Chapter One
Grant
“No, tip it—Left. Your other left. Fucking hell, would you just—”
I watch with rapt fascination as Maurice holds his phone up to the very obvious tear in the fabric of reality in the middle of the warehouse. He scowls, even though Cassian can’t see him, and when he checks what we’re doing, he brings the phone around in an arc again.
“Maurice!”
Maurice sighs and turns the phone back to face the tear. I duck further into my hoodie. Across the warehouse, Asher rolls his eyes.
Okay, Maurice might not have been the best person to call Cassian, but considering everything that’s happened in the last few hours, none of the Guardians can risk coming to us, and he’s the one who knows the most about magic.
Reluctantly, my gaze wanders to the Huntsman, who’s standing a few feet from Maurice and watching him just as intently as I am. Well, maybe he knows more about magic. He doesn’t know anything about this, though. That much is clear.
It’s only been a day since I came across a fae performing a ritual in this abandoned Limehouse building. They used traces of Asher’s and Quinn’s magic that two high fae twins had stolen a few weeks before, and then…
They tore straight through the veil that separates our realm from the Otherworld. At least five or six high fae came through before I ran off, and considering the time it took us to reach the Huntsman and get back, we have no idea how many could be here.
I eye the Huntsman again. One high fae is enough trouble. This many… It might be a slaughter. It might be a series of small tricks for their entertainment. Who knows.
“Well, fuck,” Cassian says, tinny voice echoing around the space. The Huntsman takes that as his cue, but I see the way he bares his teeth as he approaches the tear. He doesn’t like it.
“You understand what they have done?” he asks. He doesn’t take Maurice’s phone, and Cassian squawks again as Maurice swings the device towards the Huntsman’s face.
He’s a powerful mage, apparently. One of the only ones left. And he’s one of the Guardians, too, a group of creatures who use their magic to protect the true crossing between the Otherworld and here.
So this is right in his wheelhouse, is what I mean. Should be, anyway.
“Yeah, they’ve punched straight fucking through it,” Cassian says. “Can’t you feel it? It should be calling to you.”
The Huntsman nods shortly. I shrink back again. I can feel that. I’m not sure if I’m supposed to, but I know I need to keep the fact that I can to myself. Vlad looms behind me, his presence always on my radar. Is he looking at me? Probably.
He’s hardly had me out of his sight all day, which is saying something because usually he’s telling me to go off to my room and rest as soon as the sun comes up.
I shove my hands into the pocket at the front of my hoodie and twist my fingers together.
I wasn’t beaten up or anything when I got back yesterday, just had a few scrapes from running away, but I know that scared him.
And he doesn’t like me being so close to the Huntsman, either. I know that, even if I’m not sure why.
“Grant, come here,” Maurice says.
I swallow, hesitating long enough that he looks at me sharply. I don’t glance back at Vlad as I cross the space, but the glimpse I get of Asher’s expression is encouraging.
“What is it?” I keep my eyes low, avoiding the Huntsman. That’s how that works, right? If I don’t look at him, he can’t see me, either.
“First of all, here,” Maurice says and presses his phone into my hand. “You can move this fucking thing around since I’m doing such a shitty job.”
He hisses the last part, but Cassian only laughs. “You are.”
“Secondly, you need to tell Cassian everything you saw yesterday,” the Huntsman says. I dart my eyes up. He’s not wearing a glamour, and I don’t know that I’ve ever seen him in one. His dark, flat gaze bores into mine.
“Yeah, okay,” I mutter.
“Right, can you hold me up so I can get a real look at this thing?” Cassian asks.
I drag my feet over to the tear and hold up the phone so he can see the edges. Can he see them the way I can? I don’t know what the hole in reality looks like where he and the other Guardians are, but I know that one is intentional.
This one feels like it isn’t meant to be there. I don’t like it.
Cassian makes a thoughtful sound. “Move me to the right a little? I want to see the centre.”
I do that, too. He makes more sounds. I don’t know if they imply good or bad things.
At least the others seem to have busied themselves elsewhere.
Maurice has wandered over to the warehouse walls and I can feel his blessing probing the wards that are still shielding this tear from the outside.
The Huntsman has shifted his focus to him instead of me, and I’m grateful for that.
“Okay, flip the camera.”
I sigh but do that, too, squinting into the lens.
With my hood up, I look younger than the twenty-one I was when I was turned and far older than my mid-thirties, which is where I’m at now.
Cassian looks, physically, like he’s a similar age to me.
