Eight

The long Snowcat trip down the treacherous cabin access road, the transfer to Isaac’s SUV at the bottom of the hill, and the slow drive to the private airport passed in a tense, silent stretch of awkwardness. Quinn gave up her attempt at light conversation eleven minutes in when Isaac asked Zaire what he did for a living. Zaire’s response was that he tortured the innocent and guilty alike, and at that point, Quinn figured silence wasn’t terrible.

The plane ride home was better, only because Isaac was occupied with flying through a snowstorm and couldn’t be distracted by another interrogation. Quinn had never been so happy to part ways with her brother.

Grounded and ready to roll back to reality, Isaac adjusted his scarf against the icy breeze and squinted at her. “We’re in civilization again, Q. He can call someone else, find his own way without starving or freezing. I’ll give him the cash I have on hand as a going-away incentive.” His gaze slipped past her to Zaire, leaning against her vehicle, waiting. “You’re an adult and make your own decisions, but you’re still my baby sister. My instincts are at war here. As much as I trust you, there’s something undeniably not…right with that guy.”

“Something isn’t right with me, either.” Quinn reached up on tippy toes and kissed his cold cheek. She hadn’t told Isaac about Zaire’s knives or the V’alkara corpse in the kitchen. His faith in her intuition was already stretched to the limit. “But with his help, hopefully, I’ll figure that out.” Ignoring a stab of guilt at the worry lines on his brow, she brushed some snow off his nose. “Better go before Molly hunts you down. I’m sure she’s figured out how many minutes it takes for you to fly here, drive to the cabin, fly back, and return to her clutches.”

“Molly’s not that bad.” He grimaced.

“I can’t wait to introduce Zaire to her.” She patted his chest. “It’ll be epic.”

Isaac shuddered. “I’m not ready to face that nightmare.” He knuckled her chin, unsmiling. “Call me every day so I know you’re not chopped into little pieces in a freezer somewhere.”

She used her most put-out teenager voice to ease his worries a smidge more. “I promise, mother hen.”

Isaac ruffled her hair and climbed into his vehicle. He gave her one last, lingering look of warning before driving away.

Quinn waved at his taillights and released a long breath. There was a sense of change she couldn’t deny, that strange niggling of anticipation waiting right around the corner. She pivoted and there was her linchpin, leaning against her pickup, his burning obsidian gaze on her. Her nerves tingled, spreading to every limb. Everything was about to shift, and whether it brought danger or something worse, she was more than ready to face it.

Hunching into the biting wind, she cut the distance between them. “Ready for the next leg of our journey?”

Zaire’s expression was worse than Isaac’s, the look of a defiant kid about to spend the weekend with his great aunt—the one with a dozen cats, no TV, and a guestroom full of creepy dolls. It would’ve been comical if he didn’t look like he wanted to kill whatever stood in his way.

She refused the itch to touch him, to make sure he was still solid and real. While the private airport was relatively deserted, if she pushed his boundaries here, he might coerce someone else into taking him away. She should’ve brought her handcuffs along. “Relax. While we figure out what to do with you, you’ll have time to answer the thousand or so questions I still have.”

His eyes narrowed in an even more menacing expression, and a thrill roller-coasted down her spine. She’d dated all different sorts of guys, from lawyers to mechanics to musicians, and not once had she experienced these electric sparks beneath her skin, brought to life by a single scary look from Zaire. She needed to sort out whether the sensation was her imagination drawing emotions from the past, or if it was something else. Maybe she had a propensity for men who weren’t afraid to cross a Carmichael. Or perhaps she was attracted to a danger factor that she hadn’t recognized before.

But she had a feeling it was simply Zaire. Whatever he was, whatever characteristics he’d grown into were a part of him, a combination of ingredients that created her own personal catnip.

“Come on, sunshine.” She unlocked her pickup. “Off to the Bat Cave.”

