Biting Cold

chapter SEVEN

THE GAMBLER

“What the hell just happened?” Ethan asked, but given the silence that followed his answer, no one had any idea.

We stared up through the silo, as if the answer to our questions was somehow written in the Cold War–era walls.

“He split into two,” Ethan said, glancing back at Paige. “How is that possible?”

She grimaced and hobbled over to the table, where he leaned against it. “I have no idea.”

We looked back at the Maleficium, which still sat on the floor beside Mallory. It had been reduced to little more than a book-shaped chunk of charcoal. A few hints of yellowed pages were visible, but mostly the book was a cinder that seemed like it might blow away if someone breathed too heavily on it.

But if the Maleficium—the vessel—was destroyed, what had happened to all that it contained? “Paige, what about the dark magic? The evil?”

She shook her head. “I’m not really—”

“It’s gone.”

Mallory’s voice was quiet, and there was a melancholic thread of surprise in it.

We all looked at her. She was on the ground, still on her knees, staring at her hands. They were still chapped and raw, and they shook like she was an addict in withdrawal. She wrapped her arms around herself and stared into the distance, maybe ruing the fact that things hadn’t turned out the way she’d intended.

“Gone?” Ethan asked.

Slowly, she turned her gaze on him. “It was in the book, and the book is gone. So it’s gone, too.”

“How do you know?” I asked, but I realized I didn’t need her answer.

It was clear in her face.

Mallory didn’t look any better than she had before all this had started. She looked just as strung out. Just as tired.

She’d tried one more fix of black magic, and it hadn’t worked. And now there was no more magic to try.

She had officially reached rock bottom.

“She knows the magic is gone because she doesn’t feel any different,” I said. “Because she worked another spell, and she triggered the Maleficium, but it didn’t cure her. And now the book is gone, so it’s too late. There won’t be any more Maleficium-inspired black magic, right?”

Mallory looked up, and she must have caught the anger in my eyes. She looked away, tears spilling over her lashes. I wasn’t sure that emotion was remorse, but maybe—sooner rather than later—she’d own up to the consequences she’d been so quick to ignore earlier.

“Then, what happened with Tate?” Ethan asked.

I thought back to what we’d seen and what had happened seconds before he’d split in half. “He touched the book. If Mallory worked the spell but no other evil escaped, could it have, I don’t know, funneled into Tate?” I looked at Mallory. “Is that possible?”

“I don’t know,” she pathetically whispered.

Ethan wasn’t moved. “You don’t know? You don’t know? You just decided to unleash all the evil in the world from an ancient book, but you didn’t know about the possible outcomes? Stupid, foolish girl.”

“Ethan,” I quietly said.

“No, Merit, she needs to hear this.” He crouched before her, that new fire in his eyes and a thoroughly chilling expression on his face. “She didn’t care to consider the consequences of her actions before. Perhaps now she will.”

Mallory didn’t answer him; she just sat on the floor, staring back at him with wide and horrified eyes, as if suddenly and fully aware of her own fallibility.

All that work, all that research, all those spells—pointless. Fruitless. She’d gambled everything—her friends, her skills, her lover—and she’d lost it all for the sake of something she thought was a sure bet. But the cards had been stacked against her, and the house always won.

I put a hand on Ethan’s shoulder, and he rose and put a hand on my cheek. I think he meant not to apologize, but to comfort me for the things that would come, for whatever would happen with Mallory.

“We need to know what just happened,” Paige quietly said, and I could practically hear the magical gears clicking along in her head. “We need to know what he is—what they are. We need to understand it.”

It was natural she’d want to know. She was the Order’s archivist, and I had to assume she’d be writing all this down. But writing the history could wait.

“Right now,” I said, “we need to know what they are and what they’re going to do next. There’s no telling the kind of damage they can do together.” One Tate had been bad enough. “Let’s get out of here.”

I helped Mallory to her feet. She didn’t speak and wouldn’t make eye contact with me. But she allowed me to help her toward the door.

Ethan did the same for Paige, and our motley crew hobbled back down the hallway and onto the elevator platform. Up we went, back into the world.

