Wrath: The Niteclif Evolutions, Book 2 (18 page)

Conor said nothing.

“Tell me, you sorry sack of rat shit.” I slid my dirk under his chin and pierced the skin, a small line of red snaking down his neck and wicking into his shirt collar.

He cringed, but didn’t break.

Working to control my breathing, I shoved my free hand through my hair and closed my eyes. “Then you were waiting for us tonight, the coven having sent word ahead of our arrival. We were here a short while when you left the room, and I heard you talking to someone in the hallway. I assumed it was another member of the house, but I was wrong. The moment Hellion expressed his intent to propose, you called the dragons. They got here much too fast not to have known for sure where we were.” I laid my palm over the compound fracture and pressed.

He grunted in pain.

“But the kicker was tonight. You opened the door to the vampires and realized Hellion had aligned himself with Darius, so you pointed the weyr right to me and Hellion. You let the weyr have their way with everyone here, and we never had a chance to call for help, you sorry fuck.”

“I’d do all this and worse to see you kept from him,” he snarled, leaning forward.

I grabbed his face and roughly kissed his forehead. “Hellion recognized one of his worst fears tonight. May the same fate be delivered upon you.” I made to stand and felt a hand on my elbow helping me up. I looked over my shoulder at Darius. I hadn’t realized four members of his voyyah who had come with him had joined us, watching the cowering man with cold expressions. I looked each vampire in the face, finally coming to rest on Darius. I nodded.

Conor realized what was about to happen and began to scream for Hellion, pausing only long enough to draw a shallow breath before beginning to scream again.

I never looked back, not even when they began to feed. Justice was served.

Chapter Twelve

I trudged up the stairs, one heavy foot at a time, my hand pulling me forward on the banister. It felt like it had been hours since I’d been in the bedroom. I nearly ran into Hellion at the top of the stairs. I was so tired I didn’t see him standing there.

“Did you kill him?” he asked softly.

“No, I—”

He pushed past me and set one bare foot down on the first step very carefully.

I grabbed his arm. “No. Yes. I didn’t kill him, but I passed judgment. Darius got the job done for me. Had Darius not been here, Hellion, I would have done it.”

“It was for me to do, Madeleine!” he bellowed and I jumped back, nearly going ass over teakettle down the stairs. He grabbed my arm and swayed as I regained my balance.

“I’m going to pretend you didn’t just yell at me for doing my job,” I said, eyeing him carefully. “I need to lie down.” I only breathed the last, my voice wavering. It had been an overwhelming evening. I was reeling inside, careening wildly from emotion to emotion inside my head and heart. I had uncovered an ugly part of myself tonight that I didn’t care for. I’d learned that my honor didn’t have a price, but my love might. And I’d learned that violence was an easy solution to embrace when I was pushed into a corner. I needed to hide away from everyone and lick my wounds.

Hellion grasped my arm hard enough to bruise.

“Get your hands off me, Hellion. Now.” I wrenched my arm free and shoved him back a step. See? Violence. Easier than rationalizing with someone who didn’t want to hear it. I shouldered my way by him and stomped down the hallway, intent on crashing in any other room than the master bedroom. I’d never, ever go back in there if I didn’t have to. Clay’s blood would always stain that floor for my eyes, no matter how well it was cleaned.

I opened the first door I came to and found a small smoking room. I walked in and began to shut the door behind me. Hellion’s fist stopped the door before it could latch. “I mean it, Hellion. Give me some space or we’re going to go rounds.”

“Understood. At least go to the adjoining room and sleep in a real bed.”

I looked around before it dawned on my cotton-candied brain that there wasn’t a bed in the room. “Fine. Now leave.”

He bent his head in acknowledgment and went without another word.

