Biting Cold

chapter SIXTEEN

YOU TAKE THE GOOD,

YOU TAKE THE BAD

He looked tired. Tall, handsome, and exhausted. And he’d traded in the Armani suit for a long black cassock, the dresslike garment worn by priests. He was a Tate, to be sure. But I didn’t know whether he was Dominic or Seth, or what Seth was in any event, so I wasn’t going to take chances.

“Can we talk?” he asked, gaze on me.

Lindsey and Juliet stepped beside me, swords bared.

“You have three seconds to turn around and leave this House or meet the business end of my steel,” Lindsey said.

“Wait,” I said, putting out a hand, my gaze tracing the lines of guilt carved into Tate’s face. Guilt wasn’t exactly Dominic’s type of emotion.

“Identify yourself,” I said.

“I’m Seth Tate,” he said. “The former mayor. An angel, in your parlance.”

The foyer went silent.

I was stunned and confused…and then a little more stunned. If Dominic was essentially a demon, how could Seth be an angel? They’d split apart from the same person—from Seth when he touched the Maleficium.

How were things getting even more confusing?

“You’re a messenger?” I asked.

He visibly relaxed, perhaps relieved that someone had figured out the truth. “Yes, Merit. A messenger. That’s why the fairies let me in.”

It hadn’t even occurred to me that he’d gotten past the fairies.

“We don’t know that,” Lindsey said. “This could be a ruse.”

It could have been, but as we stood there, I came to realize an important difference between Seth and Dominic.

“I can tell them apart,” I said. Everyone looked at me. “They smell different,” I sheepishly added.

Seth smiled a little, but the vampires’ reactions weren’t encouraging.

“They smell different?” Lindsey asked. “You want us to trust him because he smells different?”

“Seth smells like lemon and sugar. He always has. When Dominic unfurled his wings, he smelled like sulfur. Sulfur and smoke.” I looked at Seth. “Right?”

“It’s the wings. They darkened, much like his aura. His soul.”

“He could be making this up,” Lindsey said, her sword still tipped at Seth’s neck, but I shook my head and pulled my little secret weapon from my pocket—the worry wood.

I held it up for all to see. “This is worry wood. It works against old magic. The powerful stuff. Add it to my natural resistance to glamour, and there’s not much chance he could put something over on me.”

The crowd’s murmurs were a little more supportive but still not convinced. I had one more weapon in the arsenal. I looked at Lindsey. “You’re the empath. What’s he feeling right now?”

She shook her head. “He’s a blank canvas to me. I have no idea.”

That might have been true psychically, but not physically. There was no doubting the grief and guilt etched into his face. He was still handsome, but he looked like he’d aged a few years in the last few days.

“I swear on all the deep dish, red hots, and rib-eyes in Chicago that this isn’t Dominic. And believe me, I would know better than anyone.”

No need to get into the gory deets of what he’d put me through, but having been around both of them, I now had a pretty good sense I could pick them out.

Lindsey slowly lowered her sword again. “Okay, Sentinel. You feel okay about this, I’m going to trust you. But one false move, and he gets it.”

And now Lindsey was stealing lines from movies. Maybe she and Luc dating wasn’t such a great idea.

I looked back at Seth and gave it to him frankly. “By ‘it,’ she means thirty-two inches of honed steel. And she’s no slouch with a weapon. I’d believe her.”

Seth nodded. “I’m here to talk. Not make trouble. There’s been far enough of that.”

I was fine with talking, but—given the curious and worried looks around us—it seemed we should do it somewhere else. I glanced at Lindsey. “We need a room. Any thoughts? I assume the bigwigs are in Ethan’s office.”

She frowned. “Training room? Ballroom?”

I didn’t like the training room idea. There were too few exits in the basement in the event I was wrong about Seth. I didn’t think that was likely, but they didn’t pay me fancy Sentinel wages to take those kinds of chances.

The ballroom was on the second floor. Closer to our living quarters than I would have liked, but it was a big, mostly empty room, and it was right beside the stairs.

I glanced around, looking for Luc or Malik or Ethan or anyone actually in charge of the House. But it was just us. Me and Lindsey and the other Novitiates in the foyer. I was the highest-ranking person in the room, and I was going to have to make the call.

God willing I’d make the right one.

“Ballroom,” I decided.

Lindsey nodded, then looked around the room. “Show’s over, everyone. Get back to business.”

But they didn’t move, either too curious or too worried to simply turn around and walk away.

“Okay, let me try this another way,” Lindsey said, her voice firmer now. “Get back to work before Darius feels the magic, comes out here, sees this one lounging around our foyer, and strokes out.”

