When Passion Lies: A Shadow Keepers Novel (5 page)

“Caris?”

She actually saw him swallow, and she had to bite back a smile. Apparently her reputation was worth something even up here on the Matterhorn.

“You should go if you want to live.”

She didn’t have to repeat herself. The one who’d been holding up the wall cut and ran. The other dropped the human, wiped the blood off his lips with the back of his hand, then backed out of the alley, his eyes fixed on her as if she might jump him for spite.

Any other night, and she might have done just that.

The human slumped to the ground, his cheek pressed against a slush of dirty snow. She could hear his pulse, weak but steady. She walked away, leaving him to the cold, but she pulled out her cellphone and had information connect her to the pub. She told the bartender who answered that there was a man in his alley bleeding from the neck. Just her little charitable contribution for the day.

She paused to look up and down the Bahnhofstrasse. She lifted her chin, sniffing the cold air out of habit. She expected nothing—so far her luck hadn’t exactly been stellar—and was surprised to catch a scent. Musky. Animal.

Weren
.

Not necessarily the one she hunted; couldn’t get her hopes up yet. But she turned left, following the scent up the hill, through twisting streets and finally out of the village and up a hiking path into the mountains. She slowed her step, wary. Was she walking into a trap? Or
had Reinholt come into the trees to change? To romp and hunt?

To her left, she saw a sign pointing toward a picnic area. The scent was stronger now, even despite the snow that was beginning to fall in earnest, and she increased her pace, realizing she was gaining on him. Behind the blanket of clouds the moon hung heavy in the sky—not full, but waxing gibbous—and the animal within was relishing the hunt. She could feel the wolf growing inside her. Could feel it begging to come out, especially now that she was on edge, sweet revenge almost upon her.

Unlike a regular weren, she didn’t change at moonrise on the night of a full moon. The vampire part of her fought that. But it was an advantage of only a few hours. Still, those hours had helped keep her secret when she was living with the pack. Once they changed, they could care less about her, and she could sneak off to a specially sealed cell and lock herself in.

Right now, though, the moon was days from full, and she had control over the wolf. It had been a long time since the wolf had burst out when there wasn’t a full moon.

But trapped though it was, it was still clamoring for release. So was her daemon. Primed from the blood and charged from the memories, it wanted nothing more than the kill.

She moved in silence, following the path around a copse of trees and then stopping short as she entered the small clearing—he was there, standing beside a snow-covered picnic table. And he hadn’t yet realized she was behind him.

Her hand went to her knife. She had a gun, too. A
discreet revolver tucked in at the small of her back. Five silver bullets. They’d kill a werewolf dead enough, but this was one kill Caris wanted to make with her hands, not with a gun. And definitely not with her fangs—the thought of her mouth closing over this pile of flesh made her ill. In her fantasies, she’d considered slicing herself and letting the acid blood he’d given her burn through his body. There was poetic justice there, but she still didn’t want it.

No, for this kill, she wanted a blade. One quick motion across his throat—face-to-face so she could see his expression and watch as he understood that the time had come to pay for his sins. Risky, she knew. If Reinholt saw her face before he died, a percipient daemon could pull out that image. But the weather was getting harsher, and she already knew that Switzerland had no percipient daemon on staff. It would be hours before the body was found. Time was her ally. And what she wanted was worth the risk.

She stepped forward, no longer caring about stealth. She wanted a fight. Craved it, in fact. Her daemon wanted to play. And as long as the weren ended up dead, she was more than happy to let her daemon get out and stretch its legs.

But right then, Reinholt turned, and a flicker of joy passed through her as she saw the recognition—and the fear—in his eyes.

She tensed but didn’t lunge. Didn’t move forward, didn’t attack, and for a split second she wondered at her hesitation. This was the weren she’d been looking for. The son of a bitch who’d destroyed her life, her love.

Inside, the daemon growled, wanting blood. Her body itched to leap, the wolf within wanting to rip, to destroy.

Still, though, she didn’t move, and as the blood boiling in her head calmed, she realized why. It wasn’t the kill she wanted—not right away. It was answers.

“Why?”

The question came out as a whisper, but she knew he heard it. Even so, he didn’t answer.

“Tell me what I want to know, and maybe I’ll let you live.” It was a lie she didn’t regret telling.

“Let me live?” He reached into his coat and pulled out a gun. Not something she usually feared, but this was the one man in all the world who would know what type of bullet would hurt her. Wooden bullets coated in silver. A weapon designed to kill either a vampire or a werewolf. Or both.

“You.”
He held the gun steady. His finger moved on the trigger, and in that same instant, she launched herself sideways. The bullet sang out, burning through the leather sleeve of her coat, slicing into the flesh of her arm and raising a line of crimson that bubbled and burned through the leather of her jacket.

He’d hurt her, but he hadn’t killed her. He’d fucked up there big-time.

She fell back into the snow and rolled, and when she came up, she had her own gun in her hands.

In the back of her mind, she registered approaching footfalls, moving faster than a human, but she couldn’t worry about that now. He was going to get off another round, and this was about survival. She fired one shot at his head, and he stumbled backward, a neat little hole in his skull. She stood, aimed, and put another through his heart, knocking him to the ground.

