Twice Bitten (9 page)

Gabriel, his expression all nonchalance, picked up his pile of cards and fanned them in his hand. “You agreed to these arrangements, Tony, if you’ll recall.”

So the bully was Tony, head of the Great Northwestern Pack and the man who ruled the shifter retreat in Aurora.

“Bullshit,” Tony coughed out in reply. He would have been handsome, but the chip on his shoulder tightened his features unflatteringly.

“My lieutenant,” Tony continued, “agreed to the arrangements because that was the only way we could get a word in edgewise. You called the convocation, Keene. Not me, not Robin, not Jason.
You
. Speaking for myself, we don’t want it.” He shrugged. “The Bering Sea was pretty and blue when I left it. Things are fine in Aurora, and we’re happy to keep them that way.”

“It’s your
job
to keep them that way,” said the third man.

This is Jason
, Ethan silently told me.

Jason was brutally handsome—green eyes, dark hair with just a little wave to it, killer cheekbones, curvy lips, the tiniest bit of a southern drawl in that honeyed voice. Altogether, it was a dangerous combination. “You’re the protector of the keep.”

“And that’s exactly my point,” Tony muttered, tossing a couple of cards on the table with a flick of his wrist. “I am the protector of the keep. And when the time has come to retire to that keep, we do it. We don’t convene to ‘talk it over.’ That is political, strategic bullshit.” He glanced over at Ethan. “Vampire bullshit. All due respect, vampire.”

“Ditto,” Ethan said, a surprising amount of venom in his voice. I bit back a proud smile; he seemed to be adopting a little of my snark.

“Things in Chicago—,” Gabriel began, but he was interrupted by Tony, who put out a hand.

“Things in Chicago don’t concern us,” Tony said. “There aren’t any Packs in Chicago, and there’s a damned good reason for that. Chicago isn’t a shifter city.”

Tony’s animosity charged the air in the room, that prickle of magic now strong enough to lift the hair on my arms. I shifted uncomfortably, my lungs tight as the pressure in the room shifted, a magical side effect of the buildup of shifter tension.

“Chicago is a city of power,” Gabriel said quietly, throwing a card onto the table, plucking a new card from the remainder pile, and adding that one to the fan of cards in his hand.

At least, that was all I saw him do, but those simple motions cut through the magic in the air. I sucked in a breath, the weight lifting from my chest. Apex, indeed.

“And that we don’t have an official presence here,” Gabe continued, “doesn’t mean we won’t be affected. Vamps are out. They’re in the public eye, for better or worse, and we can’t expect that humans will be satisfied with the notion that bleeders are the only supernaturals in the world.”

“So that’s your position?” asked Jason. “You’re bringing us here to, what, get us to agree to announce ourselves?” He shook his head. “I won’t do that. The vamps came out of the closet, and they got riots and Congressional hearings. We come out, and what do we get?”

“We get experimented on,” said the fourth and final shifter, who must have been Robin, head of the Western Pack. He was the one with the dark sunglasses. “We get incarcerated in military facilities, shipped to God knows where so stratcom officers can figure out how to use us as weapons.” He lifted a hand and flipped up his shades; I nearly flinched at the sight of his eyes—milky blue, staring blankly in our direction. Was he sightless?

“No, thank you,” he quietly said, then lowered his sunglasses again. “Count me out, and count out the rest of the Western Pack. We aren’t interested.”

“I appreciate the fact that you’ve guessed my agenda and you’re ready to vote,” Gabriel said dryly. “But this isn’t the convocation, and I haven’t offered a resolution, so let’s keep our fortune-telling to ourselves, shall we?”

There were humphs from the table, but no outright objections.

“What I want,” Gabriel continued, “is to state the question and ask the Packs. That’s my agenda. Do we stay and face the coming tide?” He glanced up and raised his gaze to Ethan. The two of them stared at each other, fear and power and anger combined in Gabriel’s expression, the “coming tide” apparently vampire related. “Or do we leave now?”

“Which of those decisions is safer?” Tony asked.

“And which,” Jason put in, “is more irresponsible?”

