That conversation would not end well. He never had to know. I’d speak with Jack and get my station back, and with the Dark Ones gone, we’d help save the Italian people, and Kensey wouldn’t have to leave. Everything would be well again. But he could never know about Jack.

  Kensey helped lower me back onto the edge of the bed and knelt, his hand resting on a knee. He really did look worried. I’d frightened him lately. First when an overseer took me, and then when he thought I was still inside the station with the ghouls.

  I ruffled his hair like I knew he hated and grinned when he scowled. “I’m all right. I know you don’t believe me, but Rafe and I—we haven’t… you know. We know the dangers.”

  “Safe sex is such a bore,” Rafe piped up.

  I ignored that comment. “We worked things out. I trust him.”

  I expected to hear some sassy comment from Rafe about trust, but he stayed silent.

  Kensey straightened and glanced at Rafe, then back at me. “Angelo is looking for you, and I don’t think it’s good.”

  The thought of dealing with Angelo was enough to make me want to crawl back into bed. I looked down and found my feet bare. I had no memory of Rafe removing my boots and socks. Jack’s feast had properly wiped me out. I owed Rafe for keeping me safe. Maybe when all this was over, I’d take him to the Coliseum, and we’d sit atop the arches like Kensey and I had done.

  “So what happened, then?”

  “Huh?”

  He was staring at my wrist, and in my morning-after haze, I’d forgotten about the bandage covering the evidence of Jack’s snack.

  “Oh, this? It’s nothing. I caught it on razor wire when we went back to the station, that’s all.”

  “You did?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “That’s funny, because you didn’t have it this morning when I saw you in the corridor.”

  He couldn’t know that. I’d been carrying towels. There was no way he could have seen my wrist. “I did. You must have missed it.”

  He wasn’t buying it. Damn my brother for being so perceptive.

  “It doesn’t matter. What’s wrong with Angelo now?” I tried again to stand and this time managed to make it stick. The room didn’t spin, and my head didn’t throb.

  “One of his people died,” Kensey said, addressing me and Rafe. “The body was found in the street a few hours ago.”

  “And he thinks I had something to do with it?” I asked.

  “Tell him I was with her all day,” Rafe said from the window seat. “Problem solved.”

  “Tell him my sister was sleeping with a sex demon? That’ll go down well.”

  Rafe flashed a grin. He flicked a hand down himself, and his appearance shifted into his Average suit. “Didn’t you know? Father Angelo likes me.”

  “If he discovers what you are—”

  “Don’t tell him, then,” Rafe snapped, his patience fraying.

  “It’s the truth.” I rubbed my head, hoping the small ache would go away. “What makes him think I had anything to do with it?”

  “The body was drained of blood.”

  Gods, had Jack gotten free while I’d been sleeping? It took a monumental effort not to glance at Rafe and instead stare at Kensey like I had no idea how such a thing could have happened. “There are plenty of ghouls around.”

  What if Lilith had let Jack out? If he was coherent, he could easily have bargained for his freedom. And I’d left them alone together. Fuck. My pulse thumped in my throat. What had I been thinking? I should never have left the basement.

  Kensey was damn well staring, wringing every lie from my face. “He says the Dark Ones might have followed you here from the station,” he said.

  Rafe snorted. “What does he think she is? Some Dark One Pied Piper?”

  Angelo was technically right. They had followed me here.

  “I’ll talk to him.” I started for my boots, which sat neatly by the door, but Kensey caught my hand and pulled me back. The worry on his face had my racing pulse skipping. “What?”

  “I don’t think it’s safe for you here.”

  “Angelo thinks I’m in league with them, doesn’t he?”

  “Yes. He… he always had reservations, but I’d hoped the gathering at the station would ease his mind. Then the ghouls came and… and now one of his people has died. He’s not happy.”

  “Vampire attacks happen all the time. I still don’t see why I’m getting the blame.” Because I had one tied up in the basement, and I had a sinking sensation of dread that when I went down those stairs, the room would be empty.

  “Not here they don’t.”

