The walk back to the townhouse was long and Reece’s arms were screaming by the time he carried Lex up the steps to the front door. Nick had offered to carry her for a while, but his bad leg was killing him—Reece could tell—and it just wouldn’t have been right.
Lex was still out cold and she hadn’t even stirred yet. The hum of the soulmate link was overwhelmed with the jarring crackle of white noise. He found himself actually avoiding the touch of her skin because the static he felt in her mind scared the hell out of him.
He’d seen her faint before. He’d seen her collapse, gasping for breath with her hand pressed to her chest as if she were having a heart attack. He’d seen her curled in a tight ball of limbs and spiral curls, unwilling or unable to respond to him. But those other times, he had at least been able to sense the churning of her thoughts or feel the presence of her soul like a glowing beacon for his own.
Now he felt nothing.
Nick held the door open for Reece as they quietly entered the townhouse. “Where do you want to put her?”
The master bedroom was the obvious choice, but he didn’t want to be with her in the room she had once shared with someone else. That would provoke too many thoughts that he just couldn’t deal with right now. “I think there’s a bedroom down that hall,” he replied with a nod to his left.
Karissa poked her head out of the kitchen as they were crossing the living room. “Hey, guys, did you find—” she started. Then her eyes widened when she saw that Reece was carrying Lex, and she rushed into the room. “Oh god, what happened?”
Instead of answering, he asked in a low voice, “Where’s Lindsay?”
“She’s in the den,” she replied. “Watching a movie.”
Damn. The doorway to the bedroom was just past the den. “Could you go distract her?” he asked Karissa. “I don’t want her to see Lex.”
The human girl seemed almost defensive on Alexandra's behalf. “Why not?”
“One, because she’s unconscious and I don’t want to have to answer any questions about it. Two, because I’m really not up to explaining why it seems like I’m dating a thirteen year-old girl.”
“You could just tell her the truth,” she insisted. “Lindsay’s not stupid, you know. She’s going to wonder—”
“Kar,” Nick interjected, “would you give him a break and just do what he asked?”
She looked at him in surprise. “Now you’re the one telling me to give him a break?” Her eyes darted back and forth between them. “Someone had better start explaining what the hell happened out there.”
“I’ll tell you later,” Reece swore. “But for now, would you please go?”
She pursed her lips at him and then rolled her eyes. “Fine,” she grumbled.
Reece and Nick walked just behind Karissa as she stomped down the hall and they paused at the doorway when she turned into the den. After a few moments, her cheerful voice rang out as she engaged Lindsay in a conversation about the movie, and the witches hurried silently into the back bedroom.
The room was small and dusty, as if it hadn’t been used in years, but at least the twin-size bed was made. Reece gently laid his soulmate on the tan comforter and then he kneeled down on the floor next to the bed so that he was eye-level with her.
For the first time since he’d found her in the alley, he let himself look her over. She was a little too pale and a little too thin, which was troubling because it reminded him of how she looked when they met. Back then, she never ate enough food or drank enough blood. It had been a constant battle to get her to take care of herself. Over the last year she had made a lot of progress, but now it seemed like she’d given up on all of that. And what really bothered him was that such a drastic change in her couldn’t have happened in the few days since he’d last seen her; she had to have been backsliding long before that and he just hadn’t bothered to notice.
“Do you want to try to wake her up?” Nick asked.
Reece started at the sound of his friend’s voice. Christ, he’d forgotten that the witch was even there. “No. I don’t think it would be good for her right now. She’ll wake up on her own, once she feels safe enough,” he replied with more confidence than he felt.
With a weary sigh, he straightened up. “Right now, I just want to concentrate on getting us the hell out of this city.”
Slipping his cell phone out of his back pocket, he dialed Thierry’s direct line.
“Did you find Alexandra?” the vampire asked without preamble when he answered the phone. “Is she all right?”
“Yeah. She’s safe,” Reece said, choosing his words carefully. Thierry didn’t need to know all of the sordid details.
