Chapter 12
CHAPTER 12
The broken-down house seemed more forlorn than the last time Roger had crossed its threshold. Clouds covered the moon, leaving little light to filter into this place. The boards creaked under his weight as he drifted between the long shadows. Their dry, rotted sounds were nothing like the way a ship would moan its aches on the open ocean. This complaining was a soul-weary deepness within the house. Age and decay had worn away the place. No one had taken the time to care for it. Likely, no one ever would, and it would tumble into dust.
Roger laid his hand upon the wall beside the second-story window. A kindred exhaustion was in him since leaving the mansion with Dmitri in his arms. He rested his other hand on Zack’s pendant. A shop down the street from the Last Deal had fixed the chain’s clasp for him.
Dmitri was lying on Nathaniel’s bed and, the last Roger had checked, hadn’t moved in the two nights since Roger had put him there. In his boredom—or anxiety—Vincent had cleaned Nathaniel’s shabby apartment, filing off the layer of crud of a hardworking bachelor living alone. The Wrights were safely housed in a hotel not terribly far from the Last Deal, but Roger couldn’t bring them directly into the building. That would be rude, considering Thomas’s grandfather had tortured Nathaniel for years.
He had promised Thomas and Amber that he was working on another plan, but he was unsure of what direction to push. He was breaking another promise. Failing yet again.
How many storms had the abandoned farmhouse weathered? How many more could it withstand before falling entirely?
How much more could he take on his own?
Headlights drew his attention out to the gravel road leading up to the decrepit house. The car was quieter and a sleeker, more expensive model than it had been before. He waited until it pulled in alongside his own before he dropped from the window to the ground below.
Josefina stepped out of her car and slammed the door shut. The crunch of her boots—first on the gravel and then on the dry grass—was thunder rolling toward him. Her voice carried, no hint of it lost to the wind or darkness. “I risked my life and my lover’s domain for you, and you didn’t have the decency to text me when your mission was done!”
“I had my hands full.” His voice was hollow, reverberating through the nothingness growing inside him.
“Anton departed in the middle of my evening at the Chateau. I had to sit there and pretend I had no notion of why he might suddenly have to leave. I had to smile and make nice with that bastard Seamus, who I hate above all others, and then you leave me to wonder what occurred for two nights! And make me drive back out here to the middle of nowhere!”
“I couldn’t say the words where anyone else might hear me,” Roger said hoarsely. “I owed you more than a text.”
Josefina paused. Her anger had always been a liquid steel, cold and brutal, but one that she controlled with finite precision. She continued to glare at him, but her hardness was no longer one of pure rage. “What happened?”
“I went into the basement and found Dmitri.” Roger had let his numbness shield him, but speaking that fragment fractured his self-control. Bloody tears slid down his cheeks, neither hot nor cold. They simply were. “I and the girl were freeing him while the other two continued to search. But before we could release him, Anton arrived. I had to make a choice, Josefina. I could take Dmitri and the others and leave, or he would tell me where Zack and Takashi were. The girl’s life would have been forfeit. All of them would have been. Anton’s bargain didn’t guarantee I would be able to reach Zack or Takashi either. You should have seen that room. I couldn’t leave Dmitri. Nor could I sacrifice Zack’s blood family.”
Josefina moved in a blur, and Roger prepared himself for the blow. Instead of striking, she wrapped her arms around him in a tight embrace. He slowly returned her hug. He had never stopped to consider he needed to save his former lover. And now, Zack and Takashi might be facing the same or worse, and Roger had left them to it. They might not even be alive. He may never see them again.
Something unfurled inside him, and his strength left. His knees gave out. If not for Josefina, he would have fallen to the ground, but she held him upright.
He had never stood a chance at all, had he? His mortal family had been a nightmare, his life at sea mired with violence and that life stolen from him. All for the sake of two bastards’ game. He was no prize, no vampire worthy of becoming a captain in a coven, let alone its leader. He was nothing but failure through and through.
When he closed his eyes, he could picture the five of them together—Carver, Kit, Takashi, Zack, and himself. They had had a few nights in, a few times where they relished each other’s company and forgot about the outside world. In those moments, Roger had wished that might be their ever after. That in some way, they would be able to hold on to that sanctuary, no matter what.
But Carver was dead. Kit had left. Roger had been fooling himself then and longing for that fake peace now only hurt all the more.
“All right,” Josefina said with sympathy but an element of firmness. “Pull yourself together.”
He was a million pieces of dust floating into the wind, tiny fragments scattered along three centuries of living. His last hope of holding himself together had faded. He was broken. No. No, I won’t let Seamus win. If I can’t have them, then I will destroy him. Even if I die in the attempt. What else is my shoddy life good for ?
He withdrew from Josefina’s hug and found the will to stand on his own two feet.
But suddenly, she latched onto his forearms and kept him close. Worry filled her brown eyes, and she shook her head. “Whatever you’re thinking, don’t.”
Roger traced his mental focus along the edges of his usual walls. At some point, he had slipped and let them fall. Josefina wasn’t pressing into his mind, but she’d be able to read whatever he was emanating. Which meant she likely picked up on his desire to burn the world in his desperation.
“He has taken everything from me,” Roger growled. He yanked his arms away from Josefina and began to pace toward the house.