***

Long hours after night had inked away the day, Quinn finally pulled into the tangled greenery of the narrow lane leading to their hideout. Stephanie had bought the gutted country church on a whim during a wine tasting tour one summer and had kept it a secret from everyone but Quinn. Even wannabe psychologists needed a private place to go—or so she’d said at the time. They’d both cleaned up the dust and the remnants of decades of disuse on occasional getaway weekends, but it still needed work.

She parked at the back, the vehicle’s headlights casting the church in an eerie glow. They never used the wide front double doors because Steph felt it was sacrilegious somehow, not that either side was less Gothic-creepy-beautiful. Gray brickwork formed the walls and went so far as to create decorative crenellations and towers beneath the steeple, giving it a castle vibe. The towers were merely hulls holding empty space, but the visual effect was spine tingling. The round windows, once nothing more than portals allowing wildlife inside to nest and scurry, now reflected stained glass colors, all hand-selected and special ordered. For someone worried about being sacrilegious, Steph didn’t seem to mind the suggestive poses formed in the otherwise innocent glass.

“A church.” Zaire’s voice was flat with disapproval as he peered through the windshield, looking murderous. “This is your stronghold from my enemies?”

“Yep. Only a few select people know about it. It’s perfect.” She turned off the headlights, opened the door, and slid to the ground, biting back a groan. Every muscle ached from travelling all day. Even shouldering her duffel bag made her stoop, and Wolfgang’s carrier added to the weight. She didn’t miss Zaire’s glower as he grabbed his sole load of crutches and wobbled from the truck. A manly ego chafed by being humanly helpless must be terrible.

With the combination of overgrown trees on all four sides and the night, the darkness was nearly absolute. Quinn clicked on her phone flashlight, a small, lonely flicker in the void. As dried twigs and pine needles crunched beneath her strides, the shadows closed in, claiming.

She trudged up the stone steps, unlocked the back door, and dropped her bag inside with a sigh. Wolfgang still slept, and she set his carrier down. Maybe she’d leave the groceries and extra clothes they’d picked up on the way in the truck until morning. Simply curling up on the floor and going to sleep was tempting.

“There’s enough room to run laps inside, do gymnastics, lay low, whatever. Great for claustrophobes like me.” Her voice echoed in the emptiness, rising to the open rafters. She aimed her light at Zaire, who lingered at the threshold like a shadow himself, his expression dubious. “You won’t be struck down by coming inside.”

“I’m not as certain of that as you are.” His gaze lifted to the wooden cross hanging in the shadows above the door. “Is this not sacred ground?”

She leaned against the doorjamb. “You said the V’alkara weren’t demons, so you have nothing to worry about.” His eyes gleamed, black and bottomless, and Quinn resisted a shiver. “Right?”

“I shouldn’t be here.” His voice was rough, almost strangled.

“Yes, you absolutely should.” He wasn’t getting away that easily. “You can’t face whatever you’re going through alone and injured.” Hesitantly, she touched his forearm. It was like caressing stone. “I promise you won’t get zapped.”

Setting his jaw, he lurched inside and paused. He looked up into the shadowed rafters, obviously waiting for the imminent lightning strike.

If Zaire had been anyone else, she’d laugh, but the fact that he expected to be smoked made her heart hurt. What horrible experiences had he endured to make him half-believe he’d made God’s hit list? She flicked on the lights and set them to dim. No one could see through the snarled trees from the distant road anyway, but she wasn’t taking any chances.

Zaire hobbled into what used to be the sanctuary and was now was an open room with vaulted ceilings and an empty stage. Only a hint of dust betrayed the minimal use. Several rescued pews lined one wall. Giant pillows of rich jewel tones scattered the floor, matching the stained-glass windows on the opposite wall. Stephanie could never decide whether to go for a Zen aura or a medieval faire theme. For someone who was great at helping others figure out their lives, she had a way to go on her own. Not that she ever admitted it.

“I suggest you use your question time wisely.” Zaire settled awkwardly on a pew, keeping his hurt leg straight. He removed his coat and slid one black knife free of its hiding spot. “I believe my toe moved.”

