A Secret to Die For (Secret McQueen) (9 page)

Not everyone was dazzled by Clementine.

Four people in the room maintained serious expressions, and if looks could kill, they would be our hit squad. But the rest were enraptured. This told me a lot more than I’d expected it to. The four who weren’t impacted by Clementine were the necros. It made sense, since they were able to control the dead, that the dead would not be able to control them.

Marcela, her male companion, and two younger men seated at the bar were my targets in the room. Everyone else was meat in the grinder as far as I was concerned. The two guys at the bar were twins, though one had short hair and the other long. They were both blond and had piercing blue eyes. With those scowling stares and Nordic features, they might as well have been members of a Scandinavian heavy-metal band. I was betting they had names like Lars or Sven.

“Now that I have your undivided attention, I’m hoping you’ll consider answering a few questions for me.”

“I’d sooner kill my own children than answer any more of your questions,” Marcela snarled.

“Are they here? I’ll do it for you.” I withdrew my sword and held it flat against my leg, begging the universe to give me an excuse to use it. Between the gun and the sword, I was well equipped to dispatch anyone who chose to cross me.

The man beside Marcela pulled a shotgun out from beside him and thumped it down on the table, giving me his best
come at me, bro
glare.

“If you think a gun scares me, you’re sorely mistaken,” I said.

“You should have been scared a long time before now,” he replied.

“Let that go to show you you’ve messed with the wrong girl.”

Chapter Twelve

The sad truth of the situation was, even with Clementine holding the biker boys in check, things were less than ideal. I couldn’t kill all four necros without losing one of my vampires, and though Clementine wasn’t my new BFF, I also wasn’t willing to sacrifice her life to get my revenge. There was also no guarantee she’d be the one to die and not Holden.

I definitely wasn’t going to put his life on the line.

He could heal a bullet wound or two, but a face full of shotgun buck wasn’t going to be an easy thing to walk away from.

“I came here as a courtesy to you. You and your people have until nightfall tomorrow to set things right and get gone.”

“Or
what
?” Marcela scoffed. “You’ll call the police?”

I shook my head. “If you’re not gone by sunset, I will come back. I will rain down a fire on you like nothing you ever knew existed. I’ll make you wish for something as sweet and easy as death, but I won’t give it to you. I will
ruin
you, do you understand me? Nothing you came here for is worth the shitstorm I will unleash if you decide to cross me.” Even as I spoke, my brain was hard at work, unraveling a list of possibilities. There was so much I could do to rip a person’s life apart at the seams.

If Marcela and her boys didn’t heed my warning, I would make them rue the day they crossed me.

I was good at a great number of things, but violent and bloody revenge was where I truly excelled.

“And why should we let you go? If you’re such a threat to us, why shouldn’t we kill you where you stand?”

I glanced to Clementine. “Can you show them what it really means to manipulate someone?”

She smiled, and I was a little frightened by the malicious gleam in her eyes. “No mercy?”

“No mercy.”

She focused her attention on the table closest to us. A man with his hair pulled back in a limp brown ponytail was staring at her as if she were the second coming of Helen of Troy.

“Hi, gorgeous,” she cooed.

As she spoke to him, I could see the others shaking off their stupor. It seemed her vocal thrall was either all, or one. She could cast a wide net or reel in a sole fish, but not both at once.

“Hey,” he said, his voice dopey and love drunk.

“Do you have a knife? Big boy like you should have a real big knife, right, sweetie?”

He nodded and slid a huge hunting knife out of the sheath on his leg, and set it on the table like a prize for her.

“Pick it up,” she said.

I was reminded, chillingly, of a similar interaction I’d had with Sig a week prior. We’d been sitting in my living room, and he admitted his role as my great-grandsire—the originator of my vampire bloodline—gave him incredible power over me. He’d demonstrated this by making me put a gun to my own head with no will to resist.

That Clementine could do the same thing made me exceptionally nervous over the kind of abilities she would grow into as she aged. If she were to live long enough to become a council member, she would have the vampire world at her fingertips.

The man obeyed her, lifting the knife with a solid grip on the handle.

“Now, I want you to stab yourself in the hand, please.” She requested it like she was asking for a favor, with the sweet, wide-eyed innocence of a child. He didn’t even blink, merely held the blade for a moment, then thrust it downward, cutting through his own flesh and bone until the knife settled into the wood surface of the table. Blood beaded around the cut, but with the knife sealing it, there was little mess.

