Know Thine Enemy

CHAPTER Five



The mind was a funny thing.

Izzie's childhood, for the most part, was nothing more than a blur of images and sensations. Memories of her later years—the last spent as Harrison's daughter—were more concrete. The line separating what she imagined and what she knew was real had solidified somewhere between the ages of ten and thirteen. Granted, she didn't particularly care to reflect on the life she'd left behind, but she had learned how to compartmentalize. How to preserve the memories she needed and lock all the others away.

Her mind felt fuzzy when she pried open her eyes the next day. She blinked and yawned, her skin humming, her heart pounding, and a sense of dread pooling in her belly. A few moments passed before the night returned in all its confusing glory.

Izzie sat up, looking from one corner to the next. This was her motel room—the same one she'd awakened in the day before. Her duffle bag sat where she'd left it, as did the crossbow she'd inherited from Wright and the clothes she'd worn last night. On her nightstand lay her dagger. Everything else looked in place. Everything else . . . .

"The f*ck." She threw her legs over the side of the bed. Another moment passed before the haze faded, and then the rest came flooding in. Leaving the warehouse where Prentiss and his friends had held her, spouting peace theories and making offers. She'd taken a complicated way home and doubled back a time or two to ensure she wasn't followed, though something told her it was for nothing. If one vamp could get a beat on where she and Wright were staying, others could, too.

Wright had been in by the time she got back, but she hadn't stopped in to say hello. She knew she'd get her ass handed to her when they next spoke and decided it would be better to put a few hours sleep between being kidnapped and explaining where she'd been. Wright's head would spin around but she had no control one way or another.

The memory of last night felt muddied and confused, yet too lucid to be mistaken for a dream. Besides, dreams didn't leave marks on her wrists. Prentiss's cool confidence and commanding stare, stories of an underground society consisting of vampires who had been turned against their will. And try as she might, she couldn't shake away his warnings regarding the mysterious Ryker, her other undead stalker. None of it made sense, though.

Izzie wouldn't pretend to be an expert in matters of the underworld. She didn't get close enough to her prey to study their looks or mannerisms, just as she didn't go out of her way to observe the habits of those demons smart enough to leave humankind alone. Yet she did have enough sense to know when something felt fishy, and Prentiss was as cold and scaly as they came. What his true motives were, she didn't know. The only thing she knew with any degree of certainty was where he intended to start.

Ryker might not be a standup guy, but when he met her eyes, she saw no agenda. That meant either he hid his motives with expert skill or he told the truth. At any rate, unlike the other guy, he hadn't tied her up or asked her to choose a side in a war that wasn't hers.

He also could have taken her out at any time during his Stalk Izzie Campaign, but had left her alive and only a little disoriented. Likewise, he could have chased her after she'd hightailed it last night, but he hadn't. In fact, had he followed her, she might not have spent much of the night drugged and bound and listening to a lunatic with a grudge.

Whatever else Prentiss had planned, Izzie was certain Ryker sat at the heart. And though she knew their feud was out of her hands and none of her business, she felt she owed him the courtesy of informing him someone was gunning for his head. He might already know and he might not care, but he hadn't done her any kind of wrong.

More than that, there was a familiar quality to him. And she knew finding him wouldn't be difficult.

A harsh knock thundered against the door, penetrating the cloud around her head and dragging her back to the present. "Izzie!"

She rolled her eyes and rose to her wobbly legs, doing her best to ignore the way the room twirled and threatened to throw her off balance. "Hold on." She grunted. "Coming now."

"Open the f*cking door!"

"Didn't anyone ever tell you what 'hold on', means?" Izzie staggered the rest of the way and quickly unfastened the dead bolt. "The—"

Whatever she'd been about to say fell off her lips. The instant the lock clicked open, Wright barreled inside, his eyes wild and bloodshot, his hair a tussled mess. He burned her with a hard stare before turning his attention to the room, gaze bouncing from one corner to the next. "What the f*cking hell happened last night?" he demanded. "You don't show. You don't call. You don't even f*cking bother to let me know you got in. Jesus f*cking Christ, Izz, you f*cking—"

"Oh, knock it off."

"What?"

The surprise in his voice didn't faze her. She very rarely got mouthy with him, and their arguments typically didn't end in her favor. "I said knock it off. I had a rough night."

