Wild Hunger Page 32

  I pulled and he heaved, turning as he lunged over the edge and landed on top of me.

  His body above mine, we both hovered on the two-foot wide strip of concrete, with moonlight and darkness below us.

  “We have to stop meeting like this,” I said.

  “Shut up, brat.”

  And then his hand was at my neck and his mouth was on mine, his lips insistent, his body hard and hot above mine. Heat and magic rose so quickly, surrounded me so completely, that I gasped against his mouth . . . and then tunneled my fingers through his hair and pulled him closer.

  His groan was masculine, satisfied, possessive. “Lis,” he said quietly, before ravaging my mouth again.

  When my body was warm and my lips were swollen, Connor pulled back, and the chill that replaced his mouth was equally startling, even though his lips hovered just above mine.

  And in his eyes was surprise . . . and certainty.

  I didn’t dare move, uncertain whether he’d let me go—or whether I wanted him to.

  “Um, hello?”

  We both looked over at the woman who stood on the balcony, eyes wide as she stared down at us. “Do you . . . Maybe you need help getting down?”

  * * *

  • • •

  The woman’s name was Jolie Brennan, and she’d decided not to evacuate. She’d been mightily surprised to learn her condo had become a rolling hill, and we’d been grateful when we were able to slip inside the condo and take the elevator back to the ground.

  Or Connor had been. I’d been a little disappointed that I wouldn’t get to jump.

  When we finally made our way back outside, some of the fairies were being restrained and dragged into buses that lined the edge of the park. The CPD and supernaturals were being treated for their injuries.

  Petra and Theo sat on the grass, and they climbed to their feet as we limped toward them.

  “You okay?” Theo asked.

  “We’re good,” I said.

  I looked around at the park. Trees had been toppled, boulders were plentiful as thorns, and there was a long line of cracked and scorched earth above what I assumed was the route of the ley lines. Claudia stood near it, her expression defiant but sadness lining her eyes. She’d been betrayed by her people, or at least some of them. She’d be escorted back to the castle, where I guess she’d see what there was to rebuild of her community.

  “Ruadan?” I asked, since I didn’t see him.

  “Claudia imprisoned him in the green land,” Petra said. “He’ll live there, alone, for the rest of his natural life.”

  “Cut off from her and the rest of them,” Connor said. “No one to fight for him, or stroke his ego. He won’t like that one little bit.”

  No, he wouldn’t. It was a fitting punishment that he’d probably see as a victory, at least for a little while.

  Gabriel walked over, looked at his son, at me. “You both look solid.”

  “We are,” Connor said. “You good?”

  “I am,” Gabriel said. “But I could use a drink.”

  “A-fucking-men.”

  * * *

  • • •

  As it turned out, the European delegates hadn’t needed a fancy party, formal talks, or expensive, fancy hors d’oeuvres. They just needed to be thrown together into the Cadogan House ballroom with chaos swirling outside—and my father’s best Scotch.

  My father had opened Cadogan to all the delegates who’d wanted shelter, thinking the House’s stash of food and weapons would at least give them some respite and protection if Hyde Park shifted to the green land. While we’d been working on the plan to trick Ruadan, they’d cobbled together a rough plan for a new vampire council. They’d still have to get the French and Spanish delegates’ okay, but it was a start.

  And when that was done, they’d all but taken over the House. They poured champagne and mingled with vampires in Cadogan T-shirts, shifters, and nymphs to celebrate Chicago’s return. The television monitors were tuned to the celebration, where people emerged from cars on the LSD, embracing one another and thrilled to be stuck in traffic again.

  Theo flirted with a nymph. Petra and Lulu—who figured the magic was done so the party was just a party—chatted in a corner. Connor talked to his uncles, drinking bottled beer and occasionally casting glances my way. We’d need to talk about the kiss . . . about everything. But for now, we could just be.

  I’d skipped the champagne for blood—I needed the boost—and watched revelers run up and down the House’s main hallway. My father would probably rein them in tomorrow. But for tonight, everyone was happy.