All around us the spell was cast off, and the men came back into themselves, including the man who had just stabbed himself.

He stared at his hand like it was attached to someone else entirely, and once the realization of what he’d done sank in, he screamed. The sheer volume of his cry gave me chills, but I didn’t let my uneasiness show. Instead I ignored the newly drawn guns and the men who had clambered to their feet.

“Sundown.” I glared, feigning a calmness I didn’t feel.

“We’ll see,” Marcela said coolly.

And beyond all reason, she let us walk out.

Once we were back on the sidewalk, I let out a sigh of relief. There was no way we should have been able to leave the bar with all our limbs intact, but somehow it had happened. We were still alive, but so were they. The only benefit that had come from our meeting was having faces for four of the necros. Marcela and her boys accounted for a small chunk of our troubles, but knowing who they were meant four fewer mystery villains to hunt down.

I would have preferred to kill them now, but it wouldn’t have worked. Someone aside from them would have ended up dead, and that was a risk I couldn’t take.

I matched my stride with Clementine’s. “That parlor trick back there, do you think you could do it on a larger scale?”

“If you’re asking if I can control the actions of a whole room of men at one time, the answer is no. I can subdue maybe forty or fifty, like you saw in there, but I can only manipulate one at a time. Potentially two if they were really weak-minded. Or children.” She shrugged apologetically, and I tried not to think about whether or not she’d tested her theory about children.

So much for the idea of using her to turn the biker gang against their masters.

“Well, the subduing thing is helpful, at least. Thanks for that, by the way.” I wonder if Holden had known how useful she would be when he’d gone looking for her.
Someone
had known she was a tough cookie, otherwise she wouldn’t have been made the gatekeeper at Havana.

“Glad to be of service.” She skipped forward to meet up with the rest of the crew, barely seeming to mind that we had just spit in the face of our own certain death. She was an odd one.

“What happened?” Desmond asked, coming forward to greet me.

“No one is dead. Yet. There are four necros in there, and I’m pretty sure one of them is the de facto leader. Her and her boy toy anyway. She was calling all the shots, and none of the boys were too bothered by her.” Realizing I still had my sword drawn, I re-sheathed it and nodded to Tyler. “Walkie the rest of the group, and let’s get the hell out of here before they change their minds about letting us walk.”

“Why
did
they let you walk?” Reggie asked. I tried not to take offense at his incredulity.

“Secret gave them an ultimatum and a fairly showy display of power.” Holden had joined us now, standing between Clementine and me so I was a buffer between him and Desmond.

“What did you do?” Des asked.

“Oh, you know me. Big threats, flashy sword. Clementine did all the hard work.”

The blonde vampire smiled at the compliment and did a small curtsy. “Though I be but little, I am fierce,” she quipped, putting her own spin on Shakespeare’s famous quote.

“Funny. That line always reminded me of Secret,” Tyler said, clipping the walkie back on his belt.

I almost blushed.

The three absent members of our party came around the building, and once we were again eleven strong, I started walking. I wanted everyone present to explain what I’d learned about the Hands of Death. More importantly, however, we were running preciously low on moonlight, and I needed to get myself and the vampires somewhere safe.

My original plan had been to herd the whole group to my apartment, but I now saw how foolish that idea was. With four vampires and myself in the mix, there was no way we’d all be able to comfortably wait out daylight in my tiny place. Calliope’s realm would have been a good alternative, if not for Genie and Desmond. Werewolves were prohibited in Calliope’s home, and I’d broken her rule a few too many times to think I’d be able to get away with it again. No matter how bad things were out here.

Genie had also proven to be less than stable with her power when she shifted—explosively so—and the transition from our world to Calliope’s was hard on the most controlled shifter. It wasn’t worth the risk to try.

“Where are we going?” Desmond walked alongside me, a few paces ahead of the rest of the group. Given the tone of his voice and the fact he was moving on autopilot, I was fairly certain he knew where we were headed.

“You’re not going to like it.”

“Do I need to remind you I’m not the one with all the Lucas issues?”

He wasn’t trying to be hurtful, but his words hit me like a sucker punch all the same. We’d had an argument about Lucas before leaving Louisiana. After Desmond had proposed, we’d gone to my uncle, Callum, for his blessing. I’d hoped that would be the end of the ordeal, but Callum had explained I was still married to Lucas in the eyes of the pack. In order to marry Desmond I would need Lucas to declare I was no longer his. It wasn’t an ideal situation.

