Wild Hunger
Praise for the Chicagoland Vampires series
“I was drawn in . . . from page one and kept reading far into the night.”
—Julie Kenner, New York Times bestselling author of the Devil May Care novels
“Neill creates a strong-minded, sharp-witted heroine who will appeal to fans of Charlaine Harris’s Sookie Stackhouse series and Laurell K. Hamilton’s Anita Blake.”
—Library Journal
“The pages turn fast enough to satisfy vampire and romance fans alike.”
—Booklist
“Despite all that has and continues to be thrown at her, Merit’s courage, guts, and loyalty make her one amazing heroine. Terrific!”
—RT Book Reviews
“If you loved Nancy Drew but always wished she was an undead sword-wielding badass, Merit is your kind of girl.”
—Geek Monthly
“Action, supernatural politicking, the big evil baddie with a plan, and, of course, plenty of sarcastic Merit one-liners. . . . Chicagoland Vampires is one of my favorite series.”
—All Things Urban Fantasy
“Neill’s Chicago is an edgier, urban Bon Temps.”
—Heroes and Heartbreakers
“All I can say is wow.”
—Bitten by Books
“An absolute treat not to be missed.”
—A Book Obsession
“Delivers enough action, plot twists, and fights to satisfy the most jaded urban fantasy reader.”
—Monsters and Critics
Novels by Chloe Neill
The Heirs of Chicagoland Novels
WILD HUNGER
The Chicagoland Vampires Novels
SOME GIRLS BITE
FRIDAY NIGHT BITES
TWICE BITTEN
HARD BITTEN
DRINK DEEP
BITING COLD
HOUSE RULES
BITING BAD
WILD THINGS
BLOOD GAMES
DARK DEBT
MIDNIGHT MARKED
BLADE BOUND
“HIGH STAKES”
novella in Kicking It
HOWLING FOR YOU
(A Chicagoland Vampires Novella)
LUCKY BREAK
(A Chicagoland Vampires Novella)
PHANTOM KISS
(A Chicagoland Vampires Novella)
The Devil’s Isle Novels
THE VEIL
THE SIGHT
THE HUNT
The Dark Elite Novels
FIRESPELL
HEXBOUND
CHARMFALL
BERKLEY
An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC
375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014
Copyright © 2018 by Chloe Neill
Excerpt from Some Girls Bite copyright © 2009 by Chloe Neill
Penguin Random House supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin Random House to continue to publish books for every reader.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Neill, Chloe, author.
Title: Wild hunger: an heirs of Chicagoland novel / Chloe Neill.
Description: First edition. | New York: Berkley, 2018. | Series: An heirs of
Chicagoland novel; 1
Identifiers: LCCN 2018020583 | ISBN 9780399587092 (Trade paperback) | ISBN 9780399587108 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Vampires—Fiction. | Chicago (Ill.)—Fiction. | BISAC: FICTION/Fantasy/Paranormal. | FICTION/Fantasy/Urban Life. | GSAFD: Occult fiction.
Classification: LCC PS3614.E4432 W548 2018 | DDC 813/.6—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018020583
First Edition: August 2018
Cover art by Tony Mauro
Cover design by Adam Auerbach
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Version_1
“In our youth our hearts were touched with fire.”
—OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES
CONTENTS
Praise for the Chicagoland Vampires series
Novels by Chloe Neill
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-one
Chapter Twenty-two
Chapter Twenty-three
Epilogue
Excerpt from Some Girls Bite
About the Author
PROLOGUE
“Noooooo!” A little girl’s voice echoed through the hallway. The cry was followed by footsteps, more yelling, and a petulant squeal.
“It’s mine! You give it back right now, Connor stupid Keene!”
The dark-haired boy stuck his tongue out at her—the tiny blonde he relished torturing—then tore down the hallway, holding aloft the plastic sword he’d taken from his enemy. “Victory!” he said.
She followed him, Mary Jane shoes padding down the carpeted hallway, but he was nearly a foot taller, and she knew she couldn’t catch him. Not by running. So she called in a reinforcement.
“Daddy! Connor stupid Keene won’t give me my sword!”
Connor stupid Keene stopped and spun around, then leveled his best glare at Elisa Sullivan.
“I’m a prince,” he said, sticking his thumb against his chest. “And I can take your sword if I want!” He was seven, and she only five and a half, so he was obviously the more mature of the two of them.
She jumped up to grab the sword but couldn’t reach it. “Give it back, you . . . you . . .”
“‘You’ what?” he asked with a wily grin, spinning around to keep the toy out of her hands. “What am I?”
