from my churning stomach. Mom must have had a similar reaction. Her face pinched, making her look pained more than disgusted.

On top of whatever creatures were decomposing under the floor boards and in the walls, more critters had done a good job of painting the corners with piss. The ammonia scent burned in my nostrils. When I tried to breathe through my mouth instead of my nose, I could taste the stink. I hoped that I’d get used to the smell before I barfed onto the frayed shreds of what remained of the carpet.

The front entry led directly into a cramped living room. A short couch stood on end in one corner, almost entirely stripped of its upholstery down to the rotting wooden frame. If any other furniture had been left behind by the house’s last dwellers, it had been broken down to sticks and scraps scattered across the floor among the crumpled cigarette packs and discarded needles.

The place probably looked a lot worse than the day my parents were found there. Squatters and the elements had worked over time in the three years since. Back then, more of the houses on the block had had people living in them. Now, I could have circled the block and found five homes, at most, still stubbornly occupied.

Mom wandered into the middle of the living room, her shoes scuffing through all the trash on the floor. Her gaze narrowed in on the short hallway that led to a couple of bedrooms and the kitchen. She didn’t seem to notice anything else around her. Even the smell didn’t appear to bother her anymore.

Outside, the wind picked up and whistled through cracks in the walls.

I shivered.

“You recognize anything?” I asked.

She pulled her sweater tighter against her. “Not sure.”

With her head tilted slightly to one side, she shuffled closer to the hall. Plenty of light cut through the gaps around the boards in the windows and the open doorway to illuminate the front room, but not enough of it reached the hallway to push back the shadows.

It wasn’t a very big house, probably not more than seven-hundred square feet in all, but the darkness in the hallway made it feel like it might go on forever. I wanted to tug at Mom’s sleeve and tell her not to go down there. But the most frightening thing she would probably find was a raccoon pissed off at the humans disturbing its den.

That, or the memories I had brought her here to find in the first place.

The floor creaked as she took a few more steps toward the hall.

My own feet had fused themselves in place. When I told my legs to walk, the muscles in my calves and thighs twitched, but nothing more. The stink of death and piss somehow grew thicker around me. Instead of getting used to it, I had become even more sensitive.

For the gods’ sake, I had fought and killed Detroit’s oldest and most powerful vampire, had dusted countless others, had lopped off the heads of imps with an axe, had stolen treasure from a dragon, and burned all other manner of ugly beasts that called the Motor City their home.

What the hell was I afraid I might find in the dark hall of a rundown house?

At the hallway’s mouth, Mom stopped and looked over her shoulder at me again. She looked like she wanted my permission to go in. Not sure why. Maybe she hoped I’d tell her no.

Instead, I licked my dry lips and nodded.

She set her jaw, let go of her sweater, and let her hands drift down to her sides. Then she clenched her fists and strode into the shadows.

Chapter Three

I could hear the groan and squeak of the floor under each of Mom’s footsteps. But she had slipped out of my line of sight. From the sound of it, I guessed she had entered one of the two small bedrooms. My stomach clenched.

She and Dad had been found in one of those bedrooms.

My face flushed before I realized I was holding my breath. I tried to relax and breathe like a normal person. Once the oxygen started feeding my brain again with only a little dizziness, I forced myself forward. If Mom recognized anything, or was triggered in any way, I needed to be close by.

I found her in the second bedroom down the hall.

The bedroom.

She had her arms hugged against her with her back to me. She stood so still, she looked unreal, as if I could walk up to her and pass a hand right through her. The bedroom had a single window, and the wooden plank meant to cover it hung askew, allowing a triangle of light through from the top right corner. The naked branches of a tree just outside cast a spider web shadow up one wall.

The wall opposite the shadow had a massive scorch mark from floor to ceiling. Parts of the plaster toward the center of the blackened wall had crumbled away to show the blackened studs within, as if something had struck there, hard. The mark itself formed a starburst pattern outward from the indentation and left only the wall’s corners unmarked. My father had been found on the floor in front of that wall, body twisted at the waist as if a pair of giant hands had wrung him like a wet rag.

The sight of it made my stomach turn.

They had found Mom against the opposite wall, her back propped against it, her legs splayed out in front of her, her eyes open but completely unresponsive to any stimulus. The only sign she was alive had been the rise and fall of her chest from breathing.

She would remain in that lost state for three years.

The assumption at the time was that whatever had killed my father—something obviously magical, especially considering the residual energy that hung in the air weeks after the two of them had been removed—by “luck” had only injured my mother.

Standing in the room now, imagining the scene as it was that day, I could interpret it a different way. Mom on one side of the small room. Dad on the other. A massive expelling of magical power blasting toward my Dad’s side, creating the scorch mark, but also backfiring to knock Mom out and rattle her brain.

I didn’t need to complete the connection.

Mom did it for me.

She pointed at the blackened wall. “I did that.”

I swallowed and shook my head.

No. It can’t be.

I meant to say it out loud, but my mouth refused to form the words, leaving them to echo uselessly in my skull. My mouth, apparently, had gotten sick of voicing my denial.

Mom pivoted, pointed to the opposite wall. “I stood there.”

Her voice sounded distant and cold, like a coroner at an autopsy describing her findings.

I didn’t know what to say. If I couldn’t deny it anymore, what the fuck could I say? This was worse than anything else that had happened since the day I learned my father had been killed and my mother left only a breath and a heartbeat away from death herself.

Worse than getting infected by vampire blood. Worse than finding myself in debt to a four-hundred year-old vampire in a thirteen year-old’s body. Worse than feeling my own self-control robbed from me while another, even older vampire, used his thrall to command me like a puppet. Even worse than finding out that the woman I had fallen in love with had played a part in the whole damn mess from the start.

No. There was nothing to say.

I moved up behind Mom and wrapped my arms around her. She stiffened at first, then gradually relaxed and started to cry. A few seconds later my own tears screwed up my vision. The triangular shaft of light pouring from the corner of the window broke into a white starburst to match the black one on the wall.

We stood like that for a while. It felt like forever and only a second at the same time.

Mom squirmed loose from my hug and turned to face me. Her face was so pale, it looked practically translucent. The dark circles under her eyes might as well have been bruises.

“Why?” she asked.

My stomached dropped. “You don’t remember?”

She shook her head. “Why would I do that to Walter? To the man I have loved longer than most mortals live?”

I didn’t state the obvious—if she didn’t know, I sure as hell couldn’t answer. I could not, in a zillion years, imagine any sane reason.

“Maybe it will come to you,” I said. “Maybe we just need to let the Maidens’ magic do its work.”

Her eyebrows rose while the corners of her mouth turned down. “You believe me now?”

I glanced at the scorch mark. I knew there had to be some reasonable explanation. There had to be. But I couldn’t ignore the horrible ring of truth to her memory, now that I stood where it had happened.

“I don’t want to,” I said.

She drew the collar of her sweater closed again, and hunched her shoulders. The air in the room had seemed to drop a few degrees, though the mid-morning sun should have begun to warm the air outside.

“Are you ready to go?” I asked.

She turned. The grit of dust and broken plaster on the floor grinded like sandpaper under her soles. “Can I have another few minutes? I’m sorry. I just want…”

“You take as much time as you need.”

“This must be so hard on you,” she said. “You must hate me.”

But I didn’t. Not even close. And it twisted my guts when she said it.

“I don’t want to hear that kind of bullshit from you again.” I scooted around in front of her so I could look her in the eyes. “Got it?”

“But—”

“No. Never again.”

Her gaze searched my face with fierce concentration, as if she were trying to memorize my features down to the slightest sprig of stubble on my chin—which there was plenty of, since I hadn’t shaved in a while.

“I’m so proud of you, Sebastian.”

I wasn’t sure where that had come from, but I didn’t argue the point.

She must have glimpsed some doubt in my expression. “I mean it. You’re only thirty-two, but you have shown a strength I haven’t seen in some sorcerers twice your age.”

I smiled. “I had good teachers.”

She patted my cheek. “Give me a few minutes here, okay?”

The thought of leaving her alone in this room did not settle well. “Mom, maybe—”

“Please. I’ll be fine.”

With a pit in my stomach, I went outside to stand on the front porch, keeping an ear cocked to listen for Mom. The porch creaked under my weight, and I felt the same give to the wood as I had going in. But I chanced staying put so I could get to Mom quickly if she needed me.

A breeze ran through the tall grass, making the blades rustle and undulate. The sound was like white noise, soothing. I closed my eyes and listened to it. Some of the tension that had wrapped around my neck and shoulders relaxed. I wished for a deep, fresh breath of clean air, but the hidden dead critter in the weeds ruined that. After we left, maybe I would take Mom over to the river. We could sit on one of the park benches and stare across the water toward Canada. Get some coffee to keep our hands and our bellies warm.

Take a moment to forget all the damn tragedy we’d suffered over the past several months.

We deserved that much, didn’t we?

Something rustled in the grass to my right.

Not wind.

Something moving through the tangled weeds.

I kept my eyes closed another second, listening for the sound again. Probably a squirrel, though it had sounded bigger than a squirrel. A stray dog? No. The movement had been too furtive for a dog.

Cat, then.

I heard it again, snapped my eyes open, and twisted in the direction the sound came from. For a second, I didn’t see a thing—just long enough for me to doubt my hearing.

Then a cougar leapt out of the grass, bounded onto the porch, and launched itself at me.

Chapter Four

Can’t be a cougar. Not in the middle of Detroit. Not—

That quick thought was all I had time for, then the cougar struck me in the chest with its front paws and knocked me backward. I hit the porch on my back, and the cougar landed on top of me. Between the impact and our combined weight, the porch gave way. The boards broke open like a mouth and gulped us down.

The landing onto the cold, soggy dirt under the porch blasted the air out of my lungs. At the same time, the cougar flexed its claws and ripped open the front of my shirt, raking a burning set of scratches down my chest in the process. Then it stuck its face in mine, its furious gray eyes sizing me up, maybe trying to decide which part of me it wanted to chew through first. It opened its mouth, showing its yellow fangs, and screeched at me. Its warm breath smelled surprisingly sweet.

The initial shock of the cougar’s attack snapped loose, and I remembered I was a fucking sorcerer. I drew on my magical energy and fed it with my fear and panic, which gave me an extra boost without having to squander my natural power. I had always known strong emotion could affect the heft or focus of a spell. But my tussle with Logan Goulet, Detroit’s former eldest vampire, had provided a quick lesson on just how effective that force could be, and I planned on a more deliberate use of that trick from now on.

I gathered the stagnant air under the porch, bending the element to my command, then blasted it upward to carry the cougar with it.

The animal twisted and pedaled helplessly as it sailed off the porch and out of my view. I heard it thump to the ground a few feet away.

I shot to my feet, my boots squishing in the wet earth. With a small slice of my conscious mind, I filtered some of my magic into the bloody claw marks down my chest. The pain dissipated instantly, and by the time I hoisted myself out of the hole in the porch and stood on the top of the cement steps, I could feel the itch of healing flesh.

I scanned the ground below for the cougar.

Nothing.

Sure, the grass was tall, but I should have seen something as large as a freaking cougar in there somewhere.

The skin on the back of my neck tightened, and my scalp tingled with the anticipation of another attack. I thought about jumping over the hole in the porch and into the house, but I didn’t want to draw the animal inside with Mom in there. Instead, I called on the air again to surround me and concentrate into a shield. My air shields had taken on automatic gunfire without a hitch. No way a damn cougar would get through.

I scampered down the steps onto the approach and planted my feet for optimal balance. Let the cougar come to me. I would watch it bounce off my shield then torch it with a conjured fireball. That would probably set the grass on fire, but I could deal with that easily enough. I wasn’t really worried about attention from law enforcement. Cops had written off areas like this, much like those who had been forced to flee due to eviction notices or the encroaching blight.

I looked left and right, but still didn’t catch any hint of the cougar’s location.

What the hell was a cougar doing here to begin with? Escaped from the zoo? I hadn’t heard anything about an animal on the loose, but I hadn’t exactly been plugged in to local news lately. Had a few issues of my own to deal with.

Just a few.

A cold prickle ran up my spine. I also felt the familiar buzz of gathering magic.

What the—

I heard the whoosh of something bursting from the grass behind me a second before that something plowed right through my shield and into my back.

I flew forward into the grass and hit the ground. The overgrown lawn crunched under me while the surrounding grass blades curled around me as if they wanted to pull me into the earth. A foot from where my face landed lay a maggot ridden carcass, decomposed beyond recognition, with only a few matted patches of its pelt still remaining.

The smell roiled up my nostrils and gagged me.

When the weight of the cougar slammed onto my back, the taste of my hot-sauced scrambled eggs from breakfast gushed up from my stomach and burned my throat. Magical energy rolled off the overgrown kitty with such strength I felt like I’d touched a live wire. It set my teeth on edge.

Obviously, this was not a cougar. And whatever—or whoever—it was, possessed enough power to blow through my shield as if it were no more than the plain air it had started as.

The cougar dug its claws into me.

I threw my head back and howled, eyes watering from the ripping pain.

I howled again as the beast slowly drew its claws down either side of my spine as if unzipping my skin.

I tried to conjure another shield, but the pain kept tearing into my focus. I tried to gather that pain and use it as magical fuel. That didn’t work either. I simply couldn’t keep together enough of a magical thread to weave a spell with. Meanwhile, the gouges in my back started to burn and sizzle as if the cougar had dumped some kind of poison into each gouge. The intense sting pushed me toward the brink of unconsciousness. The edges of my vision turned dark.

I had time to think that the last thing I would ever see were the maggots weaving their white bodies through the greasy lump of a long dead rabbit or raccoon or whatever had come here to die. Once this cougar had finished ripping me apart, the maggots could make the short trip over to start working on my corpse. They’d probably start with my eyes.

As the pain cut through me and pushed me closer and closer to the black, I thought I heard shouting. I couldn’t make out the words. I couldn’t even put together a coherent thought of my own. I cut myself some slack, though. After all, I was pretty sure the cougar had torn off enough of my back to expose my spine.

Then I thought I recognized the voice.

Mom.

All of a sudden, I felt the cougar’s weight push me against the ground and then lift off of me.

No!

It was going after Mom.

But before I could so much as wonder how to save her, the darkness swallowed me.

Chapter Five

I dreamt of shouting. Of soothing voices. Of promises.

Beeeeeoooookaaaaaay.

Haaaaaangiiiiiiiinnnnn.

Seeeeeebaaaaastiaaaaaaannnnn.

A few times I think my eyes fluttered open. Through a drunken haze of pain I saw a man’s face looming over me. I’d never seen him before. I couldn’t see his hands. He was doing something with them. It tickled. And hurt. And tickled.

I faded in and out. A couple of times I saw Mom’s face pushed in next to the strange man’s. Between their heads I saw a dome light, the kind you found in cars, seated in an expanse of black that stretched beyond my narrowed vision.

I tried to say something. My jaw felt like Styrofoam. My tongue tasted about the same. I tried to talk, but I heard some croaky voice speaking over me. When I realized the noise came from my own throat, I gave up and quickly sank into the darkness again.

A hundred years must have passed before I finally opened my eyes and could keep them open. First thing I noticed was that strange dude watching me with concerned lines drawn over his brow. Next thing was the cool and smooth feel of a hand holding mine. I recognized that hold.

I managed to turn my head and saw Mom looking down at me, her eyes wet, but her mouth pulled into a tight smile. She gave my hand a squeeze.

The third thing I noticed was a complete absence of pain. My back felt sweaty, and it itched a little. But that was it. The cougar attack might as well have been a dream, only I could remember how it felt to have the flesh peeled off my back with vivid certainty. Dreams did not hurt like that.

The man drew his lips into an O and exhaled slowly. “That was too much of a close call,” he said.

I studied his face while the rest of my senses came back online. He had thick, dark gray eyebrows that met in the middle, a few hairs shy of a unibrow. He had a matching goatee, the grayness too smooth for the product of age. I had a feeling his hair had always been that color. His scalp was shaved, but even the stubble had the same shade.

“I’m so very sorry,” he said.

My lips stuck together for a moment when I tried to speak. My jaw felt more substantial than Styrofoam now, but the dry, plastic-y flavor still coated the inside of my mouth. I couldn’t work up any saliva, so I didn’t trust my voice to work very well. I surprised myself, though, with three coherent words.

“Who are you?”

He smiled. A kind smile that reached his eyes but didn’t interfere with the concern in them. It was the kind of smile a doctor might offer at your bedside.

“My name is Markus Hope,” he said. “And I’m afraid I’m the one who gave you those nasty scratches on your back.”

I just about choked on my pasty tongue.

He rested a gentle hand on my chest. “Relax. You’re healed now, but you’ll still suffer some wooziness for a bit.”

I ignored his warning and tried to sit up.

He let his hand fall away from my chest, not trying to stop me.

“Sebastian,” Mom said.

I got up on one elbow, which quivered when I put my weight on it. I clenched my teeth and fought against flopping onto my back again. This was a point of pride. To hell with his caution. If I wanted to sit up, I could damn well sit up.

Apparently, he didn’t want a chance to say I told you so, because he took my free arm and helped ease me up the rest of the way.

My head spun, and a pit of nausea dropped in my stomach. I pressed my lips together to keep from spewing. I squeezed my eyes shut, but that only made the spinning worse. I opened them and focused on a spot on the floor between my knees. That’s when questions about my whereabouts rose a little higher than how crappy I felt.

Thin red carpet covered the floor. I sensed a sort of hollowness to the floor I couldn’t make sense of at first. When Markus shifted his weight beside me, the room seemed to shimmy. I might have mistaken it as a symptom of my dizziness, but my head was spinning, not rocking from side to side.

I swallowed down my impending upchuck and looked up to take in my surroundings.

Tinted windows. Facing leather bench seats. Black fabric on the ceiling, along with that dome light I had seen during one of my surfacings from unconsciousness. I had thought then that the light looked like it belonged in a car. I had been pretty much spot on. Only this wasn’t a regular car. It was a limo.

A chill washed through me as I remembered the last time I had sat in a limousine. Logan Goulet had nearly brought me with him into vampire land. I had been one bloody taste away from undeath.

My heartbeat kicked like a kangaroo. I scraped my heels against the floor, pushing myself away from this Markus guy. The rational part of my brain got body-checked by panic. I held my hand out as I scrabbled up against the door. Warmth had already coalesced in my palm without my needing to consciously tap my magic.

Mom sat on the edge of the bench seat to my right. She stared with wide eyes, holding out a hand of her own to me, but not threateningly, more like she wanted to catch my sleeve before I scooted too far away. Too late, though. I had already moved beyond her reach.

Flame flickered to life around my outstretched hand, my palm aimed right in line with Markus’s chest.

He didn’t look a smidge concerned. He sat back on his haunches on the opposite side of the limo, his elbows on his knees, his hands hanging loosely between them. His calm demeanor irritated the hell out of me. Didn’t he realize I was about to burn that almost unibrow off his damn face?

“Sebastian, please. My attack was a horrible misunderstanding. I put a great deal of energy into healing you. Can’t we let bygones be—”

“Shut up.”

The air in the close quarters grew warmer from my fire. The clean smell of pure heat filled the space. But once I threw my flame at Markus, his burning flesh would quickly dirty up that smell. And I was about to make that happen when Mom slipped off the seat and kneeled between us, blocking Markus.

“Sebastian, stop this!”

With her in the way, I quickly doused my flame. I kept my hand out, though, and watched it tremble.

Mom cupped my hand in hers. “It’s okay,” she said. “Markus is a friend.”

I didn’t have friends who rode around in limousines. You couldn’t trust a person with a limousine. They either had too much money or too much power. Or both. And if this guy had the ability to rip me open as a cougar and put me back together as a human, he was especially bad news. Because of his limo.

The line of thought made perfect sense in the moment.

But the longer Mom held my hand, and the longer I had to catch my breath and let my nerves settle, the more I realized my freak-out might have been a little over the top.

Not that I trusted Markus any more than I had to begin with. However, killing him outright wasn’t appropriate. I guess.

I nodded to Mom.

She released a long sigh. Her shoulders relaxed. “Why don’t we all take a seat like civilized folks?”

She climbed back to her spot on the seat to my right.

Markus stayed put for a few seconds, watching me. He didn’t looked worried or angry. Just…focused. If he had stared much longer, I would have started squirming. But he quickly broke off his scrutiny and took a seat next to Mom.

That made my choice of seat obvious. I parked myself on the opposing bench. I sat on the edge, too, in case I had to make a sudden move.

“Sebastian,” Mom said. “This is Markus Hope.” She patted him on the knee with easy familiarity. It made me feel a little squidgy.

“He already told me that,” I said. “He also said he’s the damn cougar who nearly killed me.”

Markus held up a finger. “But I am also the one who—”

“Healed me. Yeah. Thanks. That was such a pleasant ride. We should do it again soon.”

He laughed. “Let’s not and say we did.”

So he thought this shit was funny? I gave Mom my signature What the fuck? look.

She drew her shoulders up and smiled like a shy bride. “He’s a good man, Sebastian. We go way back.”

“Too far back,” Markus said. Now he rested his hand on Mom’s knee so that their arms crossed.

Squidgy and more squidgy. Maybe I should have sat between them like a gods damned chaperone.

“I should have gotten in touch the moment I heard about Walter,” he said.

“I wasn’t much of a talker for a while there.”

He ducked his head, nodded. “I visited you a couple times while you were…” He shrugged.

Mom’s eyes lit up. “You did?”

He did?

“I sat and read Byron to you. You always loved the Lord B.”

She did?

“I’m sorry, Markus. I don’t remember much from my time there.”

His smile turned sad. The corners of his eyes pinched as if struck by sudden pain. “I’m just thankful you’ve come out of it. It was unbearable to think I’d lost you and Walter both.”

He gently rubbed her knee.

I cringed. I would have rather had that maggoty animal corpse in my face again than watch this shifty shape shifting son of a bitch get all cozy with my mom.

“This is real touching,” I said. “But that doesn’t mean you don’t still owe me a damn explanation.”

He got my message—both of them. He took his hand off Mom’s knee and folded both of his hands in his lap. He cleared his throat. “You’re right, of course.”

I faked a smile that was supposed to look fake and waited for him to go on.

The limo shifted slightly, though none of us had moved. Then I realized Markus’s driver was still in the vehicle and just on the other side of the opaque partition right behind my head. I wondered if he could hear any of this. Probably not. And it didn’t matter. I still wanted answers.

“First of all,” Markus said, “I’m an officer of the Ministry.”

I tensed at this tidbit. Officer of the Ministry could mean a lot of things. But if this limo were his company car, I could be in some serious shit.

Mom, who still had her hand on Markus’s knee, gave his leg a little shake. “He used to be a scholar like me and your father.”

Used to be.

I braced myself.

“That’s right,” Markus said. “Those were the good old days. A lot less stress. Even running from a horde of risen mummies seemed less harrowing than working in politics.”

A Ministry politician?

My stomach felt like a crushed beer can.

Please tell me this isn’t happening.

“Yeah,” I said slowly, my voice sounding a lot like it had when I first woke up on the floor of this limo—dry, creaky, distraught.

“Poor Markus here is a Ministry arbiter,” Mom said with a wide smile, like a proud parent.

My crunched up stomach dropped clean through the floor and all the way down to China. Some poor soul over there had my stomach in their backyard—or maybe on their dinner table.

A clammy sweat rose across the back of my neck.

I was so screwed.

See, arbiters are the second step down from the prefect. If the prefect was like a governor, then arbiters sort of acted like the local legislature. These comparisons had a lot of flaws. The workings of the Ministry weren’t nearly as democratic as mortal government. But the point was, besides the prefect, you couldn’t get any higher in the Ministry’s political food chain than an arbiter. And the Ministry strongly frowned upon the assault of its highest officers. It didn’t matter a whit that Markus had started the fight. My use of magic to physically toss him off of me could win me some serious—and permanent—consequences.

A lifetime prison sentence, for example.

Markus curled up one corner of his mouth. “I can tell what you’re thinking.”

Mom shook her head. “Sebastian, he isn’t going to charge you.”

I looked from Mom to Markus. “I’d like to hear that from him.”

He held up a hand as if swearing an oath. “I am not going to charge you. My gods, what a terrible bastard I’d be after what I’d done to you.”

His word on the matter would have to soothe me well enough. But I knew he could change his mind at any moment. Best if I stayed on his good side.

“So…” I cleared my throat and hoped I could keep from sounding like a scaredy cat. “Why…” Ugh. How could I word my question so it didn’t sound like an accusation? Aw, fuck it. I’d verbally danced with the Detroit prefect. I didn’t have to let this guy intimidate me.

“So,” I repeated. “What brings an arbiter like yourself to a lovely neighborhood like this?”

He leaned forward. “You did.”

Chapter Six

“This is the site of a rather infamous crime among the supernatural community,” Markus said. “Shortly afterward, I set up wards around the house to trip if they sensed any magical or paranormal energy. The idea was that the criminal might return to the scene.”

I noticed Mom’s smile fade. Her gaze looked unfocused. She saw something beyond the limo, something that made her eyes water. A glimpse of the past, most likely.

“Frankly,” Markus continued, “I’d forgotten about the wards. And I never would have thought, three years later, they’d still work.”

For some reason, I didn’t buy that last claim. If this guy could heal me from the injuries he’d inflicted on my body in only a couple of hours, he should have easily had the juice to cast wards that would last a decade or more.

“So Mom and I set off your wards? And you showed up, what? Ten minutes later?”

“I had tucked in a summoning spell along with the wards.” He laughed. “You can imagine my surprise when I found myself pulled from a committee meeting and transported here.”

Yeah, that there was some high-level mojo. Yet somehow he kept his energy muted. Normally, I would have felt that kind of power rolling off of him like heat from a kiln. A thought occurred to me that should have struck me earlier. Probably would have if I hadn’t just woken up from a near-death experience.

“You’re a shifter,” I blurted, though I had meant to keep the statement to myself.

Markus smiled. “No. An Animagus. My cougar form comes from druidic roots. My mother was a druid, my father a sorcerer. An unusual union, to say the least. But it certainly worked in my favor. I have the skills of a druid, but access to inborn magical energy.”

My jaw dropped, felt like all the way to my knees. “Wow,” I said like the master orator I was.

He got a kick out of my reaction and burst into laughter that came from deep in his belly.

Mom jerked out of her mental trip into the past, blinked a few times, then grinned at Markus’s outburst. Though it was obvious she didn’t know what he was laughing about.

I reeled in my loose jaw and straightened in my seat. Time to get serious again. “So you pop in, see me on the porch, then go all cougar and try to kill me? That’s quite a snap judgment, huh?”

He pressed a hand to his chest as if to squeeze out the last of his laughter so he could talk. His laughing scaled down to an amused wheeze, then he cleared his throat. “As I’ve said, I apologize for that. While you looked vaguely familiar—I think you have your father’s eyes—I didn’t recognize you. I suppose I reacted a touch too vigorously, but I thought I might finally have a lead on who harmed your parents.”

“A touch?” I huffed. “That’s one way of putting it.”

“I’d only intended to incapacitate you enough so I could question you. Then you fought back, quite strongly I might add, and I reacted by instinct instead of using my head.”

He said it as if he had said enough. All was well. He didn’t mean to nearly kill me. Let’s move on already.

I honestly didn’t have anything else to say either, though I felt like I should have. I didn’t want him to think he had gotten off the hook so easily. But his explanation was fair. Could I really blame him? Especially if he thought he had someone who may have been involved with what happened to Mom and Dad. Hell, I probably would have reacted the same way.

Markus turned in his seat to face Mom. “So did your visit help?” he asked.

Mom took her hand off his knee—finally!—and wrapped her arms around her as if suddenly cold. The driver had the engine running, and heat blew from the vents, but Mom shivered.

“Not a lot,” she said.

“What do you remember?”

My nerves sparked. I didn’t care how buddy-buddy the two of them were, he did not need to hear how she thought—

You mean how she knows.

—she had killed Dad. The worms in that can were better left inside.

“Just bits and pieces,” I said before Mom could answer herself.

She glanced at me, a question in her eyes. I hoped she saw the answer in mine.

Don’t tell him!

She pressed her lips together and nodded. “That’s right. Barely anything.”

Markus put a hand on her shoulder. He looked at her for a long while. The steady sound of the engine filled the silence. I could smell the barest whiff of exhaust smoke. The tangy smell of blood was stronger. My blood, I realized, as I looked to the floor and saw the darker, wet patches on the already red carpet.

As if triggered by the sight, my back started to itch like a mother. I leaned back and rubbed against the seat, trying not to be too obvious about it, the creak of the leather not making it easy.

No reason to worry, though. The two of them gazed into each other’s eyes, oblivious to me. I could have sung some AC/DC while waving flaming pompoms and I doubted they would have noticed.

I did not like it.

I cleared my throat. Cleared it again. A third time.

They didn’t flinch. Markus kept rubbing Mom’s back. Mom hugged herself a little tighter, so at least she was keeping her hands to herself. I wondered if they had acted like this around Dad. Wouldn’t it have bothered him? Or was this new behavior for them, seeing as how Dad wasn’t around to get in the way?

I gritted my teeth, but kept (barely) from growling.

“Mom,” I finally barked.

Her eyelids fluttered. She turned her face my way with a bewildered sleepiness. “We should get home,” she said as if I were the one holding us hostage in the arbiter’s limo.

“Yeppers.”

“I can have my driver drop you at home,” Markus offered.

I snorted. What home? I sure as Skittles did not call our hotel room home. But, hey, Mom had a connection to a top dog in the Ministry. Maybe she could get a rush put on the reconstruction of our house, something we were supposed to be guaranteed in the instance of a paranormal disaster. The Ministry bureaucracy, unsurprisingly, wanted to haggle on whether the house fire counted as a paranormal act. Vampires had set the fire. It shouldn’t have mattered that they’d done it with flamethrowers.

“We’ve got a car,” I said. “Thanks anyway.”

He inclined his head. “Then allow me to drive you back to your car.”

That brought up a good point. Where the heck were we, besides in a Ministry-issued limousine? I peered out the tinted windows. The vehicle was parked by a light post in a Wal-Mart parking lot, in one of the spaces furthest from the store. The view was so mundane, I couldn’t help but laugh. “Wouldn’t want to keep you from your shopping trip.”

Markus laughed along with me. “You can thank my driver for the locale. I was too busy saving your life to notice.”

He put an emphasis on saving your life as if I needed reminding of his heroic deed. I didn’t bother pointing out I wouldn’t have needed saving if he hadn’t fucked me up in the first place. So I smiled. “Thank you.”

An awkward moment of silence followed. While I kept my gaze on Markus, I could see Mom squirming in the corner of my eye. She finally broke the stare-down by patting Markus’s arm.

“We’d appreciate that, Mark. Thank you.”

Oh, now he was Mark?

Grrrrrrr, I thought.

“Yes,” I said, trying my best to grin instead of grimace. “That would be great.”

Chapter Seven

I needed to vent. Desperately. So after I dropped Mom off at the hotel room, I drove to Hazel Park and pulled into the lot of Sly’s Smoke Shop on the brink of twilight. The sky didn’t look much different than it had all day, just a darker shade of gray.

I got out of my ‘87 Reliant (one of only a few things that had survived the fire) and went inside.

Sly’s place was a head shop on John R Road. He sold everything from elaborate water bongs with pewter dragons wrapped around their glass necks to a stunning variety of rolling papers. He also had a magazine rack featuring a library’s worth of periodicals devoted to weed and all its various joys. While selling recreational marijuana was still illegal in Michigan, the paraphernalia surrounding the act was fair game for retailers, with the caveat that all items sold were “for tobacco use only.”

Not that the laws mattered much in Sly’s shop, because it always smelled like ganja thanks to Sly’s employee and nephew, Green. (Last name or first name, I didn’t know, Sly never called him anything else.) Green had a habit, much to Sly’s chagrin, of smoking on the job. And tonight he looked like he had toked more than usual. His eyes, set somewhat close together, were so red he almost looked like a vampire. Sweat beaded his forehead and soaked the underarms of his Red Wings jersey—which was gross, because he seldom wore anything else.

He gave me a limp wave when I came in. “Hey, Sebastian.”

“You okay, Green? You’re looking a little…green.”

His wide jaw swung down, and he let out a laugh that sounded like he’d swallowed a carburetor. For a second I thought it was a sarcastic, fake laugh, but he delivered it with apparent sincerity. I’d never heard him laugh before. I could go a while without hearing it again.

“Where’s Sly?” I asked.

Green hooked a thumb in the direction of the back room. “Making sure the back entrance is barricaded.”

I lifted an eyebrow. “Why?”

Green’s stoned gaze roved to the plate-glass window facing the street. “They’ve gone crazy, man. As if they weren’t crazy enough.”

I followed his gaze. Dusk had broken into night. I’d probably get a call from Toft if I didn’t pick up my apprentice soon. But I didn’t want to deal with Odi right then. I needed to unload my recent findings on a sympathetic ear.

“Who’s gone crazy?”

“Vamps, man.” He pointed through the window, and then I spotted what he was talking about.

A gas station occupied one corner of the intersection across the street. There were two cars parked by the pumps, a pickup and some kind of compact car. Both had all of their windows shattered. Through the broken window on the driver’s side of the compact car I saw a middle-aged woman with her head cocked unnaturally back and to one side as if she saw something fascinating on the ceiling through her wide, still eyes.

A bloody tear in her throat spurted blood in time to her slowing heartbeat.

Green had said vamps, but why would a vampire waste so much fresh blood. She should have been sucked dry. Unless Green had been mistaken.

As if in answer to my doubts, one of the windows of the gas station exploded outward, and a man in a plaid shirt sailed out among shards of glass and a rain of snack cakes off a display he had bounced over on his way. A second later, a wrinkly, gray-faced vamp with glowing red eyes peered out of the hole. Blood ringed his mouth as if he’d gone bobbing in cherry sauce.

The vampire watched the man he’d tossed through the window struggle to get up with the kind of glee you expect from a kid with too many Christmas presents to count. Even the hungriest of vamps didn’t look quite so…ecstatic.

Another vampire joined him. Together, as if watching a damn nature show on the Discovery Channel, they stared out at the poor guy writhing in a scatter of broken glass and Twinkies.

Even from across the street I could see the man’s scalp had split. A large flap of skin and hair hung loose like a tattered wig. The bloody patch of his revealed skull gleamed in the fluorescent lights mounted to the overhang above the pumps. He kept getting to his hands and knees, then dropping back onto his side.

I gritted my teeth and started for the door. I’d go over there and—

“Don’t.”

I turned toward Sly’s voice. His face had lost all hint of color. His gray stubble dirtied his cheeks just enough to give him a corpse-like pallor. His eyes were a bloodshot as Green’s.

“Why not?” I asked. “I can’t let those fuckers—”

“Because there’s more of them,” he shouted over me.

A cold worm turned in my stomach.

“A lot more,” Green added.

I glanced over my shoulder in time to see the two vamps crawl through the hole in the window. They walked lockstep to the man on the ground and started stomping on him wildly, as if trying to put out a fire. It took only a couple of blows to crush the guy’s head. They clomped his brains to mash, but kept on going.

I eased a breath through my urge to vomit. “What the hell is going on?”

Movement in the shadows on the far side of the station caught my attention. Two more vampires came out of the dark. They went to the pumps, one to the truck, the other to the compact car. I stood frozen, unable to believe the outright bizarre behavior of these vampires, and stared while they grabbed the hoses from the pumps and began dowsing both vehicles with gasoline.

Four vampires. Contrary to Green’s assessment, that wasn’t a lot more. Certainly a number I could handle if I got the drop on them—though I’d have to forfeit using fire magic around all that gasoline. That would make it tougher, but not impossible.

If I didn’t do something, those vamps would turn the gas station into a bomb, putting everyone in the surrounding area in danger.

For a second, I couldn’t help visualizing the orange glow in the sky made by my burning home. I shoved the thought aside when I noticed the heat coalescing around my clenched fists. My anger and my power had recently bonded in a way beyond the normal connection between emotion and magic. That new fusion had saved my life. But if I didn’t reel it in, I could see it just as easily killing me.

I had started walking without realizing it until I stood halfway across the shop’s threshold with my elbow pushing the door aside.

“Sebastian,” Sly shouted, his voice reedy and tense.

I paused, but didn’t turn.

The night air reeked of gas as the vampires continued hosing the vehicles down. The one spraying the compact car had come around to the driver’s side and stuck the nozzle into the hole in the woman’s throat. A few seconds after he started, gasoline gushed out of her mouth. She didn’t twitch or thrash, mercifully already dead. That didn’t make the act any less disgusting.

With my attention locked on the horrors across the street, I didn’t see the shadow moving to my right until too late.

Something struck my side hard enough to send me through the glass door I still held open. Hard enough to brake the door’s metal frame off its hinges. Hard enough to send me ten feet before finally hitting the sidewalk and rolling off the curb into the street.

A car blared its horn as it swerved around me, so close I could feel the heat of its passing exhaust pipe, and got a mouthful of dirty fumes in the process.

Dazed, I could only lay there a second, staring at a line of black tar filling a crack in the pavement.

A pair of big hands grabbed the lapel of my leather coat and hoisted me up until my feet dangled a foot off the ground. I found myself staring into the red eyes of a vampire with a pair of kegs for a chest and a shovel of a face, features flat and dumb. Even his fang-filled mouth looked painted on. He wore a biker jacket way too small for his beastly size. And his breath smelled like a flooded tomb.

He cocked his head to one side as he examined my face.

I had a mixed reputation among vampires because I had vampire blood laced with mine. Only the use of some obscure magic kept me from turning into one of the undead. They referred to me as the Unturned, which, to me, sounded like the kind of thing you’d find in the back of a refrigerator.

“You,” he said.

“Yep,” I said. “Me.”

He sucked deep through his nose. Tilted his head to the other side. “Vampire?”

This big fella had quite the verbal dexterity. Alas, I couldn’t decode his one-word question. Was he asking if I was a vampire? Was he really that stupid?

Who cares? Roast him.

I clapped my hands on either side of his cinderblock head and tapped my magical energy. My hands grew warm.

The undisputed monster truck of vampires widened his eyes, a bright instant of understanding in an otherwise dim head.

I smiled, then tried a new trick I’d learned thanks to my desperate tangle with the recently dusted vampire Elder, Logan Goulet. I took the anger I still had simmering from what I’d witnessed across the street and fed it to my fire.

The flames that ignited around my hands glowed in brilliant blue and burned twice as hot (or more; hadn’t really tested it yet) as my standard fire. The vampire’s oversized noggin melted almost instantly. He had time to expel a hoarse gasp, then all he had left was a thick neck flaming like a torch.

A second later, his entire body crumbled to dust.

I dropped from his suddenly missing grasp and landed wrong, twisting my right ankle. Pain pierced the ankle like a large iron nail. I fell to my knees in front of the sizable pile of vamp dust. If I hadn’t seen for myself where the dust had come from, I would have assumed it belonged to at least two vamps.

The smell of gasoline had grown more pungent during my intimate encounter with Vampzilla. I glanced across the street.

The vamps at the pumps had tossed aside the nozzles and now stood at the curb, staring at me. The ones beating the guy in plaid into paste had joined the other two at the curb. They stood in a line, red eyes flaring, fists at their sides, like a clutch of gangbangers glaring at a rival who had wandered onto the wrong turf.

But this wasn’t their damn turf.

Despite the pain in my ankle, I stood and stared right back at them. If they wanted to cross the street and take me on over here, I’d have all four of them lit up and on their way to ashes before they made it past the yellow line.

They didn’t move.

I didn’t move.

We should have had ponchos and holstered six-shooters, like a sheriff and bandits facing off at high noon. Only high noon wasn’t a good time for these desperados.

Then I noticed one of them look quickly toward my left.

I spun in the direction of his glance and saw four (no) five (no) six more vampires trudging my way.

“Oh, shit.”

I backpedaled, my hurt ankle nearly folding under me. I managed to stagger sideways against the front of Sly’s shop and brace myself against the window.

When they started running, I turned and limp-hopped my ass toward the entrance, glass from the door crunching under my boots.

Sly stood right inside. He grabbed me by the coat and wrenched me through the wrecked doorway. I thought for sure I was going to face plant, but he pushed up against me to provide support.

“You dumb asshole,” he growled as he tugged me along toward the back room. I could see Green already inside.

Right before we reached the room, I heard a whoosh followed by a boom so loud it sounded like we were inside a thundercloud. The floor vibrated, as did the glass cases displaying all the bongs and pipes. An especially fat bong rattled off its shelf and shattered through the one below it.

A plume of hot air carrying the smell of gasoline blew in from outside.

While Sly shoved me into the back room, I glanced back and saw the roaring pillar of fire where the gas station used to be. Burning chunks of debris sailed through the air and came crashing down, some pieces landing on nearby buildings and setting the roofs alight.

The four vampires who had been standing at the curb were now crossing the street with a casual gait, black silhouettes against the raging orange light behind them. They probably thought they looked real badass.

The half dozen others who had started running at me reached the shop’s entrance well before their pyromaniac friends.

Sly bumped me further inside the back room then slammed the heavy metal door behind him. He turned the deadbolt and slapped into place three additional bolts mounted to the door. Then he dashed backward as if the door had suddenly gone hot.

On the other side, something slammed hard enough to rattle the mounted bolts like discordant bells.

The impact was followed by the familiar metallic crow of a vampire’s scream.

“That’s right, motherfuckers,” Sly shouted at the door. “That shit is blessed!”

A sudden quiet fell.

Between the three of us, our ragged breathing sounded like bad static.

“Maybe they went away,” Green said.

A moment later, the noise of smashing glass, and the thud of tossed heavy things seeped through the door.

The bastards were trashing Sly’s store.

Chapter Eight

“You dumb asshole.”

Sly glared at me as if I’d kicked him in the nuts.

“You already said that.”

He pointed toward the door. “I had all that glass blessed and hexed. And you opened the damn door and let them all in.” A vein on his temple throbbed. Some of his gray hair had come loose from his stubby pony tail and hung across his face like a scythe. He normally kept his stonewashed jeans pegged at the ankles. One of them had come undone, and the cuff was clearly too short, showing off a pristine white gym sock that matched his white-as-new high top tennis shoes.

The clang and crash of destruction continued out in the shop. When the vamps got done, I doubted a single thing would remain recognizable. Hell, they might turn everything to a fine dust if they kept at it like they were.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t know what was going on.” I scrunched up my face. “What the hell is going on?”

Green offered an answer. “Vamps have gone crazy. They’re just…” He ran a hand down his mouth. Adrenaline seemed to have cleared some of the red out of his eyes. He looked more scared than stoned now. “Crazy.”

“They’re rioting,” Sly added.

Something Goulet had said to me before he died came back to me.

If you let me die, you will set off the largest supernatural war this city has ever seen.

Was this the beginning of that war? As Detroit’s vampire Elder, he had organized a group of vampires to help in whatever scheme he’d been part off. His death may have created a vacuum in their power structure. Could that alone really set the city’s vamps to rioting like this, out in the open, fearless, reckless?

I shuddered.

We weren’t even in the city proper. Hazel Park was one of several surrounding suburban cities in the Metro Detroit area. If the vamps had begun meting out such destruction here, I couldn’t imagine what it might look like in Detroit’s heart.

“How many do you think are out there?” I asked.

Sly chewed on his bottom lip for a moment, gaze distant, as if counting in his head. Then he shrugged. “No clue, brother. They got rolling right after dusk. Seemed to come out of every shadow. I’m sure we saw a couple dozen running around out there.”

“Maybe more,” Green blurted, as if he had to force himself to speak.

“Maybe,” Sly agreed.

I wandered over to the large workbench in the center of the room. Sly’s alchemical collection of unmarked vials and glass bottles filled with fluids in all manner of shades seemed larger than before, and not nearly as organized as usual. Some of the bottles he kept on a wire spice rack lay scattered across the table. A shoebox full of oddly shaped leaves lay tipped on its side. Many of the leaves had tumbled out, some of them crunched into dark green flakes.

I looked around and noticed several of the larger boxes that typically lined the room like cardboard bricks pulled out and left open. The place looked as if in the midst of a hasty unpacking. I’d never seen it like this in all the years I’d visited. And those years stretched clear back to my childhood.

“What are you doing here?” I asked.

“Preparing.”

“For what?”

“For the worst.”

Green made a thin whine from the back of his throat. He kept rubbing his fingers together as if he didn’t know what to do with them. I had a feeling the quirk meant he desperately wanted a joint.

I couldn’t blame him. I didn’t do drugs, but a double shot of Jack didn’t sound too bad.

A thump and metallic rattle sent a charge through my every nerve. I shot a look in the direction of the sound. It had come from the back exit. Sly had put in place a metal brace of some kind that wedged between the door and the floor, like a diagonal girder. He must have had that door blessed as well, because more razorblade screeches soon followed the impact.