“Instability,” said Robin. “Death. Warfare. And not among shifters. Not among the Packs. Vampire business is not our business. It never has been.”

And there’s the rub
, Ethan silently told me.
Their unwillingness to step forward
.

No, their unwillingness to sacrifice themselves, their families, on our behalf
, I corrected, but kept the thought to myself. It was a decision they’d made before, during the Second Clearing. And while I sympathized with the vampires who’d been lost, I understood the shifters’ urge to protect themselves from the chaos. I’d leave it to the philosophers to decide whether what they’d done had been morally repugnant.

“The viability of this world is our business,” Gabriel said. “The Packs are large. Social networks. Businesses. Financial interests weren’t an issue two hundred years ago. But they are now.”

Tony put a card on the table with a decisive snap, then plucked a new one from the stack. “And how much of your friendly new attitude has to do with our sword-wearing buddies over there?” He looked at me, lip curled, hatred and a creepy kind of lust in his eyes. “Particularly the chick?”

Gabriel offered a low growl that made the hair at my neck stand on end. I gripped my katana tighter and glared back with menace I didn’t have to feign.

“Because you are a guest in this city,” Gabriel said, “I’m going to offer you an opportunity to apologize to Merit, to me, and to Tonya.”

“Apologies,” Tony threw out.

Gabriel rolled his eyes but, maybe in deference to Tony’s status, let it pass. He glanced over at Robin. “Childishness aside, I hear your point, brother. I only bring the issue to the Packs. They’ll decide as they will.”

The room went silent. After a time, Robin nodded. Jason followed suit.

It was a long, quiet time before Tony spoke again. “When we convened in Tucson,” he said, “we pledged to adhere to the rule of the Packs. To let the majority decide the fate of the others.” He looked down at the table, shaking his head ruefully. “Damned if we thought the possibility of sending our sons and daughters into war was going to be the result of that decision.”

When he looked up again, his eyes swirled with something deep and unfathomable. It was the same mystical revelation I’d seen in Gabriel’s eyes when we’d first met, right before he made a cryptic remark about our intertwined futures. It was a visual expression, somehow, of a connection to the things he’d seen, the places he’d been, the lives he’d known . . . and lost.

I didn’t know what he’d seen, or why his reaction was so strong. I knew what we were asking of shifters—Gabriel had explained it well enough the night before. And Gabriel had mentioned the rumblings of humans unhappy about the fanged among them. But there was a pretty big gap between complaints and violence, and we weren’t there yet.

Regardless of the depth of his emotion, or how unwarranted his fear seemed today, he also seemed to understand the numbers were against him. Finally, he relented with a nod.

“We convene two nights hence,” Gabriel concluded. “We’ll offer a resolution to stay or return, and we’ll let the cards fall where they may.”

ConPack was a go, and so the game began again.

I felt the sharp spike of magic around the room, and not all of it shifter. When I looked over at Ethan, his eyes were wide, lips parted. There was hope in his expression.

“There’s never been an alliance between Pack and House,” Jason said.

“Not formally,” Gabriel agreed. “But as a colleague recently pointed out, the Houses didn’t have the kinds of political and economic power they do now.”

I stood a little straighter, realizing I’d been the colleague he was referring to.

Jason tilted his head to the side. “You’re suggesting an alliance would actually benefit us, as opposed to just benefiting vamps?”

“I’m suggesting that if we stay, friends will be invaluable. I imagine the Houses would be willing to entertain that kind of notion.” Gabriel glanced over at Ethan, who was trying very hard, I could tell, not to look overeager.

“No, you’re suggesting we make some kind of permanent arrangement with
vampires
.” Tony all but spit out the words, the magic around him turning peppery, vinegary, as if his fury changed its flavor.

“The world is changing,” Gabriel countered. “If we don’t keep up, we risk ending up like the pixies—creatures of dreams and fantasy and fairy tales. No one thought they’d come to that kind of end, did they? And in the end, running back to the forest didn’t save them.”

“We are not
fucking
pixies,” Tony muttered. Apparently fed up with poker and vampire politics, he threw his cards down on the table, then stood up.