The man she’d come to kill was dead, but somehow she didn’t feel any better.

She drew herself up, ignoring the pain in her arm and the putrid scent of acid eating through leather. Someone was coming. She needed to go.

And then she heard her name, and her heart quivered in her chest.

“Caris!” he said again.

She turned, not wanting to, but compelled to see his face. Because she knew that voice. Knew that man. And when she looked at him, it took her breath away.

“Dammit, Caris, what the hell have you done?”

She forced herself to smile, an outward picture of calm control even though inside she was shaking. “Hello, Tiberius,” she said. “It’s been a very, very long time.”

Tiberius had heard the shots fired as he transformed from mist back into his corporeal form. He hadn’t bothered waiting for Luke but had rushed through the clearing to the small picnic area that Reinholt had picked as their rendezvous point.

He’d arrived in mere seconds, but even in that short time, he’d known it would be bad. How could it not be? A shoot-out. His informant likely dead or injured.

And yet never once did he fathom it would be as horrible as the reality that faced him.
Caris
. Standing right in front of his informant, a gun in her hand, a wound on her arm. And Reinholt had a hole in his head.

Now she was smiling at him, trying to act as if nothing was unusual. The hell with that.

“Goddamm it, Caris. What have you done?”

“What I had to.”

“No,” he snapped, unable to keep the anger out of his voice. “You will not evade my questions. I want answers, and I want them now.” Behind him, Luke burst through the trees.

Caris smirked. “Hold that thought,” she said as she ripped her jacket off then held it to her chest so that it partially covered her arm. At first, Tiberius wasn’t sure why she’d done that. Then he realized she was hiding her injury, and the portion of her jacket that had been burned away from the acid that had flowed from the wound.

He tensed. He’d known for years what she was, but seeing the truth of it again so unexpectedly rattled him. He schooled his features into a mask of calm, but Caris knew him well. She would have seen his reaction. All he could hope for was that Luke did not.

As if acknowledging his thoughts, Caris smiled broadly. “Lucius. Welcome to the party.” She shot a quick glance at Tiberius. “Well. This little reunion has been fun, but I think I’ll be on my way now.”

She moved to step aside, but Tiberius sped forward and took her arm. She froze, then met his eyes. With a single, deliberate movement, she jerked her arm from his grip, and there was something so cold in that gesture, so final, that he felt the ice inside him crack.

“Caris, the gunshots. The human police will arrive soon, as will the PEC. We need to go.”

“Exactly what I intended to do,” she said. “You’re the one who stopped me.”

“I had my reasons.”

She glared at him with a defiant expression he knew only too well. “I’m waiting.”

“Cyrus Reinholt was my informant,” he said. “You’ve caused me more than a little inconvenience.”

“So sorry to put you out.”

Despite everything, he couldn’t help but smile. She’d always been good with a comeback, and it was comforting to know some things hadn’t changed.

A sharp snap rang out from beyond the line of trees, as if someone had stepped on a twig. Tiberius glanced at Luke, who nodded quickly, then slipped away to check it out. Tiberius turned back to Caris. “As I was saying, you killed my informant. Are you working for Lihter?” He didn’t believe it, but he had to ask.

Her laugh seemed genuine. “Not hardly.”

“Why, then? I want to know why Reinholt’s dead.”

Her eyes were cold, emerald ice. “There are a lot of things I want, Tiberius. Right now, the most pressing one is to go home.”

“We’ll go to London.”

“
London
and
home
don’t go together anymore. Or had you forgotten?”

He hadn’t, of course. He remembered that every single day. “I’ll have my answers, Caris. One way or the other.”

Her brow lifted.

“We have limited time until someone discovers us,” he added. “We should leave now.”

“What will you do, Tiberius? Throw me over your shoulder? I’m stronger now. I’ve been training, working in the field.” She smiled sweetly, then glanced pointedly up at the moon, less than a week from being full. “In fact, I think it’s fair to say that right now, I’m strong enough that I could probably even take you.”

He didn’t flinch, even though he knew she was probably right. He might have the strength of two thousand years to draw upon, but she now had the strength of two species, and that was powerful indeed.

“Or are you threatening to hurt me some other way? Maybe you intend to share my secrets?”

He met her eyes, gave her the tiniest shake of his head, well aware that with his vampiric senses, Luke could still hear them even though he was no longer standing nearby. And even Luke, his oldest friend in the world, didn’t know the truth about what she was.

“But you couldn’t mean that, could you? After all, you made a promise to protect me once. Or had you
forgotten? All things considered, I’d certainly believe it if you had.”

“There were others I owed protection to as well,” he said, speaking carefully. “And I have never failed to shield you from harm.”

“Didn’t you? Despite all those years of shielding me—despite refusing to let me work alongside the
kyne—
despite working so very hard to keep me safe and protected, you hurt me worse than anyone else ever has.”

He couldn’t speak. Everything she said was true, and yet he’d had no choice. If faced with the decision again, he would do nothing different. Though it had killed him to do so, he’d saved thousands of lives when he’d sent her away after she’d returned to London as a hybrid. All of the vampires at his court. Hell, he’d saved every creature in London, human and shadower.

He was a leader, a protector. And that meant he had to make the impossible choices.