Chapter 19
Chapter
Nineteen
JESSE
The morning arrived wet and rainy, with half of Rome plunged into darkness. A storm had rolled in sometime after midnight, killing power in the rental house.
I’d lit candles and worked at the kitchen table while Caleb slept, and when the electricity shuddered back to life a few hours later, I’d turned on the television to newscasters reporting downed lines and damaged grids from Milan to Naples.
The storms had evaded all prediction models, and unprecedented temperature fluctuations had produced high winds, hail, and flash floods.
But the airport had power. Emile’s flight was on time.
Which meant Caleb and I had to grab the rental car Stefanos had arranged and head to Fiumicino.
I’d woken Caleb at four-thirty, which had gone about as well as poking a bear in December. He trudged at my side now, hunched inside his gray hoodie with his chin tucked against the drizzle.
Our breath puffed, and the chill clung to my bones. Stars twinkled in a sky just beginning to turn purple. The buildings around us were dark, but not even a powerful storm could thin Rome’s morning traffic. Horns blared, and scooters buzzed past. Red taillights reflected in the wet streets.
“…on purpose,” Caleb muttered.
I leaned forward so I could peer inside his hoodie. “What was that?”
He grunted and retreated deeper into his cotton cave, “Stefanos” and something that sounded very much like “dickfuck” floating from the depths.
I bit the inside of my cheek. He needed food and coffee. A lot of it.
We passed a darkened cafe, a handwritten sign that read “NO POWER” taped to the inside of the door. A line of crows perched on the gutter above the awning lifted into the air as we passed.
On the street corner, a work truck idled under a power line drooping on its pole. Two men in white construction hats shouted to each other as a crane hoisted a third man in a cherry picker over the wire.
Caleb watched them as we passed. “Fucking Stefanos did this on purpose.”
I glanced back at the workers. “The storm?”
“The flight,” Caleb said in a testy voice. “Five in the goddamn morning. The next time he calls, I’m telling that Greek fucker to—”
“I think that cafe up there has power,” I said, pointing. “What about a cornetto?”
He cast me a wary look. “What’s in it?”
I smiled. “Whatever you want. Chocolate and custard are popular. Or you can ask for—”
The scent hit so hard that I missed a step.
Rotting fruit. The cloying, gamey smell of a mind gone feral. My wolf surged to its feet and howled, hackles raised.
Rogue.
Ulfrik was close.
Caleb yanked down his hood. “Jesse?”
“I have him,” I said. The trail ran ahead of us, the scent so thick it unrolled like a carpet on the sidewalk.
I broke into a run. Caleb pounded beside me without a word.
My wolf clawed at my ribs, wanting out so it could hunt. With my gift running hot in my veins, I could have managed a swift transformation. But we were in the middle of Rome. Humans were everywhere, cleaning up the storm and trying to start their day despite the spotty electricity.
Ulfrik’s trail led us toward the river. We ran through the slick streets, dodging a delivery van unloading crates outside a bakery and cutting across an intersection against the light while a Fiat’s horn blared behind us.
The scent pulled me left down a narrow side street with empty laundry lines sagging between the buildings, then right along rows of shuttered shops with mannequins and glasswares in their windows.
Our shoes slapped against the cobblestones.
A man walking his dog jerked the leash backward as we blew past.
Caleb matched my strides, his athlete’s body handling the chase like it was nothing. I turned down another street, and then another, tracking the rot that cut through the city’s wet concrete, mold, and car exhaust.
The scent thickened with every new twist and turn. No vanishing this time. It ran ahead of me like a rope pulled taut.
Then it turned toward the Tiber. We followed, reaching the Lungotevere. A stone staircase descended from street level to the lower embankment, its steps slick and black with rain. The trail poured down it.
“Come on,” I told Caleb, and we took the stairs fast, emerging onto the wide stone walkway that ran along the river below the city.
The Tiber slid past on our left, the river swollen and brown with stormwater.
Graffiti-covered travertine walls rose on either side.
Rome carried on far above us, distant car horns and scooter engines echoing across the chattering water.
The embankment stretched in both directions, empty except for a figure slumped against the wall twenty feet ahead.
I stopped, disbelief rocking me on my feet. Caleb halted beside me.
In front of us, Ulfrik Haraldsson was unmistakable.
