House of Earth and Blood (Crescent City) (41 page)

Hunt let go of her elbow. “We did. A rogue panther shifter. I handed him over to Tharion.”

“I’m assuming the panther didn’t make it down to the Blue Court.”

Hunt surveyed the shimmering expanse of water. “No, he didn’t.”

“Is Bryce being nice to you, Athie?”

Seated at the front desk of the gallery showroom, Bryce
muttered, “Oh please,” and kept clicking through the paperwork Jesiba had sent over.

Hunt, sprawled in the chair across the desk from her, the portrait of angelic arrogance, merely asked the fire sprite lurking in the open iron door, “What would you do if I said she wasn’t, Lehabah?”

Lehabah floated in the archway, not daring to come into the showroom. Not when Jesiba would likely see. “I’d burn all her lunches for a month.”

Hunt chuckled, the sound sliding along her bones. Bryce, despite herself, smiled.

Something heavy thumped, audible even a level above the library, and Lehabah zoomed down the stairs, hissing, “
Bad!
”

Bryce looked at Hunt as he sifted through the photos of the demon from a few nights ago. His hair hung over his brow, the sable strands gleaming like black silk. Her fingers curled on the keyboard.

Hunt lifted his head. “We need more intel on Sabine. The fact that she swapped the footage of the Horn’s theft from the temple is suspicious, and what she said in the observation room that night is pretty suspicious, too, but they don’t necessarily mean she’s a murderer. I can’t approach Micah without concrete proof.”

She rubbed the back of her neck. “Ruhn hasn’t gotten any leads on finding the Horn, either, so that we can lure the kristallos.”

Silence fell. Hunt crossed an ankle over a knee, then stretched out a hand to where she’d discarded Danika’s jacket on the chair beside him, too lazy to bother hanging it. “I saw Danika wearing this in the photo in your guest room. Why’d you keep it?”

Bryce let out a long breath, thankful for his shift in subject. “Danika used to store her stuff in the supply closet here, rather than bothering to go back to the apartment or over to the Den. She’d stashed the jacket here the day …” She blew out a breath and glanced toward the bathroom in the back of the space, where Danika had changed only hours before her death. “I didn’t want Sabine to have it. She would have read the back of it and thrown it in the trash.”

Hunt picked up the jacket and read, “Through love, all is possible.”

Bryce nodded. “The tattoo on my back says the same thing. Well, in some fancy alphabet that she dug up online, but … Danika had a thing about that phrase. It was all the Oracle told her, apparently. Which makes no sense, because Danika was one of the least lovey-dovey people I’ve ever met, but …” Bryce toyed with the amulet around her neck, zipping it along the chain. “Something about it resonated with her. So after she died, I kept the jacket. And started wearing it.”

Hunt carefully set the jacket back on the chair. “I get it—about the personal effects.” He seemed like he wasn’t going to say more, but then he continued, “That sunball hat you made fun of?”

“I didn’t make fun of it. You just don’t seem like the kind of male who
wears
such a thing.”

He chuckled again—in that same way that slid over her skin. “That hat was the first thing I bought when I came here. With the first paycheck I ever received from Micah.” The corner of his mouth turned upward. “I saw it in an athletic shop, and it just seemed so ordinary. You have no idea how different Lunathion is from the Eternal City. From anything in Pangera. And that hat just …”

“Represented that?”

“Yeah. It seemed like a new beginning. A step toward a more normal existence. Well, as normal an existence as someone like me can have.”

She made an effort not to look at his wrist. “So you have your hat—and I have Jelly Jubilee.”

His smile lit up the dimness of the gallery. “I’m surprised you don’t have a tattoo of Jelly Jubilee somewhere.” His eyes skimmed over her, lingering on the short, tight green dress.

Her toes curled. “Who says I don’t have a tattoo of her somewhere you can’t see, Athalar?”

She watched him sort through everything he had
already
seen. Since he’d moved in, she’d stopped parading about the apartment in her underwear while getting dressed, but she knew he’d spotted her through the window in the days before. Knew he realized there
was a limited, very intimate, number of places where another tattoo might be hidden.

She could have sworn his voice dropped an octave or two as he asked, “Do you?”

With any other male, she would have said,
Why don’t you come find out?

With any other male, she would have already been on the other side of the desk. Crawling into his lap. Unbuckling his belt. And then sinking down onto his cock, riding him until they were both moaning and breathless and—

She made herself go back to her paperwork. “There are a few males who can answer that question, if you’re so curious.” How her voice was so steady, she had no idea.

Hunt’s silence was palpable. She didn’t dare look over her computer screen.

But his eyes remained focused on her, burning her like a brand.