I tightened my grip on my katana, but Ethan nodded me back.

“Convocation is one thing,” he said, punching a finger into the tabletop for emphasis. Anger swirled in his eyes like a freshly stoked fire. “But I’m not playing nice with vampires—I won’t lose family—because you feel guilty about something that happened two hundred years ago, something none of us was involved in. Fuck that.”

Tony clapped his hands together and threw them up like a dealer leaving his table. Then he disappeared out the red leather door, leaving it swinging angrily behind him.

“He usually does,” Jason muttered, and I assumed this wasn’t the first time Tony had thrown a temper tantrum. His concerns were understandable, the risks real. But dramatics weren’t exactly helping.

“I don’t know,” Robin said, his shaded gaze on the door, “but this feels different.”

The door opened again, and a man who had Gabriel’s same sun-streaked hair and golden eyes looked in, one eyebrow arched in amusement. He wore a snug black T-shirt and jeans, his body long and lean. His shoulder-length hair was a shade blonder than Gabe’s, but his week’s worth of facial hair was a shade darker.

That difference aside, there was no mistaking the relationship. They both had deep-set eyes and brutally handsome faces, and he exuded the same aura of power and unadulterated maleness. This was a younger Keene, I guessed.

“Commotion, bro?” he asked.

“Drama,” Gabriel replied, then glanced over at us. “Ethan, Merit, this is Adam. Adam, Ethan and Merit. Adam is the youngest of the Keene brothers.”

“Youngest and by far the smoothest,” Adam said, checking out Ethan and me in turn. When he got to me, I saw a flicker of interest in his eyes, the appreciation of trim leather and scabbarded steel. His gaze lifted, met mine, and I felt the same punch of power and history I’d gotten when I’d met Gabriel. But Adam’s punch, maybe because he was younger, had a greener, rawer feel.

Regardless, it took me a moment to drag my gaze away from Adam Keene and those hypnotic golden eyes, and I got a look of chastisement in green ones when I finally managed it.

Well, chastisement or jealousy.

I arched an eyebrow back at Ethan, then turned to Gabriel. “Brothers?”

“I’m the oldest. Mom wanted a big family, and she thought it would be funny if we were named alphabetically. She made it all the way to baby Adam, here, before she learned better.”

“Hello, baby Adam,” I said.

He smiled, a deep dimple perking up at the left corner of his mouth. My stomach wobbled a little.

Oh, yeah. This one was dangerous.

“Down, boy,” Gabe said. “If she’s going to be taken in by a Keene, it’s not going to be you.” He glanced back at me and winked. If I hadn’t seen him with his wife and would-be son and hadn’t known he was happily married, I’d have thought he was flirting with me. As it was, I figured he was showing off for baby brother.

Without warning, Gabriel pushed back his chair and stood up, then walked to the red leather door. His expression was severe.

Confused, I looked at Ethan.
What’s happening?
I silently asked him. He looked at the door for a moment and, for the first time since I’d known him, seemed unsure of the protocol.

But when the other shifters followed Gabriel back into the bar, Ethan followed. I stepped in line behind him.

We found the alphas and the baby brother at the bar’s front window, their broad-shouldered backs to us, their gazes on the dark street outside. The bar was silent—the music now off—and their body language was tense, the magic in the air prickly and bated as if they were waiting for something to happen.

“Robin?” Gabriel asked, without turning to face him.

Robin shook his head. “I don’t feel him. I don’t feel anybody.”

“I don’t like this,” Gabriel said. “Something’s off. And it’s too quiet out there.”

“Sentinel,” Ethan said, “do you sense anything?”

“What kind of anything?” I asked.

“The shifter who left,” Gabriel said. “Do you sense him . . . waiting?”

I closed my eyes, and with some trepidation dropped my guard against the sounds and smells of the world. I immersed myself in a thick, warm blanket of sensation, of latent magic, of the heat and smell of nearby bodies.

But there was nothing unusual. Nothing out of the ordinary—assuming a bar full of very intense, magically leaking shifters was
in
the ordinary.