I walked through the adjoining bedroom and went into the bathroom, dropping clothes behind me as I went. I turned on the shower, letting the steam fill the tiled room while I folded down the bedding, removed extra pillows and kicked my clothes into a small pile near the foot of the bed. Naked, I padded back into the bathroom and shut the door, making sure it latched and locked. I’d brought my dirk with me into the shower stall, rust be damned, and I stood under the hot water watching Clay’s blood rinse away from the blade. I knew I’d never forgive myself for the loss of the blue dragon. It wouldn’t matter who said what. Forgiveness was unfathomable.

I sat on the floor of the shower and propped my forearms on my bent knees, laying the blade next to my hip on the water-warmed floor. Resting my cheek on my arms, I shuddered. I was so tired. The sound of the water softened, and I found myself staring down at, well, myself. It had been a while since I’d seen Tyr but I recognized this separation of physical self and astral self as one of his visits.

A muscled arm held out a towel, and I realized I was naked. “Aw, damn it,” I sighed, grabbing the towel and covering up. “Can’t you
ever
choose to visit when I’m wearing clothes?”

“And what, exactly, does it say about you that I’m always finding you naked?” he bit out.

I blushed furiously and took a step back to the water, intent on waking up.

“Hold it right there, Niteclif,” he thundered, and I froze like a small animal in the bracken. “You will tell me what you’ve been doing about these murders. Now.”

I turned slowly, mouth agape. “Are you
blind
?” I yelled. “I’ve been falling out thirty-story buildings, getting my heart broken with shocking regularity, electing new Council members, moving through time and space with freakish determination, getting offers of marriage and abduction, and killing an innocent dragon!” I took two large steps to him and shoved. Following him, I got in his face. “Besides, when did the mundane world become my responsibility?”

He was so shocked he stumbled back.

“Tonight is
not
the night to screw with me, Tyr. You knew about the prophecy and you did nothing. You let me get blindsided, knowing all the while. Well yuk, yuk, wasn’t it a laugh? And where were you when you could have told me Bahlin wasn’t dead? I might have made different decisions,” I yelled, bumping my chest to his.

This time he held his ground.

“And where were you when you knew Bahlin was going to be raiding my new home and nearly killing Hellion?” I demanded.

“‘Yuk, yuk’? You think I found any of this
funny
?” he snarled, pushing back at me. I stumbled but he persevered. “I demanded Odin tell you
both
of the prophecy before it got any further out of hand. Where was I when you thought Bahlin was dead? I was standing next to your fucking bed, Madeleine, waiting for you to go to sleep so I might reassure you.” He grabbed my shoulders and shook me, and my physical body rocked with the force of it. “But you stayed awake all night mourning the dragon. And tonight? I violated Odin’s directive and pulled Hellion back from death because I thought you’d suffered too much.
That’s
what I’ve been doing—waiting on you to find time to involve me in your jaunty love life. Meanwhile, another girl has died, guilty only of looking like you and you’ve done nothing,
nothing
,” he roared.

I whimpered in my sleep. My astral plane self was righteously pissed, and I opened my mouth to argue with him.

“Silence,” he bellowed, and beyond the bathroom window a shower of stars fell from the night sky.

It was at that moment I remembered Tyr was truly the Norse god of war, known for his wisdom, fair play and administration of justice. Sheer folly to forget it, but I had. I snapped my mouth shut and glared at him.

He was breathing hard, his pupils had become pinpricks, and his non-gloved hand clenched and opened as if he seriously toyed with strangling me. “What are you doing, Maddy, to protect these women?”

My guilt quotient for the week apparently hadn’t been met yet, because here he was loading me up with more. “Nothing yet, though I have some clues. I promise I intended to get back to them after tonight. I did,” I asserted when he just stared at me, straight-faced. “I did,” I said more softly. I
thought
I’d intended to, but without Bahlin’s support, I wasn’t sure what to do.

Seeing my discomfort, Tyr took a deep breath that filled out his barrel chest and let it out through his nose. Doing this twice more, he leaned forward and pulled me into his arms. “I was scared for you, Maddy. You’ve had the worst start to the Niteclif position. Anyone else going through this much trauma has been mercifully killed, and tonight when you turned your back on the vampires? I nearly manifested as a corporeal deity and laid waste to the room. You make it hard to watch over you,” he said, resting his chin on top of my head.