Her heart thundered throughout her body. Dangerous, stupid, reckless—

Hunt let out a long, tight breath. The chair he sat in groaned as he shifted in it, his wings rustling. She still didn’t dare look. She honestly didn’t know what she’d do if she looked.

But then Hunt said, his voice gravelly, “We need to focus on Sabine.”

Hearing her name was like being doused with ice water.

Right. Yes. Of course. Because hooking up with the Umbra Mortis wasn’t a possibility. The reasons for that started with him pining for a lost love and ended with the fact that he was owned by the gods-damned Governor. With a million other obstacles in between.

She still couldn’t look at him as Hunt asked, “Any thoughts on how we can get more intel on her? Even just a glimpse into her current state of mind?”

Needing something to do with her hands, her too-warm body, Bryce printed out, then signed and dated, the paperwork Jesiba had sent. “We can’t bring in Sabine for formal questioning without making her aware that we’re onto her,” Bryce said, at last looking at Hunt.

His face was flushed, and his eyes … Fucking Solas, his black eyes glittered, wholly fixed on her face. Like he was thinking of touching her.

Tasting her.

“Okay,” he said roughly, running a hand through his hair. His eyes settled, the dark fire in them banking. Thank the gods.

An idea dawned upon her, and Bryce said in a strangled voice, her stomach twisting with dread, “So I think we have to bring the questions to Sabine.”

43

T
he wolves’ Den in Moonwood occupied ten entire city blocks, a sprawling villa built around a wild tangle of forest and grass that legend claimed had grown there since before anyone had touched these lands. Through the iron gates built into the towering limestone arches, Bryce could see through to the private park, where morning sunlight coaxed drowsy flowers into opening up for the day. Wolf pups bounded, pouncing on each other, chasing their tails, watched over by gray-muzzled elders whose brutal days in the Aux were long behind them.

Her gut twisted, enough to make her grateful she’d forgone breakfast. She’d barely slept last night, as she considered and reconsidered this plan. Hunt had offered to do it himself, but she’d refused. She had to come here—had to step up. For Danika.

In his usual battle-suit, Hunt stood a step away, silent as he’d been on the walk over here. As if he knew she could barely keep her legs from shaking. She wished she’d worn sneakers. The steep angle of her heels had irritated the wound in her thigh. Bryce clenched her jaw against the pain as they stood before the Den.

Hunt kept his dark eyes fixed upon the four sentries stationed at the gates.

Three females, one male. All in humanoid form, all in black, all armed with guns and sheathed swords down their backs. A tattoo
of an onyx rose with three claw marks slashed through its petals adorned the sides of their necks, marking them as members of the Black Rose Wolf Pack.

Her stomach roiled at the hilts peeking over their armored shoulders. But she pushed away the memory of a braid of silvery-blond hair streaked with purple and pink, constantly snagging in the hilt of an ancient, priceless blade.

Though young, the Pack of Devils had been revered, the most talented wolves in generations. Led by the most powerful Alpha to grace Midgard’s soil.

The Black Rose Pack was a far cry from that. A far fucking cry.

Their eyes lit with predatory delight as they spotted Bryce.

Her mouth went dry. And turned positively arid as a fifth wolf appeared from the glass security vestibule to the left of the gate.

The Alpha’s dark hair had been pulled into a tight braid, accentuating the sharp angles of her face as she sneered toward Bryce and Hunt. Athalar’s hand casually drifted to the knife at his thigh.

Bryce said as casually as she could, “Hi, Amelie.”

Amelie Ravenscroft bared her teeth. “What the fuck do you want?”

Hunt bared his teeth right back. “We’re here to see the Prime.” He flashed his legion badge, the gold twinkling in the sun. “On behalf of the Governor.”

Amelie flicked her gold eyes to Hunt, over his tattooed halo. Over his hand on the knife and the
SPQM
she surely knew was tattooed on the other side of his wrist. Her lip curled. “Well, at least you picked interesting company, Quinlan. Danika would have approved. Hel, you might have even done him together.” Amelie leaned a shoulder against the vestibule’s side. “You used to do that, right? I heard about you guys and those two daemonaki. Classic.”

Bryce smiled blandly. “It was three daemonaki, actually.”

“Stupid slut,” Amelie snarled.

“Watch it,” Hunt growled back.

Amelie’s pack members lingered behind her, eyeing Hunt and keeping back. The benefit of hanging with the Umbra Mortis, apparently.

Amelie laughed, a sound filled with loathing. Not merely hatred for her, Bryce realized. But for the angels. The Houses of Earth and Blood and Sky and Breath were rivals on a good day, enemies on a bad one. “Or what? You’ll use your lightning on me?” she said to Hunt. “If you do, you’ll be in such deep shit that your
master
will bury you alive in it.” A little smile at the tattoo across his brow.

