Cole’s head cleared before the five minutes, the timed ones, ended. And he didn’t look thrilled to wake with me in his arms. He and his subconscious clearly had issues to resolve between them. Once our team was ready to go, I called the station and turned over this scene for processing. Cowboying was not looked upon favorably by the brass, but I had resources at my disposal they didn’t, and a best friend to find before it was too late.
“I’m open to suggestions.” I paced the Uptons’ bedroom, which served as our command center while we each routed and rerouted calls, answered emails and sent texts. We traded information to try and bring the bigger picture into focus, but the best we managed was a fuzzy outline. “The only location still on the table is the dumpsite for the leg.”
“It’s too exposed.” Thom rested in his customary crouch near the door. “The swamp beyond perhaps.”
“What’s the point of using Maggie as bait if War doesn’t put her on the hook?” I hated sounding eager. I had ideas of what War might do to her. I was a cop. I had lost my innocence lost ago. But I had never witnessed anything like this. “Where else would she go?”
A melodic chime rang out, and we all jumped.
“It’s Miller.” With a few taps of his fingertips, Cole grunted at his phone’s screen. “Robert Martin doesn’t own any other properties. Neither do the Uptons. Their houses are the only deeds in their names.”
“War sank months of prep work into those locations,” I said. “She must have stocked a bolt hole too.”
“The other locations doubled as food storage,” Thom agreed then picked at the carpet. “I shouldn’t have said that.”
Food storage. “You’re saying the shelter and cellar held more than two victims?”
Thom sneaked a peek at Cole, who sighed and confessed. “It’s impossible for us to determine how many, but I would guess between ten and a dozen between the two locations based on the scents.”
I sank down on the edge of the bed. “Why didn’t anyone tell me?”
“To avoid this.” Cole glared daggers at Thom. “The scents were old, and I doubt there’s anything left to find if the storm shelter and cellar were used as—” he bit off the same phrase “—cells to keep their victims.” He crossed to me and hooked his finger under my chin, forcing me to hold his gaze. “You can’t help what was done. Right now you need to focus on the person you can save, not the ones who are already lost.” He cut off my snarl. “Later, there will be time for forensics and searching databases. I’m not saying you have to abandon them. I’m just saying Maggie needs you more.”
“You’re right.” The lost would want me to do for Maggie what hadn’t been done for them. “Thanks for putting it into perspective.”
Cole looked like he wanted to say more, do more, but he did neither and withdrew.
“Do we think it’s worth mounting an effort to search the swamp?” I wondered out loud.
“Portia’s been at it for a half hour.” Cole tapped his phone against his palm. “No news yet.”
He must have been setting that up while I was chatting with Uncle Harold. The Uptons had not, in fact, made the 911 call. At least not from their private cellphones or places of employment. Brilliant man that my uncle was, he had done one better and also reported back on the security footage pulled from the cameras at the elementary school. The initial accident was documented, but Martin’s subsequent return with Maggie wasn’t recorded. Whatever had gone down on that sidewalk, he had been careful to obscure the result.
The idea someone else might have arranged a surprise inspection for the Uptons made about as much sense as the couple calling attention to themselves in the first place.
Thinking of Uncle Harold reminded me I hadn’t checked in with Dad in a while. He must be good and fuming by now. “I’m going to get some air, clear my head.”
“Stay close,” Cole warned. “We don’t know when War will strike next.”
No, we didn’t. That was the whole problem.
The chemicals in the fertilizer didn’t bother me, so I soaked up sunshine while standing in the driveway. I dialed Dad’s number and got ready to rumble. Better to face his wrath now than let him simmer all day.
“Luce,” a feminine voice purred.
Despite the temperature being in the low nineties, a sudden chill lifted the hairs down my arms. “Who is this?”
“You named me Jane,” she said, amusement ripe in her voice. “I rather like it, to be honest. It’s so delightfully human.”
There was no way to underplay what I had to ask, so I spat it out. “Why are you answering my dad’s phone?”
“Really, Luce, the things you say.” She chuckled softly. “He contributed nothing to your genetics.”
“He loves me. I love him. That makes us family.” Hiding the depth of our bond wouldn’t work if the guys were right and she had been studying me. She would have seen the movie nights, the game nights, the late nights sitting on the porch and talking shop. “Cut the crap, War. What do you want?”