“Good. That’s a relief. Did she tell you why she had to use the blue fire? Anton is probably going to want to know.”
Guilt knotted in Reece’s stomach. He’d been too livid when he found her to even think of that question. But if he didn’t give Thierry an answer, the vampire was bound to be suspicious. He was going to have to make up something…
Aiden, his mind whispered. Give him Aiden.
It was a believable and understandable reason to unleash blue fire, and Anton Parish would be only too happy to know that Hellraiser was in his fair city right now. He would have every Daybreaker in a fifty-mile radius hunting the vampire down and in a matter of hours the problem of Aiden St. Helen could be eliminated from Reece’s life.
The words were on the tip of his tongue, but when he opened his mouth, he uttered, “It was an unconscious release. She has nightmares.” As soon as he said it, he realized that that was likely the real reason anyway. A few times back in Montreal, Reece had caught her on the verge of conjuring the fire in her sleep, but he’d woken her with a jolt of magick before the power escaped. Aiden wouldn’t have been able to do that.
“I see,” Thierry replied. “You know, there are spells that would help with that. Perhaps you ought to look into it.”
Reece didn’t want to get into that now. “Yes, sir. I will. But listen, now that I have Lex, I really want to get her back home to Montreal. Could you arrange another charter flight for us?”
The vampire’s brief hesitation felt like a noose around Reece’s neck. “Unfortunately, I won’t be able to get another flight for you until…” There was the sound of pages being flipped furiously. “Late tomorrow night or the morning after.”
“Shit.”
“You could take a regular flight out and I’ll see to it that you get reimbursed for the cost,” Thierry offered. “Just send me a copy of the bill when you get back, all right?”
“Yeah, okay,” he said noncommittally. Goddess knows that he couldn’t care less about the cost.
“Is there anything else I can help you with?”
Aiden, his mind hissed again. Still, he couldn’t bring himself to say it. “No, thank you.”
After he had snapped his cell phone shut, Reece turned to Nick. “Looks like we’re going to have to wake Lex up after all.”
“Why?”
“We can’t get a private plane for two days and trying to load an unconscious girl on a public flight is going to draw way too much attention.”
“We could just wait,” Nick suggested.
“I don’t think that’s a good idea. Not with Aiden in the city. The sooner we get out of here, the better.”
“Why don’t you let the Daybreakers know that he’s here? Then he’ll be too busy running to bother us.”
“Because,” Reece explained to Nick as well as the voice in his own head, “they might catch him.”
His friend cocked a brow at him. “And…that’s a bad thing?”
“Maybe. They’ll want him alive for information and if he’s not willing to talk, they’ll probably torture him. Lex would feel it and that is only going to make her worse.”
It was a good reason, but Reece knew that it wasn’t the real one. In truth, he was afraid that if he turned Aiden in, his soulmate would never forgive him for it.
“Torture?” Nick repeated in disbelief. “But they’re Daybreakers. That would go against everything that—”
“I told you,” Reece interrupted. “Things are different down here. Lex and I found out the hard way that Daybreak will do whatever is necessary to win this war.”
The witch’s hazel eyes were smoldering. “I don’t understand. We’re supposed to be about something. We’re supposed to show the world that diplomacy and amnesty and mercy can work.”
“Sometimes they do work, but sometimes they don’t. You met Aiden St. Helen. Do you really think someone like that can be reasoned with? And if he has information that could mean life or death to millions of people, what do you expect Daybreak to do?”
Nick seemed defeated. “Then why are we still with them if they’re no better than the enemy? What the hell is the point?”
Reece was quiet for a long moment as he fixed his gaze on the floor. “I had a lynx shifter on my team during the D.C. mission,” he said softly. “Sumitra. She was hurt pretty badly, helping me break Genevieve out of the compound, and there was no time to heal her. When we reached the entrance to the evacuation tunnel, I needed to cast a difficult spell to open the door, but I didn’t have enough power. Sumitra told me to use her.” He looked up at Nick, his throat tight with grief. “We both knew that it would kill her.”