We stepped outside to the sharp, acrid scent of smoke.

At the edge of the field, the farmhouse was ablaze, red-orange flames licking the sky.

Had Tate—the two of them—done this? Was it a final act of vengeance? Seth had sworn to me and Ethan that he wouldn’t let us stop him. Maybe the two of them had decided they needed to punish us for our interference.

Paige muffled a sob with a hand, horror in her eyes as she stared at her home. And then she started running. For an injured sorceress, she moved pretty well.

I handed Mallory over to Ethan. “I’ll get her.”

“Be careful.” He nodded, and I took off across the field. It was colder now, and the ground seemed to have hardened since we’d gone into the silo. It was like running on an upside-down egg carton—small, uneven hills and valleys that made it impossible to plan your steps.

It nearly didn’t surprise me when I stumbled and the ground came up to meet me. I stopped myself with my hands but scraped them up pretty good. Hoping no one had seen me fall in the darkness, I climbed back to my feet, wincing as a bolt of pain radiated through my right ankle.

But there was no time to wait for healing. Paige was moving ever closer to the house, and in her mental state, I didn’t trust her to stay safe.

I muttered out a curse just to make myself feel better and ran-limped forward as well as I could. I vaulted the fence and was immediately assaulted by the heat from the blaze. Acrid smoke poured from the house, and fire poured from the windows. Paige, her arm crooked around her face, was edging toward the front door.

“Paige!” I called out, but she didn’t stop. She didn’t even glance back. Of course, she may not have heard me. The fire roared like a jet engine, wood cracking and splitting as bits of the farmhouse’s interior fell.

I wasn’t a big fan of fire. I’d burned myself on an errant bottle rocket as a child, and the thought of moving closer to a raging inferno wasn’t exactly comfortable. But I was immortal; she was not. There was only one thing to do.

I pulled the neck of my shirt over my mouth into a make-do mask and moved forward.

The smoke and ash thickened the nearer I moved to the house, and it became nearly impossible to breathe. The air was scalding hot, searing my lungs with every intake of breath. But I kept walking.

“Paige!” I shouted, as something large fell somewhere nearby. “Don’t get any closer.”

She coughed loudly. “I need my books!” But she stopped within a few feet of the front door and lifted her arms. Even through the energy of the fire, I could feel the buzz of magic. She must have shaken off Tate’s magic and could work her own again.

“At least she didn’t go inside,” I murmured, and watched as one book, then another, then another, flew from the doorway of the house to safety outside.

She must not have had the power to save the house, but at least she could save a few of her most prized possessions.

My relief didn’t last long. When another crack split the air, I looked up. Flames licked the small portico over the front door, and one corner tilted dangerously low.

Suddenly the portico began to drop.

I didn’t stop to think. I ignored the shooting pain in my ankle and propelled myself forward through pain and smoke and the fingertips of fire that I would have sworn reached out through the window to snag me.

She didn’t see me coming and realized I was there only when I used my body and momentum to push her out of the way. We flew through the air, hitting the ground a few feet away just as the portico crashed to the ground, covering the spot where Paige had stood with a blazing mass of wood—and completely blocking the door.

“Good God,” she said, chest heaving as she looked from me to the blaze and back again. “Thank you. I could have been killed.”

Still on the ground, I swatted at a spark on the arm of my jacket. “Least I could do. Sorceresses were having a bad-enough night.”

When another burst of sparks flew through the window, I climbed to my feet again, then held out a hand to Paige. “We’re too close.”

She let me help her to her feet, her face dark with soot, and we limped back to the pile of books she’d managed to save. Six volumes, their covers singed and dusted with ash.

“All my books,” she said. “All my writings, completely gone.”

“Did you save anything useful?”

She picked up a book and dusted off the cover. “Each book is just one bit of the whole collection. Six books? That’s not even a start.”

Paige hugged the book to her chest. There in the dark, the raging fire reflecting off her vibrantly red hair, she looked like a creature from a Grimm fairy tale.