I hugged him and he hugged me back. “
Dýrr barn
,” he whispered into my hair, “oh, my precious child. My heart has hurt so for your over the last few weeks, just as it has rejoiced for you in finding your true
félagi
, or partner.” I’d never heard him slip into the old language, but the familiarity with which it rolled off his tongue could make it nothing else. “You have scared me, daughter mine.”

“Do you know who’s killing the girls?” I asked.

He nodded but said nothing. “I do, and I fear you must hurry if you are to stop h… the killer from reaching you. That or keep moving every day to stay in front of the killer, but then the question becomes who is chasing whom?”

I nodded at this sage observation, not sure we weren’t already at that point. “What about Bahlin? Is he still going to help?”

Tyr looked sad and he shook his head. “He’s your familiar, but he won’t offer you assistance for a while. It will be up to you, me, Hellion and—” Thunder rumbled across the astral plane and I winced. Tyr wasn’t fazed. “I swore I’d give you what I could, and Odin will just have to accept it,” he mumbled, scratching his short beard. “How about this: include in the group your new friend, made tonight with a blood exchange.”

“Darius?”

“Craps!”

“Huh?”

“The game you call out when someone is right. Craps, it’s not craps. What is it?”

“I think you mean bingo,” I said, grinning.

“Bingo.” He smiled back at me. “Darius is a strong ally, someone you will do well to align yourself with. I’ve been aware of him for years. Don’t blindly trust anyone, of course, but you would do well to get to know him and foster the friendship. I don’t trust all his people, and neither should you, but you’ll navigate those waters just fine.”

Tyr sighed, clenching his head in his fists. He looked up, no longer smiling. “Maddy, you’re going to need to give Bahlin some space. His world has been shattered, and his belief that he could manipulate the outcome of the prophecy has been decimated tonight. He thought you’d leave with him—”

“Even after his behavior at the stones?” I thought about his little spy session at Hellion’s London home. “Was the burning smell I picked up at the hotel and Hellion’s London house related to the dragons?”

Tyr tapped his forefinger to his lips. “I can tell you tit was related to your killer. For now, let’s leave it at that. For what I’ve told you tonight, Odin is near to ripping me back across this plane to the divine—and that hurts like a son of a bitch. I’ll space out my punishments, thanks. I will caution you against tempting Odin, though, Maddy. Not your wisest move to date.”

I ducked my chin to hide my anger.
Odin can kiss off
.

Tyr sighed and said, “He can hear that, Maddy.” He leaned back against the bathroom wall and crossed his arms over his chest and his feet at the ankles.

“So no private thoughts?” I asked, biting my lower lip.

“Hellion is hung like a chicken?” He grinned widely.

I blushed like mad. “Thankfully you’re the only one that knows about that little experiment. Um, where should I focus my energies? Is that all right to ask?”

He cocked his head to the side, seeming to listen to some otherworldly answer. Turning his face back to me he said, “I’ll tell you the killer is stalking you, even interacting with you. Have Hellion cloak your activities and tell no one where you’ll be. I mean it when I say no one. Be seen in public, then dematerialize to another location and be seen again before moving on for the night.” He sighed and stood up, stretching. “This will keep the killer chasing you, but it will keep the focus off the innocents.”

I looked over and realized my physical body had begun to shiver. The hot water must have run out.

“Take a day, tomorrow maybe, and lay low here, but have Hellion bring in more of his people tonight and ask Darius to bring in more vampires to leave behind. It’s important you become proactive in protecting yourself because I can’t pull either of you back again without consequence.” Tyr stepped up to me and wrapped me in his arms, and for just a moment I smelled my dad’s old pipe smoke. It was a relief to find that memories like this were happy.

“Back you go, sweetheart.” He turned me back toward my physical self. “Oh, and don’t sleep alone tonight.”