“Nothing,” I said, opening my eyes again. “There’s nothing unusual out there.”

I spoke too soon. That was when I heard it—the rumble of exhaust pipes. The hair at the back of my neck stood on end, something in the air outside suddenly tripping my vampiric instincts, something that vibrated the air in a way that wasn’t explained by the roar of the hog. A tang filled the air—the sharp, astringent burn of exhaust and something else . . . gunpowder?

Maybe because of that last dose of training, my mouth and body were moving before my brain had a chance to catch up.

“
Get down!
” I ordered, taking the necessary steps forward, my hands at their shoulders, pressing them down, and when they didn’t budge, I yelled it again.

They hit the ground just as the hammer clicked outside, milliseconds before bullets shattered the glass in the picture window.

Adam had dropped on top of Gabriel, his arms a protective cocoon over Gabriel’s head. Ethan had done the same thing to me. His body was over mine, his arms over my head, his lips at my ear. The contact made me shudder with desire, even as chaos broke out around us. And I wasn’t thrilled about the role reversal; I was
his
guard, after all. I was supposed to protect him. But my rank as Sentinel didn’t stop him from surrounding me with his body and from yelling, “
Be still!
” even as I struggled beneath him, trying to reverse our positions to keep him out of harm’s way.

Be still
, he silently repeated, as I huddled on the floor, enveloped by the feel and warmth and smell of him.

“What the fuck is this?” Gabe yelled out, his voice thick with fury, magic peppering the smoke-and-glass-filled air.

“Everyone behind the bar!” Jason said, glancing up, equal menace in his eyes. I’d only ever seen two shifters angry—Nick Breckenridge and his father, Michael. At the time, they’d been pissed at me and Ethan, thinking we’d leveled a threat against them. They’d been protecting family, a shifter instinct. Now I saw the same ferocity in Jason’s eyes—the anger at being threatened, the need to protect family.

I nodded at Jason, pulled one of Ethan’s hands into mine, and gave his body an instructional shove. “
Bar
,” I yelled at him as bullets continued raining around us, a hailstorm of steel. The vicinity of it prickled my instincts further, making me want to fight and give chase—and not just because my Master, the one who’d made me, was in the line of fire.

No—I wanted to fight because I was a predator, two months past the first time I’d felt the tug of flight-or-fight. I’d tempered my steel with my own blood . . . and I was ready to feed that steel with someone else’s.

Ethan maneuvered his body off mine, then let me tug him to his feet. We did a half run, half crawl to the bar, then dropped behind it, moving to the end to give the shifters room to join us. They crawled in behind, then turned to put their backs to the bar, whipping out weapons to respond to the cavalcade of bullets.

“Put the guns away!” Gabriel said over the din. “This is going to be enough of a police clusterfuck. We don’t need our bullets being analyzed, too.”

Guns were dutifully lowered, but cell phones quickly replaced them; calls were made, I assumed, to the alphas’ respective Packs.

I turned back to Ethan, giving his body a once-over.
You’re all right?
I silently asked him, then raised my gaze to his eyes.

They’d gone silver.

My stomach sank, my first thought that one of the shifters had been shot and Ethan was vamping out. There could hardly have been a worse time for biting.

But then he lifted a hand to my cheek, his silvered pupils tracking across my face, as if assuring himself that I was okay.

I’m fine
, I told him.

That was when Gabriel, on my other side, let out a string of curses. I immediately looked to the left and offered my own swear—Berna had just emerged from a door on the other side of the bar, shock in her expression.

“What in the sam—”

Someone called out, “Berna—get down! Go back!”

She looked toward us, but she was too surprised to process the order, even as bullets flew through the air.

Someone had to get to her.

Someone with
speed
.

I was up and moving before Ethan could stop me, vaulting over alphas on my way to her side. Bullets still rushed around us—the perpetrator well armed and apparently prepped for a prolonged assault—but I ignored them.

After all, I was immortal.

She was not.