“Goddess,” the witch whispered with a slight shake of his head. “I’m sorry, Cahill. I didn’t know.”
“Well, what I learned from that mission is that things are never black and white. There are shades of gray and…darker shades of gray.” He lifted one shoulder in a weary shrug. “Circle Daybreak may be forced to go against their principles from time to time, but at least they don’t get off on it. They just see it as a means to an end.”
“I don’t like it,” Nick said.
“Neither do I. It probably sounds terrible, but not a day goes by that I don’t thank the gods that it was Sumitra with me in the compound instead of Beth. Or anyone else from our team, for that matter.” It wasn’t a question of whether or not he would have done what was necessary—he knew that he would have—it was more a question of how he would have lived with himself afterwards.
A sad silence fell between them and Reece suddenly regretted telling Nick any of this. The witch’s idealism was such a rare and precious thing these days and it seemed wrong trounce on it with the cold, harsh truth.
“I was royally pissed at you,” Nick admitted. “When you showed up at my door the other night, on the verge of keeling over from casting an illegal spell, telling me that you gave up on the team and everything you believed in, all for the sake of revenge…”
“You were disappointed in me,” Reece finished for him. “I know.”
He nodded. “Yes. I just couldn’t understand why you’d done it. How you could have changed so much. Why I hadn’t seen it. But I think I’m starting to get it now. And…I’m sorry that I’ve given you such a hard time.”
“I’m not,” Reece insisted. Of course, there was so much more that he wanted to say, if he could only find the words. But then Nick smiled and he realized that his friend already understood.
The witch let out a slow breath. “So, what kind of spell did you want to try?” he asked with a nod toward Alexandra.
“We should start with something mild,” Reece replied thoughtfully. “If we jolt her too hard, she’ll be in worse shape when she wakes up than she is now.”
“Okay, then. Let’s get to work.”
The pale light of the winter afternoon had come and gone. Lindsay had watched the shadows of the furniture swing across the floor throughout the day, only to be swallowed up by the dusk. She was supposed to be watching TV, but she couldn’t focus on it. She crossed and uncrossed her legs and kicked her foot restlessly, possessed by nervous energy.
Something strange was going on. Lindsay could feel it, even though Karissa kept denying it with a bright smile—one that reminded her of how her parents had smiled at her after that Zarek guy had cut off her hair.
She hadn’t seen Reece at all since he’d come back to the house with his girlfriend. The two of them were shut up in the bedroom next door with Nick, and Lindsay wasn’t allowed inside. Everyone once in a while, Nick would come out of the room, looking tired and frustrated as he murmured something softly in Karissa’s ear. Twice already, he’d left the house “on an errand” and had returned with a heavy shopping bag in his hand. Then he had wordlessly headed straight into the bedroom again.
What was going on in there? Was Reece’s girlfriend sick? If she was, why were they trying to hide it? And if it was as bad as it seemed, why didn’t they take her to a hospital?
Butterflies were fluttering in Lindsay’s stomach. As she sat on the couch in the den pretending to watch cartoons, she started to wonder just how much she knew about the people she was with. They all seemed nice enough, but her father said that sometimes appearances were deceiving. The Bible was full of stories of how evil could look beautiful on the surface. So was the six o’clock news.
She tried to stay calm. She tried to tell herself that she’d already seen pure evil and Reece and his friends were nothing like that. But just because they weren’t as bad as Zarek didn’t mean that they were good either.
What if they were all…criminals or something?
No, that was stupid. She trusted Reece. She really did. He’d been nothing but protective of her since he’d pulled her out of that church. He wouldn’t let anything happen to her.
But why hadn’t he even come to say hi to her since he got back? She thought that they were friends. He was one of the few people she knew who didn’t treat her like some ignorant little kid. And he never seemed to care that she was so young; he liked having her around anyways.