  EPILOGUE

  The night was warm, the air sweet with the last growth of summer. And on the breeze, the first chill of fall.

  Two men sat in low chairs, the fire pit between them. Inside it, wood popped and sparked and flame flickered and danced beneath the slowly spinning rotisserie.

  Father and son with fire and charring meat, reenacting the same moment that had been played a million times over the course of history. Gabriel and Connor Keene. Alpha and heir apparent, preparing for another historic moment.

  “Alaska,” the son said. “You pissed?”

  The father stretched out his long legs, crossed them at the ankles. “I wasn’t angry you were going to Alaska, and I’m not angry you’re staying. Those are your decisions to make.”

  “You said I had responsibilities. That I couldn’t shirk my duties to do what was easier.”

  “You doing what’s easier by staying here?”

  “Fuck, no. Easier would be hitting the road. Feeling the sun, the wind. Sunrises, sunsets, and everything in between.” He smiled slyly. “And if I was lucky, a chance to . . . work out some aggression.”

  Gabriel smiled. “Coyotes can pack a punch. Might have been easier, but you’d have been bloody for a few miles.”

  “I don’t mind a fight.”

  “So I’ve seen. And you don’t mind jumping into one, either. Even if the fight isn’t yours.”

  “Chicago is our home.”

  “And that’s all you’re interested in? The city. Not the girl?”

  Silence rang through the room.

  Without comment, Gabriel sipped his beer. “Alpha isn’t taking the hard road or the easy road. Alpha is doing the thing that needs to be done. Sometimes that decision will be for you. Sometimes that decision will be for the Pack. And sometimes you have to decide between them.”

  He looked over at his son. “Miranda will fight you for the Pack. Her and maybe others. They want the Pack, and they’ll fight for it using whatever weapons they need to use.”

  Connor’s body went rigid, protective. His father was no threat, but he’d mentioned the possibility, and that had his instincts working. “They can try. But the Pack’s mine.”

  Gabriel’s eyes gleamed. “You’re mine,” he said. “And I’m proud of you. But watch your back. And hers.”

  Knowledge swirled in Gabriel’s eyes, magic shifting and shimmering. He knew something. And that put Connor on alert. But he didn’t bother asking which “her” his father meant.

  After that kiss, there’d been no doubt for him at all. And his father would have known that, would have felt the truth of it. “Why do I need to watch her back? What’s coming?”

  But his father shook his head. “You know it doesn’t work that way.”

  “If there’s a prophecy, I deserve to know it.”

  “Not if it’s not her prophecy.”

  Connor’s jaw worked. Anger, flame surrounding a core of icy terror, burned in his eyes when he looked at his father. “If she’s in danger—”

  “We’re all in danger,” Gabriel said, then took another drink of beer. “‘Dying since the day we’re born.’”

  “Don’t give me song lyrics, and don’t test me. Not about this.”

  “I can’
t give you information. Just be careful of her. She has enemies.”

  Connor sat back again. He could deal with enemies. Enjoyed dealing with them. What was the point of being alpha otherwise?

  “Doesn’t matter if the road is hard,” Connor finally said. “The road is the road.” He gave his father a glinting look. “Didn’t you teach me that?”

  “I’m shocked to learn you listened, whelp. Your head’s as hard as a damn rock most of the time.”

  “Built-in helmet,” Connor said, the same joke he’d been making for fifteen years.

  Gabriel rolled his eyes. “No funnier today than it was the first forty times.”

  “But accurate,” Connor said.

  “Decisions will have to be made. Between love and responsibility.”

  “They always do. That’s the road, too. And the only way to reach the destination.” Connor took a drink.

  “Are we done with this conversation?”

  “I think we’ve covered it sufficiently.”

  “Good,” Gabriel said, shifting in his chair. “I feel like I’m in a therapist’s office.”