“I want you, sister dear.” Rustling noises filled her end of the line. “I was going to trade this Maggie person for your vow of fealty, but she won’t live long enough for you to make the trade, and I can’t afford for you to balk. Your caretaker will do well enough, it seems.”
Maggie. Maggie. Maggie.
With her name a steady chant in my head, I begged, “Release her as a show of good faith. Call an ambulance. Help her.”
“No. This one is dying. She might as well do it here and get it over with.” She closed that topic and opened another discussion. “Now then. Your caretaker, on the other hand, is very much alive. I haven’t even let my darlings have a taste.”
“Understand me, sister.” The threat frosted on my lips as the cold place numbed the burn of acid rising up my throat. “I will kill you if you harm him.”
“For thousands of years you’ve been trying, and yet I’m still here.” The noise in the background increased. “Hmm. How about a trinket of equal value? Would you trade? The archduke for your father?”
An instant yes clashed with a persistent no, and all that came out was a gasp of air.
The archduke. Cole. It had to be. The others had noticed how drawn I was to him, so would she.
“Gods, you’re pathetic. After all this time?” Her voice lowered to a sultry purr. “I can’t say I don’t see the appeal, but really. Aren’t you tired of him yet? Toys do get so worn after centuries of play.”
I bit my tongue to keep from tripping up worse than I had already. This conversation convinced me as nothing else had that War was my sister. Siblings always knew what buttons to mash, and she was jumping up and down on mine.
“Humanity has done nothing for you.” Her sigh heaped on disappointment. “It’s time for the prodigal daughter to return home.”
The call ended.
Home.
War was at my house.
Spots danced in my vision. I sucked in air and fumbled my phone with limp fingers. I tried and tried, but War let my calls collide with the voicemail box Dad had never set up despite my nagging. I almost dialed Uncle Harold. Dad should have been with him. He should have been safe. But all War had to do was threaten my uncle or his wife, and Dad would have sacrificed himself for them. That’s what family—real family—did for one another. I stumbled back into the house without seeing where I was going, and then Cole was there.
“Luce?”
The words launched into the air. “She took Dad.”
“Where?” He cupped my face and forced me to look up at him. “What did she say?”
“She wanted to trade.” I gripped his wrists, and his strength was all that kept me standing. “But she said Maggie is . . . ” I didn’t finish, couldn’t finish. “So she took Dad.” My nails sank into the meat of his forearms. “She wants you too. She offered me a trade. For Dad.”
Cole stared down at me. “Take it.”
“No.” I wrested free of him and bumped into Thom. “You and Dad and Maggie— You’re people. Not things. Not toys. Not belongings to be traded. People. We don’t play her game.”
A feral gleam lit Cole’s eyes, but Thom whirled me out the door and onto the sidewalk before I could understand what I had done to upset him. He hauled me to the SUV faster than was comfortable for a woman of my height being dragged by a man of his stature.
“I’m not trading him or anyone else,” I told Thom.
“I know,” he said, releasing me at the vehicle. “He knows it too. That’s the problem.”
“Why is that a problem?” A cold stone dropped into my stomach. “No. He wouldn’t. Thom, tell me he isn’t going to face her alone.”
“I wanted to believe otherwise. I hoped this time would be different.” Thom’s expression shuttered. “You can’t help but ruin him, can you?”
Even without the subtext they tended to forget I didn’t remember, I understood enough to panic.
“Give me the keys.” I held out my hand. “Thomas, the god-damn keys.”
He handed them over, and I slid behind the wheel of the SUV. I didn’t wait to see if Thom made it inside. He had wings. Let him fly for all I cared. Why, oh why, hadn’t I driven? I had an interior lightbar mounted in the Bronco along with a hundred-watt siren. Oh well. This wouldn’t be my first ticket, and I doubted it would be my last. If they could catch me.
Pedal, meet metal.
Thom, who it turned out had made it inside, hissed at the high rate of speed as we blasted out of the subdivision. Or maybe it was the combination of so many of those fancy maneuvers I’d learned during a tactical driving course I’d taken last year. Plastic groaned, and I glanced over at him. Thom had claws tipping his fingers. Actual claws. And he’d sunk them into the plastic of the dash in an effort to hold on.
