Chapter 1
CHAPTER 1
L’Hotel Monde De Nuit, Chicago, Illinois, 2021
“Roger, please! I can’t do this on my own!”
The pleading voice sliced through the oblivion that clouded Roger’s sight all the way through to his soul. Pain so intense that it scalded, froze, and then thawed him shattered the shreds of reality attempting to stitch themselves into consciousness. Every nerve and fragment of his body ached with an agony that threatened to pin him to a wall in an abyss of unknowing.
“Roger!”
Grasping for the waking world was like groping for a loose rope in a storm, the length rain-slick and constantly bandying about in the wind. He was reaching, but it kept slipping away from him. The harder he tried, the further life seemed to be, until finally, finally , he saw a bit of carpet beneath him. His hand was pressed against it. He had a body.
With consciousness came the fragments of memories. Pieces tumbled away from him, but he fought to form a picture of himself. He had been in a fight. In a hotel room. Before a ball? No, after going to a ball. He’d walked into a party with Takashi on his arm. Spun Zack around the dance floor in an elegant waltz. Then fled. Ran to the hotel room because Seamus was angry. Because Anton had declared that the gamble was settled.
Strange that the thought of the flaxen-haired ancient vampire was what brought focus to the downpour of memories flooding through Roger. For over three hundred years, he had believed that he survived the cruelty of his sire because he had become someone that his sire at least tolerated, if not liked. That he had cut away enough bits of himself that Seamus didn’t hate him, that he had spent night after night smiling away his pains because that was the only way to stay alive.
But he had been nothing more than a plaything. Seamus and Anton had been competing with each other to see whose sireling would live longer, Roger or Dmitri. Their lives had been a damn game for their sires.
Even now, he was coming back to consciousness because their bet wasn’t over. At the Grand Winter’s Ball, he’d shown off his ability to incite desire in others in order to shut down the fear that Seamus had been spreading. He’d humiliated Seamus in what he’d thought was a coy move, but he hadn’t survived because of any skill or talent of his own. He’d lived as long as he had because Seamus willed it.
Seamus couldn’t stand for the humiliation to go unpunished. He would have ripped them to shreds inside the Chateau de Vampire, except the Lady Belladonna, an Unseelie noble, had interrupted and demanded he remain civil as it was a party to honor the fey.
Roger and his group had fled the party. On their way out, Roger had scooped up Vincent into his arms. The boy had been one of Seamus’s pets, and Seamus had beaten him. Roger wasn’t sure he could save the boy’s life in the end.
He wasn’t sure of anything anymore except that someone was calling to him.
“ Roger !” The voice was unfamiliar, climbing in pitch with desperation.
The sharp pain in Roger’s neck was subsiding. The last wound Anton had dealt was to snap his neck. Not deadly for a vampire, but inconvenient. How long had he been out?
Roger pushed himself to his hands and knees. His vision swayed like the world was the deck of a ship before settling. The blades he’d wielded from the fight were gone. The one he’d made of shadows must have melted away when he lost consciousness, but he didn’t spot Callum Wright’s magical Bowie knife either.
Callum Wright. The name of that monster was the key to unlocking another flood of memories. Bits of Zack appeared, fragments of visions. Now, Roger could hear the echo of his laugh, remember the feel of him in his arms.
Was the voice calling out to him Zack’s?
No.
Did Zack need his help?
Roger’s vision settled, and he took in his surroundings. How odd that the hotel suite that had been the home for the five of them for weeks was in nearly the order they’d left it in. The couches were pushed out from the center of the living room because they’d practiced their ballroom dances one last time before the party. Where the lights had dimmed during the fight, they were back to their usual brightness. The bar and large television remained untouched from the fight.
But the glass doors leading to the balcony were broken. A gaping hole and the scent of blood on the air were evidence that part of the fight had gone that way.
Zack had been fighting Seamus, and Roger had been too busy with Anton to help him.
Takashi had fought at Roger’s side until Anton had snapped his neck to knock him out. Where was he? He had been close.
Kit and Carver had to be somewhere nearby. They were vulnerable mortals, made more so by Roger’s decision to exclude them from his true mission.
Where were his friends? His lovers? Were any of them still alive? Who was calling to him?
Moving was a mistake. Roger had fought with every ounce of his spirit with the belief that he might not live another moment. Doing so had torn through his stored energy, and without that power in his veins, his hunger became a thirst so fierce that his throat was rougher than the barnacles caked onto the underside of a hull that hadn’t been cleaned in three decades. He ground his teeth. The pain of his fangs pricking his gums was minor compared to the rest of his aches.
There was blood. He smelled a pool of it behind him, and he turned toward it.
Carver was lying in the doorway, his body keeping the exit open. Another flash of memory sparked for Roger. Seamus had torn Carver’s throat open.
The blood would be no good for Roger.
That the realization came before the first pang of grief drove a dagger deep into Roger’s heart. Carver had been a friend and someone who had shared his blood with Roger. He had been a mortal boy with a broad smile and an easygoing love for life.
And he was dead because of Roger. Because Roger couldn’t see that he hadn’t been acting the part of a fool but been one.
He staggered to his feet. Migraine was a mundane word for the agony threatening to shred his mind. A whine filled his ears, some indiscernible pitch that had to be a concoction of his inner senses rather than something real. Every thought was sluggish, especially when memories danced in front of his vision. Nearby was a source of fresh, wondrous blood. He wanted to lap it up.