We both looked up at the sound of footsteps. Ethan, an arm around Mallory, moved toward us.

Paige didn’t waste any time. “You did this.” She bounded forward, intending to pummel Mallory, but I wrapped an arm around her waist and held her back.

“She did this!” Paige screamed, red hair flying about her face as she struggled in my arms. “This is all her fault. All of it! You think we don’t all feel the imbalance? We do! That’s how we know right from wrong, Mallory. That’s how we know it! It’s not a punishment; it’s part of our gift. You use it. You learn from it. You don’t let it drive you to destroy the world!”

“Paige, stop it! This isn’t going to help.” I worked to maintain my grip, but her arms reached out for Mallory, who seemed completely oblivious to the conversation.

“She should have to pay for what she’s done!”

“She will pay,” Ethan said. “But her punishment is not for you to decide.”

“It should be mine. Look what she did!”

“Paige,” I said, “that’s exactly what Mallory tried to do—control things she shouldn’t have controlled. She shouldn’t have done it, and you shouldn’t do it, either.”

Paige shook her head, but after a moment she stopped squirming, so I let her go.

“Everything I owned was there. Everything. All my stuff. All my clothes.” She swallowed thickly. “I don’t have anywhere else to go.”

Our clothes, too, and everything else in our duffels. Thank God we’d taken our swords with us. The heat of a house fire might not have had much impact on finely tempered steel, but I’d rather not test that theory firsthand.

“If you want to return with us to Chicago, you can stay at the House until you make other arrangements,” Ethan said. “We’ll also need to get Mallory back safely. We’ve seen her before in magical handcuffs. Perhaps…?”

Paige nodded and wiped her eyes and, with a bare flick of her finger and thumb, whipped out a fierce bite of magic that pulled Mallory’s hands together like they’d been zip-tied.

Mallory just let it happen. No argument. No squirming. I couldn’t help but wonder: Was this the beginning of her contrition or another chance for her to fake remorse until she could escape again?

“Those will keep her for a little while,” Paige said, pulling a cell phone from her pocket. “And I’ll call Baumgartner. He can decide where to put her. Maybe in the same place they held her before, but with a little more security this time.”

At the sound of boots on dirt, we looked up. Dark figures approached from the other side of the house.

“Tate?” Paige asked.

I opened my senses and caught the sharp, wild scent of animal. A bit of the tension left my shoulders. Our odds were evening a bit.

“No,” I said, shaking my head. “Shifters.”

Specifically, Gabriel Keene, brawny and tawny haired, with golden eyes that seemed to look right through you. He was the head of the Apex of the North American Central Pack of shifters. And beside him, a pack mate: tall and lanky Jeff Christopher, my grandfather’s employee. Or former employee, anyway.

They both wore jeans and thick leather jackets, and I guessed their motorcycles were parked nearby.

“What are you doing here?” I exclaimed.

“Is that any way to greet an old friend, Kitten?”

Gabe was right. I jumped forward and hugged him. He laughed and patted my back. “That’s enough. Sullivan here will get jealous.”

I stepped back, then gave Jeff a little wave. He blushed.

“Sullivan assures me he won’t get jealous,” I said.

But Gabriel’s smile faded when he looked at Ethan. As if not quite sure what he was seeing, Gabe gave him a good, long once-over.

By the look in Gabriel’s eyes and the tingle of magic around him, this was something heavy, weighty. Gabe hadn’t seen Ethan since he’d returned, and it seemed clear that Gabe was evaluating who Ethan was—whether he was still vampire, whether he was still good, whether he was still Ethan. Whether the magic had tainted him, changed him into something else, or damaged him irreparably.

“The sorceress did a number,” Gabriel finally said.

Ethan held out a hand for Gabriel, but Gabriel ignored it and wrapped Ethan in a bear hug that nearly lifted him off the ground.

“And that’s but one of the weird things I’ve seen tonight,” I muttered.

“It’s good to see both of you,” Ethan said. “What brings you to Nebraska?”

“They’re the escorts for the Maleficium,” Paige said. “They dropped it off before Mallory escaped.”