  “Fine.” I pulled free and headed toward my boots again. “We’ll go back to the station. Maybe if we go in Day you, Etienne, Rafe, and I can fight the ghouls back. We don’t need these people. I don’t even know or care why the station brought us here, but this is feeling like a losing battle. He doesn’t want us here, so we leave—”

  The door flung open, and the business end of a shotgun was thrust in my face. I instinctively recoiled.

  “Lynher Aris, I cannot allow you to leave,” Father Angelo said.

  “Angelo, don’t—” Kensey started forward, but Angelo pushed on, backing me up. “Put the gun down. We talked about this… Lynher isn’t—”

  The way Angelo’s finger hugged the trigger silenced my brother and stopped him from closing the distance.

  A clean, sharp dedication glinted in Angelo’s old eyes. He wouldn’t be convinced I was anything but evil.

  I lifted my hands and backed up until I bumped against the bed.

  “My argument is not with you, Signor Aris,” Angelo said. “It is clear you are a good man, but this harlot has been touched by the Dark Ones. I cannot allow her to reclaim that cursed station.”

  “That cursed station is my home, and you, sir, have no idea who you’re pointing a gun at. I suggest you kindly lower the weapon before you get hurt.”

  His short, sharp laugh was humorless. “Will you kill me like you killed poor Elena?”

  “This is all a misunderstanding. I haven’t killed anyone. But I can see we have some differences that will not be resolved by talking, so we’ll leave, and—”

  “You’re one of them…” The gun wavered, his greasy finger slipping on the trigger.

  Was he calling me a vampire? “Sir…” I smiled. “That’s absurd.”

  “Is it! Do you think we haven’t been watching you come and go with your demon cohorts and bring their filth under my roof?”

  Rafe’s dramatic sigh sounded behind me. “Well, it looks as though the jig is up, darling.”

  I could only assume Rafe had stood and was making a show of revealing his true appearance because Angelo’s expression went from insane to outright terrified in the blink of an eye. He was going to shoot me or Rafe, and neither was acceptable when the most lethal vampire of all was likely free with his mind set on ripping out my heart.

  “Demon!” Angelo spat.

  I grabbed the gun barrel in both hands and yanked, angling the muzzle up. Angelo toppled forward. The gun boomed, firing over my shoulder. Rafe barked in pain, then a tirade of swearing followed. I reversed the gun, shouldered it, and aimed it at Angelo’s fleeing back. I could have fired—I wanted to—but hesitated. I was not a murderer, despite what that man thought of me, and I could not shoot someone in the back. Not even someone who would have killed me.

  “Oh, thank Lilith’s tits!” Rafe lifted his right wing, displaying the hole in the leathery membrane. “He missed the waistcoat.”

  “What did he mean, with your demons, Lynher?” Kensey asked. “How many of them are here?”

  “I can explain—”

  “Don’t!” He pointed a finger at my face. “I told you what this meant to me, and you brought demons! Plural. Not just one? Who is the other one—never mind, I don’t care. Just go. Leave, like you said. I’ll fix this.”

  “You can’t fix crazy,” Rafe murmured, stretching his wing back and forth.

  Kensey’s mouth twisted around whatever he wanted to say. “This was our chance to be free, Lynher! Why do you have to be like this?”

  “No, this was your chance! Not mine. The station is my life. It’s my duty. And I will not abandon it because things got hard. Gerome would be disappointed in you, Kensey Aris.”

  “Gerome is dead! Gods, Lynher… don’t you see? He’s dead, and we’re free of that wretched place!”

  What was he saying? He couldn’t mean that. The station needed him. I needed him. “I don’t know who you are anymore.”

  “Good, because I don’t know who you are either. Fucking that thing!” He flung a hand at Rafe, who blinked and straightened in surprise. “Bringing demons here. For all I know you did get that poor woman killed. Maybe you are all the things Angelo says about you.”

  He saw it then, the fear, and the fact I didn’t deny it, because deep down, I knew it was true. I played with Dark Ones, so maybe that made me one too.

  He recoiled, grimacing. “There’s more… What else have you done?”

