Biting Cold

chapter FOURTEEN

YOU LIGHT UP MY LIFE

I woke to searing pain and blinding light. My leather jacket was gone, and sunlight poured over my bare arms. I pulled them back into the shadow that covered the rest of my body.

Tears sprang to my eyes as blisters lifted down my arms, but the pain was the least of my worries. My mind fuzzy, I squinted against the glare and looked around.

I was in a square concrete room with a window on one wall. The window was uncovered, and sunlight spilled across the room. I was tucked into the only shaded corner, a little ball of vampire…and my phone had been in my missing jacket.

“Handy, isn’t it?”

I also shouldn’t have been awake at this hour. Slowly and groggily, I looked toward the sound of Tate’s voice. He stood in an open doorway that was twenty feet of sun-drenched concrete away from me.

The doorway led directly outside. Even if I managed to cross the room, there was nowhere to go.

Tate had imprisoned me with sunlight. He’d even left me my sword, because what could I possibly do with it? I had no room to wield it, unless I hoped to spare myself the pain of death by sunshine.

“You’re a sadist,” I said.

“Hardly. I’m a realist,” he said. “The world could be better than it is. I intend to prove that.”

My mind was dull and slow. “Where are we?”

“That’s not important,” he said. “The more important question is why we’re here.”

“Because you’re a vindictive son of a bitch?”

Tate laughed and walked into the room. He wore dark pants and a T-shirt. His wings had disappeared, but his T-shirt was mottled with blood. I guessed Jonah had gotten in a few shots.

He chuckled and moved closer. It was disturbing to watch him move. So handsome…and so deadly. I looked him over, scanning his face and body for any detail that would help me differentiate between the two of them. But I saw nothing.

“I prefer messenger of justice, thank you.”

I guessed the librarian had been right. “Prefer it all you want. Playing judge, jury, and executioner doesn’t make you just. It makes you arrogant.”

“I’m not the arrogant one, Sentinel of Cadogan House.”

“You’re a fallen angel, aren’t you? A Dark One? That’s arrogance by definition. You thought you knew better than everyone else.”

“I know right from wrong.”

“Is this right? Punishing me because I tried to help save four police officers? Putting me in this room, where I’ll burn to ashes in a couple of hours?”

“Those men were corrupt,” he said. “Their souls were corrupt.”

“Those men have families. They have wives and children.”

“They hurt others. They deserved punishing,” he insisted.

“That’s not your call to make.”

He stilled, and it was almost scarier than arguing with him, like I was staring back at a furious man suddenly frozen in marble.

“Those who say we cannot tell right from wrong have no courage. They have no will to make the decisions that must be made. Justice should be meted out by those who have the willpower to act, the stomach for punishment. No one forced those men to their actions. They chose their own paths. They should bear the burden of the consequences.”

“They would have. That’s why they’d been imprisoned.”

“And they were released. The human justice system has no backbone.”

“You don’t get to make that decision. Isn’t that what got you in trouble millennia ago?”

My hands began to shake with exhaustion, my body rebelling against the fact that I was awake. I squeezed them into fists and forced myself to concentrate.

“You are weak creatures with no stomach for justice.”

“What you call justice, we call war. Destruction. Havoc.” I swallowed down a scream of pain. Ethan was probably frantic, but Jonah would have seen me disappear. They’d have to work to find me, but they would. God willing, they would.

“Why did you bring me here?” I asked.

“To make an example of you.”

“For what?”

“You stopped me from completing my work, just as the scarlet witch tried to do. You asked for this, remember?”

Paige must have been the scarlet witch. “You burned her house down because she tried to stop you?”

“Justice does not veer for cowards.”

“And killing people doesn’t make you brave. It just makes you a killer.”

“I can see that you’re regretting your decision to stand in for the corrupt cops. You’ll have a little while yet to regret that decision, won’t you?”

He pointed at the line of sunlight, which had shifted a few more degrees. Soon my bit of shadow would shrink to nothing, and I would be completely exposed to sunlight.