The old rotting wood whispered secrets in its darkness. Its shadows were deep, never-ending, and reached toward someplace cold. A place beyond fury, beyond light. He sensed a lurking power, not in the house, but in that strange connection. A fragment within himself screamed, and the scream became a howl.
“I played his games. I smiled. I seduced. I killed. I fucked. I sat at his side and let him do whatever he wanted and prayed he would not see me,” Roger said. Each word was a liberation born from the chests at the bottom of his mental sea flinging themselves upward. “When I was at my strongest, I balked. I was still afraid of him. Of what he might do to me. To them.”
Slowly, Josefina came into his eyeline, but she was twenty feet away. She crept as if she was keeping alert for danger, and yet her expression did not waver from sternness. The traces of her worry were gone. A pulse of curiosity slid out from her. “Was I wrong? Was that not self-destruction I felt in you?”
“Forgive me if I don’t give a damn for this.” Roger put his hand on the center of his chest. “This is still here. I endure. Not because of any strength. But because he is a prideful bastard, and my life is a toy to him. I cannot live that way anymore. I will not bend and disappear into exile. He has made it so that I am worthless, so no, I no longer care what happens to me so long as he burns .”
The more he thought of what had happened in his long life, the more rage bubbled and boiled to the surface. Mortals died; that was the way of the world. But so many of them hadn’t needed to die the way they had. The horrific massacre at Gladwell Manor—children and adults tortured until they lost their minds. Roger hadn’t done the worst of it, but he had stopped none of it either. Letting Mary Gladwell run wasn’t near enough penance, not when he had failed her descendent, too.
Josefina was a beacon of red light in the shadows that roiled around them. The moving grays had shapes, some like ropes on a runaway ship. He could grab hold of them and tie them in place. Direct them.
A strange sensation coursed through him. He felt a rush as if he’d drunk blood, but he’d only had a blood bag at dusk. Molten heat burst underneath his mental sea, a wealth of power bubbling up. Something in the house cracked, and a beam fell. Was that me? How?
“Roger—”
“I will not be a coward anymore,” he rasped. “I will not be weak. He will pay for what he has done. He and everything he loves will burn. You cannot stop me.”
“I wouldn’t dream of that,” Josefina replied. She took careful steps forward. “But if you die in the undertaking, even if you succeed first, he will achieve his greatest victory. You need to live through this, Roger.”
“If they’re gone, I can’t promise that I’ll want to,” Roger murmured.
“Roger—”
“If he had taken Nell from you? Reed?” Roger snapped.
Josefina pursed her lips. She rested her hand on his shoulder. A shallower version of the longing to rip and shred came from her, but it lacked the flame of need and the heat of desperation that currently fueled Roger. “Roger, I will stand at your side and see you through this. For the sake of Zack and the sake of Takashi, both who I love, too, I will not see you destroy yourself.”
Roger laughed, the sound bitter and mean. “You’ll be able to do that safely watching from a thousand miles away?”
“I’m staying.”
“What about dragging a war to your lover’s doorstep?”
“I’ll worry about Nell and ramifications.”
He loved her desperately, needed her friendship, but he couldn’t let her remain with him. “Josefina, this isn’t your fight.”
“The fuck it isn’t,” she said angrily. “He hasn’t taken them from just you. I have claim to my anger and grief as well. I will see that he pays for it.”
“You have been adamant that you cannot be caught helping me,” Roger said.
“You have been skirting around your anger rather than embracing your wrath for as long as I have known you. But if you are finally ready to bring a war to him, then I won’t leave you to face it alone. Especially if you believe this is worthless.” She put her hand on his chest. “You have held on to your heart, Roger. I owe at least Takashi enough to ensure you live long enough for that chance to reunite with him.”
“If they’re dead?—”
“We have no confirmation. Until we do, we carry hope,” Josefina said. “If you can’t, then I will hold on to it for you.”
“I wouldn’t have thought you the type,” Roger said wryly.
“You introduced me to the love of my life. You got me out of this fucking hell, and I have been in paradise for almost a hundred years,” Josefina whispered gently. “I owe you more than I can ever repay, Roger, so much so that I am terrified to speak of its debt in case you would hold it over me.”
Though the rage was still churning inside him, the worst of it settled after listening to Josefina. She had been a beautiful human girl and an angry young vampire. Since then, she had become the stunning, powerful creature before him. She’d had the opportunity because of him. Because he had managed at least one good thing in his life. Not everything I’ve attempted has failed .
He put his forehead against hers. “You will never owe me a debt, Josefina. To know that you love and are loved heals a wound in my heart.”
“There you are, asshole,” Josefina said. Her laugh was tinged with a soft cry. “I was worried your first casualty would be your true self.”
“Carver was the first.” Roger stepped away. “I haven’t told his family. I don’t know if he had any, to be honest. Worse, I don’t know what’s happened to his body. I had to leave him.”
“I’ve already put Reed on it,” Josefina replied.
Roger put an arm around her shoulders and tugged her close. “If you keep looking out for me, perhaps I will survive this.”
Lightly, Josefina pushed him away rather than letting him drag her in. “You still have to do something. I won’t let you sit idle either. Do you have a plan?”
“No, but I think I have a brilliant idea.” Roger grinned at her. “Why don’t we see what we can do about emptying the coven’s coffers?”