Chasing Shadows (A Shadow Chronicles Novel) (40 page)

“But that doesn’t make any sense,” she said.
“If they were just going to bring him back to town or ambush him on the side of the road, why the text luring him to Columbus?”

“Perhaps it is all part of the game, the bastards,” Lochlan said. “I can’t wait to get my hands on them.”

“Then have I got a surprise for you,” Juliette declared. “One of them is the tick you and Mark got into it with at the movie theater.”

“Turn right at the next light, Lochlan,” I broke in.

He acknowledged my direction and turned when he came to the corner, then cast a glance over his shoulder at his other passenger.
“Oh really now?
Well then, that makes it all the more fun…and gives me all the more reason to tear his sodding head off.”

Juliette actually grinned at that, but once again I made myself tune the two of them out. I had never created a blood bond before, let alone tried to trace somebody through one, and I feared losing the connection to Mark. I assuaged my fear for him with the fact that I wouldn’t be feeling anything at all were he not still alive. I had to take comfort in that or my fear might end up controlling me, and I couldn’t let that happen. If it did, I would be of no use to anyone, let alone Mark.

“Turn left up ahead,” I said to Lochlan.

My brother nodded, and then said, “What the bloody sodding hell…?”

Juliette, still sitting forward in the middle of the back seat, grabbed his shoulder. “What? What is it?” she demanded.

He ignored her. “Saphrona, no offense love, but are you sure you’ve got it right? I mean, do you realize where we are going?”

Blinking, I took a good look around at the buildings and scenery outside.

“
That son of a bitch!
”
I all but screamed. “
I will kill him, I swear to God!
”

“What?!”
Juliette demanded forcefully. “What are you talking about? Where are we?”

Lochlan glanced back over his shoulder once more, a grim look on his face. “It would appear, my lovely Siberian
friend, that
we are going to see our father.”

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“Your
father?!
Do you think he’s been behind this from the beginning?”

Lochlan’s reply was something along the lines of, “As much as I hate to say so, it is certainly possible. He seemed quite adamant about discovering the whereabouts of Vivian Drake, especially after Alana O’Mara told him she was a vampire. It’s not out of his realm to intimidate someone he thinks isn’t working hard enough or fast enough to get him what he wants.”

To which Juliette replied, “So much for his profound love for Saphrona. Isn’t he the one who said he loved her and would make sure Mark was protected from other vampires?”

“Aye.
But again, he’s not above using somebody’s loved one as a pawn to motivate them into doing his bidding.”

Somehow I was hearing them, hearing Juliette and Lochlan talking about Diarmid’s involvement, but I wasn’t really paying attention. All I could think of in that moment was how much I hated Diarmid Mackenna. How the
hell
could he do this to me—
again?!
Did he
really
think that luring Mark out of the house and kidnapping him was going to motivate me to look harder for a woman who for all intents and purposes didn’t even exist?!

If he hurt Mark
, I swore to myself,
I am going to kill him
.

I wouldn’t even hesitate, I knew. The moment I saw him, this man who proclaimed unconditional love for me, I would fly at him and I would tear his head off. Whether it would be due to the strength of Mark’s blood in my body or I’d simply be fueled by unadulterated rage, before the day was over he was going to die.
And if Mark was hurt in any way…

I refused to let myself think of how I could have prevented all of this by coming clean to Diarmid when I had the chance. If I had only taken him aside and told him I was the one who had written the books I might not be in this situation right now. Or maybe I would. Obviously I had been right not to tell him, because look at what he had done—he’d apparently kidnapped Mark because I wasn’t working hard enough or fast enough to find Vivian, like Lochlan had suggested a moment ago. Or maybe he thought I had failed him, and his geniality the night before had been just a ruse. Had I confessed to being Vivian, I might already be dead myself, for there was no telling how outraged he would have been.

“Lochlan, drive faster!” I growled.

He complied with my order silently, and the Escalade moved forward at a faster clip. “Juliette, darling, keep your eyes peeled for the police, won’t you?” he asked the shapeshifter. “After all, we’re speeding through a school zone right now.”

“Who cares?!”
I shouted. “Who gives a damn about the police or whether or not you’ll get a fucking speeding ticket?! Just get me there…
NOW!
”

Lochlan threw me a look I didn’t bother trying to decipher. I just looked back out the passenger window and silently urged him to go faster.

*****

When we arrived at Diarmid’s multi-million dollar home in the
lake district
, on the opposite end of town than the rural district I lived in, I felt through the bond that we had indeed come to the right place. Mark was here.

Before Lochlan had even pulled the parking brake I had opened my door and thrown myself through it, dropping fang and flying up the steps to the front door, pulling it open without even bothering to turn the handle. It flew backward as I threw it behind me, narrowly missing Lochlan and Juliette as they hurried up the steps in my wake. As I was entering, Diarmid was casually descending what he liked to call his “grand staircase”—

—casually, that is, until his front door was ripped out of its frame and a banshee flew through it, tackling him and tumbling down to the floor with her hands around his throat.

“Where is he?!” I screamed. “Where is Mark, you lying bastard?!”

“Mida, I don’t…know…what you’re…talking about,” Diarmid gasped.

Two of his bodyguards came running in then, and I heard the ripping of fabric as Juliette transformed into the super-sized dog she’d told us she could become. I heard her snarling as she moved to stand between where I sat atop my father and one of the men who’d come to his aid.

Lochlan was already engaged in a fistfight with the other one.

“Mark, you liar!”
I hollered, lifting his head and banging it forcefully into the granite floor. His hands around my wrists were trying futilely to pull my hands from his throat but I was not to be moved. “You just couldn’t wait for me to find Vivian Drake so you hired someone to burn down my barn and kill my animals!” Another lift and bang. “You hired two goons to follow Juliette, then kidnap and torture and rape her!” Another bang, and as I said those last words, Juliette snarled loudly.