“Are we safe in here?” I asked. “Can the room hold?”

“Probably.”

Green started pacing while still flicking his index and middle finger of one hand against each other. The nervous tick made a sandpapery sound that would start to grate if he didn’t quit it soon.

I tried to ignore him and focus on Sly. “So we wait them out until dawn.” I glanced from the back exit to the door that led to the shop. “And if they get through before then?”

Sly went to his bench and gathered three matching vials about as long and narrow as my pinky, each filled with clear blue liquid and stoppered with rubber corks. He handed one to me. He stepped in front of Green, forcing the big guy to stop pacing. Green took the second vial from Sly with a spacey curiosity. Then Sly held up his as if in toast.

“A quick death.”

Chapter Nine

The vial of blue stuff Sly had given me felt cool to the touch, but when I put it in my pocket I swore it burned like a hot coal. My imagination, of course. I had never carried death in my pocket before.

Two hours had passed. Green was kicked back in the recliner Mom used to sit in while Sly tried treatment after treatment to bring back her memories. Despite Green’s palpable anxiety, he had fallen asleep within thirty minutes of our forced confinement. He snored, but nothing obscene. Just a soft little gurgle that kind of sounded like he had swallowed a purring kitten.

Sly and I sat on a pair of stools at his workbench. He spent most of his time fiddling with this tincture or that mix of herbs and powders. I had no idea what he was making, if anything. I think he needed to keep his hands busy.

I spent twenty minutes of those first couple hours talking to Mom. I had called her as soon as my mind had accepted the absurdity of our situation and calmed a bit. Thankfully, she hadn’t seen any sign of the riots around the hotel.

She was watching news of the riots on TV and filled me in.

The mortal coverage was all over the place. They tried to explain away the inexplicable, conjured theories about what had set off the riots, and had lost contact with a number of news crews dumb enough to try and get coverage “on the ground.” The vampires had probably eaten them.

As I had suspected, Detroit itself suffered the brunt of the vampiric chaos. Burning buildings. Smashed shops and homes. Corpses scattered among the debris, the vampire equivalent of tossing aside hamburger wrappers and French fry cartons, the litter of a quick meal.

Police in riot gear had been dispatched. Reporting on their progress was spotty, but I doubted they had made much progress. There was talk of calling in the National Guard.

But eventually the Ministry would have to get involved, if they hadn’t already. They would deploy the Guardians, a magical SWAT force with serious juice. They could probably bring things under control. The hard part would come in the light of day, when the Ministry had to somehow cover up the paranormal aspects of this riot. Something like this might even warrant bringing in the global tier of the Ministry.

You will set off the largest supernatural war this city has ever seen.

After getting the lowdown, I told Mom to stay safe then hung up and filled Sly in on what I’d learned.

He set down the ceramic bowl of goop he’d been stirring (which smelled like a hog with bad gas) and dragged his hands down over his face. “Holy fucking hell.”

Since that pretty much summed up both of our sentiments on the subject, we fell silent.

Sly picked up his bowl, sighed, then set it down again and shoved it aside.

The long wait gave me plenty of time to heal up my twisted ankle. It wasn’t even a full on sprain, so it didn’t take much.

At some point, the vamps tossing Sly’s shop had apparently taken off. Only the vaguest noise of death and destruction reached us in the well-insulated room. It made the quiet feel oppressive, unbearable.

I started tapping out drum beats on the workbench to a selection of classic rock songs I could play in my head from first note to last.

Sly threw me a look that promised one of his potions in my face if I didn’t quit.

When my phone rang at the top of our fourth hour in captivity, I nearly cheered at the prospect of some kind of distraction. Then I saw the number on my screen, and my stomach juices curdled.

“Do not give me a hard time about not picking up Odi,” I said before Toft could get a word in.

“Where are you?” he asked with a breath of urgency that sounded too mature for his little boy voice. Toft was a four hundred year-old vampire in the body of a thirteen year-old. Yeah, it was as disconcerting as it sounded.

“Locked in the back room of my friend’s shop, waiting for all the vampires to go away.”

I heard him swallow. When he next spoke, his words came more measured. “Then you’re alive?”

“Pretty obvious, since I’m talking.”

“Sometimes the dead speak, Sebastian.”

I laughed. “Kinda like you.”

“I’m undead, not…” He growled. “This isn’t the time for humor. The city is being torn apart.”

“I’ve noticed. Got any theories why?”

“Do you?” he asked, and I couldn’t help noticing the accusatory tone.

“Power vacuum?”

“Indeed.” He swallowed again. “When this is over, come see me at the club.”

“Won’t you need to be in bed by then?”

“I’ll wait up,” he said and disconnected the call.

Chapter Ten

When I arrived at the Black Rose—Toft’s downtown jazz club—I came to a shattered window and a pile of black dust on the sidewalk mixed in with glittering shards of glass. The front window was typically blacked out, so it looked a little weird being able to see into the club from outside. I couldn’t spot a lick of movement. None of the lights were on, so the bulk of the space remained shrouded in shadows outside the reach of the pale light from the overcast sky.

A gust of chilly air came through, making my bare ears burn. It would be hat weather soon. The wind made a whooshing sound as it blew through the window. A few loose pieces of glass fell from the top of the jagged hole and clinked against the sill.

I looked down at the mess on the sidewalk. I recognized vampire dust when I saw it. Apparently, someone had thrown a vamp through the window, and the sunlight had taken care of the rest.

Interesting.

I rapped on the door while taking quick glances over my shoulder as if the vamp dust might put itself back together again and launch onto my back, take a nice juicy bite out of my neck. I had apparently developed an unhealthy paranoia about vampires. But after all I’d been through with those bloodsuckers, could you blame me?

Toft’s main lackey, Mortimer, answered my knock. His massive body filled the doorway. He probably had to turn sideways to get through. He fulfilled a number of roles at the Black Rose, including bouncer. And while he appeared human, if you looked into his dull black eyes, you could see the troll hidden behind the glamour.

Trolls don’t typically wear glamours. Unlike vampires, it didn’t come naturally. But Toft had hooked his main troll up. He had also done some weird trick to the troll that allowed Toft to see through his eyes like a tiny passenger in Mortimer’s tiny troll brain.

Mortimer’s stare turned blanker than usual, which signaled to me that Toft was looking through the troll right then. But the moment quickly passed, and Mortimer blinked his way back to his own self. He stepped aside wordlessly.

I took the hint and went inside.

Mortimer followed me in, then took the lead on the way toward the back of the club.

The breeze through the broken window ruffled the linen tablecloths on the nearby round tables. A stray cocktail napkin flipped and tumbled off one of them, the jazz club equivalent of tumbleweed through a ghost town. The air inside smelled like ice.

I expected Mortimer to take me back to Toft’s office, but we passed the door and continued down the hall into a storage room. Shelves full of napkins, candles, and folded tablecloths lined two walls. An industrial-sized stainless steel sink had a neat stack of clean glasses next to it, and a rubber mat on the tiled floor in front of it.

The room had two more doors besides the one we came in through—a brown metal one in the back wall with a glowing EXIT sign above it, and a cherry wood one with a gold plaque on it that read PRIVATE.

Mortimer drew a set of keys from the pocket of his massive dress slacks and unlocked the PRIVATE door. He pulled the door open. The hinges made a well-oiled sigh. Inside, all I saw were a couple steps heading down into darkness.

I knew right away what I was looking at—the entrance to Toft’s…home? Crypt, maybe? Lair?

My skin prickled with cold sweat. To paraphrase Boromir from one of the Lord of the Rings movies, one did not simply walk into a vampire’s lair.

Mortimer reached in and hit a switch on the wall inside the stairwell. A light on the well's ceiling came to life and illuminated a set of stairs with red velvet carpeting all the way down. The walls were covered with an ornate gold leaf wallpaper. The smell of cinnamon wafted out from somewhere down below, like a scented candle.

I cocked an eyebrow and gave Mortimer a look.

He stared back, face impassive.

I sighed. "All right."

I went down the stairs, my footsteps muffled by the carpeting. When I reached the bottom, I found myself in a large room, what looked like a living room. The carpet matched the stuff on the stairs. Despite being below the club, the room had a brick fire place. The chimney must have gone all the way up above ground.

The smell of cinnamon was much stronger. I couldn't fathom Toft burning scented candles like some old grandma. I couldn't picture him burning incense for that matter. Unless for some kind of spell. But Toft didn't have any magical skills.

He sat on a couch with wooden claw feet and red plush upholstery. It looked like something out of the Victorian era. The rest of the furniture matched. Even the cabinet that held the TV on top. And the TV could have fit a small movie theater in a pinch.

The TV was off, but I heard faint music coming from a massive stereo system, speakers arranged throughout the room so it permeated every corner.

"Nice digs," I said.

He scowled and adjusted the collar of the red silk robe he wore. His eyes looked bleary as if from sleep deprivation. Which made sense, I guess, since he should have been snoozing in his coffin at this hour.

"I'm not in the mood for pointless banter."

Like I said before, Toft was a four-hundred year-old vampire. But he was turned at the unripe age of thirteen. He normally kept his blonde hair neatly parted, but many of the locks had lost their oiled shine and hung loose. He looked kind of like a playboy in a little boy's body. Or a little boy pretending to be a playboy. I couldn't help feeling a little ill at the idea.

"It's Mister Crabby Toft, huh? You need to get yourself to bed. Or coffin. Or whatever you sleep in."

He straightened, planted his hands on the couch on either side of him like he meant to push himself to his feet—or launch himself at my throat.

But he stayed seated. His eyes flashed red. And when he opened his mouth, I saw he had extended his fangs.

"I said—"

I waved him off. "Yeah, yeah. No banter. You should know by now I can't resist." Then I hooked a thumb toward the stairs. "What's up with the broken window?"

Toft curled his lip. "Unwanted attention," he said. "Thanks to you."

I looked around for a place to sit. None of his furniture looked all that comfortable. A wing chair to one side of the couch was the best prospect, though the seat looked awfully thin in the padding department, and it was situated closer to Toft than I would have liked at the moment. I stuck my hands in my pockets and stayed on my feet.

“Did you ask me here just to bitch?”

He ran his hand through his hair, mussing it up even more. One lock stuck out on the side of his head—bed head before he'd even made it to bed.

"The former gentleman you saw outside was one of several annoyances I've had to deal with of late. Ever since your...disagreement with the elder."

"Disagreement? The blood guzzler kidnapped my mom and nearly turned me vamp. Besides, what does that have to do with you?”

The red glow in his eyes faded. His fangs shrank away, and he bowed his head.

He didn’t say another word, but after a few seconds of silence, a thought struck me.

"Are you the new elder?”

He sighed and strode away toward the mini wet bar in one corner. He took his time fixing a drink from a crystal decanter. I was glad he had his back to me, because I cracked a smile, unable to fight back my schadenfreude.

“I can smell your disdain," he said.

"It's not disdain, Toft. It's amusement."

His shoulders visibly tensed. Slowly, he set the decanter down and turned toward me, a matching crystal highball glass in his hand holding amber liquid.

I had only ever seen Toft drink Martinis. This stuff looked harder. Stuff he probably saved for when he really needed a bigger buzz. He wouldn't get much more. As a vampire, it would have taken several decanters of whatever he had in the glass to get him close to actually drunk. Poor bastard.

"Fine," he said. "I'm glad to amuse you. But you might want to show a little more respect to Detroit's new..." His face soured.

My smile widened. "You can’t even say it."

He tossed back the contents of his glass in one gulp, then threw the glass aside, shattering it against the wall.

"This isn't funny. My newfound situation puts me in great stress. I am not a leader. I'm not a mainstream vampire. It took me a great deal of time to build my place in this city. I prefer to be left alone."

Wow. He was taking this pretty hard. But I thought I understood his position. Toft was what a lot of us called, with a hint of derision, a "tame" vampire. These vamps followed Ministry law, blended in with society at large, and mainly kept to themselves, staying in the shadows instead of lurking out at night to feed on the poor, unsuspecting mortals.

A tame vamp didn't mean a friendly vamp. But they didn't outright flaunt their undead selves, making them slightly less dangerous in the conventional sense.

But achieving a place, especially one as lucrative as Toft's, took time, work, and patience. And these traits didn't come easy to a vampire.

Maintaining all that he had built would prove a pain in the ass if the non-tame crowd starting hanging around.

But Toft was the elder now, a position vampires instinctively praised. They would expect him to fulfill the role much as Logan Goulet had. For all I knew, whoever had been behind the mess Goulet and his lackeys were involved with would want to recruit Toft to take his place.

I shuddered at the thought.

Toft tilted his head to one side as he watched me. "You look a little green, Sebastian. Do you finally realize the uncomfortable truth behind my situation?"

My smile faltered. Leave it to a vampire to suck all the fun out of things.

"I didn't call you over here to complain," he said. He strolled back to his couch and eased down with a tired groan. "I need a barrier between me and this unwanted attention. Mortimer can only throw so many insipid sycophants out the window and into the sunlight. The cost of replacing windows the least of my concerns."

My smile died. I had a sick feeling I knew where his train of thought was headed.

"I need more robust protection," he said.

"He isn't ready."

Toft frowned. "How long will it take to make him ready?"

"Jesus, I've barely had a chance to work with him. And I've had a few other things on my plate."

"You've nearly had two weeks since Goulet's demise. And you've spent every night with him."

I threw my hand up, exasperated. "You know, it typically takes a lifetime for a sorcerer to master the full extent of his powers."

"I'm not worried about the full extent. I simply need him powerful enough to dissuade others from bothering me."

"Odi is plenty powerful," I said, picturing our last meeting and how utterly wrong it had gone. "Power isn't his issue. It's control."

Toft slammed his fist on the couch beside him and punched a hole through the seat. He wrenched his hand free and shook it off as if it were wet.

"You need to work harder," he grinded through his clenched teeth. But he managed to keep his fangs in.

"You really have no clue," I said. "Odi is a teenager. He's only been a vampire for less than a year, but he's still a kid, and he's lived eighteen years not even knowing he's a sorcerer."

"What's your point?"

"You start training a sorcerer at birth. It's like..." I scrambled for an analogy that would make sense. The one I went with...well, it could have been better.

"It's like potty training," I said and grimaced as soon as it was out of my mouth. "It's something you learn as part of growing up. It's not like learning to drive or speak a second language. It’s not something you can study later in life. I mean, if you don't know how to use a toilet by the time you're in high school, you're in pretty damn terrible shape."

Toft wrinkled his nose. "That's..." I thought he would say "disgusting" or "sickening.”

"Unacceptable," he said. I guess the analogy didn't bother him so much. Then again, this was a creature whose regular meal plan included bodily fluids. I guess he had a stronger stomach.

"Unacceptable or not," I said. "It's the damn truth. And let me give you an example."

I stepped toward him and gave him as serious a look as I could muster. "Night before last, I decided to give elemental control a try. After all, that's my specialty. I thought I could teach him a few easy tricks. So I set up a candle and taught him how to light it with a hint of magical flame."

Toft looked bored. He crossed his arms. If he'd been standing, he probably would have tapped his foot.

"Thing is," I said, "he missed the candle. No, I take that back. He hit the candle. Melted it in a couple seconds. He also set the whole table on fire, and scorched the floor, and nearly burned the whole room down. I should have worked with him outside, but I didn't really have a good place to take him."

"Where did you take him?"

"Sly's house. And I'll tell ya, he's not too pleased about having his downstairs man cave extra crispy."

Toft closed his eyes, dragged a hand down his face. "I need him, Sebastian."

"Yeah, well, what you need and what we've got isn't going to work out. Maybe not ever."

He opened his eyes and looked up at me. "What do you mean?"

"I mean, I think training him to use his power is a mistake. It's too late. He's too old. And if I keep this up, he's liable to do more harm than good."

Toft rose to his feet. A red glow flared in his eyes for a moment like a pair of coals. But the light quickly faded.

"You will not stop his training."

"Toft, you need to listen to reason—"

"You will not stop his training. You'll work twice as hard. You will do everything you can to bring him up to speed."

"Toft—"

"No," he said. "This isn't up for debate. You swore a blood oath. You will honor that oath."

Of course I would. I didn't have a choice. A blood oath was more than a strong promise. It was a magical leash. I physically could not disobey his order on this.

"I seriously regret that oath."

"Regret it all you want," he said. He moved in close. He had to look up at me when he did, but the difference in our height didn't seem to phase him. And it didn't make him look any less intimidating, even in his little boy body. "You will work harder. You will train him well enough so that he can protect me. The vampire community will take my rejection of their fawning for only so long before some of them grow resentful."

"I don't know what the hell you expect from me."

"I just told you what I expect. And I expect you to do it quickly. Get his fire control figured out. That would go a long way for me."

"And the truth finally comes out," I said. "You don't give a damn about Odi. You just want a glorified bodyguard."

"For now," he said with a hungry creak in his voice. "But I want him to be so much more. And you will make that happen."

I shook, my hands in fists. I would have liked to punch him in the mouth, but he'd probably bite off my hand if I tried.

"Fine," I said. "Anything else, my lord?"

He laughed. "That has a nice ring." Then he scowled and waved me away. "I need my rest, or I'm going to have to feed early. And my breakfast isn't here yet."

My stomach turned. I knew he drank blood. I knew he took it from supposed “willing” donors. But I did not need to hear about it. I didn’t show my disgust, though. I recognized bait when I saw it.

"I'll see myself out."

I turned and headed up the stairs without glancing back. I couldn't stand another second looking at the little bastard's arrogant face.

Chapter Eleven

I parked in the lot behind the hotel, eyes corroded with sleepiness, my body aching as if I'd become an old man overnight. I planned on checking in on Mom, then I’d pull the curtains and hit the bed for a good, long nap.

But when I tried to open my car door to get out, it wouldn't budge. I checked the lock. It was definitely open. I tapped the unlock button a half dozen times to be sure, but the door wouldn't budge.

Great. Just what I needed. A broken door.

With a sigh, I slid over to the passenger side and pulled the handle. The handle moved freely enough, but that door wouldn't open either. I leaned against it with my shoulder and planted my feet on the floor, but I might as well have tried pushing through a brick wall.

Then I felt it. The familiar buzz of magical energy that made the hairs on my arms and the back of my neck stand on end.

A moment later, a man stepped into view through the passenger-side window. He just stood there, so I couldn't see his face. But I could see his tan trench coat and the thick hands hanging beyond the cuffs. He wore a monster of a ring on his right ring finger with a blue, shimmering stone. Clearly a magical talisman of some kind.

My heartbeat quickened. I did not like this at all.

I shimmied back to the driver's seat, only to find another person standing there like a sentry, arms relaxed, hands held in a loose fists, casual as can be. The stance kind of reminded me of a secret service agent guarding the president during a speech.

I craned my neck to look up at my second captor. She stared down at me, making me feel like a specimen trapped in Petri dish. She had a narrow chin and crisp, blue eyes. Her blonde hair was cut short and firmed by gel.

"What?” I snapped.

The dude on the other side of the car rapped on the window with his ring.

I spun toward the sound in time to see him crouch to peer in at me. He gestured as if rolling down a window. I almost made a smart remark that I had power windows, but held back. I had a weird feeling I knew who these two were, just based on the way they carried themselves and the feel of the magic they exuded.

And I really hoped I was wrong, because I did not want anything to do with Ministry Guardians.

I buzzed down the window on his side.

"Can I help you officer?" I asked, unable to hold back an itch of snark.

His impassive face didn't seem to register it.

"You're to come with us," he said.

I raised my eyebrows. "And you are...?"

One corner of his mouth curled up barely more than a centimeter. "You know who we are."

I sighed. Sometimes I hated being right. "Okay," I said. "Is there a charge I should know about?"

"Why?" he asked. "Should there be?"

I barked a derisive laugh. "I didn't know guardians were allowed to have a sense of humor."

"Did I sound like I was joking? I apologize."

I gritted my teeth. He was enjoying keeping me dangling on a hook like a squirming worm. "I haven't done anything wrong," I said. I didn't like the guilty defensiveness clear in my voice. But I really hadn’t done anything against Ministry law. I couldn't think of a single reason they would come to collect me.

Not knowing, of course, made it worse, and the guy in the tan trench coat loved every worried second of it.

"Come with us," he said.

"How? I can't even get out of my car."

The tremble of magic I felt in the air ceased. A second later the woman on my side pulled open the door like a valet. She stepped aside, clearing the way for me to climb out.

I stayed seated.

"I'm not going anywhere until you tell me what this is about.”

October's biting air blew in through the open door and seemed to suck all the heat out of the car in a single gust.

"I'll be honest," the man said. "I wasn't informed of the reason for picking you up, only that it was the Ministry's wish to do so."

Okay, that was weird. Guardians weren't gofers. They were the law enforcement branch of the Ministry. They were deployed only when Ministry law had been broken. At least, that's how I understood it.

"Well, we wouldn't want to deny the Ministry its wishes."

"No," he said flatly. "We would not."

I looked back at the woman. She remained off to the side, one hand still on the door handle.

I did not want to go with them. Wherever they took me couldn't be good. None of it made any sense.

Of course, what had made sense lately? I was a sorcerer who should be a vampire, with a magical brand that both kept me from turning and from accessing a goodly portion of my power. I'd adjusted, but nothing was normal about my life. So why not throw in a mysterious visit by a pair of Ministry heavies? Hell, maybe they wanted to take me out shopping. I still needed to get a new wardrobe since mine had gone up in smoke with the rest of my house—I was getting tired of rustling through the bargain racks at JC Penney.

"Will you come with us?" the man asked. "Or do we have to take you?"

I had a fair amount of magic, but nothing that could compare to the kind of juice guardians carried. There was no point resisting. I wasn’t in the mood for a fight anyway.

"Sure," I said. "I'll go. Could be fun, right?"

The man straightened and walked away without answering.

The woman jerked her head to one side, encouraging me to get out. Once out of the car, I gave her a smile and a wink. “You’re taking me out for ice cream, aren’t you? Can I get Moosetracks?”

She slammed the door closed, turned, and headed off in the same direction as her partner.

They both approached a dark sedan of a make and model I couldn't name. Never looked back at me. Apparently, they weren't worried about me trying to cut and run.

I shivered against the cold, tucked my hands in my coat pockets, and followed them to the car.

Chapter Twelve

I sat in the reception area of the office of Detroit’s Ministry Prefect, on a stiff-cushioned sofa built for two, only my pair of guardian escorts sat on either side of me, smushing me between them. The seating arrangement had been their choice. A trio of modern style chairs that matched the sofa were arranged in a casual semi-circle on the other side of an oval, glass-topped coffee table. Perfectly good seats. Probably no more comfortable than the sofa, but at least we’d have some breathing room.

Now they were acting worried I might try to slip away. Not at all like their casual confidence that I’d come along back at the hotel. Then it occurred to me: our little cozy lineup was meant more for show. When the prefect came out of his office, they wanted to make sure they looked like they had me, and good.

Whatever. At least neither of them smelled. On the other hand, since I was trapped between their combined body heat, I had started sweating, could feel it trickle down my sides from my armpits. I didn’t know how long my deodorant would hold out. I half hoped it wouldn’t. And a little juvenile part of me would have loved passing some gas. See how long they held out before giving up and leaving the sofa to me.

But, lucky for them, we didn’t have to wait long. Ten minutes after we sat down, the prefect’s dark, polished wooden door swung open, and he stood aside to leave room for entry. I felt kind of special. The last time I came to see the prefect, I had waited for two freaking hours.

Prefect Morgan St. James had skin several shades darker than his door. He had shaved his head clean since the last time I saw him, and his smooth pate gleamed in the light through the window behind the receptionist’s desk. A window that had a view of the International Riverfront a few dozen stories below. The Ministry leased three whole floors of the Renaissance Center, the Detroit cityscape’s most prominent feature—seven connected skyscrapers looking over the city like a group of sentinels armored in glass.

I couldn’t imagine what three floors here cost a month, but it delivered a clear message to those governed by Ministry Law—the Ministry had money, which meant they had power, which meant don’t fuck with them.

My companions each grabbed one of my arms and hauled me to my feet with them. The move wasn’t rough or harsh. Just firm. In other words, they weren’t treating me like a prisoner, but they did want me to know they had control. Maybe that should have been reassuring, but I wasn’t feeling it.

As soon as we were standing, the guardians let me go and took a step back as if presenting me to Prefect St. James. Here is our offering, Prefect. Do with him what you will.

I shivered, attributing it to my sweat cooling now that I was free of the Sebastian sandwich. A little could have been nerves. Just a bit, though.

Whatever jitters I felt about this meeting, I kept to myself, doing my best to project a “chillin’ like Bob Dylan” vibe.

St. James invited me in with a short tilt of his head. He had his own chill vibe going on. We were just a couple of dudes meeting up for a chat, maybe sharing one of his bottles of home brew it was rumored he kept in a mini-fridge behind his desk. Which I totally would have gone for.

But I didn’t get my hopes up.

I went in, leaving the guardians behind. As St. James closed the door, I took a seat in front of his huge desk: enough surface space to land a plane on, all made of polished-to-a-shine cherry wood. The only thing more impressive was the ornate rug underfoot woven by fairies. Fairies didn’t do rugs anymore, and this was probably one of very few still in existence. If the Ministry found anyone with enough money to pay for it, the cost of the rug could cover the next ten years of the Ministry’s lease in the RenCen.

I could smell the thousand years of must permeating the thing. I hated walking on it, but if the sucker had lasted through that many years of foot traffic, I probably wasn’t hurting it much.

St. James walked around and sat behind his desk, grunting softly as he settled in. He laced his fingers together and rested his hands on his ink blotter. “I suppose you’re wondering why I summoned you here?”

I smirked. “Indeed I am, Monsieur Poirot.”

He laughed, pointed at me. “I see what you did there.”

His laughter eased the tension that had knotted my shoulders while I hadn’t been paying attention. Eased it, but didn’t kill it entirely. I was glad St. James had a sense of humor. It wasn’t something I had gotten to see the other time we had met.

His laughing petered out quickly, and his expression turned serious. “I’m not sure if you’ve heard reports, but the Metro Detroit area has developed a sudden vampire problem.” He shrugged. “A more than usual problem.”

“Didn’t need a report,” I said. “I found myself smack in the middle of a vamp riot in Hazel Park last night.”

He pressed his lips together, didn’t say anything for a moment. His gaze drifted down to a picture frame on his desk. The frame faced him, so I couldn’t see the picture. Based on the worried look in his eyes, I figured it was someone important to him. It’s easy to forget that someone in a position of power as high as a Ministry prefect was still a regular person, with a family, a personal life, hobbies, and concerns that had nothing to do with politics.

“Riots are a good way to describe it,” he finally said, nodding his head slightly. He looked up from the picture to me. “I suspect this had something to do with your…confrontation…with Logan Goulet.” So he’d heard about that. “The loss of their elder seems to have stirred them up quite a bit.”

“I thought so, too. But seems to me there’s got to be something more to it than that.”

If you let me die, you will set off the largest supernatural war this city has ever seen.

Goulet’s words rang back to me once more. The prick had taken up a mighty chunk of my mental real estate. I seriously wanted to evict his ass.

“How so?” St. James asked.

Moment of truth. How much did I want to reveal to the prefect? I had come to the sad conclusion that someone with a great deal of power lurked behind whatever plan Goulet had had for my mother. And, following that line of thinking, I found it easy to believe that that someone (or several someones) had a position in the Ministry. It tasted like a tinfoil hat conspiracy theory, but what other conclusion could I draw?

That left one nerve-wracking question—was Prefect St. James involved in that conspiracy?

“I’m not sure,” I said. Not a lie, but it did omit my suspicions.

He frowned, narrowed his eyes, and looked at me as if trying to read words tattooed across my face. “No theories?”

Was he pumping me for information? Trying to figure out how much I knew? Because he was somehow involved?

I took a slow, steady breath. Jumping to crazy conclusions could bite me in the ass. I had to stay cool.

I decided to let a little more truth leak free. His reaction might give me a better read on him. “Goulet suggested some larger plan. He didn’t share details before I pumped him full of silver, though.”

St. James wrinkled his nose as if a bad taste filled his mouth. “What kind of plan?”

I shrugged. If his question was genuine, then we were both stumped on that front. I didn’t have any magical lie detecting skills, but I went out on a limb and chanced sharing Goulet’s dying claim.

“I honestly don’t know, Prefect,” I said. “But he did say his death would trigger a supernatural war of some kind. Does that mean anything to you?”

His eyes widened, and he drew back. “To me? Why in the names of the gods would that mean anything to me?” His eyebrows drew together, and his upper lip curled a fraction of an inch. “Are you accusing me of something, Mr. Light?”

Oops. Never a good idea to piss off a prefect. “No,” I said quickly. “I apologize if it came across that way.”

His nostrils flared as he let loose a breathy growl. Then he laced his fingers together and rested his hands on his desk like he had when he first sat down. “I’ll have some people look into it,” he said. “In the meantime, something has to be done about the vampires. If there’s a repeat of the destruction and violence after dusk tonight, it will be hard to contain the truth from the uninitiated.”

Ah, yes. Worry about exposing the supernatural world to the average citizens, but don’t fret about the livelihoods of those same citizens. Typical Ministry politics. I clamped my mouth shut to keep my opinion to myself. Wasn’t easy.

“I’ve decided,” St. James went on, “to put together a special task force with the goal of discouraging further lawlessness.”

“How do you plan on doing that?”

“By tracking down offenders and dusting them before they ever see another night.”

A city wide vamp hunt. Sounded like fun for a hunter like myself. “Standard contracts wouldn’t do the trick?”

“There aren’t enough hunters in Detroit to handle so many undead targets. And I need swift action.”

“So even if you don’t get them all, you can take a large bite and send a clear message to vamps at large.”

“That’s the idea.”

“Makes sense,” I said. “But what does any of this have to do with me?”

He drew his hands apart and pressed his palms flat against his desktop. He leaned toward me. “Because I want you in on this.”

I tried to swallow, but the lump in my throat wouldn’t go down. The light seeping through the vertical blinds behind the prefect suddenly seemed too bright, forcing me to squint. “Excuse me?” I croaked.

St. James grinned, clearly amused by my confused reaction. “You are the best hunter in Detroit. And, due to your recent experiences, have an intimate knowledge of the local vampire population.”

He was seriously overstating the case. A lot of different vampires called the Motor City home. But I was too tongue-tied to say as much.

“You have whatever Ministry resources you need to do your part. I suspect you’ll outperform even some of our best guardians. They’re amazingly powerful, but their skills serve a more general purpose.”

“Are you…” I shuffled words in my head like a deck of cards, but couldn’t find any aces.

“Hiring you as a temporary employee for the Ministry.”

No. Not cool. I’d take all the money the Ministry wanted to give for fulfilling contracts. I’d take out vampires all night long if they wanted to put proper bounties on them. But working directly for the Ministry? That shit was not my style.

“I appreciate your confidence in my ability, Prefect. But I’ll have to decline. I’m strictly a private contractor.”

He huffed, leaned back in his chair, and crossed his arms. “What’s the difference between collecting bounties and collecting a paycheck? You can trust you will be greatly compensated for your work. Certainly more than you do as a private contractor.”

“Autonomy,” I said.

“So it’s purely a philosophical objection?”

“I’m sorry. I have a lot on my plate as it is.”

“I understand. You’ve been through a great deal.”

I exhaled and relaxed. I thought he’d give me a harder time about my refusal. I guess even the top dog of a political machine didn’t have to be one-hundred percent a dick.

I was about to thank him, but he spoke first.

“I also understand you’ve had to deal with some red tape to get your life back in order.”

The muscles at the base of my neck tensed. So much for relaxing. “That’s right.”

“As unfair as it is, a Ministry employee would probably have his destroyed home replaced within days of the incident. Such are the advantages of being a part of the system.”

He was not seriously going there, was he? I’m sure he thought that was one juicy carrot he was dangling in front of me. And I couldn’t deny it looked mighty tasty. But where there was a carrot…

“On the other hand,” he continued, “it could take weeks, possibly months to get through all the rigmarole so often involved with the process. Assuming the Ministry approves your claim in the first place.”

…there was a stick.

I clenched my fists in my lap. “So that’s how it is?”

He stared at me without a word. What else was there left to say? If I ever wanted to get our home back, I had to play along. Otherwise, Mom and I were stuck trying to rebuild the house on our own dime—and we did not have enough dimes.

The lump in my throat must have been my pride, because when I swallowed, it went right down.

“Do I need to fill out any paperwork?”

“My receptionist will provide you with the proper forms.” He stood and held out his hand. “A pleasure to have you on board.”

I stood, but didn’t take his hand. “Whatever.” I turned on my heel and left his office.

He might have forced me into working for him, but that didn’t mean I was going to kiss his ass.

Chapter Thirteen

“You’re what?”

Sly gaped at me, the broken water bong in his hand forgotten. The three of us—Sly, Mom, and I—stood in the smoke shop among the debris left behind by the vamps. Mom had come over to help Sly with clean up. She leaned on the handle of the push broom she had used to sweep a heap of shattered glass and random pieces of pipes, bongs, and even sections of the metal frames from a few of the destroyed display cases to the center of the floor.

They had taped plastic sheeting over the broken windows. It rippled and crackled against the wind.

“I’m working for the Man,” I said.

Mom furled her brow. “What an odd thing.”

“Odd.” Sly whistled and tossed the destroyed bong into the pile Mom had swept up.

The sound of shattering glass set my teeth on edge, the night spent trapped in Sly’s backroom in the middle of a vampire riot still fresh in my mind.

“That’s more than odd,” he added.

I recounted what the prefect had said to me. Neither of them moved much while I did. Mom kept the broom handle clutched tight. Sly had his thumbs hooked into the waistband of his stonewashed jeans. Their intense focus made me feel self-conscious for some reason, as if I thought they were judging me. But I was probably projecting my own feelings toward myself onto them. I don’t know why it bothered me so much that I now found myself on the Ministry’s official payroll. Was it just pride? I wasn’t really an anti-establishment type. I simply preferred to avoid authority, rather than fight it.

But I sensed a deeper reason for my discomfort with the arrangement. A reason I didn’t want to waste time trying to dig up.

I had let my mind wander even while I was describing my meeting with St. James. I didn’t know how long I stood there, silently, after I finished talking. Sly waved a hand in front of my face, then snapped a couple times.

“You got a contact high from Green’s weed, brother?”

I blinked away my daze and pulled my attention back onto the two of them. “Sorry. The wheels are spinning at triple speed.”

Mom gave me a worried look, which made me feel a little guilty. I didn’t want her worrying about me. She had enough worries of her own to chew on.

“Now what?” Sly asked. “You have a plan for doing the Ministry’s grunt work?”

“The first thing I want to make sure of is that Mom is safe.”

“I’m fine,” she said without any sign that she was otherwise.

I sometimes forgot what a powerhouse she was, both in spirit and as a sorcerer. She would have to be, in order to kill Dad with a single magical stroke. He had been damn powerful himself. Not even a guardian could have taken him down with such apparent ease.

I shoved that line of thought away.

I nodded to her. “I know. But you’ve been through hell lately.” I turned to Sly. “Is there somewhere you can take her, somewhere safe? If the vamps do riot again, I’d rather not have her all alone at the hotel.”

Mom straightened. “Excuse me? You think you can tuck me away in storage while you run the streets chasing after vampires on your own?”

The lingering stink of marijuana wasn’t giving me a contact high, but it had started to turn my stomach. “I didn’t mean it like that.”

“Really?” She poked Sly with the end of the broom handle, but her gaze stayed on me. “What do you think, Sylvester? Does he mean to have you coddle me while he puts himself in harm’s way?”

Sly’s tired gray pallor gave way to a small blush. “I…uh…”

She frowned at me, the lines around her mouth deeper than usual. A sorcerer’s natural magic stretched the aging process well beyond that of any average mortal. But even her magic couldn’t keep up with the toll all this crap was taking on her psyche. Yes, she was powerful, but she was also human. I couldn’t imagine the agony she must have felt knowing that she had killed the love of her life.

“Stop that,” she said.

“Stop what?”

“Stop feeling sorry for me. Don’t shove me away. Let me help you.”

I glanced at Sly. He took a step back and held his hands out, a clear leave me out of this gesture.

I was about to object again, but stopped myself. Who was I to tell a century-and-a-half-year-old sorcerer what she could or could not handle? My concern for her had clouded my logic. Having her at my side made perfect sense. I would have been a fool to pass up help from a badass like her.

I took a deep breath and got a noseful of stale marijuana smoke. Sly had blamed the smell on Green, but I had no doubt Sly had helped. He just didn’t like to admit his weed habit to me, as if it might tarnish my view of him. Even though I had known he partook of the ganja since I was a kid. I mean, duh, you smell like weed and own a head shop. Besides, he knew I knew. It was a silly throwback to my childhood, but I let him have it.

Anyway, the smell didn’t bother me like it had earlier. My stomach had settled. I even cracked a smile.

“Okay, partner,” I said, “Hand the broom over to Sly, and let’s go dust some vamps.”

She smiled back and held the broom out to Sly.

He took it with a sigh. “Thanks for stealing my helper, brother.”

“Where’s Green?” I asked.

He came awful close to pouting. “Kid quit. Breaks my heart, but after last night, I guess I can’t blame him.”

He tried to sound light about it, but I could hear the genuine disappointment in his voice. “Sorry, man.”

“Forget it.” He waved, brushing aside the issue. “What’s your next move?”

“The Switch,” I said, naming the metro area’s prime supernatural hangout—a bar catering to all types of paranormal beings. Even vampires. “No one has a better grasp of the rumor mill than good ol’ Barry.”

Chapter Fourteen

There was a brewery in Warren that made some of the best beers in the state, maybe even the region. I was particularly fond of their double rye India Pale Ale, or DRIPA. I’d never tasted beer so good anywhere else, though there was one from Great Lakes Brewing that came damn close.

But there was more to the brewery than the beers, at least for those of us within the Detroit area’s paranormal community.

Mom and I parked in the lot of a Catholic church a little ways down the street. It was best not take up parking at the brewery itself since we weren’t actually going inside.

As we walked along the sidewalk, the fall wind carried the scent of coming winter. Assuming I survived the next few months—a prospect that seemed less and less likely the way things were going for me—Thanksgiving would arrive in a blink. The first snow would come sometime between then and Christmas, if it didn’t come earlier. And I would then spend as much time indoors and off the roads as possible until the March thaw.

Snow sucks. If I thought I had any chance of convincing her, I would beg Mom to move somewhere like Southern California, where the only snow you got in the winter came in a globe.

She was too attached to Michigan, though. She had grown up in the state. Her parents had lived and died here. And now her husband, too. Granted, as Ministry scholars, she and Dad had traveled all over the world collecting artifacts, old books, and other mementos of the hidden histories behind cultures both present and forgotten. But home would always be here.

Which meant it would remain that way for me, too. I couldn’t imagine living very far away from her.

The chilly, damp air made my bones feel cold. But at least I had a coat. Mom had yet to buy one after the fire took both of our wardrobes, preferring her sweater. But she looked like she regretted putting it off now. She held her collar pinched closed under her chin, and her lips formed a tight line. I moved in close and put my arm around her as we walked the rest of the way to the brewery.

When we arrived, we crossed through the lot and headed straight toward the alley behind the building. A tall cinderblock wall formed one side of the alley, blocking the view of what lay on the other side. A Dumpster with one of its plastic lids missing emitted a yeasty and dank scent. The brewery’s metal back door was closed. Back here, no one could see us.

Still, I kept watch while Mom pressed a brick in the brewery’s back wall. A second later, the bricks split apart to form an archway. Inside the archway was a wooden door with large iron hinges and a bronze knocker in the shape of a goblin’s head. The goblin had the signature large, pointed ears and hooked nose of his kind, which reminded me of a goblin I had met way back when I first started hunting. The knocker’s ring hung from the goblin’s nose like an oversized piercing.

But Mom didn’t need to use the ring, because the face came to life. Its thick bronze lips curled up in a smile. “Why Madame Light, what brings a nice sorceress such as yourself to a dump like this?”

I didn’t know if Mom had ever been to the Switch before, but it didn’t surprise me that the knocker knew who she was. The Light name went back several generations in the Midwest. And they were known for both their strength and their kindness.

Before Mom could answer the knocker’s inane question, his blank bronze eyes turned to look at me.

“Oh,” he said. “I should have known. The Unturned.”

“Do not call me that.”

“Whatever. I hope you didn’t come hoping for a drink. They ain’t serving right now.”

I wrinkled my brow. “Why not?”

“Place is a wreck.”

My heart picked up a few extra beats. “What happened?”

“Best you see for yourself.” His face returned to its original expression and solid, immobile bronze.

A dull clunk came from the other side of the door, the sound of the lock sliding open.

I shared a pensive look with Mom.

Then I took the lead, pushed the door open, and went inside.

Chapter Fifteen

Wreck was an understatement. The bar looked hardly recognizable. Nearly every table lay in splinters. Piles of black dust covered the hardwood floor, some of it scattered like windblown sand. Holes of various sizes and shapes littered the walls. I recognized them for what they were—bullet holes. Small ones in clusters from buckshot. Larger ones in jagged rows from automatic weapon fire. And gaping ones from higher caliber rounds.

The smell of cordite and blood filled the room.

The broken tables weren’t the only things on the floor. I counted four clearly dead bodies visible from where I stood just inside the door. Two of them looked human, one with his belly ripped open from what might have been a shotgun blast. The other, a woman, lay spread-eagle on her back, throat sliced clear to her spinal column. The third was a thick-bodied ogre. One shoulder was ripped apart as if a mad animal had chewed through the muscle. A long sword protruded from his breast—probably what had killed him.

Oh, yeah. And his eyes were missing, the empty sockets weeping runnels of blood.

The fourth body…its face was so ravaged, hanging in bloody tatters, that I couldn’t tell what species it might belong to. It had thin limbs with knobby joints and a relatively long neck. None of these features ruled out human, but it could have easily been a reaper or revenant. Or something else entirely.

Beside me, Mom gasped.

While I gaped at the carnage, the door behind me swung shut, the lock clunked home, and I could hear the bricks outside coming back together, the sound like the clatter of falling dominoes.

I stood with my feet welded to the floor, breathing through my mouth to avoid inhaling the stink of death. I kept shaking my head as if I could deny what I saw in front of me long enough to make it all disappear.

Then I thought of Barry, and that snapped me out of my frozen horror.

I waded through the debris and skirted around the eyeless ogre, but paused before I left him behind. I grasped the hilt of the sword piercing his heart. “Sorry, man.” Then I yanked it loose. So much blood dripped off the tip of the blade. I held it out at my side as I made my way to the bar, dribbling a red path along with me.

When I reached the bar, I glanced back at Mom. I expected to find her at the door still. Instead, she stood right behind me. I was about to do that macho stay here where it’s safe bullshit. It was damn hard not to. I had gotten so used to her frail condition over the past three years, her catatonic state that had her living in a nursing home, completely unresponsive. But that wasn’t her anymore. I had to remember that.

She nodded, her eyes fierce. I noticed she had one fist clenched at her side. After a few seconds, I could feel the hum of her magic.

I nodded back, then turned and rounded the bar.

My stomach twisted, expecting to find Barry lying dead behind the bar. When I didn’t, I let out a long breath. Glass shards from the bottles of booze off the shelves on the wall blanketed the floor back here, their contents forming a massive puddle. The smell from all that liquor almost knocked me off my feet. I wondered if I could get drunk only by inhaling all of that.

My eyes watered, and I had to wipe them with the back of my sleeve so I could see. That’s when I noticed the golden glint of spent shell casings scattered among the glass. I imagined someone using the bar for cover during the massive firefight. Maybe Barry. I sure as hell hoped so. And doubly hoped he had made it out okay. If he’d been using silver rounds, he was probably responsible for some of the vamp dust on the floor.

Barry was also a shifter, able to transform into a massive grizzly. If he ran out of bullets, he might have been able to tear up some vamps with his claws, though it would have taken a lot of damage to kill a vampire that way. At the same time, the vamps would have had to deliver some serious damage to take Barry down, too. Even if he couldn’t win the fight, he had a good chance of getting out alive.

But I had one more place to check before I could get my hopes up.

I did my best to walk around the glass without crunching too much under my soles. I loved my boots and did not want to wreck them if I could help it. I also didn’t want to slip in the puddle of booze and fall onto the glass. Then I’d ruin my coat. And probably some of my skin, too, I guess. Gotta love my priorities.

Mom stayed close as we skirted the lake o’ liquor and stepped through the doorway into the back room.

I’d never been back here. I’m not sure many had, besides Barry himself. But I spent no time checking the place out, except to notice the orange floor tiles that Barry lay on.

A hot stone came up the back of my throat and caught there. A cold rush ran over my skin, and I trembled slightly.