  I couldn’t lie anymore. Not to him. “I was trying to get it back. I thought I could control him, but Jack—” I reached for him.

  He staggered, almost falling over his own feet. “Jack!” He half laughed, half sobbed. “You brought the Ghost back! Are you out of your damn mind?”

  Oh no, no, no. This couldn’t be happening. Kensey wasn’t supposed to know because he’d hate me, but now he knew, and somehow, I had to salvage my brother’s love before I lost him forever. “I was supposed to trap his soul. It should have worked. Lilith—”

  “Stop!” He fell against the doorframe. “Just stop.” His chest heaved. “Gods, I didn’t see it. I didn’t know… I should have. My little sister… I should have seen how he’d turned you. That’s why he separated us. That’s why…”

  What was he talking about? He who? Did he mean Jack?

  “Kensey, please.” I started forward, but Rafe’s arm shot out, holding me back, and I didn’t much feel like fighting him to get to a brother who was saying bad things about me and believing them.

  “Leave, Lynher.” He lifted his gaze. Tears sparkled in his eyes. “I can’t be part of what you do. Leave, go back to that place where you belong, and don’t ever come looking for me.”

  “What? You don’t mean that. No… we can fix this. Kensey and Lynher… just us, together. I can’t—”

  A horrible, piercing scream barreled down the corridor.

  —do this without you.

  Another scream rose up in a different part of the building. Boots thumped against boards and doors slammed.

  “Breach!” someone yelled. “Get to your posts!”

  Dread whooshed through my insides. Jack. It had to be.

  Kensey’s hollow glance found me, then he shook his head and vanished out the door.

  “The window,” Rafe suggested. “C’mon. The fools here don’t deserve you.”

  I stared at the empty doorway, listening to screams.

  “No.” I pumped the shotgun to reload the chamber. “There are people here, and they’re afraid. I will not abandon them like they’ve abandoned me.”

  I shouldered the gun once more and followed my brother into the hall.

  Chapter 17

  Ghouls.

  A great plague of them, just like in the Night Station. I stepped from the doorway and came face to face with the first. It sprang, claws out, mouth agape, fangs ready to plunge into my parched veins. My trigger finger twitched, the gun boomed and kicked, and a hole appeared in the ghoul’s chest at the same time as it jerked backward out of the air. It landed several feet away in a twitching mass of limbs.

  My brother wasn’t in the hallway and neither was Angelo, just ghouls leaping and galloping and chasing screams. A girl vanished from sight with six ghouls pursuing her. A memory flashed: a girl running through the mud, the vampires closing in.

  “Not on my watch.”

  I aimed the gun at a ghoul scurrying across the ceiling, waited until it was about to leap, then fired, blasting its face through its skull.

  A third sprang at me near my shoulder. Rafe blurred between it and me, caught it by the neck in mid-spring, and slammed it into the floor so hard the floorboards splintered. The ghoul screamed and bucked, arms flailing. Rafe drove the heel of his boot into its face, buckling its skull. Finally, it stopped moving.

  I followed the screams. Rafe dropped all pretense that he was anything other than a warrior by grabbing his many blades and tearing into the attacking force. When his blades failed him, he ripped them limb from limb with his bare hands.

  He plucked one off a sobbing man and punched it through a wall. His wings shimmered, raining sparks, and his tail thrashed and sliced and strangled. He caught another ghoul with that tail, yanking it backward off its sprinting trajectory, and flung it through a window in a hail of glass.

  But he couldn’t get them all, and I had an unknown number of cartridges in Angelo’s gun. We had to make it to the reception area and out, saving as many people as possible on the way.

  I kicked open a stairwell door and spotted Angelo running down the stairs toward a swarm of oncoming ghouls. They’d kill him, and a large part of me wanted to watch it happen. Shouldering the gun, I prepared to shout for him to duck, but the ghouls veered away, as though Angelo was surrounded by an invisible bubble they all instinctively avoided.

  He ran through the ghouls as if they weren’t there and disappeared down the stairs, untouched.

  Rafe had seen it too. He narrowed his eyes and vaulted over the banister, dropping through the middle of the stairwell and out of sight. He’d get him.

