Noah stares at me a minute, with those calculating mercury vampiric eyes. Finally, he leans over me and opens the cab door. “After you.”
I climb out, and the chilled air bites through the black leather jacket I’m wearing. It’s not uncomfortable, the chill. Lately, I welcome it. Seems I’m always hot lately.
“Here, grab these and I’ll get the rest. Here are the keys to the back entrance.” Noah hands them to me and nods. “Just up the walk there, turn left down that alley.”
“Yeah, okay,” I answer, and grab the two duffel bags containing our gear.
I could have sworn we got in that taxi over an hour ago. It’s only been twenty minutes or so since we landed. Wicked-ass dream that was, and I damn sure don’t want to have another like it. It left me not only aching for Eli, but fearing what he may have become. Stepping away from the curb, I sling one pack over my shoulder and head in the direction Noah indicated. It’s dark, well after sunset. The old gray stone of our Edwardian-era guesthouse blends in with the pale haze lingering in the air. A sign hangs on an iron post that reads ABERNANTHE GUESTHOUSE. NO VACANCY. As the breeze catches the metal sign, it creaks back and forth. The typical city sounds surround me, but I tune them all out and listen close as I walk. Every noise ceases except the very, very faint ones. The lapping of the firth against the shoreline. Seabirds cooing as they bed down for the night. Pigeons. Gulls. Rats scuffling along the cobbles.
I turn down the narrow close leading to the guesthouse’s back entrance, and a soft breathy sound reaches my ears. My skin breaks out in goose bumps. The fine hairs on my arms and neck stiffen. I’m on total alert, and my eyes scan. I see nothing, but I hear. Breath, but no heartbeat. Shadows reach, stretch in awkward lengths. It’s hard to tell where the stone ends and the shadows begin. Something’s here. I feel it.
Out of nowhere, a hand encircles my throat. I drop my bags. My feet leave the ground.
Apparently, there are wily, ballsy vampires afoot in Inverness, Scotland.
“When all is said and done, Ms. Poe, you’re nothing more than a glorified human armed with pointy little weapons.” The bloodsucker knows my name? He squeezes my throat tighter, lifting me higher off the cobbles. “You can still die.” His lips pull back, gums recede, and a dozen razor-sharp teeth drop from his top jaw, jagged and lethal as shit. What the hell? I’ve only been out of the cab for three minutes. He pulls me closer. His breath alone nearly knocks me out. It reeks of old metallic blood, flesh, and decay. Sounds like a cool name for a heavy metal band. Blood, Flesh, and Decay . . .
And the smell is familiar. Like from my dream.
“When all is said and done,” I repeat his words, gasping for breath at the same time, “you’re still nothing more than an asshole.” My voice is raspy as it pushes past his fierce grip against my windpipe, and my feet aren’t even touching the ground when I rear one leg back and knee this bloodless prick in the groin. His grip loosens, just enough, and his pupils dilate. I see the pain there, in their depths. It’s all I need.
From the waist of my jeans I palm my silver blade, flip it, and jam it straight into his heart. All within, no lie, the blink of an eye.
The vampire drops me and falls to the ground. He is seizing, quivering, gurgling. His body starts to smolder, disintegrate, and finally, bubble into that disgusting pile of white junk they become when they meet their end.
He didn’t even see it coming. Funny how male vampires are way more male human than they like to admit. Target their wieners and wham—on the ground they go.
Glorified human with pointy little weapons? Kiss my ass.
“Riley, what the hell?”
I glance behind me. Noah Miles is standing on the street side, scowling down the narrow alley I’m standing in. He swaggers toward me, his gaze lowering to the quivering pile of used-to-be vampire. Mercury eyes flash so angrily, they almost glow in the dark. Ever since Edinburgh, he’s smothered the hell out of me. Edgy, watchful, and overly mother hennish. He gets on my fucking nerves. Everybody does, actually.
“I liked you better when you were just a horny, whimsical old vampire,” I say under my breath, and then sigh with frustration. “I’m fine.”
“Riley. You left me, like, ten seconds ago.”
I look at my WUP partner. “I was just . . . walking by. Heading inside.” I incline my head to the heap on the ground. “He grabbed me.” I shrug. “I let him.”
Noah mutters under his breath, something annoyed and unintelligible, and stares at me. “Come on, let’s make like a tree and get out of here.” He grabs the bags I dropped and shakes his head.
I watch Noah Miles’s broad back as he retreats to our guesthouse’s back entrance. The way he moves tells me he’s waiting on me to follow. Slow, careful, on full alert. One thing I can say about him: When he makes a vow, he damn well means every solemn word of it. A vow to protect me, keep me safe, no matter the cost. This he made to Eli, back in Edinburgh when the very real threat of the Black Fallen killing all of us lingered.