Quinn couldn’t breathe, as if a tidal wave slammed into her, crushing. The second he was whole and healed, or at least well enough to walk, he’d leave her behind. The truth of it glittered in his eyes. She shrugged off her jacket and kicked free of her boots. “Your mission is that important? That you have to go even if you’re not entirely functional?”

He nodded, but his gaze fixed on the stained-glass windows, their colors dulled by night. He slowly turned the knife over and over in his hand, the blade a sharp glint in the gloom.

“If you don’t want to go back, why don’t you just stay gone?” She sat on the pew beside him and tucked her knees up, facing him. “No matter how dangerous or powerful the V’alkara are, there has to be a way to disappear.”

“I am too potent to be allowed freedom.” His mouth twitched bitterly. “Of our kind, I am the worst, the greatest weapon.” One shoulder lifted. “When fully operative.”

“So if you’re the baddest of the V’alkara,” she said, putting more pieces together, “and they won’t give you freedom yet allow you to go to Montana alone, they must have something on you.” Since becoming a politician, blackmail had always been one of her mother’s greatest fears, that someone would hurt Quinn or Isaac to control her, one of the main reasons they were practiced at privacy. “They’re blackmailing you, aren’t they?”

Zaire stared into the dark through the stained-glass windows for so long, his jaw clenched, she figured he was trying to find some way to answer the question without too much detail. At last, he blew out a breath.

“I grew up in V’alkara captivity.” His voice blended with the shadows, a confession long overdue. “White is the V’alkara leader, the most powerful of us, a master who rules with a steel fist and iron rod. When he found a V’alkara—preferably as a child—the remainder of the family would be eliminated, whether from fear of being discovered or to discontinue the bloodline and any potential rivals, I’m not certain. I didn’t know I had any family until, by a fluke, I found my sister. I dared not contact her at first. I didn’t know how she would react—if she was worth altering life as I knew it.” The harsh line of his mouth softened. “After watching her and her son, Braden, her kindness and caring, I had to decide whether or not to reveal myself. It was a great risk to them. If White learned that any part of my family survived, he would have exterminated them immediately.”

Quinn held her breath, afraid if she made a noise or moved at all he might remember he was sharing secrets, telling her things he probably never intended.

Zaire swiped a hand down his face and leaned his elbows on his thighs, hunching his muscular back. He flipped the knife in his fingers, a smooth, habitual routine. “As much as I feared Jenny and Braden being exposed, I selfishly wanted to meet them that much more. So I made contact.”

The affection in his tone flowed through her like honey warmed in sunshine, and she gripped her knees tightly against an unwarranted pang of jealousy. He spoke of his sister, but she’d trade anything to hear him use that same tone of voice while talking with her, as if she made his world come alive.

“Jenny knew I was her brother immediately,” he continued, not looking at her once. “And without question, she included me in her kindness, in her family. We abandoned our lives and moved across the country. It was the only way to obliterate any traces I might have left that would endanger her and Braden.” His jaw tightened again, and all traces of softness fled. The knife flipped over and over, a mesmerizing rhythm in the contagious dark. “I concealed my nature and effectively erased my existence from the V’alkara for over five years, and in that time Jenny became ill. Death came for her, and she asked me to be Braden’s caretaker when she was gone.”

The air seemed heavier than before, deep as the night surrounding their tiny pocket of flickering light and life. Quinn’s throat was thick with emotions that didn’t belong to her, for a person she’d never met, for the pain belonging to a man she hardly knew, but who owned her heart. She couldn’t pretend to empathize with Zaire’s upbringing, with finding—and losing—his only brush with caring, with family. Her heart stretched at the seams, slowly ripping apart.

“Jenny was the first person who was ever kind to me. I had no choice but to do as she wished, no matter that Braden would be better off with someone who understands people. Children.” He straightened suddenly and gazed at the knife, now still and black and deadly in his fingers. “Because of who I am, what I am, Braden is now at the mercy of men who care nothing for others. His capture is my shame to bear, my failure. He’s only twelve years old, a mere human boy, and will break sooner rather than later. My sole purpose is to see him safe and beyond the reach of any enemy. I will spend my last breath battling for his freedom.”

