House of Earth and Blood (Crescent City) (42 page)

Until he’d asked her out at last. And she had said yes. Had started down that road.

To the wolves, she was Connor’s, and he was hers.

Message me when you’re home safe.

Her chest tightened and tightened, the walls pushing in, squeezing—

She forced herself to take a long breath. To inhale to the point where her ribs strained from holding it in. Then to exhale, pushing-pushing-pushing, until she was heaving out the pure gut-shredding panic that burned through her whole body like acid.

Bryce wasn’t a wolf. She didn’t play by their rules of courtship. And she’d been stupid and scared of what agreeing to that date had meant, and Danika certainly didn’t care one way or another if Bryce had some meaningless hookup, but—Bryce hadn’t ever worked up the nerve to explain to Ithan after she’d seen and heard his messages.

She’d kept them all. Listening to them was a solid central arc of her emotional death-spiral routine. The culmination of it, of course, being Danika’s last, foolishly happy messages.

Ithan knocked on Sabine’s door, letting it swing wide to reveal a
sunny white office whose windows looked into the verdant greenery of the Den’s park. Sabine sat at her desk, her corn-silk hair near-glowing in the light. “You have some nerve coming here.”

Words dried up in Bryce’s throat as she took in the pale face, the slender hands interlaced on the oak desk, the narrow shoulders that belied her tremendous strength. Danika had been pure wildfire; her mother was solid ice. And if Sabine had killed her, if Sabine had done this …

Roaring began in Bryce’s head.

Hunt must have sensed it, scented it, because he stepped up to Bryce’s side, Ithan lingering in the hall, and said, “We wanted to meet with the Prime.”

Irritation flickered in Sabine’s eyes. “About?”

“About your daughter’s murder.”

“Stay the fuck out of our business,” Sabine barked, setting the glass on her table rattling. Bile burned Bryce’s throat, and she focused on not screaming or launching herself at the woman.

Hunt’s wing brushed Bryce’s back, a casual gesture to anyone watching, but that warmth and softness steadied her. Danika. For Danika, she’d do this.

Sabine’s eyes blazed. “Where the Hel is my sword?”

Bryce refused to answer, to even snap that the sword was and would always be Danika’s, and said, “We have intel that suggests Danika was stationed at Luna’s Temple the night the Horn was stolen. We need the Prime to confirm.” Bryce kept her eyes on the carpet, the portrait of terrified, shameful submission, and let Sabine dig her own grave.

Sabine demanded, “What the fuck does this have to do with her death?”

Hunt said calmly, “We’re putting together a picture of Danika’s movements before the kristallos demon killed her. Who she might have met, what she might have seen or done.”

Another bit of bait: to see her reaction to the demon’s breed, when it hadn’t yet been made public. Sabine didn’t so much as blink. Like she was already familiar with it—perhaps because she’d been
summoning it all along. Though she might just not have cared, Bryce supposed. Sabine hissed, “Danika wasn’t at the temple that night. She had nothing to do with the Horn being stolen.”

Bryce avoided the urge to close her eyes at the lie that confirmed everything.

Claws slid from Sabine’s knuckles, embedding in her desk. “Who told you Danika was at the temple?”

“No one,” Bryce lied. “I thought I might have remembered her mentioning—”

“You
thought
?” Sabine sneered, voice rising to imitate Bryce’s. “It’s hard to remember, isn’t it, when you were high, drunk, and fucking strangers.”

“You’re right,” Bryce breathed, even as Hunt growled. “This was a mistake.” She didn’t give Hunt time to object before she turned on a heel and left, gasping for breath.

How she kept her back straight, her stomach inside her body, she had no idea.

She barely heard Hunt as he fell into step behind her. Couldn’t stand to look at Ithan as she entered the hallway and found him waiting against the far wall.

Back down the stairs. She didn’t dare look at the wolves she passed.