It still took a moment—they seemed loath to leave Seth here with us or me here with him—but they finally got moving and filed back down the hall and up the stairs.

Lindsey, Juliet, Seth, and I were left in the foyer.

Lindsey pointed at Seth. “You, follow me. Cause any trouble and you’ll be wearing steel in very uncomfortable places.”

“Duly noted,” Seth said.

She looked at me and Juliet. “You heard him. Any funny business and you have his consent to skewer him like a kebab.”

I wanted to laugh, but this didn’t seem like the time. “I’ll take the rear,” I told her, then looked at Juliet. “Can you find Ethan?”

Juliet nodded gravely and disappeared, and Lindsey started for the stairs. His hands crossed before him obsequiously, piously, Seth followed her, the rough fabric of the cassock thrushing as he walked. It didn’t sound especially comfortable. I imagined stiff, starched fabric rubbing raw skin, and the thought gave me cold sweats.

Had he found religion? Did he feel guilty for what he’d done, or for what Dominic had done? Was the garment, as itchy as it sounded, some kind of personal punishment?

We rounded the stairs at the second floor. Lindsey opened the double doors to the Cadogan ballroom, watching suspiciously as we filed in. When we were well inside, she shut the door behind us.

The room was large, with oak floors, golden walls gilded with framed mirrors. Chandeliers hung from the high ceiling above us. They’d once held hundreds of candles, but those had been replaced with lightbulbs after an attack by a group of rebel shifters. The bulbs didn’t offer as much ambience, but one less fire hazard in a building reviled by people who’d once carried torches to flush out monsters seemed like a good precaution.

Seth walked into the room. He stopped beneath the chandelier, then turned a half circle as he looked up at it. “This is a beautiful space,” he said.

“Your approval is appreciated,” Lindsey said. “Start talking.”

Seth looked at me, and I nodded. He began to talk, less a discussion than a monologue. A sermon.

“Millennia ago, the world was a different place. The divisions between humans and others were…less rigid. Humans were aware of supernaturals. We, the messengers, bridged the gap between them. Messengers like me arbitrated for peace. Messengers like Dominic administered judgment. At first, humans called us angels and deemed us virtuous.”

“And then what happened?” I asked.

“The angels of judgment, the others, grew to love violence,” Seth said. “They satisfied their lust for it, their compulsion for it, by meting it out for any perceived slight. Humans, so often the victims of that compulsion, didn’t appreciate it. They called them the Dark Ones, and they deemed them fallen. Demonic. Devilish. The source of evil.”

“And so humans began to distinguish between good and evil.”

Seth looked at me thoughtfully. “You remembered what we talked about when I was incarcerated.”

I nodded.

“Humans wanted the violence to stop, but the fallen angels were arrogant and refused to believe their actions were wrong. And so a war was waged between humans and messengers. Incensed by the humans’ conceit, the justice givers delivered redemption on their own terms, destroying human cities and salting the earth so nothing could grow again.”

“Carthage,” I quietly murmured.

“You said messengers, plural,” Lindsey said. “There are others of you?”

“There are many, although our roles are diminished. Our magic is old, and our ways are old. We aren’t part of this world, not in the way we once were.”

“And the Maleficium?” I asked.

“When humans grew sick of the destruction, they called their magicians, who separated evil from good and placed it into a vessel that would contain it. The Maleficium, the book, was created to hold the evil they’d separated out. But it wasn’t just a thing. A power.”

“What was it?” Lindsey quietly asked, transfixed by the story.

Suddenly, it all made sense. Well, most of it.

“It was them,” I said. “The fallen angels. The Maleficium was created to separate good and evil—they thought the fallen angels were evil. Which means the Maleficium was created to hold the fallen angels. Dominic and the others.”

“The magicians didn’t know how to kill them,” Seth said, “so they thought to lock them away for eternity. At least until Mallory came along. Mallory’s spell at the silo—what was she trying to do?”

“It was a conjuring spell,” Lindsey said. “It does seem like she conjured someone.”

But I shook my head. “The Maleficium didn’t release Dominic. He didn’t pop out of the book. He split off from Seth.”

“Is that why you look alike?” Lindsey asked.

Seth’s expression was sad. “No,” he said. “I’m afraid the answer is much simpler. Messengers of justice and of peace were always born to earth in pairs. It was an innate way of keeping the world in balance.”

The magical world was big on balance. Good and evil. Dark and light. The reason Mallory’s first attempt to unleash the Maleficium on the world caused so much havoc in Chicago was precisely because dark and light magic were thrown out of whack.