Quinn let the silence draw out, the details of Zaire’s life sinking in. She wanted to wrap her arms around him and tell him that everything would be okay, but they both knew it was a lie. People hurt others all the time, whether they could shapeshift or not.

When it was clear that Zaire was done talking, Quinn released her knees and rested her shoulder against the pew’s backrest. “So until Braden’s free, you’re stuck doing the V’alkara’s bidding.”

“The ones who hold Braden are a V’alkara splinter group that calls themselves the Red Crows.” He angled his face her way slightly, his gaze still on the knife. He flipped it, caught the tip, tossed it again. “They won’t act rashly until they determine what happened and whether I still live. Braden will remain unharmed, but if they suspect I’m deserting or searching for ways to retrieve him, he will pay in pain. Recovered or not, I must return before those suspicions stir.”

Pay in pain. She swallowed hard. “The V’alkara in Montana, the one who attacked me. How did he find you?”

Zaire’s nightmare gaze clicked up to hers. “He didn’t. When you removed your necklace, he sensed you. To clarify, it’s not the cross that shields you from the V’alkara. It’s the rock embedded in the center. We’re not vampires.”

Her hands shaking only a little, she lifted her cross and frowned at the gleaming black rock. “Obsidian repels V’alkara?”

He shrugged, a total noncommittal gesture that suggested there was more he wasn’t sharing, and resumed staring through the stained glass into the night.

If Zaire could escape the attention of his captors for five years, maybe he could do it for the rest of his life. With her. After rescuing Braden. “How did you keep out of V’alkara notice all these years?”

“I didn’t Change or feed,” he said flatly.

“I thought you needed dreams to survive.”

“I do.” He closed his eyes and laid his head back against the wall as if suddenly too weary to answer any more questions.

“So how did you survive?”

He made an exasperated noise but kept his eyes closed. “I starved. Eventually, my body began absorbing the stored dreams, a side effect I didn’t expect.” Lines bracketed his mouth. “Our defect affects each of us differently, but we all meet the same inevitable fate. Some V’alkara go mad. Some intentionally destroy themselves. Others wind up committing such violent acts that they devour themselves along with their victims. When my control frayed, I planned to distance myself from Jenny and Braden and die alone. I preferred to live a shorter life with them than existing for many years alone and enslaved.”

Quinn blinked back tears, glad Zaire didn’t see them. He’d planned to waste away until there was nothing left of him. Nothing for her to find. Merde. To never have met him or known he existed? The very thought hollowed out her heart and made her shake inside.

“The absorbed creatures and shapes became permanent residents in my mind, more clamoring in my already cluttered head.” His mouth twisted, an almost smirk. “The toxin that neutralized me did have one benefit. It silenced the voices.” He glanced at her, his features unreadable. “Surely you understand now why remaining near me is ill-advised.”

“I was never very good at taking advice. Ask my guidance counselor.” She smiled sweetly at his glare. “So your enemies can’t locate you if you don’t take dreams and you don’t change forms?”

He hesitated as though he regretted telling her anything. “Not Changing or taking dreams helps, but it’s not a guarantee. The Crows found me anyway.”

“How long can you go without taking a dream?”

“Before Jenny, I had stored thousands. It was the only way I lasted as long as I did.” He twirled the dagger, the blade a deadly, spinning beauty. “I have so few dreams left in storage that it’s necessary to gorge every ten nights or so.”

“Which means we have roughly seven nights to work with.” Quinn blew out a breath, stirring the escaped curls near her chin. “Seven more nights before you have to do anything that might attract their attention. Seven nights to let them search for you.”

“Seven nights to draw them closer to you,” he snarled softly. “Seven nights to tempt them to hurt Braden anyway.”

She ignored his pessimism. “Isaac took your syringe to his friend Watt’s, the best forensics guy around. It shouldn’t take him more than a couple of days to analyze it and a few more to figure out an antidote. Until then—”

“Or until I heal naturally.” He gave her a superior look.