She knew Ithan trailed, but she didn’t care, didn’t care—

“Quinlan.” Hunt’s voice cut through the marble stairwell. She made it down another flight when he said again, “
Quinlan
.”

It was sharp enough that she paused. Looked up over a shoulder. Hunt’s eyes scanned her face—worry, not triumph at Sabine’s blatant lie, shining there.

But Ithan stood between them on the steps, eyes hard as stones. “Tell me what this is about.”

Hunt drawled, “It’s classified, asshole.”

Ithan’s snarl rumbled through the stairwell.

“It’s starting again,” Bryce said quietly, aware of all the cameras, of Micah’s order to keep this quiet. Her voice was rasping. “We’re trying to figure out why and who’s behind it. Three murders so far. The same way. Be careful—warn your pack to be careful.”

Ithan’s face remained unreadable. That had been one of his assets as a sunball player—his ability to keep from broadcasting moves to his opponents. He’d been brilliant, and cocky as fuck, yes, but that arrogance had been well earned through hours of practice and brutal discipline.

Ithan’s face remained cold. “I’ll let you know if I hear anything.”

“Do you need our numbers?” Hunt asked coolly.

Ithan’s lip curled. “I have hers.” She struggled to meet his stare, especially as he asked, “Are you going to bother to reply this time?”

She turned on her heel and rushed down the stairs into the reception hall.

The Prime of the wolves stood in it now. Talking to the receptionist, hunched over his redwood cane, Danika’s grandfather lifted his withered face as she came to an abrupt halt in front of him.

His warm brown eyes—those were Danika’s eyes, staring out at her.

The ancient male offered her a sad, kind smile. It was worse than any of the sneers or snarls.

Bryce managed to bow her head before she bolted through the glass doors.

She made it to the gates without running into anyone else. Had almost made it onto the street when Ithan caught up to her, Hunt a step behind. Ithan said, “You never deserved him.”

He might as well have drawn the knife she knew was hidden in his boot and plunged it into her chest. “I know,” she rasped.

The pups were still playing, bounding through the high grasses. He nodded to the second level, to where Sabine’s office overlooked the greenery. “You made some dumb fucking choices, Bryce, but I never pegged you for stupid. She wants you dead.” Another confirmation, perhaps.

The words snapped something in her. “Likewise.” She pointed to the gates, unable to stop the rage boiling in her as she realized that all signs pointed toward Sabine. “Connor would be ashamed of you for letting Amelie run rampant. For letting a piece of shit like that be your Alpha.”

Claws glinted at Ithan’s knuckles. “Don’t you
ever
say his name again.”

“Walk away,” Hunt said softly to him. Lightning licked along his wings.

Ithan looked inclined to rip out his throat, but Hunt was already at Bryce’s side, following her onto the sun-drenched street. She didn’t dare look at Amelie or her pack at the gates, sneering and snickering at them.

“You’re trash, Quinlan!” Amelie shouted as they passed by, and her friends roared with laughter.

Bryce couldn’t bear to see if Ithan laughed with them.

44

“
S
abine lied about Danika not being at the temple. But we need a solid plan for catching her if she’s summoning this demon,” Hunt said to Bryce twenty minutes later over lunch. The angel devoured no less than three bowls of cereal, one after another. She hadn’t spoken on the way back to the apartment. Had needed the entire walk here to reel herself back together.

Bryce pushed at the puffed rice floating around in her own bowl. She had zero interest in eating. “I’m sick of waiting. Just arrest her.”

“She’s the unofficial Head of Moonwood and basically the Prime of the wolves,” Hunt cautioned. “If not in title, then in every other way. We have to be careful how we approach this. The fallout could be catastrophic.”

“Sure.” Bryce poked at her cereal again. She knew she should be screaming, knew she should be marching back to the Den to kill that fucking bitch. Bryce ground her teeth. They’d had no word from Tharion or Ruhn, either.