“Mida, I —”

“And then this morning you lured Mark out of the house to use him against me, but I’m not going to let you do it! Where…is… he?!”

As Juliette and the second bodyguard gave up circling each other and launched into a fight, Lochlan came over and laid his hand on my shoulder. I looked up with a loud snarl of my own.

“Saphrona, he’s not going to be able to tell you anything if he can’t breathe,” my brother said quietly.

I was breathing heavy already, could feel my eyes were wide with fear and anger. I had to find
Mark,
I had to know, to see for myself that he was alright. Slowly, with one hand still on his throat, I moved off of my father, glancing to the side to see that Loch had staked his opponent with—

“Is that a
pen?
” I asked incredulously as I stood, dragging my father to his feet along with me.

He looked over at the fallen vampire and grinned. “Aye—may not leave a scar like a stake would have, but it made do in a pinch.”

A crashing sound had us all turning our heads to watch as Juliette fought with the
second bodyguard. They’d knocked over a suit of armor and she now had him pinned to the floor, her forelegs planted firmly on his back. One of his arms was immobilized underneath him, and the other was futilely swinging upwards, trying to grab hold of the massive dog anywhere that he could.

“And we were worried she wouldn’t be able to fight,” I mused,
then
turned back to Diarmid. He stood with his hands held out to his sides, his gaze at me wide-eyed and cautious.

Lochlan looked between us, saying, “I’m going to go and give our canine companion a hand in dispatching her foe—don’t kill him yet, Saphrona, we need him to talk first.”

With that he started over to where Juliette had knocked her opponent down, but he stopped short when the other man grabbed hold of a foreleg and pulled, and a loud snap was clearly heard. She howled with rage, and even though her weight had shifted, her leg clearly broken, she didn’t let him up, holding him down with one giant paw long enough to clamp her jaw around his head—which she promptly tore off and threw across the room before her energy reserves gave out and she collapsed on top of his body in human form.

Juliette screamed as she grabbed her arm and held it to her chest. Lochlan rushed over, pulling his shirt off as he knelt next to her. “Come now, darling, let me see,” he directed her gently.

I tightened my grip on Diarmid’s neck as I turned and dragged him over so that I could see for myself how she was doing. Juliette’s jaw was clenched tightly, her teeth
bared
as she extended her arm for Lochlan to examine. She growled deep in her throat as he probed the ends of the bones of her left forearm, which thankfully had not broken the skin, but had been twisted so that it appeared she had a second elbow.

“Looks like a clean break—I don’t feel any splinters, thank goodness. Best I reset this now, though, so your healing factor doesn’t start setting it wrong,” he said to Juliette.

She nodded, taking several deep breaths to steady herself. “Do it,” she told him, and almost before I could blink Lochlan had grabbed the bones and set them back into place. Juliette screamed again but did not pass out. Loch felt her arm again, nodded, and then began to wrap the t-shirt he had yanked off around it.

“I know it’s a lot to ask, love, but do try not to move it,” he said with a small smile.

“Here,” Diarmid rasped, and I turned to him sharply.

He held his hands up,
then
slowly reached for the collar of the suit jacket he wore, shrugging it off his shoulders and handing it to Lochlan. The younger man took the jacket and draped it around Juliette’s shoulders, tugging it into place over the front of her as he next helped her to stand.

I looked at Diarmid. “Where is Mark?” I asked.

He held his hands up again. “I swear to you, I do not know what you are talking about. What’s happened to Mark?”

I tightened my grip on his heck and shook him. “That’s why we’re here! You’re behind everything, admit it! You hired someone to burn down the barn and kill the animals and you hired someone to kidnap and torture Juliette—”

“Mida, I swear to you,” he began again, “I do not know what you’re talking about. I love you, darling—why would I do any of that?”

“Maybe because you’re jealous—after all, you’ve been a vampire for more than seven hundred years and still you have not met your bondmate. Or perhaps the reason is more mundane, and you’re simply a little tired of the time it is taking me to track down Vivian Drake,” I said. I then looked over my shoulder at Lochlan and Juliette, both of whom nodded minutely.

I turned back to Diarmid. “Or maybe you somehow learned that your precious Mida
is
Vivian Drake, and you have done all of this as punishment.”

His eyes widened in shock that appeared to be genuine, but when it came to my father I never could take anything he said or did at face value. Not to mention that he’d become an Oscar-worthy actor in his centuries-long lifetime.

“Why on Earth…? Mida, how could you?”

I shrugged. “The psychic was close when she said the first was written from a place of frustration and anger. And truthfully, I didn’t see the harm. Humans don’t believe we’re real anyway, and what was one more twisted vampire mythology among the dozens already out there? I never expected the book to sell, let alone become a series that’s earned me millions. The humans don’t seem any more enamored of the partial truth than any other theory about vampires, so why should it bloody matter to anyone what I wrote? The Ancients don’t even seem to mind as far as I know—the only one who’s shown any concern about Vivian Drake is you.”

I stepped closer so that we were almost nose to nose. “Now where is Mark?”

Diarmid’s eyes searched mine for a moment before he spoke. “The Ancients are…concerned. But you are right in that they do not care as much as I put on. Still, I thought finding Vivian and her source—her, when it was revealed she was one of us—seemed to be the ideal way to curry favor with them, perhaps give me a little more room to breathe. Of course, that won’t do at all now. I certainly can’t turn you over to them. I would not kill your animals just because I thought your investigation was taking too long, nor would I have harmed Mark’s lovely sister for the same reason. And now that I know you are, in fact, the one whom I seek, I will simply have to find some other way of appeasing them.”