I don’t know if that’s a lie in the same way my face is.
“Anyone close?” he asks, lowering his voice.
I dart my gaze around. It doesn’t matter, and we both know it. Everyone in this room has the ability to hear us. And while the others might not be watching, Vlad’s gaze is unerringly on me like I might run away again if he averts it.
“They’ll still hear us,” I mutter.
Cassian stares at me, then nods. “Tell me what you saw.”
Maurice has already told him. Still, I need to help. “A fae. I don’t know what kind, but I wasn’t trying to work it out. They had all this magic, and they didn’t know or didn’t care that I was there. It went—”
My mouth goes dry. The magic went into them. The memory of it makes me shiver.
“Where did it go?”
“Inside them. And exploded out. The wards kept it in the building, but then… they came through.”
“How many did you see?”
I squeeze my eyes shut, trying to remember. “Six. I think.” I haven’t told any of them about the one that came towards me and sensed my power, magic, whatever it is I have. I’ll tell Paxton, or maybe Maurice, if I can get either of them alone.
Vlad’s made it clear that the Huntsman doesn’t need to hear about things like that.
“This magic the fae had, was it their own?” Cassian asks.
“I-I don’t—”
“You’re Vlad’s turn, right? Grant?”
“Yes.”
Cassian’s gaze sharpens. “What magic did they have? Could you feel where it came from?”
Okay, being a vampire is great, except I don’t need to glance around to know that everyone else in the warehouse has stopped to look at me. I resist the urge to bare my fangs. I’ve never been that kind of vampire.
No need to be rude.
“Yes,” I say.
“And?”
“It was… It felt like Asher. And Quinn.”
Quinn’s magic isn’t all that familiar to me, not yet. He’s a shifter, and he and Asher haven’t been together that long, so we haven’t spent much time together. But I met Asher early on after Vlad turned me, and his blessing is one I recognise.
“Fuck,” Maurice hisses from across the room. The Huntsman stalks over, and I go still, but he doesn’t move to take the phone from me.
On the screen, Cassian leans back and speaks to someone else in low tones. I try to listen, but I’m hyper-aware of the Huntsman next to me. Vlad is still a few feet away, but he’s moved closer. I can feel that, too.
Maybe I shouldn’t have been surprised when Asher said the Huntsman had told him we all have bonds.
We’re all connected to the Huntsman, as well, because he handed out some of his magic as a blessing.
Regardless, I’ve always been able to feel Vlad, and for the past fifteen years, that’s been a comfort.
Recently, it’s begun to feel more like a cage.
“Right,” Cassian says, moving back in view of the camera. There’s a flash of long dark hair at the side as someone else leaves. “You’re all there?”
“Yes,” the Huntsman says, and Maurice wanders back over.
“Okay. So the good news is that things could have been a lot fucking worse.”
“How so?” the Huntsman asks. He doesn’t look amused. Not that I can read his face. I’m not sure he has an expression that isn’t ‘mildly perturbed’.
“If Asher had been true fae, or even if he hadn’t been a wolf to begin with, then this tear would’ve been a lot bigger. It wouldn’t have rivalled the gateway here, but we’d have a problem.”
“This is a problem.”
“I know, I know.” My eyes widen at Cassian’s dismissive tone, but the Huntsman says nothing. “Anyway, could have been worse. As it is, I think this will heal on its own. Grant, does it look smaller than last night?”
I lift my head and squint at the tear.
“I think so?”
“Get someone to keep an eye on it, but I think it’ll be gone in a couple of days.”
“The bad news?” the Huntsman bites out.
“There’s no way to tell how many fae got through,” Cassian says with a sigh.
“I know you were there just after daybreak, but that’s still hours of time unaccounted for.
Soren’s willing to make the trip to the Otherworld to check, but it might be good for you to come along and… grease the wheels, so to speak.”
The Huntsman growls. I jump, jerking the phone, but Cassian doesn’t move at all. He’s not looking at me—he’s looking at the Huntsman and waiting.
How powerful is he? I frown. Quinn’s pack has a real mage too, I think. Maybe I can ask Quinn to introduce us and get the rundown on his magic.
After I’ve seen Quinn shift. He promised.
“Fine,” the Huntsman says. “Let Soren know I will be there in a few hours. He is to await my arrival.”
Cassian huffs and I swear he rolls his eyes. “Yeah, sure,” he says. “Get Grant to call me if you all need anything else. I don’t want to get seasick again.”