I felt the tear of bullets as I ran toward her, knife-hot pain ripping through skin and muscle. There was panic in her eyes when I reached her, a cloud of astringent fear marking her spot in the bar. I’m sure my eyes had silvered—not from hunger, but from adrenaline—and the sight of it must have frightened her. But we needed to move, and I didn’t have time for comforting.

I also had less than a second to make the decision whether to move her back into the room she’d come from, or take her away to the bar.

I had no clue what—or whom else—that door led to. The kitchen? The back exit? If so, a secondary assault on the building?

No, thanks. I opted for the bar and the devils I already knew. I put myself between Berna’s body and the window, then used the speed and strength I’d been gifted with to half run, half tow her back to the bar.

When we were tucked behind the barricade, I situated her in the corner, which I thought offered the most protection from still-flying bullets.

She looked up at me, her face pale, but her expression just this side of pissed off. Blood blossomed across her shoulder. “Shots!” she said, jerking her chin toward her wound. “At me!”

I ignored the internal prick of interest, the sudden pang of hunger that tightened my stomach. This wasn’t just blood—it was shifter blood. Like the difference between tomato juice and a Bloody Mary, the smell carried an extra tang of something—something animal.

Something intoxicating.

I shook my head to clear the thought. Now was definitely not the time. . . .

Focusing on the task at hand, I pulled the T-shirt away from her shoulder and found a gouge at the edge of her collarbone. She was bleeding and the skin was torn, but it didn’t look like the bullet had actually penetrated.

“I think it just grazed your shoulder,” I told her.

“
Meh
,” she said. “Flesh wound.”

I looked around the shelves beneath the bar, then grabbed a stack of folded white towels. I pulled off one towel from the wad, lifted her arm (and got a
hiss
of pain for my effort) and pressed the rest of the stack to the gash. I used the loose towel to hold the make-do bandage around her arm, pulling it tight enough to keep pressure on her wound, but not so tight that I cut off her circulation. She was a waitress, after all; she was probably going to need that arm.

“I’ve seen worse,” she petulantly said, but sat still while I knotted the ends.

“I don’t care,” I told her, then pointed a finger in her face when she opened her mouth to retort. “You’re bleeding, and I have fangs. Don’t push me.”

She snapped her mouth closed with an audible
click
.

I sat down again, the sting of the shots I’d taken now beginning to echo through my body as the world began to slow again.

Before I could blink, Ethan was in front of me, checking my body for wounds. I heard the
plink
of metal on the floor beside me and looked down. A bullet rolled across the floor, its end flattened. There was a corresponding hole in the thigh of my pants, the skin beneath it bloodstained, but healthy and pink. Score one for quick-speed vampire healing.

I looked up again and found Ethan’s eyes on me, another bullet in his open palm. From the sting in my shoulder blade, I assumed that was where I’d taken a second hit.

You could have been killed.

Doubtful. But she could have.

He looked at me for a moment, concern in his eyes. And then, finally, his expression shifted. Instead of fear, there was pride. My move to help Berna might have scared him, but he was proud I’d made it.

Of course, he’d played the hero, too.
Thanks for covering me at the window
, I told him.

He nodded, a blush creeping across his perfectly sculpted cheekbones. I gnawed the edge of my lip, the protectiveness in his eyes curling something deep in my abdomen. He didn’t speak, but he nodded, as if admitting the emotion in his eyes.

And I had no clue what to do with it.

Heavy seconds passed before I turned back to the shifters. Adam and Robin still had weapons in hand, but they’d obeyed Gabriel’s order not to fire back. Jason, on hands and knees, was crawling toward the far door, maybe to find out if it offered us an exit.

Adrenaline giving way to fear, that idea was suddenly very appealing. Sure, the shooter was outside and we were tucked behind a solid oak bar. But what was to stop him from deciding he wanted a little one-on-one contact, and rushing the bar? Yes, I’d proven I could play the strong Sentinel when necessary, but the thought of being rescued sure seemed attractive right now.

I thought about Noah’s offer and the fact that I’d have a partner in Jonah if I consented to joining the Red Guard. Having backup certainly would have come in handy, although I doubted the shifters would appreciate an underground vampire army’s being called in to deal with their problems.