“D’Ambray came in at some point, with five other people. They entered as a group,” Derek said. “Also someone fired a shotgun slug into that wall.” He nodded at the opposite wall.
“Before or after the murder?”
He shook his head. “No way to tell. It’s fresh.”
Ascanio nodded at the hallway. “Dorie left after the murder. Her scent trail is separate from the others, tainted with blood, and older. You can see her bloody tracks.” He pointed to the side. “She ran out of here.”
A member of the Pack had murdered a Master of the Dead. A small part of me had been hoping that Hugh’s accusation wasn’t true, and now that hope died a sad death.
I tried to make sense of it. “So she killed Mulradin for some reason. Either it was some sort of accident or she did it on purpose. If it was an accident, how did Hugh get involved? If it was a premeditated murder, Hugh either hired her to do it, forced her to do it, or happened to somehow be watching the apartment when she did it.” That last one didn’t seem likely. “Would she kill for money?”
“I doubt it,” Derek said. “She isn’t violent. I wouldn’t call her a nice person, but she wouldn’t kill someone on her own.”
Why did Hugh let Dorie go? I rubbed my face. It didn’t make me any smarter. If I were Hugh, what would I do with Dorie? How could I use her? If Dorie was dead, the Pack couldn’t turn her over in time for the deadline, which would guarantee a war. We could still produce her corpse or acknowledge that she was the killer and offer to pay restitution. But if Dorie was alive, things would get really complicated. If we did turn her over, we would look weak. If we didn’t, we would look like we thought we were above the law. There was no good way to resolve this situation, and the responsibility for it would land on my shoulders. Whichever decision I made, the Pack would detest me for it.
No, Hugh wouldn’t kill her. Why, when he could kill a whole flock of birds with one stone? “Dorie is still alive.”
Ascanio raised his eyebrows at me.
“The question isn’t why Dorie killed Mulradin, it’s what we do about Dorie. We have to get out of here.”
“We have company,” Robert announced, looking out the window.
I willed my legs to move and crossed the room. My head was still swimming. Riders flooded the street, one, two . . . twelve. The leader rode a familiar dark horse. Hugh.
We’d been in the apartment about six minutes, and here he was.
Desandra leaned out to glance past Robert. Her clawed fingers grazed the wall.
Magic pulsed through the window in a flash of dark green. Desandra jerked her hand-paw away and cursed. “I know, I know. I touched something. My fault.”
Tiny runes ignited in the paint of the windowsill, pulsed, and vanished, as a ward snapped closed.
I spun around. “Door?”
Ascanio was already checking. “Warded,” he called out a second later.
We were trapped. Great. I moved to the window and pushed against the ward with my palm. It nipped at me with magic teeth. Not a blood ward. This was incantation-based and someone had sunk a wallop of power into it. Shit.
Ascanio returned.
“Is it breakable?” Robert asked me.
“Sure. Give me an hour to figure out how it was made.”
Derek swore.
I dropped on my knees by the window and slid my hand against the ward, trying to trace its boundaries. Magic scraped at my skin with pale green lightning. Ouch. If Hugh had warded the whole building, we’d be in trouble.
At the street, the riders dismounted.
I found an edge of the ward. Another edge. “He didn’t ward the entire building. He just warded the openings, the windows and the door.”
Derek bared his teeth. “Ceiling or floor?”
“Ceiling,” Robert said.
It would take them at least a few minutes to break through the ceiling onto the roof. A few minutes, and nothing between us and Hugh except for a busted door. I ran to the door.
“Where are you going?” Ascanio called.
“To buy us some time. Stay in the bedroom out of sight.”
“Ask him about the cops!” Robert called.
Good point. If Hugh had bought the Atlanta PAD, we needed to know.
The front door stood ajar, just as we had left it. The sound of people running up the stairs floated up.
I couldn’t break this ward, but I had enough magic left to make one of my own. I dipped my fingers in my blood and touched the bottom corner of the door frame on my side.
The pounding steps drew closer.
I concentrated. The magic rushed out from me, twisted into an invisible current, kissed the empty air of the doorway, and snapped like a broken rubber band. The pain lanced my mind and for a second the world teetered in a red haze. Ow. I forced myself upright. Breach that, you sonovabitch.
The steps reached the landing just below us.
I leaned against the wall and tried to look casual. All this practicing must be paying off, because a couple of years ago I couldn’t have broken the ward and put up one of my own in the space of fifteen minutes. It still hurt, but at least I wouldn’t give Hugh the satisfaction of passing out in front of him.
Hugh conquered the last few steps and halted by the door. He still wore jeans tucked into tall riding boots, a black wool sweater, and a plain cloak, splattered with mud and melting snow. Gloves shielded his hands. His height and broad shoulders guaranteed that people would maintain their distance, but if he pulled the hood over his face, he wouldn’t stand out too much. Hugh in his inconspicuous mode.
The hood was down now. I scrutinized Hugh’s face, looking for any sign of the wounds Curran and I had left on him. I knew they weren’t there, but my brain refused to acknowledge it. I just couldn’t help myself. No old scars on the square chin or the cut jaw. No hint of crushed cartilage in the nose. I looked higher and ran straight into his eyes. They brimmed with arrogance, power, and humor. Hugh was having fun.