Or, at least that’s what she had thought. Maybe this whole time, he was just—just humoring her like that policeman had back at home. Maybe they all were. After all, they were obviously trying to keep something from her. With each minute that Reece stayed locked in the bedroom, each mysterious shopping bag that Nick brought back to him, and each time that Karissa slipped inside the room and came back out looking dazed, Lindsay became more and more anxious.
There was something very wrong happening here.
What if they were doing drugs back there? She’d seen something on the news once about the police arresting the leader of a drug ring and she had heard both Nick and Karissa call Reece their leader. And there was a weird smell coming from that room—something like stale incense.
She stole a glance at Karissa, who was sitting on the other end of the couch. She didn’t look high. Then again, Lindsay had never been around anyone who was on drugs before, so she didn’t really know what to look for.
Karissa turned her head, catching Lindsay in the act of watching her. “What’s up, chica?” she asked. “What’s the matter?”
“Nothing.”
“That’s the third ‘nothing’ I’ve gotten from you in the last hour. And I’m still not buying it.”
“You said it a couple of times, too,” she said as the blood rushed into her face, “after I asked you what was going on. You’re not telling the truth either.”
“You got me there,” Karissa said with a smile. “Anyone ever tell you that you are too perceptive for your own good?” Then the smile faded as she gave her a patient look. “I know that you’ve got a lot of questions, hon. I’d answer them if I could.”
“Why can’t you?”
She bit her bottom lip. “It’s...complicated.”
The word stung as badly now as it had when Reece had said it to her in the car the day before. And it unsettled her too because of how nervous Karissa seemed.
The older girl abruptly stood up. “Hey, why don’t I try to scrounge up some dinner, okay? You must be starving and I’m sure the boys are, too.”
“Do you think Reece will eat with us?” Lindsay couldn’t help asking. If he really was the leader of the group, then it was probably his decision to keep her in the dark. Once he actually came out of that room and remembered that she was even here, maybe she could get him to tell her what was going on.
“Uhhh.” Karissa bit her lip again. “You know, I’ll just go ask him. Wait right here, okay?”
Lindsay watched her hastily walk out of the room and into the hallway. But before she could knock on the door to the Forbidden Bedroom, a deep ding-dong rang throughout the house.
Karissa frowned as she pivoted in place and headed toward the front door. A few minutes later, she called out, “Nick! Reece! Get out here now!”
Holding her breath, Lindsay saw Nick emerge from the bedroom first, followed by Reece, who pulled the door shut behind him. They both looked downright awful as they trudged by the den and neither of them seemed to notice that she was there.
This was her chance. She couldn’t just sit here any longer with these strange people who wouldn’t tell her anything, who wouldn’t let her call her parents, and who didn’t plan on letting her go home any time soon. If they were doing drugs or anything illegal back there, then she wasn’t safe with them and she had a right to know that.
Lindsay used that thought to give her the courage to creep out into the hallway. She could hear Karissa and the others arguing with someone, but they were speaking too softly for her to make out the words. All that mattered, though, was that they were too busy to see her sneaking into the bedroom. Licking her dry lips, she quietly pushed the door open a crack and squeezed inside.
The room was hazy with smoke. That stale incense smell was thick in the air, making it hard for her to breathe as she looked around. Her heart was pounding and it was from more than just the fear of being caught or the fear of what she would find; there was something disturbing about the room itself. Just standing there made her feel like she was full of electricity. If she passed a mirror, she wouldn’t have been surprised to see her hair standing on end.
The curtains had been drawn shut so that the room was lit only by the dim glow of a candle that sat on the small table. Plastic baggies of what looked like tea leaves and dried flowers were scattered over the table and there was a small ceramic bowl full of crushed leaves teetering on the edge.
Lindsay leaned down to push the bowl back so that it rested fully on the table. Then, as if compelled, she grabbed a pinchful of the crushed leaves and sniffed it warily. Puzzled by the smell, she took a small taste.
