Chapter 46
I press my face to the metal to try to hear more and find a crack in the container wall. A sliver I can see through—
Blood. Flashes of silver. Twelve demons against my dad. It’s not a fair fight. And they all carry the mark of the Brood.
He’s screaming as he drives his sword, bleeding from his ribs and neck…
I know he needs me. But no matter how hard I pry at the container door, it doesn’t budge—
One rugged man whose face I can’t see in the dark swings at him. I can hear the muffled recognition in my dad’s voice. He isn’t surprised. “You,” he says. “After all this time…At least tell me why.”
I don’t hear the man’s response. I see only a flash of light. Fire, maybe? Lightning? It isn’t raining. The men converge. My dad’s silver sword shrieks against claws.
“Come on, Dad,” I whisper. I know the demons have hearing as good as my own. It doesn’t stop me from chanting, “Come on, come on.”
I press my hands together in some kind of useless prayer. I beg whoever is listening to make sure my dad survives. Why did so many Broods follow us tonight? What do they want with him?
They’re slicing him down. Pushing him toward the railing of the docks. They have him cornered. If I’m going to help, it has to be now. I don’t care how the container door bangs. Now, now, now—
But I can’t get free.
He doesn’t let the demons take him. Not his soul, not his life. He utters something I can’t hear and flings himself over the docks into the churning water below.
My fist finds my mouth to stanch a scream. I sob into my hands.
A few of the demons curse. They’re angry. They wanted to kill him. The burly man he recognized tips his head over the edge to stare at the ocean water.
When the Broods have left and I’ve cried everything I have inside of me onto the rusting base of the shipping container, the police come.
I yell until they find me, and when they shove the door open, I land hard on the wooden dock.
My bones ache from weeping. My eyes are dry and raw.
I hurtle past them toward the railing, and there, floating in the raging, roiling sea, is my father’s lifeless body.
I scream for him until my voice has left me.
Then I scream more, new, fresh tears cresting in my eyes and dripping down my face as I watch his body bob in the choppy water. The pain is unbearable. The thought of never being able to turn to him when I’m afraid.
I scream for my dad until I’m certain I’ll pass out from the way it rips at my throat.
And even then, I can’t stop—
“Viv!”
I jolt upright, sucking in huge gulps of air, my throat rasping as I fight to swallow.
“Viv,” Reid repeats. His hands are on me, grasping tightly, cupping my shoulders, holding me upright.
“You were having a nightmare.” His face is a mask of worry, blue eyes wide as he searches my face for the source of my pain.
“You’re okay,” he murmurs, his fingertips brushing over my wet cheek. “You’re here, at the Windsor. With me.”
My heart is pounding as my eyes adjust to the dark and I remember where I am. Where we fell asleep. His shirt is still under my head.
“I’m sorry,” I mutter weakly. Shame fills my chest. And a decaying, empty grief.
“It’s fine.” He rubs a hand down my spine and back up until I can breathe naturally again.
“We should probably get going.” My voice echoes through the exhibit hall.
Reid nods, clearing sleep from his eyes. When I’ve slid on my shoes, he asks quietly, “What are your nightmares about?”
“My father. The night he died.”
Reid nods as if he assumed as much. “You said it was the Brood?”
“They killed him at the docks. He’d hid me somewhere safe so they wouldn’t find me. But I saw everything.” The words still hurt all these years later. “I was ten.”
Reid’s eyes widen at the realization, as if something new has hit him.
Something horrifying. “I remember hearing about that…About a decade ago, a pack of Broods took out one of the best hunters in Astera. You were there?” It twists my stomach to think of how they might have bragged to him about the kill. I only nod.
“Viv…” He’s really reeling. “I’m so sorry.”
“Hey. It’s okay.” I press one soft kiss to his mouth, but he barely kisses me back. “It wasn’t your fault.”
He sucks in a breath. “I know, but—”
“I don’t have them that often anymore. Lately, I don’t dream at all.”
“Really?” Reid shakes his head. “Most nights I dream of you.”
I try to swallow the cartoony things that does to my heart. “You never did tell me when your lurid fantasies began.”