“Oh, dear gods,” Mom said so softly I almost didn’t hear her.

Barry’s white button up shirt had little white left to it. Blood soaked most of the fabric. More blood streaked his face like war paint. His torso had at least a dozen oozing gunshot wounds. He had a bite in his neck that I knew had come from a vampire. One leg of his black slacks was shredded all the way up to his hip. And his exposed leg had been flayed to the bone.

I pressed a fist against my mouth.

The savagery was not the worst part, though. The worst part was that he was still alive.

He was curled into a fetal position, facing us. His blood-ringed eyes stared up at me. His breathing came in quick, short hisses through his clenched teeth.

I dropped the sword and hurried over and knelt at his side, ignoring the blood on the floor as it seeped through my pants. Shifters heal fast, but I didn’t think Barry could heal fast enough to make up for such extensive damage. And I had I feeling he had more injuries that I couldn’t see. I couldn’t imagine the pain he was in.

He tried to roll onto his back. I put a hand on his shoulder to keep him from moving. His body felt like he’d spent a few hours in a freezer.

“Easy, man. Try not to move too much. We’re going to get help.”

Although I didn’t know where the help would come from. It wasn’t like we could call 911 to send an ambulance to the Switch. And I didn’t personally know any magical healers. Truth was, I didn’t think Barry would make it long enough for help to arrive.

Barry shot his hand out and grabbed my forearm. His grip was surprisingly strong considering his condition, but his hand felt as cold as his shoulder. He opened his mouth to speak and ended up coughing instead. A blood mist sprayed off his lips. He clenched his teeth, stifled his coughing, then tried again.

“Vamps,” he said, voice wet and scratchy at the same time.

“I know,” I said.

His grip on my arm tightened. “War.”

Ah, fuck. Not that again.

He must have seen something in my expression he didn’t like. He shook my arm and dug his fingertips into my muscles hard enough that I knew I’d have a bruise later. I didn’t struggle against him, though.

“Serious,” he said. “They’ll kill…everyone.”

He clearly knew something I didn’t. Even with so few words, his message made my skin prickle.

“The riots aren’t random acts, are they?”

He slowly shook his head. His grip on my arm went instantly slack, his hand dropped away, and his knuckles rapped the tiles when it landed. “Not all of them.,” he said. “Interrogated a vamp. Before I dusted… Mostly nonsense. But—”

He cringed, and his body spasmed as if from a quick chill. He broke into another bout of coughing.

I felt so damn helpless watching him suffer. I wished I knew how to use my magic to ease his pain at the very least. But that kind of work involved special skills I didn’t have. If I tried, I was more likely to make his heart explode than do any good.

I looked up at Mom. She shook her head.

We both knew there was nothing we could do to help him.

I decided the best thing I could do was get as much info from him as he could stand to give and not let his last efforts before death go wasted.

It took a lot of will to keep from questioning him until after he finished coughing. But the second he did, I was ready.

“But what, Barry? What else did the vamp say?”

He swallowed. “Ministry.”

“I’ll tell them,” I said. “But if you can give me more—”

“No,” he barked. His eyes grew so wide, their whites stood out starkly against the deep red blood around them. “The Ministry needs…”

He went from panicked to limp in a blink. His eyelids fluttered. I was losing him.

“Find the vamps.” He reached for his neck. His fingers scrabbled at his collar. His thumb caught under a chain, and he managed to pull out a silver crucifix about the length of an index finger. His hand dropped, thumb still hooked around the chain, and the crucifix clinked against the tile floor.

He took one deep breath, then went still. His eyes stared at me, lifeless. One breath was all it took to go from living to dead.

I didn’t know Barry on any intimate level. But I had kept regular contact with him as part of my job as a hunter. He seemed to always know something helpful. And when he didn’t, he would offer me a free drink as if he owed me something. But he had never owed me a thing. He just liked me for some reason I would now never know.

And I had damn well liked him, too.

As gently as I could, I pulled the chain off from around his neck. Then I held it out in front of me, the silver cross dangling at eye level. I noticed a strange glaze on the cross, almost like cooked bacon fat. I laughed when I realized what it was. Barry must have pressed this against one of the vamps he’d tussled with. The gunk was sizzled vamp flesh. And since it had remained flesh instead of turning to dust, the vamp was likely still alive.

Barry had given me a way to find the bloodsuckers who killed him.

Chapter Sixteen

Despite what had happened with Odi when I tried to teach him some flame magic, Sly allowed me and Mom to use his place to conjure some magic of our own. With the vamp goop stuck to Barry’s cross necklace, we could use it as an ingredient in a vision spell. I’d done something similar when trying to track down Goulet after he had kidnapped Mom. But that had been with remains from an already dead vampire—I had used his dust. Since we were dealing with one who was still alive, we didn’t have to look into the vampire’s past; we could get a good peek into his present.

We had gathered the necessary supplies on the way over to Sly’s. First stop was the church down the street from the Switch. Using an empty plastic water bottle from the back seat of my car, we scooped up some holy water from the bowl at the church’s entrance. I think the priest spotted us, but we were in and out before he had a chance to say anything.

Then we hit a dollar store to get the rest of the stuff—a cheap pair of plastic sunglasses, a plastic Elmo bowl, and a paring knife that would probably go dull the second it cut anything. But it would work fine for our purposes.

When we got to Sly’s place, we spread out the stuff on the kitchen table.

His kitchen smelled like gingerbread, as if he’d done some baking recently. But I doubted it was cookies he’d put in the oven. Probably one of his herbal treatments. My guess, it had super relaxing properties that not even a packed pipe of weed could compete with.

He deserved it, the poor bastard. I hoped he was insured by a standard company, because the Ministry’s payouts were probably deadlocked with all the claims they must have been getting after the riots.

Mom stepped back from the table, her gaze roving over the items. Then she pulled out a chair, but instead of taking it, she gestured for me to sit.

I stepped back and held my hands out. “Um, no thanks. You’re better at the small stuff than me.”

She rose an eyebrow. “I thought you’d come around on that. There’s no small magic—”

“Yes,” I said, not wanting to hear one of Dad’s truisms. Not now. “I’m working on learning some more subtle magic. But I haven’t had a chance to really perfect anything. Especially not this spell.”

She crossed her arms. She gave me one of those narrow-eyed looks she used to when I was a kid and she had called me out on my trademark stubbornness. “It’s a simple spell. You used almost this exact one to find me.”

“And it blew every ounce of magic clean out of me.”

She stepped forward and gently nudged me toward the chair with her elbow. “You want to learn,” she said, “let me teach you.”

“Now’s not really—”

“Shut up and sit down, Sebastian.”

I sighed and plopped onto the chair. The wooden ribs in the chair’s back felt especially hard. I scooted to the edge of the chair, but then my ass started going numb from the loss of circulation through my legs. I slid back a little and found a compromise that didn’t feel any more comfortable, but at least I wouldn’t lose my legs from lack of blood flow.

“Quit fidgeting,” Mom said. “You’re like a little kid who doesn’t want to eat his broccoli.”

“I love broccoli.”

“Stop stalling.”

I looked over the funny tools at my disposal. These items weren’t half as sophisticated as those I had used last time I had tried a similar spell. No mortar and pestle. Chintzy plastic sunglasses instead of the real glasses with wire frames. But I was somehow supposed to do better this time. The muscles in my neck had tied themselves in knots. I tried to relax without much success.

Mom, now standing behind me, rested a hand on my shoulder. I felt a small spark of magic, then those tense muscles eased.

My pending headache averted, I took a deep breath and picked up the crucifix.

I used the paring knife to scrape the vamp gristle into the Elmo bowl. A thick clump landed right in poor Elmo’s eye, but he kept on smiling. Once I had scraped as much crisp flesh into the bowl as I could get, I set the necklace aside. I picked up the plastic water bottle of holy water. I dumped the blessed water into the bowl. It filled the bowl up about a quarter of an inch. The clusters of cooked vampire rolled around in the water like…well, like boogers.

I grimaced, set the plastic bottle aside, and twisted in my chair so I could look up at Mom.

“Vampire flesh in holy water,” I said. “The source and the weakness. Now I need a part of myself.”

She nodded.

“So…?”

“The knife, Sebastian,” she said with restrained annoyance.

“Blood is old school. Last time, I used a nail clipping.”

“And last time,” she said, “you blew every ounce of magic clean out of you. Isn’t that what you said?”

“It’s not nice to use my own words against me.”

She rolled her eyes. “Blood will make it easier for you. There’s more power in it to work with. For someone whose primary skills lie in elemental manipulation, and who has seldom done low key magic, I have to say, it was pretty ambitious of you to think you could pull it off with a little bit of your nail.”

“Thanks, Mom. I feel better already.”

She pressed her fingertips against my jaw and gently pushed so I looked back at the table. “Time to bleed a little, son.”

I didn’t want to look like a weakling. Mom had already busted my balls enough. So I splayed my left hand out and sliced straight across my palm with the paring knife. It stung like a bitch, but I didn’t so much as say ouch. Blood immediately ran down to the edge of my hand and dripped off onto the table. Luckily, Sly hadn’t laid out a table cloth. He didn’t need me staining his stuff with my blood.

I moved my hand over the bowl and let the blood continue to dribble. The drops exploded into red swirls when they hit the holy water. I bled into the bowl until the water turned completely red. Only then did I realize I didn’t have anything to staunch the wound.

Mom had thought ahead, though. She held out a dishtowel she must have pulled from one of the drawers in the kitchen.

So much for keeping my blood out of Sly’s things.

But I didn’t want to bleed all over myself either. I took the rag and wrapped it around my hand, then tucked in one end to keep it in place.

All I had left on the table was a bowl of holy blood water with vampire bit floaters and the cheap sunglasses. The glasses had bright yellow frames, but least they weren’t those silly oversized kind. I could retain that much dignity, at least. I picked the glasses up, turned them from side to side as if they were an ancient relic fresh out of the dirt.

“The spell isn’t going to cast itself, you know.”

I looked over my shoulder at Mom, doing my best to keep from sticking my tongue out at her. Boy was I having flashbacks to my childhood right then. But instead of resenting the memories, I softened to them. All those times Mom or Dad had leaned over my shoulder while I did my studies, learning about this arcane theory or that ancient magical culture or, best of all, pouring through spell books. I had taken that all for granted. Now a part of me desperately wanted to go back. But, as far as I knew, there wasn’t a kind of magic that could allow time travel. Not in the literal sense anyway.

“Last time, the stuff turned into a paste I could smear on the glasses.”

“It’s magic,” Mom said. “Not science. Go with your gut.”

I shrugged, then dipped the lenses of the glasses into the bowl like a tea bag. The watery mixture didn’t stick to the plastic. Only a few beads rolled around on the inside like rain drops. And when I raised the glasses to put them on, the drops scurried down and dripped off the frames, back into the bowl.

I didn’t hesitate, though. Going with my gut, as Mom suggested, I put the glasses on. They felt cold against my face, and the moisture made my skin crawl knowing where it had come from.

Mom rested her hand on my shoulder again. “Now, you only need a spark of magic. You have to look at your power in a whole new way.”

“Seriously, Mom. Maybe we should swap places.”

“It’s too late for that. You’ll spoil the spell.”

I couldn’t help remembering the feeling from the last spell, how I felt like I was melting inside, how empty I felt when it was all over. Despite Mom’s touch of magic, my shoulders tensed again. The start of a headache crawled up the back of my neck.

“What do you mean I have to look at my power in a new way? What way?”

“Think of it as a kiss. You don’t want to slip the spell your tongue—”

“Aw, come on.”

“—you aren’t trying to get to third base. This is your first date. You’re on the porch to her house. It’s time to say goodnight. Give her a peck. Nothing more.”

I laughed. “You have been out of the dating scene for too long.”

She smacked me upside the head. “It’s an analogy, for the gods’ sake.”

“Fine. Give her a peck on the cheek. No tongue. It’s nineteen fifty. Good girls don’t kiss on the first date.”

That got me another smack to the noggin.

“I’m trying to concentrate here.”

“Uh-huh.”

I took a deep breath. No more jokes. No more stalling. I pictured Barry, on the floor, ravaged, dying, the metallic smell of blood thick in the air.

I clenched my teeth and drew on my power.

“Easy,” Mom whispered. “Now isn’t the time to let anger fuel your magic.”

I stared straight ahead. On the kitchen wall, Sly had hung a Picasso print. I recognized the Cubist portrait, but couldn’t have told you the name. I focused on the portrait’s strange eyes. I fell into those eyes. The dark shade of the sunglasses somehow didn’t darken my vision. In fact, I felt like I could see more clearly than ever before.

“That’s it,” Mom said. “A gentle touch. Barely a brush against her cheek.”

I wasn’t sure what she was talking about. I hadn’t let loose any of my energy yet. I almost said so, but then I felt it. My focus on the painting had relaxed me, distracted me, allowing the power I held to seep away outside of my notice. And the second I realized it, a black curtain dropped over my sight.

My breath caught while a cold sweat broke out across my skin.

I remained still, not letting panic get the best of me. I knew instinctively that any sudden reaction could let the bulk of the energy I held at bay break loose, at best wrecking the spell, at worse leaving me empty and powerless like before.

I focused on my breathing, bringing it back to a steady, relaxed rhythm. I cleared my head of any intrusive thoughts or worry.

The darkness dropped away.

I found myself looking out of a pair of eyes not my own. I felt someone else’s weariness. They desperately needed sleep.

I was now in the mind of the vampire Barry had burned with his cross.

Chapter Seventeen

I could still feel the crucifix’s sting against the vamp’s neck, coincidently around the spot a vampire typically fed—at least from those who didn’t fight back.

The vamp—I couldn’t tease out a name from his subconscious, and since most people don’t go around thinking about their name, so I wasn’t likely to get one unless someone addressed him—scratched at the bubbled skin where the crucifix had touched, sparking a fresh twinge of pain. The vamp’s sharp senses could even smell the wound, a cross between corpse flesh and barbeque.

Turned his stomach. But remembering the pathetic bastard who’d done it to him bleeding out on the floor in the back of the Switch made him feel better.

My own stomach turned, too. The taste of the Tubby’s sub I’d grabbed on my way to Sly’s from the Ministry offices came back up. (I should have held off on the onions.)

The vamp walked down a nondescript hallway. Looked like the kind of plain, white-walled, thin-carpeted hall in a standard office building. It even had ugly gray rubber molding along the floor. The white walls were dirty, though. The ghosts of handprints past, dust gone black, cobwebs clinging to the corners where wall met ceiling. A few of the doorways he passed were missing the doors. I caught glimpses of broken down office furniture in the shadows of those rooms. One of the intact doors had a golden plaque that read, “Canton Summers, CFO.” Poor Mr. Summers apparently hadn’t done so well maintaining the finances of whatever company had once occupied this building.

But the vamp himself didn’t notice any of it. He’d seen it all before. A hundred times. Had walked this hall so often he barely saw it. He walked with hurried purpose. The journey an inconvenience between him and the destination.

It didn’t help that, with each step, he grew more tired. And his wound grew more and more painful.

He needed sleep, damn it. All he could think about was sleep.

He came to the end of the hall, which intersected with another hallway. He made a right. More of the same down this hall. Except this one was shorter and ended at a metal door. The door had dents here and there. Its beige paint had flaked away in spots, showing the gray steel underneath.

The vamp made a beeline for this door. He wrenched the knob as if me meant to twist it off. Then he shoved his way through and let it slam shut. The sound reverberated against cinderblock walls and down a set of stairs. The stairs went down half a flight to a landing, then turned and continued into shadows.

A hideous smell filled the stairwell. Hideous to me, at least. To the vamp it smelled like…home. But it smelled like a high school gym locker times about a thousand, as if all the boys of all the world shared this one room.

Those onions came back up again, along with the peppery flavor of salami.

I held back the urge to puke. That would have definitely put a damper on my spell.

The vampire took the stairs as if they might crumble beneath his feet, rushing down into those shadows as he continued to fight off his fatigue.

The stairs only went down one full flight. I realized there was no light source in the stairwell. I was seeing through the eyes of a vampire, where night and shadows were as good as light.

He skipped off the last step, the soles of his shoes scuffing the dusty grit on the floor. He didn’t pay much attention to where he stepped, but I could see dozens of trails in the dirty floor where plenty of others had stepped or shuffled through.

This building might have been technically abandoned, but I had a feeling it got more use than anyone on the outside would have expected. I had a feeling, as well, that I knew what this place was. But I wasn’t at all prepared for what I saw when the vampire pushed through another metal door like the one above.

The space he entered must have come close to stretching the full square footage of the entire building, a massive basement held up by rusty metal columns and the skeletal remains of studs and beams that had once formed walls to separate the space. Someone had come through and ripped everything apart to accommodate at least a hundred vampires all laying in the darkness, sleeping.

Some lay on old, thin mattresses. Others on woven mats. Some on the bare concrete. It looked like an oversized and overcrowded crack house. Only these junkies were strung out on any conventional drug. These were blood junkies. And that locker room stink permeated the air so thickly, if I had actually been present, I probably would have gagged myself into a coma.

Despite the stench, the rush of relief that poured through the vamp rushed through me as well. But I also hung onto the cold sweat and twisted stomach from my own physical body outside the vision. The mix gave me a dirty feel, as if I should have been ashamed of something, caught in some profane act.

The vamp shuffled through the narrow spaces between his sleeping brethren, heading for one of only a few bare spots he could curl up in and finally sleep off the annoying damage from that fucker’s cross. He paused on his way, though. Something caught his eye to his left. Something dangling from a rafter.

He turned, and I could feel the smile break across his face, and the wet hunger roll across his tongue.

A male human dangled upside down by a rope tied around his ankles. His naked body was so wasted and gray, I couldn’t guess his age. His longish hair hung from his scalp in greasy, black clumps, caked with the blood weeping from the half dozen bite marks on his arms, neck, and torso.

The man’s arms hung limply, and my host vampire gazed at the coagulating blood dripping off one of the man’s fingers. The vamp’s fangs slid down, and he ran his tongue over one of them.

Only one craving held him more strongly than his need for sleep.

His hunger.

He changed direction, stepping between the sleeping others, toward the hanging man. On his way, I caught glimpses of others hanging by their feet throughout the large basement. Up to half-a-dozen from what I could tell.

I had never actually been inside a vamp nest. I hadn’t known they could be so large. Maybe this wasn’t a prime example. But I suspected this gathering represented a large portion of the rioting vampires from the night before.

The vampire I had hitched a ride in reached the hanging man. The victim’s sickly gangrenous scent made the vamp’s mouth water. When he found a crusted and bloody wound on the man’s arm and dipped his head toward it, I jerked myself out of the vision with an instinctive bolt of magical energy.

A brief flash of darkness took me in, but quickly released me.

The plastic sunglasses lay on the other side of the table, broken in half. Either I had wrenched them off without realizing, or my magic had blown them off my face.

I came out of the vision gasping as if from a nightmare. I would have taken a real nightmare any time. I still felt a lingering hunger for blood even though I was out of the vampire now. Hot bile burned its way up from my gut and caught in my chest.

I jumped when I felt the cool hand on the back of my neck.

Mom hushed me, pressing her hand more firmly. She slipped another calming dose of her magic into me.

My heartburn and bloodlust faded almost instantly. Once I had my own senses completely back, I checked in on myself, expecting to have blown all my power on this spell like last time. Instead, I felt the same amount as I had gotten used to after the magical brand on my shoulder had cut me off from enough of my magic to keep the vampire blood in my system from turning me into one of the undead.

Despite how sick it had left me, the spell worked just like it was supposed to.

“What did you see?” Mom asked in a whisper.

I stood up on shaky legs and turned to face her. “A damned nightmare.”

Chapter Eighteen

I had to call Sly to get his Wi-Fi password. Then, with a little Google-fu, I managed to discover that Canton Summers had once co-owned a company that manufactured and distributed medical equipment. The company had lasted a scant year back in the early two-thousands, and further research told me the building, located in an industrial park in Troy, hadn’t been occupied since. At least not by any company. Unsurprisingly, the building’s owner did not have it up for lease. The owner was some corporation going by the name Stoker Industries, which had purchased it a little over a year ago. Pretty obvious the vamps owned it now, and they’d had a sense of humor when it came to naming their shell corporation.

And while all this ancillary information was interesting, the most important information I got was the building’s address.

At this point, it was after dusk. Visiting a vamp nest at night was the worst idea of all ideas. But if the vamps were awake and out on the prowl (or mindlessly ransacking the metro area again), we could use the opportunity to rescue the people the vamps had hung up for meal time.

Mom and I discussed our next move while sitting at Sly’s kitchen table. We’d cleared the stuff from the spell—dumped the blood, water, and bits o’ vamp down the sink, and thrown the rest of the stuff in the trash, including the towel around my hand and the paring knife. I had pushed enough magic into my hand to heal the superficial slice across my palm, so I didn’t need the towel anymore. And, with my blood all over it, I doubted Sly would want it anymore.

“They’ll have the nest guarded,” Mom said. “Even at night.”

I nodded. “Nothing we can’t handle, though. Right?”

“A nest as big as you described? I’m not sure. We’ll have the element of surprise, I suppose.”

“But they’ll have home court advantage.” I frowned. Nothing about this sounded good, but I couldn’t leave those poor people in there, slowly bleeding, yet not allowed to die, not until the vamps could milk them for all their hearts were able to give.

Mom crossed her arms and leaned back. “We need to think like vampires.”

That proverbial light went off in my head—though, in retrospect, it should have been a shadow.

“We don’t need to,” I said and stood. I checked the cuckoo clock on the wall—which never cucked or kooed, since Sly had dismantled that part of the clock. (I have no idea why he didn’t just get a new one without the bird.) The Black Rose was due to open in a couple hours. And I was overdue on picking up my apprentice. I was surprised Toft hadn’t already called me to bitch about it.

I held my hand out to Mom. She took it with a whimsical smile and stood. “Where are we off to?”

“Do you like jazz?” I asked.

Chapter Nineteen

We arrived at the Black Rose not long after a line had formed at the door stretching half the length of the club’s facade. A velvet rope held the line in check for the moment, though Mortimer’s presence in front of the door probably did the bulk of that work.

I had to park two blocks over, and the walk left both me and Mom shivering in the fall chill by the time we reached the club. There was more winter than fall in the air. I would have to give in and buy a thicker coat sooner than I had hoped. The only reason Mom hadn’t turned blue in just her sweater had to be because she was expending magic to stay warm. A complete waste of energy, but I figured she could afford it.

I, on the other hand, suffered the cold. I didn’t want a single drop of my power lost before we tackled that vamp nest.

Mortimer unclipped the rope and waved us right in to a chorus of groans and muttered curses from the mix of bearded hipsters with their crunchy girlfriends and the genuine jazz lovers in formal jackets and little black dresses.

The dense silence of a club only moments from opening greeted us and sent an involuntary thrill through me. I preferred rock to jazz, but I could appreciate Charlie Parker as easily as Jimmy Page. In any case, the tension of a pending live show stirred me almost as much as foreplay. Almost.

A jazz trio stood on stage, looking over their instruments—an upright bass, a saxophone, and piano with a microphone propped on it. They exchanged words in low voices, possibly discussing which piece to start with. I wasn’t sure if they’d do mostly covers or if they composed their own stuff. Toft brought in both kinds of artists. The only guarantee was that they would be damn good. The Black Rose’s reputation was built on Toft’s superior taste.

I don’t know if he heard or smelled us, but the moment Mom and I stepped into the club proper, Toft came out from the back with Odi close behind.

Odi wore a pair of faded jeans two sizes too big for him. Thankfully he didn’t wear them with the waistband on his hips like some kids did. In fact, he had a braided leather belt wrenched so tightly around his waist, the sides of his pants sort of puffed out around the pockets. He had on one of his signature plaid flannel shirts, untucked and unbuttoned, with an AC/DC t-shirt underneath.

The two vampires made a funny pair. Odi looked like Toft’s older teenaged brother, only Toft was better dressed in a black suit and red bowtie. Toft’s slicked blond hair also contrasted with Odi’s scraggly, over-moussed nest of red. The irony, of course, was that Toft had over four-hundred years on Odi, and Odi looked exactly his own age. It wouldn’t last, but for now the only thing that made Odi different than the average teen was that he was a vampire and untrained sorcerer.

Which, yeah, was a pretty major difference.

I still found it easy to forget sometimes.

“What’s the haps, yo?” Odi said with a quick smirk and a sideways glance at Toft.

Toft made a face. “I try to stay modern,” he said. “But sometimes I think this boy speaks a different language.”

I traded smiles with Odi. “I think he’s pulling your leg.”

Odi chuckled like a kid stuck in detention with the teacher’s back turned. Metaphorical spitball incoming. “Check that, brah. I’m radically stoked to chill with my home cheese the Toftinator.”

That got a surprise titter from Mom.

Toft came to a sudden halt, making Odi almost plow into him. “You two realize this city is on the brink of a paranormal implosion, correct?”

“Fo’ shizzle my—”

Toft’s hand turned to a blur one instant, and was clamped across Odi’s mouth a half-second later. Odi’s eyes went wide, his ginger eyebrows making a run for his hairline.

“Enough.”

Odi held out his hands in surrender.

“Go easy on him,” I said. “He’s one of the only vampires I know with a sense of humor. Don’t ruin it for him.”

Toft removed his hand. “Give him another hundred years and he won’t find frivolities so humorous anymore.”

Odi crossed his eyes. “I just hope I don’t start talking like you. Frivolities? Seriously?”

“Please,” Toft said to me with his lip curled. “Get him out of here before I defang him.”

Odi played hurt. “Not cool, dude.”

I waved Odi over. “Come, padawan. Don’t let Darth here lure you to the dark side.”

I expected another scoffing remark or disgusted grunt from Toft, but his attention had left me and Odi so quickly, we might as well never have been there to begin with. Instead, his gaze had locked on Mom. The glassy shine in his eyes looked like awe, but I had never seen Toft awed by anything. Besides, though they had never met, he knew who my mother was, not only from what I’d told him, but by the reputation of her name.

He bowed his head. “Madame Light.”

My jaw dropped so low, I would likely need surgery to get it set back in place. Toft did not bow to anyone.

Based on Odi’s own slack jaw, he was as surprised as I was.

Mom cleared her throat. “Mr. Kitchens,” she said with peculiar restraint. The admiration was sure as hell not mutual. Probably my fault, seeing as I had told her all about Toft, including his scheme of having me train Odi for dubious reasons.

“I would invite you stay for the show—”

“But you know I won’t accept.”

“Be that as it may—”

“Oh, please.” She turned to me. “Can we go now?”

I tilted my head, beckoning Odi to come with us. He started to, but Toft grabbed his wrist. The four-hundred year-old boy’s gaze burned into me. He should have looked petulant, like the child he appeared to be. He didn’t. He looked positively deadly.

“Remember your focus,” he said.

“Yes, Toft.”

“By your blood, you swore.”

“Yes, Toft.”

He glared at me a couple seconds more, then released Odi. “Odi, on your way out, tell Mortimer he may begin letting guests through.”

“Sure thing, boss.”

As we left, Mom grumbled something I couldn’t make out. She knew a lot of ancient languages, and how to swear in most of them.

Chapter Twenty

I filled Odi in on the way to the vamp nest. He sat in the passenger seat, Mom in back. He listened attentively until I had told him all I knew.

“So,” he started slowly, “I fit in how?”

“I need an inside vamp.”

He scrunched up his face. “You know, Toft says vamp is a derogatory name for us. Kind of like the N-word.”

Mom snorted. I glanced in the rearview and caught her pressed back against the seat, arms crossed, and shaking her head. For a second I wondered about her open derision that had started at the Black Rose and hadn’t faded since we’d left. I even felt some of it directed toward me.

But, not too long ago, I would have acted the same way. I had gotten too used to dealing with vampires. Even the ones who had tried to turn me or kill me had sort of normalized their presence in my life. Once upon a time, the only time I thought much about vamps was when I had a contract to dust one.

Odi was different, though. He was such a fresh turn, he hadn’t yet let the lifestyle of the pasty and bloodsucking taint his innocence. He was a good kid. And, at times, my heart freakin’ ripped open for him, because that innocent version of him was an undead man walking.

“Sorry, kid. I need an inside vampire.”

He gave me a wary look. “You think I can just walk in there, no issue? Won’t they realize I don’t belong there?”

“Toft hasn’t explained anything about nests to you?”

He shook his head.

Can’t say I was all that surprised. Toft, like any “parent,” would raise Odi in a similar life to his own. A tame vamp like Toft had no use for nests, which belonged to a more primal realm in the vampire’s collective psyche, a holdover from undead pre-history.

“A nest,” I said, “is not an exclusive club you need a membership for. No secret handshake or ritual hazing. They sort of build and grow on their own. Certain types of vampires are wired to prefer nests. Safety in numbers and all that.”

“So I can just walk in?”

“You’ll be welcomed, in fact.”

“That’s weird.”

“It’s not as common in the modern age. Vampires don’t have to hide in caves or dank basements anymore. There are plenty of good hiding places in big cities.”

“Do they have bunk beds or something?”

“Not these vamps…er…vampires. They sleep on the floor.”

Odi blinked a few times. “Wow. Totally old school.”

I nodded. “Totally.”

Thankfully, the industrial park where the nest was located had a number of other, similar looking buildings, many of them seemingly as vacant. It was easy to park in the shadow of a squat brick machine shop with dirt-fogged front windows and a sign out front (Zinctech, Inc.) that was tilted diagonally because one of its supports had broken.

I felt a little depressed looking at the place. Places like this had once offered Detroiters and their suburban middle-class neighbors a living wage without dumping thousands into college. They could afford good homes, could raise children without straining to spoil them during the holidays, could own two cars, American made, and still keep evenings and weekends open to spend time with family instead of working a second job (or third).

Those days seemed gone forever now. Bad governing and broken unions had left the Motor City with serious engine trouble.

The business formerly known as Zinctech, Inc. was a couple lots over from the nest. The second the three of us got out of the car and started heading over, I realized how out of place we would look to anybody who happened to see us. A teen, a thirty-something man, and an old lady walking through a mostly abandoned industrial park after dark would definitely earn a second look.

Since most of the surrounding locations looked as defunct as the rest, I wasn’t too worried. But I made sure we stuck to as many shadows as possible, avoiding the cast of the phosphorescent, antennae-shaped streetlights that hadn’t yet burned out.

As a matter of fact, the shadows were thick enough that Odi disappeared suddenly from my side. It startled me to see him there one second, and then seemingly gone. Only I knew he was still with us. Vampires, for the most part, could bend the darkness so deeply around them, they became invisible to the naked eye.

The first time I had seen Odi shadow walk, he had failed miserably. But since then he had gotten awfully good at it. I wished he’d taken to the magic I was trying to teach him as quickly. Not that he was a total slouch as a sorcerer. He was a quick learner in a lot of ways. He, unlike me, could work some small spells with confidence. The bigger stuff, though, tended to blow up in his face.

Hence Sly’s poor scorched basement wall.

With Odi out of sight, Mom decided to act like he really wasn’t there and offer a few critiques.

“He’s cute,” she said. “But Kitchens is going to corrupt him with ease.”

I glanced toward where I had last seen Odi. He might not have been next to me anymore, but I doubted he’d run ahead. “Mom, maybe now isn’t the best time.”

“I see how the two of you act together. Like buddies.”

“So what?”

“He isn’t your buddy.”

I stopped walking and turned to her. “Sly already gave me this talk.” I felt warm around the collar. I barely noticed the cold air trying to blow its way through my coat. “You need to drop it.”

“Sly’s right, then. This whole arrangement is—”

“Enough,” I snapped. “It’s not like I have a choice. I’m bound by blood. I’m stuck with the kid.” I realized the cold wasn’t the only thing I’d forgotten about. But too late.

Odi let the shadows fall away so that I could see him as clearly as Mom. His eyes shined in the distant glow from one of the streetlights behind us. Vampires couldn’t cry, but I could clearly see he was hurt. He had his hands jammed in his pockets, his head down, but looking at me from under his brow.

I expected him to say something, but he just stared at me like that for a handful of seconds, then he sighed, turned his back to me, and slipped into the shadows again.

I threw Mom a nasty look.

She averted her gaze and pulled the collar of her sweater closed against his throat.

“See?” I said. “You wonder why I treat him like a friend? Because there is still more human than vampire in him, and if I can somehow help him hold onto that humanity, maybe…”

I threw up my hands. We had more important things to deal with. And I didn’t owe Mom any explanations. I had gotten myself into this commitment to Odi, so I would deal with it how I wanted. Even if that meant treating the kid like a young man instead of a monster.

And if I really meant that, then I needed to apologize to Odi once we’d finished our job here.

We walked the rest of the way in silence. I didn’t see Odi again until we crouched in the shadowy entryway of the building across the street from the nest. A row of mostly dead shrubs offered a little additional cover without obscuring our view too much. They had a piney smell that randomly made me think of a Christmas when I was twelve and I got a pocket edition of Spells to Entertain Your Friends. All the spells in the book mimicked parlor magic tricks and card tricks, but used real magic instead of illusion. Unfortunately, I could never master any of them except for one that involved snapping my fingers to light a dollar bill on fire without actually burning it. Even as a kid, I’d done better with fire than most everything else.

None of the streetlights on the same block as the nest worked. The vamps had probably broken them all. They could see fine in the dark, so they didn’t need them.

Their building was another single story brick block slapped onto a slab of blacktop behind a small, overgrown strip of lawn. Glass lined the length of its facade, from both windows and the wide entryway with two pairs of double doors. And while all that glass remained intact, the vamps had hung boards behind them, blocking any sunlight from slipping through.

In the darkness, I couldn’t make out much more than that.

I sensed a presence beside me before Odi emerged from the shadows.

My boots grated against the concrete when I pivoted toward him in my crouched position. Echoing in the recessed entryway behind us, the sound seemed a dozen decibels louder than it was. That’s all we needed, getting discovered ten seconds after we showed up.

“Look, man. I—”

Odi held up a hand. “Don’t sweat it.”

I tried to read his expression, but he kept his gaze on the building across the street. He’d sounded sincere enough. I didn’t buy it, though. I started to say something more, but he spoke over me.

“You guys need to go around behind this building.” He pointed outward into the darkness. “There are six vampires shadow walking the perimeter, and this little bit of cover won’t do you much good if any of them glances this way.”

Mom and I wasted no time retreating around the corner. This lot didn’t look much different than Zinctech’s. Broken blacktop with weeds choking every crack. Black crumbles of asphalt scattered like stones. Faded yellow lines that had once demarked parking spaces.

Once we were beyond the vamps’ line of sight, Odi circled back. I couldn’t see him, so I pictured him casually crossing the street, maybe getting stopped by one of the sentries, some quick questions, then an open invitation to join the nest.

Mom and I exchanged looks, both of us wondering how long this would take, and what we might find inside. A bunch of vamps sleeping in? Just the hanging captives? Another set of guards?

Odi’s intel would tell us soon enough. But, really, not as soon as I would have liked.

Only a couple minutes later, Odi was back with us, a pained look on his face.

“What happened?” I asked.

“Turns out there is a secret handshake.” He held out his hand. His palm had the pattern of the Star of David seared into the skin like a brand.

My shoulder itched at the sight, where I had my own brand of a completely different type. “What the hell?”

Odi drew his hand back and studied his palm for himself, wincing at the sight of it. “One of the guys met me at the door. He asked me why I wasn’t out doing The Work. Which totally weirded me out, because it sounded like God’s work, ya know? Like passing out flyers door-to-door.”

“What did you tell him?”

“I said I needed a rest.” He tried to close his hand, hissed through his teeth, and uncurled his fingers. “That’s when he went to, like, shake my hand. I didn’t think anything of it. So I shook. And he burned me with this like he had one of those joke buzzers.”

I wrinkled my brow. “But it didn’t burn him?”

Odi shook his head. “I think it was something like a coin, but with the symbol only stamped into one side.”

I noticed our voices had risen from our initial whispers and started to reverberate against the brick facade we stood by and into the night.

“We should get back to the car, talk there.”

“Why would he do this?” Odi asked, holding his hand up as if swearing an oath, displaying the mark.

“I don’t know. Let’s work it out at the car before they hear us and—”

“Too late for that.”

The voice had a soft lilt, but a gritty tone. I spun toward it. Three vampires stood in a row a couple dozen feet away from us.

Chapter Twenty-One

The vamps were all fangs and wrinkly gray faces. The one in the center had half his head shaved, the other half had long black hair with white streaks through it. I could tell he was the one who had spoken by looking at him. He had the posture of a leader, and his nails were a good four inches or more, made for scooping out eyeballs or shredding flesh. The long nails suggested some age.

The other two looked a lot like Odi—about the same age, similar casual dress, only with long sleeve tees instead of flannel. Typical high school kids, but undead. Which meant they could have been any age at all, from seventeen to a hundred, though probably not more than that.

We had a second before they charged us. But for a couple of sorcerers like me and (especially) Mom, a second was sometimes all you needed.

I conjured a quick fire ball and threw it at the face of the apparent ringleader in the middle. He dodged easily, the flame shooting over his shoulder and into the distance.

Mom threw a blast of pure green energy at the teen vamp on the left. He didn’t have the same reflexes as his boss. Her beam struck him in the chest, blowing a hole clean through where his heart would have been had Mom not vaporized it. He took two steps, then crumbled to dust.

Odi charged at the teen on the right, meeting him halfway. He crouched low, like a linebacker, and hit Teen Vamp with his shoulder in the gut. Teen Vamp lifted off the ground about three feet and sailed backward a half dozen. But Odi lost his balance and tripped on a loose chunk of asphalt. He got his hands out to break his fall just in time to save his face from some serious road rash.

The lead vamp I had missed reached me and clapped both hands around my throat. I could feel his thumb nails pressed under my chin like a pair of blades ready to slice me a new mouth. He lifted me off my feet, bared his fangs, and unleashed the worst smelling breath I had ever encountered. It smelled like an overflowing diaper pail left in the sun for a good week. If he hadn’t been squeezing my neck so tightly, I would have gagged.

He pushed his face toward me, mouth wide, as if he meant to bite off my nose.

Then, after a flash of green light, his face disappeared.

His whole head disappeared.

I had a bit of déjà vu as he continued to hold me up even while I stared at the smoking stump of his neck with a scorched stub of his spin sticking out. A second wave of déjà vu hit when he turned to dust and I dropped back to my feet.

For a second I wondered if I was having a nightmare, reliving the night outside Sly’s shop. But the vamp dust that now powdered my sweaty but cold face felt too real. Some of it had blown into my mouth as well. It tasted like ash with a hint of rot.

I spat and wiped at my mouth with the back of my hand. All that did was smear sweat and ash around my lips. If I had looked at a mirror in that moment, I imagined I would have looked like a deranged clown who had run out of face paint and went with soot from the bottom of a fireplace instead.

Odi hopped to his feet and scanned our surroundings. The vampire he’d tackled had disappeared. He’d likely shadow walked his way the hell out of there. And was possibly getting more friends from the nest.

“The car,” I said, that ashen hotdoggy taste still on my tongue. “Now.”

Chapter Twenty-Two

We all climbed into the car, slamming our doors shut in near unison—thunk, thunk, thunk.

I started the engine and squealed the tires as I made a U-turn and raced out of there. I didn’t have any conscious destination or direction in mind. I drove until we were clear of the industrial park, then kept driving until we had a few miles between us and them.

I pulled into a BP and parked along the side where they had the air pump, because it was out of the way, and mostly out of reach of the lights.

I cut the engine and thumped back in my seat. Neither Mom nor Odi said anything, leaving the car silent except for the muffled grumble of a Dodge Ram parked in front of the station, the driver presumably somewhere inside buying a pop or some of that yummy gas station jerky they kept in the clear containers at the counter. I got heartburn just thinking about them, and I was only thirty-two. Heartburn was for old people like Mom. You know, mid-one hundreds.

Random thoughts like that let my subconscious think things through on its own. But even after the truck’s owner came out with a Mountain Dew and a bag of Cheetos and pulled away, the subconscious hadn’t kicked up anything good.

“How the hell are we going to get those people out of there?” I asked.

Mom leaned forward with her head between the seats. “So much for the element of surprise.”

“Sorry, guys,” Odi said. “I led them right to us.”

“Not your fault,” I said. “This isn’t an ordinary nest.” I twisted in my seat to face Odi beside me. “What did they do after you got burnt?”

“The dude said I obviously did not belong there. Emphasis on the obviously. Then he opened his coat, showed me a pistol in a holster on his belt, and told me to get lost. I didn’t argue.”

“How does burning you with a religious symbol tell them you don’t belong? That would burn any vamp, at least to some degree.”

I was mostly talking to myself, but Odi said, “That’s a cross between and elephant and a rhino.”

“An ‘elephino,’” Mom said with wry amusement in her voice. Maybe she was warming to Odi already. Or at least accepted my forced relationship with him like I had.

“You guys are so cute,” I said. “But can we stay focused?”

“Oh, that’s good coming from you, Sebastian,” Mom said.

“Yeah,” Odi added.

“Why did they burn you?” I said, pretending we were already back to serious so maybe they would follow suit.

Odi shrugged.

Mom scooched back in her seat and sighed.

“You didn’t see it before you shook his hand?” I asked.

“No. But I wasn’t looking for it. He just had it in his palm.”

“But if you had known it was there, you wouldn’t have shook his hand.”

“Hell no.” He held his hand out. The skin was having trouble healing. “It still hurts like a bitch.”

“So the vamps who are part of that nest know better than to shake hands with the guards.”

Odi leaned his head back against the headrest and stared up at the ceiling. He sighed. “Duh.”

I hitched a shoulder. “No big deal. We’ll figure out another way.”

“We don’t even know how many are inside,” Mom said.

“So what then? We leave them in there? Wait until dawn and burn them down with the rest of the nest?”

Mom rubbed her face and groaned softly. “I don’t know, Sebastian. I’m a scholar, not a demon hunter. This is outside my wheelhouse.”

Odi chuckled. “Well, you did better than Sebastian back there. You totally obliterated that dude’s head. It was awesome.”

“Hey,” I said. “I did nearly the exact same thing the night of the riots. And that was while the vamp had me lifted off my feet, too”

Odi laughed some more. “That’s so pathetic, dude. You remind me of this kid I skateboard with.” He made his voice mockingly nasal. “I can do a bone drop off a minivan. Just get me the minivan.” He brought back his normal voice. “Of course, no one had a minivan.”

He hadn’t noticed his use of the present tense when talking about the friend he used to skateboard with, but I did. Odi’s days thrashing with his friends were long gone. I’m not sure he realized that. I had noticed how he sometimes forgot he was a vampire the same way I sometimes did.

“Can we get back on topic…again?”

The mood in the car quickly sobered.

A junker made mostly of rust sputtered and squealed its way up to one of the pumps. The sound made my skin go tight and made my nerves frizzle like frayed wiring. It shouldn’t have bothered me so much, but I was on edge. I kept thinking about those bodies hung upside down and weeping blood from dozens of old wounds. Their agony had worn them so thin, they couldn’t even struggle anymore.

Despite all that, I did appreciate that this gas station wasn’t getting the same vamp treatment as the one across the street from Sly’s shop. In fact, there weren’t any signs of vampire rioting in the area. If they were rioting again, they had decided to leave Troy out of it. I wondered if it had to do with their nest being located in the city. I also wondered, seeing as how the nest appeared to have more organization than normal, if the spots they were hitting weren’t as random as they seemed.

If we could get our hands on a vamp from the nest to interrogate, we might get some of these answers. But adding secondary objectives to a task that already seemed impossible fell into the cart before the horse category.

“Could you shadow walk past them?” I asked Odi. “Get inside without the noticing?”

“Not now that they know about us. If they don’t see me, they’ll probably smell me before I get through the door.”

“What would he do once he got inside anyway?” Mom asked.

“I’m brainstorming, all right? I don’t know.”

The driver of the junker looked as weathered as his car. Lifting the nozzle from his car back to the pump looked like it took some effort the way his shoulders slumped while he held it. He had a wiry gray beard and more gray through most of his curly hair.

I idly watched him climb into his car and start the engine. A loose fan belt or something screeched from under the hood. Besides the rust and the coughing engine, the car had all sorts of dents, and the bumper had at least three rolls of duct tape holding it together.

The two of them both looked like they’d ran straight through a brick wall.

My brain sparked. “Whoa.”

“What?” Odi asked, but I didn’t answer until the junker and its rough passenger pulled away.

I pictured that wide entryway the vamps’ building had, nothing but glass and sheets of wood.

“We storm the castle.”

“What are you talking about? They won’t make the same mistake those others did. They won’t come out of the shadows until they’re right behind you. They’ve got guns. And they’ve got fangs.”

“And we’re driving an old ‘87 Reliant,” I said, “that the Ministry, now that I’m on the official payroll, will pay to replace if it’s damaged during the course of duty.”