As a teenager, I had become a pro at racing against curfew to get home. I called on those memories, taking every shortcut and avoiding the known speed traps. I squealed into the driveway and hopped out almost before I threw the SUV into park. Thom poured out the door onto the gravel beside me, and a dull thud sounded as his phone tumbled from his pocket. He bent as if to scoop it up, wobbled on unsteady feet, and then fell in behind me as I marched up to the front door.
Robert Martin opened it before I reached him, his expression sharp and hungry. There was nothing human in his gaze. Nothing merciful. None of the light or joy or humor I had glimpsed in my own coterie showed on his face. What more had War done to stamp out even a glimmer of what I hesitated to label humanity in hers? They were not human, but my coterie, I was relieved to finally understand, were not monsters either. Though how much credit I could take for that after a fifteen-year absence remained to be seen.
Martin allowed Thom to join me in the foyer, then returned to his position guarding the door. Mr. Upton prowled forward to greet us, a vicious smile playing on his lips, and I marveled that he had aped being a frazzled human so well. He ushered me into my own living room where Cole sat in Dad’s recliner with War sprawled across his lap. A tall man with the cold, unending universe in his eyes stood behind them, black hair framing a pale face sculpted from glorious nightmares. A blade filled his hand, its razor edge drawing blood against Cole’s throat while War nestled against him. She grinned at me, happy as a lark, her regenerating eye a red welt on her face, mucus dripping onto her cheek.
No sign of Portia, Miller or Santiago. That was good news. No sign of Dad either. That was the not-so-good news.
“I’m here.” I walked right up to her, fisted her hair and hauled her off Cole’s lap. The man behind her didn’t so much as flinch. “Where’s Dad?”
“Still like it rough, do we?” War punched me in the solar plexus, and her knuckles must have brushed my spine. The edges of the man’s lips curled at that, but I didn’t have air to hiss at him. “Where are you hiding, Conquest?” She waited until I hit my knees, coughing and wheezing, before wrapping my ponytail around her fist and yanking my head back until my neck threatened to snap. Our gazes clashed, and her lips pursed. “I don’t see you in there at all.” She jabbed my cheek with a finger. “This skin suit is quite convincing.”
“My name—” I gulped another lungful of air “—is Luce.”
“Release her.” Cole spoke against the blade, though it drew fresh blood. “I’ve agreed to your terms.”
The black-haired man sank his weapon deeper, and fresh blood dripped down the strong column of Cole’s throat.
“Sadly, Conquest owns you to the marrow of your soul, beautiful one. You might have hoped to find a kinder mistress in me, and I do so hate to disappoint, but you are hers. There is no salvaging you.” Sparks ignited in her eyes as she swept her gaze over the black-haired man. “Besides, my beloved is the jealous sort. It’s probably best we not tempt his rage.” War turned back to me, leaning down until our cheeks brushed, and her lips tickled my ear. “Even I don’t go to such lengths to secure my coterie. What have you done to the poor archduke?
I’ve never seen the like, and I have seen much.”
“I’ve done nothing to him,” I snarled.
“Nothing? You destroyed his family, his homeland. You enslaved him. I was there when you bound him as the first member of your coterie. I would not call that nothing.” She cocked her head. “You must remember. Everyone remembers their first.”
The moisture wicked from my tongue, and I couldn’t stop the sidelong glance at Cole or the chills from the fraction of a smirk on the lips of the man I realized must be Thanases.
“Tell her the story, Archduke,” she purred. “Explain why you love and hate her so much.”
Cole set his jaw, his lips pressed into a bloodless line that didn’t flinch when Thanases applied more pressure.
“Oh fine, I tell it better anyway.” War strolled over to him and ran her palm over the stubble covering his scalp. “Once upon a time, the man you know as Cole Heaton was an archduke, the son of an emperor. Isn’t that how all the human fairy tales begin?” She scratched lightly with her nails. “His terrene fell first and hardest. We were young and vicious then, and Convallaria was to be our proving ground.
“You met him on the battlefield that first day, and you wanted him as you had never wanted in your existence. But he was noble and kind, and you were deceitful and cruel, and he denied your advances.” A smile teased her lips. “You took it as a challenge and brought him to his knees, and then you offered him a bargain. Bow to you, accept you as his master, and you would spare his kingdom from the horrors we had planned for the wider world. His honor was such that he agreed, and yours was such that you betrayed him within hours of the bond setting.”
“Cole?” I rasped out his name. This was no story of rescue, no reprieve from a worse existence. This had been a massacre. I had let myself hope that when he finally confided his story in me that . . . I would somehow not end up the villainess.