The intensity when he finds my eyes takes my breath away. “The moment I saw you. You saved that mom and her kids. The most beautiful woman I’d ever seen, beating a demon to a pulp in a tiny black dress…I’m not proud of what I did that night when I got home.”
A tired laugh breezes from me as I lace my locket back around my neck, and Reid throws his shirt back on. I study him in the moonlight and unexpectedly find that I miss the horns he so despises. “I think I found the first thing we don’t have in common.”
“Besides you being a demon-slaying angel and me a hellion?”
His words bring a small smile to my face. “I love your horns,” I say, before a new thought sparks. Then, “Hey, that’s it.”
Reid blinks at me. “What is?”
“I’ve been trying to figure out what to name my daggers. Angel and Hellion.”
Reid considers this as he stands. “I like it.”
“I’m going to take a couple of these broken artifacts up to Fiona’s office. Meet you at the gateway?”
“Sure.” His eyes look sad. I wonder if he, too, is thinking about how much is about to change when we go back to Harker. The impossible fight that looms before us.
Upstairs, I’ve brought the few most damaged pieces into Fiona’s office for safekeeping, only to find her sitting on the floor in classic Fiona fashion: poring over paperwork, shoes off, mocha latte steaming in a huge mug by her side.
Her glasses are carving a dent into the side of her nose, lithe limbs folded primly under her pencil skirt.
“Viv.” Fiona’s round eyes glint in the soft desk light when she looks up. “What are you still doing here?”
I put the artifacts on the floor beside her. “I didn’t want to leave these on the museum floor.”
“Thank you,” she says quietly, eyes back on her work.
“What did the Elders say?”
Fiona’s lips purse. “Contacting them isn’t quite so easy. I got word to the Citadel hunters. Now we wait.”
I nod, prepared to leave, when something new bubbles to the surface. “You know, you could have told me what you were.”
“Actually, I couldn’t. That’s why I keep my distance at school.
One of the Elders’ conditions of my role here at the Windsor is that no mortal nor lymantrian know of my double life.
This museum houses more than just history, Viv.
If someone knew my human identity, it might open the Windsor up to great vulnerabilities.
” I imagine a vampire holding Nora hostage to get Fiona’s master key and shudder.
“I broke a substantial rule this evening, which I don’t plan on revealing to the Elders.
I trust you and Reid can keep the knowledge to yourselves? ”
“Of course.”
When I turn to leave, she adds, “I did want to help. I didn’t want you to be alone, Viv.
After I saw you do that ritual, I looked for your records—wanted to know why you hadn’t been enrolled…
but you weren’t in them. Not even marked dead or whereabouts unknown…
just missing completely. I figured your father had been the hunter in your family line.
He hadn’t gone to Harker, either, I guess.
There was no David Abbot in any of the records. ”
Just as I saw that day in the archives.
“But I did look into his death to confirm my suspicions,” she continues. “To see if there was anything obviously deviant about it. Couldn’t find much besides that twenty-six.”
My muscles tense. “What twenty-six?”
Her eyes widen behind her glasses. “You never looked at his autopsy report?”
I shake my head, heart beginning to pound.
“He drowned. I watched it happen. I tried to find the Brood demons who killed him, but…No, I didn’t look at the report.
” Why would I have wanted to read about the sharks that had devoured him or the way the frigid ocean had bloated his corpse?
Even now, the thought sends my stomach into revolt.
Fiona’s mouth twists as if she doesn’t know if I can handle whatever she’s about to say.
“Tell me.”
She takes a breath. “He carved the number twenty-six into his own hand. I did as much research as I could”—she gestures to the Windsor around her—“mortal and otherwise. For you, for Nor…Never came up with anything that made sense.”
Twenty-six.
Twenty-six.
It hits me like a freight train.
The betrayal. The sickness.
“Viv?” Fiona asks. “What is it?”
But I can’t breathe, let alone speak. I sprint back down the emergency exit stairs and through the mirrored glass of the Windsor lobby, Fiona chasing after me. I nearly barrel right through Reid.
“Come on,” I gasp. “Now.”
He doesn’t ask what’s happened. He trusts me, taking my fingers in his hand.
We leap through the gateway, my heart between my teeth.