“You’re . . . you’re . . . you’re a stupid boy—that’s what you are!”
“Children.”
They froze, then turned back toward the doorway to Elisa’s father’s office and looked warily at the vampire who filled it. “Is there a problem?” he asked.
“No, Mr. Sullivan,” said Connor, scowling at his companion.
Green-eyed Elisa, just as wily as he was, stuck out her tongue at Connor, then batted her eyelashes at her father
. “He took my sword,” she said in a small, soft voice she knew was guaranteed to get her way. “And he won’t give it back.”
“Son, did you take her sword?”
They turned again, saw a tall man at the other end of the hallway.
“No, Dad,” Connor said as his father walked toward him. Connor held out the sword and let Elisa take it back, but scowled when she stuck her tongue out at him. Again. She is so spoiled, he thought.
Gabriel Keene grinned wolfishly, crossed his arms over his chest. “I’m glad we resolved this peacefully.”
Ethan Sullivan smiled, one hand braced against the doorframe as he watched his daughter and her nemesis do what they did best. “As am I. Do we need to talk about the House rules again?”
“No, Daddy.” Elisa tucked the sword behind her back.
“Son?” Gabriel asked.
“No, Dad.” Connor shifted from foot to foot.
“We talked about this.”
There was a moment of uncomfortable silence in the hallway.
“I know.”
As she bit her lip, Elisa looked up at Connor and saw the flush of embarrassment on his cheeks. She didn’t like being teased—or not that much, anyway—but she really didn’t like that look on his face.
She stepped forward, putting her small body between Connor and his father.
“It was my fault,” she said.
Arching an eyebrow, Gabriel crouched down, hands clasped in front of him. “Was it, now?”
Worriedly, she looked back at Connor, then at his dad, and nodded once.
Gabriel leaned in and whispered quietly, “Is it your fault, or do you just not want Connor to get in trouble?”
In the just-slightly-too-loud whisper of a child, she said, “I don’t want Connor to get in trouble.”
“Ah.” He nodded gravely, then stood again, Connor moving to stand beside him. “I think we’ve gotten things cleared up, then,” he said, then ruffled his son’s hair.
Connor grinned at him, leaned against his father.
And stuck his tongue out at Elisa.
ONE
Vampires were made, not born.
All except one.
All except me.
I was the daughter of vampires, born because magic and fate twisted together. I’d spent nineteen years in Chicago. Tonight, I stood nearly four hundred feet above Paris, several thousand miles away from the Windy City and the Houses in which most of its vampires lived.
Around me, visitors on the second level of the Eiffel Tower sipped champagne and snapped shots of the city. I closed my eyes against the warm, balmy breeze that carried the faint scent of flowers.
“Elisa, you cannot tell Paris goodbye with your eyes closed.”
“I’m not saying goodbye,” I said. “Because I’m coming back.”
I opened my eyes, smiled at the vampire who appeared at my side with two plastic cones of champagne. Seraphine had golden skin and dark hair, and her hazel eyes shone with amusement.
“To Paris,” I said, and tapped my cone against hers.
It had been four years since I’d last stepped foot in Chicago. Tomorrow, I’d go home again and visit the city and spend time with family and friends.
For twenty years, there’d been peace in Chicago among humans and sups, largely because of efforts by my parents—Ethan Sullivan and Merit, the Master and Sentinel, respectively, of Cadogan House. They’d worked to find a lasting peace, and had been so successful that Chicago had become a model for other communities around the world.
That’s why Seri and I were going back. The city’s four vampire Houses were hosting peace talks for vampires from Western Europe, where Houses had been warring since the governing council—the Greenwich Presidium—dissolved before I was born. And vampires’ relations with the other supernaturals in Europe weren’t any better. Chicago would serve as neutral territory where the Houses’ issues could be discussed and a new system of government could be hammered out.
“You look . . . What is the word? Wistful?” Seri smiled. “And you haven’t even left yet.”
“I’m building up my immunity,” I said, and sipped the champagne.
“You love Chicago.”
“It’s a great city. But I was . . . a different person in Chicago. I like who I am here.”
Paris wasn’t always peaceful. But it had given me the time and distance to develop the control I’d needed over the monster that lived inside me. Because I wasn’t just a vampire. . . .
Seri bumped her shoulder against mine supportively. “You will be the same person there as you are here. Miles change only location. They do not change a person’s heart. A person’s character.”
I hoped that was true. But Seri didn’t know the whole of it. She didn’t know about the half-formed power that lurked beneath my skin, reveled in its anger. She didn’t know about the magic that had grown stronger as I’d grown older, until it beat like a second heartbeat inside me.