Hunt tapped a finger on the glass table, weighing her expression. Then he mercifully switched subjects. “I get Ithan’s history, but what’s Amelie’s problem with you?”

Maybe Bryce was just tired, but she wound up saying, “Did you ever see them—the messages from that night? Every newspaper had them on the front page after they leaked.”

Hunt stilled. “Yeah,” he said gently. “I did.”

She shrugged, swirling the cereal in her bowl. Around and around.

“Amelie had … a thing. For Connor. Since they were kids. I think she still does.”

“Ah.”

“And—you know about me and Connor.”

“Yeah. I’m sorry.”

She hated those two words. Had heard them so many times she just fucking
hated
them. She said, “When she saw the messages from that night, I think Amelie finally realized why he had never returned her feelings.”

He frowned. “It’s been two years.”

“So?” It sure as shit hadn’t done anything to help her feel better about it.

Hunt shook his head. “People still bring them up? Those messages?”

“Of course.” She snorted, shaking her head. “Just look me up online, Athalar. I had to shut down every account I had.” The thought made her stomach churn, nauseating panic tightening every muscle and vein in her body. She’d gotten better about managing it—that feeling—but not by much. “People hate me. Literally
hate
me. Some of the wolf packs even wrote a song and put it online—they called it ‘I Just Hooked Up with Someone in the Bathroom, Don’t Tell Connor.’ They sing it whenever they see me.”

His face had gone cold as ice. “Which packs?”

She shook her head. She certainly wouldn’t name them, not with that murderous expression on his face. “It doesn’t matter. People are assholes.”

It was as simple as that, she’d learned. Most people were assholes, and this city was rife with them.

She sometimes wondered what they’d say if they knew about that time two winters ago when someone had sent a thousand printed-out lyric sheets of the song to her new apartment, along with mock album artwork taken from the photos she’d snapped that night. If they knew she had gone up to the roof to burn them all—but
instead wound up staring over the ledge. She wondered what would have happened if Juniper, on a whim, hadn’t called just to check in that night. Right as Bryce had braced her hands on the rail.

Only that friendly voice on the other end of the line kept Bryce from walking right off the roof.

Juniper had kept Bryce on the phone—babbling about nothing. Right until her cab had pulled up in front of the apartment. Juniper refused to hang up until she was on the roof with Bryce, laughing it off. She’d only known where to find her because Bryce had mumbled something about sitting there. And perhaps she’d rushed over because of how hollow Bryce’s voice had been when she’d said it.

Juniper had stayed to burn the copies of the song, then gone downstairs to the apartment, where they’d watched TV in bed until they fell asleep. Bryce had risen at one point to turn off the TV and use the bathroom; when she’d come back, Juniper had been awake, waiting.

Her friend didn’t leave her side for three days.

They’d never spoken of it. But Bryce wondered if Juniper had later told Fury how close it had been, how hard she’d worked to keep that phone call going while she raced over without alerting Bryce, sensing that something was wrong-wrong-wrong.

Bryce didn’t like to think about that winter. That night. But she would never stop being grateful for Juniper for that sense—that love that had kept her from making such a terrible, stupid mistake.

“Yeah,” Hunt said, “people are assholes.”

She supposed he’d had it worse than her. A lot worse.

Two centuries of slavery that was barely disguised as some sort of twisted path to redemption. Micah’s bargain with him, reduced or no, was a disgrace.

She made herself take a bite of her now-soggy cereal. Made herself ask something, anything, to clear her head a bit. “Did you make up your nickname? The Shadow of Death?”

Hunt set down his spoon. “Do I look like the sort of person who needs to make up nicknames for myself?”

“No,” Bryce admitted.

“They only call me that because I’m ordered to do that sort of shit. And I do it well.” He shrugged. “They’d be better off calling me Slave of Death.”

She bit her lip and took another bite of cereal.

Hunt cleared his throat. “I know that visit today was hard. And I know I didn’t act like it at first, Quinlan, but I’m glad you got put on this case. You’ve been … really great.”

