When Passion Lies: A Shadow Keepers Novel (7 page)

“I’ve never met the man in person, but he’d arranged a meeting with Tiberius at this spot,” Dragos said.

“So where’s Tiberius?”

“If you know who I am, you also know that I often stand in Tiberius’s stead.”

“Fair enough. Who’s the guy?”

“Cyrus Reinholt.”

Gabriel shook his head. “Should I know him?”

“Are you weren?”

“Half human, half hellhound,” Gabriel said. Beside him, Everil’s pinched face had pulled into a frown.

“No reason you’d know him, then. He’s weren, obviously. This was a preliminary meeting. He’d contacted Tiberius about acting as a possible intelligence resource.”

“He offered to spy on Lihter?” Gabriel said. “Why?”

“That was one of the questions I intended to ask him.”

Gabriel nodded, then turned toward Everil. “This puts Lihter at the top of our suspect list.” Dragos was on the list, too, of course. At least until his story was confirmed. But Gabriel didn’t intend to mention that. “We’ll see if the percipient can give us anything else to work with.”

“You’ve summoned a percipient?” Dragos asked. His expression shifted then, so slightly that Gabriel doubted anyone but himself noticed. But Dragos wasn’t happy with the idea of a percipient arriving. In fact, if Gabriel had to pin it, he’d say Dragos looked irritated. And that was interesting.

“Should be here any minute,” Gabriel said, keeping his eyes on Dragos’s face.

A pause, then, “Good thinking.”

“But?”

Now Dragos’s smile came easy. “Unless you want to deal with the inevitable consequences of the human Swiss police witnessing the arrival of a percipient daemon by wormhole, I suggest you clear away the humans.”

“We’re working on that,” Gabriel said, shooting a sideways glance at Everil, who was in fact supposed to be working on that. “The PEC can take exclusive jurisdiction pursuant to our agreement with the Swiss Polizei. But it takes time. Unfortunately, we don’t have any vampires on staff. No one with any sort of persuasive abilities, actually, so there’s no easy way to convince the humans they have somewhere else they need to be.”

Dragos nodded, obviously only half listening as he surveyed the scene.

“But you’re a vampire …”

Dragos turned, surprised. “I am.”

“You’re here. You’re a vampire. And,” Gabriel added, taking a step toward him. “I’m sure you must want your informant’s killer caught as much as we at Division 12 do.”

Dragos didn’t hesitate. He was either innocent or very, very good. Considering what he knew of the vampire, Gabriel wasn’t about to discount either possibility. “I’m happy to help,” he said. “By the way, who did you summon?”

“Whoever’s closest,” Gabriel said. “Probably Ylexi. Shouldn’t take any time to arrive from Berlin.”

“No, it shouldn’t,” Dragos said, and the hint of irritation that Gabriel had seen earlier faded.

Beside them, Everil shifted nervously from one foot to the other. “Gabriel, I don’t—”

“It’s homicide,” Gabriel said, cutting him off. “And technically, I outrank you.” He turned back to Dragos. “Do it.”

And just like that, Dragos did.

Gabriel watched him disappear into the crowd. He
watched the forensics team examining the body. The staff protecting the scene. A hive of activity, just as it was supposed to be, and he was back in and hip deep whether he wanted to be or not.

What a goddamned, fucked-up mess.

She was running, the forest thick around her. She was in the heart of it now, where witches built gingerbread houses and ate small children for breakfast
.

Trouble
.

It was brewing all around her. Thick and heavy
.

She needed to run faster, look harder
.

But she didn’t. She couldn’t
.

The dream had its claws well into her now
.

This was her personal mission, and she couldn’t fail. She had to find the traitor. Had to prove that she could once again be an asset in the field. That she could be
kyne
by action if not by bond
.

He would be angry, of course
. Tiberius.
Her mate. Her friend. Her love
.

For years, he’d refused to send her into the field, and that one small point was creating a hard knot of dissension between them. He’d relented only once—when they’d hunted the hybrid in France—but she’d almost been bathed in the beast’s acid. In the end, they’d prevailed and Tiberius was hailed as a hero, raised up to sit at the Alliance table, and she had been praised as his mate and advisor
.

But never again had he let her hunt
.

Her daemon itched for the release of battle. This day, she would prove herself worthy
.

Around her, the forest hummed with life. The wind
whispered through the leaves, its music her anthem. Indigenous animals watched with glowing eyes, her witnesses to the traitor’s inevitable apprehension. He’d been clever enough to elude her for a time, but she’d found him. Was closing in on him. The bent branches and footprints lightly dusted with snow testified that the gap between them was closing
.

Her smile was thin and determined
. You’re mine. You’re all mine.

A sharp crack sounded to her left, and she froze, momentarily confused. Her quarry was in front and to her right—of that she was certain. So what had she heard?