  Connor snorted. “No member of the NAC Pack has ever willingly walked into a therapist’s office. Court order? Maybe. But not willingly.”

  “That’s because we’re surrounded by things that comfort,” Gabriel said, moving closer to the fire and crossing his ankles on the fire pit’s stone surround. “You have darkness, stars, booze, fire. There is nothing more that you need. Except possibly a good woman.”

  And, by his reckoning, his son was moving closer to that particular goal.

  Read on for an excerpt from the first Chicagoland Vampires Novel,

  SOME GIRLS BITE

  Available now

  ONE

  The Change

  EARLY APRIL

  CHICAGO, ILLINOIS

  At first, I wondered if it was karmic punishment. I’d sneered at the fancy vampires, and as some kind of cosmic retribution, I’d been made one. Vampire. Predator. Initiate into one of the oldest of the twelve vampire Houses in the United States.

  And I wasn’t just one of them.

  I was one of the best.

  But I’m getting ahead of myself. Let me begin by telling you how I became a vampire, a story that starts weeks before my twenty-eighth birthday, the night I completed the transition. The night I awoke in the back of a limousine, three days after I’d been attacked walking across the University of Chicago campus.

  I didn’t remember all the details of the attack. But I remembered enough to be thrilled to be alive. To be shocked to be alive.

  In the back of the limousine, I squeezed my eyes shut and tried to unpack the memory of the attack. I’d heard footsteps, the sound muffled by dewy grass, before he grabbed me. I’d screamed and kicked, tried to fight my way out, but he pushed me down. He was preternaturally strong—supernaturally strong—and he bit my neck with a predatory ferocity that left little doubt about who he was. What he was.

  Vampire.

  But while he tore into skin and muscle, he didn’t drink; he didn’t have time. Without warning, he’d stopped and jumped away, running between buildings at the edge of the main quad.

  My attacker temporarily vanquished, I’d raised a hand to the crux of my neck and shoulder, felt the sticky warmth. My vision was dimming, but I could see the wine-colored stain across my fingers clearly enough.

  Then there was movement around me. Two men.

  The men my attacker had been afraid of.

  The first of them had sounded anxious. “He was fast. You’ll need to hurry, Liege.”

  The second had been unerringly confident. “I’ll get it done.”

  He pulled me up to my knees, and knelt behind me, a supportive arm around my waist. He wore cologne—soapy and clean.

  I tried to move, to give some struggle, but I was fading.

  “Be still.”

  “She’s lovely.”

  “Yes,” he agreed. He suckled the wound at my neck. I twitched again, and he stroked my hair. “Be still.”

  * * *

  • • •

  I recalled very little of the next three days, of the genetic restructuring that transformed me into a vampire. Even now, I only carry a handful of memories. Deep-seated, dull pain—shocks of it that bowed my body. Numbing cold. Darkness. A pair of intensely green eyes.

  In the limo, I felt for the scars that should have marred my neck and shoulders. The vampire that attacked me hadn’t taken a clean bite—he’d torn at the skin at my neck like a starved animal. But the skin was smooth. No scars. No bumps. No bandages. I pulled my hand away and stared at the clean pale skin—and the short nails, perfectly painted cherry red.

  The blood was gone—and I’d been manicured.

  Staving off a wash of dizziness, I sat up. I was wearing different clothes. I’d been in jeans and a T-shirt. Now I wore a black cocktail dress, a sheath that fell to just below my knees, and three-inch-high black heels.

  That made me a twenty-seven-year-old attack victim, clean and absurdly scar-free, wearing a cocktail dress that wasn’t mine. I knew, then and there, that they’d made me one of them.

  The Chicagoland Vampires.