A giggle bubbled up inside of her. It was just lemongrass! Her mom sometimes used it when she was making chicken for dinner—just to shake things up, she said. Oh God, Lindsay couldn’t believe she had been so worried about this. She should have known that Reece would never—
Her relief was cut short as her gaze fell on the twin bed that was situated in the far corner of the room. There was a girl lying there who wasn’t much older than her. An eight-grader, maybe ninth. She seemed to be asleep, but there was blood trickling from her lips onto the pillowcase.
There was no girlfriend, Lindsay realized. There never had been.
But why would they lie about that? Why would they want to keep Lindsay from finding out about this girl?
There was only one explanation: they had kidnapped this girl. They had kidnapped the both of them. They had been friendly to Lindsay this entire time just to keep her at ease so that she would do what they said. Maybe this other girl hadn’t been so cooperative, so they had knocked her out and put her here.
Tears burned in her eyes and she had to clamp her hand over her mouth to keep from screaming.
Reece had lied to her. Reece had been using her. Reece had taken her away from her home, had used her fear against her, had tricked her into liking him just to get money from her parents. He had never liked her. He probably thought it was hysterical how stupid she was.
What would he do to her if he found her in here? If he knew that she had figured out his secret? Maybe he didn’t want to hurt her, but that didn’t mean that he wouldn’t.
God, please help me. Please…
She scrambled back and came up against the door. She was about to throw it open and run out of there, but she stopped.
This was a test. This had to be a test. She was scared and that was fine. It was okay to be afraid—it was smart to be, sometimes, but she still had to do the right thing. God wouldn’t want her to leave that other girl in here.
Lindsay went back to the bed and shook the girl hard. “Hey,” she whispered. “You have to wake up!”
The girl didn’t respond.
Lindsay tried not to panic, but her hands were trembling as she shook the girl so hard that the bed creaked. “Come on, come on. We have to get away.”
Still, nothing.
She wanted to cry. She bit her lip like Karissa so often did. “Okay,” she whispered. “Okay. You stay here. I’ll go get help and come back for you.”
As quietly as she had come in, Lindsay slipped out of the bedroom. She tiptoed down the hallway, carefully making her way towards the kitchen, where she knew there was a back door. Each tiny step also brought her closer to the living room, where her captors were arguing heatedly with someone. By the time she had reached the entrance of the kitchen, she could clearly hear Reece’s angry voice.
She tried not to listen. She didn’t want to listen. She just wanted to get out of there, to save herself and that girl in the bedroom. But just as her hand was closing on the knob of the back door, one word pierced her consciousness.
Witch.
Lindsay froze in fear as visions of the orange fireballs that Reece had thrown in the church flashed before her eyes.
“Is that how you get your kicks?” demanded a voice that she didn’t recognize. “Slowly, painfully disintegrating innocent people into dust? Did you like hearing the person scream?”
Realization crashed down around her. Reece had kidnapped her, but not for ransom money. He was a witch—a servant of Satan. She probably couldn’t even imagine the things that he’d had planned for her.
In blind terror, Lindsay ran out the back door. Her feet slipped on the wet cement and she fell down the steps, skinning her knees as she landed in the narrow path behind the house. Ignoring the pain, she got back up and ran as fast as she could toward the street.
Karissa opened the front door to find a tall, curvaceous woman and a gangly man with a hooked nose standing on the steps. “Can I help you?” she asked them.
“Is there a Reece Cahill here?” the man asked.
She looked him over for a minute, feeling somewhat intimidated by his golden eyes in spite of herself. You’d think after being with Nick for two years, she would be immune so such a subtle attack, but there was something untamed about his eyes that made her uneasy. While Nick’s stare was icy and controlled, this man’s was full of a certain recklessness that was barely held in check. His mouth was twisted into a sneer that seemed as natural on his face as his five o’clock shadow. And she could tell that he was a shifter, but she couldn’t discern which kind.