“Oh, goodness,” Mom said from the back. “You…”

I looked over my shoulder. Even in the darkness, I could make out the slight, upward curve of her mouth.

“Is this how it always is when you hunt?”

I laughed, full on and from the belly. “No way. These vamps have given me extra special challenges compared to the usual bounties. Makes my job look positively dull in comparison.” I waggled my eyebrows. “Why? Does it excite the mild-mannered scholar?”

She spat air and looked at me like, Are you serious? “You know full well there’s nothing mild about my manners. And just because I’m a little exhilarated still doesn’t mean I approve of your occupation.”

“Just a little exhilarated?” I asked and winked.

Odi waved his hands out in front of him. “Whoa. Hold the onions for a sec. Are you saying you want to drive straight into the nest?”

“Not drive, my young apprentice. We’re gonna crash this baby…” I thumped a fist on the dash. “…right through the front door.”

Chapter Twenty-Three

The trick would be getting the angle right. If the nest had been on a corner, we could have come almost straight on, jumped the curb, and smash. But the nearest cross street was more than half a block down. We would have to tear ass down the street, then curve the car around, without slowing too much, and then barrel through the entrance. Because I didn’t want to just break the glass and boards with the front end of my Reliant—I wanted to blow clean through as if pulling into a garage.

If we got lucky, we would run down a few vamps on the way.

I threaded through the industrial park from a different direction than we had entered last time, coming off a back road instead of turning in from Big Beaver, a four-lane main road that only had one entryway into the park, which would make us easy targets if any of the vamps were posted there waiting for our return.

Would they? Did they even suspect why we had come in the first place? Our brief encounter with the three vampires, two of which we dusted, couldn’t have told them much about us. I had a reputation among vampires as the Unturned, many of whom thought my condition abhorrent, as if denying the vamp blood inside of me was some kind of unholy blaspheme.

But not every vamp knew the Unturned on sight. And our tussle had begun and ended so quickly, even if the one who had escaped did know who I was, it wasn’t likely he had identified me in the confusion.

I hoped so, anyway. Because, while they didn’t like the whole unturned thing, they would hate me even more for having killed their elder.

I let the car idle, headlights off, a few blocks east of the nest, the complete opposite direction from which we had approached the first time. Odi kept an eye on all the surrounding shadows for anything lurking within, while I went to the trunk. I still had the shotgun Sly had brought to our showdown with Goulet almost two weeks ago, as well as the box of silver slugs that came with it. I also had the handgun I had used to actually kill Goulet, and a couple of magazines to go with.

I gathered the weapons and ammo and got back into the car.

I handed the shotgun over to Mom. She loaded some slugs and pumped the first round into place.

I released the magazine from my pistol and checked the bullets. The mag held thirteen rounds, and every one of them was silver. I slid the magazine back and thumbed off the safety. No reason for a dramatic racking of the slide. I already had a round in the chamber.

Odi peered around his seatback at Mom. “You’re one badass lady.”

She laughed. “I’ve had my share of scrapes. You can only uncover so many ancient monuments or catacombs before you wake up something nasty.”

“We ready?” I asked.

“Yes,” Mom answered.

“Roger Wilco,” Odi said. “Whatever that means.”

I handed my gun to Odi. “Hold this.”

He took it gingerly, as if it were a baby bird, or a ticking bomb. He held it with both hands, not bothering to take it by the grip.

“You’re going to have to hold it a little tighter than that when we hit the door.” I pointed in his face. “Don’t lose it.”

He clenched his teeth and gazed down at the weapon. He wrinkled his nose as if it stunk. “There’s silver in there, dude.”

“Don’t pull the trigger and you’ll be fine.”

He snorted, but closed his fingers around the gun and grasped tightly.

I put the car in gear. Reliants aren’t known for their speed. I could probably get the thing from zero to sixty in five minutes or so. I felt sure I could get the little four-banger up fast enough to break through some glass and plywood, though. I just had to keep a decent amount of speed when I made the turn to aim the car at the entrance.

I stomped on the gas. The engine roared like a baby dragon. The RPM needle bounced clear to the end of the gauge. And the car…

…didn’t move.

Not for a few seconds, at least. Then the engine caught up, and we lurched forward on our reliant chariot. (Get it?)

The poor motor sounded like it might blast off through the hood and crash, dead, on the street. I would never have abused it like this if I had any illusions about driving the car again. But this was a one-way kamikaze mission. And would be the second car I’d gone through in a year’s time.

If I lived through this, maybe I needed to take up biking.

By the time we reached our destination block, I had the car up to forty. I ground my foot against the pedal as if I could make it go faster that way. I was more likely to push my foot through the floorboard.

“You’ve got their attention,” Odi said, voice tight. He took one hand off the gun to yank his shoulder strap tight.

I couldn’t see anything ahead but shadows and the squat silhouettes of the surrounding buildings. I didn’t doubt Odi could see them, though.

“They’re drawing their—”

Something punched a hole through the windshield. I heard it buzz close to my ear. I hunched down behind the wheel as low as I could while still keeping my eyes on the road.

I glimpsed a couple of muzzle flashes coming from the center of the street in front of the nest. The flashes disrupted the shadows around the couple of vamps standing there, giving me a glimpse of their simmering red eyes.

Their shots cut through the windshield, adding more spider webs to the safety glass.

I flipped on the headlights and cut away the rest of the shadows around them, bringing them into full sight. I clenched my teeth and grinned. They stood right in the spot I planned to make the turn. Lady Luck had given me a pair of bloodsucking pins to bowl over after all.

They kept shooting. Bullets zipped and pinged around us. I hoped like hell Mom was on the floor in back, and nothing had ricocheted too severely. I could see Odi in the corner of my sight balled up under the dash, seat belt abandoned. Heard him saying, “Shit, shit, shitty shit shit.”

So determined to empty their guns into the car, the dumbass vamps waited too long to get out of the way. I drifted to the left, curving out before curving back in as if pulling into a parking space at fifty miles per hour. To them, it looked like I was swerving to keep from hitting them.

Bzzzzt! Sorry, fellas. Thanks for playing.

I wrenched the wheel to the right, the tires cried out, the smell of hot rubber drifted through the vents. For a moment, I felt the car drift. Skidding sideways would destroy our velocity. I gripped the wheel tighter until my knuckles felt ready to break.

The tires held. The car swerved around to head straight at the building’s entrance.

The two vamps in the street threw up their arms, but then they went under the car with a clunky crunch. The car kicked up as if we had already hit the curb. Then we did hit the curb. My stomach dropped as I came up off my seat and strained against the belt. Then my bones rattled when gravity turned angry and slammed me back down.

“Shit, oh, shit, shit on a stick,” Odi went on.

As expected, we had lost speed from both the turn and jumping the curb. Plowing over the vampires had dragged our momentum down even further. I kept the pedal down, and the speedometer inched up past forty again.

Automatic rifle fire chittered over the volume of the straining engine. My side window blasted to pieces. Something grazed my forehead. I felt the warm blood gush over my eyebrow before I felt the pain. Flying toward a building at forty-five MPH with machine guns shooting at you makes pain an easy thing to ignore.

The boarded up entrance rocketed toward us faster than I’d expected. The howling engine and the tin can rattle of gunfire had nothing on the crack and clash of glass and wood as we plowed through the front. The metal doorframes dragged on the car as they twisted and bent. They nearly kept us from making it all the way through. But enough of them gave way and we careened into a wide hallway that looked like a perfect place to park.

Chapter Twenty-Four

I slammed my heel against the brake pedal, and if I hadn’t been wearing my belt, I would have sailed out the windshield and across the hood like a penguin on ice. My shoulder strap cut so hard across my chest I’d probably find a bruise there when I changed shirts.

Assuming I’d make it out of this still able to dress myself.

I held my hand out to Odi. “Gun.”

He uncurled from under the dash and held out my pistol. I snatched it from him and threw open my door. “Go, go, go.”

Odi became a blur. The passenger side door seemed to open itself, and a second later he stood outside.

I smiled. Adrenaline had his vampire abilities on full alert. He had yet to grow into them to have much control. Now would be a perfect time for him to come into his own.

I turned in the direction of the destroyed entrance. Splinters of wood and slices of glass lay everywhere. The smell of exhaust and hot motor oil hung thick. The vampires outside had given up the shadows and hurried towards us. One of them, I was a little shocked to notice, wore a suit with a red tie—the uniform Goulet’s lackeys had worn. Seemed some of them had remained loyal to their overdressed leader after his death. But this guy’s suit looked ratty. The seam of one shoulder had split. Dirt had turned his white dress shirt a pale brown. His tie hung loose around his neck.

But the most notable accessory to his ensemble was the AK-47 he toted.

As he came forward, he sprayed bullets left and right like someone watering their lawn with a garden hose. None of the rounds came all that close to us. But it might not take long for a lucky ricochet to hit one of us.

Two more vamps in casual attire approached as well. They carried handguns like the pair I had run over. They took more measured shots, and once they closed range, their better aim would give us serious trouble.

By this point, Mom had come out the back of the car on my side. She grabbed me by the arm and pulled me deeper into the hall.

“A suit,” I said over the gunfire.

“I know.”

The three of us gathered at the front of the car. Black smoke oozed out the sides of the crumpled hood and smelled like burnt oil. The bumper hung askew. One headlight was dead, but the other cast a solid shaft of light into the darkness beyond. We had smashed into a lobby, and the headlight illuminated a flag-sized plaque on the far wall that read, “Healthtech,” in tall, blocky lettering.

Healthtech. Zinctech. I guess it didn’t matter what industry you served, in this park the suffix -tech apparently had a certain cachet.

We crouched low.

The suited vamp emptied his rifle. The following silence seemed as thick as the smoke from my car. The vamps with the handguns had also stopped shooting. Possibly reloading, or waiting for us to pop up into view.

I tucked my gun into my waistband at the small of my back and decided to oblige them. I drew from my power. Flame engulfed my hand. Then I shot up like a Jack in the Box and threw my fire toward the vamp with the suit. His buddies had burned down my house. I wanted to return the favor.

He was occupied with reloading his rifle, fumbling with it, clearly an amateur when it came to assault weapons. He didn’t see the flame coming, didn’t even know it was on the way until it hit him in the face.

The force of the blast snapped his head back as if getting punched by an ogre. The rifle flung from his hands. He went down screaming as the fire consumed him from the neck up.

One of the vamps with a handgun turned to look at his fallen comrade.

I conjured up another ball of fire to catch him while he was distracted, but Mom beat me to the magical punch. Her blast of pure green power ripped his arm from its socket. The heat from the blow instantly cauterized the stump sticking out from his shoulder. Unfortunately, she took off his left arm, and he held his gun in his right hand.

He squeezed off a pair of wild shots even as he howled in pain from his lost limb.

Beside me I heard a shout that cracked at the end like a boy’s voice during puberty.

I dropped down into cover behind the car and glanced toward the sound.

Odi had his hand pressed against his shoulder, blood oozing between his fingers. “That really hurt.”

I didn’t see any of the signs I would from contact with silver. No steaming or the stench and crackle of burning vamp flesh.

“They’re not using silver rounds,” I said.

He scrunched his nose. “It still hurts!”

But he would heal. Easily. More importantly was what the lack of a silver round suggested. Even though they had their secret handshake, these bloodsuckers weren’t expecting resistance from other vampires. They only wanted to keep their nest exclusive to club members.

I grabbed Odi by his flannel shirt and pulled him close. “You can distract them while Mom and I head into the nest.”

“Just me?”

“They’re not using silver. They can’t harm you.”

“Um…” He pulled his hand away from his shoulder. The wound had already stopped bleeding, and clotting had formed a crust around the edges. “This qualifies as harm, dude.”

“Okay, sure. But they can’t kill you. And there’s only two of them, and one’s missing an arm.”

Odi shook his head. “There’s six of them. The two you ran over, and another two waiting in the shadows.”

Oops. Forgot about my bowling pins. As satisfying as plowing them down had been, Odi was right—that wouldn’t keep them out of the fight for long. And I didn’t need to question him about the two he saw shadow walking.

But that meant I needed Odi running interference here all the more.

I hooked my hand around the back of his neck and drew him closer, until our foreheads nearly met, and I looked at him hard in the eyes. “You’re not just a vampire. You’re a sorcerer. Remember what I’ve taught you.”

“I can’t do most the stuff you taught me.”

A couple more shots rang out. Nearer. They were moving into the building.

“If we’re going to do this,” Mom said, “we need to get our fannies in gear.”

I squeezed Odi’s uninjured shoulder. “You can do this. You have the power in you. Trust your gut. Get creative. You don’t have to worry about burning Sly’s house down now.”

He cracked a smile, but his eyes still looked scared. “Yeah, I guess.”

“Good man.” I turned to Mom. “Y’all ready for this?”

She frowned. “Now that song will be stuck in my head.”

“My work here is done.”

We stayed low and sprinted further inward. We were looking for a basement door. When we juked down the hall to the left of the plaque, I instantly recognized our surroundings. It looked exactly like the hallway the vamp from my vision had walked through. Granted, most of the halls in this building would look the same by the very nature of its generic design. But I could feel this was the right way. Maybe my subconscious had picked up small details like the amount and pattern of the dirt streaks and handprints on the walls. The Reliant’s headlight spilled just enough light into the hall for me to make out some of those details.

Didn’t matter. I knew to my bones that the metal door at the end of the hall led to the stairwell down into the nest.

I ushered Mom along down the hall. I started recognizing the offices located off the hall, the broken down furniture crouched in shadows, the missing doors, and…there…the door with ‘Canton Summers, CFO’ on the plate.

This was definitely the right hall.

With that last bit of confirmation, I rushed the rest of the way to the door. I pulled my gun out of my waist band. Mom hefted the shotgun, ready to put the stock to her shoulder and sling slugs as easily as she slung spells. Down there, in the nest, with innocents held captive, throwing around magical fire and light could cause too much collateral damage. The guns would give us more precision if we needed it.

The all-out destruction would come later, when we had the captives out.

From above I heard more gunfire. I hoped I hadn’t set my apprentice up for certain doom. I had told him they couldn’t kill him—which was true when it came to non-silver bullets. But if they got close enough, if Odi couldn’t keep them at bay, they would have plenty of ways to dust him.

I’d also told him to trust his gut. I would have to trust my own, too.

I nodded to Mom, then I shouldered my way through the metal door and into the stairwell.

Chapter Twenty-Five

Our footsteps echoed as we scrambled down the stairs. A fresh dose of adrenaline poured into my system. Sweat rolled down between my shoulder blades, and the taste of ash filled my mouth, left over from the vamp Mom had dusted while he held me.

We reached the bottom, same as the vamp did in my vision. The door to the nest stood before us in near complete darkness. A dingy window at the top of the stairwell let in some moonlight, but we wouldn’t have even that much once we went inside.

I pulled out the mini Maglite I had tucked in my coat pocket, pressed the rubber button with my thumb, and a clean shaft of light cast a wide glow across the nicked and filthy door. The knob had some gunk on it, like the sweat of a hundred hands left to coagulate with dust and fungus. My palm prickled at the thought of touching it. But I was ten times more nervous about turning it.

I didn’t know what we would face in there. I was surprised we hadn’t come up against more resistance on the way down. But maybe they lay in wait for us to come through the door. How many out of the hundred or so I had seen in my vision might be in there? Ten? Twenty? Four dozen?

Even with all the magic Mom and I possessed, there was no chance in hell we could take on that many vampires. Especially if we wanted to avoid obliterating the hostages in the process. We would either have to fall back and fight our way out through the vamps outside, or we could stand our ground and die fighting our way in.

I worked for the Ministry now, bitch. And the Ministry didn’t back off for nothing.

At least, that’s what I told myself as I finally got the balls to go in.

The door made a loud clang that echoed in the large space when I threw it open. Since the vamps had torn down all the walls, only a few support columns provided any kind of cover from the entrance. And the shadows. Lots and lots of shadows.

I held the flashlight up alongside the barrel of my pistol and swiped it back and forth, cutting those shadows like black curtains. The Maglite had great range, even for a mini. While the light diffused some at the farthest reaches of the nest, I could still see the far wall. If any shadow walking vampires were down here, the flashlight would uncover them.

But when I made a full sweep from north wall to south, I didn’t see any glowing red eyes or bared fangs or suits with red ties. I didn’t see any movement at all.

Except for the slight twitch from some of the people hung from the joists. I could hear the creak of their ropes as their minute struggles made them sway slightly like long, bloody pendulums.

I couldn’t believe the vampires didn’t have anyone down here. With the sentries up top clearly ready for some kind of attack, I thought for sure a near equal force would hold the fort inside. Maybe they never expected anyone to get through. Especially at night. What fool would chance going into a vampire nest during the time all the vampires were awake?

(Besides us, of course.)

I was never one to look a gift horse in the mouth. I moved in, swinging the flashlight and gun into the near corners I hadn’t had a good angle on from the doorway. Dust motes twirled in tiny vortexes in the beam, but the light revealed nothing else.

The mats some of the vamps slept on remained scattered across the floor. That overwhelming stench of body odor I had smelled through my host vamp during my ride in his noggin still permeated the air, but not nearly so badly. I took shallow breaths while I grew acclimated to the stink. Barfing would have been so inconvenient right then.

“Quiet,” Mom said.

“Too quiet,” I said, unable to help myself.

Outside the flashlight’s glow, I couldn’t see Mom’s expression very well, but I could feel her rolling her eyes at me.

We spent the next few minutes moving through the room, checking behind every column, rechecking every dark corner.

No vamps.

A soft moan off to my left startled me. My heart seized for an instant. A hard breath lodged in my throat, I spun, gun up and ready to fire.

One of the captives hung a half dozen feet away. Her eyes stared up at me from her upside down face. Her lips moved, but her voice was little more than a faint creak, much like the sound of the rope tied around her ankles as it turned from side-to-side less than an inch in each direction.

I moved close to her, crouched down. The smell of rotten wounds turned my stomach. I tried not to show my disgust, but I doubt I managed. “We’re going to get you out of here.”

She blinked a few times, then her eyes rolled into the back of her head.

The flawed logistics of my rescue plan hit me then, and I wanted to punch myself for not thinking this through better.

“How are we going to get these people out of here?” I looked up at the ceiling. Long, hooded fluorescent lamps hung from chains at various intervals throughout the nest, but most of them didn’t have bulbs. Like the broken streetlights outside, the vamps didn’t need them. “How are we going to get them through the vamps upstairs?”

Mom didn’t say anything. Probably because there wasn’t a good answer. I had fucked up. No wonder there weren’t any vampires down here. If someone got in, what the hell could they do?

Not much. Except watch their mortal victims suffer.

“Damn it,” I shouted. My voice echoed back to me. I didn’t know its angry edge. It sounded nothing like me.

“You meant well,” Mom said.

Cold comfort. Cold as a damn corpse.

I ran my hands through my hair. “We’ve got to get Odi, before they chew him up. This was pointless. The whole fucking thing. Pointless. I’m not going to let the kid suffer for my stupidity.”

I had no sooner said it when a boom erupted above us. Grenade? Missile launcher? Gods, I couldn’t fathom. But I had the sick feeling I had seen the last of Odi.

The silence that followed hurt. It was so complete. Not even the hanging victims made a sound. Nothing made a sound except my angry breathing.

The hairs on the back of my neck stood on end.

I heard the click of Mom swallowing. “Sebastian?”

I looked at her. I kept the beam aimed at her feet to keep from shining it in her eyes. The light cast shadows across her face that deepened her tense expression.

“Quiet,” I whispered.

“Too quiet.”

I wiped my eyes with the back of my hand and pivoted toward the entrance to the nest. They had overwhelmed Odi. Probably killed him. Any moment, they would come rushing down the stairwell to finish us off. We could take on six vamps, assuming the six we knew about were the only ones coming. By this point, they could have called in reinforcements. They had a hundred vamps to choose from.

Part of me felt I deserved what was coming. I would fight. I didn’t give in to vamps, no matter how pathetic I felt. But Mom didn’t deserve to die because of my crappy planning. I would fight ten times as hard to see her out of this.

I dropped the flashlight to the floor and positioned it with my foot to aim it at the door. Then I raised my gun in my right hand and drew flame into my left. I channeled my fear, my anger, my jagged guilt over what I had brought onto my family and my apprentice…my friend. I injected those emotions into my magical energy.

My flame turned from orange to the clean blue of a gas fire’s core.

Let. Them. Come.

Chapter Twenty-Six

I held my breath as I listened for their footsteps in the stairwell. I held it to the point where I had to inhale or risk my lungs bursting. My head swam as I sucked at the air. The mixed smell of sweaty socks forgotten in the back of a gym locker and the gangrenous stink of pus-filled wounds ran straight up my nose and turned my stomach inside out.

I clenched my teeth to keep from throwing up. When I had control of my swimming guts, I glanced at Mom. She had the stock of the shotgun pressed firmly against her shoulder, the barrel pointed at the entrance.

“Where are they?” I asked.

She opened her mouth, but a sound on the other side of the door stopped her.

The tension from both of us coalesced into a magical buzz that rattled my teeth. We were both charged and ready to unleash. But holding that kind of power in check for too long could wear us out faster than if we threw every ounce of that energy at an attack.

The door handle clicked. In the indirect light from the flashlight on the floor, I could see the knob turn. I readjusted my hold on my pistol. The sweat between my hand and the grip made me feel like the gun might slip from my grasp the first time I pulled the trigger.

The growing heat from my blue flame drew more sweat across my brow. The salt from that sweat mixed with the gash above my eyebrow that I had forgotten about until I felt the sting.

The door slowly opened.

My finger tightened on the trigger. My flame glowed even brighter.

Then I saw the red nest of hair as Odi peered around the door.

He froze, eyes wide. “Whoa! Don’t shoot.”

I let my flame die and lowered my gun.

Mom released a long, shaky breath and lowered her weapon, too.

Odi came all the way through the entryway and let the door quietly swing shut behind him. His face was covered in soot. His clothes were ravaged with tears. His jeans had more holes than usual. Blood stained nearly every shred of fabric still hanging on him. I counted at least a dozen gunshot wounds in his torso and down one leg. A flap of skin hung loose along his hairline, and blood rolled down in a curve down the side of his face and along his jaw.

I gaped at him.

He waved a hand weakly. “Hi.”

“What the hell happened?”

“I…uh…” He wiped his fingers through the soot on one cheek, making clean streaks across his skin. He rubbed his fingers together as if testing the soot’s consistency. “I blew up.”

“You what?”

He smiled. “I trusted my gut, like you said. You should have seen the fire. It was like I stood in the middle of a blast, only I was the bomb. It went out in all directions. I vaporized them in a single go. It was glorious.” Then he frowned. “But your car is pretty much fucked, if it wasn’t already.”

The boom I’d heard right before the silence. That had been him?

“Holy shit,” I said.

Odi beamed. “I know, right?”

Chapter Twenty-Seven

One by one, we cut the victims down and carried them outside.

Odi had been right. My car was nothing but a burnt out shell of blackened steel. Oh, well. I hadn’t expected it to survive the attack anyway. But my car wasn’t the only thing that had suffered Odi’s wrath. The place smelled like an overwhelming amount of charcoal. He had painted the walls black with his fire. Barely an inch of the drywall had escaped the blast. And while some pieces of the walls and the studs within had broken or crumbled, the lobby didn’t look like the site of an explosion. Because there hadn’t been an explosion. Just a huge outpouring of magical flame.

Sly should have felt blessed that Odi’s uncontrolled magic hadn’t done more than scorch his basement wall. It frightened me a little to see what the kid was capable of. If only he could control it. We were lucky he hadn’t brought the ceiling down on top of him.

We carried out six victims in all and let them rest on the weedy patch of lawn in front of the building until we could figure out a way to get them, in their condition, all out of there. (Another damn flaw in my plan.)

But once we had them out, I noticed all six starting to quickly heal. For a gut spinning moment, I had the irrational thought that they were vampires, too. This had all been an elaborate trap.

Which didn’t make any sense at all.

Especially when I noticed the collective hum of magical energy emanating from them.

It took a lot of power to heal like that, even for a sorcerer—unless they specialized in the healing arts. We could heal our wounds over time and with a good amount of rest. These folks made it look almost easy.

Mom, Odi, and I watched over them as they slowly roused themselves out of an anemic stupor. Three men. Three women. All of them with a hellacious amount of juice. These weren’t ordinary practitioners. Their power could have made even Mom look like a newborn sorcerer.

The first to recover fully enough to stand was a man about six feet tall with a barrel chest. He had a bald head, but a thick beard. He could have passed for a lumberjack. He even wore a plaid flannel shirt, bright red. Not like the faded ones Odi typically wore.

“Thank you,” he said with a reedy voice. “They kept us drained enough to be too weak to fully heal, which worked for them as they could continue to feed on us indefinitely. We faced an eternity of suffering.”

“It’s all good,” Odi said.

The man’s gaze snapped to him. His lips peeled back. “You undead motherfucker. I’ll send you to Hades.” He raised a fist, and I could feel his magic gathering.

My instincts made me do a foolish thing.

I moved in front of Odi and stood between the sorcerer and the vampire.

The sorcerer’s eyes grew wide and incredulous. “What are you doing?”

I pointed behind me at Odi. “This vampire saved your lives. We would have never gotten you out of there without him.”

The sorcerer’s brow furrowed. “This demon?”

“Yes,” I said. “And he’s not just a demon. Feel him out.”

“That sounds gross, dude.”

Sheesh. Even facing certain death, the kid acted like he didn’t have a clue.

“Shut up,” I snapped. Then I nodded at the angry sorcerer. “Go ahead. Feel the power in him.”

He lowered his fist.

I stepped aside, and the sorcerer approached Odi.

Odi drew back, but kept his footing. His nostrils flared from his quick (though pointless) breathing. The sorcerer loomed a good foot taller than Odi. And Odi must have sensed the sorcerer’s strength, because the frightened look in the kid’s eyes told me he had caught that missing clue.

The sorcerer narrowed his eyes and stared down at Odi. It took him a mere second, then he straightened and spun toward me. “A sorcerer?”

“Untrained, but yes. He was abandoned by his parents, and a vampire took advantage of his situation.”

“You sound like you have sympathy for him?”

“I do.”

The sorcerer turned back to Odi, held out his hand. “My name is Able,” he said. “And the Ministry thanks you for this good deed.”

Hold the flippin’ phone.

The Ministry. He was speaking on behalf of the Ministry? Only a very high ranking member could speak for them as a whole. Anyone else who dared would get their asshole relocated.

I swallowed. “You’re an officer of the Ministry?”

He gestured toward the others who, all but one, had gotten to their feet by now. The last one, a thick guy with mangy gray hair, was on his hands and knees.

“We all are,” Able said.

Six Ministry officers captured by vampires and fed on for who knows how long? If I hadn’t seen and felt how powerful they were, I would have never believed it. Actually, I still didn’t believe it. How could this have happened?

Mom came up beside me and took my hand. A subtle sign that she had the same questions. Which meant she didn’t recognize any of them—not that all members of the Ministry hung out together. But as a former Ministry member herself, it made sense that she might at least know one of them in passing, if only as a familiar face.

Able inclined his head. “May I ask your names?”

I gestured toward Odi and introduced him. Then I nodded at Mom. “This is my mother, Judith. And I’m Sebastian. Sebastian Light.”

The man on his hands and knees growled from deep in his throat. Then he changed form, shifting from a man to a black panther.

For the second time in as many days, I had an exotic cat pounce on me.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Despite all the déjà vu, I still didn’t know how to deal with a giant attack cat. But if I lived through this, I promised myself to start carrying cans of tuna as a matter of course. Surely even the biggest kitties could be bribed with some yummy fish.

The cat took me low, barreling into my stomach, striking with a furry shoulder. I went down hard. My head bounced off the firm sod and turned my vision to stars.

This time, I didn’t hesitate with my magic. I conjured up a massive gust of wind, using my panic to fuel it, almost losing control like Odi had, but I had the experience to catch the edge and keep it from (literally) blowing away from me.

The cat nipped at my throat, but my wind carried him away before his teeth sank in. He sailed straight up, and I watched him whirl his paws uselessly as if he thought he could run on air. Yet still, his movements carried a dance-like grace that held me mesmerized.

Until he started falling back down.

I rolled out of the way.

He hit the ground a second later with a quick yip. One of his legs twisted under his belly on impact. The sound of crunching bone rang out like a shot. The panther flipped onto his side and writhed, broken paw hanging loose like a sock full of marbles.

The sight of the cat’s struggle made me cringe. I don’t know why seeing an animal suffer often hurts more than seeing a person in pain. Then I reminded myself this wasn’t a damn kitty. This was a shifter of some kind, and he wanted to kill me for some reason.

A snapping sound, like breaking sticks, came from him, and I watched as his broken leg righted itself. The second the limb was healed, the panther leapt to his feet and reared on me.

For an instant, I remembered the pain of Markus Hope’s cougar claws tearing through me. The sensation triggered a cold fear that stirred my magic barely above the surface of my consciousness. My hands went out to my sides without thought. Blue fire bloomed from my palms.

The flames reflected in the panther’s glassy eyes.

But that didn’t stop him from pouncing at me again.

I swung both hands forward and out in front of me as if pushing through something in my way. Gouts of blue fire poured from my palms and caught the panther in mid-air.

The force of the fire halted his forward movement. The flames engulfed him completely.

The panther threw back its head and roared at the sky as the fire burned away its pelt. The flesh around its teeth melted away, revealing its fangs and the jawbone that held them in place. More spots across his entire body sizzled and ripped open, the fire chewing the beast down to the bone.

Everyone there stood in a rough circle around the living torch thrashing and crying on the ground. It took less than a minute for him to finally die. The flames eased, going from blue to orange, but continued to smolder like a campfire, feeding on blackened bones and clumps of burnt meat. The smoke rising away from the mess carried an overdone pork-like stink. The flames cast flickering shadows across our faces.

One of the men pressed a fist against his mouth and turned away.

One of the women placed a hand against her belly while the color drained from her face.

Able crossed his arms and shook his head at the sight.

My stomach turned as well, but not only because of the nasty smell. Able had said they were all officers of the Ministry. Which meant I had killed a Ministry officer—a crime that would win me my own death. It didn’t matter that he had attacked first. The Ministry protected its own, no matter what.

I doubted my recent deputization would matter much, either.

I staggered backward, glancing back and forth among the other officers. None of them looked at me, their attention still captured by the mound of ex-panther.

Should I run?

I bumped up against Mom. The worried look she gave me told me she was wondering the same thing. But if I ran, I would end up with a contract on my head. I’d already been through that once. I wouldn’t survive a second go. The local hunters would make sure of it.

Before I moved much further, Able uncrossed his arms and looked at me, expression stoic, eyes unreadable. The others followed suit until all five of the remaining officers stared at me like a Greek chorus about to announce my fate in this fucked up tragedy.

I couldn’t run. I wouldn’t stand a chance getting more than a few paces away. These were sorcerers who had healed themselves in thirty minutes at most. If they could heal that quickly, they could kill even faster.

Instead of bolting, I stepped forward, making sure I stood between them and Odi and Mom. I held my arms out like a basketball player on defense. “This was my doing,” I said. “Please don’t blame them for my mistake.”

Able frowned. “It was a mistake to fight for your life?”

“I’ve been a bounty hunter for the Ministry long enough to know the Ministry laws when it comes to assaulting an officer.”

“Someone would have to report you,” he said, then turned to his fellows. “I doubt anyone here would accuse you based on the circumstances.”

The others didn’t say anything, but a few of them nodded. The woman holding her stomach and the guy still holding back a spew-fest had other concerns, so I gave them the benefit of the doubt. But this was the second time I was promised I wouldn’t face consequences for throwing down with a Ministry bigwig. I felt extremely uncomfortable accepting those promises. There was no statute of limitations on any Ministry laws as far as I knew. I would have to go the rest of my life wondering if someone might decide to break that promise. The only way I could put my paranoia to rest would be to get something official from the Ministry courts in writing.

Of course, to get such a document, I would have to admit the transgressions in the first place.

My head started aching.

“The question remains,” Able said, “why did he attack you in the first place?”

A great question. One I hadn’t yet asked myself because I was too busy expecting to die. I thought through what had led up to his attack. The last thing I’d said before he pounced was my name.

Why would a Ministry officer I had rescued from eternity as a vamp extra value meal try to murder me once he knew who I was?

“I don’t have a clue.” I looked down at the smoldering lump. “How well did you know him?”

“His name was Ira Glass.”

Odi snickered. “Like the guy from public radio?”

Able didn’t smile, but he didn’t obliterate Odi either. “Yes. Like that. But obviously not him.”

“Obviously,” I said and threw Odi a dirty look.

He drew his shoulders up toward his ears and mouthed, “Sorry.”

“He was a scholar,” Able said. “Though he was due for a transition to guardian.”

“A scholar going guardian? Not very typical.”

Mom cleared her throat. “Not all scholars are merely bookish.”

She had me there. Like Odi had said, Mom was one badass lady. “Okay,” I admitted. “What was with the shift to panther? Was he a were?”

Able shrugged. “Not that I knew of. If so, he kept it to himself.”

I thought about Marcus and his cougar form. “He have any druid in him?”

“Again, I don’t know.”

I looked down at the man I had killed. I could still smell his cooked insides, but my stomach must have gotten used to it, because I wasn’t feeling so much sick as empty. Cold. And more than a little confused.

I looked to Mom. “There has to be some connection to your friend Markus.”

“That’s absurd.”

“They both shift into cats. They both attacked me, unprovoked.”

“Markus already explained why he did that.” She waved a hand the ground. “This is entirely different.”

I wanted to believe her. Not only did I not want to get all accusey toward her good friend, I didn’t want to think some Ministry cat collective had it in for me for some reason. I could fight a legion of vampires. I could face almost turning into a vampire myself. I could hold my own against all the big-time hunters in Detroit gunning for me when I had a contract on my head.

I could not fight the Ministry.

I couldn’t hide from them, either. Not for long. They would find me. They would send more than a couple of cats. And they would kill me.

Before it went that far, I had to find out more about this Ira Glass guy. I needed to know if he was acting alone. I needed to know if I was being completely paranoid, too. For all I knew, the trauma from his time hanging in the vampire nest had driven him nuts, and he had lashed out at me by pure chance.

But I couldn’t shake the feeling he had attacked me on purpose, right after I said my name.

“Is there anything else you can tell me about him?” I asked.

The guy with his fist against his mouth turned, lowered his hand, and opened his mouth to speak. Instead, he doubled over and hurled into the grass. Everyone took a slight step back and redirected their gazes. The hoarse barks he made as he heaved sent my own stomach into a tailspin. I wanted to cover my ears, but that would look kind of douchey, so I pinched my lips shut and hoped for the best.

Eventually, he stopped.

He wiped his mouth with his sleeve and looked up at me. “Ira and I did some work together a while back,” he said. “I can tell you where he lives.” He glanced at Ira’s remains. “Lived, I mean.”

Chapter Twenty-Nine

The last thing we did before leaving behind the nest was burn that bitch to the ground. Able, Mom, the other Ministry officers, and I threw so much magic at that poor building the splinters splintered. The ash and debris filled the subfloor where the nest had been. When those hundred or so sleepy vamps came home, they would have one hell of a surprise on their hands. Hopefully a bunch of them wouldn’t find a new hidey hole before the sun came up.

I grinned like an evil super villain as the last wall collapsed.

The demolition also worked as a kind burial for the night’s biggest hero—my Reliant.

Once the work was done, we parted ways with the Ministry officers without goodbyes. They had already thanked us for saving them. There wasn’t really time to say anything else anyway. We all had to get out of there before the police and fire department arrived.

Without my car now, the three of us walked three blocks away from the industrial park, and I called a cab to come pick us up. The driver made no comment about the cut on my forehead, the soot on our faces, or the smell of smoke in our clothes. Cabbies are great like that.

Dawn wasn’t far off, so we took Odi back to the Black Rose first. Before he climbed out of the cab, I grabbed his wrist. “Don’t say anything to Toft about your pyrotechnics tonight.”

A line creased the space between his eyebrows. “Why?”

“He’ll get the wrong idea. You did good over there, but we both know that was a fluke. You didn’t have any control.”

He looked ready to argue, but sighed, nodded. “Yeah.”

“But now you know what you’re truly capable of. You get control of that shit?” I shook my head. “You’ll be a force, man.”

That got a smile out of him. “Thanks, Sebastian. You…” He stopped himself, uncertainly in his eyes. “Thanks.”

“Where next?” the driver asked once Odi was inside.

Mom took my hand. “I suppose you need to report your success with the Ministry.”

I made a barfing noise. “That can wait. I need sleep. No. I need a coma.”

I told the cabbie to take us back to the hotel. The whole way, my eyelids kept drooping, and at one point I even started to dream until Mom punched me in the arm to wake me up when we arrived.

That coma I needed came easy when my head hit the pillow. Not even the over-starched pillow case could get between me and oblivion. But I dreamed. I dreamt of Odi. His whole body was in flames and he was screaming in pain. We stood in a giant paper box, and the walls quickly caught fire and burned away, big flakes of ash fluttering through the air like crow feathers.

I woke up in a sweat, still feeling the heat from the blaze that had surrounded us.

The sight of the unburnt ceiling calmed me. I took a couple deep breaths, and my heartbeat slowed.

Light leaked into the room from around the edges of the drawn curtains. I rolled onto my side and checked the time on the alarm clock on the nightstand. Almost one o’ clock. I rubbed the sleep out of my eyes, got up, and headed straight for the shower. The steam helped clear the last threads of sleepiness out. I could smell the smoke from our oversized bonfire in my hair as I wetted it down. Soot rolled off of me and swirled into the drain.

I thought of the weird dream about Odi. It didn’t take Freud to work out what it meant. I was worried for the kid. If he tried something like he had last night again, he could get hurt…bad. And wouldn’t I feel responsible? I was the one who had told him to trust his gut, the one who had set him up to let loose like that, knowing where it might lead.

I closed those thoughts away and finished cleaning up. Sleep and my magical energy had healed the cut above my eye, and the shower had washed off the last bit of crusty blood. I used the complimentary razor and shaved the scraggly hair unworthy of the term beard off my face. Mom would approve. She always preferred me clean-cut. I guess that’s part of what made her a mom.

I started some coffee in the tiny coffeemaker plugged in on the bathroom counter. As it started, I could smell how cheap the provided coffee was, but I couldn’t wait to go out to Biggby for a caffeine fix. I needed it now.

Mom came in shortly after I started the coffee.

“I was wondering when you’d wake up,” she said, looking fresh. “You always did like to sleep in.”

I pinched the bridge of my nose as if I could squeeze the sleep out of my eyes that way. “We didn’t get back until almost dawn. It doesn’t count as sleeping in.”

“Well, I’ve been up since nine.”

I plopped into the creaky wood-framed chair at the small round table by the window. I had opened the curtains to my wonderful view of the parking lot and the back of a McDonald’s. I knew if I cracked the window I would smell the old grease from the restaurant. My sleepy stomach was already queasy enough.

I kept an ear cocked for the last sputter and hiss from the coffeemaker so I could get that shit inside of me pronto.

Mom joined me at the table. “What’s the plan?”

“We follow up on this Ira Glass dude. Toss his place.”

“What do you think we’ll find?”

I shrugged. “Probably nothing. But I’d like to know why a member of the Ministry tried to kill me. You know, for closure.”

“I think—”

My phone trilled from the nightstand. I pushed myself up from my chair, feeling like a three-hundred-year-old sorcerer with bad knees.

Where’s my cane?

I shuffled over and checked the number on my phone’s screen. I didn’t recognize it. I almost let it go to voicemail, but the call could have been coming from the Ministry wanting a check in. Even if the officers from last night didn’t report my role in Glass’s death, I was sure they had said something about the night. After all, the Ministry would have wondered where its missing officers had been all this time.

The second I answered, I knew it wasn’t the Ministry, because it was Odi, screaming at me.

“We’re trapped,” he shouted. “You gotta get us out of here somehow.”

I jerked at the blast of his voice. I tried to parse what he’d said. Trapped? Shouldn’t they have been tucked into their coffins?

“Sebastian? Come on. Where are you?”

“I’m here. Slow down. Tell me what’s up.”

I heard him take a breath. He sounded only a fraction calmer when he spoke again. “Some group attacked the club. They killed Mortimer, but he warned us in time. Now we’re stuck in Toft’s safe room, and they’re trying to get in.”

Mortimer dead? Safe room?

Of course Toft has a safe room.

“Who’s attacking you?”

“We don’t know. Toft says it’s the Ministry, but that’s crazy, right?”

My stomach dropped as if I’d stepped off a cliff. Any moment I’d hit the jagged rocks below and break into pieces.

He’s wrong. They can’t be Ministry.

“Yes,” I said. “Crazy.” I could hear in my own voice that I didn’t one-hundred percent believe it. After all, hadn’t a random Ministry officer tried to kill me?

A more reasonable explanation occurred to me.

“Has Toft broken Ministry law?”

“I most certainly have fucking not!” Toft shouted in the background, his vampire ears picking up my side of the conversation. He sounded more like a kid than ever before. A kid scared out of his mind. “Get over here, unless you want to let your apprentice die.”

Low blow. Especially with Odi right there to hear Toft using him as the pawn Toft believed him to be.

The coffeemaker in the bathroom sighed. The smell, burnt and bitter, drifted out into the room. I wouldn’t get the chance to drink it now, and I didn’t see that as much of a loss.

“I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

Chapter Thirty

We had to take a cab. (I was already missing my Reliant.) It took everything in me not to keep nagging the driver to go faster. When we got there, I had the cab drop us off across the street. The cab drove away, and Mom and I stared at the Black Rose.

From the outside, the club looked like it always did during the day. Toft had already had the shattered window replaced. The afternoon sun reflected off the blacked-out glass, making the windows look as though they were made of onyx.

After a minute, Mom turned to me. “I find it difficult to believe the Ministry is behind this. If they were, Toft and his spawn would be dust by now.”

I didn’t correct her mistake about Odi’s relation to Toft. Toft had picked up Odi after Odi’s maker had abandoned him, much like his mortal parents had when the kid was first born. Odi had a history of people leaving him right when he was most vulnerable. It was another reason why I treated him like I did. I felt sorry for him.

“For all we know,” I said, “they are. We’re going to have to go in to find out.”

Mom pressed her lips together for a moment, gaze focused on the club. “If they are Ministry, you can’t stop them. You’ve already got the death of one officer hanging over you. Interfering in whatever this is?” She shook her head. “I know you like these demons, and you have your reasons, but they aren’t worth pitting yourself against the Ministry.”

Another mistake on her part. I didn’t like Toft at all. I tolerated him—not only because I had to with my Odi situation, but because he had helped save me from becoming a demon myself.

What difference did it make? She was right. I could not openly defy the Ministry. But could I live with myself if I let something happen to Odi?

“It can’t be Ministry, though. You said so yourself.”

She sighed, didn’t say anything.

I checked both ways for traffic then crossed the street. I wasn’t sure when I did if Mom would follow. She didn’t need to. But she did.

I half expected Mortimer to greet us at the door like he so often did when I showed up during off hours. But Odi had said their attackers had killed the poor troll. I tried to imagine what Toft would do without his valet/puppet.

Nothing, if Toft were dead, too.

I tried the door, found it open. I heard a metallic clink when I pulled. A piece of the latch had fallen loose. The lock had been broken.

I exchanged looks with Mom then led the way inside.

We found Mortimer on the floor next to an overturned table close to the stage. Well, most of him.

In death, his human glamour had fallen away, leaving him in all his trolly glory. His bulky torso strained the buttons on his tux, spreading his shirt open between them. His dull, solid black eyes stared up at the ceiling from under a protruding brow that could have doubled as a small shelf. He had fuzzy black eyebrows and grayish-green skin. His mouth hung slack, his cow tongue dangling from his mouth and dripping glistening drool.

He was missing both arms. Something had ripped them off and tossed them wide. One lay on the seat to one of the booths lining the outside wall. The other had landed up on the stage. Blood spurted fresh from the empty sockets under each shoulder. One of his legs had also been yanked loose, but I couldn’t see it anywhere. It looked like he might have died from blood loss. I didn’t have a way to tell for sure.

“Gods damn it. What the hell could rip a troll apart like that?”

“A lot of things, Sebastian.”

My stomach shriveled. That wasn’t the most comforting answer.

Outside of my quickened breathing, I didn’t hear anything. No shouts or sounds of struggle. No sign that anything perilous was in progress—except for the dead troll on the floor.

Odi had said he was calling from a safe room. I figured it had to be down in Toft’s underground penthouse. Maybe they were still in there, safe, the attackers gone because they’d given up.

That’s good, man. Stay positive.