Sunlight and aspen could kill me—but the monster could bury me in its rage.
I’d spent the past four years attending École Dumas, Europe’s only university for supernaturals. I was one of a handful of vampires in residence. Most humans weren’t changed into vampires until they were older; the change would give them immortality, but they’d be stuck at the age at which they’d been changed. No one wanted to be thirteen for eternity.
I hadn’t been changed at all, but born a vampire—the one and only vampire created that way. Immortal, or so we assumed, but still for the moment aging.
The university was affiliated with Paris’s Maison Dumas, one of Europe’s most prestigious vampire Houses, where I’d lived for the past four years. I’d had a little culture shock at first, but I’d come to love the House and appreciate its logical approach to problem solving. If Cadogan was Gryffindor, all bravery and guts, Dumas was Ravenclaw, all intellect and cleverness. I liked being clever, and I liked clever people, so we were a good fit.
I’d had four years of training to develop the three components of vampire strength: physical, psychic, and strategic. I graduated a few months ago with a sociology degree—emphasis in sup-human relations—and now I was repaying my training the same way French vampires did, with a year of mandatory armed service for the House. It was a chance to see what I was made of, and to spend another year in the city I’d come to love.
I was three months into my service. Escorting delegates from Maison Dumas to Chicago for the peace talks was part of my work.
“How many suitcases are you bringing?”
I glanced at Seri with amusement. “Why? How many are you bringing?”
“Four.” Seri did not travel lightly.
“We’ll only be in Chicago for four days.”
“I have diplomatic responsibilities, Elisa.”
I sipped my champagne. “That’s what French vampires say when they pack too much. I have a capsule wardrobe.”
“And that is what American vampires say when they do not pack enough. You also have diplomatic responsibilities.”
“I have responsibilities to the House. That’s different.”
“Ah,” she said, smiling at me over the rim of her drink. “But which one?”
“Maison Dumas,” I said, in an accent that was pretty close to perfect. “I’m not going to Chicago on behalf of Cadogan House. It’s just a bonus.”
“I look forward to meeting your parents. And I’m sure they’ll be glad to see you.”
“I’ll be glad to see them, too. It’s just—I’ve changed a lot in the last few years. Since the last time I went home.”
They’d visited Paris twice since I’d been gone, and we’d had fun walking through the city, seeing the sights. But I still felt like I’d been holding myself back from them. Maybe I always had.
“It’s not about you or Cadogan or Chicago,
” I’d told my father, when we’d stood outside the private terminal at O’Hare, in front of the jet that would take me across the world. I’d been struggling to make him understand. “It’s about figuring out who I am.”
In Chicago, I was the child of Ethan and Merit. And it had been hard to feel like anything more than a reflection of my parents and my birth, which made me a curiosity for plenty of sups outside Cadogan House who treated me like a prize. And the possibility I might be able to bear children made me, at least for some, a prize to be captured.
I’d wanted to be something more, something different. . . . Something that was just me.
“You couldn’t fail us by living your life the way you want,” my father had said. “It’s your life to live, and you will make your own choices. You always have.”
He’d tipped my chin up with the crook of his finger, forcing me to meet his gaze.
“There are some decisions that we make, and some that are made for us. Sometimes you accept the path that’s offered to you, and you live that path—that life—with grace. And sometimes you push forward, and you chart your own path. That decision is yours. It’s always been yours.
“I don’t want you to go, because I’m selfish. Because you are my child.” His eyes had burned fiercely, emeralds on fire. “But if this is your path, you must take it. Whatever happens out there, you always have a home here.”
He’d kissed my forehead, then embraced me hard. “Test your wings,” he’d quietly said. A suggestion. A request. A hope. “And fly.”
I had flown. And I’d read and walked and learned and trained, just like everyone else.
In Paris, I’d been just another vampire. And the anonymity, the freedom, had been exhilarating.
“We all carry expectations,” Seri said quietly, her eyes suddenly clouded. “Sometimes our own, sometimes others’. Both can be heavy.”
Seri came from what the European Houses called “good blood.” She’d been made by a Master vampire with power, with money, with an old name, and with plenty of cachet—and that mattered to French vampires. Seri had been the last vampire he’d made before his death, and those of his name were expected to be aristocrats and socialites. Unlike in the US, French vampires selected their own Houses. She’d picked Maison Dumas instead of Maison Bourdillon, the House of her Master. That hadn’t made her many friends among Bourdillon’s progeny, who decided she was wasting her legacy.