The woman next to him, with the long, lustrous brown hair, was obviously a witch. She radiated power and wisdom—the yin to her partner’s yang. They must have been working together for some time because she seemed unconcerned by the shifter’s edginess.
“Are you from Daybreak?” Karissa asked, though she already knew the answer. Witches and shifters did not tolerate each other well in the Night World, in spite of the alliance that had been made a few years ago.
“Yes,” the witch answered. “I’m Mina Whitehall and this is Halin Sparnasa.”
“Did Anton send you?”
Mina and her partner exchanged glances. “No. We’re from the Burlington office in Vermont.”
Uh, oh. Not good. Not good.
And worse yet, the witch must have caught some change in Karissa’s expression. “You know why we’re here,” Mina noted.
Ugh. Why did she have to be such a terrible liar? Why? Goddamn, she couldn’t even lie well enough to keep a ten year-old from seeing right through her. It just wasn’t fair.
“He had good reason,” Karissa blurted out.
The shifter snorted. “That’s really not for you to decide.”
“Fine. Call up Thierry Descouedres. I’m pretty sure he would agree with me.”
She probably shouldn’t have said that. Dropping Thierry’s name gave too much away about Reece’s status; the leader of Circle Daybreak wouldn’t intervene on a matter like this for just anyone. You had to be someone of great importance—or the protector of someone of great importance.
Luckily, the Daybreakers didn’t take her suggestion seriously. “Yeah, we’ll do that,” Hal said sarcastically. “In the meantime, why don’t you let us in? Don’t make this any harder than it has to be.”
Karissa was tempted to slam her fist into the shifter’s crooked nose. She could take him down, easy. The witch, too, if she moved fast enough.
Hal must have sensed her growing hostility because he narrowed his eyes at her. “Don’t get any ideas. We brought back-up.” He took a small step to the side, and belatedly Karissa noticed the three burly vampires who were standing on the sidewalk behind the Daybreakers.
“What’s the matter?” she asked dryly. “Too scared to come down here and face us on your own?”
“Too smart,” he replied. “We did our homework, Miss Gigena.” A smug smile spread on his face.
“Oh goodness,” Karissa said flatly. “You know my name. Am I supposed to be impressed that you can read a file and spot a human when you see her?”
His nostrils flared. “I would be worried, if I were you. Clearly, you know about the illegal spells your leader cast, so that makes you an accessory.”
Mina gave the shifter a quelling look, which he returned with a sneer. She just smiled gently at him for another moment and Hal threw his hands up, as if he was sickened by all of them.
“You’ll have to forgive him,” the witch said to Karissa. “He tends to get a little rash.”
“Then tell him to call his anger management sponsor instead of trying to start something with me.”
“We’re not trying to start anything,” Mina said amiably. “We’re just doing our job. So could you please let us in?”
Karissa was at a loss. She couldn’t fight her way out of this and she didn’t want to get Reece into any more trouble than he already was. Besides, if this was as bad for him as it seemed, he probably could call Thierry. It would raise people’s suspicions, but they would cross that bridge when they came to it.
Begrudgingly, she stepped back from the door and the Daybreakers followed her inside. The three vampires positioned themselves side-by-side in the doorway, effectively blocking off the exit for Karissa, but of course they would stand aside if the witch or shifter needed it.
“So, where is he?” Hal demanded. His eyes searched the living room as if he was expecting Reece to be hiding behind the furniture.
“Nick! Reece! Get out here now!” Karissa shouted so loudly that her own ears rang. She had the satisfaction of seeing the vampires at the door wince, but unfortunately the shifter didn’t. Guess he wasn’t an animal that had a heightened sense of hearing.
Nick came into the room first, looking completely ghastly. His complexion was pasty, there were dark rings under his eyes, and he moved so sluggishly that she worried he was about to keel over. Reece, of course, looked no better. For hours, they had been pouring all of their power into spells to try to wake Lex up, but the girl just wouldn’t come around. They had tried incantations, crystals, and herbs. They had even tried to make her drink a blood bag, thinking that she might just be too weak to wake. None of it had worked.