I motioned for Mom to follow me into the back, and that’s where we found the second sign of an attack. The door to the stairs leading down into Toft’s lair was off its hinges and nowhere to be found. The hinges were twisted and blackened. The light to the stairwell was on. I peered down, but didn’t find any sign of the door. As near as I could tell, the attackers had completely obliterated it.

I stood at the top of the stairs and listened.

Total silence.

“Dead troll,” I said. “Missing door. But no other visible destruction.”

“They were precise.”

“Yeah.” The sweat on the back of my neck turned cold.

Precision plus power didn’t automatically equal Ministry. But it moved them up the list of possibilities. A bitter flavor, like bad coffee, filled my mouth. I guess I should have stomached the hotel brew. Right now I suffered the bad taste without any of the caffeinated perks.

So far, we hadn’t come up against the attackers. All signs seemed to point to their having left. I didn’t know how safe Toft’s safe room was. Whoever came through here gave the impression that not much would stand in their way. I became more and more convinced I was going to find a pair of dust piles down there. I keep seeing Odi’s goofy grin after cracking some stupid joke, kept hearing his hoarse laugh, kept feeling the unbelievable buzz of his power.

Mom took my elbow. “You want me to go down first?”

I shook my head and started down without a word.

The light from the stairwell cast a rectangle of light into the kind of living room space where I had met with Toft the last time I’d been down here. That light didn’t do much more than pale some of the shadows. The fireplace was dead. The cinnamon smell I’d noticed before still lingered, but not nearly as strong. The air felt a lot warmer than a subfloor should have without the fireplace going. I doubted Toft had the place heated. A waste of energy for a vampire.

A static taste touched my tongue like a spark, the remains of magical power still simmering in the room.

I raised my left hand and ignited it with my magical flame, the standard orange version. I used it like a torch to chase off the shadows and inspect the room. I didn’t find anything of note. The only sign of any cast spells was the flavor of the air. But if they hadn’t used any kind of destructive spell, I didn’t know why that flavor hung so thick. Unless a spell had been cast within the last minute or so.

A single hall fed off from the living room. Flame held high, I entered into the hall’s darkness, Mom close behind. I felt her magic vibrating now, either from nerves or anticipating the need to cast something soon. Maybe both.

The hall had two rooms off either side about halfway down. Both had their doors open and a quick glance found them both unoccupied.

One of the rooms was adorned with tattered flags from a hundred different countries or more hanging on the walls. A votive candleholder on a long stand sat beside on open coffin. The coffin itself lay on a gray stone pedestal, and was lined in pale rose silk. A matching pillow lay askew at the head of the coffin. The candles were out, but I doubted they’d make much light. Just enough so that Toft could get comfy without straining his night vision before blowing them out.

The most chilling feature of the coffin was its size. It was built to accommodate a young person of around twelve. A child’s coffin.

I shivered and turned away.

The other room had a coffin as well, a standard sized one, also open. This one had dark blue silk lining. The outside had a luminous black glaze that made me think of the windows upstairs in the club. It also reminded me of Darth Vader’s helmet after a fresh polish.

Odi’s “bed.”

I moved further down the hall until it came to an abrupt end. While the walls from the living room and down the hallway had wallpaper the same shade and style as the living room, the wall at the end was a dirty iron color. I didn’t see any handle or hinge, but I knew this had to be the safe room. The iron was probably meant to keep any fae from touching it. There were probably other magical wards in the door I couldn’t see or sense.

But, at last, I found evidence of the assault—a black scorch mark square in the center of the door. It didn’t look like much of an effort, especially considering the attackers had fucking melted the door to the stairwell. Luckily for Toft and Odi, this one seemed to be made of sterner stuff.

Still, only a single blast to this door and they’d given up? Unless they’d tried other things that hadn’t left a mark.

I let my makeshift torch flame out then pounded a fist on the iron and called out for Odi. I gave him or Toft a handful of seconds to respond, but I didn’t hear anything. The door was probably too thick to hear through. I pulled out my cell and dialed back the number Odi had called me from.

It rang once before Toft answered. “Light?”

“Hello to you, too.”

“Where the fuck are you?”

“Outside your door.”

“We’re downstairs. Watch yourself. They blew out all my cameras, so I can’t see where they are.”

“I meant I’m outside the big iron door. Do you actually get cell reception in there?”

“It’s a land line, you…” He growled. He was so easy to bait. “You’re down here now?”

“That’s what I said.”

“You took them out?” he asked with nervous wonder as if he’d asked me on a date and couldn’t believe I’d said yes.

“No,” I said. “There’s nobody here. They must have given up.”

A long silence followed. I wasn’t sure if I’d lost him. I checked my phone’s screen. The time counter kept running. The connection was still open.

“Step back from the door a good twenty feet,” he finally said, then disconnected.

“We’re to stand back, “I said to Mom. I guessed standing by the boys’ bedrooms gave us plenty more than twenty feet. And I was glad I went that far back.

A green and blue static blast shot from the door and clawed along the walls and ceiling. It went on for about ten seconds before dying and left the wallpaper burnt and smoking in spots. The smell of ozone roiled through the hall.

Toft had tripped a ward of some kind, something he had to set once he entered the room, then disarm in order to get back out. Probably something his mage friend (and the guy who had branded me) had set up for him.

I wondered why it hadn’t worked against his attackers.

A moment later, a heavy clang rang out from inside the door. A row of lights down the length of the hall flickered on. Then came a hiss, like steam. The door slowly swung open and Toft came out with Odi behind him.

Toft’s pallor had gone a few shades paler than the average vamp’s pasty gray. His lips had also lost some color and looked a little shriveled around the edges. His eyes glowed a deep red. He had dropped his glamour and looked positively feral with his wrinkled face and sharp fangs.

Odi, on the other hand, looked the same as always, except more nervous than usual, the color drawn out from his face like Toft’s, but without the red eyes, wrinkles, and fangs.

Toft rushed at me. For a second, I thought he was going to tackle me and chew out my jugular, but he slammed me aside against the wall and charged past.

The three of us exchanged confused looks, then came to a silent decision and headed after Toft.

Toft reached the living room before we could catch up. He scanned the room with wide eyes and trembling fists at his sides. He looked like a scared kid who had lost his mom at the grocery store. Well, except with fangs and red eyes and wearing a red velvet smoking jacket.

Then he froze, his gaze locked on something. “You idiots,” Toft screamed. “You brought me right to them.”

Chapter Thirty-One

I rushed the rest of the way down the hall and found one of the most chilling sights of my life.

Out of the shadows in one corner of the room emerged a vampire twice as tall as myself. He had long arms that ended in yellow claws. His elongated jaw hung open to show off three-inch fangs. A glow the color of hellfire filled his recessed eye sockets. He was completely naked, showing off his shrunken bits and his greasy dark skin.

I’d only read about vamps like this one. They were supposed to come from indigenous populations across the globe. I couldn’t fathom how this one had made its way to the United States. Someone must have brought it here.

Scarily enough, the beast was only one part of what triggered the sick horror in my gut and all the gooseflesh across every inch of my skin.

Three other figures stood in the room with the creature. All mortals. All faces I had seen not that long ago—all Ministry officers. There were the two women from the nest, and Able.

Fucking Able.

“Mr. Light,” Able said. “This doesn’t involve you. It’s Ministry business. I suggest you leave.”

I looked from the towering vamp thing, then to each of the Ministry officers in turn. I pointed at Beastvamp. “He’s with you?”

Able straightened. His nostrils flared. His lumberjack beard gave him a wild animal look. “The Ministry owes you no answers. Leave before this grows more awkward than it already has.”

I noticed my jaw hurt. Then I noticed I was clenching my teeth. I relaxed my jaw enough to form words.

“Somehow, I don’t think you’re speaking for the Ministry right now.”

Beastvamp threw his head back and screamed. The shriek pierced me down to my core, rattling my bones and shaking my teeth. I staggered, the sound so harsh it messed up my equilibrium like an inner ear infection.

Mom slipped to one knee.

Despite Beastvamp’s frightening display, a volcanic heat rolled up from deep in my belly. I felt my magic begin to coalesce without my command. The edges of my vision turned a brilliant blue. I looked down at my hands. I had drawn fire without realizing, both hands engulfed in the blue stuff.

Fuck with me? Fine. But you do not fuck with my mom.

“Sebastian,” Mom said beside me, warning in her voice.

Able’s flashing eyes dared me to strike. And while my anger didn’t seem to care, I knew I couldn’t win a fight against him, let alone his two friends and the nasty creature he had somehow leashed to do his bidding.

That was dark shit, man. Beyond me. Beyond Mom. Beyond anyone I had ever known in my life.

With great effort, I extinguished my fire and let my hands relax at my sides.

Able nodded. “Good choice.”

“How come you haven’t killed me like your panther friend?” I asked.

“There are those who find you a threat. I know better.”

Them were fighting words. Too bad I had already decided fighting him would only end in my death.

“We’ve come for the elder,” he said and pointed at Toft as if any of us needed to know who he meant.

Odi stepped forward. “No way, dude.”

Toft gently touched Odi’s wrist. The tenderness in the gesture gave me pause. “It’s all right, son.” And hearing Toft call Odi son not only looked weird because he looked so much younger, but it sounded strange because it suggested the same tenderness as his touch.

“No,” Odi said. “It isn’t.”

“You proved yourself an ally last night,” Able said. “Don’t change that now.”

“What do you want with him?” The edges of Odi’s face wavered. For an instant I saw a glimpse of his vampire self.

“That isn’t your concern.”

Odi’s eyes flashed red. I could tell he was ready to go full vamp. Able or one of the others could interpret that as aggression, and they would have no reason not to kill him, and no trouble doing it. “He is my friend. I won’t let you just take him.”

And then I sensed it. The building energy. The raw power. The smell of sulfur. Never mind him going full vamp. If he unleashed his magic like he had at the nest, he could get us all killed.

“Odi,” I warned. “Don’t.”

But he didn’t act like he heard me. He began to tremble. He peeled back his lips, and there were his fangs. Oh, gods, this was seriously bad.

Able narrowed his eyes, studying Odi like an amusing curio on a shelf. He had to have felt the magic growing around Odi. He apparently didn’t find it worrisome.

I didn’t care how powerful these Ministry goons were. A raw infernal blast might not kill them outright, but they wouldn’t recover as easily as they had from the vampires’ abuses.

I rushed over and grabbed Odi’s arm. “No. Stop.”

Odi wrenched out of my grip so hard he left my fingers numb. Dark veins swelled under his skin, and the skin itself wrinkled. He was an angry vamp and an out of control sorcerer all in one. And I didn’t have a flippin’ clue how to defuse him.

“Stand down, boy,” Able said.

I realized there was no way to stop what was coming, so I grabbed Mom’s arm and bolted for the staircase. I wondered if the kid realized he might kill the very person he wanted to protect. Decided he didn’t. Rage had taken over. And rage didn’t know a thing about reason.

Mom and I made it halfway up the stairs before Odi unleashed. A wave of heat struck my back, lifted me off my feet, and flung me almost to the top of the stairs. I heard Mom cry out, but I was too busy with my rag doll impersonation to see what happened to her.

I landed, twisted at the waist, on my side. The hard edge of a step cracked my ribs. I felt more than heard the crunch. The pain quickly followed.

Flames whooshed overhead in a swirling orange cloud. The heat pressed down like a physical force. My lips went instantly dry and chapped.

All I could do was press myself as low as possible and hope the fire didn’t completely fill the stairwell. I untwisted my body, crushed my cheek against a step, and squeezed my eyes shut, waiting for relief or death.

Then I heard the creak and crack above me.

I chanced a glance. The stairwell’s ceiling had broken apart. Sheets of plaster and wood rained down.

My instinct to live thankfully worked faster than my frightened mind. I propped myself up on my hands and bear crawled up the last few stairs right before the entire ceiling collapsed.

I heard Mom scream, then abruptly fall silent.

I rolled onto my side and looked down the length of my legs toward the stairwell. It had collapsed like an unsteady mineshaft. Chunks of plaster, split joists, and snapped wall studs filled the space so that I couldn’t see into the room below.

I scanned the wreckage, searching for any sign of Mom.

There.

I saw her arm sticking out between a pair of tented plaster pieces. Her fingers clutched another piece of plaster as if trying to hold on to keep from sinking deeper into the destruction. But that hand lay still.

A cloud of plaster dust choked me when I gasped at the sight of my mom’s limp arm. The rest of her was under there. I had to get to her. Had to stop fucking coughing before I passed out from lack of oxygen.

I pressed my hand over my mouth and sucked careful breaths through my nose. I kept coughing against my palm, but not as badly. I started to stand and a lance of pain through my side dropped me to my knees. Broken ribs. I flowed a little magic into the area to dull the pain and got to my feet.

But I stood helpless at the edge of the cave-in. I couldn’t wade in there without worrying about falling through and getting stuck. All I could do was stare at my mother’s unmoving arm and wonder if I had lost her again, only for good this time.

Chapter Thirty-Two

I felt my emotions getting the best of me. The helplessness. The anger. The fear. The gut hollowing sadness. In that moment, I had convinced myself I would never see my mother alive again.

I kept staring at her arm. It looked disembodied, as if it lay there unattached. The idea brought bile up the back of my throat. But if I studied closely, I could see a part of her shoulder obscured by plaster powder, and her arm connected to it. I did my best to rein in my imagination. I didn’t need to speculate. I needed to know.

But how?

If I couldn’t wade into the debris myself, I had to find some way to get Mom out of it and to me.

I lowered the hand I’d covered my mouth with and brought it even with my other hand. They shook. They both had dust coating them. Some of my knuckles had been scraped raw. My emotional spin cycle wouldn’t stop. I knew if I tried to use magic now, I would only have a few degrees more control than Odi had when he blew this fucking place apart and had…

I pressed my lips tightly together and honed my gaze in on Mom’s arm. The sleeve of her sweater was torn up to her elbow. A couple of her fingernails were missing.

I inhaled deeply through my nose. The plaster dust tickled the back of my throat, but I forced myself not to cough. I would choke before I coughed again. I didn’t fucking have time to cough.

Get a grip, Sebastian. You’re no good to her if you freak out now.

I took another deep breath.

Another.

The urge to swallow fought against the lack of moisture in my mouth. I tried to work up some spit, but couldn’t.

I closed my eyes. I pictured my heart in my chest. I imagined it slowing down. A few seconds of this brought my heart rate in line with my imagined rhythm. I moved my focus to my stomach, worked to calm the churning. Then to my neck muscles, focusing on releasing the tension.

The last part I tried to control felt physical, but existed entirely in my psyche. The

clusterfuck of emotions had eased their rampant chattering as I had relaxed my body. Now I could pick them apart and address each one in turn.

These were all tricks my father had taught me, tricks I should have taught Odi before he went and…

Magic did not depend on emotion, but it could feed on it. In most cases, this was a bad thing. Certain circumstances could take advantage of that connection, though. Such as when I focused my anger to make my intense, blue fire. I had worked out that trick right before Goulet nearly fed me his blood and finished my turning.

I had learned to control that flavor of anger well enough to keep it from blowing up in my face.

But I didn’t want to dance with my other emotions when I needed my magic now. I needed precision, finesse, and the lightest touch I could manage. In other words, I needed to cast a spell in the same way I would work the low key stuff like that vision spell, but needed I big spell effects.

I was about to get all Yoda on this mess.

Once I finally felt as centered as I could get, I reached out my hands and called on the air to obey my command. A slight wind rippled by me, no more than the sigh from an air duct or small fan. Not enough to help me. But this was only the start. I threaded more and more of my magic into the air, slowly feeding the wind. I wasn’t looking to create a large gust like I usually did. I wasn’t fighting.

Wind began to whirl around me like a vortex. It was warm. A bead of sweat rolled down my cheek like a tear. I turned my hands, fingers splayed, palms up, as if waiting to receive a gift. The wind picked up more and more circular speed until it reached a torrent equal to a hurricane. I was the eye of the storm, held total control. As strong as it was, the small cyclone did little more than blow the plaster dust off of me.

I had managed to harness the wind’s power while also controlling its effects.

I never would have thought I could do such a thing. Desperation had pushed me to the next tier of my abilities. If I’d been a character in a video game, I would have heard the ding of leveling up.

Confident of my new control, I directed the air in the most precise manner. Bit by bit, I cleared the debris, the wind an extension of my outstretched hands. I mimicked picking up each shard and piece, and the air did the rest. I pulled the junk out of the stairwell, over my shoulder, and into a pile behind me.

My harnessed wind also cleared the air of the chalky dust, replacing it with the fresh smell of a mountain breeze.

I couldn’t help smiling as I did my work, amazed at my own power.

I dug around Mom, not stopping until I had gently removed enough pieces to leave her lying in a fetal position in a ditch. I hated the way it looked like a dug grave. It gave my fears too much to work with.

Finally, I scooped up Mom in a cushion of air and floated her to me. I stepped aside to give me a place to lay her down. Once she rested on the dusty floor, I released the air I’d been controlling. It whistled by me, pushed me aside on its rush to escape the confines of the stairwell, made a mini avalanche in the pile of debris I had stacked, then dissipated with a final whip crack.

I sagged to my knees beside Mom, my mouth bitter and pasty. Cold sweat soaked my shirt and even dampened the inside of my thighs, making me feel like I’d wet myself.

So much plaster powdered Mom’s face, she looked like she had lost all color, like a vampire victim drained of every drop of blood. Her clothes were torn. Blood matted her hair from a gash on her scalp. Otherwise, she didn’t look too bad. Or I was in denial.

Then I saw her move. She was breathing.

I shuddered as relief exploded inside of me. My eyes watered. I blinked my vision clear and rested a hand on Mom’s arm. “Mom?”

She took a sudden deep breath, then her eyes fluttered open. She looked up at me. “Oh, thank the gods, you’re all right.”

I laughed. “Me? You’re the one who got buried.”

“I’m a strong old broad, Sebastian. You should know that by now.”

“Yeah,” I said, smiling. “You are that.”

She took my hand. “Help me up.”

I pulled her up to a sitting position. She surveyed the damage in the stairwell, shook her head. “Your apprentice…” She stopped, turned to look at me, then cupped my face with a hand. “I’m sorry.”

“Thanks,” I said. “Turns out I’m not a very good teacher.”

“It was too late for him. That isn’t your fault. That old son of a bitch should have never asked you to mentor him. The whole arrangement was doomed from the start.”

I nodded. Couldn’t argue. But I didn’t want to believe it. I wanted to think I could have done Odi some good, kept him from fading too far into the natural darkness of the undead.

In other words, I was an idiot.

Mom got to her feet, swooned, but recovered quickly. She gingerly touched her scalp and her fingers came away with blood on the tips. The blood poured thick through her gray hair. She looked like the victim in a horror film. But you always bled a lot from the scalp. The wound probably looked worse than it really was.

“You okay?” I asked anyway.

“Fine.” She gestured toward the ditch in the debris. “You did that yourself?”

I nodded.

A grin broke across her face. She wrapped her arms around me and hugged. “You’re growing up so fast,” she said. Which would sound funny to the average mortal, but comparatively speaking, I was still in my adolescence as a sorcerer.

I hugged her back. We held that way for a moment. When we parted, she tilted her head toward the stairwell. “Do you want to clear the rest and see who’s left below?”

Part of me did. Another part wanted me to walk away and never look back. When I did considering leaving, some outside force kept me from moving.

At first I thought Able or one of his people was responsible. But when I turned toward the stairwell, I had no trouble stepping forward.

“Pah.” I chuckled.

“What?” Mom asked.

“Odi’s down there, alive and well. Toft, too, for that matter.”

“How do you know that?”

“Because my blood oath won’t let me leave him down there.”

Chapter Thirty-Three

Between the two of us, it didn’t take long to clear the debris enough to get downstairs. Only half the ceiling in the living room had collapsed, but considering that it was underground, that amounted to a great deal of concrete along with the plaster and wood. We created more of a tunnel through it than actually removing it.

Odi had managed to climb free of the cave-in and lay on the Victorian style sofa with a shard of wood the size of a baseball bat through his throat. One of his legs was bent backward at the knee. His shirt had ripped wide open to reveal his pale chest, and it looked like his chest had caved slightly.

His eyes were open. He stared blankly at the intact part of the ceiling above him. He lay entirely still. But that didn’t mean anything. If he were dead, his ashes would have blended in with the rest of the dust carpeting the floor.

I didn’t see any sign of Toft, the Ministry goons, or the primal vamp, and hadn’t run into any remains as we’d tunneled our way in. Of course, if Toft or Beastvamp had perished, their dust would have also been indistinguishable in the wreckage. And Toft had to be alive, otherwise my oath would have expired along with him.

I had hoped to find Able’s head crushed under a slab of concrete. No such luck so far.

I approached Odi slowly. If he hadn’t noticed us breaking through the destruction, he might spook if I suddenly came upon him. Badly injured vampires tended to lash out. He was still in vamp form. I didn’t need him tearing a hole in my neck with his fangs. Been there. Done that.

Halfway to him, I saw him blink a few times as if coming out of a deep sleep. He turned his head toward me. The wood through his neck caught and widened the wound, giving me a glimpse of his trachea. Blood pulsed out of the hole.

Then he tried to say something. More blood sprayed out his mouth. He made a sound like kek kek kek, but nothing close to words.

I stopped suddenly. I had intended to go over and help him. Then the image of Mom’s arm sticking out of the wreckage passed across my mind’s eye. My face heated up. My fingers curled stiffly with the urge to choke Odi. Or yank that makeshift stake out of his throat and jam it through his fucking heart.

I tried to take another step toward him, but couldn’t. The blood oath again, keeping me at bay, keeping me from dusting the little fucker.

“Kek kek,” Odi said.

I couldn’t turn around and leave. I couldn’t approach him. I would have to get a hold of my anger, or end up stuck in this spot forever. I inhaled through my nose. Exhaled out my mouth. I ran through the same series of techniques I had to calm myself enough to magically finesse the air. Apparently it did the trick, because I was able to take another step forward.

Odi looked at me pleadingly. “Kek.”

I moved over to him and stared down as if he lay on a hospital gurney, slowly dying. And there was still a chance he could. I doubted a young vamp like him could recover quickly enough from his extensive injuries before he bled out. It would take an excruciatingly long time for him to turn to dust.

Even after what he had done, I didn’t want that for him, blood oath or not.

“Kek.”

I gripped the wooden shaft sticking out his neck and yanked it free.

A geyser of black blood gushed from the hole. Odi’s eyes went wide. “Kek kek keh kuh kek.” His voice was soaked in his own blood. The wet gurgle turned my stomach.

“We need to stanch that bleeding or he’s gone,” Mom said.

I looked over my shoulder at her, surprised she advised on how to save his life rather than grabbing the wood shard from my hand and staking him herself.

She must have seen that surprise on my face. “He didn’t intend for this,” she said. “And I’m fine.”

I looked down at the bloodstained wooden shaft in my clutch. I dropped it, turned to Odi, and clapped my hand over the hole in his throat. “This is going to hurt,” I said. Before he had a chance to brace himself, I lit up my hand. The smell of his cooking flesh rose up and gagged me. He tried to scream, making the blood bubble in his throat like a boiling kettle.

I held on until the wound, on this side at least, had cauterized.

I turned him on his side and did the same for the exit wound through the back of his neck.

By that point, he had fallen limp from shock.

I rolled him onto his back and stepped away. His cracked chest and broken leg would heal on their own in time. The important thing had been to stop the bleeding. He would also have to feed as soon as he was able. Without Toft, I wasn’t sure who would find the kid a meal. Sure as hell wasn’t going to be me.

Unless the damn blood oath forced my hand on that front as well.

Hopefully, Toft was still in that mess somewhere and I could get him out before it came to that.

I told Mom as much, and we prepared to get to work.

“Kek uhk kik.”

I looked at the kid. He had already broke free from shock and seemed desperate to tell me something. With his throat wrecked like it was, I couldn’t imagine how he could, though.

I crouched beside him and watched his lips carefully, hoping I could read them.

The noises he made didn’t make any more sense than they had before, but he made sure to form the words with his mouth as clearly as possible. And I got it. Three words.

They are gone.

“Gone? Gone how?”

Odi waggled his fingers in the air in the universal gesture of magical woo-woo.

“All of them?”

He nodded.

“They took Toft?”

He nodded again, more emphatically.

So they had escaped with what they’d come for—Detroit’s elder vampire.

Which left me with a frightening question.

Why?

Chapter Thirty-Four

“Jesus Christ, this is heavy!”

Sly’s face had gone pink while struggling to carry his end of Odi’s coffin out the front door of the Black Rose. I had used some wind power to get the thing, with Odi inside, through the trench Mom and I had made in the remains of Toft’s underground living room. But I couldn’t very well float it clear out to the panel truck Sly had rented in the middle of the day. Any witnesses would make that awkward, and the last thing I needed to do right now was commit an infraction against Ministry Law, no matter how slight.

In fact, I needed to stay far, far away from the Ministry until I knew if this thing went any deeper than Able and his two companions. They couldn’t all be involved. The fact that the guy who had barfed over the panther remains the night before had volunteered personal information on Ira Glass told me as much. He wouldn’t have given me Glass’s address if he was a part of…whatever the fuck was going on.

Some bad actors within the Ministry I could swallow. Politics, whether magical or mortal, made for a good corruptor. But that beast vamp? That shit was crazy. Smuggling that thing across international borders was probably a severe enough crime to win a Ministry contract on your head. Aligning oneself with such a creature didn’t even make sense. I mean, hadn’t these idiots just escaped the clutches of a nest of hungry vamps? I would have thought they’d avoid contact with any kind of vampire after that, especially one that ugly.

The priority at the moment, though, was to smuggle Odi someplace safe. Much to Sly’s chagrin, we had decided his basement would work best. When I suggested the idea, Sly said, “This damn kid’s committed to ruining my basement.” But we didn’t have many options, and the thing about Sly, you could always count on him—even if he did bitch about it.

I used a little wind to ease the load for Sly, and we got Odi loaded into the back of the van without any trouble. I didn’t see anyone on the street watching. That didn’t mean someone wasn’t peering out a window at us. I hope no one got so freaked out by the sight that they called the cops.

I thanked Sly for his help, and he drove off with my nearly dead apprentice in a coffin. Green was waiting at Sly’s house to help get the kid inside. While he’d quit the shop, apparently Green hadn’t sworn off his uncle altogether. Maybe he’d come around on the shop in time. Where else could he smoke weed while on the job?

I’d left Odi to them, because Mom and I had something else that needed doing. We had to check out Ira Glass’s place. Maybe there was something there that could give us some idea of what he and his cronies were involved with.

I should have known better.

Glass lived in a one bedroom apartment in a complex off Hall Road, not far from Lakeside Mall. It was easy enough to find. I barely needed to consult the GPS on my phone. This complex had separate outside entrances for each of its units, so we didn’t need to get buzzed in. Just climb a flight of stairs to the second story.

I found his door partially open, but couldn’t see any signs of tampering. I also felt a faint magical crackle. It felt the same as what I’d felt in Toft’s basement, and I knew it belonged to Able. I pushed the door wide and stepped inside.

The place was gutted. It looked like no one lived there, like the apartment was ready for the next renter.

Able had cleaned house.

Chapter Thirty-Five

We were already there, so I figured we’d take a look in case they had missed something, left some clue behind. But I didn’t have my hopes up.

I closed the door and turned the bolt. I didn’t anticipate anyone showing up—why would they if they’d already gotten the job done?—but I wanted to play it safe. Besides, in our condition, all covered in plaster dust, bruised, and clothes ratty, we’d raise some eyebrows if someone like the landlord swung by and found us inside.

The paint looked and smelled fresh, a clean white coat on all the walls. The surfaces of the apartment’s included appliances were polished to a snowy shine. I had no idea how they managed to get a stovetop to look so clean, but these were magical practitioners, after all. Maybe one of them had a super scrubber spell. Aside from Able, who I felt pretty certain was a sorcerer, I didn’t know how the two ladies practiced the arts. They could have been anything from witches, to druids, to demigods for all I freakin’ knew.

As we strolled through the modest apartment, I asked Mom if she sensed anything.

“I’m not a bloodhound, Sebastian. Or a Jedi.”

I cracked a smile and gave her hand a squeeze. “You nerd.”

“Oh, look who’s talking.”

We filed into the single bedroom. More fresh paint, the smell thicker in the enclosed space. The closet had accordion style doors which hung wide open. A single wire hanger dangled from the rod. I turned away from the closet and scanned the bedroom floor. The beige carpet looked like it had been vacuumed, but I could see stains, many of them concentrated around the entry, probably from foot traffic. I also saw four divots in the carpet, impressions made by the wheels of a bed frame.

Plenty of daylight streamed through the window since the shades were rolled up, and no curtains were hung. I flicked the light switch anyway. A single dome light in the center of the ceiling turned on. A section of the far wall reflected the new light. A wet streak of paint.

I must have looked at it funny, because Mom asked, “You see something?”

I pointed. “The paint is still wet there.” I scrunched up my nose. “This is super recent.”

“I can see why they would take all his things, but why paint? Seems like wasted effort.”

I folded my arms and stared at the moist paint as if it might tell me something. “Unless they needed to cover something.”

“On the walls? Like what?”

“One way to find out.”

I pulled off my coat and nearly cried to see the back had an ugly black streak down the center, scorched from Odi’s explosion. But it made what I did next easier. I carried my coat over to the wet spot and used one sleeve to start wiping. The paint was wet enough to smear, but I couldn’t do much else. As I scrubbed, I realized how ridiculous I must have looked. Even if there was something important under the layer of paint, using my coat sleeve wasn’t going to reveal it.

I threw my coat down and cursed. “This is pointless. I don’t even know what we’re looking for.”

“Answers.”

“Answers to what, Mom? Some Ministry officers wanted Toft. They took him. If not for Odi, that wouldn’t be any of my business.”

“Someone tried to kill you.”

I threw my hands out. I felt breathless, lightheaded. “So what? I killed him instead. Does that count as some grand conspiracy?”

She folded her arms. “Is this making you feel any better?”

“No.” My voice buzzed in the corners of the empty room, like an echo in fast-forward. “It’s making me feel a whole bunch worse.”

One corner of her mouth curled up. I saw the laugh in her eyes before it broke loose. “You are too much, son.”

I ran my hands through my hair, which was all chunked up from sweat and plaster. “You raised me.”

“And I did a wonderful job, even if I do say so myself.” She came over to me, took both of my hands in hers, and gave them a little shake. “We have to think this through…”

“I am—”

“…calmly.”

Calm seemed impossible. But I did my best. I focused on the facts. All of them, not just the most recent.

“Goulet and his crew wanted you for something. That has to tie in somehow.”

“Because of my missing memories,” Mom said, and it felt dead on.

“Okay. Next bit. Vamps start going nuts in the streets.”

“And most of those vampires were gathered in a large nest.”

I nodded. “With six Ministry members hung up for snacks. At least four of which are involved in…” I pulled my hands free from Mom’s grasp and started pacing. I shrugged. “Involved in something that requires Toft.”

“Who,” Mom said slowly, “took the place as Detroit’s Elder after you killed Goulet.”

A buzz of excitement started humming at the back of my brain. I felt this leading somewhere, though I still couldn’t fathom what. “They need an old vamp. And they need you.” I stopped pacing, thoughts coming to a wall. “Why didn’t Able and company try to take you along with Toft?”

“Kidnapping an elder vampire is tricky enough,” Mom said. “They weren’t prepared for my presence.”

It made sense. It also bothered the hell out of me because it meant they might try to grab her again. I tried not to dwell on that, though. We still had unanswered questions that needed some damn quick answers.

“The panther tried to kill me. Whoever’s behind this has been trying to kill me all along. They want me out of the way. Make it easier to get to you. Plus, I guess I’ve pissed them off because I put a kink in things when I took Goulet off the board.”

“What about the rioting?”

Goulet’s dying words came back to me yet again.

If you let me die, you will set off the largest supernatural war this city has ever seen.

“The Ministry, or at least those involved in this, must have made some deal with the vamps. I can’t see any other reason why they would align themselves with an institution that’s been picking them off for centuries.”

Mom pursed her lips. Worry lines deepened around her eyes and mouth.

“Goulet told me his death would trigger a war. Having six Ministry captives was deliberate. A message.”

“You think they blame the Ministry for Goulet’s death?”

“I think Goulet was the only one keeping their arrangement intact. Without his lead, the vamps have no reason to trust the Ministry, no one to keep them loyal.”

Mom drew a hand down over her mouth. “This is the war.”

Chapter Thirty-Six

“I feel like we should just let them tear each other apart,” I said.

I had gotten used to the paint smell, but I could still feel it making me sick to my stomach. The pieces of the ugly puzzle Mom and I were putting together didn’t help.

“Except I doubt it will be that easy,” Mom said.

“Nothing ever is.”

I wandered to the window. It was situated up high, the bottom edge even with my chest. Staring out, the sunlight, washed out by the gray sky, hurt my eyes as if I were a vampire. I had to wonder if the vamp blood inside of me could create weird traits like that even though it couldn’t fully turn me with my magic holding it at bay.

I decided to believe the light hurt because my eyes were tired.

I squinted, which helped a little.

The window faced a court yard behind the apartment complex. Plastic playground equipment formed a cluster in the center, the grass around it worn away from heavy use. No kids played on it now. The spritz of water on the window explained why. At some point since we’d entered the apartment, it had started raining.

“The fact remains, Glass must have had something of value here. Something Able did not want us to find.” I turned away from the window to see the mess I’d made of the paint with my coat. I couldn’t make out anything underneath. And what had I expected to find. Hieroglyphs? A secret map?

I felt like I was trying to get a grip on a mirage. My hands just kept swiping through it.

“Maybe we should go,” I said. “I don’t think we’re going to find anything here.”

Mom didn’t answer.

She wasn’t in the room with me anymore.

I’d been so locked up in my thoughts, I hadn’t noticed her leave.

“Mom?”

I went out into the hall. Didn’t see her. I checked the bathroom, but the door was wide open. She wasn’t in there.

“Mom?”

My nerves jittered. Why wasn’t she answering?

I found her in the kitchen. The refrigerator door hung wide open, and Mom stood in front of it, holding something in her hands. Looked like a small book. She had it open and stared into it, transfixed. She was shivering, but I knew it wasn’t because of the cold fridge.

“Mom?” I said softly. “What is it?”

Slowly she lifted her gaze from the book and onto me. “He hid it in the ice maker,” she said. “I don’t know what possessed me to look in there. It was like I suddenly knew I would find something.”

I didn’t like the tight, hoarse sound to her voice. I got the sense she wasn’t breathing right. I crossed over to her and tried to pull the book from her grasp, but she clung so tightly to it, the tips of her fingers turned white. I let go and tried to see what I could from where I stood.

Looked like a leather-bound journal with a black cover. Over the top edge, I could glimpse what looked like a drawing. I could also see the pages didn’t have lines. Not much else, though.

Mom swallowed, and her throat clicked. “I remember this,” she said. Then she turned the journal around.

I had seen books like this before. Mages kept them. Kind of like their personal recipe books. But they contained notes and musings as much as they did spells. Mages typically had a great hunger for knowledge. They made great Ministry scholars.

Neat print covered one pages of the journal, each sentence perfectly straight despite the lack of lines. The writing was so small, I couldn’t make out a single word.

On the opposite page I found the drawing I’d glimpsed. The detail, the perspective, the shading all looked amazing. Yet I still didn’t fully understand what I was looking at. A bunch of feathers overlapping each other but without a bird, as if someone had peeled the bird’s skin with the feathers attached.

Mom saw my confusion.

“It’s a cloak of feathers,” she said. “More specifically, hummingbird feathers.”

Okay, weird. But what the hell did it have to do with anything? I was afraid to ask.

Mom told me anyway. “It’s an artifact. Said to belong to the Aztec god, Huitzilopochtli.”

Wow. That was a mouthful.

“It’s at the center of this whole nightmare,” she said. “And I’m the only living person who knows where it is.”

Chapter Thirty-Seven

There was more. But I wanted to get out of Glass’s apartment, fast. I couldn’t see any reason why Able would come back, but I also didn’t see any reason why he’d want to kidnap Toft Kitchens either. Best to not try outguessing his next move. I did not want him to know what we had found. It was the only advantage we had in this fucked -up situation.

Instead of calling a cab, I phoned Sly. He sent Green over, who showed up in Sly’s Cadillac. Mom and I climbed into a cloud of pot smoke. A roach still burned in the ashtray. I rode shotgun, and I was half tempted to take a toke from that roach. Then Mom reached her hand over the seatback and snapped her fingers.

“Hand me that blunt, kid.”

Green snickered, his eyes sleepy and bloodshot. He passed the joint. Mom took a long drag, then eased back in her seat with a sigh, smoke streaming out her nose.

By the time we reached Sly’s house, all three of us were high. But my buzz died as we pulled into the driveway. I remembered Odi was here, in his coffin in the basement, without a doubt still fighting for his life. I worried I would open his coffin and find nothing but dust.

If he didn’t get fed soon, that’s exactly what would happen.

On the way in, Mom sobered up some, too. Green had good stuff, but not good enough to cut through the gravity of what we faced. We’d need tequila for that, as long as we drank enough to pass out.

Sly greeted us at the door. His brow creased as we entered, and he took a deep sniff. “Whoa.”

“Yep,” I said.

“That bad, huh?”

On the phone, I had only mentioned to Sly that shit had gotten serious. I didn’t want to talk details on the phone. Paranoid, maybe. But I wasn’t taking chances.

Green headed into the living room, plopped himself in a recliner, and put on a Wings game. They were playing the Chicago Blackhawks and down by two, the slackers.

Sly, Mom, and I gathered around the kitchen table. He had a pair of Styrofoam containers holding tacos from El Charro’s, with their signature puffy shells. Between the pot munchies and a basic lack of food since the sparse continental breakfast at the hotel, I could have eaten all six tacos in front of me. Sly claimed to have eaten already, so I mowed my way through three, and Mom got the other three. It took us mere minutes to polish them off.

Sly put the empty containers in the recycling, and Mom pulled the journal from her back pocket and snapped it onto the table like a poker player laying down a royal flush.

Sly stared at it as he sat down again. But before he asked about the book, he asked us if we wanted to wash up first.

I had totally forgotten what we must have looked like after coming out of the shambles at the Black Rose. As soon as Sly mentioned it, I craved a good, long, super-hot shower. But we needed to get this out of the way first. We needed the whole story, or at least as much as Mom could remember.

“I don’t remember everything,” she started. Then she tapped the book with her finger. “But this helped me fill in a lot of gaps. Just looking at the sketch. And I…” She squeezed her eyes shut. Tears ran down her face. She held stiff for a moment, as if bracing herself against an incoming blow. Then she rolled her shoulders forward, bowed her head, covered her face with her hands, and cried.

I scooted my chair closer to hers and held her. Her body shook against me as she gasped between each sob.

I softly hushed.

Sly looked on, lips pressed together, a moist shine in his eyes.

The hockey game’s announcer on the TV rattled on in the background. Instead of annoying me, I actually got a little comfort from its utter normalcy. I could have used a whole lot of normal right then. We all could have.

After a short while, Mom recovered enough to talk again. She started with what I knew had caused her to break down.

“I remember why I killed your father,” she said, her red rimmed eyes focused on me. Tears still streaked her face. They had washed off the last bits of plaster dust on her cheeks. “I had to. But I was supposed to die, too.”

She might as well have been speaking in code. I heard what she said, but it didn’t penetrate. It couldn’t.

She picked up the journal and flipped to the page with the drawing. “This artifact,” she said and turned the book around to Sly could see. “Walter and I were assigned a dig in the Valley of Mexico. We weren’t given specifics, but we seldom were. The Ministry suspected a specific location might contain information or items pertinent to magical history. That was our job as scholars. Study the past, investigate the present, speculate on the future.

“So we took the assignment. We wouldn’t realize until later that Able and the others had arranged the expedition themselves. They knew, or hoped they knew, what we would find. And they were right: we found this.”

She lay the book flat and open, then pointed at the drawing. “The cloak of hummingbird feathers imbued with the power of the god Huitzilopochtli himself.”

Sly scratched his gray stubble. “What kind of power are we talking about here, Judith?”

“Huitzilopochtli was supposedly the god who commanded the Aztecs to move from Aztlan to the Valley of Mexico. His influence was unmatched. A whole people obeyed his will without question.”

“That doesn’t sound too farfetched when it comes to gods,” I said.

“Maybe not. But if a mortal had the same kind of influence?”

“Now that is crazy talk.”

Mom titled her head to one side. “Yet that’s what the cloak of Huitzilopochtli does. It projects an uncanny amount of…motivation, for lack of a better term. It’s not mind control. It’s more like mass persuasion.”

“So you couldn’t make a whole bunch of people start killing for you.”

“No. But you might have some luck influencing the voters in an election.”

My stomach dropped. “Is that what they’re planning?”

She laughed ruefully. “I wish that were all.”

That seemed like a pretty big deal to me. How could it get much worse?

Which was a question just asking for a nasty answer.

Green cried out. For a second, I thought something had attacked him. I twisted around to look at him in the living room. He had his fists up in the air. “Aw, yeah, baby!”

I checked the TV. The Wings had scored.

Thank you for the near heart attack.

He clearly wasn’t listening to a word from us. He’d baked himself good and thrown himself into sports land. The poor guy hadn’t had more than a passing familiarity with the paranormal until the vamp riots forced it right into his face. I couldn’t blame him for retreating into distraction. I was jealous, in fact.

I brought my attention back to Mom. “What are they planning?”

“The theory is…” She frowned, and her eyes took on a faraway look.

I waited until she was ready. I knew she was navigating memories she had been without for three years, memories that included her killing her own husband.

Mom wet her lips with her tongue, then charged on. “They have this insane notion. If an old and powerful vampire wore the cloak, they think the cloak’s reach could also stretch the reach of his thrall.”

A cold pit dropped in my stomach. I felt about ready to shit myself. “Now we know why they took Toft. Gods, that would make it mind control.”

“If it works.”

“Do you think it could?”

She hesitated. Her gaze shifted to Sly, then back to me. “If I didn’t think so, I wouldn’t have killed your father.”

Chapter Thirty-Eight

My tongue felt like chalk. Dizziness swooped over me. I gripped the edge of Sly’s kitchen table because I thought I might fall off my chair and straight through the floor. I felt heavy. A wrecking ball without a chain.

“Breathe, brother,” Sly said.

I looked at him as if he spoke Chinese. Had he not heard what Mom just said? What good would breathing do? My mother had admitting to killing my father…on purpose. I had kept a slice of hope that we’d learn it was all some horrible accident. Mom’s power gone wild or something. But that wasn’t the case. Not according to Mom. Not at all.

Mom clutched my wrist. “I’m so sorry, Sebastian.”

I swallowed. “Tell me.”

I couldn’t force out much else. Mom got it, though.

“When your father and I figured out what they were up to, we hid the cloak where no one else could find it. We thought we could keep it from them, and that would be the end of it. We had no idea how motivated they were.”

I thought back to my conversation with Goulet. He had claimed to be at the house when Dad was killed. He’d played coy about it, saying another powerful sorcerer had done it. Well, he hadn’t been lying. And now I had an idea of why he was there and what they were doing.

“They tortured you,” I said.

“We were scholars. We couldn’t have resisted them long. We both knew it. Able can be especially cruel when he needs to. So your father and I, we came to the same conclusion. We couldn’t let them go through with their plan.”

Was what Able planned so horrible that my parents would choose death instead of revealing the location of the cloak? “What are they going to do with it?”

“They mean to save Detroit,” she said with pure disdain. “Let the vampires enthrall the ‘less desirable’ populace and make them willing victims.”

Sly made a noise between a choke and a gasp.

I noticed the announcer wasn’t jabbering, and I couldn’t hear the general mix of cheers, slices, and clacks of hockey sticks from the TV either. I checked on Green.

He stared at us from the recliner, mouth hanging open, red eyes wide and frightened.

The smell of pot had seeped into my clothes, made me feel sick to my stomach.

I spoke slowly, trying to process what Mom had said using my own words. “They give over the poor neighborhoods to the vamps so they can wipe them out. So the vamps are fat and happy, and Detroit suddenly has a whole lot of prime real estate to gentrify. Which explains the mayor’s involvement.”

Though, according to Goulet, the mayor really had no idea what he had gotten himself involved with. The stupid fool.

“But why would Able care about any of this?” I asked.

“A stronger Detroit makes for a more effective Ministry,” Mom said. “And the bargain gives the Ministry a great deal of influence over the vampires. It’s purely political on all sides—mortal, magical, and undead.”

Sly cleared his throat a couple times, but his voice still came out hoarse when he asked, “How high in the Ministry does this go?”

A damn good question. I was glad Sly asked it, because I don’t think I would have had the heart.