I had been a fool to doubt the icy fury crackling in those meltwater eyes.
“We butchered his family and his friends,” War continued into the silence, “felled his entire kingdom and burned it to ash you scraped into an urn to present him. You said, ‘There. I have spared them. They will not live to see what becomes of their sweet archduke or their precious Convallaria.’” She stroked his head once more then sighed. “He’s been your loyal second ever since. The bond ensures he must remain in close proximity to you, or he’ll die. So will the others for that matter. All those stolen touches, all those kindnesses, all a lie. A means of loosening the chains that bind him to you. He will protect you until his last breath, because you are his master and have commanded it so, not because he cares whether you live or die. He will always crave you, but you will never sate him. Any capacity he had for love, you have burned from his heart. Lust is harder to stamp out, but you don’t carry his scent in your skin.
“Is this new persona of yours chaste? Or is she simply cruel? In any case, I applaud your newfound restraint.” Her razor-sharp laughter should have drawn blood. “Poor male. Denied even that much pleasure, if bedding your mortal enemy could be called such. Perhaps that’s what appeals. Do you see your death in his eyes while you rut like beasts? Is that why you’ve bound him so close? Why you can’t let him go?” She drew a pattern on his scalp with her nail. “He would raze this world you’ve embraced as your own if he ever slipped his leash. What a wonderfully dangerous game you play.”
The room spun around me, and bile rose up my throat.
“Give him an order,” she invited me. “Any order. See for yourself. He will break himself to obey.”
“No,” I breathed through the knot in my chest. “Cole is free to do as he wishes.”
“This nonsense again?” She rolled her eyes. “Must you go on? I understand this production has had a fifteen-year run, and you’re comfortable in your role, but aren’t you tired of playing human? Aren’t you ready to welcome our sisters?”
There was no convincing her the only person in this body was me.
A rustling noise coming from the kitchen had my lips moving in silent prayer that White Horse had arrived. But the person who stepped through the doorway was as familiar as her appearance was unexpected.
Ida Bell.
“Luce.” The nurse’s expression shifted from curious to amused. “I’d offer you a drink or a snack, but I wouldn’t want to step on your toes. This is your house, after all.”
“Well, that explains a lot.” Her offer broke open a detail that had been pestering me. “All those foam cups were your handiwork, I assume. That’s how War got past the guards when she left the hospital. Those nights you slipped in something extra the soda masked.”
“I’ll admit I was surprised how easily I tamed them to my hand. Playing human has softened them if they accept food and drink from strangers, even ones wearing uniforms.” Ida swept her gaze over War, a flicker of concern tightening her face. “Did you really believe we would leave our mistress unguarded?”
“A girl can hope.” Especially when I hadn’t known any better.
“Hope,” she mused. “When have prayers ever saved anyone?”
I clamped my jaw shut to keep from agreeing with her.
“Poor Ida sold her soul at a mere fraction of its worth after her youngest suffered a tragic accident in the pond behind their house.” War chuckled, relishing the memory. “I had hoped seeing me incapacitated might rouse your killer instincts and end this charade, but not even a second chance prompted you to act. Your sympathy for my injuries only served to prove how very weak you’ve become.”
Plots within plots within plots. The hospital had been a test. Win me to her cause or wake the monster in me. She seemed fine with either outcome. Too bad she was getting neither.
“I’ll tell Harold you said hello the next time I see him,” she said, joining War on the rug, a respectful step behind her mistress. “Nancy and I have that big church bake sale to organize.”
A fringe of ice encased my heart, and my chest burned from the cold. “I’m ready to see my father.”
“Bring the human male.” War snapped her fingers, and Mr. Upton jogged up the stairs. “Have a care with him, would you? Humans are so fragile, so brittle, at that age.”
“Where’s Maggie?” I demanded when she made no mention of retrieving my friend.
“Who? Oh. That.” She flipped her wrist in the direction of the backyard. “I told you she was dying. That was what—twenty minutes ago? Surely she’s finished by now. There wasn’t much left of her in the first place.” She cooed in Thanases’s direction. “My beloved gets so hungry, you understand.”
Without me seeking it out, the calm and cool place where I retreated when emotion might otherwise get me killed surfaced all on its own. I sank into its chill embrace and kept my position kneeling on the floor. Meek. Mild. Meaningless. I projected those things and bided my time. I had infinite amounts of it.