And humans thought magic was all about fairy tales and simple stories. Little did they know.

“You are twins,” Lindsey said. “Real-life twins.”

“We were. Are,” he corrected, his expression slinking toward despair. “Although he and I are very different creatures. We always have been.”

Before any of us could react to that, the door burst open. Ethan stood there, Juliet and Luc behind him. A perk of magic filled the air, and Ethan had the fire of a devil in his eyes.

He moved toward Seth, his strides long and determined. His hair had come loose from its tie, and it streamed around his face as he moved like he was a warrior moving into battle.

“Ethan,” I said, but he threw me a silencing look. The look of a Master vampire whose irritation at me was matched only by his irritation at the party crasher in his House.

He grabbed Seth’s cassock by the shoulders and pushed him backward. Seth stumbled but stayed on his feet, and stared back at Ethan with equal intensity, but much less hatred.

“Are you looking for a fight, Tate? Because I will show you a fight.”

Oh, God. Ethan didn’t know this wasn’t Dominic—the man who’d tried to kill me—and he was ready for war.

“You would have killed her, goddamn it. Do you understand that?”

Seth’s eyes went wide, and his gaze snapped to me. “Merit?”

“I’m fine,” I said, eyes shifting between him and Ethan. “Ethan, this is Seth. Not Dominic.”

“Merit can tell the difference between them,” Lindsey said.

But neither Ethan nor Seth was willing to listen; they were both too wrapped up in their own emotions. Ethan thought the man who’d tried to kill me was here again. Seth, who’d known me since I was a child, had only just learned his twin brother had tried to kill me.

“This will not stand,” Ethan said.

“He hurt you?” Seth asked.

“Dominic decided I’d interrupted his work. He put me in the sun. But I’m fine now.”

Seth looked horrified but turned back to Ethan. “I am sorry,” he said, and there was no mistaking the sincerity in his voice. “I am so sorry. I didn’t know. I wouldn’t have come here if I’d known.”

The words finally seemed to shake Ethan out of his fury. Chest heaving, he ran his hands through his hair, then linked them atop his head and walked away from us. Just a few feet away, but enough to gain distance. Enough room for him to think.

He didn’t walk toward me. He wouldn’t even make eye contact.

My stomach tightened with worry.

“Lindsey?” Ethan asked. “You allowed this man to enter our House?”

She looked nervously at me, and I nodded. “This is Seth,” she said. “Merit believes she can tell the difference.”

Ethan looked back at me, expression flat. “Can she?”

“I can. But he can prove it better than me,” I said. After all, I’d seen the pictures in the Kantor Scroll. There was at least one difference between demon and angel, even if it wasn’t normally visible.

Even if they weren’t normally visible.

I looked at Seth. “Show them.”

Seth looked at me for a moment, debating the request, then looked at Ethan. “I can prove what I am.”

He unclasped the top button of his cassock, then continued down the row until each was unclipped. He wore simple dark pants and a shirt beneath. He dropped the cassock onto the floor, then pulled the T-shirt over his head. His chest was well carved with planks of muscle, but that wasn’t the feature attraction here.

“Back up,” he said, and we did, stepping farther away from him. He closed his eyes and rolled his shoulders.

I knew what was coming, but that didn’t diminish the effect of actually watching it happen.

With a whoosh of air, he unfolded his wings. Like Dominic’s, they were at least twenty feet from tip to tip. But unlike Dominic’s, Seth’s wings were still feathery and white. The top ridgeline was iridescent and downy, while the long, straight feathers below were sharp and crisp. His feathers arced along the top and bottom to points at each end that gleamed like opals.

The smell of lemon and sugar filled the room—the sugar-cookie smell of a millennia-old angel in twenty-first-century Chicago.

“They’re beautiful,” I said. But neither the extension of his wings nor the sentiment lifted the veil of sadness from his face. Seth looked, in a word, tortured. As if embarrassed by what he’d done, he whipped his wings into hiding again.

“I’m sorry,” Ethan said, but Seth shook his head.

“He is Dominic’s twin brother,” I explained. “Seth, the angel. Dominic, the demon. Born together but with different roles in the world. The Maleficium was created, in part, as a prison for Dominic and the others like him.”

“So Dominic was inside the Maleficium?” Ethan asked. “How did he split apart from you?”

Seth shook his head. “I don’t know.” He turned to pull his T-shirt back over his head. His wings, apparently magical in nature, had completely disappeared. But there in the middle of his back between his shoulder blades was a gruesome scar, a vaguely star-shaped burst of raw pink.