“I haven’t any idea,” she said. “For all I know, even the prefect could be involved.”

I had to stand up, get my blood circulating. Unfortunately, my legs had turned to rubber, and I couldn’t. I rubbed my face with both hands, worked at my temples with my fingertips. The air got stuffy at some point. I wanted a breath of the wet October air, a nice chilly gulp to soothe my boiling blood.

“But if you and Dad were dead, they couldn’t find the cloak, and none of their scheme could go forward.”

“That’s right.”

“Which is what you meant when you said you were supposed to die, too.”

“Your father’s magic was always quieter than mine. But we’re both strong. It isn’t easy for a sorcerer to destroy themselves, let alone another one as powerful as Walter. I did my best, but…” She waved at hand. “You know the rest.”

It hadn’t killed her. Only damaged her enough to put her in a near-vegetative state for three years, until Sly had cooked up a potion that finally brought her out of the fugue. Which was why they had had Fiona watching her, in case Mom did wake up. Then they put the vamps on me to keep me out of the way. But the vampires decided they’d rather turn me than kill me. And if it weren’t for that, this whole thing would have ended a lot sooner, and not in our favor.

I was almost thankful for the vamp blood mixed with mine.

Okay, not really. But still…Yay, vamps, for fucking things up!

“I guess that leaves only one question,” I said, though I’d likely have a thousand unanswered questions about all of this until I died at the ripe old age of three-hundred. “Where’s the cloak?”

Her gaze drifted to the table. She stared at salt and pepper shakers, looked like she wanted to crawl into one of them and disappear. “I’m not sure I should…” She wiped a stray tear off her cheek. “It’s too dangerous for you to know. I don’t want what happened to us to happen to you.”

“I can put up a pretty good fight,” I said.

“They’ll hurt you, Sebastian. Badly. Better they kill you than you suffer their torture.”

“So what? You get to keep that burden on yourself? After all you’ve been through?”

She wiped at her face again, though most of her tears had evaporated. Her hand trembled. “No. I need to finish what I started.”

My intestines tied themselves into knots. “What the hell does that mean?” Which was a dumb question, because I wouldn’t have asked so angrily if I didn’t already know the answer.

“The cloak’s location needs to die with me.”

Chapter Thirty-Nine

I shot out of my seat. The chair skated across the linoleum and tipped when it hit the line where the tiles ended and the living room carpet began. It made a dull thump when it landed.

“Enough,” I shouted. “Enough of this insanity.”

Sly and Mom stared up at me with enough worry between them to last a lifetime.

“You can’t,” I said. “I will not lose you again.”

“Sebastian, there’s no other way.”

“There is always another way.” I backed away from the table. Pins and needles flooded from my heels to my groin. My knees felt ready to snap. I staggered like a drunk before coming up against the kitchen counter. I leaned against the Formica surface to keep from toppling. “Always,” I whispered.

Slowly, Mom rose. Through the growing wetness in my eyes, she looked like a specter, a visitor from another plane of existence. The light formed a starburst along one side of her, made her glow. She approached me.

I sidled along the length of the counter to move away from her.

“Don’t give me some bullshit lecture about how I need to accept this. I won’t accept it. I will kill every last one of them, before I let anything happen to you. I’ll bring down the entire Detroit arm of the Ministry. I’ll burn the prefect himself if I have to.”

She stopped coming at me. “So you would become just like them?”

I snarled. “I said no bullshit reasoning.” Spittle flicked off my lips. I was totally losing it, could feel my sway toward madness. With it came the hot ember of my magic flaring in my belly. I could already see Able and the two women writing in pain as my fire charred their skin, melted out their eyeballs. Then I saw myself conjure a hurricane to throw the prefect through the window of his Renaissance Center office and down the forty stories until he made a stain on the ground below.

I clenched my fists. The blue flames sparked around them all on their own.

“Shit, brother,” Sly said. “Get hold of yourself.”

I snapped my head around to glare at him. “Are you on her side, then? You want her to commit suicide to keep some stupid artifact hidden?”

He held out his hands. “I didn’t say that. But you look ready to kill us all.”

I raised my fists in front of me and looked down at the blaze that surrounded them. I didn’t bother trying the calming tricks. I forced the flames to die with angry will. The act shot sparks of pain up my spine and straight into the back of my neck. I nearly dropped to my knees, but used the counter to help keep my feet again.

“We’ll destroy it,” I said. “You said it’s made of hummingbird feathers? Should burn easily.”

Mom took a single stop forward. She reached out to me, but there was too much distance between us. “Don’t you think we would have thought of that? There isn’t a way to destroy it. We searched for some ritual or place that could. We found nothing.”

“It can’t be indestructible,” I snapped. “Every artifact has its Mount Doom, the pit of flames to cast it in.”

“The hummingbird feathers are the feathers of a god. We came to the conclusion that only another god could rend it apart.”

“Then we summon a god.”

The words came out my mouth before the rational part of my brain could stop me. Gods weren’t like demons. You couldn’t just call one down with a ritual. The gods did as they pleased without any concern for the will of mortals—unless our will entertained them in some way.

Mom didn’t correct me. She knew I knew better.

“This is so fucked up.”

I turned toward the voice. Green stood at the edge of the kitchen. He had lifted the tipped chair and righted it. He had lost some of the slack-jawed stoner gape. The pot couldn’t keep even him numbed enough to sit back. “You can’t let your mom just…die.”

I spat a short laugh. “Tell that to her.”

“Judith,” Sly said tentatively. “Sebastian's right.”

Mom studied us each in turn. “You boys realize I don’t want to die. There’s just no other way to keep the cloak out of their hands.”

“This is different than before,” I said. “They don’t have you like they did. If they can’t get to you, they can’t get to the cloak. Fuck the cloak, all right? You are the precious artifact here. You are the one we need to protect.”

Her mouth curled slightly. It would have been a total Mona Lisa smirk if not for the sparkle in her eyes. “I’d rather not be referred to as an artifact. I’m not that old.”

My simmering magical energy cooled some.

“But you are precious,” I said.

I pushed away from the counter, crossed to her, and hugged her tightly. I could feel her own stirred magic against me. We’d both let our emotions get the better of us. After a few seconds, though, we let our power sink back to its natural state, always ready to wield, but safely held in place until needed.

We parted, shared a smile.

“So,” she said. “I’m your artifact. What are you going to do with me?”

“I wish we had someone in the Ministry we could trust,” I said. “Someone who could give us a better idea of what we’re up against.”

Sly snorted. “Good luck, brother.”

I made a face at him. “Not helpful.”

“Sebastian, what about Markus?”

Oh, yeah. The first cat who had tried to kill me. “After what happened between us, I’m not sure he’s someone we can count on for help.”

“He was protecting that house,” she said. “He was looking for who was behind what happened there. He’s looking for the same thing we are.”

It sounded good. It also sounded too easy. And there was still that whole cat connection. “You think the fact that he shifts into a cat like Glass did, and they both attacked me, that it’s a coincidence?”

Sly scrunched up his face. “Cats? What cats?”

I guess we hadn’t had a chance to tell about that part. “Ask me again some time.”

“Markus is part druid,” Mom said. “We know now Glass was a mage. He must have been a practicing Animagus. It’s a completely different thing.”

“It’s still the same kind of animal.”

“A panther is not a cougar.”

“Now you’re just splitting hairs.”

“You know what?” I held up my hands. “Let’s forget it. Going to anyone in the Ministry is a bad idea. I should never have mentioned it.”

“We can’t face the conspirators on our own, Sebastian. Your instincts are right. We need our own man on the inside. And if Markus were at all involved, I would have remembered.”

“Unless he never told you.”

She paused, put a hand on her hip, and looked me over. “This isn’t about Markus at all, is it?”

I narrowed my eyes. “What are you talking about?”

“This is about Fiona. Her betrayal.”

“This has nothing to do with her.”

But was that true? I hadn’t thought much about Fiona since Mom told me she’d killed Dad. I had gathered a lot on my plate since then. She was sitting in a corner of my subconscious, though, wasn’t she? All the times we’d made love. The first time she trusted me enough to shapeshift into her tiger form in front of me. The extreme level of care she had given Mom when Mom had been stuck in the nursing home.

All of that sullied by the truth—that none of it was real, all just a ploy to get close to me and Mom, to report on us, to set us up.

I wandered to the table and dropped into the chair next to the spot the one I’d kicked away had stood. I rested my elbows on the table and held my head in my hands.

Sly’s chair scraped against the tiles as he pulled himself close. “We’ve got to trust someone, brother. The only other option is going on the run for the rest of your life. These folks don’t sound like they’re gonna give until they get what they want. Especially when it’s brought on a war with the vamps.”

“Or there’s my plan,” Mom said right behind me.

I glared at her over my shoulder. “Not even funny.”

Her dead stare said clearly she wasn’t joking.

So our options were…

Run away.

Kill Mom.

Trust Markus.

I grunted. “Fine. We’ll feel him out. If he can give us any sense of who’s working for Able and who isn’t, that would go a long way.”

“Good,” Mom said.

“But,” I added, and pointed at her. “You are going to do some more research on how we might destroy the cloak.”

“You’ll need me with you to talk to Markus.”

I thought about their extra closeness in the limo. I did not want to see that shit again. Besides, I had better reason for wanting her to stay behind. “You’re biased toward him. It’s better to have a skeptic talk to him. I need to make sure he’ll root for our side. I just need you to set up the meet.”

She sighed, nodded.

I turned to Sly. “Do whatever you can to help her. If we can blow that fucking thing up, this all goes away.”

“Right,” he said. “There’s just one last thing.”

I didn’t like his tone. I’d had enough bad news, for the gods’ sake. “What?”

“Odi.”

Chapter Forty

The stairs down to Sly’s basement creaked underfoot. The basement was finished. Drywall, carpeting, a pool table, an old projection television right out of the ‘80s, Sly’s favorite decade. Framed photos of Michael Jackson, Devo, Lita Ford, and a number of interchangeable hair bands adorned the walls, some of them autographed.

Unlike the rest of his house, the smell of marijuana permeated the space. An IKEA coffee table in front of the TV had a water bong on it about the height of a toddler. I didn’t go over and sniff it, but I had little doubt the leather sofa would positively reek.

Sadly, a few of Sly’s ode to the ‘80s pictures had hung on the now scorched wall and hadn’t survived Odi’s flames.

In front of the blackened wall, Sly had, appropriately, put down Odi’s casket.

I crossed the basement, rounded the pool table, drawing my fingers across the soft felt, then crouched next to the coffin. It had lost its shine in the process of taking it out of Toft’s lair. I created a curved streak through the dust with my hand, then wiped my hand clean on my pants. Who cared? They were already a mess.

“I’m sorry, man. I don’t know what to do with you. I can’t…I can’t just bring you a sacrifice to feed on. Would pig blood do it?”

I didn’t know, and Odi wasn’t offering any answers through the lid of his coffin. I did know they drank it socially. Barry had kept a supply at the switch, would pour it into wine glasses, and his undead customers would drink it up and make their lips glisten as if covered in cherry sauce.

Thinking of Barry depressed me more than I already was.

This was the kind of situation the term FUBAR was made for.

Where could I get pig blood on such short notice? Make a trip to the butcher? Hello, I need four gallons of pig blood, or cow blood if you’ve got it.

Honestly, I doubted it would work well enough to revive him. He needed good, strong blood from…

“Holy shit,” I whispered. I touched the puckered scar from not one, but two separate vamp bites. One from a vamp sent to capture and turn me. The other from Goulet himself, in yet another attempt to corrupt my soul.

That first time, I ended up drinking the blood of a vampire, infecting myself with it. Hence the magical brand on my shoulder to hold it back. After that, rumors started among the undead. Because of the impossible mix of vampire and mortal blood inside of me, my blood was thought to be stronger somehow. It could have been bullshit. After all, it hadn’t helped Goulet stay alive after I unloaded a full mag of silver rounds into his chest.

If it were true? Maybe I could use it to help Odi.

Then, I’m gonna kick his ass for nearly killing us all.

I eased the coffin open. The hinges barely made a sound. I didn’t have to worry about sunlight. The basement only had shallow glass block windows in three places at the top edge of the walls, and Sly had tacked up towels to keep out what little light they let seep through.

Odi lay like a corpse, especially pale against the casket’s blue lining. He was still vamped out. His mouth hung open slightily, giving me a glimpse of his stubby fangs. The vampire equivalent of baby teeth. The hole in his throat had closed to a black spot like a cancerous blotch on the skin. Gross, yes. But at least I couldn’t see inside anymore.

His chest looked a little less concave. I gently pushed on his breastbone and felt a squishy give. If it hurt him, he was too conked out to notice. He didn’t so much as twitch.

If I was going to feed him, I needed to wake him up. I didn’t want to shake him awake. If I startled him, he might attack me. As wounded and out of is as he was, he might fall to his baser vampire instincts. I’d offer him my blood, but I was going to do it on my own terms.

I looked around the basement. My eyes locked on a rack attached to the wall nearest the pool table that held a number of cues. I got the longest of them and stood back from Odi’s coffin, as far as I could while staying close enough to poke him. I probably looked ridiculous. I didn’t care. I would have rather had the proverbial ten-foot pole to touch him with. Alas, a trip to Home Depot wasn’t on the schedule for the day.

I played dirty, because I didn’t have time to waste.

I poked him right in the healing wound in his throat. And I didn’t hold back. I jabbed him a good one.

He snapped awake snarling. Bloody foam flung off his lips. His lips peeled so far back I could clearly see his gray gums. He came out of it so quickly, I didn’t have a chance to pull the pool cue back, and he grabbed it, yanked it out of my hands, nearly bringing me down with it, and would have if I hadn’t let go.

He broke the cue in half and threw the pieces wildly.

One half whizzed over my head.

I ducked.

The other half went harmlessly clattering into a far corner.

Odi’s gaze met mine. The red glow in his eyes turned to pinpricks, the rest of his eyes pure black. From a distance, it looked like a pair of black widow spiders had crawled into his eye sockets.

The air seemed to drop ten degrees. My heart kicked. I drew on the power of the wind and used it to form a shield in front of me. If he launched at me, I could easily block him. I couldn’t keep him from getting hurt, though. If he came at me hard, his vampire strength could work against him, and he might end up breaking a bone or two.

Despite the flash of rage, Odi stayed put. Instead of attacking, he clutched at his sunken chest and screeched in that skull-splitting way only vamps could do. He was too hurt to attack. Which was saying something, because I had seen vampires with missing limbs and half their faces burned off lash out more fiercely than if they’d not been injured at all.

I let my shield drop.

“Odi.”

He hissed at me between his fangs like a feral cat.

“It’s me. It’s Sebastian. Your Jedi master.”

He cocked his head. The red in his eyes expanded like glowing pupils.

“Come on, padawan. Snap out of it.”

For ten seconds or so he stared at me. Then he blinked a few times. His fangs retracted. His skin smoothed and took on a little more color. And, finally, his eyes cleared. He looked like the goofy teen I knew and…liked.

The confusion on his face quickly scrunched up into bald pain. He groaned and dropped onto his side. The coffin door shimmied and almost fell closed. “Ah, fuck. God, fuck.”

I approached him and knelt down beside the coffin. “Odi.”

“What did I do? What the hell did I do?”

“I ain’t gonna sugar coat it. You went ape shit, kid.”

He snuffled and writhed, bumping his head a couple times against the inside wall of the coffin. “I’m dying.”

“Probably feels that way, but you’re a vampire now. For you guys, dying’s a little harder than it looks.”

He gritted his teeth and looked up at me. “Are you enjoying this?”

“You almost killed my mom. So, yeah, I’m savoring.”

“Oh, God.” He kicked at the inside of the coffin like he wanted to break it apart. The thing was made of pretty stern wood, though. This wasn’t some cheap pine box.

“You’re a vampire, Odi. God’s not going to help you.” I didn’t mean it as a barb, but it sounded like one, and Odi reacted in kind.

He shot his hand out, grabbed the front of my shirt, and yanked me down until he had me right in his face. “Stop. Talking.”

His breath smelled like rot. Made me wonder if there was more severe internal damage.

“Fair enough,” I said.

He let me go and went back to squirming in agony.

I stayed close. “I want to say one quick thing, then I’ll shut up.”

He sneered at me. But he didn’t object, so I went with it.

“You need to feed, or it’s going to take you forever to heal.” I kept back the part about how he might die first. He didn’t need to know that. “I want you to feed on me.”

His kicking, his groaning, his cringing all stopped at once. He stared up at me as if I’d asked if I could examine his prostate. “Are you fucking kidding me?”

I shook my head, then I held out my wrist. “Goulet seemed to think my blood had special properties for vampires. Drink.”

“I…I can’t.”

“Sure you can. Just pretend I’m one of the puppets Toft brings you at meal time.”

“You don’t understand.” His face scrunched up in pain again. He pressed a fist against his chest as if holding it in place. “I’ve never…I’ve never fed on a human.”

My mouth dropped open. I think I blubbered a bit.

Never fed on a human? How was that possible? Why?

I didn’t need to ask the questions. Odi knew what they were.

“Toft didn’t want me to. He said…something about keeping me pure.”

Pure.

Man, I had been hit with so many crazy things lately, my brain simply could not accept this one.

Memory full. Please delete applications to make space for new programs.

“What have you been eating?”

“Toft’s blood.”

“You can do that?”

“Blood is blood.” He grimaced against a new shot of pain. He looked so miserable I had some sympathy pains. Especially one spiking through my head. “At least, that’s what Toft says.”

I knew Toft fed on humans. Supposedly willing donors. So, technically, wasn’t Odi drinking human blood via Toft? I did not understand the depths of vampire physiology enough to even guess. You didn’t need to know the digestive system of the undead in order to turn them into dust.

I didn’t have time to learn about it either.

“Well, I hate to take your virginity without buying you dinner first… Oh, wait. Yeah, never mind.” I bent back my hand to give him a cleaner shot at my wrist. “Just drink.”

He clamped his mouth shut and shook his head like a two-year-old who didn’t want to eat his broccoli.

“We don’t have time for this, Odi. If you give a damn about Toft and want to get him back, you need your strength. This is one-hundred percent prime Unturned blood, motherfucker. Not just any vamp can get shit this good.”

He snorted, even managed a smirk. “Are you sure?”

“Don’t ask me that. Just bite me already.”

He looked at my wrist, and I nearly reared back when I saw the hunger in his eyes. He licked his lips, then peeled them back to expose his fangs. I braced myself.

Odi sank his teeth in and started guzzling.

Chapter Forty-One

The face Sly made when I came upstairs with my arm all bloody and fang holes in my wrist almost made me laugh. His eyes went so wide, another centimeter more and I might have caught a glimpse of his brain behind them. His jaw hung loose, not much unlike Green’s did went he was stoned to the gills. In fact, I felt pretty confident Sly would be hitting that bong downstairs first chance he got.

“What did you do?” he asked when he caught me in the hall before I reached the kitchen.

“Don’t ask stupid questions, Sly. It’s not your style.”

“Brother, you’re out of your mind.”

“Be that as it may, Odi is now making a very, very quick recovery.”

Sly furled his brow. The door to the basement was right behind him. He glanced over his shoulder, then turned back to me. “How quick is very, very?”

“Pretty very, dude.”

Sly jumped at the sound of Odi’s voice. He clutched at his chest. When he spun around to face Odi, Sly’s short ponytail whipped by my face and would have whacked me if it had been any longer.

The kid, standing in the doorway to the stairs, now free of the shadows, grinned. “Hey, Sly.”

“You…” Sly looked Odi up and down. Outside of the kid’s ripped up clothes and the blood on him—some of it mine—you wouldn’t have known he’d been hurt at all.

“Me,” Odi said. He pointed down the hall. “All right if I use your bathroom?”

Sly nodded quickly.

“Odi,” I said, stopping him. “It’s not dusk quite yet.”

“Oh, right. Should I go back downstairs?”

“For now. I’ll pick up some new clothes for you before you wake up. You can wash up then.”

“Get some clothes for you, too,” he said, nodding at my own wrecked ensemble.

“I plan on it.”

Sly gaped down the stairwell as Odi retreated back to his coffin. He didn’t say anything until Odi cleared the last step. “What the holy fuck, brother?”

“I notice we’re swearing a lot more,” I said. “Stress, you think?”

“Cut the bull…” He wrinkled his nose, then growled impatiently. “Crap. Shit. Poop. Whatever. You need to tell me what happened.”

“Isn’t it obvious? I gave Odi a dose of Unturned blood, and it worked wonders.”

He squinted at me, studied my face. “You’re damn pale. How much did he drink?”

“More than Goulet,” I said. “More than any other vamp. But not any more than he needed.”

“Are you sure about that?”

“Don’t nag me about it. Help me wrap this thing up and think of a story to tell Mom.”

I heard Mom clear their throat behind me. So it was my turn to jump at the sudden appearance of someone at my back.

“I think I got the story just fine,” she said.

“I know this sounds gross,” I said. “But I need to get my arm tended before Odi’s clotting saliva wears off and I bleed all over Sly’s nice carpet.”

That got them to stop bugging me.

With Sly’s help, I cleaned, gauzed, and wrapped up my wrist. Then I hummed a little magic into it. Sleep and a good meal would take care of the rest.

Mom stood right outside the bathroom when we emerged. The look on her face was all mom. When I was little and did something especially naughty, she would threaten to “get her spoon,” which was a standard wooden cooking spoon. Once, she had paddled me so hard with it, it had snapped in half against my ass. We had a good laugh about it, then I was sent to bed without dinner.

Right now, I thought she might whip out her spoon and start beating me with it.

“Look, Mom. I need him well. Not just because I’m sworn to him. I need his help.”

“The kind of help he gave us at Toft’s?”

“No,” I said. “The kind of help he gave us at the nest.”

Technically, the same kind of help. Just worked out better the first time. But Mom took my message and backed off.

The three of us were all huddled in the hallway. It was a little stuffy. I desperately wanted to suck on some fresh air.

“What now, brother?”

A wave of fatigue hit me all at once, as if my body had answered Sly’s question on its own.

“Rest,” I said. “For all of us. Then we set up the meet with Markus and you two hit the books.”

“And Odi?” Mom asked.

“He’s backup.”

Chapter Forty-Two

We slept until ten, well after dusk. Mom took the couch. I kicked back in the recliner. Green took off for his own bed at home, and I doubted we’d see him again for a while.

When my eyes fluttered open, I sensed the tail end of a dream slip away from memory. I couldn’t recall anything except the feeling it left me—a feeling of hope. My subconscious must have been deluded, because the odds were well stacked against us. The memories of real life soon crowded out the hope. I was sad to see it go.

First thing I did was check my arm. I unwrapped it and peeled away the gauze that had become pasted to the wound with thick, dry blood. But underneath all that coagulated blood, the bite mark had disappeared except for a pair of pin-prick scars.

I let Sly and Mom sleep while I cleaned up. Then I started coffee brewing.

Sly must have heard me up and moving. He shuffled into the kitchen scratching his bare chest. He wore a pair of gray sweatpants and gym socks. His ponytail was undone and his salt and pepper hair stuck out on one side of his head. “Brother,” he muttered, then went to the counter to stare at the coffee maker as if he could will it to work faster with the power of his mind.

Mom woke up right as I started pouring the coffee. The three of us sat at the table in total silence. We had a big day ahead of us, and I think we were all storing our energy.

Sly offered to make a late night breakfast, but I passed. I needed to grab some clean clothes for me and Mom from the hotel, hit a twenty-four-hour Meijer to buy a cheap outfit for Odi, and, while doing all that, think about what I was going to say to Markus Hope when we met.

It felt strange running errands at night when I had only just woken up and felt like it should be morning. I was on a vampire’s schedule.

I got all the clothes we needed, including new coats for me (just a Docker’s pea coat, nothing fancy) and Mom. Alas, I still hadn’t come up with some magical interview questions for Markus that would tell me whose side he was really on. I would have to play that by ear.

Everyone dressed and feeling human again—or undead, in Odi’s case—we had one last sit down. Three Jet’s pizzas, Detroit-style deep dish, and a couple two liters of Pepsi. Obviously, Odi was already full, and pizza would not agree with his undead system. Sly had a couple pieces. Mom and I ate the rest. Sorcerers had some of the most ravenous appetites when they needed to operate at full power. I had to recoup the energy I’d used in my sleep to heal my wound, which didn’t amount to much. But I also needed to make up for all the magic I’d used at Toft’s to pull Mom and Odi out from the wreckage. Not to mention the juice I had used to help burn down the nest.

Long fucking day.

Mom had called Markus while I was out and set up the meet.

“Please,” she said before I left. “Give him an honest chance. Don’t let what happened with Fiona make you a cynic. There are good people in our community.”

I gave her a noncommittal grunt and headed out.

Dodge Park sat across the street from the Sterling Heights Library and the police station. Dodge Road pretty much ended at the park. I had come here a lot as a kid, though plastic had long since replaced the metal and hard wood play structure I remembered. As you pulled into the front lot, you were greeted by a large open span of grass with a hill that sloped away toward the playground and beyond to the wooded area that hid a number of biking and walking trails. Large trees also dotted the open area, providing shade for some of the picnic tables.

At night, I could hardly see any of it from the parking lot except what the headlights on Sly’s Caddy illuminated as I pulled in. The park was closed after dark, but they didn’t have a gate or anything to keep me from entering. I knew this ahead of time because in high school I would take girls here for “walks” in the moonlight. The platform at the top of the curly slide had made a great place to make out.

Only one other car sat in the lot. An SUV of some kind. I couldn’t make out details in the dark.

I took the spot three down from the SUV.

I checked the rearview mirror to make sure the Caddy’s back seat looked empty. I saw what I was supposed to see—nothing but shadow.

When I got out of the Caddy, Markus Hope climbed out of the SUV. No limo this time, and he was driving himself. Poor Arbiter Hope was slumming it.

He stayed by his car while I rounded the back of mine. A crisp wind tugged at the bottom of my coat and flapped it around my knees. The buttons on the new coat only came so high, leaving the cold air to sneak in around my neck and upper chest. If the temps kept dropping like they had been, I’d need a scarf. Just one more inevitable step toward the bitter winter.

Once around the Caddy, I stopped.

Enough light from the nearest buildings, including the police station, allowed me to see his silhouette and the barest hint of his face. I realized I might have made a false assumption that this was Markus Hope. Maybe he had sent someone else, some Ministry underling, to do his dirty work and finally take Sebastian Light off the board.

The reason I had wanted the meeting at Dodge Park was because of its proximity to the cops. Not that they would know what to do if a magical throwdown started across the street. But it still might discourage an attack. I clenched one fist anyway, ready to toss fire at the first sign of trouble.

“Mr. Light,” the figure said, and I recognized Markus’s voice.

But I didn’t relax my hand.

“Arbiter Hope. Thank you for meeting me.”

“I have to admit. I’m baffled about the clandestine nature of this meeting. You’ll forgive me if I’m suspicious.”

“You trust my mom, don’t you? She’s the one who asked you to meet me.”

“Yes. I trust Judith. I also think she trusts you enough not to question your motives.”

I tucked my hands into my coat pockets, one still in a fist, and hunched against another icy gust. The air smelled like exhaust from the road, which was pretty close to the park’s front lot. Kind of ruined the nature vibe, but I wasn’t here to hike trails or have a picnic.

“Mom knows my motives. This meeting is more her idea than mine. Because she trusts you.”

He laughed. My eyes were adjusting to the dark, and I could make out his smile. “Trust, trust, trust. Should we skip the dancing, then, and get to the point?”

I didn’t like the distance between us. Well, I had mixed feelings about it anyway. The gap kept me out of immediate reach in case he initiated an attack. But I also couldn’t see him clearly enough to look for the usual cues that might tell me if he were lying or not.

I decided to start by trying to throw him off balance. “You part of a killer cat club?”

My night vision had sharpened enough now so I could see his thick eyebrows knit together. “Are you out of your mind? What does that even mean?”

“You tried to kill me while in the form of a cougar.”

“And I’ve already explained why.”

“Another Ministry officer, in the form of a panther, also tried to kill me. Is that a coincidence?”

His eyes widened. “Did you say a panther?”

“Yep.”

Without warning, he strode toward me.

I yanked my fist out of my coat pocket, held it out at my side, and pushed my power into it. I had it lit for all of three seconds when Markus waved a hand, “Oh, please,” and the fire winked out. That had only happened to me once before. A powerful little goblin had done the same trick.

He trudged up to me, stopping only a foot away. I could see him clearly now, from the top of his thick dark hair, to his sport coat with a t-shirt underneath, and his loose slacks and loafers. I would have been shivering if all I had on was a sport coat, but the October air didn’t seem to bother him at all.

He narrowed his eyes and peered at me as if he thought I could be an illusion. He tugged at his goatee, seemed to come to some decision, and backed off a couple steps.

“A black panther?”

I nodded, feeling a little lost.

His gaze drifted away and lost focus on any one thing. “Ira,” he whispered.

“You knew him?”

His eyes snapped back to me. “Knew?”

“He’s dead.”

He sighed, hung his head. I got the feeling he wasn’t surprised by the news. I made sure not to add any more details about me being the one who killed him.

“He went missing about a week ago,” he said. “Several members did.”

“Was some guy named Able one of them, too?”

His brow formed so many lines, he seemed to age before me. “How do you know all of this?”

It would have been easy to keep going, answer his questions, tell him as much as I could without implicating myself with Glass’s murder. I reined myself in, though. His concern appeared real enough. But Fiona’s love had also seemed real, and that hadn’t worked out so well.

“Those wards you put on the house where my dad was killed? You set those up to catch his killer?”

“I’m not lying to you, Sebastian. I sure wish you would answer my questions. As it stands, it would be my duty to take you in for a formal interview at the Ministry offices.”

I laughed. “Interview? You mean interrogation.”

“I don’t know why you’re being so aggressive with me. I’ve been nothing but forthright with you. I am not your enemy, no matter what you’ve gotten yourself involved with.”

“Do you know what I’m involved with?”

“For the heavens’ sake, I haven’t a clue.”

I studied his face, focused on his eyes, examined the set of his mouth, the slight tilt to his head. I had to face a nasty fact. Short of hiring a psychic to read his mind, I would either have to trust him without any proof that he might betray me, or walk away.

I ground my teeth. I kept seeing Fiona at Goulet’s side, felt the twist in my guts as I learned she’d been working for him all along. I could even smell the animal-like musk she left behind after we made love. A primal scent that aroused me more than it bothered me.

I almost got in Sly’s Cadillac and left Markus in a cloud of exhaust. But Mom truly trusted him. And my mother was no fool. Not like I had been falling for Fiona.

To hell with it.

“I’m about to trust you with my mother’s life,” I said. “If you truly care about her like you claim, you need to know that. She’s as good as dead if you cross me.”

He gave me a hard stare. “I would die for your mother.”

That reminded me of the touchy, lovey display they had shown when I’d first met him. Much as I didn’t want to think about it, I felt pretty sure he had once had a thing with Mom. I didn’t know if it was before she married Dad, or after. And right now, it didn’t matter. If anything, it gave me just enough to finally trust bringing him in on this.

I really hoped I wasn’t wrong.

“It’s getting cold out here,” I said. “There’s a Denny’s on Hall Road, just east of Schoenherr. Meet me there.”

Chapter Forty-Three

I insisted on a corner booth at the back meant to seat eight even though we were a party of two. I convinced the hostess with a pair of twenties. She guided us back, took our drink orders, and promised that our server, Steve, would be right with us.

I asked for a coffee.

Markus went with root beer of all things.

“Give me as much as you can before Steve arrives,” Markus said, voice low.

It was close to midnight, but the twenty-four-hour diner had a fair share of its tables occupied, including a table of three male loud talkers nearest us, probably early drunks on their way to a club after mowing down some Moons Over My Hammy or Grand Slam breakfasts.

The smell of grease and something burnt on the griddle hung at the edges. My stomach growled even though I’d had a whole pizza not too long ago. There was always room for diner food.

The busy noise was actually a good thing. It would mask our own conversation.

“None of the missing Ministry members reported what had happened to them?”

“I hadn’t heard. Someone else might have, though. I’m an arbiter. Their report would have gone to the Guardians first.”

“I found six officers strung up as feed bags for a nest of vamps in an old office building in Troy. Able was one of them. As was Glass.”

Markus stared at me, lips parted. I could see the wheels turning. He was trying to decide if I was fucking with him. “I want to say you’re mistaken or a fool.”

I smirked. “But?”

“The vampire aggression in the past couple weeks…” He rubbed a hand over his mouth and down the length of his goatee. “That they would dare target representatives of the Ministry astonishes me. And yet, it’s hard to deny, given the circumstances. And I can’t fathom why you would make up such a story.”

Steve (though his name badge read “Steph”) came with my coffee and Markus’s pop. He asked us if we were ready to order and looked devastated when we said we were happy with the drinks for now. He didn’t nag us about it, though.

I took a sip of the coffee. It tasted like tree bark, but my body appreciated the zap of caffeine.

Then I went for it. I told Markus everything, going back as far as my near turn, through the details of my battle with Goulet and the things he told me before dying. I described the role of the Maidens of Shadow and their effort to restore Mom’s memories. I stopped just short of Mom’s realization that she had killed Dad.

Markus noticed me holding back instantly.

“What did she remember?” he asked, almost breathless.

I did not like his eagerness. I hesitated.

He slid aside his untouched glass of root beer so he could lean on the table and move in closer to me. “Sebastian, I have waited for this information for a very long time. I won’t lie to you. I want vengeance for what happened to Judith and Walter. Those wards I planted were outside of the Ministry’s eye. This is personal to me, and the Ministry need not know a damn thing about it.”

Whoa. I hadn’t expected that. This guy was speaking my language now. I wanted to reach across the table and shake his hand. I settled for a devious smile. “That’s a good thing,” I said. “Because it was the Ministry, or at least a part of it, who was responsible.”

He drew back. “Impossible.”

“Your pals Able and Ira were in on it. So was Goulet.”

“The vampire? That doesn’t make any sense.”

“It does if you know what they want to accomplish.”

I told him the rest. I even trusted him enough to tell him that Mom was the one who killed Dad and how her spell was meant to kill them both to keep the conspirators from getting their hands on Huitzilopochtli’s cloak. The deeper I went into the details, the lower his jaw opened and the wider his eyes grew. His thick black eyebrows became the unibrow they seemed destined to be. I noticed him grasping the edge of the table, knuckles white.

When I finished with it all, he didn’t say anything for a long while.

The loud talkers shouted about their most recent drunk bowling scores. One of the guys bragged about the number of gutter balls his “drunk ass” threw. All three of them howled with laughter.

Steph eyed us as he swung by with a tray full of steaming plates towards another table.

“I don’t even know what to say.” Markus’s voice came out in a rasp, almost inaudible against the drunk bowlers club. “It explains the vampire behavior. They feel betrayed. It explains…” He blinked and shook his head. “It explains a lot. But not the kind of explanation I could have imagined in a million centuries.”

I let the story sink in a little more before I asked the key question, the reason for this whole meeting.

“So,” I asked, “can you help us?”

“You’re asking me to turn against my brothers and sisters in the Ministry.”

“No. I simply need you to find out who’s behind this, how deep it goes, and if there are any others we can trust to help bring these motherfuckers down.”

His dark eyes stared at the middle distance between us, I think visualizing various scenarios, one of them, I hoped, involving his revenge on those who had pushed my mother to such a desperate point, she had tried to kill herself and the man she loved.

Steph came by, clasped his hands together, and smiled big. He opened his mouth.

I stopped him there. “No.”

“Uh—”

“No. Leave.”

His cheese ball smile faltered. All his customer service training couldn’t keep him from breaking into a sneer. “Whatever.” He stormed off, grumbling to himself.

Markus’s gaze withdrew from his thoughts and pinned to me. “You’re a brave young man,” he said. “You’ve faced off against the city’s most powerful vampire and came away victorious. You’ve defeated the undead infection in your blood. And now, you stand willing to fight against a branch of the most powerful institution in the world.”

“Brave or stupid. Either way, I’m going to do whatever I can to protect my mom. Or die trying.”

“Indeed.” He folded his hands in front of him on the table, straightened his posture. “And so will I.”

Chapter Forty-Four

I climbed behind the wheel of Sly’s Caddy, pulled the door shut, and let out a shaky sigh. I’d done it. I’d given a member of the Ministry all the information the Ministry would need to get to Mom. I felt a strange sort of relief about it as much as I did worry. It was the ultimate step toward bringing this all to an end, and I honestly had a feeling I’d done the right thing enlisting Markus’s aid.

“You okay?” Odi asked, materializing from the shadows in the back seat.

I nodded. “He’s agreed to help.”

“And you trust him?”

“I have to. Without someone on the inside, we’re fighting blind. We need to know who’s involved and what their exact plans are. We need to go on offense instead of all this defense.”

“So while we wait for him to do his part, what do we do?”

I started the engine and put the car in gear. “Hopefully Mom and Sly have figured out a way to destroy that thing. After that, the rest should come easy.”

I twisted in my seat to look behind me while I backed up. I noticed Odi’s tense expression and kept my foot on the break.

“What about Toft?” he asked. “If you destroy the cloak, you’ve got no reason to get him back. And they have no reason to let him live.”

“Do you want him back?”

“I need him. Pretty obvious. I doubt any other vampires are gonna want to adopt me.” He smiled, but it didn’t touch his sad eyes. “I’ll be orphaned for the third time in my life. How pathetic is that?”

“Not going to happen,” I said. “We’ll get him back.”

“Really?” This surprise in his voice broke my heart. What he said next broke it again. “Because if they kill him, you’re free of your oath.”

“You think I’d abandon you like that?”

“Why wouldn’t you?”

I opened my mouth to argue the point, but stopped myself. Whatever I said probably wouldn’t sound sincere to his ears. And if I looked deep enough inside of myself, could I deny a part of me wanted to let him go? Hadn’t I argued with Toft that the kid couldn’t handle his power enough and it was already too late to train him? With my oath undone, I could do the right thing. I could stop trying to make Odi the sorcerer he could never be.

“We’ve got to get back to Sly’s,” I said.

Odi drew back into the shadows. For all intents and purposes, I was alone again.

The first words out of Sly’s mouth when we arrived were, “We can’t destroy it.”

We were back in the kitchen, our makeshift command center. The smell of coffee hung so thick, if I closed my eyes I could imagine I stood in a Starbucks. Sly must have cranked up the heat. I went from chilly to sweaty in under a minute, and I could hear the ducts still breathing out more warm air. Add a little humidity, and we could have gone tropical.

A laptop computer sat open on the table among a scattering of printouts. Mom was poring over a sheaf of papers and barely muttered a hello when we came in.

“You’ve done all the research on the internet?” I asked.

Mom threw down her papers. “It isn’t like I have my collection of books from our basement anymore, seeing as they were all burned up. And I can’t very well waltz into the DML.”

DML stood for the Detroit Ministry Library—a massive collection of arcane tomes, many of which Mom and Dad had helped recover during their time as scholars. They had both spent a great amount of time in the DML. It had been like a second home.

All their time there had given me enough slack as a teen to get into all sorts of trouble. But that’s a story for another time.

“So that’s it, then? There is no way to destroy it?”

Mom sighed and rubbed her temples. Then she looked up at Sly. They exchanged a weird look. They were trying to decide whether or not to tell me something.

“Hey,” I said. “What are you guys thinking?”

Sly worked his lips together and looked away. Mom had the guts to look me in the eye, though.

“We can’t destroy it, but I have an idea of where we can put it, somewhere nobody could ever get to it.”

I leaned up against the counter and tucked my hands into my pockets. The heat still blew through the ducts. Sweat slicked the back of my neck. “Another hiding place? Doesn’t that leave us in the same situation?”

“Not a hiding place,” Mom said. “A place no one could dare go, whether they knew the cloak was there or not.”

That sweat on my neck spread down the length of my spine. My shirt stuck to my skin. “What kind of place are you talking about?”

Sly blurted, “Hell.”

I scrunched up my face. “Um, what?”

“I told you that’s a simplification, Sylvester,” Mom chided him like a child.

“Fine. Not the Hell. A hell.”

Talk of hell could get confusing from the perspective of someone familiar with the paranormal. When the typical person mentions Hell, most think of the Christian version. Eternal damnation. Lucifer. Flames. Other cultures have similar takes. But the truth was, the mythical ‘Hell’ mortals were familiar with merely represented a larger truth. Demons came from all manner of alternate planes. Many of those planes were filled with creatures one could mistake for devils. A number of them even hosted undying flames. In fact, the flames were close to universal.

In any case, there were a whole bunch of places a person could call Hell. But spelling the word with a capital H did not jive with reality. That would be like calling all the states in the US Michigan. I imagine many of those states would take issue with that generalization.

I looked at Mom as if she’d snuffed a tank of helium while I was gone. “You want to stick the cloak in hell?”

“I know it sounds ridiculous—”

“It sounds impossible.”

She held up a hand. “Just listen to me.” She grabbed that stack of papers she’d been studying and held them out to me. I stared at them as if they might take on a life of their own and shred me with paper cuts.

“Fine,” Mom snapped and slapped the papers back onto the table. “I found a ritual that could open a portal to a hell dimension. We open the portal, toss the cloak in, close it up, and we’re done.”

“You want to open a window into hell? You’re out of your fucking mind. You can go in—”

“Of course not. That’s the point.”

“—and who knows what could come out?”

“There are logistics we would need to work out, but—”

“Logistics? Logistics?” I had swallowed enough crap ideas to last me a lifetime. I would not go for this one. “Two words, and then I don’t want to talk about it again. No. Way.”

Mom pounded the table hard enough to make the laptop jump. Sly snatched the computer up, closed it, and tucked it under his arm.

I noticed Odi had slunk out of the kitchen at some point and was nowhere in sight.

“Damn it, Sebastian. You said yourself if we hide the cloak somewhere else, nothing changes. They’ll still come after me for the location.”

“That’s why you aren’t going to be the one to hide it,” I said. “I am.”

She shook her head. “Then they’ll get to you eventually. Torture you. Make you tell them.”

“No they won’t.”

Mom shot to her feet. She came at me, grabbed me by the shoulders, and gave me a quick shake. “You are a thirty-two-year-old sorcerer. Your father was six times your age. I’m nearly five times. If sorcerers as experienced and powerful as us couldn’t resist their efforts, what in the heavens makes you think you can?”

Ah, crap.

She was right. She could have said it a little more politely, but she was right. I had nothing on them. And if these Ministry goons got a hold of me, I wouldn’t stand a chance. They would break me. Then they would kill me.

My whole body sagged as I accepted the truth. “How complicated is the ritual?”

“Not very, frighteningly enough. Sly is going to take me shopping so I can pick up what I need. In the meantime, you need to get the cloak and bring it back here.”

My stomach fluttered as if I suffered stage fright. It all came to this. “Okay. Where is it?”

“In our basement.”

I drew my head back. “Say what? The house was destroyed. And I know Goulet picked through the wreckage because he had Dad’s pocket watch. If it was there, they would have found it.”

Mom rolled her eyes at me. “It isn’t just sitting around. I hid it in a bubble. A sort of parallel existence pulled around it like a blanket.”

My surprise must have been obvious. “I know,” she said. “It’s not my typical work. And not something I could do on my own. Your father and I both worked it out.”

“So the cloak is still down there among the wreckage, but in this bubble.”

“Yes.”

“And I need to what? Pop the bubble?”

She turned her hand from side to side. “Sort of, I suppose.”

“Easy peasy. Just tell me what I need to do.”

She frowned. “That’s the catch.”

I groaned. “Why does there always have to be a catch?”

“You’ll need help. I would come with you, but I think it’s better if I get this ritual going so you can come directly here and toss it through the portal.”

Oh, boy. I knew what was coming, and I already felt queasy.

“Markus could do it,” she said. “Probably more easily than I could, for that matter.”

“You want me to grab this thing with the help of a stranger?”

The dry heat had me sweating enough to stink. I could even feel sweat running down the insides of my thighs. I had put myself in nice fresh clothes, free of plaster dust and tears, and now I felt like I had to change again already. I wanted to shout at Sly for cranking up the thermostat so fucking high.

“He isn’t a stranger,” Mom said while I wriggled in discomfort.” He’s my…my very good friend. I thought you had decided to trust him.”

“Not with the cloak, the whole fucking reason we’re so screwed in the first place. You’ll have to do it. You can conjure up the portal once we have it.”

“I told you, I have things I need to gather first.”

“Well, gather them now while the cloak is still hidden. Then we can head over there.”

She touched my face and smiled sadly. His hand felt cool against my cheek despite the overwhelming heat. “You aren’t strong enough. I won’t be able to carry you enough to make it work. Markus has more power. You’ll need him, not me.”