His big frame filled out a tuxedo, the black bow tie askew.
Tangled blond hair streamed over shoulders wide enough to take out a stone doorway.
One hand rested palm-up on the ground next to him, the fingers that had once gripped a Viking’s axe curled toward the sky.
His long legs sprawled in front of him, and his chin rested on his chest.
But it shouldn’t have rested anywhere. Because I’d ripped his head from his shoulders with my jaws and then burned his body with aluminum, magnesium, and iron oxide. I’d watched his flesh bubble and melt and his bones turn to dust.
I’d killed him in New York, and yet he slumped against a wall next to the Tiber in Rome like a drunk sleeping off a bender.
I jolted forward. Caleb came with me, and we pounded toward Ulfrik.
Ten feet away, he rippled.
I threw out an arm, and Caleb and I stopped cold.
Ulfrik’s body changed, his form going wavy like heat shimmering above asphalt. His blond hair darkened and receded. His giant frame shrank and softened, broad shoulders collapsing inward until the tuxedo hung off him like a deflated tent. By the time the air stilled, Ulfrik was gone.
A different man slumped in his place, his smaller body swallowed by the tuxedo. He was fifty, maybe older, with the round, flushed face of a hard drinker. His scalp showed through a bad combover. A gold Rolex circled one hairy wrist.
“Holy shit,” Caleb breathed. “That’s the guy. The watch— Jesse, that’s the guy from the street outside the catacombs. The one arguing with the woman in the cab.”
Memory snapped into place. The heavyset man in the baggy suit, one hand braced on an open cab door while a woman’s sharp voice pushed him back.
I’d cataloged him in half a second and dismissed him just as fast: a human on the losing end of a lover’s quarrel, no more relevant to my hunt than the rain.
He’d stood thirty feet from where Ulfrik’s trail died, and I’d looked straight through him.
He roused now, and I rushed forward, grabbing him by the lapels and hauling him up. His bloodshot eyes went wide.
“Who are you?” I growled. The sour stench of panic and alcohol rolled off him. Human.
But not Ulfrik’s scent. The rot was gone.
For a second, the man gaped, mouth opening and closing like a fish caught on a hook. Then he came alive, kicking his legs and clawing at my arms. “Let go of me, asshole!”
Russian. Or something Slavic.
A sweeter, feminine scent wove between the others. The coppery bite of old blood floated there, too. He gripped my wrist.
Healing scratches covered the backs of his hands. A deeper gouge peeked from under his watchband, and a sinking feeling spread through my gut.
“Who gave you those scratches?” I dragged him higher, lifting him off the ground. “Did you hurt that woman?”
Fear flashed in his eyes. Then he fought like a demon, ripping at my arms and kicking my shins. His knee glanced off my groin.
“Answer me!” I demanded, giving him a shake.
“Fuck you!” he screamed. His arm swung wild and caught me across the jaw, snapping my head sideways.
Caleb detonated.
With a roar, he tore the man out of my grip and shook him like a terrier with a rat. “You don’t fucking touch him!” The man’s head snapped forward, then back, and a loud crack split the air.
He went boneless in Caleb’s grip. The sharp scent of urine hit my nose.
Caleb froze, his hands fisted in the man’s coat. The man’s head lolled, his eyes open but unseeing.
The Lungotevere was silent except for the bloated rush of the Tiber.
“Oh…” Caleb said weakly. “Oh, my god.”
I took the man from him and lowered his body to the ground so he slumped against the wall once more. His neck bent at an unnatural angle. I pressed my fingers to his throat, feeling for a pulse I knew I wouldn’t find.
“Dead,” I murmured. Which meant we couldn’t question him. I cursed softly in Dutch and leaned close, drawing his scent deep into my lungs. Perfume, sweat, expensive cologne, and the rust of old blood. Not his. He’d hurt someone in the past few days, but he wasn’t a werewolf.
I stood and scanned the top of the wall, searching for observers. No one looked down at us. The embankment was still deserted, the street above dark.
Caleb sat down hard on the ground. “Oh, Jesus,” he said, voice gone thin. “Oh, shit.”
I crouched in front of him and gripped his shoulders. His pupils were blown wide, and his breathing was fast and shallow.
“Caleb. Listen to me. Stop freaking out.”
“I’m not freaking out.”