In one of the brief moments Karissa had dared to leave Lindsay in order to slip into the back bedroom, Nick had told her that he’d never seen anything like this before. He hadn’t wanted to say it, but she knew that he was afraid that Lex was just beyond their reach and she might never wake up. Reece refused to believe that, though. He refused to give up. And he was running the both of them into the ground.
He eyed the Daybreakers. “What do you want? No one has reserved this space for the next week. I checked the logs.”
“They’re not from D.C.,” Karissa told him softly. “They’re from Vermont.”
“Ah, fuck,” he groaned, running his fingers through his hair.
“Ah, fuck, indeed,” Hal said snidely. His assessing gaze moved over Reece’s wan face. “You’ve been casting more illegal spells, I see.”
“No. We’ve been casting a fuck-ton of legal ones, actually.”
“So you don’t deny—”
Mina stepped forward and put her hand out in front of her partner. “Would you mind casting one for us now?” she asked Reece politely.
He crossed his arms over his chest. “Why? Don’t you have enough evidence to convict me already?”
The Daybreakers hesitated, exchanging another look.
“You don’t, do you?” Reece remarked. “You need me to give you an energy signature.”
“How did you get his name, then?” Karissa asked suspiciously.
“We received an anonymous tip,” Mina replied.
“A tip,” she repeated. “You came all the way down here because of a tip?”
“The guy told us the sig from Vermont would match an unidentified sig from the D.C. compound’s records, and it does,” the shifter said defensively. “We had every reason to believe he was right about this as well.”
Anger flared in Reece’s eyes. “Those records are classified.”
“Our supervisor’s supervisor has the proper clearance,” Mina said. “She compared the signatures for us.”
“That’s two illegal spells we can pin on you, witch,” Hal spat fervently. “And that first one…” He whistled and shook his head. “Man, that was impressive. Is that how you get your kicks? Slowly, painfully disintegrating innocent people into dust? Did you like hearing the person scream?”
It was a loaded question. If Reece said yes or no, it wouldn’t matter because he would still be admitting that he’d done the spell. Thankfully, he was smart enough not to rise to it.
“Who did you do it on?” the shifter pressed heatedly. “Some innocent little kid on her way home from school? Some beautiful woman who wouldn’t touch the likes of you, so you just had to put her in her place?”
Reece just smiled. “I don’t think you have anything on me.”
“We will as soon as Mina feels out the energy signature from the ‘fuck-ton of legal spells’ you were casting here.”
“You have no just cause for doing that and we both know it.”
“We’re not the human police,” Hal snarled. “We don’t need just cause. We don’t need a warrant. We’re Circle Daybreak and you’re nothing but a sick, pathetic excuse for a witch.
“Now,” the shifter continued, “if you cooperate with us, maybe they’ll let you out of the Daybreak prison before you’re too old to get it up any more.”
“Hal.” Mina touched his arm again. “Let’s all just stay calm here.”
Reece laughed loudly. “You two been working on this good cop/bad cop routine long?”
“Yeah, you’d better get your laughs in now, witch,” the shifter growled, “because as soon as we haul you out of here and drag your ass back to Vermont, I don’t think you’ll be laughing again for a very long time.”
Karissa looked around the room as Reece and Hal stared each other down and she weighed their odds. Five to three wasn’t too bad…
Of course, the three vampires at the door were freaking gargantuan…
Six to three.
And Nick and Reece were practically dead on their feet already…
Six to two. Still doable.
Then Karissa glanced at Nick, and seeing his closed-off expression, she knew that they wouldn’t be able to count on him after all. His allegiance to his leader was deep-rooted, sure, but his allegiance to Circle Daybreak would always come first and Reece had broken their laws. He might not help these Daybreakers arrest Reece, but neither would he stand in their way. It was times like this that she would really hate Nick if she didn’t love him so damn much.