Again she hit me with my lack of ability. I had never felt like such a weakling in my life. Not even when I was all but drained of my magical juice while fighting off the vampire infection before I got the brand, though I had more power now, brand or no brand.

But that power couldn’t keep me from feeling helpless.

I hated it.

“Are you sure?” I asked. “Should we try first?”

“The longer we wait, the more time they have to find us, hurt us. All of us.” She waved a hand around her to indicate Sly and Odi, who had crept back into the kitchen at some point, standing in the archway to the hall behind him. The kid looked smaller to me. Younger. A lot less undead, and a whole lot more unprepared.

“We really don’t have a choice, do we?”

“He will help us,” Mom said. “He will.”

Trust had become such a sticking point for me. Who could blame me, though? Still, if I kept refusing help because of my own hang-up, we couldn’t find our way out of this mess, couldn’t finally put the danger behind us.

“All right. Call him and have him meet me at the house.”

She nodded and hurried to the table where she had left her cell phone and snatched it up as if trying to put the call in before I changed my mind.

“We still have a few hours of dark left,” Odi said. “Am I coming with?”

“For sure.”

Chapter Forty-Five

I arrived before Markus, which kind of sounded like an omen or something. That was the kind of bullshit swirling through my head at the moment. Negativity and paranoia. My gut twisted and twisted again while I waited. If it kept up, I might cough up a wad of flesh that only kind of resembled my stomach.

I stood at the edge of what used to be my house. Most of it had caved into the basement. Partial walls and blackened beams remained in some parts. I could use my imagination to reconstruct some of it. Other sections I couldn’t recognize enough to fill in the blanks. As a whole, though, it looked entirely alien to me.

The smell of charred wood and wet sod dominated the air this close to the remains. Enough October rain had soaked the lawn and the broken innards of the house to give the ruins a sunken and saggy appearance.

Through some of the debris that had collapsed into the basement, I could make out wet flaps of parchment and leather bindings glistening with moisture. I saw one end of a giant bone that looked like a dinosaur femur. I had once wielded that bone as a weapon against another hunter out to collect on my head. I still didn’t know what animal it had really come from. I made a mental note to ask Mom about it, but with all that was going on, I doubted I’d remember.

I sensed someone watching me. I hadn’t heard Markus pull up, and I didn’t think it was Odi crouched in the shadows close to the neighbor’s house to my left. I turned my gaze to my other neighbor’s house that belonged to a widow named Mrs. Sokalski, but who Dad had christened Mrs. Snoopis because of her propensity to pry into our lives. She was determined to discover what kind of secret life we led, though most of her guesses didn’t come close. Meth dealers was one of my faves. I had often entertained myself imagining how she would react if she learned the truth.

I used to resent her unwanted attention. Nowadays, I mostly felt sorry for her.

Sure enough, she peered at me through the curtains hung across her picture window. Her eyes glimmered.

Finally, Markus’s SUV pulled to the curb and parked behind the Caddy.

It had started to drizzle. My scalp prickled as the cold rain dampened my hair.

Markus came out of his car wearing a flowing robe with wide sleeves and trim with runes embroidered onto them. The robe flowed down to his ankles. The sleeves covered his hands. The robe had a wide hood, but it hung down his back.

“Nice getup,” I said as he approached.

“From what your mother told me, we’ll need a fair amount of magic. This enchanted robe will help a great deal.”

He still looked stupid to me.

“I hope you don’t mind getting it dirty,” I said. “Because we have to go down there.”

I pointed down into the crater around where my Dad’s work area used to be. I could see his old work bench and a crushed bookcase that had separated his area from the rest of the basement. Mom had said that was where she and Dad had planted the bubble. Apparently, it didn’t have an exact location, but the incantation she had taught me would pull it to us as long as we stood close enough.

“I wouldn’t worry about me,” he said. “You’re the one dressed as if we’re on a date.”

I looked down at my clothes. I wore my new pea coat and some relaxed fit jeans. My trusty boots had survived the cave in at Toft’s. And while I had a black button down shirt under my coat, he couldn’t see it. “I dress a little nicer than this on dates.”

He shrugged and moved to the edge of the ruins, lined up to where I had pointed. “Down here?”

“If we can get close to the work bench, we should be good.”

Problem was, a pair of rafters crisscrossed and leaned into the space with a bunch of wet drywall crumbled into the bottom V of the rafters, not giving us much room to get down there. We might have been able to stand on the wreckage and still have enough proximity to draw the bubble to us and open it, though.

I couldn’t see any other way, short of lifting out the debris with magic, and I didn’t want to waste energy doing that like I had at Toft’s, because the way Mom explained things, I would need every ounce of my power to open the bubble.

Markus, on the other hand, didn’t seem to have any such concerns. He pulled a full-on Yoda and lifted the beams and most of the broken drywall without much thought or care, simply holding out his hands and maneuvering them as if holding a miniature version of the stuff he manipulated.

As he dropped the stuff onto the driveway, I glance back at Mrs. Snoopis’s picture window. The curtains were closed, but they ruffled as if very recently disturbed. If she’d seen Markus’s handiwork, what would she do? Call the police? The local news? Or hide under her bed and try convincing herself she had hallucinated the whole thing?

She had already witnessed a bunch of vamps burn down the house with flamethrowers—though she probably hadn’t realized they were vampires—so how much worse could some flying rafters and crumpled pieces of wall be to witness?

Best not to think about it and get this shit done.

Once Markus had a space open by Dad’s workbench, he turned to me and gestured to the basement. “Youth before experience.”

I glanced between the basement and him. Hesitated. We go down there. We get the cloak. What then?

“It’s starting to rain steadily,” Markus said. “Let’s not dally.”

I had barely noticed, but the drizzle had grown to a steady patter against my head and shoulders. I looked up at the night sky. The moon peered down through a gap the rain clouds. Its light made the rain drops sparkle like falling diamonds. Each drop felt like ice against my cheeks and forehead. I could feel my hair getting weighed down. Some of my pomade, softened by the rain, released its scent as if I had just put it on fresh. It smelled like a barber shop.

I blinked away the rain getting in my eyes and moved my gaze back to Markus. His robe had begun to sag like the branches of a willow tree. “Well?”

I nodded.

The climb down was the very definition of precarious. The pieces of the house and the random flotsam of tattered books and broken artifacts kept slipping out from under my feet. The rain on it all made things even worse. But we both made it down into the clearing without breaking our necks.

Down in it, the remains smelled like old ash and left a burnt taste in my mouth after each breath.

I dug into my coat pocket and brought out Mom’s wedding ring. She and Dad had made the ring into a key which would unlock the bubble once we channeled enough magic into it. With the ring, the incantation itself was simple. A few words in an archaic language the mortal historians had no idea existed. They required a ticklish roll of the tongue, but were otherwise easy enough to speak.

I held the ring out in the palm of my hand.

Markus clasped my hand, pinning the ring between our grasps. I felt the row of small emeralds press against my skin with a touch of pain.

Markus asked, “Are you ready?”

I nodded.

“Then let’s give it all we’ve got.”

We spoke the words, but each of us in the reverse order of the other. It was a little tricky at first keeping rhythm because we said different words at the same time, the lack of pure synchronicity awkward.

I pushed more and more of my magic into my hand, willing the ring to take what I offered. And it took. The ring sucked in my power like a parched sponge. I could feel it draining away, could sense the coming barrier put up by my brand, the point where my available power stopped, and the power that kept me from turning began. I didn’t think anything could pierce that barrier, but I didn’t know that for sure.

A cold sweat broke over me as I feared what might happen if the ring did rip past the barrier and steal that magic, too. I would end up spending my soul to retrieve the cloak. Not a fair trade, if you asked me.

Then I felt a surge into my hand that buzzed so hard I thought my knuckle bones might shake loose.

Markus’s magic. A lot of it. It took some effort to hold on. It took more effort to stay concentrated on contributing my part to the incantation.

We spoke the words faster and faster.

Suddenly I heard a pop, like a cork shot free of its bottle. My ears rang. A pressure wrapped around me and squeezed. My eyes watered as they pulsed in time with my heartbeat. The pressure seeped inside of me, crushing my ribs, my stomach, my brain. Along with the ringing, I could hear my rushing blood in my ears.

For a moment, I felt certain the pressure would kill me.

Then, all at once, it stopped.

I gasped for breath I hadn’t noticed I’d lost. My hand slipped out of Markus’s clutch. I heard the ring clink onto the concrete floor. The smell of ozone pushed out all other scents.

I staggered away and leaned against a crooked beam with a ragged, broken end that stuck out of a pile of drywall and bricks.

“Are you all right?” Markus asked.

I blinked away the water in my eyes so I could see. He stood right where he had when we started the incantation. He showed no signs of the after effects I suffered. In fact, he smiled.

He held the cloak in his hands.

The artifact was beautiful. The hummingbird feathers glistened in the falling rain. The ends of the feathers flashed with a bright blue glow every time Markus moved it in his hands. He held it in front of him like a magician about to reveal his next trick.

“Thank you,” he said. “Thank you so very much.”

My head was still a little cloudy, but his voice sounded weird. Full of relief and awe.

And hunger.

“Do you have any idea how long we have waited for this moment?”

Then my cloudy mind cleared. The truth hit me like a sucker punch to the gut. It knocked the wind clean out of me like a real punch.

I had trusted him. Against everything in my being that had said I shouldn’t. I had trusted him. And now he was in the process of betraying me. Betraying Mom.

Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice…and I’m a gullible fucking idiot!

“Take a deep breath, Sebastian,” Markus said. “What we have planned for this city will undo its dismal reputation. Detroit used to be a wonder to behold. It deserves that. It deserves to rival the likes of Chicago. Maybe even New York.”

The rain came hard enough now that water flung off his lips as he spoke, making him look like the mad bastard he really was. A little bit of foam would complete the image.

With my wet hair plastered to my scalp, and water rolling into my eyes, I felt heavy, slow. Part of that probably came from spending so much power to open the bubble, too. But it didn’t matter.

“I can’t let you leave with that.”

“I was afraid you might say that.”

I raised both hands in front of me and called on the element of fire. The rain could not cool the heat of my magical flame. And it wouldn’t have, if I could have conjured any.

Opening the bubble had dried me out.

Markus looked sad. “I have what we want. You and Judith can walk away from this now. There’s no reason to fight this. And you can’t win.”

“I can’t stand by and let you feed thousands of innocents to the vampires. I just can’t.”

“I care about your mother very much. I think you know we had something special a long time ago. Something more than friendship.”

“Shut up!”

“If you care for her like I do, you’ll step aside. If the ugliness of our plan is too much for you, leave Detroit. You’ll miss out on the beginning of a new history for this poor city, but maybe you can come back when you see what we’ve accomplished.”

I wiped rain out of my eyes. “You are a twisted bastard. All of you are. Making deals with vampires? Do you really think, once they’re all fat and happy, they’ll let you run the city? They’ll take this place over. They’ll turn every last one of you into a meal or a member of their fang club.”

“We have the Ministry’s resources at our disposal. I’m not worried about the vampires. Once they’ve served their purpose, we will sweep their dust from the streets.”

Thunder rumbled in the distance. The downpour came harder.

Markus pulled his hood on then swung the cloak across his shoulders.

“It’s time for me to go, Sebastian. Wish your mother well for me.”

An undulating green and blue light rippled down the cloak’s feathers.

For a moment, all I wanted to do was tell Mom Markus wished her well. The cloak’s influence. But it wasn’t mind control. He had made a suggestion I wanted to follow. Nothing more. And, thank the gods, my will was strong enough to bury the urge and tell Markus, “Go fuck yourself.”

He shook his head, started climbing out of the hole.

I charged at him.

He saw me coming before I made two steps. With a wave of his hand, he knocked me off of my feet and onto a cracked chunk of concrete from the basement floor. My forehead glanced off a nearby lump of bricks. Sparks exploded across my vision. By the time I got my senses clear, Markus was already out of the hole.

I tried to get to my feet too quickly. The rain had made some of the finer debris slick like mud under my feet. I slipped in it and landed on my ass. Before I had a chance to try again, I heard Odi scream.

Chapter Forty-Six

It’s hard to be careful when you want to run. But I had to take to my feet a little less recklessly than I had the first time. While I stood, I heard Odi scream again. This one sounded different. His teenage voice had ripped open and let a vampiric screech tear loose. It sounded like the edge of a tin sheet drawn across steel.

I felt shaky, cold, and heavy. When I tried to climb out of the basement, my wet hands made my grip slip. It took me too long to get up. An age. The lifespan of a star before it goes supernova. Odi kept screaming the whole time. And something screamed with him. A thicker, louder version of a typical vampire’s cries. More guttural and threatening.

I had a sick feeling I knew what made that noise.

Sure enough, when I finally managed to pull myself up enough to look out, I found Odi on the ground, a bloody mess (again!), and Beastvamp looming over him. The beast had one clawed hand raised, ready to shred Odi in half.

“Hey,” I shouted. “Go back to the jungle you came from.”

He turned his searing red eyes toward me. Rain and watered down blood dripped off his pointed chin. His lips peeled back in what looked like a grin, exposing his red-tinged fangs and gray gums. Then he opened his mouth wide and let free an ear-rattling screeeeeee.

The sound shocked my nerves so hard, I nearly lost purchase on the cement edge of the basement and fell down into the hole. I gritted my teeth, propped one elbow up onto the edge, then the other, and dragged myself up, feet kicking at the landslide of debris that had turned mushy in the rain.

Mud streaked the front of my coat as I wriggled onto the lawn. The smell of wet earth filled my nostrils. I could also smell the dirty sock stink coming from Beastvamp.

He turned from Odi and stomped my way, each footstep pressing into the sod and leaving craters behind.

I scurried to my feet, held my hand out at my side, and felt the empty and rude reminder that I had spent the last of my power basically handing the cloak over to Arbiter Hope.

The beast grinned as if he understood my dilemma, despite his dumb primal appearance. Maybe he had more brains than I thought. Big, strong, scary, and smart? Bad news.

I couldn’t back off. I’d tumble back into the damn basement. I bent my knees and readied myself to leap to either side if he charged me.

He didn’t charge, though. He closed in slowly, intently. Three of his wide paces from me, he shouted at me again. The spray of rain and blood from his mouth spritzed my face, smelled like rotten beef. The taste of bile pooled in my mouth.

I didn’t have any time or many options, so I took my chance and sprinted along the length of my destroyed house, the edge of the crumbled foundation less than a foot to one side of my boot. A bad step would pitch me down into the ruins and probably get me a broken joist through my chest.

Light bulb!

I heard Beastvamp give chase behind me. He would only need a few of his long strides to reach me before I could slip him. I had to time my next move with more precision than I felt confident I had. Adrenaline can do amazing things, though. Time seemed to slow. A bolt of hubris made me feel buoyant. This motherfucker didn’t stand a chance against me, I thought, while at the same time knowing it was bullshit.

But it gave me the edge I needed to do the next crazy bit.

I eyed one of many broken wall studs down below. This particular one had a canted but otherwise upward trajectory. I timed my next step to launch me out into the emptiness and sail down toward that makeshift spear, but hopefully a foot or two just beyond.

I felt weightless for a second as I jumped into the open, like Wile E. Coyote right before he realizes he’s run off a cliff. I pedaled my feet on the way down, my body’s instinctive response to the sudden fall. I landed on a tilted piece of wall with bricks scattered the length of it. My foot hit one of the bricks and twisted my ankle under me. Any hope of staying on my feet went out the door.

I crashed down onto my side, more bricks jabbing me with their corners in various spots along my body. Pain popped like corn kernels inside of me.

But I had cleared the wall stud and avoided a brutal stabbing.

My beastly friend did not fare so well.

I never had a chance to see him leap after me. I was too busy getting a good thumping by gravity to look back. I did hear the wet squish and crack of bones, though. And when my forward and downward momentum quit, I rolled around on my bed of bricks to find the thing speared onto the stud like I had planned.

I let out a whoop in celebration, but the celebration died quickly when I realized the makeshift beast-sized stake hadn’t caught him in the heart. Instead, he had speared himself through the crotch and up out the small of his back. The ripped and twisted remains of his vamp junk dangled off the stake among a smear of brackish blood.

I gagged at the sight, wishing Beastvamp had had the courtesy to shop at a big and tall store instead of going nudist.

Despite his genital massacre, the beast was still alive and mad as hell. He lashed out with a claw and raked across my leg, ripping my jeans and a few lines of flesh in the process.

For the gods’ sake, I was ruining a lot of clothes lately.

And skin.

I kicked my heels, scrabbling in the bricks to push myself out of Beastvamp’s reach.

He took another swipe at me.

I jerked my leg up.

His claw busted a hunk of drywall in half and sent bricks scattering in all directions. One of them thumped against my shoulder, and I went numb down to my elbow.

He reached out again and grasped my ankle. The strength in his grip made me cry out as he squeezed. It didn’t help that it was the same ankle I had twisted in my landing. He pulled me, dragged me through splintered wood and crumbled bricks.

I jammed my heel down against the lip of a chunk wall on its side. The wet wall crumpled against the force, and my foot broke right through it.

When Beastvamp had me close enough, he grabbed my arm with his other hand and lifted me over his head. Vertigo spun my head like a top. The ground became the sky. The rain fell upward and into my nose. I sputtered for air while the water flooded my sinuses and ran down the back of my throat. Then I gagged on the rain. Breathing became impossible.

Breathing seemed like an afterthought, though, when the beast pulled my leg in one direction and my arm in the other. He pulled slowly, as if he wanted to draw as much pain out of me as possible before he ripped me in half like a cold band of taffy.

I cried out, which made me choke on the rain all the more.

In the corner of my eye, I could see the beast grinning at me. I could see in his eyes the anticipation of hearing the snap in my spine or the pop from a socket. My heart raced, its rhythm thrumming in my ears. A greasy smear crossed my vision. I had been close to dead before—hell, Markus had nearly done it a couple days ago—but this was a new brand of agony that trumped even the feel of Markus’s cougar claws cutting through me.

A stray and distant thought wanted to know why he hadn’t repeated that trick tonight, instead of siccing his oversized vamp pet on me. Had the incantation to open the bubble drained him, too? Seemed impossible. Also seemed irrelevant, as I was about to die.

I felt something give in my lower back. A vertebra popping loose maybe?

Then I heard its nails-on-a-tin-sheet scream again, and saw a person-shaped shadow descend from above.

Odi landed on Beastvamp’s back, wrapped both arms around the beast’s neck, and hugged him like a long-lost lover.

The beast snarled and tried to shake Odi off, but Odi hung on like a cowboy riding the ugliest bronco this side of the Mississippi—or the planet.

With this new annoyance on his back, Beastvamp flung me aside like an old piece of laundry. He threw me hard enough, in fact, that I landed on the front lawn. I rolled through the mud a dozen times, my injured ankle twisting and re-twisting with each impact to the ground. When I finally came to a stop, pain jagged up past my knee. I felt wet, sticky mud clumped on my face. But the rain quickly began to sluice it away.

I had to squint through the downpour to see Odi. The beast reached behind him, trying to claw Odi off. The silhouette of spurting blood shot off Odi’s back. He screamed and screamed, but did not let go. I had to do something or that thing would shred him to pieces.

I looked around me for some kind of weapon. Best thing I could find was a chunk of what used to be our cement porch. I found a piece about as large as one of Beastvamp’s hands. I hefted it up and staggered back to the edge of the ruins while I tried to ignore the burn from the scratches on my leg or the pounding ache in my ankle. My leg wanted to give out on me, but I demanded it hold.

The beast twisted at the waist from side to side. Odi swung from the back of the beast’s head like a ragged cape. A good fifteen feet stretched between me and them. With the beast thrashing like that, I didn’t think I could toss my rock and hit him on the head like I had hoped.

My arms trembled as I hoisted the cement chunk like a basketball while I stood at the free-throw line. No way I could hit him. I’d fall short, or it would harmlessly bounce off his chest or an arm. I’d piss him off, but I wouldn’t hurt him.

I threw it anyway.

I watched it tumble through the rain. It moved as if in slow motion. And, in slow motion, it followed a short arc before thumping into the debris five feet short.

The beast didn’t even stop long enough to notice.

I was left with a choice. Run for it, leaving Odi to fend for himself—which, in this case, was another way of saying leave him to die. Or I could jump into the fray—which, in this case, was another way of saying I could get us both killed.

I couldn’t bring myself to abandon him. I should have. At least tried. I didn’t consider it. Not because of my oath, which probably would have stopped me from running anyway. But, vampire or not, the kid was my friend. Plain and simple. I cared for him. Denying it wouldn’t make any difference. Time to accept it.

I backed up to make a running start.

Then my ankle finally gave out, and I fell to my knees.

What was the saying?

The road to hell is paved with good intentions.

“You motherfucking monster,” I screamed.

Amazingly, my voice drew his attention. He stopped trying to shake Odi off just long enough to glance my way.

Despite all the damage Odi had taken, he grasped his opportunity and sank his teeth into the beast’s neck.

Beastvamp threw his head back and howled, the sound eerily similar to a wolf’s baying. Not very vampire-y. I reveled in the sound, though. Reveled in the pain he must have felt. Reveled in the way he sunk further down the wooden pillar skewering him through the groin and howled again as the pointed end protruding from his back grew longer as he slipped down.

The beast thrashed harder than ever, and yet Odi didn’t let go. His kept his mouth locked on Beastvamp’s throat, and I realized with a tinge of nausea that the kid was feeding on the creature. But the more he drank, the firmer his hold on the beast appeared to be. And the weaker the beast’s struggles became.

Until, finally, Beastvamp let out a long sigh like a deflating tire, and fell still.

Odi didn’t stop feeding until well afterward. All I could do was kneel there and watch. The rain blurred the scene, and the night obscured them with shadow. But the moonlight and the cast from the streetlight gave me enough to see by.

It seemed to take a while before Odi finally drew away from Beastvamp’s throat. When he did, I saw the dark blood ringing the kid’s lips and dribbling off his chin. The wound on the beast’s neck looked incredibly large compared to Odi’s mouth, but I knew vamps could unhinge their jaws if they wanted to really drink deep. Apparently the kid had learned that trick, and I had a feeling he had learned it that night.

I didn’t recognize the wild stare in his red eyes. He was all monster in the moment. He leapt off the beast’s back and landed on the mushy sod only a few feet from me. His clothing hung in shreds, soaked with rain and blood. I could make out a few wounds on his torso, but they were shallow, nothing to the extent they should have been considering the size of the beast’s claws. And while I studied the scratches, I saw them continue to close.

Odi showed no signs of pain, or even mild discomfort. Way the opposite. He looked exuberant, smiling, totally jazzed.

He laughed. “Dude, that thing’s blood is even better than yours!” Then he threw his arms up in a victory V, pumped his fists, and shouted, “I’m king of the world.”

“Okay, Leo.” I held a hand out to him. “Help me up.”

He clutched my hand and pulled way too hard. I got to my feet, but with a new pain in my shoulder socket. I cried out and nearly feel down again.

Odi caught me. “Sorry, dude. I’m a little psyched. I’ve never…never felt so good!”

Movement off to my right caught my attention. I glanced over in time to see Mrs. Snoopis’s storm door swing shut and rattle in its frame.

In all the commotion, I had forgotten where we were.

I looked back at the wreck of my home and had the terrible realization I could never come back here. Even if the Ministry rebuilt like they were supposed to, Mom and I had brought too much attention to this place in the last couple weeks. I doubted the Ministry could feed Mrs. Snoopis any false explanation that she would buy. And who knew who else had been watching?

I choked up for a second, then got a grip. Time for self-pity later. “We have to get out of here.”

“You need me to carry you to the car?”

I snorted at the very idea. I’d suffered worse. I could walk myself to the damn car. “No, but I do need you to do something for me first.”

“Whatever you need.” The compassion in his voice sounded so strange with his vamp face still on. I didn’t know a vampire could say anything nice through a set of fangs.

I pointed toward the ruins, in the general direction of the hole Markus had cleared to get us to the bubble. “My mom’s wedding ring is in there. I need it back.”

“Sure thing.”

He shot off so quickly it looked like he had disappeared. He came back just as quickly with Mom’s ring pinched between his fingers. He offered it to me, and I took it, shoved it in my pants pocket.

“Thank you,” I said, then turned and headed to the car. One step, and I took a knee. I wanted to flop onto my side, curl up, and take a nap in the mud and rain. I had started to shiver, either from shock, the icy rain, or both. The will to move seeped out of me entirely.

“Odi?”

“I’ve got ya.”

He scooped me up like a groom carries a bride across the threshold on their wedding night. I was too tired and hurting for my pride to bitch too much. He put me in the passenger seat, and I dozed while he drove.

Chapter Forty-Seven

I woke up on Sly’s couch. Daylight streamed through his living room blinds, which were open enough that I could see the golf green and a sand trap on the course behind his house. This window had taken a number of hits from stray balls teed off by less than amateur golfers. But every time it happened, the course’s owners paid to have the broken window replaced. Sly was easygoing enough to roll with it. Would have driven me nuts, though.

My eyes felt gummy, my mouth dry and pasty. The taste of a hangover stuck to my tongue, and I had the headache to go with it without the fond but fuzzy memories of a hell of a party. I did smirk at the image of Beastvamp with a big wooden stake jammed through the crotch.

“What’s so funny, brother?”

My head rested on a fluffy pillow that would have coaxed me back to sleep if not for the pounding racket in my skull and the growing burn up my leg. I didn’t want to, but I lifted my head and found Sly standing by the couch, arms folded, eyeing me like a terminally ill patient. Some claw marks in my leg and a twisted ankle couldn’t keep me down for long, though. Neither could the sharp barbs in the shoulder socket Beastvamp had nearly yanked my arm out of. So I didn’t know what he was so worked up about.

“It’s not that bad,” I said. My voice would have given the largest frog in the pond croak envy.

“I tried to count your injuries,” he said. “I gave up after twenty-five.”

I shrugged and paid for it with a rip of pain from my injured shoulder straight into my chest. I yelped, the sound rattling in the corners of the room.

“Easy, brother. We’re fixing you up some potions and poultices.”

My stomach growled. “And food.”

“I hope pizza is okay again. They deliver the quickest.”

More grumbling and gurgling in my belly. “Pizza sounds amazing.” I’d probably eat it too fast to taste it anyway.

“You rest easy,” he said. “Odi gave us the broad strokes before he went downstairs to his…bed.”

I swallowed. Felt like sand going down my throat. “Does Mom know?”

He glanced over his shoulder, then looked back to me. Nodded.

I closed my eyes. “Fuck.” I could only imagine, after all her assurances to me, how she took the news of Markus’s betrayal. “She all right?”

He scratched the back of his neck, didn’t answer.

Which said enough.

“I’ve got to talk to her.” I tried to sit up. The room did a pirouette, and I flopped down. All those uncounted wounds barked like a pack of tramps. I ground my teeth and tensed. Tensing only made the pain worse.

“You’re sticking to the couch. You’re hurt more than you realize, and it doesn’t look like the few hours’ sleep you got helped much.”

“Incantation drained me,” I said, then hissed through my clenched teeth. It even hurt to speak now. I should have stayed on my back and let the numbness of sleep stick around a little longer. But noooo, I had to try to sit up. I checked for any energy my short nap had brought back. I found little more than a wisp. I spent it on relaxing my body, and the pain eased. Then the tank was back to E.

“Try to get some more sleep. We’ll get you back to one-hundred percent eventually.”

“Eventually? No. I need to be up and running as soon as possible. Markus and his minions have the cloak, they have Toft, and as far as I know, they have everything they need to enact their plan.”

Sly looked down and shook his head. “It’s out of our hands, brother. You did your best.”

I rose up onto my elbow, ignoring the dizziness and pain it brought me. “They’re going to slaughter thousands, Sly. And not just anyone. We’re talking people who have suffered enough. People whose only crime is being poor and stuck in Detroit’s slums.”

“Brother, you are preaching to the choir. But it’s like you said. They’ve got what they need. We don’t even know where to find them, let alone how to stop them.”

“I can’t accept that.”

“Neither can I.”

Sly turned around at the sound of Mom’s voice. She stood at the edge of the living room. Her long gray hair hung loose over her shoulders. Her eyes were puffy and bloodshot from crying. But they also carried her signature fierceness. I felt a chill just looking at her. The hum of her magical energy pulsed off of her in waves. Typically only practitioners, and sorcerers in particular, could feel another’s magical energy. But in this case, the way Sly stiffened, I thought he might feel it, too.

“Do you still have my ring?” she asked.

I tried to dig it out of my pocket, but I was too rigid with pain. I eased down onto my back again, my head sinking into that amazing pillow. The pillowcase smelled like fresh lavender, not that fake scent you got from detergent. I bet Sly mixed his own soaps from real ingredients, maybe threw in some magical properties as well. Which would explain why the pillow felt like the most comfortable pillow in existence.

“My pocket,” I said.

“Walter and I weren’t fools. We knew it was possible someone might get at the cloak despite our precautions.” She lifted her chin. Her mouth formed a straight, stern line. “The ring isn’t only a key, it’s a tether. It can lead us to the cloak, which will lead us straight to Markus and his thugs.”

Chapter Forty-Eight

While Mom triggered the magic that would make the ring lead us to the cloak, I had to get myself back into fighting shape ASAP. Sly gave me the potions and poultices he’d mentioned, but they all focused on my physical ailments—cleaning and healing wounds, nullifying pain, reversing any internal injuries I might have sustained.

It only took a couple of hours before I could walk without falling down or throwing up. Sly’s mixtures tasted bad enough going down. Coming back up, they achieved a whole new level of awfulness. I also used the time to put on some new clothes. A plain green t-shirt and a pair of dark cargo pants. Nothing fancy. Just something I had, thankfully, bought during my last impromptu shopping trip.

Those two hours did nothing to recharge my magical batteries, though.

Then the pizza came. Two of them, and I ate both. I had heard certain fae were especially fond of pizza. If I didn’t know any better, I might have suspected I had some fae blood in me. But, nope, just sorcerer blood and vamp blood. Ho-hum.

After eating so much, I needed a nap. I could finally feel some of my power returning. Nowhere near enough to go up against Markus, Able, and however many Ministry friends they had involved in their fucked-up scheme. I really hoped I didn’t find Prefect St. James as one of them. Bad enough they had an arbiter among them. And as I sketched out a vague plan of attack, I decided I would need the prefect to bring these fuckers down.

But not until after we sent the cloak to hell.

This time, instead of the couch, Sly offered me his bed. I thanked him, but didn’t take him up on the offer immediately. Sly needed to do something else for me that I was surprised he hadn’t already put together.

“What about that stuff you gave me before? You mixed something up to help me recharge faster.”

He made a constipated face, hummed, and shook his head. “Not a good idea, brother.”

We stood in his bedroom. Sly had dressed the bed with a fresh set of sheets that had a lavender scent similar to the pillow on the couch. Just a few whiffs of that made me sleepy. The wad of sheets he had stripped from the bed lay in a pile in a corner of the room. It was the only thing that looked at all messy. Vacuumed carpet. All clothes in the drawers, out of sight. Even his dresser was clear of clutter, with only a hairbrush and a package of hair bands on the surface. Guy sure was neat for a bachelor.

The tidiness annoyed me for some reason.

“Some pizza and a nap aren’t going to get me to full strength,” I said. “And I don’t have twelve hours to recuperate on my own.”

“Your body can only take so much of that stuff. It hasn’t been long enough. It’s more likely to kill you than help.”

Yeah, I remembered him saying something like that before. But I couldn’t afford to wait much longer. For all I knew, Toft was already using the cloak to thrall all the poor people the Mayor and his Ministry masters thought were in the way of progress. Though it sounded to me like Markus and his conspirators planned to use the scheme to gather and wipe out the city’s vamp population in the process.

That part of the plan I could almost get behind. Only almost, though, because vampires like Odi could get thrown into the mix simply by virtue of having fangs. Some of the undead really did try to get along. I used to not care, used to have the same attitude against all vampires like the Ministry did.

Funny how a vampire puppy could change all that.

With so many fewer vampires in the city, it would leave those remaining more vulnerable. Easy to isolate and dust. That included Odi.

“There has to be something,” I said. The desperation in my voice embarrassed me. I sounded so needy. Hated it. But it didn’t stop me. “Please, Sly. Pull something out of your sleeve.”

He threw his hands out at his sides. “Sorry, brother. I’ve got nothing I would want to put in your system right now, except something to help you sleep.”

I would have to go in half-charged. I planned on a daylight mission, hoping they would wait until Toft woke up before they turned half the city into docile food for the vampires to suck dry at will. Daylight meant no backup from Odi. Besides, the kid had suffered enough.

“I hope you don’t think you’re going after them without me.”

Mom stepped into the bedroom from the hall. Her outfit looked funny—a pair of tan slacks and a maize and blue University of Michigan sweatshirt Sly had let her borrow. The sweatshirt fit her surprisingly well. Of course, Sly was a waif of a man, which was the only reason he could get away with the tight stonewashed jeans he loved so much without looking totally gross.

“Hell, no,” I said. I saw she wore her wedding ring again. I nodded toward it. “It working?”

“I feel the pull. It’s strong. We should have no issue finding the cloak.”

“Any inclination where we might find it?”

“Sorry. There’re no visions. Just a firm tug in the right direction. I’ll drive. It will make this easier.”

Sly grunted. “So you can find it, but you still have no idea what you’re getting into until you get into it.”

I clapped him on the back. “Story of my life.”

Mom came over to me, gave my bicep a squeeze. “Get some rest. It sounds like I’m going to handle the big stuff, but I still need you as perky as possible.”

I chuckled. “I can’t promise perky. But I’ll be ready to give ‘em hell.”

She smiled. “That’ll do.”

Chapter Forty-Nine

I woke up at three according to the old-fashioned alarm clock with actual bells on the nightstand. But it was too dark. A prick of panic started my heart beating faster. Could I have slept too long? Was it three in the morning? I was too late. Dusk had long since come and the people of Detroit had their commands to literally stick their necks out for the vamps.

I blinked away the crust of sleep in my eyes and got my head situated right. Sly and Mom wouldn’t have let me oversleep.

You doofus.

I must have slept hard. My joints felt achy from laying in the same position for so long, but my injuries from the battle with Beastvamp didn’t hurt at all anymore. I got up, did a few stretches, put my t-shirt and cargo pants back on, and scooped up my phone from the dresser where I’d left it.

Sly, Mom, and I regrouped in the kitchen. There was coffee and not a lot of talk. I think we were all worried we might talk ourselves out of going forward. I kept thinking about what Markus had said to me at the house, how Mom and I should skip town and let doom descend on Detroit without us. A tempting idea, to say the least. But for some dumb reason, I cared about what happened to those people. They didn’t deserve to be fed to the vampires. Well, maybe the pushers, killers, and other lowlifes who fed on the victims of poverty would have made good vamp snacks. I wasn’t so morally superior to pretend I would care what happened to those types.

But contrary to what many hear, the criminals did not represent the Motor City. Good people lived in the D, and I had to protect them. After all, I worked for the Ministry now, and one of the prime purposes of this secret political Goliath was to maintain order between the natural and the supernatural.

Just doing my job, ma’am.

We finished our coffee. Sly made grilled ham and cheese sandwiches. Mom and I both had two. We were as ready as we were going to get.

We said our goodbyes to Sly, and he gave us his good lucks.

Mom got behind the wheel of the Caddy. I slipped in shotgun. Before she started the engine, she handed me a small leather pouch with a drawstring.

“That’s our door to hell in there,” she said.

I almost fumbled it when she said that. “This little thing?”

She winked at me. “It’s bigger on the inside.”

Chapter Fifty

I had a forty-minute drive into the city to imagine the kind of venue Markus and Company would use for their mass enthrallment. I had little idea of the mechanics behind the whole deal outside of the cloak somehow amplifying Toft’s thrall so he could affect a thousand or more people all at once. Would he need to do it in shifts? Did he need to look at those he enthralled like he would normally, or did the cloak make that unnecessary?

Despite all the angles I played through my mind, I did not expect Mom to drive us to the Renaissance Center—home of the Ministry’s Detroit branch, including the office of our beloved Prefect Morgan St. James.

She slowed down as we passed through the shadow of the seven skyscrapers. The sunlight flashed bright enough in the windows of the iconic round central building to make me squint. The People Mover—one of the city’s feeble contributions to public transit—rolled along on its raised tracks between us and the Center.

There weren’t any cars in front of us, so I had to assume the worst.

“Please tell me you’re slowing down to admire the RenCen before tooling right on by.”

She held her left hand with the wedding ring up and sort of waved it in the direction of the gathered buildings. “This is where it’s pulling.”

I dragged my hands down my face. My stomach curled up into a ball, and my intestines wrapped themselves around it like a sick little package. A nervous belch slipped out and tasted like cheese and fried ham. Our plan was all over before it had begun. We could not infiltrate the Ministry offices. Even if we could, if the conspiracy reached so high that Markus felt comfortable performing their stunt from Ministry headquarters, we might as well have slit our own throats and let UPS deliver us to their door.

Mom accelerated back to the speed limit and drove out of the RenCen’s shadow.

“Just because it’s in there,” Mom said, “doesn’t mean they’re in the Ministry offices. Plenty of real estate in there.”

“That would be a crazy coincidence, wouldn’t it?”

“Not really. We know Ministry officers are involved. Wouldn’t it make sense that they operate close to HQ? It would make quick, secret meetings a lot easier.”

“I don’t know,” I said slowly. “The proximity still bothers me.”

“The whole blasted thing bothers me, but what are we supposed to do? Give up?”

Yes, I thought. Maybe.

And this after all those proud thoughts of sticking up for D-Town’s little people. I couldn’t tell if I was a coward or an asshole. Hell, probably both.

I twisted in my seat to watch the RenCen recede behind us. “Will the ring lead you right to the cloak?”

“It will pull until I’ve got my hands on those damn feathers.”

I straightened and leaned back against the headrest. “We won’t just have Ministry security to worry about,” I said. “Building security could get in the way.”

“We need some kind of pretense to get through the lobby. We can’t just call on the Ministry like we normally would.”

I chuffed as a thought struck me. “Sure we can. The Ministry will be our pretense.”

Mom took her eyes off the road long enough to give me a confused glance. “Excuse me?”

“I work for the Ministry, Mom. And I still haven’t issued my report on the vampire nest I discovered and destroyed.”

“You’re going to report to the prefect? Are you insane? They know you’re onto them.”

“They’ve known that for a while. He isn’t going to execute me right there in his office.”

Her sidelong look made me feel like a three-year-old who had tried to tell her the facts of life, and gotten it horribly wrong.

“Okay, at this point, maybe he would,” I said. “But I had planned on bringing the prefect in on this anyway. I just hoped we would have the cloak in hell first, though.”

“What difference would that make?”

“If he’s in on it, and the plan fails, he could use the opportunity to roll in and look like the hero, cleaning up everyone behind it, and, in turn, shutting them up before they reveal his involvement.”

Mom whistled softly. “You’d make a pretty good politician, Sebastian. Your father would be so disappointed.”

“Trust me. Just because I can think like them, doesn’t mean I could be like them.”

“Should I turn around and find parking, then?”

I took a deep breath through my nose. I had started sweating, although the heat was only on low. I smelled a little ripe.

“No,” I said. “I want you to talk me out of this.”

She turned around.

Chapter Fifty-One

Mom and I rode the elevator up together, but I arrived in the prefect’s reception area alone. While I offered my report to Prefect St. James, Mom would follow wherever the ring took her. Thank the gods it didn’t lead her in behind me, though it would have been a ballsy move, bringing a vampire into the prefect’s office, no matter how deep the conspiracy went.

I had quickly offered her a “good luck” before we parted ways. If she found (when she found) the cloak, she would text me. From there…well, we’d improvise.

I stepped up to the receptionist’s desk and waited for her to finishing typing something into her computer. She looked up and broke into what looked like a genuine smile. “Mr. Light. It’s good to see you. Go on in. He’s free.”

I stood there with my mouth hanging open. Just go in? Had I heard her right? And she thought it was good to see me? Really?

The hairs on the back of my neck prickled. My suspicion cranked up ten-fold. I had never gotten such a warm welcome here. And I had always had to sit and wait the couple other times I had visited the office.

The receptionist’s smile grew. “I know, right? He’s usually so busy.”

I returned her smile, but it felt crooked on my face. She was too polite to give me a funny look.

“It’s okay,” she said and stood. “Hand me your coat and go on in.”

So I took a deep breath, handed her my coat, and went on in.

Prefect St. James sat on the edge of his desk, arms folded, staring out the massive window behind his desk. He had a nice view of the International Riverfront and Canada on the river’s southeastern side. He wore a pair of charcoal slacks and a light blue dress shirt with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows. His skin had a polished glisten to it, as if he were made of dark wood. He carried an aura of magic I felt like dry static the second I came in.

I closed the door behind me and approached his desk.

He had to have heard me, but he kept his gaze out the window as if hypnotized by the flow of the river forty stories below.

I waited quietly until he finally unfolded his arms and turned to me. He grinned, his teeth clean and bright. “Sebastian. It’s about time you came in.”

“I, uh…I’ve been busy.”

He came around his desk. “I heard what you did. Able Kemper told me himself how you saved the lives of our missing Ministry officers, only losing one life in the struggle. Poor Ira will be missed. But you shouldn’t blame yourself. You did fine work.” He offered me his hand. “Well done.”

I took his hand while my mind raced through what he’d just said. Able had told him about what had happened at the nest, but had kept his promise not to tell the prefect I had killed Glass when he’d attacked me. From the sounds of it, Able had gone so far as to praise me.

I really wasn’t sure what to make of that. I supposed the prefect could be playing a game, making it sound like he didn’t know what was going on right under his nose. He sounded so sincere, though. Maybe he wasn’t involved in the conspiracy after all. Maybe Mom and I still had a chance to pull off our heist.

“Thank you,” I said, giving his hand a firm shake.

“I knew you’d be an asset to the Ministry.” He winked. “I also have a feeling your home will be rebuilt in short order, red tape be damned.”

Shit, I really did not think he knew what Markus, Able, and their cronies had going.

The question was, should I tell him now?

Then I remembered Fiona. And Markus. And my stupid mistake to trust either of them, especially Markus. I would not make that mistake again. If he didn’t plan on arresting or assassinating me on the spot, I would wait until I absolutely needed him.

“Please, have a seat.” He gestured to one of the fancy chairs in front of his desk. Then, instead of getting behind his desk, he sat in the chair next to mine. “Give me the details. It sounds like a fine story.”

His smile shined so bright, I convinced myself it had to be fake.

But I played along. I told him how we had tracked the nest from the Switch and made sure to give him the gory details about what had happened to Barry, which won a promise that Barry’s family would want for nothing, that the Ministry would take good care of them.

I stayed a little sketchy about our assault on the nest itself. I wanted to keep Odi out of it, but St. James caught me at it.

“Able told me you had the aid of a young vampire. Is that true?”

I hesitated, hoping I could wriggle my way around the subject, realized I couldn’t, so went as vague as possible. “Yes,” I said. “He’s one of the few good ones.”

“How do you know him?”

My phone felt like a hot brick in my pocket as I willed Mom to text me. I really didn’t want to discuss my relationship with Odi with the freakin’ prefect.

“I…through a friend of a friend. He’s a really fresh vamp and his maker abandoned him, so I’m doing a favor by keeping an eye on him.”

“Babysitting a baby vampire? Here I thought you’d want nothing to do with vampires after your recent escapades.”

Escapades was totally the wrong word, but I didn’t correct him. “Like I said, it’s a favor to a friend. I’m just trying to help.”

“And in the end, he helped you.”

“That’s right.”

He refreshed his smile, leaned forward, and planted his elbows on his knees, light in his eyes. “You fascinate me, Sebastian. I knew your father well, and I have to say, you are nothing like him.”

I didn’t know whether I should thank him or punch him in the face. I decided to keep my mouth shut and my hands to myself.

But St. James must have seen something in me. “I didn’t mean anything by that. I hope you don’t—”

My phone buzzed and trilled in my pocket. I gave him an apologetic smile. “Sorry. I’m expecting an important message.” I dug out my phone and checked the text.

A chill raced up my back.

It was from Mom’s phone, but the text read: You should have left while you had the chance.

Chapter Fifty-Two

A second text came right on the heels of the first.

Excuse yourself from the prefect’s office. Say nothing of this.

I tried to swallow, but the rock in my throat made it impossible.

One more text dinged through.

Come to the Marriott in the South Tower.

“Is everything all right?” St. James asked.

I looked up from my phone, blinking. I’d forgotten the prefect was there. I gritted my teeth for a few seconds before I could ease my jaw enough to speak.

“Yeah. Fine. But I need to get going. I’m supposed to meet my mom.”

St. James rose with me and offered his hand again. “Tell Judith I appreciate her help as well. Perhaps I should put her on the Ministry dole, too.”