“—there’s only one thing to do.” She swung her legs down and sat up straight. “We have to get your nephew back.”

A deep growl rose from Zaire, the simultaneous snarl of several different monsters. Faster than her eyes could track, he flung his knife. It plunked into one of Steph’s garage sale treasures, a painting of a faun chasing a nymph, and imbedded right between the faun’s eyes. Steph would be pissed.

The hair on the back of her neck stirred as she stared into the depthless void of his eyes, unable to look away. No longer was he the boy protecting her from nightmares. He was the nightmare.

“Do you believe I’m a fool?” His voice held a skittering quality, like the swarming of insects. “That I haven’t schemed and plotted and planned? Unless I’m certain of Braden’s location, I can’t act, and I can’t search for him without endangering his welfare. The Crows provide random recordings to remind me of this, and I have no way of knowing how recent they are. He is surrounded by concrete, I know that from the echo. That is all the detail I have to go on, so tell me…how do you propose to locate my nephew, Quinn?”

The despair and frustration in his eyes only fueled her determination. There had to be a way to find Braden, to get him back before it was too late. There had to be more information Zaire was overlooking, maybe something a different set of eyes would discover. “If the Crows didn’t have Braden, what would you be doing right now?”

Those sparks in his eyes flared to an inferno. Something dark and tingly swept through her, pooling in her belly and softening everything in between. Zaire shifted her way and reached for the escaped curl hanging near her eye. He brushed it aside and trailed his fingertips along her cheekbone, so light and gentle she wouldn’t have been sure he even touched her except for the heat left behind. “That,” he murmured, “is a cruel question.”

She wanted to protest, but when his callused thumb stroked the corner of her mouth, the entire world shrank to that one, single touch. Without considering the consequences, she leaned her cheek into his palm, exactly as Wolfgang had.

He drew a sharp breath and went absolutely still. For one heartbeat, he cupped her face as if she were a forgotten treasure, breakable and precious. The next, he grabbed the fallen crutches and stood, his gaze on the doorway.

Quinn was trapped between a rapid-fire heartbeat and a shudder. He’d looked at her with a longing that matched her own, igniting every nerve and hope and secret dream. But the last time he’d turned to the door like that, a V’alkara had appeared and possessed her. She kept her voice to a whisper. “What is it?”

Zaire held up a hand in a shushing signal, his head cocked. The sudden silence thrummed, deep and ominous. A clock tick-tocked from one converted bedroom down the hall in a slow, formal cadence, a counterpoint to her heartbeat. Nothing stirred in the deep shadows. That didn’t stop the sense of being watched, however.

Quinn slipped her hand into her purse and retrieved her Walther. Even though a bullet couldn’t affect smoke, it made her feel better to hold something solid. If anyone appeared out of thin air, she’d shoot first and ask questions later.

He pivoted so fast, she jerked to her feet. “It’s nothing.” His mouth was tight, making the easy words questionable. “Waiting to be struck down from the heavens makes me jumpy.”

Still holding her gun, she collapsed onto the pew and curled on her side. She grabbed a pillow from the floor and stuffed it under her head. “Here’s the deal. Once my heartrate returns to normal, I’m going to sleep. While I dream, you’re not going anywhere.”

He arched one dark eyebrow, his heated gaze on her.

“There’s a bathroom down the hall. Make yourself at home, get comfy.” She still had to ask him the important questions burning inside, the personal ones that could determine her future, but putting her needs before his captive nephew wasn’t happening. For now, it was enough that Zaire was with her, undeniably real. “In the morning, we plan.”

“Plan for what?” A definite snarl played around his words. He’d probably already decided he wouldn’t approve of her ideas.

“You can’t be free until Braden is, and you can’t do that until you find him, so our game plan is simple.” She yawned and closed her eyes, ignoring his growl vibrating through the wooden pew beneath her. “Tomorrow, we’re going to find Braden.”