  Ghouls closed ranks and poured up the stairs.

  I swore and doubled back into the hallway. Rafe would be fine, even if this place was anti-magic. He was strong and fast and Rafe didn’t need magic to punch Angelo through a wall.

  Ghouls flooded the hallway from both directions. More like rabid dogs than vampires, they sniffed the air and, one by one, turned toward me. I couldn’t shoot them all. I had maybe three rounds left, if the gun had been fully loaded to begin with. The window Rafe had flung a ghoul through gaped, but at three stories up, the landing wouldn’t be soft.

  A long, low hissing sounded, like gas escaping, then a man turned the corridor corner, striding into sight. His clothes were black with blood, his face and hands veined black with it too. He grabbed the ghoul nearest him by the face and chest and snapped its neck as though the creature had been no more bothersome than a twig. He grabbed the second ghoul by its shoulder and yanked it into his arms. Fangs flashed and disappeared into the ghoul’s throat. It managed a pitiful wail, and then the new vampire tore the ghoul’s throat out and tossed it aside.

  Silver eyes flashed and horrible recognition fired inside my mind.

  Oh gods. Jack. And he’d come for vengeance.

  In a blur, he caught a third and cut it down as efficiently as the others, raining blood and howls and carnage, getting closer to me with every ghoul he destroyed.

  I lifted the gun and trained it on him. The window was at my back. Glass crunched under my bare feet, making them burn. Cold air wrapped around me and whipped my hair about my face. Freedom teased from behind me. The fall wouldn’t kill me. Jack would. I’d tried to take his soul. I’d trapped him in Hell. And he was back and free and had turned into a whirling figure of death that I had no hope of stopping.

  The ghouls had all turned on him. One leaped onto his back. He ripped it off and threw it down, then kicked it in the face so hard its head snapped back at a deadly angle.

  There was nothing elegant in the way he killed. His movements jerked, his body barely human. He only passed as Jack because he fought upright on two legs and not all fours. Although, when a ghoul knocked him down, he turned on it like he was one of them. Wild and rabid and devoid of thought and reason.

  In a blur of movement, he appeared in front of me. I pulled the trigger. The gun kicked, but Jack had already grabbed the barrel. He thrust the gun upward, and my shot blew a hole in the ceiling.

  His cold body was against mine. His breath heated my neck. I froze. The stench of wet blood and rancid guts burned the back of my throat. Tears blurred my vision. I should fight, should shove him back, do something, but the messages weren’t getting through to my body. I knew I was caught and caught prey always froze.

  Cold sweat chilled my skin. I’d felt his fangs in me twice before, but this time would be different. He’d rip out my throat like he had the ghouls. I’d bleed out right here, just another dead girl like the one running hopelessly through the mud, knowing the vampires were closing in. But this vampire was different, and I’d unleashed him into this world, foolishly thinking I could control him.

  This was all my fault.

  My wrist itched but the mark didn’t spark to life.

  He panted, his breath stroking my skin, his grip on my gun unrelenting.

  Maybe I deserved to die. What had I done to help people? Kensey saved people. I just handed them over.

  “Run, girl,” he growled and shoved off, turning to face the ghouls still rushing in.

  He’d carved a path through them, leaving enough space for me to dart through. I took it, not looking back, heart in my throat, body racked with shivers, muscles burning and feet bloody.

  Another stairwell delivered me to the ground floor, but there was no sign of Rafe or Angelo.

  “Lynher!”

  I spotted Etienne armed with his shotgun and met him in the middle of the reception area, surrounded by the wounded.

  “It is not safe for you here.” As he said the words, I watched people recoil from me. They tucked themselves close to each other as though they feared me. “He’s been spreading lies about you,” Etienne whispered, his face close, his arm looping around my waist and guiding me toward the door. “They believe you brought the ghouls here. You must leave.”

  I’d saved some of them and still they hated me. I looked up into Etienne’s dark eyes. “I didn’t do this.”

  “I know you didn’t.”

  “Kensey… Where’s Kensey? He was with me and—”

 

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