CHAPTER THREE

RED FLAG

My grandfather appeared a few minutes later, pulling over to the curb in his official white van. He wore a short-sleeve plaid shirt, slacks, and thickly soled shoes. He still used the cane he’d needed since he was trapped in a house fire caused by anti-vampire malcontents, but moved spryly with it.

Jeff Christopher, brown-haired and lanky, climbed out of the car’s passenger side, waited while my grandfather gave instructions to the officers who’d pulled up behind him in two CPD cruisers. When my grandfather finished his instructions and moved toward us, the cops turned to the crowd, creating a barricade to control the gathering people.

“Merit, Ethan,” my grandfather said, then nodded to Mallory and Catcher. His expression was serious and slightly sympathetic, not an uncommon expression for a man who, more often than not, was dealing with supernatural fallout.

“Sorry it took so long,” my grandfather said. “There’s an accident on Lake Shore Drive. Traffic was moving at a crawl.”

Not an unusual circumstance for Chicago.

“We’re sorry you had to drive out all this way,” I said. My grandfather’s office was on the city’s South Side, relocated from the basement of his house after the firebombing.

My grandfather looked around. “You reached Gabriel?”

“Should be here anytime,” Catcher said with a nod.

And so they were. The rhythmic thunder of bikes roared as the shifters moved into the alley. Seven traveled together tonight, and they slipped around my grandfather’s car in a line of chrome and black leather.

Their arrival made me nervous—not because I feared shifters, but because I regretted what had gone on here and knew some blamed all vampires equally, including us. It hadn’t been that long ago that we were in Colorado, watching animosity between shifter and vampire bubble up.

Ethan reached out, put a hand at the small of my back, a reminder that he was there. He couldn’t change the circumstances—death, murder, bitter magic—but he’d remind me that I wouldn’t face them alone.

Gabriel rode in front, an imposing figure on a long bike with wide handles, every inch of the chrome gleaming to a mirrored perfection. He stopped his bike ten feet away, pulled off his helmet, and ran a hand through his shoulder-length mane of tousled golden-brown hair. His eyes were the same tawny gold, his shoulders broad beneath a snug black V-neck T-shirt that he’d paired with jeans and intimidating black leather boots. He hung the helmet on a gleaming handlebar, swung a strong thigh over the back of the bike, and walked toward us, followed by his only sister, Fallon.

She was Jeff’s girlfriend, a slight woman of surprising strength, with warm eyes and long, wavy hair in the same multihued shades as her brother. She rode the bike directly behind his, wore a skirt with boots and tights, a gray tank under a short-sleeved leather top with lots of pleats and zippers.

The other shifters were male, with broad shoulders, plenty of leather, and generally dour looks.

Gabriel nodded at my grandfather, at Jeff, then looked at Ethan.

“Sullivan,” he said, then glanced at me. “Kitten. He’s one of ours?”

“We don’t know if he’s one of the Pack’s,” Ethan said. “But he’s definitely a shifter, so we wanted to give you the opportunity to find out.”

We escorted him to the body, and Gabriel crouched by the fallen shifter, his leather boots creaking with the movement. Elbows on his knees, hands linked together, he looked slowly and carefully over the body, his gaze finally settling on the wounds at his throat.

The silence was thick and to my mind, threatening.

“His name was Caleb Franklin,” Gabe said. “He was a Pack member—a soldier. A shifter who helped keep order in the territory. He’d go on runs with Damien, actually.”

Damien Garza was a tall, dark, and handsome shifter with a quiet personality, a dry wit, and an exceptional hand with an omelet.

Gabriel stood up. “But Caleb’s not a Pack member anymore. He defected.”

Ethan’s eyebrows lifted. “He left the Pack by choice?”

“He did.”

“Why?” Ethan asked.

“He wanted more freedom.”

Since the Pack was all about freedom—the open road, communing with nature, good food, and good drink—I guessed we weren’t getting the full story. The look on Ethan’s face said he didn’t entirely buy it, either. But this wasn’t the setting for an interrogation of the Pack Apex.

“The vampire?” Gabriel asked.

“We gave chase, but he got away.”

Gabriel nodded, noticed the bandage on my arm. “And got you in the process.”

“Handgun through the window of a beat-up Trans Am. I don’t suppose that vehicle rings any bells?”

He shook his head, glanced at Fallon. She shook her head, too.

“He did this in a relatively public space,” my grandfather said, “but he was eager to get away.”

“We found something else,” I said, gesturing down the alley.

We walked toward the pedestal—a human, two vampires, three shifters, and two sorcerers, all of us impotent in the face of death.

Fallon, Gabriel, and my grandfather studied the pedestal.

“Alchemical,” my grandfather said.