She tucked away what his praise did to her heart, how it lifted the fog that had settled on her. “My dad was a Dracon captain in the 25th Legion. They stationed him at the front for the entire three years of his military service. He taught me a few things.”

“I know. Not about you being taught, I mean. But about your dad. Randall Silago, right? He’s the one who taught you to shoot.”

She nodded, an odd sort of pride wending its way through her.

Hunt said, “I never fought beside him, but I heard of him the last time I was sent to the front—around twenty-six years ago. Heard about his sharpshooting, I mean. What does he think about …” A wave of his hand to her, the city around them.

“He wants me to move back home. I had to go to the mat with him—literally—to win the fight about going to CCU.”

“You physically fought him?”

“Yeah. He said if I could pin him, then I knew enough about defense to hold my own in the city. Turns out, I’d been paying more attention than I’d let him believe.”

Hunt’s low laugh skittered over her skin. “And he taught you how to shoot a sniper rifle?”

“Rifles, handguns, knives, swords.” But guns were Randall’s specialty. He’d taught her ruthlessly, over and over and over again.

“You ever use any outside of practice?”

I love you, Bryce.

Close your eyes, Danika.

“When I had to,” she rasped. Not that it had made a difference when it mattered.

Her phone buzzed. She glanced at the message from Jesiba and groaned.

A client is coming in thirty minutes. Be there or you’ve got a one-way ticket to life as a vole.

Bryce set down her spoon, aware of Hunt watching her, and began to type.
I’ll be at
—

Jesiba added another message before Bryce could reply.
And where is that paperwork from yesterday?

Bryce deleted what she’d written, and began writing,
I’ll get it
—

Another message from Jesiba:
I want it done by noon
.

“Someone’s pissed off,” Hunt observed, and Bryce grimaced, grabbing up her bowl and hurrying to the sink.

The messages kept coming in on the walk over, along with half a dozen threats to turn her into various pathetic creatures, suggesting someone had indeed royally pissed off Jesiba. When they reached the gallery door, Bryce unlocked the physical and magical locks and sighed. “Maybe you should stay on the roof this afternoon. She’s probably going to be monitoring me on the cameras. I don’t know if she’s seen you inside before, but …”

He clapped a hand on her shoulder. “Got it, Quinlan.” His black jacket buzzed, and he pulled out his phone. “It’s Isaiah,” he murmured, and nodded to the now-open door of the gallery, through which they could see Syrinx scratching at the library door, yowling his greeting to Lehabah. “I’ll check in later,” he said.

He waited to fly to the roof, she knew, until she’d locked the gallery door behind herself. A message from him appeared fifteen minutes later.
Isaiah needs me for an opinion on a different case. Heading over now. Justinian’s watching you. I’ll be back in a few hours.

She wrote back,
Is Justinian hot?

He answered,
Who’s the pervert now?

A smile pulled at her mouth.

Her thumbs were hovering over the keyboard to reply when her phone rang. Sighing, she raised it to her ear to answer.

“Why aren’t you ready for the client?” Jesiba demanded.

This morning had been a wreck. Standing guard on the roof of the gallery hours later, Hunt couldn’t stop thinking it. Yes, they’d
caught Sabine in her lie, and all signs pointed toward her as the murderer, but … Fuck. He hadn’t realized how rough it’d be on Quinlan, even knowing Sabine hated her. Hadn’t realized the other wolves had it out for Bryce, too. He should never have brought her. Should have gone himself.

The hours ticked by, one by one, as he mulled it all over.

Hunt made sure no one was flying over the roof before he pulled up the video footage, accessed from the 33rd’s archives. Someone had compiled the short reel, no doubt an attempt to get a better image of the demon than a toe or a claw.