I pointed a finger at Jeff. “That explains why you weren’t at work yesterday. You were on your way out here with the book.”

He shrugged his narrow shoulders with impressive machismo. “A man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do.”

“After much begging, we’re here to retrieve it again,” Gabriel said. But he cast a dark glance back at the burning farmhouse. “But something tells me we might be changing our plans.”

“The Maleficium has been destroyed,” I said, and Gabriel’s eyes went wide with horror. “And it seems the evil it contained was destroyed along with it. Or most of it.”

“Most of it?” Jeff asked.

“Seth Tate touched the book just as Mallory finished the spell,” Ethan said. “He split into two.”

Gabriel blinked. “I don’t understand.”

“One Tate became two Tates,” I confirmed.

“The book burned to a crisp, and they propelled themselves through the missile shaft.” Ethan looked back at the farmhouse. “We came outside to discover the house on fire.”

“What is he?” Gabriel asked, and I think he meant it rhetorically. Even if he didn’t, it wasn’t as if we could answer.

“That’s the million-dollar question,” I said. “Whatever they are, one or both of them set Paige’s house on fire. It’s not hard to imagine they’ve headed back to Chicago to make more trouble. We need to get home.”

“Actually, there’s trouble at home, too,” Jeff said.

“Oh?” I asked.

“Four cops beat the holy hell out of a couple of vamps and two humans they were hanging out with.”

“Were they from a House?”

“Rogues,” he said. “The cops say the vamps attacked them. The vamps say they were hanging out near a bodega with the humans and the cops jumped them for no reason, shouting obscenities about vamps and humans mixing together. Pretty clear things have gone a little downhill in the CPD since your grandfather left.”

“Racism is alive and well in the twenty-first century,” I ruefully said.

“When the mayor tells the city vampires are the enemy,” Ethan said, “such violence isn’t surprising.”

“And having to register with the city isn’t going to help us,” I said. That was one more thing I needed to add to my to-do list. “There won’t be any way to blend in when we have to carry papers that show our identity.”

“Sad but true,” Jeff agreed.

“What are you going to do with her?”

We all looked at Mallory.

“She’s going back to Chicago with us,” Ethan said. “After that, it’s up to the Order.”

“They didn’t do so well with her the last time. Not even twenty-four hours before allowing her to escape.”

“No,” Ethan agreed, “they did not.”

Gabriel looked at Jeff. “Could you excuse us for a moment?”

When Ethan waved a hand collegially, Gabriel led Jeff a few feet away. Heads together, they began to whisper.

“What’s that about?” I quietly asked.

“I’m not entirely sure,” Ethan said, but there was no denying the curiosity in his voice.

After a moment, they walked back toward us. “We’ll take her,” Gabe said.

Stunned silence filled the air.

“You’ll take her where?” Ethan asked.

“We’ll take custody of her. The Order didn’t manage her before. You know I’m not one to get involved in politics, but I’d also really prefer that the city not burn down around us, since we’ve decided to stay in it.”

Ethan looked completely befuddled. “I’m sorry, but I’m having trouble wrapping my mind around this. Where would you take her?”

“We have a place” was all Gabe said. “And you’d be welcome to visit her at your convenience. Catcher, too,” he said, looking at Mallory. “She wouldn’t dare try that bullshit she pulled on the Order with us.”

He gave her an ugly, pointed stare that should have scared the shit out of her. It scared me a little, and I wasn’t even the one in trouble.

“She’ll need caretakers,” Ethan said. “She believes she’s ill—that she has a magical imbalance that necessitated what she’s done.”

Gabriel’s lip curled. “She doesn’t need to be coddled. She has acted like a criminal without remorse. If she were one of mine, the problem would have solved itself.”

Gabriel had been betrayed by his youngest brother, Adam, and we hadn’t heard from Adam since. “She won’t work magic around us. We can arrange that fairly easily. As it is, she doesn’t need excuses. She needs to get her shit together.”

“And you can help her do that?”

“No,” Gabriel said, eyes narrowed at Mallory. “No one can help her. She either does it or she doesn’t. That’s the choice we’ll give her.”