“And the Merits are two for two,” Catcher said. “That’s as far as we’ve gotten. We can pick out individual symbols, but we don’t know what they mean in context.” He glanced at Gabriel. “This mean anything to you?”

Gabe shook his head. “I can feel the magic but don’t recognize it.”

“It’s weird, isn’t it?” All eyes turned to me. “I mean, it has a weird edge. A sharp edge.”

“Metallic,” Mallory said, nodding. “That’s the nature of alchemy.”

“And there’s one more thing,” Catcher said. “Mallory felt something. Some kind of magic.”

All eyes shifted to her now.

“That’s how I found him,” she told Gabriel. “I felt—I don’t know how else to describe it—like a magical pulse. And then we looked for him, found him.”

Gabriel cocked his head at her. “You haven’t sensed anything like that before?”

“No,” she said. “And God knows I’ve been around enough bad magic in my time.”

I reached out and squeezed her hand, found it a little clammy. She gripped mine hard and didn’t let go.

•   •   •

Jeff and Catcher took photographs of the symbols. My and Mallory’s hands were still linked when we walked back toward the body. Three more of the shifters had dismounted, and they stood around him protectively.

“We’ll want to take him home tonight,” Gabriel said.

“You know that won’t be possible.” My grandfather’s tone was polite but firm. “We’ll release him to his family, but not until the postmortem is complete.”

“We’re his family,” Gabriel said gruffly. “Or the closest thing to it. The Pack doesn’t give two shits what Cook County has to say about cause of death. Especially since that cause should be brutally obvious to anyone with a brain.”

“Gabriel,” Ethan said, the word as much warning as name.

“Don’t start with me, Sullivan.” Magic began to rise in the air, peppery and dangerous. “He may not have been mine when he was alive, but he’s mine now.”

He and Ethan might have been friends and colleagues, but they were also leaders with people to protect, and very little tolerance for those who challenged them.

“And you watch your tone, Keene. I recognize your people have endured a tragedy, but we are not your enemy. And you are not immune to the rules of the city in which you live.”

Gabriel growled, and his eyes lit with the promise of anger, of fighting, of action. “A vampire killed one of my people.”

Ethan, who had his own steam to work off, stepped forward. “Not one of my vampires.”

I considered pushing between them, demanding they separate and calm down. But I wasn’t about to incur Ethan’s wrath by playing that card again. Besides, it wasn’t the first time they’d nearly come to blows; maybe their beating the crap out of each other would clear the air.

Fallon apparently decided she wasn’t having any of it. She nudged her way between them, both towering over her by five or six inches.

“Stop being assholes,” she said, her voice quiet but firm. “We’ve made enough of a scene as it is, and have enough tragedy to deal with. You two want to beat the shit out of each other? Fine. But do it out of sight, when the humans can’t see and we don’t have to waste time watching.”

Biting back a smile, I glanced at Jeff, saw his eyes light with appreciation and pride.

Gabriel’s position didn’t change. Shoulders high and stiff, chest forward, hands balled into fists, his tensed body speaking of barely banked rage. He slid his gaze to his sister, nailed her with a look that would have made me nervous if directed at me.

But Fallon Keene just rolled her eyes. “That look hasn’t worked on me since I was seven.” She pointed a finger—the nail painted matte navy—at Gabriel and Ethan in turn. “Get. Your shit. Together.”

Fallon turned on her heel and walked back to the other shifters, whispered something to them. They seemed to relax but kept their wary gazes on their alpha and the alpha he stared down.

“Goddamn murder,” Gabriel said, running a hand through his hair again. “Waste of life, waste of energy.”

“You’ll get no argument there from me,” Ethan said. “And perhaps she’s right. That we shouldn’t waste any more time.”

Gabriel made a sound that was half grunt, half growl. “I find the vampire first, he’s mine.”

Ethan was quiet for a moment, no doubt evaluating his strategy, his best play. He wasn’t one to take advantage of murder, but he rarely made a move without thinking it through.

“All right,” he finally said. “But before you take care of him in whatever method you deem appropriate, we want a chance to question him.”

“Because?”

“Because he’s killed a shifter and attempted to kill Merit. That’s more than enough reason for me.”

Gabriel considered it silently. “Rest of your people going to be so easygoing about his fate? The other Masters?”

Ethan’s expression flattened. He liked Scott Grey, the Master of Grey House, and he tolerated Morgan Greer, the Master of Navarre House. “Should this atrocity prove to have been committed by one of their vampires, I suspect they will want to handle his punishment. That would be an issue for you to take up with them. But there’s no reason to believe he was a Navarre or Grey House vampire, either. I’ve been in Chicago a long time, and there was nothing about him that was familiar to me.”

Gabriel looked at my grandfather. “We will have to mourn him.”