“Your back,” I began. “What happened?”

“Magical burn. It happened when I touched the book.”

I’m not sure how I knew, but I knew. That wasn’t a magical burn.

“I was right. Mallory didn’t conjure Dominic from the Maleficium,” I said.

Ethan frowned at me. “What do you mean?”

“Dominic popped into being, sure, but not from thin air, or even from the Maleficium.” I looked at Seth. “We watched you split apart. But she didn’t divide you in half, not really. She pulled Dominic out of you—and you have the scar to prove it.”

“How is that even possible?” Ethan asked. “How could Dominic exist within Seth?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “That’s what we have to figure out.” And once again, every question we managed to answer led to six or seven more.

Seth pulled his T-shirt down.

“You came to our House,” Ethan told him. His posture and tone had changed—back to calm, cool, and collected Master. “Why are you here?”

“Atonement,” Seth said without hesitation. “I should have come sooner, but I was, well, mortified. Horrified at what we’ve done. Dominic has killed again. He was created as a being of justice, but he misapplies the rules. Very rarely is murder just, and certainly not when humans have already adjudicated the guilt of those he seeks to punish again.”

Seth was right—and that was a similarity between Paulie and the cops. Paulie had already been convicted; the cops had been acquitted. Humans had already done their justice making, but Dominic wasn’t satisfied with their results.

“He’s not the only guilty party.” He walked toward the ballroom wall and looked into one of the mirrors, staring back at his visage as if it were unfamiliar.

“I have done things.” He shook his head. “Throughout my life, I have worked to build communities, to strengthen individuals. I ran for mayor here, in this time and this city, to help those efforts. But somewhere I fell off course. I endangered people who trusted me. I promoted the sale of drugs to vampires.” He put a hand to his temple. “It made sense at the time?”

He met my gaze in the mirror. “I owe you a specific apology, Ballerina. Particularly for the things that happened in my office. For putting you through hell. I had information. About your father.” Seth glanced at the others in the room. “About the manner in which you were made a vampire,” he carefully said. “I thought you had the right to know.”

“At the fund-raiser,” I said. “You said you wanted to talk to me. That’s what you wanted to talk to me about?”

Seth nodded. “There was never time to say the words, and when the confession finally came out, it came out in violence. It caused violence.” He looked away. “Whatever her faults, Celina did not deserve to die at my hand. Or yours.”

Something clenched in my gut, the monumental regret that I’d taken a life, even one as wasted as Celina’s. She hadn’t been the first I’d killed, but she was undoubtedly the most memorable.

“And there’s nothing we can do now to change what happened,” I added.

“Not to change it,” Seth said, “but perhaps to atone for it.”

“Those actions may not have been yours,” Ethan said. “If Dominic was somehow inside you, leading you astray…”

“Maybe it was Dominic. Maybe it was the slow, creeping influence of the Maleficium. Maybe it was just me. But I have never killed. And I would never do so. He must be stopped. I’ll help however I can. I will make my atonement in that fashion. I will stand here, and I will help you face him.”

There was strength in his eyes, but I knew it was going to take a lot of time before he was truly healed again. And even if his scar faded, he would be tortured for a very long time.

“What did you have in mind?” Luc asked. “Do you know how to stop him?”

“I do not. I’d hoped your magical friend might have some idea. Her people bound Dominic and the others into the Maleficium in the first place. Perhaps we could bind him there again?”

I broke the bad news. “The Maleficium was destroyed when you split apart. But surely there’s something else we can do. If he was born, he can die, just like the rest of us.”

“We saw the footage from his attack at the lockup,” Luc said. “He’s powerful. Strong. Bullets don’t affect him.”

“Bullets don’t affect us, either,” I pointed out. “He may be strong, but we already know he’s susceptible to magic—that’s why the conjuring spell worked. What magic could we work now to bring him down again? Could we create another Maleficium?”

“The Maleficium was the work of hundreds of sorcerers over decades,” Seth said, raining on my parade. “That wouldn’t be possible. Not in the near term.”

And not before he killed more people. Dozens? Hundreds? Thousands?

“There must be a way,” I said. “There will be a way. There were battles against demons—Carthage, Sodom, Gomorrah. There must have been some fatalities on the demons’ side.”

Ethan nodded. “We have to try something. We are immortal. Better we take a chance on putting him away than humans he could so easily injure. Or worse.” Ethan looked at Luc. “Find Paige and get her and Seth in a room together to discuss the magical underpinnings.”

Luc nodded, then held out an arm to guide Seth back to the door. Seth walked back to us and picked up his cassock from the ground. He stopped when he reached me.