“I’ll admit,” he said, surveying the room, “this is my first time using this particular mechanism. A single slice with a sword wouldn’t quite have the same effect on you, would it? You’d too easily survive that.”

For the first time, I actually regretted having fast healing powers. But I wasn’t going to let Tate get the emotional upper hand.

“You’ve already lost once today,” I said. “We stopped you. They’ll find me, and you’ll lose again.”

But with each second that passed, it seemed more and more unlikely that they’d find me in time. The press conference had taken place in the early evening. An entire night had come and gone, and the sun had risen again. No one had found me yet. And now the sun was up, and neither Jonah nor Ethan could look for me.

Soon I’d be out of time.

Tate pulled something from his pocket, then held it up. It was shiny and reflected the light, and I looked away again, blinking back the glare.

“You still have my Cadogan medal,” I said. “That’s not news.”

“It is, actually.” I heard the clink of the chain and assumed he’d tucked it away again. No point in waving it in my face if I wasn’t going to look.

“I find it interestingly symbolic. A girl, a graduate student, changed into a vampire one night against her will. Reborn into a vampire House right here in Chicago. She fashions herself a savior of lost souls and decides to battle me for supremacy. She loses, and here she dies.”

“So you won’t be needing that anymore.”

“Au contraire,” he said. “It is a prize. A remembrance.”

He meant when the sun finished its journey, I’d be gone. Reduced to ash, but he’d still have a trophy of having beaten me. (Either he didn’t notice I was wearing a replacement medal, or he wasn’t going to let a bit of inconvenient fact get in the way of the victory he was already imagining.)

I knew I couldn’t hear Ethan anymore, but I still imagined his voice in my head, giving me a speech similar to the one I’d given him on the field in Nebraska. Reminding me I was a Cadogan vampire, that I was stronger than Tate believed, that I would survive until he found me.

And he would find me. He would. I only had to hang on until he arrived. I only had to survive.

Move! I told myself. I shifted a centimeter to the right, and I forced myself to keep talking. I might as well use the time alone with Tate for a good purpose.

“There are two of you now.”

“In a fashion,” he enigmatically said.

I frowned at him. “I saw you. You touched the Maleficium and you split in half.”

He clucked his tongue. “I am not split in half, Ballerina. I am whole. My name is Dominic.”

He was one of the three Dark Ones the librarian had identified—Uriel, Azrael, and Dominic. “You destroyed Carthage?”

He laughed heartily. “I did not. That was not my particular handiwork. It belonged to my brothers in arms. But at least you better appreciate what we’re about.”

“Destruction and revenge?”

“Only if deserved,” he said, clearly having no qualms about appointing himself the man to decide what someone did or didn’t deserve.

“The world is a cruel place,” he said. “Often unfair.” Dominic moved to the window and looked outside, then back at me.

“I’ll be back in a moment,” he said. “Don’t move.”

He strode from the room. For a moment, I hoped he might have seen someone outside—a rescuer intent on saving me. But the world remained quiet.

I shuddered with exhaustion, the edge of my arm grazing a band of sunlight. Pain shot through me, and I pulled my knees to my chest and wrapped my arms around them. If things got worse, I could stand up, squeezing myself into the tiny sliver of space. But then I’d be out of room, without even my jacket to protect me.

That he’d taken away my jacket just to bare my arms and expose me to even more sunlight was disgustingly thorough. I guessed I should have been thankful he hadn’t stripped me naked and left me entirely vulnerable, not that the clothes would help much when my bit of shade was gone.

And it was disappearing fast.

Please, someone, find me, I thought.

Merit?

My name echoed in my head. I thought a panicky response. Ethan?

It’s Morgan. I’m with Ethan. He’s here. He asked me to talk to you. Do you know where you are?

I closed my eyes in relief. I’d all but forgotten about my connection with Morgan Greer. Thank God someone had remembered.

