Blood Rights

The Castus vanished.

With a head-splitting wail, Tatiana scattered into a swarm of black wasps, obviously attempting one last attack before escaping. Mal, blood covering the side of his face and neck, stabbed the hand with his sword, plucking it up like a piece of refuse. The wasps dove after him, stinging relentlessly.

Dominic reached into his suit jacket and retrieved a vial. He threw it into the empty fireplace, smashing it. Smoke billowed up toward the ceiling, sending the wasps flying from the room.

Mal held the sword out toward Chrysabelle. She freed the ring from Tatiana’s dead finger, then stuffed it into her vest pocket. Mal flicked the hand off his blade.

Suddenly, he jerked, his gaze going to his arm. He pushed his jacket sleeve back and exposed a strange bare spot among the names. ‘She’s gone.’

‘Who’s gone?’ Chrysabelle asked.

‘Fi,’ he answered. ‘Her name isn’t on me anymore.’ He let the sleeve slide back into place. ‘I can’t sense her.’

Shouts rang from down the hall. Dominic got to his feet, his face twisting at the sight of Maris. He tugged her lifeless body into his arms, cradling her and whispering low in Italian.

Mal pointed his sword toward the doors. ‘You know the way to the front door?’

‘Mostly.’

He turned to Dominic. ‘You with us?’

‘Si,’ Dominic answered softly. ‘I will carry her home.’

‘Then let’s get the hell out of Dodge.’

Chapter Thirty-five

Paradise City had a few evenings every autumn when the cooler temperatures brought a chill to the skin, the winds cleared the lingering smog, and the stars twinkled more brightly. In the first of her journals, Maris had written about those nights and called them ‘a gift of nature.’

Nothing about this night felt like a gift.

Chrysabelle stared at the lies carved into her mother’s granite headstone. The real dates of her birth and death would remain the private knowledge of those who’d known her and loved her. The human world would not understand a life lived over such a span of time, not yet anyway. Maybe they would once the snarling, creeping darkness of the covenant’s dissolution saturated their lives and their nightmares walked among them. Maybe then the human world could grasp something more.

The human world. She shook her head. The world belonged to the othernaturals now. It might be slow at first, but wars would erupt. Vendettas would be played out. Power seized. Unless humans rose to the challenge, they would become collateral damage. Pawns. Prey.

Already the news broadcast stories of strange sightings. How much longer before mortal kind fully understood their new reality? Another week? A month?

A blanket of white roses covered the grave. Dominic’s doing. Any doubts she’d had about the vampire’s feelings for Maris had vanished watching him grieve. He seemed lost. Like part of him had died along with her.

In her own way, Chrysabelle knew how that felt. Maris had been her beacon of hope for a normal life in a normal world. Now all of that had been ripped away by Tatiana’s greed.

A jacket settled over her shoulders. ‘You looked cold,’ Doc said.

‘Thank you,’ she said, nodding at the still-grieving varcolai. Fiona had died in his arms, sighing out her last breath, then vanishing into nothing. Doc held out hope she would return in her ghostly form and Chrysabelle prayed he was right. Not just to ease his pain, but because Chrysabelle felt responsible for what had happened. Fi didn’t deserve the lot she’d been handed, and Doc didn’t deserve the sorrow etched into his body like a million tiny scars.

The sun had set hours ago, but Doc kept his black wraparound sunglasses on. ‘I can pick you up later, if you want more time.’

As far as she knew, this was only the second occasion he’d left the ship in the week since they’d returned. Maybe he thought Fi might show up here. The other time he’d left the freighter, he’d come by the house to see how Chrysabelle was doing. And to tell her Mal had yet to drink the blood she’d sent.

She understood Mal’s anger, but she hadn’t forgotten her responsibility or her promise to help him. Although with Fiona gone, Chrysabelle didn’t know what that meant for her blood rights. Did Mal still own them? And what if Fi did come back? What then? The comarré rule book didn’t really cover these kinds of circumstances. Most likely, he was still her patron. Which meant they were still connected, whether either of them liked it or not.

‘No, I’m ready.’ She placed the single rose she’d been rolling in her fingers onto the grave and turned to walk to the car, the hilts of the double sacres on her back clinking softly together. ‘Any sign of her?’

‘Not yet.’ Doc shook his head, kept his eyes straight ahead. Chrysabelle gave his arm a squeeze. ‘I’m so sorry.’

Up ahead, the devil himself leaned against the passenger door, keeping well off the cemetery’s hallowed ground. Mal’s arms were crossed, face a blank mask. The moonlight cut across the hollow of his cheek and sank his eyes in shadow, but still she could tell he looked past her, not at her. What she couldn’t tell for sure was if the darkness flickering over his skin was more shadow or the beast trying to rear its head.

An uncomfortable mix of guilt and longing washed through her. She wanted to ask him for time, for patience. To understand her side of things. Words hadn’t come easily between them since Corvinestri, but there was plenty that needed to be said. Mostly from her.