I let my wolf rise higher, and it deepened my voice as I said, “Yes, you are, and I need you to stop.”
Caleb whimpered and tried to drop his eyes, but he couldn’t. Not unless I allowed it.
I held steady, my beast bending his will to mine. It was as if invisible threads of power—his and mine—formed a net around us. My threads were thicker and stronger, and they always would be. My wolf was naturally more dominant, the same as a person being born with red hair.
“Calm,” I said. “Deep breaths. Calm, okay?”
He dragged in a breath and released it. Then another. Some of the tension eased from his muscles. “Okay.”
“Good boy.” I pressed a quick, hard kiss to his forehead. “Help me search him.” Maybe it was a bad idea, but giving him a task was hopefully better than letting him sit still and think about what he’d just done.
We went through the man’s jacket pockets, withdrawing a phone, plastic hotel keys, and a wallet stuffed with euros and credit cards. I turned over a little white card printed with the name of a gentlemen’s club.
“Passport,” Caleb said, handing it over.
I flipped it open. “Pyotr Zarins. He’s Latvian.”
“I guess that explains the accent,” Caleb said weakly. He stared at the body, his freckles dark against his pale skin.
“Search his pants,” I said, flipping up Pyotr’s suit jacket. When I pulled out a small blue vial, Caleb gasped.
“I saw that in Carlo’s office.”
“Are you sure?” The vial was glass, no larger than my thumb, and stoppered with a cork. The brown liquid inside glowed faintly even in the predawn light.
“Yeah. He had a row of them on a shelf behind his desk.” Caleb looked from the vial to me. “It’s the same bottle. I’m sure of it.”
I worked the cork free and held the vial to my nose.
My wolf recoiled so hard I nearly dropped it. Rotten fruit and madness. Ulfrik’s scent: concentrated and undiluted, as if someone had bottled the man himself.
“It’s Ulfrik’s blood,” I said, forcing the cork back in.
Pyotr’s pockets turned up a second vial, empty except for a ring of blood crusted around the rim.
I pocketed both vials and stood, pulling Caleb up with me.
His gaze drifted over Pyotr, and he swallowed thickly.
“It’s all right,” I said, turning him away from the body. “Keep your eyes on me, okay?”
“Okay.” He swallowed again. “It’s just… I’ve never… I killed—”
“You’re okay.” I took his elbow and guided him a few steps away, scanning the walls and river as I went. The embankment was deserted, but the sun was coming up. I couldn’t count on the cold to keep humans away for long.
“I have to call Stefanos,” I said. “The Council has resources everywhere. They’ll help us dispose of the body.”
“Right.” Caleb nodded too many times. “Right.”
Fucking Carlo. My wolf paced in my head, eager to storm the opera house and tear the place apart until I got answers.
Because that blood had come from Carlo’s shelf, and somehow it had let a human wear Ulfrik’s body like a costume.
How? Had Pyotr been able to take wolf form, too?
How many more vials were out there in how many more pockets?
Did the Council know?
But I couldn’t walk into a master vampire’s stronghold unprepared. Caleb was barely holding himself together, and we had a dead body on the ground in the middle of Rome. Whatever my misgivings about Stefanos and the Council, they were my sole option at the moment.
“What about Emile?” Caleb asked.
I pulled out my phone. “I’ll have Stefanos send a car.”
Something sharp pierced the side of my neck.
I slapped my hand against it, and pain seared my fingers. Smoke rolled off my skin. I wrenched the object free and flung it away. A silver dart bounced over the ground. Weakness gushed down my arms and legs. Blisters spread over my hands and up my arms.
Silver. In my bloodstream. Everywhere.
“Run, Caleb!” I barked.
A second dart caught him in the neck. He went down hard, hitting the stone and writhing on the ground.
Rage burst like a dying star in my chest.
Footsteps pounded toward us. Figures dressed head-to-toe in black rushed from the shadows.
Their scents reached me through the agony flooding my limbs. Human—but only just, their signatures threadbare.
Pets. Carlo’s favorites, strong on their master’s blood.
I lurched to meet them, but my legs collapsed from under me.
On the ground, Caleb screamed.
My wolf roared and threw itself against the walls of my failing body, desperate to reach him—to shift and protect our mate.
Caleb! I tried to say his name.
The world went black before it left my mouth.