Hunt went still. And as interesting as it would have been to finally see how Hunt Athalar killed, they had a reason for being here. So Bryce said to the pack leader, “You’re a delight, Amelie Ravenscroft. Radio your boss that we’re here to see the Prime.” She flicked her brows in emphasis of the dismissal she knew would make the Alpha see red.

“Shut that mouth of yours,” Amelie said, “before I rip out your tongue.”

A brown-haired male wolf standing behind Amelie taunted, “Why don’t you go fuck someone in a bathroom again, Quinlan?”

She blocked out every word. But Hunt huffed a laugh that promised broken bones. “I told you to watch it.”

“Go ahead, angel,” Amelie sneered. “Let’s see what you can do.”

Bryce could barely move around the panic and dread pushing in, could barely breathe, but Hunt said quietly, “There are six pups playing in sight of this gate. You really want to expose them to the kind of fight we’d have, Amelie?”

Bryce blinked. Hunt didn’t so much as glance her way as he continued addressing a seething Amelie. “I’m not going to beat the shit out of you in front of children. So either you let us in, or we’ll come back with a warrant.” His gaze didn’t falter. “I don’t think Sabine Fendyr would be particularly happy with Option B.”

Amelie held his stare, even as the others tensed. That haughty arrogance had made Sabine tap her as Alpha of the Black Rose Pack, even over Ithan Holstrom, now Amelie’s Second. But Sabine had wanted someone just like herself, regardless of Ithan’s higher power ranking. And perhaps someone a little less Alpha, too—so she’d have them firmly under her claws.

Bryce waited for Amelie to call Hunt’s bluff about the warrant. Waited for a snide remark or the appearance of fangs.

Yet Amelie plucked the radio from her belt and said into it, “Guests are here for the Prime. Come get them.”

She had once breezed through the doors beyond Amelie’s dark head, had spent hours playing with the pups in the grass and trees beyond it whenever Danika had been given babysitting duty.

She shut out the memory of what it had been like—to watch Danika playing with the fuzzy pups or shrieking children, who had all worshipped the ground she walked upon. Their future leader, their protector, who would take the wolves to new heights.

Bryce’s chest constricted to the point of pain. Hunt glanced her way then, his brows rising.

She couldn’t do this. Be here. Enter this place.

Amelie smiled, as if realizing that. Scenting her dread and pain.

And the sight of the fucking bitch standing there, where Danika had once been … Red washed over Bryce’s vision as she drawled, “It’s good to see that crime has gone down so much, if all you have to do with your day, Amelie, is play guard at the front door.”

Amelie smiled slowly. Footsteps sounded on the other side of the gate, just before they swung open, but Bryce didn’t dare look. Not as Amelie said, “You know, sometimes I think I should thank you—they say if Danika hadn’t been so distracted by messaging you about your drunk bullshit, she might have anticipated the attack. And then I wouldn’t be where I am, would I.”

Bryce’s nails cut into her palms. But her voice, thank the gods, was steady as she said, “Danika was a thousand times the wolf you are. No matter
where you are
, you’ll never be where
she
was.”

Amelie went white with rage, her nose crinkling, lips pulling back to expose her now-lengthening teeth—

“Amelie,” a male voice growled from the shadows of the gate archway.

Oh gods. Bryce curled her fingers into fists to keep from shaking as she looked toward the young male wolf.

But Ithan Holstrom’s eyes darted between her and Amelie as he
approached his Alpha. “It’s not worth it.” The unspoken words simmered in his eyes.
Bryce isn’t worth it
.

Amelie snorted, turning back to the vestibule, a shorter, brown-haired female following her. The pack’s Omega, if memory served. Amelie sneered over a shoulder to Bryce, “Go back to the dumpster you crawled out of.”

Then she shut the door. Leaving Bryce standing before Connor’s younger brother.

There was nothing kind on Ithan’s tan face. His golden-brown hair was longer than the last time she’d seen him, but he’d been a sophomore playing sunball for CCU then.

This towering, muscled male before them had made the Drop. Had stepped into his brother’s shoes and joined the pack that had replaced Connor’s.

A brush of Hunt’s velvet-soft wings against her arm had her walking. Every step toward the wolf ratcheted up her heartbeat.

“Ithan,” Bryce managed to say.

Connor’s younger brother said nothing as he turned toward the pillars flanking the walkway.

She was going to puke. All over everything: the limestone tiles, the pale pillars, the glass doors that opened into the park in the center of the villa.

She shouldn’t have let Athalar come. Should have made him stay on the roof somewhere so he couldn’t witness the spectacular meltdown that she was three seconds away from having.