He stared at her vacantly. "You," he replied incredulously. "You had a rough night?"





"What the hell do you think? I was out hitting every frat party on campus?"

"You didn't show."

"And gee, let's not once stop to think that might just not have been my fault." Izzie's nose wrinkled. "You're a very special kind of jackass, you know that? And for all your talk, you sure weren't lurking outside the door waiting for me to get home. Must've been so f*cking inconvenient to get all that sleep."

"You're gonna grill me 'cause I nodded off waiting for your ass to get home?"

"How long have you known me, a*shole? You really think it was on purpose?" Izzie snickered. "I got grabbed last night."

He paused. "Grabbed? What do you mean, grabbed?"

"I mean I got myself invited to a mandatory party."

"Who?"

"What?"

"Who grabbed you?"

"Who do you think? We only know one kind of person, Zack, and they typically come with sharp teeth." She held his gaze for a long moment before breaking away, tension rolling off her shoulders. "Look, there's something I haven't told you. In hindsight, I should've told you right away, but I know how you like to flip your lid about every little thing and I really wasn't in the mood for a lecture."

"Uh-huh," Wright said. "How do you think you're gonna fare now?"

"Not well."

"Good guess."

Izzie hesitated, worrying a lip between her teeth. She'd known to expect this—hell, just yesterday she'd questioned the judgment about keeping Wright in a dark about her newfound vampire friend. But while the encounter had left her puzzled and shaken, she genuinely hadn't felt threatened. She hadn't felt anything but bewildered.

Yet Wright wouldn't see it that way. He couldn't. He'd see nothing but a walking corpse with homicidal tendencies and a pair of fangs.

"Night before last, I . . . I met a vamp."

Wright stared at her blankly, his eyebrows arching. "Yeah. And?"

"We talked."

"You talked," he deadpanned.

"He'd been tailing me. This vamp."

The suspended skepticism on Wright's face dissolved, replaced with the hard outrage she'd expected. "Tailing you?" he spat. "You let a vamp tail you?"

"Yeah, I signed his permission slip and everything. What the hell do you think?"

"You got sloppy."

A cold shudder claimed her. "F*ck you."

"What the f*ck do you expect, Izz? You could've gotten killed!"

She spread her arms. "Standing right here, aren't I?"

"You disappeared last night!"

"That wasn't Ryker's fault!"

Wright froze. "Ryker?" he repeated. "Ryker? Is that supposed to be its name?"

"His name," she corrected without thinking. The look she received in turn was no less than she expected. Assigning a vamp a name was a huge no-no—it personalized the target, and emotionally compromised the hunter—and Wright would read her the Riot Act in several languages before she could even imagine a day when she wouldn't hear about it again.

"His name?" Wright repeated at last, blinking erratically. "His name?"

"Calm down—"

"F*ck you, calm down. You got to know a vamp by name?"

"That's not the point."

"Yeah, well, I'm making it the point."

"You can back the hell off, 'cause I'm the one telling the story."

Wright's brows shot skyward again. "Watch it—"

"I told you I got grabbed. Is that worthy of your attention, or is he suddenly more important than me?"

That at least seemed to calm him. The fire in his eyes faded.

"All right," Wright said, exhaling. "All right. Dish."

"Three of them. A guy and two chicks. They grabbed me outside The Wall—"

"What's The Wall?"

Izzie frowned. "Umm . . . this . . . bar."

"A bar?"

"I know the owner."

"Yeah?" he replied suspiciously. "How long?"

The frown melted into a wince. "How long have we been here, again?"

"Jesus, Izz. You got a death wish or something? What do we say?"

"We only trust each other," she recited. It was one of the tenets of their relationship. They didn't explore new places unaccompanied—places being anywhere with walls and a door. Nightly scouring of their territory was a different matter. Most of the time, there were at least five ways to escape if accosted outdoors. The same could not be said for businesses or homes with which they were unfamiliar.

"I know this is asking a lot," Izzie said, "but is there any chance we could skip this part?"

"What do you think?"

"I think you know I didn't tell you for a reason, and therefore have whatever lecture you wanna throw my way memorized."

"Yeah, 'cause obviously that's f*cking effective."

She ignored him. "They got me with a dose of something wicked. When I woke up, I was tied to a chair, and they were at the end of a long table." Izzie paused, shivering. "They knew me, Zack."