I looked around the room, the images blurry, my head swimming with exhaustion. I don’t know. I’m in a room; there’s a lot of sunlight. I’m trying to stay in the shade. But there’s not much left.

Can you see anything? Does anything look familiar?

I squeezed my eyes closed to clear my vision, then opened them again. I squinted against the sunlight and caught a glance of red outside the window. My retinas burned viciously.

Red, I told him, closing my eyes again and weeping in relief. There’s red outside.

For a moment, there was only silence. Panic stabbed through me. Morgan? Are you there? Don’t leave me. Please don’t leave me.

I’m here, Merit. Jeff and Catcher and Ethan are here. We’re talking about where you might be. Can you tell me what kind of red you can see? Bright red? Dark red?

I swallowed thickly and made myself look again. Dark red. Orange-red.

Anything else?

Tears slipped from my eyes. I don’t know. I’m so tired.

I know you are. But you must concentrate. What else is around you?

I can’t see anything else.

That’s okay, Merit. Use your other senses. What do you smell? What do you hear?

I closed my eyes and loosened the barriers against the sights and smells of the room. I heard the scuffle and coos of pigeons roosting in the ceiling above me and felt the damp breeze in the air.

I think we’re near the lake, I told Morgan.

That’s good, Merit. What else?

He meant it wasn’t enough to know I was near the lake. Lake Michigan was enormous, and they might never find me.

No, I told myself. Focus. If you want to live through this, focus!

I tried again, letting my senses explore the world around me. More pigeons. Gravel. Damp and dying grass.

And beneath all of those smells, a sharp, dry scent. Something powdery. Something dusty.

Something familiar.

I searched my mind for the memory, but my brain was sluggish.

Merit? Are you still there? Ethan is asking about you.

Morgan meant it encouragingly, but I could tell it was hard for him to mention Ethan’s name, to reference our relationship.

He was hurting himself to help me, I thought, and that realization was enough to focus my mind and send the memory back into sharp focus: I was standing in a room, and Seth Tate was seated at a table before me. The smells of lemon and sugar filled the air. But beneath that scent, there was something more…the same scent of chalk that I smelled now.

I knew where I was.

The ceramics factory, I said.

It was an abandoned compound where Seth Tate had been held before he’d sought out the Maleficium. I’d visited him there—here—twice. Both times at night, but both times for a good long while as Tate taught me about the Maleficium and magic.

There are pigeons above me.

They know where you are, Merit. They’re coming for you. Hang on.

Please don’t leave me. I skittered an inch deeper into the corner. If they didn’t find me in time, I didn’t want to be alone. Not here. Not in this place with Tate.

I won’t, he said. I’m right here.

I don’t know how many minutes or hours passed, but I was standing in the corner, my back pressed to the wall, mere inches of space between me and the moving sunlight, when a sound as loud as a gunshot split the air, and I clapped my hands over my ears. Voices burst out. Yelling, the roar of an engine, the sound of rocks and gravel.

Unaware of the danger it posed, immune to my tears, the sunlight crept closer. I was running out of time. “Please be help. Please be help.”

Morgan’s voice popped into my head again, as exhausted as mine must have sounded. Merit, they’re coming to get you. Hold on, okay?

I dropped my head back to the wall behind me, tensing every muscle to keep myself upright and poised in the tiny bit of shade. You can do this, I told myself over and over again. You can do this. You can do this.

Paige burst into the room. “I found her!” she called out.

I sobbed in relief.

Jeff rushed in behind her, a shiny silver blanket in his hands. Immune to the sunlight, he ran to me. “I’m getting you out of here, okay?”

I managed a nod before he threw the cloth over my head and whipped me into his arms like I weighed nothing. I wrapped an arm weakly around his neck. “Tate?”

“Temporarily incapacitated,” Paige said, hustling Jeff out the door. “So we don’t have much time.”