“He knew my name,” I say to Noah’s back as we stand at the door.
Noah’s shoulders rise and fall, as though he’s taking in a long, exaggerated breath. “That really doesn’t surprise me, Poe.” He glances back at me. One eyebrow lifts. “At all.”
I move ahead of him and through the door. “Just saying.”
Inside, I find the switch on the wall and flip it on. The light illuminates a small kitchen area. I move to the hallway and flip another switch. It shines on a staircase, and I head up. At the top, I find a corridor with doors. I throw open the first one and hit the light. Big bed. Fireplace. Terrace overlooking Montague Row. I throw my pack onto the fluffy pink duvet and open it, withdrawing a leather case. I open it and stare down at my cache of pointy little weapons.
“I’ll stay on the first floor,” Noah yells up.
“Yeah, okay,” I answer absentmindedly. I pull off my leather jacket and toss it on the bed, too, leaving just my black leather vest on. I truly prefer nice soft cotton, but it can’t hold my blades like leather can. Swiftly, I remove and secure on my person multiple silver daggers, knives, dirks. In my vest, the waist of my jeans, front and back. Grasping the lightweight leather holster, I push my shoulder through and secure the strap around my waist. I snug it tight. Then I eye the one remaining weapon I have.
Right now the most important.
My scatha.
What’s that? you ask. Well, in the wise words of the great Inigo Montoya, let me s’plain. From the beginning.
When I think of who I used to be, it seems as though I’m looking at someone else in an old high school yearbook or old photo album. I barely recognize myself. The line separating my old life and this one is hazy, muddled, and most of the time I don’t know if I want either one of them anymore, if given the choice. I feel icy cold inside now. Ever since Eli’s death.
In my full-blown human days, I used to be a juvenile delinquent. Then I found my mom murdered, and it set me right. With the help of loving surrogate grandparents, albeit root doctors, I became a successful tattoo artist and businesswoman. I raised my baby brother, Seth, to near adulthood. My business thrived.
Then the vampires descended upon first my brother, then me. Some vampires good. Some very, very bad.
One . . . perfect. But he’s gone now. Eli. My fiancé. He was killed by a Black Fallen—a fallen angel whose soul is darkened by the most evil of magic. My friend Victorian Arcos, a powerful Strigoi vampire, was killed, too, by a Black Fallen. The Fallen were taking over Edinburgh, seeking complete mortal power, and killing a lot of innocents to do it. They sought an ancient book of dark magic, and then, well, WUP got in their way. Eli and Vic especially. God, I’ve never felt so out of control in my life as when those fuckers took Eli and Vic away from me.
Yet Gawan Conwyk, a thousand-year-old Pictish warrior and swordsman, has given me a shred of hope that maybe, just maybe, they’re not so dead after all. Once an Earthbound angel, Gawan earned his mortality by offering himself as a sacrifice to save a mortal’s life. Not only is he wicked fast and lethal with the blade, but he knows things the rest of us don’t. He knows about Heaven, Hell, and in between. According to his theory, Eli and Victorian might just be suffering in an alternative plane akin to Hell itself. Or purgatory. I’m not sure I believe it just yet. In my heart, I feel emptiness. I don’t feel Eli there anymore. I think I’d feel him inside me, were he still alive. Gawan, though, knows it’s possible. That the Fallen would have thought it more torturous to send them there, to a realm where they have no control, vs. simply killing them. Yet I can’t ignore the emptiness I feel, too.
I feel . . . nothing. Two hours ago, leaving Edinburgh, I had hope. Where did it go? Even Athios, the wrongly accused Black Fallen who saved me and turned out to be not such a bad guy after all, encouraged me. But I feel a hole inside me. A gaping, lifeless, aching hole. Now that I’ve lost Eli, I only have Seth, my surrogate Gullah grandparents who raised me, Nyx, my friend and coowner of my ink shop, Inksomnia, and, well, Eli’s family. And Noah.
With so many to love, why do I feel so cold and empty?
I pick up the scatha. It’s an ancient Pict weapon, fashioned sort of like a combination handgun/crossbow. It has cartridges the size of a ChapStick container filled with mystical holy water from St. Bueno’s Well. Once I’m in that weird, hellish alternative plane of a world, I can obliterate anything that comes near me with it.
And I have to do it alone.
I tuck the scatha into the holster, shrug my leather jacket back on, and zip it up to my neck. Just as I turn to head out, I pull up short. Noah’s standing there. Staring.
“Where do you think you’re going?” he asks.
I meet his silvery gaze. “Out.”
Noah’s face hardens. “Ri, it’s only me and you here. Not the whole team, just us. We have some rogue vampires to take care of, remember?”
“I already took care of one by myself.” I go to move past him. “Your turn.”