An animal?

She sniffed the air, drawing in the sharp green scent of pine needles and the pungent smell of decaying undergrowth. There was something else, too. A heavy musk hanging in the air. A feral smell that she didn’t recognize
.

Trap.

The word ricocheted through her, torn from some deep-buried instinct. But it came too late: The arrow pierced her shoulder while she was still corporeal, and suddenly her ability to change was gone. Hematite. The damned arrow tip was hematite
.

Within her, the daemon roared, brought to the surface by the heady combination of anger and fear
.

She let it rise, using its strength to speed her actions, and trusting that it wouldn’t rise so far and so fast that it punched through, leaving the daemon in charge rather than Caris herself
.

Moving as fast as she was thinking, she reached back to remove the arrow, but the angle was no good. Instead of freeing the thing, she merely broke off the shaft. The
metal tip was still inside her, and there was no way it was coming out
.

She forced herself to remain calm, to keep her focus so she could keep her head. If they’d wanted her dead, a wooden arrow to her heart would have been the way to go. So that meant she had the advantage. Her attacker wanted her alive; she didn’t hold the same compunction. Whoever put an arrow in her was a dead man
.

Too bad she didn’t have an enemy to fight
.

Above her, a flock of birds took off with a flurry of wings and caws. Time she did the same
.

She ran. The hematite in her shoulder slowed her some, sapping her strength, but not so much that she couldn’t fight through it. She’d make it
.

By the time Caris heard the soft whoosh of the net being released from its anchor in the trees, it was too late. The hematite threads were already snugged tight around her, tripping her. Binding her
.

She struggled, her daemon snarling as she tried to rip apart the web that had captured her, but it was no use. Her strength was fading in the presence of so much hematite, and her captor was approaching. Tall and dressed in fatigues. Face hidden by a mask. The body shapeless under the loose-fitting clothes
.

In front of her, he raised his weapon—a tranquilizer gun. Fear ripped through her, an emotion she hadn’t felt with such force in centuries. She didn’t much like feeling it now, and she bit the inside of her cheek to keep from begging. Begging would do no good, and she wasn’t about to show weakness
.

He fired, and there was nowhere to go. The dart penetrated her chest, just above her breast, and the world began to spin
.

Her attacker stepped closer, and she saw cold calculation in his gray-hued eyes. She breathed in through her nose, testing the air, trying to catch the scent of him, but he’d masked more than his face, and she smelled only the heady scent of the earth
.

“Blaine?” she whispered, forcing the traitor’s name out as reality dissolved beneath her
.

“No,” a man’s voice replied. “Now sleep.”

Caris shook herself, forcing her mind to clear. Tiberius was the last person she’d expected to see on that mountaintop, and his proximity had thrown her off her game. Pain mixed with a desperate longing. Emotions going where they had no business going. She should be over him. She should hate him as much as she’d once hated herself. More, even.

So why the hell did he still make her blood burn?

Stop thinking about it
.

Good advice, and she was trying. Except it wasn’t working. Her mind was all over the place. The mountaintop. Tiberius.

The past.

She clenched her fists, once again trying to force her thoughts not to go back to those weeks when she’d been changed.

Not to go back to when Tiberius had banished her. When he’d looked at her with such horror in his eyes. She’d hated him for not having the strength to kill her, even while she wanted to rail on him for not having the balls to step up and help.

He’d picked politics—his people—over her, and the wound had cut deep. It still did.

She shivered.

Her word
. Why the hell had she given Tiberius her word?

She should have told him no way, screw you, just forget about it.

But she hadn’t, and now she was pacing the Tower Bridge’s pedestrian walkway, watching the Thames flow by beneath her. The mansion was a few kilometers to the south and sunrise was fast approaching.

She should go. But somehow she couldn’t get her feet moving in that direction.

Everything was so confused where Tiberius was concerned. For so long she’d told herself she hated him. That he’d betrayed her and their love, and that he’d destroyed everything.

But seeing him again …

She hugged herself, shaking her head to clear her thoughts, frustrated that her skin still tingled at the sound of his voice, and her throat still caught when she said his name.

Seeing him again so unexpectedly had driven the truth home, and hard. She
didn’t
hate him. Not really. That emotion had been reserved for herself, at least at first. Because of what she was. What she’d done.

She closed her eyes, clenching her fists against the pain and the regret and the guilt.

How quickly life could turn around. For centuries, she and Tiberius had been united. But then her hubris had gotten in the way. She’d gone out to prove that he was wrong and that she was a warrior. That she could capture
a fugitive traitor. She’d been a fool. And that one choice had destroyed them both.

Reinholt had captured her—not because she was Tiberius’s woman, or because she was Caris, or because she was anyone in particular at all. He’d needed a female. He’d needed a vampire. And she’d been in the wrong place at the wrong time.