So that brought their odds down to six to one and a half, at best.
Crap.
Karissa could picture exactly how this would play out. Reece would refuse to let the Daybreakers down the hall and Nick would stand aside. Two of the vampires and probably the shifter would go after Reece, leaving one of the vampires and the witch to restrain Karissa. She would start fighting the vamp and while she was distracted, the witch would cast some weird-ass spell on her to get her out of the picture. Meanwhile, the shifter and the other two vampires would take Reece down. The witch would go down the hall, feel out the energy signature, and then the Daybreakers would have enough evidence to arrest Reece. And, of course, they would take Karissa and Nick into custody as well because they were accessories to the crime, which left Lex and Lindsay with no one to protect them from Zarek.
She had to stop that from happening.
“He has a soulmate,” Karissa cried out, breaking the heated silence. All eyes in the room fell on her. She could feel the weight of Reece’s gaze, ordering her to shut the hell up about Lex, but she knew that trying to reach the Daybreakers’ sense of decency was their only shot at getting out of this. “And she sick, okay? Really, really sick. She needs him right now. If you take him away, she’ll probably die.” That, at least, was true enough. “She doesn’t deserve that.”
Hal wrinkled his nose. “He should have thought of that before he started casting illegal spells,” he replied coldly. “Now, are you going to let us by, witch?”
“No,” Reece replied.
The shifter crooked his finger at the vampires in the doorway and, as Karissa had expected, two of them stepped forward.
Fine. Screw decency. If that’s the way they wanted it, at least she and Reece would give them one hell of a fight. She wouldn’t let this go down the way these Daybreakers wanted it to.
Karissa started to lunge at the shifter, but Nick beat her to the punch. Shocked, she halted mid-motion as he drove his fist into Hal’s face. He followed the blow with a hard switch kick to the left leg and the shifter toppled to the ground.
Reece was as stunned as she was. “Nick, what the hell are you doing?”
“Crossing over to the Dark Gray Side.” He paused to throw a foot jab at one of the vampires to push him back. “Karissa and I will hold them back. Just take Lex and Lindsay and run.”
“I can’t just—”
“Don’t argue, just go!”
As Reece sprinted down the hall, Karissa side-kicked Mina in the ribs. And thank god, the witch fell a lot easier than she’d expected.
One of the vampires came at her next and she used his motion and his weight against him, grabbing him around the waist and throwing him over her hip onto the floor. Nick came up behind her and they stood with their backs to each other while the vampires and the shifter—who was limping slightly, but was apparently pissed off enough to keep fighting anyway—began to circle them.
The next few minutes were a blur of punches, kicks, throws, and grunts. The vampires were as tough as she’d anticipated, but the shifter was weaker. In fact, after she easily slipped and blocked the few shots he took at her, she was pretty sure that he didn’t have any formal training. He was all anger, no focus.
Karissa grinned. “Baby, do you think they have conjugal visits in a Daybreak prison?” she asked.
She felt Nick move against her as he threw a punch at one of their opponents. “I don’t know. I don’t see why not.”
“Good.” She kneed a vampire in the stomach and then kicked him in the head. “Because I am going to ravage you when we get there.”
“Be careful, Kar,” her boyfriend warned breathlessly. “I’m going to hold you to that.”
In the corner of her eye, Karissa saw Mina use the couch to pull herself back up to her feet and she knew that it was all over. Nick’s power was drained and with the others circling them, there was no way that either one of them would be able to take the witch down before she threw some kind of magick at them.
Even so, Karissa couldn’t bring herself to care. Her heart was just too full. She reached behind her to squeeze Nick’s hand. “I love you, baby.”
“I love you, too.” She could hear the smile in his voice as he said that and she knew that he was as proud of himself for choosing to stand up for Reece as she was.
She just hoped that they had given Reece enough time to get away from here.
Part 14
Part 16
Until It Sleeps Main Page
Home