"Of course, if you go chatting with the enemy—"

"That's not what I mean. They knew me. They knew about Harrison, about Maine. They knew about you, too. Things no one could know."

Color drained from Wright's face. "What?"

"They knew."

"What do you f*cking mean, they knew?"

"I mean they knew! About Amber—"

If there was any chance at all to get out of this argument unscathed, it evaporated instantly. No one, not even Wright, spoke of his dead wife.

He closed down. "Shut up."

"They knew about Stephen—"

"Shut up!"

"They knew about Berlie—"

"What the f*ck have you done to us?" The space between them closed. Wright seized her by the shoulders and shook her until the room blurred. "What the royal f*ck have you done to me?"

"Let me go!"

"If they know who I am, they can get to me. Get to us. Get to her." He released her just as quickly, disgust falling across his face. "For Christ's sake, Izzie, even if you don't give a rat's f*ck about me, how the hell could you do this to Berlie?"

"This isn't my fault."

"Oh, of course it isn't," Wright spat. "You're just the one going to strange bars and making friends with bloodsuckers. Why in the world would this be your fault?"

"Your rules are insane!"

"F*ck you twice!"

"Goddammit, Zack, the whole world isn't out to get you! You think a couple vamps knowing where you came from and your name is gonna make any kind of difference?"

"You don't know what I know."

Izzie rolled her eyes. "Of course not. How could I? But I do know you spend more of your time absorbed in your paranoid bullshit than you do being a father to your kid."

A deafening silence filled the air between them, and for a very real moment, Izzie thought he might strike her. The wild look in his eyes became maniacal, and though his hands shook, though she very much knew he wanted to smack her to the ground, he had too much class to raise his fist.

"I'd kill you if you were anyone else," Wright growled.

"I know."

He nodded curtly. "Yeah. Okay. Get your shit ready. We leave in ten."

"No."

She felt as surprised as he looked. The objection had come from nowhere.

"What?" he demanded. "It's not safe here, anymore."

Izzie nodded, emboldened by her bravado. "Maybe, but I'm not going."

"The f*ck you mean?"

"I have to warn him."

"Warn who?"

"Ryker."

The manic look flickered again in his gaze. "The vampire? What the hell for?"

"The vamps who grabbed me last night had some personal beef with him. They wanted to sign me on as their personal bounty hunter and take him out."

Wright blinked. "And?"

"And Ryker had more than one chance to take me out, and he didn't. I owe it to him to let him know—"

"Jesus Christ, listen to what you're saying."

Izzie shrugged. "Look, it's the lesser of two evils."

"No, it's just evil. So these vamps have a f*cking turf war, what do you care?"

"What does it matter? It's Ryker or C.R.O.S.S.—"

"What the—cross? What the f*ck is cross?"

"Some demented vampire members-only club." She made a face. "I'm warning Ryker."

"If you're doing anything, you're killing Ryker."

Her muscles tightened and her skin flushed. The rising pressure in her chest gave her the faint idea of what a heart attack might feel like. "You know what? I think I'm tired of this arrangement."

"What?"

"This bullshit my way or the highway sob story that is your life." She shook her head hard and crossed her arms. "You and Berlie better get going. I'm going to find Ryker."

"What the hell is this? You're choosing him over—"

"I'm not choosing him," Izzie said. "I'm choosing me. And I'm choosing to do this my way. Get out."

Another cold beat settled between them, the air hanging thick. "Yeah," he said. "Right. Go to Hell."

Izzie flinched but didn't respond. Tears burned her eyes and the pressure in her chest swelled until she thought she might explode. She didn't breathe again until the sound of her door slamming sent a hard shock through her bones, and silence fell across the room.

And then the walls came crashing down. Panic set in.

She owed Wright her life. More than her life. She owed him everything.

Goddammit.

Izzie had no idea how many minutes had passed by the time her mind returned to her body. She blinked and wiped her eyes, then turned her attention to the room.

Whatever had just happened, she couldn't handle it at the moment. There would be time for reflection later.

Right now, she had a vampire to find.



* * * * *



Izzie didn't have much to her name. A duffle bag full of clothing and hygiene products, her dagger, the cross around her neck, and the crossbow Wright had given her. Packing didn't take long, though she caught herself stalling, riding out waves of panic as snippets of her fight with Wright pressed against the corners of her mind.