“I am sorry.”

I wasn’t sure I owed him honesty, but I decided I needed it. “I killed someone there, I watched my lover staked through the heart, and you made me believe my father paid him to make me a vampire. Forgiveness will take time.”

He nodded. “Then I accept the challenge of my contrition.” He put a hand on my shoulder, then walked past me toward the door, lemons and sugar in his wake.

Lindsey leaned toward me. “Is it wrong that I really want to eat a cookie right now?”

“Not at all,” I said.

“Let’s go, Lindsey,” Luc said, ushering her and Juliet outside again. Linds gave me a small smile, then left Ethan and me in the ballroom together.

He’d come into the room fighting, and he’d been sullen for most of the conversation with Seth. I had a pretty good sense a fight was looming, so I bucked up my courage and made myself meet Ethan’s gaze.

His eyes flashed silver. “You invited him into this House.”

“Only after I was sure it was him.”

“You believed he wasn’t Dominic. But as you know nothing else about Seth or who he is, that may not have mattered at all. Did you stop to consider what anyone in a position of authority in this House would have decided?”

I didn’t appreciate the insinuation that I hadn’t thought through the considerable consequences of bringing Seth into the House. My own temper rising, I crossed my arms and glared back at him.

“There was no one else in authority,” I said. “Because all the men in this House are too busy whipping theirs out for comparison with Darius West and the shofet. And, more important, I stand Sentinel; it’s my job to protect this House. I did so.”

“By bringing its enemy here?”

“Seth Tate is not our enemy. Dominic is.”

“And Seth will lure him right into Cadogan House.”

“There’s no evidence Dominic is looking for Seth. And we aren’t exactly kicking Dominic’s ass on our own. We need help. I’ll admit it was a risky move, but I evaluated that risk and made the best decision I could. Hearing him out was the only play I had, and I took it. Besides, you just invited him to make himself at home and you handed him a sorceress.”

Ethan put his hands on his hips and looked away. My answer was perfectly rational, but that hadn’t mitigated his barely contained anger.

“Tell me I’m wrong,” I quietly said. “If I made the wrong call, tell me I did.”

He looked back at me, and there was something much worse than anger in his eyes. There was disappointment.

“The rightness or wrongness of the call isn’t the point, Merit. It’s far beyond your authority as Sentinel.”

“I did what I was called upon to do. There was nobody else to decide.”

He blew out a breath. “He almost killed you. How can you be so lackadaisical about your life?”

So that’s what this was about. Not about the decision—because he had to agree I was the only one available to make it—but because I’d put myself at risk. Once again, his desire to protect me was overwhelming his ability to make a good decision.

“Seth isn’t Dominic!” I yelled, goose bumps lifting on my arms from the prickle of magic I’d sent through the room. I imagined my eyes were silver, too, and guessed that every other vampire in the House would be able to feel our argument as the magic permeated the building.

If that bothered them, too bad. I’d put my ass on the line, and I’d been right. I wasn’t going to apologize for making the decision—not when I was cleaning up the messes of so many other people who’d flat-out refused to act.

“I was in that room with Dominic, Ethan. I’ve seen that shine of justice in his eyes. Dominic nearly killed me, and he was excited by it. He reveled in it. But that was yesterday. I can’t sit in a locked room for the rest of my life because he almost managed to kill me. Celina’s Rogue almost managed to kill me. Celina almost managed to kill me. Mallory almost managed to kill me. McKetrick almost managed to kill me. I’ve been a vampire less than a year and I’ve topped any number of hit lists. I can’t help that, and I’m not going to sit here waiting for it to happen again. Not when I can do something about it.

“Seth isn’t Dominic,” I said. “And we need Seth. That makes the math easy for me. If you don’t think I’m making the right kinds of decisions as Sentinel, then you know what to do.”

A thought occurred to me. Not one that he’d want to hear, certainly, but something that needed to be said. “Are you really mad at me, or is this because of Mallory?”

“Does it matter?”

I took a step closer to him. “Ethan, for God’s sake, if you’re angry at me, then be angry at me. But if this is Mallory, don’t push me away. Let me help you. We are partners—we have proved time and again that we are better together than we were apart. We have battled back angry shifters and crazy Masters and vampire saboteurs. We can manage a skinny little sorceress.”

I saw the flicker of hope in his eyes, and I waited for him to grab on to it, but fear got the better of him, and he turned away again.

“I need to get back to Darius,” he said. And as he walked out of the ballroom, I put my hands on my hips and stared up at the ceiling and wished for patience.