Jeff carried me outside, where I heard the sound of an engine revving and a door opening. I was gently placed on something soft, and then we were moving again.

Jeff pulled away the blanket. My heart skipped at the sudden darkness. I reached out, and he squeezed my hand.

“I can’t see anything.”

“It’s temporary,” said another voice. Catcher, in front of us. “It’s because you were exposed to sunlight for so long; it’s too dim in here for your receptors. It will pass.”

I nodded but couldn’t stop the tears that slid down my face. A minute more, and I’d have been a pile of ash.

I sobbed, and Jeff pulled me into his chest.

“Shhh,” he said, as I breathed in the spicy scent of his cologne and gripped a fistful of his shirt. “You’re okay. Rest for a few minutes, and we’ll get you home. Oh, and I think Catcher found your jacket.”

“Thank you,” I said, crying in relief until my eyes closed again.

I didn’t wake up again until midnight the next evening.

I sat up in my bed, the room lit by a golden light that filtered in from the open hallway door. My eyes took a moment to adjust, but I could finally see again.

“Water?” I touched my throat. I was parched, my voice harsh and gravelly.

Ethan walked into the room, relief on his face. He wore a suit, but the top of his shirt was unbuttoned and his tie was loose around his neck. He strode to the bed and handed me a cup of water from the nightstand.

I drank it greedily.

“How are you feeling?” Ethan asked.

He looked down at the bed but didn’t touch me. Even after the night we’d faced, he was keeping his distance.

“I feel miserable,” I said, and I didn’t just mean the Tate situation. “Like I haven’t slept in twenty-four hours.” I handed the empty glass back to him. “More, please.”

He refilled it. “Blood would also be a good idea. Keep drinking that, and I’ll get you some.”

I didn’t argue and kept drinking. I drank so much so quickly I nearly didn’t keep it all down. Nausea overwhelming me, my stomach suddenly swollen, I sat back and closed my eyes.

“Is Jonah all right?” I asked.

“He’s fine. He’s the one who called us. He waited here until just before the sun rose, then returned to Grey House. Catcher and Jeff looked for you for some hours. Apparently, you led them on quite a chase.”

“How’s that?”

“You don’t remember?”

I shook my head. “He touched me at the lockup and knocked me out somehow. I didn’t remember anything until I woke up in that room.” I looked up at Ethan. “I know what he is. His name is Dominic. He’s a fallen angel, just like the librarian said. He has great black wings, Ethan. Bat’s wings.”

“If he’s Dominic, what’s Seth?”

I shook my head. “I don’t know. Dominic was the only one there. At least, I think he was. How did Paige stop him?”

“Magical flash bang,” he said. That explained the loud noise. “It disorients someone sensitive to magic, but the effect is only temporary.”

“I should thank her, too.”

“She’s out tonight. She said she needed to talk to Baumgartner. She said she had some things on her mind.”

I smiled. “Good for her. She seems like the type to take her magic seriously—unlike everyone else in the Order.”

I flipped back the covers. I was dressed in a slinky nightgown. I gave him a look. “Seriously?”

“That was Lindsey’s doing,” he said. “She said it was the first thing she found, and time was of the essence. We weren’t sure how badly you’d been burned, and we wanted you out of your clothes.” We both checked out my arms. They were still pink from the burns, but they were clearly healing.

“They may be tender for a bit,” he said, “but you’ll heal.” He paused. “I was afraid it was going to be too late.” True anguish crossed his features.

“They cut it close.”

“They found you,” he corrected, “and that’s what counts.”

“Morgan was the key. If we hadn’t been able to communicate…” I trailed off as tears threatened to breach my lashes again.

Ethan nodded. “He called after you were home to ensure you were okay.”

“He did good. Comforting, but with just enough push to make sure I stayed awake.”

We’d been concerned Morgan had been too immature to handle his position as House Master. Maybe he could grow into it. Maybe he already was growing into it.

“I need to thank him,” I said. It was the right thing to do and might help clear the air between us.