I took a rag out of my pocket and began cleaning Slayer, drawing the cloth along the pale blade.
Nick followed Hugh to the door. He was wearing clothes and seemed no worse for wear. A woman walked with him, at least fifty, but strong and fit, built like she could punch a tank out. Bright red paint crossed her left cheek, an upside-down T, smudged, probably drawn with a finger. It stood for Uath, the sixth letter of the Ogham alphabet used by the ancient Celts. It meant horror or fear, and according to Voron, Uath had earned her name. My adopted father had found her years ago. She was one of his elite soldiers who later formed the backbone of the Order of Iron Dogs. Hugh must’ve inherited her. I had no idea she was still alive. Voron knew how to pick them.
Hugh flicked his fingers. Nick and Uath backed off, took a couple of steps down the stairs, and waited.
Hugh pulled a glove off his hand and reached for the doorway. His defensive spell flashed green and drained down. His fingers touched the invisible wall of my blood ward. He pushed.
I kept cleaning my sword.
“Clever girl,” Hugh said.
“Learning as I go.”
He reached into his cloak and pulled out a small white bottle.
“What is it?”
“Ibuprofen,” he said. “For your headache. I know you have one.”
Hugh, a benign and considerate mass murderer. Always thinking ahead.
Hugh shook the bottle at me.
“No, thanks. I’ve had my daily dose of poison already.”
Hugh smiled.
“Something funny?”
“The more you struggle, Kate, the more I learn about you.”
“Learn anything interesting?”
He moved, stalking around the landing. He seemed to have gotten bigger somehow since our encounter in the Black Sea. Taller, broader, stronger. Maybe it was my memory playing tricks, or maybe it was the cloak.
“You can break my ward. This morning I knew of eleven people in the world who could. Now there are twelve.”
“Whoop-de-doo.”
Hugh shrugged his shoulders. “You know what I hate about the winter in this city?”
The longer we kept talking, the more time I would buy for Derek, Ascanio, and Robert to take the ceiling apart. I raised one eyebrow. “Mmm?”
“It’s so damn cold, I wouldn’t let a dog out, but there’s no snow. There’s just this crud. It’s not rain, it’s not snow, it’s like freezing mud falling from the sky.” He rested one hand on the wall next to the side of the door. “I say we call it quits. The new Four Seasons has VIP suites. I stayed there on my last trip here. We’ll have them build us a nice fire and hide in the room, hot, dry, and cozy. We’ll order some food, some decent wine, and talk.”
“What would we talk about?”
“About the future.”
I pretended to think about it. “Pass.”
Hugh flashed his teeth in a narrow smile. Before a hungry tiger pounced on its prey, he would smile just like that.
“Where is Hibla?”
“Hibla has been reassigned.”
“Where?”
“Let it go,” he said, in that good-natured way as if we were sitting somewhere in a bar, sharing a drink, and I were venting to him about a co-worker who annoyed me. “She’s hard to kill and not worth the time.”
“When you see her, let her know I have a grave picked out for her. With a headstone and everything.”
“How about this: if you come with me, I’ll deliver her to you. You can play with her as long as you want. I’ll even heal you if she rips you up.”
“Still a pass.”
“You should reconsider. Just some friendly advice.”
“I don’t think so.”
Hugh leaned forward, his eyes amused, and looked me over, slowly, head to toe. “You look good.”
Spare me. “Nice touch letting Dorie go. If I don’t turn her over, you’ll start a bloodbath and I and the alphas will be blamed for it. If we do turn her over, we look weak and our own people will lose confidence in our leadership. Either way the Pack is destabilized and I’m the bad guy.”
“You’re beginning to catch on to how the game is played,” Hugh said.
“There’s a third possibility. I could kill Dorie and dump her dead body on your lap.”
“I don’t think so.”
He said it with absolute surety. Not a moment’s hesitation. Note to self: bluffing—learn to do it better.
“Why not?”
“Because it sends the wrong message. If you kill Dorie, every shapeshifter who has ever broken the law will wonder if they’re next on your hit list. If you go that route, nobody will follow you. I’m a bastard but even I don’t kill my own people, unless it’s absolutely necessary.”
“No, you just put them in cages and let them slowly starve to death.”
He rolled his eyes. “Of course, there is a fourth option.”
“And what’s that?”
“You come with me now,” he said. “And this whole ugly mess goes away.”
“I don’t believe you.” The words had come out almost on their own. But a look into his eyes told me he wasn’t lying. Shit. He really had come here for me. I was the sole reason Mulradin was dead and the Pack was now evacuating. Well, that was one mystery solved.
I didn’t need that kind of pressure. I had plenty to drag me down as it was.
Hugh shifted his weight, reached over, and drew a doodle on my ward. The magic nipped at his finger. It must’ve hurt. “I meant what I told you before. Their lives don’t matter to me. If I have to crush the coal to get to the diamond, I’ll do it.”
“Aha. And I’m the diamond?”
“You cut like one.”
Ha! “Flattery, really? Subtle like a hammer.”
He shrugged. “Why not? Do the shapeshifters take time to flatter you? Do they tell you how grateful they are for you sticking your neck out for their sake?” He touched the blood ward again. “Do they beg your forgiveness every time this precious blood is spilled?”