“You think he’d be receptive to a divorce right now?” I joked, hoping to keep the mood light.

Desmond offered me a tight smile. “‘Hey, Lucas, New York is on fire and the dead have come back to life. How do you feel about me marrying Secret?’”

“You’re right. It’s not the best pitch.”

As far as inopportune conversations went, now was a terrible time to talk about our wedding. But the truth was, I wanted to think about anything
other
than the current situation. I had to believe Desmond and I would come through this, and we would have our opportunity to be together when all the dust settled. Maybe it was selfish of me to focus on that, but I felt the universe owed me something positive, considering all the crap I’d been put through.

“Maybe wait until
after
he’s agreed to help us before you ask,” Desmond suggested.

“Aren’t you the one who claimed he was more reasonable than I gave him credit for?”

“Yes. But you can’t deny you two bring out the worst in each other.”

Desmond’s brother Dominick had said something similar to me last time I’d been with Lucas, and it was a harsh truth. For two people who had been destined by fate and a metaphysical soul-bond to be together, we couldn’t have been more poorly matched. Lucas was selfish and obstinate, and I was too willful and independent to make an obedient queen.

And he would always put matters of the pack before me, which was his job as king, but he did it often enough it became detrimental. He didn’t know how to delegate tasks to others and kept the weight of the whole pack firmly on his shoulders.

He was one of the youngest pack kings in a century, next to Callum, and I think he felt the burden of proving himself too much. His father had been beloved, and it was an awful lot to live up to.

Damn, was I starting to empathize with my shitty husband?

The end of the world was giving me some unsettling perspective on things.

Rain Hotel, where Lucas lived in the city, was a few scant blocks from the vampire council’s headquarters. I was tempted to tell the vamps in the group to go to ground there, but I didn’t know if I’d see them again if I did.

Since Lucas and his father both recognized the wisdom of catering to a supernatural crowd, all Rain Industries hotels were set up with light-safe curtains. It was a lesser-known perk, but something that became a big selling point if exposure to the sun would burn you into a pile of ash.

It took us about twenty minutes to walk from the Dirt Hog to Rain Hotel, and by the time the glossy black façade of the hotel appeared, I was feeling the drag of sunrise. We still had some time, but the blackness of night was starting to peter out, replaced with a lighter blue-purple shade. Soon the sun would peek her head up over the buildings, but by then we’d be safely tucked away.

I hoped.

The front glass doors of the hotel were shattered, but when we stepped into the lobby, we found the place abandoned. Several vases of flowers had been knocked to the floor, and the check-in desks had been ransacked, but apart from that the place was untouched.

If the hotel had been compromised, though, it meant the guestrooms might not be secure. I’d hoped we could spend the night in the regular suites before approaching Lucas, but it looked like our best shot at safety would be going to the king himself.

“Do you have your card?” I asked Desmond.

It had been quite some time since Desmond had lived under the same roof with Lucas. A rift had formed between them thanks to me, and it had never healed properly. The former best friends now only spoke and saw each other when it related to pack business.

Or business-business, I supposed, since Desmond was the head of one of Lucas’s architectural firms.

Desmond pulled out his wallet and withdrew a familiar-looking Rain Hotel keycard. I had an identical one buried in a drawer at home somewhere. I didn’t know if my code still worked, but Desmond’s certainly would.

“This is going to be a tight squeeze.” He held the door open and ushered everyone inside.

Eleven grown adults all wedged into a cramped metal box was enough to set my claustrophobia going haywire. I breathed deeply and kept my eyes shut as Desmond entered his personal access code and the elevator whirred to life.

Wait.

“How the hell is the elevator still working?” I asked, wondering how it had only occurred to me as strange once we were already in it.

“All the Rain hotels have substantial back-up generators,” Desmond explained. “After the 2003 blackout, Lucas’s father insisted on the upgrade. A few people were stuck in the elevators then, and he didn’t want anyone else to have to deal with that kind of experience. Looks like we owe Jeremiah Rain a big thank you.”

I’d never been so pleased to hear about engineering foresight before. Hauling ourselves up eighty flights of stairs would have been exhausting. I’d have rather slept in the stairwell. And given how close sunrise was, I probably
would
have fallen asleep in the stairwell.

Moments later the door chimed and slid open, and we were greeted by three men with guns aimed at our heads.