“You may do so in one hundred years when I let you leave the House again.”

“Ha.”

“I’m only slightly joking, Merit. I have a nearly irresistible urge to lock you away and keep you out of trouble.”

“Locking me away wouldn’t keep me safe or out of trouble. And if you locked me away, I couldn’t keep you safe.” Of course, there were some things from which I couldn’t protect him. “How did your interview with Darius go?”

He shook his head. “Let me navigate the political streams. I am the captain of this ship, after all.”

“Wow. You usually go for naughty. Tonight it’s nautical. It’s bad, isn’t it?”

“It’s not good.”

“What happened? Is he going to remove our accreditation?”

Ethan stood up and walked to the window and didn’t say a thing. My chest tightened uncomfortably.

“You aren’t going to tell me?”

“I’m not avoiding the conversation because I don’t trust you,” he said, glancing back at me, that line of worry between his eyes. “But because there’s nothing to tell. The shofet ruled; you know that. Darius will decide what he decides. He hasn’t verbalized that decision, and until he does so, we have to wait.”

With that enigmatic statement, he went silent on the issue. I decided he’d been through enough tonight and didn’t press him further.

“What about the fallout from the press conference? I can’t imagine the new mayor is thrilled someone who looks like the former mayor, except with bat wings, tried to take out four of her cops.”

“She wasn’t thrilled,” Ethan agreed. “But she also didn’t try to blame it on vampires. Of course, that’s pretty easy, since you were there with a sword trying to defend the cops. The human-interest reporters loved that.”

“Ironic,” I said.

“There has, however, been a bit of a change in the status quo.” Ethan reached over and grabbed a folded newspaper from the nightstand and handed it to me.

The top half of the front page was devoted to a photograph of Dominic, his black wings spreading ominously across the newsprint. Beneath the photo was the headline: WINGED MAYOR ATTEMPTS COP HIT; CITY HOME TO OTHER SUPS.

It hadn’t actually been the mayor, of course, but I could forgive them the error. The city didn’t know two Tates were on the loose, and they were hard to tell apart, anyway.

“Read the first paragraph,” Ethan said.

I read aloud: “ ‘Chicago reels today after Mayor Seth Tate, bearing a pair of batlike wings, attacked the so-called South Side Four outside the police precinct where they were released. In response, three new species of supernaturals—so-called nymphs, sirens, and trolls—were outed in a press release sent to news outlets across Chicago. Mayor Diane Kowalcyzk says she was shocked to learn Mr. Tate was ‘one of the monsters.’ A source close to the mayor’s office says Kowalcyzk is aware the city harbors dozens of supernatural species but kept that information from the public.’ ”

I glanced up at Ethan, nervous about his reaction. But he was smiling.

“Someone just outed more supernaturals to the mayor and everyone else.” I pointed to the paper. “You’re okay with this? How are you not freaking out?”

“Because your grandfather was the source.”

I could only blink. “What? Why in God’s name would he do that?”

“Because they told him to. It makes strategic sense. One, it makes Kowalcyzk look as incompetent as she really is. That’s a fun bonus. Two, we’re fighting a losing battle. The information has spilled out, a bit at a time, since Celina announced our existence, and not usually on our terms.”

He was right about that. Celina outed vampires, and Gabriel had to out the shifters after his brother launched a full-out attack on Cadogan House.

“You said he had permission?” That was as big a surprise as any. There were all sorts of supernatural creatures the general public didn’t know about, and I hadn’t heard any of them express any strong desire to mingle with humans.

“In light of Tate’s—Dominic’s—behavior, your grandfather thought it best to revisit the issue with the city’s supernatural communities. Chicagoans have already seen two supernatural reveals. You add yet another reveal—Dominic’s wings—and the public starts to believe there’s more out there than they’ve seen, assuming they don’t believe that already. If they were going to be outed, they wanted to do it on their terms.