Mr. Upton reappeared moments later, the missus in tow. She nudged Dad ahead of them, the shove sending him tumbling down the last few steps. He landed with a grunt of pain and blinked up at me through a swollen face marked with dried blood and purpling bruises.
“There.” War gestured to him. “See how well he is?”
Gritting my teeth against the coming pain, I made a fist and swung with all I had, right in her lady business. She screamed and covered the tender area with a hand. Her grip loosened on my hair, and I jerked to my feet. It cost me a clump of ponytail, but I made the sacrifice willingly. Once I got my legs propped under me, I staggered over to Dad and smoothed my hand across his brow.
Thom joined me and bent his head to mine. “Be ready.”
My lips parted as the dropped phone flashed in my memory, and I got it. He’d activated his GPS and left it out there as a beacon in case War patted us down for electronic devices. Thom’s attention flickered past my shoulder, and I understood the message. I couldn’t afford to turn my back on War or her coterie. Drawing her attention from Dad, I circled nearer Cole. “Hope you and Thanases weren’t planning on spawning.”
War had recovered her composure, but her lips peeled away from her teeth. “You will regret this once you’re mine.”
“Is that what this is all about?” I cocked a hip and anchored my fist there. “You want me to join Team War?”
“My heart,” Thanases purred in a velvety rumble. “She doesn’t yet understand.”
War absorbed his words, and a calculating smile swept across her lips. “Your coterie has run wild for fifteen years. I imagine the taste of freedom soured in their mouths when I made my grand entrance. They haven’t told you, have they? Perhaps they want to spare you, or perhaps they only want to spare themselves.”
The urge to ask what she meant was a tic in my cheek.
“Czar Astrakhan wishes us to conquer this terrene and explore that which lies beyond.” She rubbed a thumb over one of the bands at her wrist. “You were bred for this. You’re a conqueror, my sister, not a sack of meat and bones that will turn to dust in the blink of an eye.”
“I won’t help you,” I rasped, horror tickling up my spine on spider feet.
“Your newest skin will crack when the right amount of pressure is applied, and when it does, we’ll laugh about this. All four of us. Together.”
I stood firm. “No.”
“You asked for this, remember that.” She examined her nails. “Kill them.”
Thanases carved a gaping, red smile from under Cole’s left ear to his right, and his snarl dissolved into wet gurgles. A yowl stopped my heart from beating as I whipped my head toward Thom and found him slammed against the wall, a knife in his gut. Mrs. Upton twisted the blade while her husband ripped open Dad’s shirt and stroked the fragile skin above his heart with sickle-shaped claws.
“Stop!” I screamed, rushing for Dad. “Let him go. Please. He has nothing to do with this.”
Martin scooped me up around the middle and hauled me back to my spot on the faded rug.
War lifted a hand, barely more than a flick of her wrist, but her coterie stilled. “What will you give me in return?”
Time. I needed more time. Ours was running out. “What do you want?”
“I want you. On your knees. Kissing my feet. Begging my forgiveness. Pleading for my mercy.” She dipped her fingertips in Cole’s blood, then licked them clean, all while holding my glare, throwing my helplessness in my face. “I want this farce ended. Fifteen years. Fifteen years to prepare for my coming, and what have you done? Nothing. You have raised no armies, won no allies, done no research on the inborn defenses of this realm. What sort of conqueror hides behind a speck of metal and a uniform?”
The kind who didn’t know she was a conqueror was my best guess, though I kept my snark to myself.
“You were firstborn, and each new world is yours to behold with fresh eyes,” she seethed. “I want that honor, I want you to shred the veils between realms at my behest, for you to stand behind me as I enter a new world and claim the glory of its downfall as my own.”
All this death, this ruin, so I would play interdimensional can opener for her when I didn’t even know how.
The ground rumbled under our feet, the pictures rattling on the walls, and the room held its collective breath. Thom was grinning like the cat that got the cream, and Cole had gone predator-still. Help was coming. All I had to do was hold out until it arrived.
“Let them go,” I demanded, ripping War’s attention back to me. “Release them, and I’m yours.”
Cole snarled behind the blade still sheathed in his throat while Thom sank claws into his attacker’s forearm.
“Is that all?” Her smile was imitation-maple syrup sweet. “Then you have it.”