Cassian ends the call without saying goodbye and I offer Maurice’s phone back to him. He gives me an amused look when he takes it.
The Huntsman turns his back to the tear, surveying the lot of us. “We need eyes on this day and night until it is gone,” he says. “We will not risk any more high fae crossing over.”
“And the ones already here?” Jeremiah asks.
“Await my return before investigating but react if there is an emergency. We do not know how many high fae are here or why.”
We’re all quiet for a moment and I do my best not to shift my weight and draw any more attention to myself.
Last night was a mess after I got back. I’ve never seen Vlad so panicked in all the time I’ve known him, and I know we’ve still got a conversation waiting about how I managed to get out of the house without him noticing in the first place.
Not that he spies on me or whatever. Well, not much. But I can manipulate the wards that should have let him know I was leaving, and he didn’t know about that.
I’m sure he’s figured it out now.
“Maurice, you will stay here tonight,” the Huntsman says, and Maurice scowls.
“Why me?”
“You have the most power at your disposal. I will ward the windows and ensure no one can get inside except for members of the Hunt.”
Maurice’s scowl deepens.
Asher pushes away from the wall at the back of the warehouse. “Should I keep watch during the day?”
The Huntsman doesn’t blink. “No,” he says, and Asher flinches, just a little. He’s got the most tentative grasp on the magic the Huntsman gave him, from what I can tell, but that’s because he used to be a wolf, and wolf magic and fae magic don’t mix.
My eyes skip back to the tear. Except here.
Wolf magic did this. Wolf magic and the Huntsman’s blessing.
I let my eyes unfocus until the edges of the tear blur and it’s nothing more than a pulsing light.
How did the fae know this would happen? Cassian put it together just like I did; I don’t think the Guardians knew this was a possibility before today.
“Paxton, you will watch in the day. Someone will be present in this room every minute until that tear has healed.”
Jeremiah looks even less pleased than Maurice about this development, but that’s hardly surprising. He’s a vampire. Paxton isn’t. They’re together and this is dangerous, so it makes sense that he’s worried.
“Vladimir, with me,” the Huntsman says, and then he strides over to the warehouse door and out into the night.
I glance up. Vlad is closer than he was before, and he gives me a stern look before he follows the Huntsman out.
I sigh and look at the tear again. I’m in for it, which is silly because I’m a grown man and I shouldn’t be getting shit for leaving my house in the middle of the night.
Vlad should be glad I was here. If I hadn’t been, when might we have found the tear?
“Uh-oh.” Maurice comes up on my right. He stops next to me and inspects the tear himself. “You don’t look pleased.”
“Neither do you.”
He snorts. “Why would I wish to be here when I could be spending my time with Njáll?”
Njáll. His lover and the head of the clan that contains just about all of London’s vampires. Cute.
“Hm, guess that makes sense.”
“What about you?”
“Me?”
“Are you… all right?”
He says the words like he’s not used to them, and I can’t help my smile. Maurice is fine, really, even if he’s a bit more wild than I expected from him at first. That’s fine. Not like he was expecting me at all.
No one knows why Vlad turned me, least of all me.
“Fine,” I say after blowing out a heavy breath. “Vlad’s going to want to talk about this when we get back.”
Maurice nods. “Not his preferred method, of late.” His gaze flicks to Jeremiah and Paxton, who are having their own quiet conversation. Asher ambles over to join us.
“What’s going on?”
“We’re discussing whether Vladimir will actually decide to talk about all of this,” Maurice says.
I glare at him, but he only grins, unrepentant.
Asher grunts, but the expression he gives me is sympathetic. “You’re still okay staying there?”
He’s offered to move me out of the base three times in the last couple of months. Maurice is in on it too. I know that because my alternatives seem to be either Kieran’s pack house or the clan house, but neither is what I want.
I mean, I want to spend more time with Quinn and the rest of his pack. I can’t pretend I’m not a little envious of what he has—I miss having so many people around. But I’m not going to leave my home either. I’m not going to leave Vlad.
It’s not like Vlad is doing anything to me. He’s not actually confining me to the house or whatever. But there was enough trouble before, even more now, and I don’t want him to worry about me on top of all that.
“It’s my home,” I say and peek over at the tear again. Is it getting smaller? Can’t have in the last five minutes, but I’d like to think so.
“It’ll be fine,” Maurice says. “You know he’s not mad at you. I don’t think he gets mad at you.”
I huff and don’t reply. Yeah, that’s not true at all.