“And frankly,” he added, “I think your grandfather stressed the fact that vampires have been taking the supernatural heat in this town for a while now, and it was time to share the burden. He says it helped considerably that you’ve been meeting the groups and conducting yourself honorably. Attempting to solve problems that weren’t yours in order to keep the peace for everyone.”

I blushed at the praise. It meant a lot that they’d said those things to my grandfather. He’d all but raised me, and I was glad to have done good by him.

“This could change a lot of things in Chicago,” I said.

“It could.”

He had a little smile on his face, and I figured out the reason for that fast enough. “And with that much change, Darius would be hard-pressed to dump one of his Chicago Houses.”

“That is an unintended side effect.”

It might not, of course, have any bearing on what the GP ultimately did. After all, they tended to ignore the cold, hard realities of what went on in Chicago. But it would certainly make them think twice before disbanding us.

“How’s the public reacting?” I asked.

“The usual mix. Some are celebrating; some are afraid. Some are convinced we are the harbingers of the apocalypse.”

“Dominic’s wings can’t be much help with that.” They looked exactly like something you’d have seen at the end of the world as the four horsemen rode down upon you…

“I don’t imagine they did. On the upside, with so many other options, the protestors have completely abandoned us.”

“No kidding?” That I had to see. I climbed out of bed and joined Ethan at the window. I could see only a corner of the front yard, but no signs bobbed above the Cadogan House gate.

On the other hand…“There’s a hatred vacuum,” I said, crossing my arms and turning back to him. “If humans aren’t out there protesting vampires because there are so many other things to protest, it leaves a gap for McKetrick to fill. Kowalcyzk’s still in office, and as far as we know, he’ll still have her ear. He’s going to be pissed if folks are lovey-dovey in our direction. And he’ll fire things up again.”

“That does seem possible. Likely, even. He is motivated.”

We were quiet for a moment, probably both considering the likelihood of another enemy raising the stakes around the House.

But when I looked back at him, his gaze was on the silk slip that barely covered me. Magic rose around us, swirling as desire deepened.

Ethan caressed my bare shoulder with a fingertip, and I shivered. I closed my eyes, my body warming as his hand splayed across my bare back.

“Ethan,” I said, the word an invitation, but instead of bringing him closer, it broke the spell.

Frustration poured through me.

“There are plenty of things in the world to be afraid of,” I said. “But you are not one of them. Nothing but fear is holding us back from each other,” I quietly said, then walked toward the shower.

“Where are you going?”

“To take a shower and get dressed.”

“You are sun drunk if you think you’re going anywhere,” Ethan said. “You need to recuperate.”

My hand on the doorjamb, I looked back at him, my gaze as flat as his had become. “I don’t have time to recuperate. Dominic is still out there, and God only knows who he’s going after next. I need to figure out how to stop him.”

Ethan pointed to the bed. “Get back over there.”

“I will not.”

He arched an imperious eyebrow. “It wasn’t a request, Sentinel.”

“Great, since I wasn’t asking for permission.”

“You could have been killed.”

“Unfortunately, that’s true every day of the week. Danger is part of my job, Ethan. The one you assigned me to.”

His lip curled. “I’m trying to remember my reasons for appointing you Sentinel. Was I attempting to teach you a lesson?”

“And who has learned the lesson now, Professor?”

He growled, so I didn’t push him further.

“We can’t argue every time I have to go to work. That’s not going to be productive for the House. Besides, you would have been proud of me out there last night, notwithstanding the fact that I nearly became ash. I managed to move a fallen angel off his target and sweet-talk a cop into giving me back my sword.”

“That is impressive.”

“It is. And we both know I’m going anyway.”

He fumed silently for a moment. “You are as stubborn as they come.”

“We are well matched, Mr. Sullivan.”

Ethan humphed but relented. He turned to the side and held out a regal hand. “Go have a shower and report to the Ops Room.”

“As you please, Liege,” I said, then closed the bathroom door.

Why did all of our interactions have to end with a closing door?