Promises to Keep

chapter 1


PRESENT DAY

JAY’S ARMS PINWHEELED like those of a cartoon character as he tried to avoid tumbling backward down the cellar stairs. It looked silly, but it gave him enough momentum to throw himself forward instead. When he fell, his shoulder connected with the knee of the vampire, snapping the joint. An extra twist, and she was the one who fell down the stairs.

He heard the impact of bones and flesh on rough concrete—then no more. Damn. That meant the vamp had disappeared, and would reappear momentarily to—

You arrogant witch.

The hostile thought from behind Jay gave him warning. He spun around, bringing his knife up as he did so.

The vampire’s black eyes widened in surprise as the slender silver blade slipped between her ribs and into her heart. A fall down the stairs hadn’t hurt her, but even if the knife hadn’t had three centuries of witches’ power in the metal, this vamp wasn’t strong enough to survive a heart blow.

Jay pulled the knife away, and the late shopkeeper fell back, into a display of faux-Native American souvenirs—plastic dream catchers, miniature tepee tents, and other kitsch that had little connection to the Mohawk people this area was named after. A Santa Claus key chain, one of the few nods to the Christmas season, plunked directly into the pool of blood that welled up around the wound.

Jay started to turn away, then hesitated. It was stupid—his kind didn’t even celebrate Christmas—but he felt bad leaving the poor Santa sitting in the quickly drying blood.

He rescued Saint Nick, brushed off the powdery remnants left by vampiric blood turned to dust, and returned him to his fellows on the shelf. Then Jay stretched out his senses.

The storekeeper had been the last of three vampires Jay needed to deal with. One of the others was sprawled at the bottom of the cellar stairs, and the third was draped across the cash register. All of them were now permanently dead. From downstairs, though, Jay could sense the rising panic and hope of the victims he had come to rescue.

What’s happening? Is it more of them? Who are they fighting with? What’s going on? The questions came, rapid and panicked, from two of the three shapeshifters. The third one’s mind was sluggish and incoherent. Drugged? Or blood loss?

Jay wiped his knife on his jeans, returned it to its sheath at the back of his neck, and then hurried downstairs, where he found the captives blindfolded, gagged, and bound.

“I’m here to help,” he announced as the two conscious shapeshifters flinched from the noise. “SingleEarth sent me.”

The SingleEarth organization was a multinational coalition of witches, shapeshifters, vampires, and humans. These three shapeshifters were students at one of SingleEarth’s schools. When they had failed to return from a hiking-and-swimming day trip, SingleEarth had dispatched Jay to find them. After all, these woods were Jay’s home, even more than the farm his family owned or the room he occasionally used at the local SingleEarth haven.

He had expected to find the shapeshifters lost in the forests of western Massachusetts. He had not expected to find them imprisoned by three entrepreneurial vampires who had decided a supply of shapeshifter blood would be a good thing to keep on hand.

Jay pulled blindfolds off and gags down but ignored words of thanks as he turned to the bonds that held the shapeshifters’ wrists behind their backs. The vampires had tied each shifter in a way that held a length of rebar against his back, preventing them from shifting and escaping. No shapeshifter could change form with a line of steel next to his spine.

The unconscious shapeshifter’s pulse was slow and erratic, and his skin was clammy. He was close to gone. Jay pulled his cell phone out of his pocket and then shook his head as he realized the battery had died … probably days ago, while he had been traipsing through the snowy woods. What time was it, anyway? He had a party to get to.

There was a phone and a clock upstairs. Jay was halfway there before the shapeshifters’ anxious thoughts caught up to him: Where is he going?

“Need to make a call!” he shouted back from the stairs. “Lay your friend down, elevate his feet, try to keep him warm.” Jay knew the basics of how to treat blood loss, because a vampire hunter needed to, but he wasn’t a healer.

Jerky?

The query came from a Canadian lynx who had been waiting lazily outside the front door. He had helped Jay track the shapeshifters here, but he hadn’t had much interest in joining the fight itself.

Lynx had been a cub when Jay had met him two years ago. They had bonded swiftly, and now Lynx’s presence meant Jay’s senses were sharper—the traditional five, as well as his sense of the fluid shifts in the power around him. In exchange, Lynx’s life span would be longer, and his body stronger and more resistant to disease and injury. Hopefully that included resistance to the salt and chemicals that packed beef jerky, for which Lynx had developed a ferocious fondness.

Jay grabbed a strip of moose jerky from a box beside the register and tore it open while he held the store’s phone to his ear with his shoulder. It didn’t count as stealing when you took things from people who’d tried to kill you, right?

Lynx had eaten two strips before Jay had finished calling SingleEarth for medical support and a cleanup crew. By the time the EMTs had arrived and Jay had sponged blood off his skin in the restroom, he was ridiculously late to hook up with his carpool.

“Sorry, I couldn’t wait any longer,” the bloodbond said when Jay called to ask if he could still get a ride. “I’m almost there now.”

“Damn.” A bloodbond was a human tied to his or her vampiric master through a blood exchange, as well as what Jay considered an unhealthy level of emotional dependency. He couldn’t expect this one to willingly run late to an event her master considered important.

“Is there anyone else I can get a ride with?” he asked. “I was really looking forward to this bash.”

If helping SingleEarth made him miss the best vamp-fest of the year, he was going to … whine and do nothing about it, most likely. SingleEarth paid pretty much all his expenses. He was obligated to help them out occasionally.

“Well …” The bloodbond hesitated. She probably wasn’t supposed to let him know precisely where the house was.

“I would really hate to disappoint Nikolas,” Jay added. “He asked me to come.” Invoking her master’s name was dirty, underhanded manipulation. Jay was cool with that.

“I guess I could give you directions?”

“Great! I have a pen right here.” Jay knew to accept the offer quickly, and swiped a souvenir pen and a handful of receipts to write on.

Kendra’s annual Heathen Holiday was infamous—and extremely exclusive. The celebration lasted from Christmas Eve until New Year’s Day and was as much an art exhibition as a social gathering. Kendra’s line was primarily made of artists—emotionally unstable, frequently violent artist vampires, specifically. No witch and certainly no hunter had ever been invited. All the most powerful and influential bloodsuckers would be gathered in one place.

Jay changed into a tux featuring a black silk jacket and a green and gold vest. The cashier at the rental shop had assured him that the color complimented his hazel-green eyes and auburn hair, which he brushed and pulled back into a ponytail.

Want to come to a party? he asked Lynx.

The cat merely yawned.

Lynx would be able to make his way home when he wanted to. Jay double-checked to ensure that his knife was accessible but not visible, then got into his car and eased it onto the snowy road.

He hoped he would get there in time. It would be so disappointing if all the good vamps were gone.