Beyond finding and warning Ryker, she had no clue where the road would take her. Before meeting Wright she'd relied on the kindness of strangers . . . and the wallets she lifted from their pockets and purses. While she knew picking up where she'd left off wouldn't take much, the thought of ripping off unsuspecting bystanders stirred unrest in her belly. With Wright, she never had to worry about cash. Amber's death had provided Wright a healthy life insurance payout, and with the way they lived—staying in dives and only buying what they needed—it had yet to run out. Of course, that money wouldn't last forever; Wright had already stretched it beyond its lifespan. What came next for him was anyone's guess.

Izzie exhaled slowly, slinging her duffle bag over her shoulder. She wouldn't take the crossbow. It wasn't hers, and she knew shit about wielding it. The dagger was her weapon—the only weapon she'd ever used with any measure of success. Casting a final glance to the room she'd called home the last few weeks, she pushed herself toward goodbye.

Christ, that had happened fast.

"It's all right," she murmured, stepping onto the landing outside the room. And it was all right, though she didn't know how. Nothing felt real at the moment. Not the wind on her face or the bag on her back, or even the familiar eyes of a child she adored. Izzie stopped short. Berlie stood between her and the stairwell that led to the parking lot.

"Hey, kiddo," Izzie said awkwardly. She didn't know why, but she thought Wright and his daughter would be long gone. Much more than ten minutes had passed since he had stormed out of her room. "What's the buzz?"

"It's true," Berlie said, her gaze drifting to the duffle bag. Her hands trembled, her pale blonde hair frizzed and uncombed. "He said you were going away, but I didn't believe it."

"Sweetie, I—"

"You can't. You can't leave us."

Izzie plastered on a smile as something in her chest twisted. "I have to. Just for a while."

"He won't wait."

"I know."

"He says you won't be able to find us once we leave. Please don't go, Izzie."

Shit. She knew that look. A long sigh heaved through her lips, her shoulders dropping. Berlie wouldn't do well with change—not of this magnitude. Her thoughts, dark and twisted, always escalated in degree and severity once Wright uprooted and took her somewhere new. Losing someone she cared about would be a huge setback. And because Wright was prone to write his daughter's fears off as a side-effect of the life he lived, the kid had never possessed a reliable outlet for her anxiety.

"I'll find you," Izzie said softly. "Your dad doesn't know me as well as he'd think."

"He won't let you," Berlie replied. "If you go to the vampire, he won't ever let you back. He says evil won't let you go without making you evil, too."

Izzie sighed again, her head bowing.

"Look," she said, "your dad and I have very different views on evil. He has his reasons and I have mine. The way Zack sees monsters everywhere . . . ."

She shivered and frowned, her mind taking her down a path she hadn't intended, but one which led her to convictions she hadn't realized she held.

"Harrison did that, you know. He saw the Devil behind every shadow and it drove him mad, in the big ole literal sense. I won't be like that. Not after everything."

Sometimes words brought light to thoughts and action. Until that moment, talking with Wright's daughter, just seconds from making her escape, Izzie hadn't realized how trapped she felt. How controlled. How much Wright mirrored Harrison in thought, if not in action. Harrison's demons might have been imaginary, but he waged war all the same. She'd watched for years as madness mounted before finally taking him over completely, and the breaking point had nearly destroyed her.

"I love you," Izzie said, looking to Berlie again. She couldn't stand the pain on the girl's face, but understood now, unlike ever before, how important these next steps were. "I love you, and I love your dad, too. But I got to do this for me. I promise this won't be the last time we meet."

"Please," Berlie whispered, tears choking her voice. "Please don't go."

"I have to."

"No."

Izzie nodded and smiled sadly. "Yeah, I do. You have my number if things get rough." She pressed forward. "Here's looking at you, kid."

It took everything she had not to glance back, but Izzie pushed onward. A strange sense of power washed over her in the aftermath. Her life was suddenly an open book, rather than part of someone else's strategic plan. Granted, she had a mission now. A purpose. She had to find Ryker, but that was nothing. That would be over soon, and then whatever came next would be a roll of the die.

Oddly enough, as frightened and uncertain as she was of the road ahead, a very real part of her trembled with excitement. For the first time in a long time, the world was hers.