So he was taking the tough-love approach. It certainly didn’t sound easy, but nothing else had worked. The Order put her in a medical facility—gave her around-the-clock care and treatment—and look where that got us.

“I’ll want to check on her,” Paige said to Gabriel, apparently willing to let them have the burden of watching her.

He nodded. “I understand decisions will need to be made about her long-term status. She has amends to make. Many amends, to friends and family.” Gabriel looked up at me. “I’m going to give her the chance to do that. Success or failure is up to her.”

“It’s a lot of responsibility,” Ethan said.

Gabriel nodded. “And I’m not looking for new responsibilities. I’ve got a wife and a son and problems of my own. But if I can help address this now, I won’t have to worry about it later. Besides,” he said, turning his golden eyes on me, “you’ve helped us before. I still owe you one.”

Gabriel had made a prophecy about me and my future with, or without, Ethan. It had something to do with a favor I was going to do for him, but of course he hadn’t given away any details about that.

Ethan glanced at Mallory. “Are you sure you can make it back to Chicago without her causing trouble?”

Gabriel chuckled. “There’s always a solution to that problem.” He walked over to Mallory and crouched down before her.

“How are you doing?”

She looked up to respond to him, but before she could speak he put a hand on her cheek and tapped it gently. When her head went limp on her shoulders, Gabriel stood up again. “And that takes care of that.”

“Is she okay?” I asked.

“She’s fine. Just a careful touch. It’s like holding a shark upside down—it calms them. A handy little technique for putting out errant sorceresses. Gives us a good four or five hours before she wakes up again. And when she does wake up, we can have a nice chat.”

I gave him a flat look. “You couldn’t have done that three days ago?”

Gabe shrugged. “No one asked me to.”

And that was a succinct lesson in using all available assets during a crisis.

“How will you get her back to Chicago?” Ethan asked.

“Sidecar,” Jeff said, thumbing his hand back toward the driveway.

“You have a sidecar?” I held up a hand. “Wait. Let me restate that. You rode to Nebraska in a sidecar?”

Adorable as Jeff was, I couldn’t get the image of him riding excitedly in an old-fashioned sidecar—brown locks waving in the wind, as happy as a puppy—out of my mind.

“I drove my own rig,” he said. “The sidecar was for the book. And now it’s for the girl who destroyed the book.”

We all looked at her again, limp on the ground, plans for her future being decided around her and without her permission, because she’d given up her right to object.

The low roar of a fire truck sounded in the distance. It must have taken the neighbors a while to realize that anything was amiss. That meant it was time for us to make our exit. The Order could clean up the rest of this mess.

“How will you get back?” Gabriel asked.

“I have a truck,” Paige said. “Fortunately, the keys are inside it.”

“Then, if you can give us a ride to the airport, we can take the jet,” Ethan said.

I stared at him. “I’m sorry—the jet?”

“The House has a jet,” Ethan said. “Well, the House leases a jet on occasion. And I’d say this is an appropriate occasion.”

“Were you going to mention we had a jet before we spent eight hours driving to Nebraska and destroyed your Mercedes in the process?”

He looked up and arched an eyebrow at me. “If I’d done that, we wouldn’t have had all those hours together, Sentinel.”

That might have been an unintended benefit, but he wouldn’t have delayed us with a car ride if a faster alternative had been so easily available. “Couldn’t find a pilot on such short notice?” I asked.

“Perhaps. But don’t ruin the illusion.”

I rolled my eyes.

“We’ll get her settled and introduce her to the rules,” Gabriel said, “and then you can say hello. It’ll give you a chance to check out her situation. Although I’m fairly certain you’ll approve; you’ve already met the caretaker I have in mind.”

I didn’t have a good reason to object to that offer, so I nodded. “By the way, there’s a strip along I-29 that’s probably going to require a detour.”

Gabriel frowned. “It was clear on the way down.”

“That was pre-Tate.”

Gabriel sighed, and I looked at Ethan. “By all means,” I said, “let’s take the jet.”