  It had started eight months ago with a letter, a kind of vampire manifesto first published in the Sun-Times and Trib, then picked up by papers across the country. It was a coming-out, an announcement to the world of their existence. Some humans believed it a hoax, at least until the press conference that followed, in which three of them displayed their fangs. Human panic led to four days of riots in the Windy City and a run on water and canned goods sparked by public fear of a vampire apocalypse. The feds finally stepped in, ordering Congressional investigations, the hearings obsessively filmed and televised in order to pluck out every detail of the vampires’ existence. And even though they’d been the ones to step forward, the vamps were tight-lipped about those details—the fang bearing, blood drinking, and night walking the only facts the public could be sure about.

  Eight months later, some humans were still afraid. Others were obsessed. With the lifestyle, with the lure of immortality, with the vampires themselves. In particular, with Celina Desaulniers, the glamorous Windy City she-vamp who’d apparently orchestrated the coming-out, and who’d made her debut during the first day of the Congressional hearings.

  Celina was tall and slim and sable-haired, and that day she wore a black suit snug enough to give the illusion that it had been poured onto her body. Looks aside, she was obviously smart and savvy, and she knew how to twist humans around her fingers. To wit: The senior senator from Idaho had asked her what she planned to do now that vampires had come out of the closet.

  She’d famously replied in dulcet tones, “I’ll be making the most of the dark.”

  The twenty-year Congressional veteran had smiled with such dopey-eyed lust that a picture of him made the front page of the New York Times.

  No such reaction from me. I’d rolled my eyes and flipped off the television.

  I’d made fun of them, of her, of their pretensions.

  And in return, they’d made me like them.

  Wasn’t karma a bitch?

  Now they were sending me back home, but returning me differently. Notwithstanding the changes my body had endured, they’d glammed me up, cleaned me of blood, stripped me of clothing, and repackaged me in their image.

  They killed me. They healed me. They changed me.

  The tiny seed, that kernel of distrust of the ones who’d made me, rooted.

  * * *

  • • •

  I was still dizzy when the limousine stopped in front of the Wicker Park brownstone I shared with my roommate, Mallory. I wasn’t sleepy, but groggy, mired in a haze across my consciousness that felt thick enough to wade through. Drugs, maybe, or a residual effect of the transition from human to
vampire.

  Mallory stood on the stoop, her shoulder-length ice blue hair shining beneath the bare bulb of the overhead light. She looked anxious, but seemed to be expecting me. She wore flannel pajamas patterned with sock monkeys. I realized it was late.

  The limousine door opened, and I looked toward the house and then into the face of a man in a black uniform and cap who’d peeked into the backseat.

  “Ma’am?” He held out a hand expectantly.

  My fingers in his palm, I stepped onto the asphalt, my ankles wobbly in the stilettos. I rarely wore heels, jeans being my preferred uniform. Grad school didn’t require much else.

  I heard a door shut. Seconds later, a hand gripped my elbow. My gaze traveled up the pale, slender arm to the bespectacled face it belonged to. She smiled at me, the woman who held my arm, the woman who must have emerged from the limo’s front seat.

  “Hello, dear. We’re home now. I’ll help you inside, and we’ll get you settled.”

  Grogginess making me acquiescent, and not really having a good reason to argue anyway, I nodded to the woman, who looked to be in her late fifties. She had a short, sensible bob of steel gray hair and wore a tidy suit on her trim figure, carrying herself with a professional confidence. As we progressed down the sidewalk, Mallory moved cautiously down the first step, then the second, toward us.

  “Merit?”

  The woman patted my back. “She’ll be fine, dear. She’s just a little dizzy. I’m Helen. You must be Mallory?”

  Mallory nodded, but kept her gaze on me.

  “Lovely home. Can we go inside?”

  Mallory nodded again and traveled back up the steps. I began to follow, but the woman’s grip on my arm stopped me. “You go by Merit, dear? Although that’s your last name?”

  I nodded at her.

  She smiled patiently. “The newly risen utilize only a single name. Merit, if that’s what you go by, would be yours. Only the Masters of each House are allowed to retain their last names. That’s just one of the rules you’ll need to remember.” She leaned in conspiratorially. “And it’s considered déclassé to break the rules.”