Ithan Holstrom’s steps were unhurried, his gray T-shirt pulling across the considerable expanse of his muscled back. He’d been a cocky twenty-year-old when Connor died, a history major like Danika and the star of CCU’s sunball team, rumored to be going pro as soon as his brother gave the nod. He could have gone pro right after high school, but Connor, who had raised Ithan since their parents had died five years earlier, had insisted that a degree came first, sports second. Ithan, who had idolized Connor, had always folded on it, despite Bronson’s pleas with Connor to let the kid go pro.

Connor’s Shadow, they’d teased Ithan.

He’d filled out since then. At last started truly resembling his older brother—even the shade of his golden-brown hair was like a spike through her chest.

I’m crazy about you. I don’t want anyone else. I haven’t for a long while.

She couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t stop seeing, hearing those words, feeling the giant fucking rip in the space-time continuum where Connor should have been, in a world where nothing bad could ever, ever happen—

Ithan stopped before another set of glass doors. He opened one, the muscles in his long arm rippling as he held it for them.

Hunt went first, no doubt scanning the space in the span of a blink.

Bryce managed to look up at Ithan as she passed.

His white teeth shone as he bared them at her.

Gone was the cocky boy she’d teased; gone was the boy who’d tried out flirting on her so he could use the techniques on Nathalie, who had laughed when Ithan asked her out but told him to wait a few more years; gone was the boy who had relentlessly questioned Bryce about when she’d finally start dating his brother and wouldn’t take
never
for an answer.

A honed predator now stood in his place. Who had surely not forgotten the leaked messages she’d sent and received that horrible night. That she’d been fucking some random in the club bathroom while Connor—Connor, who had just spilled his heart to her—was slaughtered.

Bryce lowered her eyes, hating it, hating every second of this fucked-up visit.

Ithan smiled, as if savoring her shame.

He’d dropped out of CCU after Connor had died. Quit playing sunball. She only knew because she’d caught a game on TV one night two months later and the commentators had still been discussing it. No one, not his coaches, not his friends, not his packmates, could convince him to return. He’d walked away from the sport and never looked back, apparently.

She hadn’t seen him since the days right before the murders.
Her last photo of him was the one Danika had taken at his game, playing in the background. The one she’d tortured herself with last night for hours while bracing herself for what the dawn would bring.

Before that, though, there had been hundreds of photos of the two of them together. They still sat on her phone like a basket full of snakes, waiting to bite if she so much as opened the lid.

Ithan’s cruel smile didn’t waver as he shut the door behind them. “The Prime’s taking a nap. Sabine will meet with you.”

Bryce glanced at Hunt, who gave her a shallow nod. Precisely as they’d planned.

Bryce was aware of Ithan’s every breath at her back as they aimed for the stairs that Bryce knew would take them up a level to Sabine’s office. Hunt seemed aware of Ithan, too, and let enough lightning wreathe his hands, his wrists, that the young wolf took a step away.

At least alphaholes were good for something.

Ithan didn’t leave. No, it seemed he was to be their guard and silent tormentor for the duration of this miserable trip.

Bryce knew every step toward Sabine’s office on the second level, but Ithan led the way: up the sprawling limestone stairs marred with so many scratches and gouges no one bothered to fix them anymore; down the high-ceilinged, bright hall whose windows overlooked the busy street outside; and finally to the worn wood door. Danika had grown up here—and moved out as soon as she’d gone to CCU. After graduation, she’d stayed only during formal wolf events and holidays.

Ithan’s pace was leisurely. As if he could scent Bryce’s misery, and wanted to make her endure it for every possible second.

She supposed she deserved it.
Knew
she deserved it.

She tried to block out the memory that flashed.

The twenty-one ignored calls from Ithan, all in the first few days following the murder. The half-dozen audiomails. The first had been sobbing, panicked, left in the hours afterward.
Is it true, Bryce? Are they dead?

And then the messages had shifted to worry.
Where are you? Are you okay? I called the major hospitals and you’re not listed, but no one is talking. Please call me.

And then, by the end, that last audiomail from Ithan, nothing but razor-sharp coldness.
The Legion inspectors showed me all the messages. Connor practically told you that he loved you, and you finally agreed to go out with him, and then you fucked some stranger in the Raven bathroom? While he was
dying
? Are you kidding me with this shit? Don’t come to the Sailing tomorrow. You’re not welcome there.

She’d never written back, never sought him out. Hadn’t been able to endure the thought of facing him. Seeing the grief and pain in his face. Loyalty was the most prized of all wolf traits. In their eyes, she and Connor had been inevitable. Nearly mated. Just a question of time. Her hookups before that hadn’t mattered, and neither had his, because nothing had been declared yet.