Lucky Break

“Until bagged blood became available,” Vincent said. “And then we switched to it. We’d buy bulk stores and keep them for the winter. If the season ran long, we’d supplement with vampire blood.”

“And the shifters?” Ethan asked.

“They were here at the time of our arrival. They lived primitively.” His lip curled in distaste at the term. From his dress, it seemed Vincent preferred a simple kind of life. But I supposed there were limits even for him.

“Primitively?”

“They’re mountain lions,” he said with clear disdain. “There were no permanent homesteads, at least of the variety that humans or vampires would recognize. We had no trouble from them at first. We later learned they objected to our settlement and to our growth as a community.”

“How?” Ethan asked.

“They killed livestock. Destroyed fences. Ripped shutters from our homes to let in light while we slept.”

“And that was the origin of the feud?” I asked.

“Love was the origin of the feud,” he said. “Fiona McKenzie and Christophe Marchand, one of my companions. She, a shifter. He, a vampire. They first met in their ‘human forms,’ I suppose you could say, in 1891. And against the wishes of their respective family and Clan, they fell in love.”

“You objected?” I asked.

“I was not comfortable with their relationship but did not formally object. Bernard was far more conservative than me. He objected, and vigorously. He told Christophe he’d be cast from the Clan if he proceeded. The Clan is a democracy, and Bernard won the vote.”

That was as easy a justification for prejudice as I’d ever heard.

“And so Christophe was cast out. You may know there are many ‘ghost towns’ in this part of the country. Villages were established for mining, for railroads, and abandoned when lodes ran dry or didn’t materialize. Many were optimistic in that time. Fiona and Christophe found such a place, not far from Elk Valley. Four buildings, abandoned only a few years before. They called it High Creek and made their home there.”

Vincent’s eyes darkened. “They were happy, as far as I was aware, although neither the Clan nor the family relented. Their door was bloodied.”

“Like they did to us,” Nessa said, glancing at Ethan.

He nodded. “And something happened to this couple?”

“One night, Christophe woke and found Fiona gone, along with some of her possessions and a brooch Christophe had brought from across the ocean. Laurel leaves around a dove, all of it rendered in gems. He’d planned to give it to Fiona, but no trace of her was ever found. Some suspected she’d been a plant by the McKenzies the entire time, had only ever wanted the brooch in payment for our use of the valley. Others suggested Christophe had been violent, that she’d sought escape, had taken the brooch to finance her travels.”

“And some believe she never left the valley,” Nessa quietly added, and the air in the room seemed to chill. “That she was killed—by Christophe, by another McKenzie, by another Marchand—and never found.”

“Christophe was mad with grief, insisted he’d never harmed her and that she wouldn’t have left willingly.” Vincent swallowed hard. “He searched for her for three weeks straight, had to be dragged inside at dawn on two occasions because he’d thought he’d been close to finding her. He was convinced she was out there, waiting for him. But he never found her. One night, twenty-two days after she left, he walked into the sun.”

He’d killed himself, Vincent meant. Willingly turned himself to ash in mourning for his lover.

“Since then, there have been reprisals?” Ethan asked.

“Over the intervening decades, too many to count. Bernard blamed the McKenzies for Christophe’s death. He confronted Fiona’s father, and they both died in the ensuing battle. There’ve been eleven deaths since then. Two dozen attacks, a hundred minor acts.”

Vincent cleared his throat. “Given events, what you’ve fallen into here, I’m sure you’d like to return to Chicago.”

Vincent’s tone was casual, but there was heat behind the words. Because he wanted Nessa to himself, or because he didn’t want us poking around into the manner of her husband’s death? Either way, Ethan wasn’t having it.

“Nessa has requested we help her,” Ethan said evenly. “As we are friends, we’ve agreed to do so.”

Vincent didn’t answer, at least not aloud, but shifted his gaze to Nessa, who nodded.

“I’d value his help, his perspective. Maybe he can help bring this ugly chapter to a close.”

“It is not up to the Marchands to bring peace,” Vincent said, a frisson of temper coloring his cheeks. “We didn’t begin the fighting.”

Ethan crossed one leg over the other, the move apparently casual, but signaling his frustration, the rise in his own temper. “You started the Clan with three—you, Christophe, Bernard. You maintain the first insult was shifter against vampire. That means you, or your people, struck back. Now you are the only founder left alive, and yet the feud has continued.”

“Christophe and Bernard were casualties in a war. I do not fight the battles, but nor can I control those who do. We are a democracy,” he said, using the word like a shield for his own inaction.

“And every democracy has its saviors and demagogues.”

“Are you accusing me of something?”