My grandfather nodded. “We can give you space if you want to do it here. We’ll have to request you not touch him, if that’s possible.”

Gabriel didn’t seem to like the answer but didn’t argue with it. “Give us space,” he said, and if operating by an unspoken command, his people clustered around Caleb.

Ethan put a hand at my back, and we walked back toward the street.

“Give them a wall,” my grandfather said. And however weird the uniforms might have thought the request, they obeyed it. They moved to stand shoulder to shoulder facing the crowd, giving the Pack some privacy. We took places beside them, the line stretching all the way across the alley.

Gabriel spoke first, a whisper that put magic into the air, a song that rose and fell like a winter’s tide. I couldn’t distinguish the words. He’d disguised them somehow, muffling vowels and consonants, perhaps so they could be shared only by the Pack. But the point of the song was clear enough. It was a dirge, a song of mourning for their former Pack member.

I let myself drift on the rise and fall of the song. It told of blue skies and rolling green hills, dark and deep waters and mountains that pitched toward a dark blanket of sky scattered with stars. It told of birth and living and death, of the Pack’s connection to wildness, and of the reunion of loved ones. The tone momentarily darkened, unity giving way to struggle, to war.

The hairs at the back of my neck lifted. Ethan moved incrementally closer, pressing his shoulder into mine as if to protect me, just in case.

The tone changed again, fear and loss evolving into understanding, acceptance. And then the song ended, and the magic faded again, faded back into darkness.

I opened my eyes and glanced back, meeting Gabriel’s gaze.

I dipped my head, nodding, acknowledging that which he’d allowed me to share. And when I looked back at him, I realized he wasn’t looking at me, but past me, into some time or space long past, into memory or recollection. And from his expression, not an especially happy one.

•   •   •

“We’ll take care of him,” my grandfather promised when the shifters had moved back to their bikes. “I’ll accompany him personally to the morgue, speak to the medical examiner personally. You’ll remember they have protocols in place.”

It wasn’t the first time a shifter had died in Chicago. There’d been several killed in a botched attempt by Gabriel’s brother, Adam, to take over the Pack.

Gabriel picked up his helmet. “I know you do what you can, within the parameters you’ve got. I’m in the same position.”

“Then we understand each other,” my grandfather said. A van from the Cook County Medical Examiner’s Office pulled up to the alley entrance. “I’m going to go have that talk,” he said, then squeezed my hand. “Get home safely.”

“We will,” I promised, and he made his way to the van.

“We should probably talk tomorrow,” Gabriel said. “We’ll host a wake at the bar, and you’ll want to wait until after. It wouldn’t be the best time for vampires to show up.”

Little Red was the Pack’s official bar in Ukrainian Village. It was a well-worn dive but served some of the best fare I’d ever tasted.

“I appreciate the warning,” Ethan said.

Gabriel pulled on his helmet, clipped it, then slung a leg over his bike. He started it with a rumble, then turned the bike back onto the street. Fallon followed him, then the rest of the shifters. And then silence fell again.

Ethan put a hand on the back of my neck, rubbed. “Not exactly the evening I had planned, Sentinel.”

“You hardly could have predicted this.”

“No, not the particulars. But that trouble would find us, even in Wrigleyville? That, I should have predicted.”

“You can owe me a Cubs game,” I said.

I was lucky to be alive. But I still hadn’t gotten my flashlight.

•   •   •

It was past midnight by the time we dropped off Mallory and Catcher in Wicker Park. She and Catcher stood on the sidewalk with their fingers linked. But for the evening of supernatural mayhem, they could have been just another couple heading home after a night on the town.

Mallory covered a yawn. “I’ll get started on the symbols tomorrow, although Catcher’s pretty swamped at work.” She looked at Ethan. “Maybe you could talk to Paige? See if she’s got time to help?”

Ethan nodded. “I’d had the same thought,” he said, which made three of us. “And we should have alchemical texts in the library to assist with the translation.”

“I’ll talk to Jeff,” Catcher said. “Maybe there’s something he can work up from a programming standpoint—something to speed the translation along.”

“Oh, good idea,” Mallory said. “There were a lot of symbols.”

Catcher glanced at me. “I’m sorry the night didn’t turn out like we’d planned. I know you were looking forward to an evening at the ballpark.”

I nodded. “There will be other nights. Bigger things to worry about right now anyway.”

“Yeah,” Catcher said ruefully. “That’s beginning to feel more and more common.”

He and Mallory walked inside, closed the door, turned off the light above their small porch, a signal that they were locked safely inside.

“Let’s go home, Sentinel.”

I’d been excited to leave the House earlier in the evening, eager to get to Wrigley, enjoy a beer, and watch some baseball. And now, with the evening having taken such an ugly turn, I couldn’t wait to get home again.