He laughed.

I fake laughed.

He narrowed his eyes for a second. He knew my laugh was phony. He knew something was up. And I wanted to tell him about it. Despite my natural, and recently upgraded, distrust level, I felt confident St. James had no part in Markus’s scheme. Especially since the text—presumably from Markus—had specifically told me not to inform the prefect where I was going. If St. James had any involvement, he could have escorted me up himself.

In my rush to get out, I forgot to grab my coat. But St. James’s secretary chased after me with it and caught me in the hall. She pressed the folded coat into my hands. “You probably won’t need this in the Marriott, but you never know.” She smiled big at me like she had when I’d entered, but now I saw the evil in her eyes. The prefect’s own secretary was in on this?

That poor son of a bitch had no idea how out of the loop he was in his own organization.

“Thanks,” I said through clenched teeth. “Maybe I’ll let Markus Hope wear it when I throw him through the fucking window so he’s not so cold on the way down.”

The secretary laughed. “Yeah, right.”

She kept on laughing at my back as I stalked away.

On my way to the RenCen’s south tower, I got another text with a room number in the hotel. It made sense. They could operate out of the Marriott inside the Renaissance Center, change rooms whenever they needed to, but stay close to the Ministry offices in the central tower. Mom had hit the nail on the head with that one.

I stood outside the room for a moment, palms sweating, heartbeat kicking hard, eyeballs feeling swollen and pumping in time with my pulse. If I went in there, I gave up all control of the situation. Well, what little control I had. Once inside, they could do whatever they wanted. And we had no cavalry coming.

I rubbed my sweaty hands on my pants and felt the lump in my left pocket.

I withdrew the leather pouch Mom had given me, the supposed portal to hell she had conjured to throw the cloak into. Bigger on the inside, she’d said. Rather than stuff it back in my pocket, I palmed it.

Then I knocked on the door.

Chapter Fifty-Three

A Hispanic woman with deepset eyes and dark curly hair that went clear to her waist answered the door. She was dressed in a robe similar to what Markus had worn to open the bubble at the house. She scowled at me, looked like she wanted to bite off my nose, chew it up, then spit the wad back in place.

Pretty specific, I know, but that’s the image that came to me.

She didn’t wait for me to step inside on my own. She grabbed my arm, yanked me across the threshold, then slammed the door shut. She turned the bolt and leaned her back against the door as if she meant to hold it closed against anyone who could break the lock.

They had a spacious suite, lots of modern but still clearly hotel brand furniture. The doors to the bedrooms on the right and left were closed. A pair of sofas situated in an L took up most of the space in the suite’s common room. A plasma screen TV that could almost have passed as a billboard hung on the wall over a cabinet with a burnt orange lacquer over the wood. I bet the view up on the thirtieth floor was sublime, but I couldn’t tell, because they had the curtains drawn. The only light came from the warm glow of a pair of lamps, each situated on end tables flanking the sofa parallel to the TV.

Markus sat on the sofa facing the entrance next to one of the women from the nest. She had platinum hair and looked around Mom’s age, but the relaxed way she lounged made her look like a young sex kitten. She had a set of clear blue eyes that gave me a chill just to look at. Thoughts of death lurked behind those beautiful eyes.

Able and the second woman from that night sat on the other sofa. Able’s lumberjack beard looked like it had a little too much balm in it, the way it shined. He had a bit of a paunch, but still looked like one of those pretty boy models you saw wearing ridiculously long and over-coiffed beards.

The woman had short, dark hair gelled up in a spike with a white skunk streak through it. She looked bored, not even looking up from picking at a fingernail when I came in.

The rest all looked at me, giving me a bit of stage fright, like I was supposed to perform. I felt doubly out of place because they all wore matching robes, and I only had a coat without any runes sewn on the sleeves.

In the corner of the room, in an arm chair tucked by a table close to the window sat a familiar, yet completely out of place man—Mayor Dion Kirkland. He had a pinched, nervous face. His eyes darted from one robed practitioner to another as if he expected one of them to cast a spell and turn him into a pig. I wasn’t sure if they’d worked any magic in front of him, but I had a feeling they may have. A minor infraction compared to what they were really doing. Goulet had been right about the Mayor, it seemed. The guy had no idea what he’d walked himself into. Probably still didn’t.

Nobody said anything.

I glanced back and forth between the suite’s bedroom doors. I figured they had Toft and the cloak in one. Mom in the other. But maybe not. Maybe they weren’t here at all.

“What are you all staring at?” I asked when nobody spoke.

Markus smiled. “The Unturned.”

I peeled my lips back like an angry mutt. “I really don’t like it when people call me that.”

He shrugged, all casual, like nothing in the world mattered. “You’re an anomaly, Sebastian. One most of us would have enjoyed getting to know better if you hadn’t turned out to be such a prick.”

I barked a short laugh. “Oh, I’m the prick? Aren’t you all the ones who’ve been trying to kill me or feed me to vampires?”

“Your condition was not part of the plan. As you can tell, the vampires rather have minds of their own. And demons with minds aren’t anything but trouble.” He held his hands up, mea culpa style. “Prick was the wrong word. Thorn might be better.”

“Sorry I had to mess with your plan to rule Detroit.”

Able spoke up. “We’re not trying to rule the city, we’re trying to save it.”

“I already had this conversation,” I said. “I only want to know three things. Where’s the cloak? Where’s Toft? And where the fuck is my mom?”

Markus nodded his head toward the bedroom on the left. “Judith is in there. The other questions aren’t your concern.”

I pointed at the other bedroom door. “So they aren’t in there? Good old Tofty curled up in bed until the sun goes down? That’s not the plan?”

“Let’s kill him already,” the woman against the door growled behind me.

I looked over my shoulder at her. “That’s not very original, you know.”

She curled her lip and wrinkled her nose in a nah-nah face. So mature.

“She has a point,” Skunk Girl said. She kept on picking at her nails when she spoke, and sounded as bored as she looked.

“I don’t want to kill him,” Markus said. “He’s no longer an issue. Neither is Judith. We just need to keep them contained while the work continues.”

Able crossed his thick arms like a good lumberjack would. “What’s to keep pretty boy here from crying to Prefect St. James?”

Markus frowned. “I suppose you’re right.”

“No,” piped up the little mayor in the corner. Sweat rolled down his deep brown face like tears. “No killing. I never agreed to killing.”

Markus, Able, and the woman with the platinum hair all laughed. Skunk Girl and Angry Door Leaner didn’t, probably couldn’t. Some horrible anti-humor disease had them both infected.

Markus said, “You have no idea what you agreed to, Mr. Mayor. How could we possibly enact our mass gentrification initiative without killing a great many people.”

“You…you said with magic.”

“Indeed, very powerful magic. But that magic is what’s going to kill all those people who are in the way of progress.”

My stomach churned so hard, I nearly puked on the fancy beige carpet. “Do you hear yourself? You’re evil. Do you like being evil?”

“Not evil, Sebastian.” Markus gave me a dead stare. “Practical. Isn’t the death of a bunch of already miserable people worth also wiping out the bulk of the city’s vampire population?” Then he pressed his hand to his mouth and looked up in mock revelation. “I forgot. You like the vampires now.”

“Not all of them,” I said. “Not most of them. But it isn’t the vampires I’m worried about. Delivering death doesn’t mean delivering salvation. This isn’t some inane Christian myth. Killing those people won’t save them.”

“Honestly, I don’t care anymore. I did at first, but I’ve grown so tired of the hundreds of news stories about these people killing each other in the streets, surrounding themselves with drugs and squalor. They are better off dead. Gods, they already are dead!”

I felt a presence close behind me. I smelled mild body lotion and sweet breath.

“Can I kill him already?” the Hispanic woman said over my shoulder.

Markus sighed. “I suppose.”

Her knife jammed hard into the small of my back.

Chapter Fifty-Four

The pain was tremendous. She must have hit some kind of sensitive nerve or—worse—a vital organ. Maybe my kidney, based on the location. Whatever she did or did not hit, the stab hurt like a motherfucker. When she ripped the knife free, the pain doubled. I felt blood gush hot from the wound, soaking my shirt, running down under my waistband.

My legs went numb.

I sank to my knees.

The mayor in the corner let out a girlish shriek.

My pulse quickened. It was so loud in my ears, I thought my ear drums might tear open.

Pumppumppumppumppump.

My would-be killer stepped up and grabbed me by the hair. She yanked my head back to expose my throat. From the corner of my eye I saw her raise the blade as if she meant to pound it straight into my neck. She didn’t even have the courtesy to make it a simple slice, had to get all brutal about it. What had I ever done to her?

Bitch.

She must have wanted to line up her strike perfectly, because she took a moment before drawing the knife down in a killing arc. This gave me enough time to yank open the leather pouch still in my palm. For such a small pouch, it opened surprisingly wide. Wide enough, in fact, that when I lifted it into the path of the knife, the woman’s arm, knife and all, sank right in to her elbow.

She screamed so loudly, I felt her voice like a vibration through my body. She instantly yanked her arm free, but the only thing that came out was a charred stump. The woman had literally reached into hell.

“How do you like that?” I said and gave her a shove.

The pain and horrid sight of what remained of her arm had the woman off balance. She went down easily.

The spectacle had glued the rest of the party members to their seats in shock. The wide-eyed expression on Able’s face was especially priceless. He looked like a frightened little boy with a bearded man-face.

I jerked the pouch’s pull string like a ripcord and closed it up. A residual blast of heat rippled the air, then dissipated. My cheeks felt hot and dry.

I tried to stand, but the pain in my back shot down my leg. I fell onto my side, the side with the stab wound, and cried out against more pulses of agony that ripped straight through my whole body. The woman with the hellfire-burned arm lay beside me squirming. Her mouth opened and closed, but only a hoarse whine came out. She stared at me with wide and accusatory eyes. The smell of her flame broiled flesh wafted over to me, and if I hadn’t been so clenched with pain, I would have emptied my stomach.

By now, the rest of the crew had shaken off their initial surprise. All four of them rose, even Skunky (not so boring now, huh?), and gathered around me and the burnt woman. Their gazes collectively went to the woman. They wore matching expressions of horror.

Then Markus turned his gaze to me. “What is that?”

“Hell.” I grinded my teeth to near the cracking point, grabbed his ankle, and pulled.

He wasn’t expecting the move and toppled as easily as Stump Lady. These were old magicians, used to letting magic do their fighting. Able was the only one who looked at all physically imposing.

I pulled the bag open and shoved it up Markus’s right leg like a baggy leather sock. I wriggled on my side, the pain in my back begging me to stop, but my survival instinct pushing me on. I hiked the bag up until I reached his knee.

He thrashed and cried. His left shoe’s hard sole clocked me in the side of my face.

A beefy set of hands grabbed me by one of my legs and dragged me away from Markus. I clenched the hell bag, refusing to let my only advantage go. Able’s hands let go of my leg and descended toward my throat. I drew on my limited power to conjure a gust of wind and blew him off his feet. Then I cast another gust to lift me to a standing position. A sloppy maneuver, and it hurt like hell as the air jostled me around. But I didn’t think I could get to my feet any other way with that agonizing stab in my back.

I could feel the blood pouring down my back, some dripping down my hip under my pant leg. More of it drenched my shirt. Another outfit ruined. Good thing I got the cheap stuff from Meijer instead of shopping at Ralph Lauren.

I landed on my feet, staggered a few steps, and bounced against the nearest end table, knocking the lamp to the floor. On the way down, the lamp’s light whirled around like an out of control spotlight.

A haze of smoke hung in the room, smelling like a barbeque from hell. Which, I guess, it technically was. Even when I was bleeding to death, I was funny.

Markus rolled around on the floor howling. A bit of his knee joint peeked out of the blackened end of his stump.

The woman who’d lost her arm had regained her composure. With the help of Skunky, Stump Lady stood. That bite-my-face-off look she gave me when she answered the door looked tame compared to the way she looked at me now. Now she looked like she wanted to swallow me whole.

I pulled the bag open wider than before. It seemed to grow to accommodate me, and I felt I could stretched large enough to consume a whole person. “Come get some, bitch.”

She smirked, her eyes catching something behind me. I knew what it was the second before those big lumberjack arms wrapped around me and lifted me off my feet.

“Grab the bag,” he shouted to the three women.

Skunky made a move toward me, but when she looked directly into the hell pouch she shrunk away.

The woman with the platinum hair growled and pushed Skunky out of the way. She came at me, her eyes focused on my face, not the bag. I didn’t know what they saw in there, but it clearly disturbed them.

Platinum raised her hands up, fingers curled. Claws of ice formed around them with points that looked as sharp as Beastvamp’s had been. She thrust those ice talons at my face.

With my arms pinned against me, I couldn’t bring the bag up. Instead, I adjusted the angle of its opening. Enough heat poured from it to melt her claws some, turning to steam, before they reached my eyes. She still had enough to scrape some skin off my face.

Able started squeezing harder.

I struggled to lift the bag up a little higher. The heat drove Platinum back with a snarl.

She didn’t come at me again.

She didn’t have to.

The pressure around me felt too strong for Able’s arms alone. Sure enough, I had a layer of packed earth around my upper arms and torso, hugging me along with Able. An earth elementalist. I should have figured, with his whole lumberjack vibe.

The layer of dirt thickened a little, but it didn’t spread. Unlike heat, air, and even moisture, you didn’t find a whole lot of earth hanging around indoors. Able must have drawn from the few potted plants in the suite and whatever dust floated in the air. It didn’t give him much to work with, but it held me tight enough that he could let me go and kick one of his heavy boots right where Stump Lady had stabbed me.

I screamed and fell forward.

Luckily, I folded the top of the bag over before I landed so I didn’t accidentally burn myself. Based on Markus and Stump Lady’s reaction, it looked like hellfire hurt worse than a stab in the back.

Of course, stabbing hurt plenty. And between Able’s boot and the clingy dirt, the pain had tripled since the knife first went in. I couldn’t clear my head enough to call some fire or air or something. (Sure as hell not freaking dirt, though. How lame.)

I felt Able and the two women close in on me. Now that my magic bag was closed up, they weren’t so skittish. But before they started kicking me to death or carving me up with ice fingers or choking me with dirt, a resonant voice boomed, “No!”

They all stopped and spread apart.

Markus sat up against one sofa, glaring at me. His stump still smoked, and gristle snapped and popped around his exposed kneecap, but he hardly seemed to notice. “I’m going to kill this little fucker myself.”

Then he shifted into a cougar.

The cougar was missing one of its hind legs, which corresponded to Markus’s missing limb. It made him look a little vulnerable and pathetic, if not for the pure hate in the cougar’s gray eyes. He opened his mouth wide and emitted a raspy cry.

I rolled onto my side so I could face him.

I pulled open the bag.

The cougar glanced at it and leapt back, fumbling to keep its feet with only three of them to work with.

The others backed away, too.

“Forget this, Markus,” Stump Lady said. “We’re done anyway.” I was faced away, but I heard the deadbolt snap and the door open, then slam shut.

Markus in cougar form shied away, pressed against the couch. I couldn’t see Able, Skunky, or Platinum, but Able’s earth trap crumbled. I wanted to see what was going on, but I didn’t dare take my eyes off Markus. I couldn’t trust that whatever frightened him in the bag would keep him from pouncing on me anyway.

I let out an exasperated sigh. “Will someone please tell me what’s so scary in—”

Something in the bag lurched, then kicked.

And that’s when the hellhound jumped out.

Chapter Fifty-Five

Hellhound was really slang for any kind of four-legged, somewhat doglike demon. Some of them hung low and slick, sneaking up to their prey. Others lumbered like monstrous horses, trampling whatever stood in their way. The one I had let out of the bag (har, har) was engulfed in flames, of course.

It had black skin with cracks full of molten lava. Its long, thin tail had a barb of flame at its tip. It had leapt out with its back to me, so I didn’t have a good view of its head, but as it growled at Markus’s cougar, I could see a black jaw the length of an alligator’s chomper.

Markus hissed like an oversized house cat. It was the last sound he would ever make.

The hound’s massive maw opened unnaturally wide and clamped down on the cougar, engulfing the cat’s entire head. The hound bit through Markus’s neck and ripped his head clean off before the cougar could so much as cry out. The cougar’s headless body tipped over onto its side and twitched, blood spurting from the jugular in long arcs that painted the flank of the hound.

Someone screamed.

The hound was too busy munching on Markus’s cougar head to notice. The crunch and squish the head made as the hound feasted pushed bile up the back of my throat and made me gag. But I didn’t waste time getting sick. I doubted it would take the hound long to devour Markus’s head. It was the only chance any of us in that room had to survive.

I wrenched the bag shut and it shrunk to its normal size. I shoved it in my pocket and struggled to stand. Platinum stood gaping at the hound, eyes wide and wet. I shouted at her. “Freeze it!”

She blinked, looked at me as if I had said feed it instead.

I figured her for a highly skilled water elementalist. Not only could she manipulate water physically, but she could change its temperature as well. I could work water, but nothing close to that.

I got in her face.

Behind me, most of the crunch had gone out of the hound’s chewing. Whatever remained of Markus’s head made slurping sounds as the hound ate.

I snapped in Platinum’s face. “Your water. Freeze it. My fire won’t work.”

My fire would probably make it stronger, in fact.

She snapped out of it, gave a quick nod, then turned toward the hound. Her face wrinkled with fear and disgust, but she didn’t look away. She raised her hand, fingers spread, and hard streams of water shot from her fingertips as if each finger were its own mini power washer. But when the water hit the hound, it froze instantly.

The hound reared around to face her even as she covered it with a smoky glaze that steamed like liquid nitrogen. It had big, black orbs for eyes, like shark eyes. Its ears were split down the middle like a pair of forked tongues on its head. Its snout looked like a hot coal on the end of its muzzle. But it was the sight of its black teeth that sent a chill through me. Three rows of jagged pieces of onyx surrounding its gray serpent tongue. Chunks of cougar head were still caught between some of them, bloody flaps of furred skin and a cracked slice of bone lodged toward the back.

The hound’s howl shook the floor, but it didn’t last long.

Platinum filled its mouth with ice until it couldn’t close its jaw.

The hound swung its head from side to side. Cold breath chuffed visibly from its nostrils. Platinum kept pouring on the ice. She sprayed until the beast’s entire head looked like a sloppy ice sculpture. The hound collapsed shortly after that. But Platinum kept shooting until the streams petered out and she fell to her knees. She had poured everything she had into taking down that hound, and had done a damn fine job of it.

So I felt a little bad drawing on the last shred of my magic to engulf my hands in orange flame.

I hobbled backward until I had Able and Skunky in sight as well. Once I did, I turned my flames from orange to blue. It was easy. All I had to do is think about Mom trapped in the next room. Or about Markus’s betrayal, not only for how foolish that betrayal made me feel, but how much it must have hurt Mom. I knew that feeling all too well.

I knew I couldn’t hold the flames for long, though. I simply had not had enough time to recoup my magic. Taking down this trio would spend what I had, and that was assuming I could take them without too much of a fight.

Able and Skunky were both breathing hard and staring at the cougar’s headless corpse. The soiled stink of fresh death hung in the air. The smell of hellfire and meat locker added a nauseating flourish.

Platinum stood on her hands and knees, panting, gaze on the floor. She looked ready to pass out.

Their shock had temporarily erased me from their minds.

I leaned against the wall, the pain in my back wanting to send me to the floor. I smeared blood across the cream paint and hit a Monet print with my head, knocking the frame askew. I would only have a few moments here before they turned their attention back to me, the guy who had inadvertently summoned a hellhound into our world and let it bite off their leader’s head. I don’t think the inadvertently would matter much to them.

So what could I do? I couldn’t run. I still needed to get Mom and Toft out of there. These three weren’t going to let me do that.

I had one choice. A choice I didn’t particularly like. So I didn’t dwell. I acted.

Three big blue balls of flame, one for each of them. They each might have heard the fire crackling its way to them, but I could fling flame faster than most. Three direct hits.

Platinum got the worst of it. She was closest and on her hands and knees. Her back lit up. For a moment, she looked like a blue-fired version of the hellhound. Her scream sounded animalistic, but not like the hound’s. An octave higher and she could have shattered the all the glass in the room.

Skunky took her fire bolt in the face. It struck with such force, it flipped her off her feet and sent her onto one of the sofas. Her momentum made the sofa tip backward, and Skunky went rolling across the floor, head engulfed in flame, her skin already sloughed off her skull.

Able reacted best. He turned and took the brunt of the fire on his shoulder. It pushed me back, but he went with the force instead of fighting it. He scampered sideways a few steps. Kept his feet. His mouth opened and let loose a deep scream like a Viking warrior charging into battle. He beat at the flame on his shoulder and put it out. His robes hung off that shoulder, his skin puckered with massive blisters, some of which popped and oozed. The sleeve on the arm he’d used to slap away the flames was singed off around the cuff. That hand also had bright red blisters.

Able’s eyes simmered as he glared at me. His lips peeled back from his clenched teeth. The angry grimace looked insane surrounded by his over-coiffed beard.

He charged at me.

I tried to pull up another flame. An orange flicker lit up my fingers for an instant, then died.

Able laughed. It came from deep in his chest and sounded like a bad cough. As he crossed the room toward me, he held out his hand. Dirt and dust swirled into his palm and coalesced into a narrow rock with a sharp point, the kind of thing our primal ancestors used as cutting tools. The weapon suited the burly asshole perfectly.

He raised it over his head and swung it down at mine.

I dodged, tripping over my feet, and landed on the floor once again. I felt something tear in my back. A damaged muscle near the knife wound? I probably didn’t want to know. So much blood soaked my shirt and pants now, I felt like Platinum had sprayed me down like the hound.

I rolled onto my back in time to see Able’s pointed rock pierce the wall, while the force of his fist cracked the hole wider. He glared down at me with his crazy lumberjack eyes as if shocked he’d missed. He yanked his rock loose with a growl.

I shoved my hand in my pocket, going for the hell bag.

He dropped down on me, straddling my waist and pinning my wrists down with his knees. “Haha!” He clenched his rock knife in both hands and held it over his head with a proud grin.

I twisted my head to look for anything that might help. The only thing I would see was the knife Stump Lady had shanked me with. A rather plain dagger with a short blade and simple hilt with just a hint of medieval flair. It was a good ten feet out of reach, though.

I didn’t have enough energy to burn Able, but I’d had good luck with air magic lately. Just needed to keep the spell subtle, simple, and fast.

Not my strong point. But I didn’t have time to practice or take lessons. Do it or die.

“This city is still ours,” Able boomed like a heavy weight wrestler claiming victory for keeping his championship belt.

Not so fast, Paul Bunyan.

I focused on the air around the dagger, enveloping it with energy like I had while moving all that debris at Toft’s. It was smaller, would need a delicate touch. I couldn’t do it with my brain. I needed my instinct to take over. Something like muscle memory, even though I didn’t have a whole lot of memories stored away about doing stuff like this.

But Able looked ready to stop gloating and start smashing.

I let out a small grunt and whipped the air around the knife and tried to direct it at Able’s throat.

It slammed into his eye instead. Close enough.

His good eye shot wide. He coughed once. The rock dropped out of his hand and crumbled to dirt on its way down, peppering my face with dust and soil. Then he tipped over and thumped onto his side.

Rather than feeling relief at having his weight off me, a whole new wave of pain burrowed through my gut. I could taste blood in my mouth, metallic and tangy.

I rolled my head one way, then the other to check on the women. Neither of them moved. Skunky’s hair was gone, as was pretty much all the flesh on her head, leaving only a blackened skull. Platinum’s robes had melded to her back, making it look like her skin was made of paper.

So many nasty smells filled the room now, it was hard to parse them. Cooked flesh. Hellfire. Something like the inside of a freezer. And a whole lot of death.

I closed my eyes. Oblivion rose to catch me the moment I did.

But I couldn’t let it take me.

I forced my eyes open. They didn’t want to stay that way. I bit my lip. It barely hurt compared to my stab wound, though I noticed some numbness taking over. I also felt so cold. Maybe Platinum had hit me with her magic, but I couldn’t remember. Sparks went off in my head. Short circuits and power surges. System shutting down.

No.

I bit my lip again. I rolled onto my side. I had a little magic in me. I tried to hold together the damaged muscles in my back. I didn’t have skills that specific, though. I could mask the pain, but shock had already started doing that on its own.

I thought of Mom. I thought of our burnt house. I thought of Fiona, and Markus, and betrayal. I thought of Goulet, and that creepy old vamp that had fed me his blood and started my fucked up, unturned life. And I thought of Dad. His patient lessons. His acceptance of who I was. How I should have told him I had taken up demon hunting, but I’d been too afraid to lose that acceptance.

I thought about a lot of things.

But mostly, I thought about bringing this all to an end.

And that was what got me up.

I caught a glimpse of movement in the corner of my vision. I twisted toward it too quickly. More jagged agony ran up and down my back and clear down into my thigh. I braced myself for another attack.

Mayor Kirkland had fallen off his chair and had shoved himself as deeply into the corner as he could.

I had completely forgotten he was in the room.

A large wet spot soaked the crotch of his pants. His face shimmered with sweat, and his eyes were partially rolled back in his head as he tremored and drooled. This was why you didn’t bring the unacquainted into the paranormal world without a great deal of preparation.

“Mayor Kirkland,” I shouted. “Hey!”

His eyelids fluttered, and his eyes rolled back in place. But when he glanced at the carnage before him, I could see him about to pass out.

“Hey! Look at me. Not any of this other stuff.”

Kirkland’s gaze floated to me. “Wha…wha…”

“It doesn’t matter. You know about the Ministry?”

He nodded.

“You need to contact Prefect St. James. Tell him he needs to get some guardians and bring his ass over here promptly. Can you do that?”

He nodded again. His hand absently fumbled under his sport coat and drew out a phone.

I left him to it.

I wanted to check on Mom, but I needed to check on Toft first. I needed to make sure to send that damn cloak to hell.

I shuffled to the door opposite the one Markus had claimed Mom was behind and went into the room.

Toft sat on the edge of the queen-sized bed facing the window. The curtains were drawn. The only light came from a lamp on the nightstand. Toft sat with his back to me. He kept his head bowed, didn’t move at the sound of my entry.

The cloak lay draped across his shoulders.

Otherwise, he wore the same black dress pants and white dress shirt I had seen him in last.

On the nightstand, I spotted a carafe half-full of water and a wooden crucifix about twelve inches long. I waddled my way over to him. His shirt hung open. Several burn marks in the shape of the crucifix on the night table seared his chest. His clothes were completely drenched in what, judging from Toft’s condition, was holy water. They’d used a lot, more than what had been in the carafe there.

He shivered, his gaze staring at nothing. Several sections of flesh had sloughed off, probably from prolonged exposure to the holy water. Smaller, square burns marked his face. I gathered they had used the end of the crucifix to do those. His skin looked gray and mottled, but the glow in his eyes was gone. He looked stuck between his natural form and his human glamour.

What made the obvious torture all the worse was that it was done to a twelve-year-old body. I knew who Toft really was, what he was, yet it still pained me to see what had once been an innocent boy brutalized like this.

Heat bloomed in my belly. I wanted to go back out into the suite’s common room and beat on the dead bodies out there. Of course, I could barely stand, so that wasn’t really an option. I would have to sate my anger in another way.

I pulled out the hell bag. I whipped the cloak off Toft’s shoulders and threw it down onto the bed. Then I opened the bag to about the same diameter as a manhole. The roiling flames inside instantly dried the sweat on my face. I had to stagger away before it burned of my eyebrows.

I picked up the cloak.

“This is my city, assholes.”

I threw it into the bag then quickly drew the bag shut. If there were more hellhounds in there, now they had a pretty chew toy made of hummingbird feathers. And this whole shit storm was done. Even though Stump Lady had taken off, and even if there were more conspirators, their plan was now toast. We could probably expect some more vampire rioting. But even that would die down when they realized their main players in the Ministry were out of the picture, permanently.

“What did you just do?” Toft asked in a pinched rasp.

“I sent that fucking cloak to hell. Take it easy. Ministry’s on its way.”

He slowly turned. He looked near tears. I’d never seen a vampire cry. Hadn’t thought they could.

“The cloak is gone?”

I smirked. “That’s right.”

He closed his eyes. “All hells, this city is doomed.”

Chapter Fifty-Six

I had to sit. Blood loss had taken its toll. I was a sorcerer. I was tougher than the average mortal, even without my magical stores. That’s how we lived longer than everyone else. But we weren’t invincible, and if I didn’t get to a Ministry healer soon, I wasn’t going to make it.

“What are you talking about?” I asked. “Doomed how?”

“They made me, Sebastian. I know you believe I’m evil incarnate, but I never wanted to do it.”

“Do it? You mean…” I lost my breath. The taste of blood in my mouth thickened.

Forget this, Markus. We’re done anyway.

That’s what Stump Lady had said before bailing.

We’re done anyway.

“You’ve already done it?”

Toft nodded.

I turned my attention to the bag. The fucking bag of hell that was supposed to be the final answer, the way out, the end to nearly four years of misery, from the day I learned about Dad’s death and Mom’s fugue till now. The end, damn it. And I had let my angry need for that end rush me into throwing the cloak away without stopping to think, just think for a damn minute. In the process, I had assured death for thousands of Detroit residents.

“You can’t undo it without the cloak?”

“I would have to personally visit each and every thrall. It’s impossible.”

“There has to be another way,” I shouted as if he were to blame. I broke into a coughing fit. When I held my fist in front of my mouth, I felt blood spray across my knuckles.

Toft waited for me to stop, then said, “There is another way.”

I gripped his arm. The chance to make up for my stupid mistake sent a thrill through me. “What is it?”

“A thrall dies with the vampire.”

“What are you talking about?”

“If I die, my thrall will break. It should free them all.”

“But you’re not dead.” I heard how stupid it sounded, but denial makes you say funny things.

Toft’s little boy smile with all those burns on his face tricked me for a moment much like Odi could trick me into forgetting he was a vampire. “It’s sweet that you’re concerned for my life.”

“To hell with your life,” I said. “What about Odi?”

Toft shrugged. “With my death, the blood oath expires. You can walk away, return to your life without worry. Like you’ve always wanted.”

“I’m not talking about myself. I’m talking about him. He’ll have no one.”

Toft looked away, toward the window, as if he could look through the curtains and the city below. “I know. But you have no choice. You must kill me.”

I opened my mouth, but I couldn’t think of anything to say. I couldn’t decide how to feel, either. I’d gone emotionally numb, which made way for the physical pain in my back to flare up. I gritted my teeth. It hurt to breathe now. I didn’t have a lot of time.

Neither did all those people.

“Do it,” Toft said.

Which was easier said than done. I didn’t have enough power to burn him. The dagger in Able’s eye was metal, so it wouldn’t do any good piercing Toft’s heart with it. And it was too small to cut off his head. I couldn’t see myself yanking the hell bag over his head either. I just…couldn’t.

“What are you waiting for? My brothers and sisters will feed on these people tonight, and you don’t look like you have long to live yourself. Kill me before you die.”

I looked around the room. On a chair in the corner was a duffel bag. I glanced at the vampire torture items on the nightstand. You don’t fuck around with a vampire unless you were prepared to kill him. I shuffled over and, sure enough, found a sharpened wooden stake within the duffel. I pulled it out and looked at it as if it might change into something else, something silly, like a dirty sock or a bag of jellybeans.

“That will do,” Toft said. He had laid down on the bed while I had my back turned. His head rested on the pillow. He had his hands laced and resting on his belly. He already looked like a corpse.

I limped over to him. I could tell he was struggling against tremors. I could see the fear in his eyes. For the short time I’d known him, he never looked more like his young body’s age than now.

I lined up the stake over his heart. My hands shook, making the stake’s point jitter.

“One thing,” he said. “You owe me nothing once I’m gone. But, as you said, Odi will have no one.” He pressed his pale lips together for a moment. “Unless he has you.”

I lost my breath for a second, and it had nothing to do with my pain. “You are a son of a bitch.”

“Son of a whore. From what I remember, at least. It takes a while for a life of several centuries to flash before one’s eyes.”

I wouldn’t feel sorry for him. I couldn’t feel sorry for him. I wouldn’t feel sorry for him…

“Please,” Toft said.

“I’ll…” I cleared my throat. Blood gurgled up into my mouth. “I’ll see what I can do.”

He closed his eyes. “I’ll have to accept that.”

“Do you really care so much about him? I thought he was just a pawn to you.”

“My pawns are my family.” His lips curled in the vaguest of smiles. “I don’t expect you to understand.”

He had me there.

“Quit stalling. Put that stake in my heart. Save those people.”

I really couldn’t believe these things were coming out of Toft’s mouth. He didn’t sound anything like the vampire I thought he was. Which made it all the harder to stake him.

But it didn’t make it impossible.

There was too much…too much at stake. (What a terrible time for a pun, intended or not.)

I said the only thing I thought might comfort him before death.

“I promise I’ll take care of him.”

He still had his eyes closed when he smiled.

I hesitated a couple seconds more.

Then I pierced his heart and turned him to dust.

Chapter Fifty-Seven

I flopped down on the bed next to Toft’s ashes, that familiar dry smell of vampire remains surrounding me, and fell into darkness. At one point I thought I heard Mom’s voice, but I couldn’t answer her calls.

The next thing I remembered, I woke up in a strange bed in a strange room, surrounded by strange people. The walls had ancient looking tapestries depicting everything from mating fae to what looked like a chorus of angels. They reminded me of the rug in Prefect St. James’s office, the one that looked like fairies had woven it.

The mattress and pillow I lay on might have tricked me into thinking I was levitating, if not for the soft feel of the sheets under me.

A bookshelf stood against the wall to my right, stuffed with leather bound books of various sizes and conditions. A floor lamp in one corner provided a mellow glow. The walls were painted a soothing earth tone. I didn’t see any windows, but the air felt cool and smelled like incense.

An elderly woman with a blue scarf covering her head stood at my beside. When she smiled, a legion of wrinkles and lines circled her features, yet her eyes had a vibrant glow that spoke of eternal youth. I knew somehow that she was a healer, and she had fixed me up.

“You are well,” she said like a statement of pure fact.

And I was. I felt pretty damn good compared to how I had.

In a chair pushed back from the bed, Prefect St. James sat with his chin resting on his folded hands, his elbows braced on the chair’s arms. He studied me with a steady gaze. I couldn’t read his expression. Anger? Fascination? Disappointment? One of those.

The other two people in the room stood on the opposite side of the bed from St. James—a man and a woman. I didn’t recognize either one, but I could tell from their stance and general presence they were Ministry.

The healer pressed the back of her hand against my forehead, nodded, then backed away. She gave St. James a small bow, then left the room.

St. James cleared his throat and lifted his chin off his hands. “You’ve given us quite a mess to clean up.”

I groaned and closed my eyes. Here it came. How many Ministry members had I killed? Four? And maimed a fifth. I was going away for a long time.

“It’s lucky for you Mayor Kirkland was so…forthcoming. But you and your mother still have a great many questions to answer.”

Mom!

“Where is she? Is she all right?”

St. James nodded. “She’s recovering like you. She’d been put into a near death stasis. Ugly magic the Ministry doesn’t approve of.”

I curled my hand into a fist.

St. James noticed. “I told you, she’s fine.”

“Still pissed at your colleagues for touching her.”

“I understand.”

“Really? Because I don’t think you do. I don’t think you have any idea what these bastards did right under your nose all this time. I should assume you were in on it, only I’m pretty sure you weren’t. But my life, my family’s life, has been wrecked because you couldn’t control your branch of the Ministry.”

His nostrils flared, but he showed no other outward signs of anger. His gaze flicked up to the pair standing on the other side of the bed.

“On behalf of the Ministry,” St. James said, “I extend our sincerest apologies.”

I smirked, turned my head to face the two of them. The man wore a three-piece suit. The woman an elegant but simple green dress with a high collar. The woman had very dark skin. The man, on the other hand, had a pasty pallor as if he hadn’t seen enough sun.

“You two aren’t Detroit Ministry, are you?”

The woman shook her head. “No.”

I turned to look at St. James again. “Are you in trouble?”

His gaze danced up to the Ministry pair again, then back to me. “The Global Ministry Faction is here to assist in the investigation.”

“How much do you know so far?”

“Only what the mayor shared, and a few answers to questions your mother answered.”

“It’s a hell of a story,” I said.

“Tell us,” the pasty-faced guy said.

And you bet your ass, I told them every last bit.

Chapter Fifty-Eight

I sat in Sly’s basement on a folding chair next to Odi’s coffin. Dusk was minutes away, and I wanted to be there when he first rose.

The Ministry had had me and Mom in custody for three days while they investigated, cooperated, and debriefed. They had asked us all sorts of questions, but didn’t offer many answers. I got the feeling from the general tension that they had discovered more Ministry members involved in the conspiracy. They would also have to decide how to handle the vampire side of things. Separating the co-conspirator vamps from the general vamp population would be all but impossible.

The vamps wouldn’t talk.

Amazingly, when they finally let us go, the pair from the Global Ministry Faction assured me I wouldn’t be charged with any crimes. They even provided a piece of parchment saying as much, with an official signature from the prefect of the GMF (the prefect of all prefects) herself. I felt kinda special.

During those three days, we’d been completely cut off from the outside world. Sly and Odi had no idea what had happened to us or where we were. And, of course, the Ministry covered up any evidence of the incident at the RenCen Marriott, so it wasn’t like they’d see something in the news about it.

Sly got the news first, since Mom and I arrived during the day. About halfway through our story, Sly stopped us so he could roll a joint. It was the first time he’d ever smoked weed in front of me. I couldn’t blame him. This story was seriously messed up.

I heard stirring inside Odi’s coffin. I braced myself. I didn’t know how he’d take the news. I didn’t really want to break it to him. But I’d promised Toft I would take care of the kid, and part of taking care of someone meant you told them the truth, even when it was hard.

The coffin popped open an inch or so, then Odi pushed it the rest of the way open and sat up. He jerked when he saw me sitting there, clearly not expecting a visitor at coffin-side, let alone his missing mentor. He blinked away some of his sleepiness and a huge grin spread across his face.

“Dude!”

I smiled. “Dude.”

He climbed out of the coffin and wrapped his arms around me, forgetting his vampire strength and nearly cracking a rib.

“Ouch.”

He let go and backed off. “Sorry.” He looked around. “Is Toft with you? I’ve been going nuts wondering what happened. Sly’s smoked so much weed he’s gone through like fifty bags of Cheetos. Where the fuck have you been?”

I stood from the folding chair and held my hands out. “Slow down, kid. Let’s ease into this.”

He narrowed his eyes. “You…you smell funny. Extra sweaty.”

I kept from sniffing my armpit. I knew it was his keen senses picking up on my nerves. I wouldn’t get a chance to ease into this.

“I’m just gonna come out with it,” I said.

Odi stared at me.

“Just gonna say it.”

“Then say it.”

I put a hand on Odi’s arm. “Toft is gone.”

He knocked my hand away and staggered backward. He nearly tripped on his coffin. He gathered his balance, then wandered over to the couch. He dropped down onto it and picked up Sly’s glass bong. He turned it from side to side, examining the abstract carvings in the pipe’s base.

“They killed him?”

I so wanted to lie. I mean, hadn’t it been their fault? If they hadn’t forced Toft into enthralling half of Detroit, he would still be here. But there was that little detail about my zeal, throwing the cloak into hell before I’d said word one to Toft. If I had just waited a second, first…

I clenched my fists and bounced them gently against my thighs.

Odi twisted on the couch and looked over its back at me. “Sebastian?”

“They got him to do it,” I said. “Tortured him. He didn’t stand a chance resisting.”

I licked my lips.

“When I found him, he was a wreck, but I didn’t know he’d already completed the ritual, had all those people enthralled and ready to let the vamps eat them.”

Odi shot to his feet. His face shifted, skin going gray and shriveled, eyes glowing red. He bared his fangs. And the weight of his power crowded the room. “What happened to Toft?”

“I threw the cloak into hell,” I said quickly. “Before I knew it was too late. So the only way to clear Toft’s thrall…”

Odi’s glamour rippled back into place. He looked like an average, pained teen again. “Was to kill him.”

“Yes.”

He sank back onto the couch. He bowed his head and raked his hands through his hair. “So that’s it, then. You’re free of me. That worked out great for you, huh?”

“I didn’t want to do it, Odi.”

“Don’t treat me like a two-year-old, you son of a bitch. Don’t make it any worse than it is. I’m on my own again.” He covered his face with his hands. “Thanks for orphaning me again.”

I came around the couch and sat next to him.

He shied away, scooting to the other end. “Just give me a sec to process, then I’ll take off.”

“No,” I said. “You’re not going anywhere.”

He slowly raised his head and looked at me. “You’re going to kill me, too?”

“No. No way. Just shut up and let me talk, okay?”

He crossed his arms and frowned. “Whatev.”

“I promised Toft I would take care of you.”

He snorted. “Blood oaths expire after death, duh. I’m not an idiot.”

“This isn’t a blood fucking oath, Odi. It’s a promise. One I intend to keep if you would just close your damn mouth and let me finish.”

He gaped at me, mouth open.

Good. Had his attention.

“Toft is gone,” I said. “And I can’t replace him. I’m no vampire. I don’t know all the things you need to know. But I’m willing to figure it out if you’re willing to stick with me.”

He gaped for a full ten seconds before finally saying something. “Are you for real?”

“I promised,” I said. “But not even that matters. I won’t abandon you, Odi. You…you’re not just my apprentice. You’re my friend.”

He released a long exhale then he slid over to me and hugged me again. This time a couple vertebrae popped, but it kinda felt good.

Chapter Fifty-Nine

Two weeks later, Mom and I moved into our new home.

The Ministry had offered to rebuild our old house just as it had stood before the vamps burned it down, but Mom and I both felt it was time for a change. Especially since no one in that neighborhood would look at us the same—Mrs. Snoopis most of all.

We ended up with a small house in a district of Detroit called Corktown. I liked the idea of leaving the suburbs for the city itself: my city, the city I hadn’t let Markus Hope and his crew steal from the folks who really belonged here.

The other nice thing about the house was the neighbors. We had a super cute druid woman on one side and a white witch about Mom’s age on the other. The houses belonged to an initiative to create more support and cooperation between those of us in the paranormal community, which started with bringing that community closer together. All of this was started by the interim Detroit Ministry leadership from the GMF, who had taken over until they could elect a new Detroit prefect. I tried to convince Mom to run for the position. She answered with some vulgar language in plain old English that I didn’t know she knew. Wow.

We settled in nicely. Mom shared food recipes with the witch, Gladys, in exchange for the opportunity to pour through Gladys’s massive collection of spell books from around the globe. You couldn’t take the scholar out of my Mom, no siree.

Me?

I laid low. The Ministry ended up way overpaying me for my services rendered, then promptly fired me. I didn’t really feel like demon hunting. I was more interested in getting a date with the druid next door. Of course, I would have to actually ask her out. Every time I got up the nerve, I thought about Fiona, and chickened out. I guess I still wasn’t over her. Who knew how long it would take me? I found it very hard to trust. And I’d earned that. I wouldn’t trust anyone outside of Mom, Sly, and Odi until I was damn well ready.

Speaking of Odi, he lived in the basement now. I’d decided continue his training. I didn’t know any other way to keep him out of trouble. I also discovered we could keep him fed with a fraction of my Unturned blood compared to that of an average mortal, so we worked with that until we could figure out something better. There were ways tame vampires could get their needs met without killing. I would just have to make sure he came by it honestly, not through any kind of thrall.

So, yeah. I was training Odi. Pining over my neighbor. And spending a lot of time reading and playing video games.

I didn’t know what would come next.

And I was totally good with that.

~~~~

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Books by Rob Cornell

The Lockman Chronicles

Darker Things (The Lockman Chronicles #1)

Dark Legion (The Lockman Chronicles #2)

Darkest Hour (The Lockman Chronicles #3)

Darkness Returns (The Lockman Chronicles #4)

Darkening Dawn (The Lockman Chronicles #5)

Unturned

Branded (Unturned #1)

Crossed (Unturned #2)

Deceived (Unturned #3)

Visit Rob Cornell’s website at robcornellbooks.com

About the Author

Rob Cornell is the author of The Lockman Chronicles, a five-book urban fantasy series featuring ex-government agent and monster hunter, Craig Lockman. He is also the author of Branded, the first book in a new series about Detroit sorcerer, Sebastian Light. Raised on a steady diet of Star Wars, He-Man, G.I. Joe, and Transformers, Rob has always spent much of his time wandering the halls of his imagination, conjuring stories. Nowadays, he writes them down like a responsible adult. He lives in rural Southeast Michigan with his family.

Published by Paradox Publications

Copyright © 2017 by Rob Cornell

All rights reserved.

Cover Design by Beth Flumignan

Deceived is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.