The kristallos was a gray blur as it exploded from the front door of the apartment building. They hadn’t been able to get footage of it actually entering the building, which suggested it had either been summoned on-site or had snuck through the roof, and no nearby cameras had picked it up, either. But here it was, shattering the front door, so fast it was just gray smoke.

And then—there
she
was. Bryce. Hurtling through the door, barefoot and running on shards of glass, table leg in her hand, pure rage twisting her face.

He’d seen the footage two years ago, but it made slightly more sense now, knowing that Randall Silago had trained her. Watching her leap over cars, careening down streets, as fast as a Fae male. Her face was smeared with blood, her lips curled in a snarl he couldn’t hear.

But even in the grainy video footage, her eyes were hazy. Still fighting those drugs.

She definitely didn’t remember that he’d been in that interrogation room with her, if she’d asked about the messages during lunch. And, fuck—he’d known everything from her phone had leaked, but he’d never thought about what it must have been like.

She was right: people were assholes.

Bryce cleared Main Street, sliding over the hood of a car, and then the footage ended.

Hunt blew out a breath. If it really was Sabine behind this … Micah had given him permission to take out the culprit. But Bryce might very well do it herself.

Hunt frowned toward the wall of fog just visible across the river, the mists impenetrable even in the afternoon sunlight. The Bone Quarter.

No one knew what went on in the Sleeping City. If the dead roamed through the mausoleums, if the Reapers patrolled and ruled like kings, if it was merely mist and carved stone and silence. No one flew over it—no one dared.

But Hunt sometimes felt like the Bone Quarter watched them, and some people claimed that their beloved dead could communicate through the Oracle or cheap market psychics.

Two years ago, Bryce hadn’t been at Danika’s Sailing. He’d looked. The most important people in Crescent City had gone, but she hadn’t been there. Either to avoid Sabine killing her on sight, or for reasons of her own. After what he’d seen today, his money was on the former.

So she hadn’t witnessed Sabine pushing the ancient black boat into the Istros, the gray silk-shrouded box—all that remained of Danika’s body—in its center. Hadn’t counted the seconds as it drifted into the muddy waters, holding her breath with all those on shore to see if the boat would be picked up by that swift current that would bring it to the shores of the Bone Quarter, or if it would overturn, Danika’s unworthy remains given to the river and the beasts who swam within it.

But Danika’s boat headed straight for the mist-shrouded island across the river, the Under-King deeming her worthy, and more than one person had heaved a sigh. The audio from the apartment building’s shitty hall camera of Danika begging for mercy had leaked a day before.

Hunt had suspected that half the people who’d come to her Sailing hoped Danika’s begging meant she’d be given to the river, that they could deem the haughty and wild former Alpha a coward.

Sabine, clearly aware of those anticipating such an outcome, had only waited until the river gates opened to reveal the swirling mists of the Bone Quarter, the boat tugged inside by invisible hands, and then left. She didn’t wait to see the Sailings for the rest of the Pack of Devils.

But Hunt and everyone else had. It had been the last time he’d seen Ithan Holstrom. Weeping as he pushed his brother’s remains into the blue waters, so distraught his sunball teammates had been forced to hold him up. The cold-eyed male who’d served as escort today was a wholly different person from that boy.

Talented
, Hunt had heard Naomi say of Ithan in her endless running commentary about the Aux packs and how they stacked up to the 33rd. Beyond his skill on the sunball field, Ithan Holstrom was a gifted warrior, who had made the Drop and come within spitting distance of Connor’s power. Naomi always said that despite being cocky, Ithan was a solid male: fair-minded, smart, and loyal.

And a fucking prick, it seemed.

Hunt shook his head, again staring toward the Bone Quarter.

Did Danika Fendyr roam that misty island? Or part of her, at least? Did she remember the friend who, even so long after her death, took no shit from anyone who insulted her memory? Did she know that Bryce would do anything, possibly descend to the level of rage forever preserved in the video, to destroy her killer? Even if that killer was Danika’s own mother?