No, that’s the life draining from someone I care about. I don’t want to kill them. Roger struggled out of the remnants of his tuxedo jacket and dropped the ruined silver fabric to the floor. “Where are you?”
“Over here!”
Fuck, there was a lot of “here” in the suite. The pitched note in his ears moved to a higher frequency and stopped blocking the deeper sounds. He could pick out heartbeats. Two pulses pounded away, one fast while the other was weaker but steady.
Two? There should have been four . Wait, no. Carver was already gone. Three. He should have heard three.
Roger stumbled toward the source of the heartbeats. On the floor, he discovered a white-gold dagger pendant on a beautiful, broken chain. It had a pink tourmaline gem—Zack’s birthstone—set in the tiny pommel and little diamonds on either side of the hilt and in a line down the center of the two-inch pendant. Takashi had given it to Zack for his birthday. Though it took far too much energy, Roger scooped it up from the floor and slid it into his pocket. He’ll want this back .
A muffled cry drew his attention. Whoever was alive was hiding behind the bar. He was moving closer to the fresh blood, but he throttled his hunger and choked it into submission. He was over three hundred years old and would not fall into a blood frenzy.
A smear of blood across the floor led him through the furniture and to his destination.
Kit lay on the floor. Deep red soaked their beautiful silver dress, the light failing to illuminate any of the sparkles. Their eyes were closed, and they lacked tension in their body, dangerously close to having the sort of stillness that only came to the dead. Against the pallor of their skin, their dyed red hair was a brilliant shock of color. They had shifted into their hybrid form, and they had long foxlike ears, a tail, and claws on the tips of their fingers.
Holding a blanket to the largest of Kit’s wounds, Vincent trembled as he continued to press down. His right eye was puffy, and the red marks on his arms were more bruises than welts. His lip was split anew from his shouts. Every mortal Roger met anymore felt young, but Vincent couldn’t be older than Zack. Besides the hallmarks of youth clinging to Vincent, Roger knew what sort of mortal Seamus claimed. The young and helpless.
As Vincent choked on tears while trying to staunch Kit’s bleeding, Roger’s mental winds shifted, and his sails snapped into place. He had to step up for Kit’s and Vincent’s sakes. He had to take action before Kit was lost.
Roger went to his knees beside Kit. “They’re a shifter. We need to reposition the blanket before it heals into the wound.”
Immediately, Vincent lifted the cloth. Rather than sticking, blood welled too quickly.
I could lap it up. Suck it down.
NO.
Darting forward, Roger snatched the blanket from Vincent and pressed it back onto Kit. “They should have been healing.”
“Zack.” Vincent coughed on the name and started again, wiping tears from his eyes. “They were helping Zack fight Seamus, and … and Seamus blurred out of the way and made Zack cut them.”
“They were cut with the enchanted silver.” Roger fought the urge to clench his hands. He had to keep the pressure steady. But was there a point?
Yes. Kit’s heart was still beating. In theory, Roger could use a few of the blood bags that he’d kept for himself and Takashi as emergency supplies and pump them into Kit to give them a better shot. But the wound …
His long life had given Roger too many opportunities to smell the dead and dying. Having been the cause of much of it, he knew the scents. He ignored his hunger and sifted through the odors of blood around him. Kit’s was overpowering, but only in the most delicious of ways. No trace of foulness polluted the smell of them. No organs were nicked.
“Can you move?” Roger asked Vincent.
“Yes?”
“I need you to go into the bedroom across the living room,” Roger said firmly. “Underneath the bed are three duffle bags. You want the one that has C.W. on it. There’s a dark green pouch. Bring it to me. Hurry .”
Vincent scrambled to his feet and dashed for it.
Left alone with blood covering his hands while more soaked into the blanket beneath his fingertips, Roger had to focus on the world outside himself. If he let himself think of the blood so close to him, he might lick his fingers clean. He might lose himself to feeding on Kit.
But blood was only part of feeding. The sustenance from blood truly came from its connection to a mortal’s spirit. Kit was fighting for their life. They couldn’t afford to lose an ounce of their essence.
Breathing wasn’t necessary for a vampire, so Roger slid out of the habit to cut off his sense of smell as much as possible and relied on his hearing and psychic senses. He didn’t hear anyone else in the suite. Kit was unconscious, so they had no wants or fears. The only source of emotion that Roger felt outside himself was the bubble of fear that was Vincent.
Darling, I said you weren’t going to die tonight. I said nothing about anyone else , Anton had said before snapping his neck and leaving him unconscious.
Was everyone he loved dead or gone?
Not everyone. He had people he cared about outside the suite. But were they safe? Was anywhere safe?
“Got it!” Vincent ran back toward them. “Is this a first aid kit, master?”
“A hunter’s med kit,” Roger replied. “It has suture supplies.”
“You think that’ll work?”
“If it couldn’t, they’d already be dead.” Roger held out his hand for the med kit.
Vincent looked over at Roger, and his features hardened, sliding from panicked to determined. His blue eyes were the color of storm clouds, and he shook his head. “I’ve got this.”
“I—”
“You’re hanging on to the edge. I’ve seen it before. Last thing they need is for you to start hoovering up their blood.” Vincent set the kit down on the counter and washed his hands in the sink. He took a second to wet a towel and wipe his face as well.
When he settled down next to Kit again, he was no less young, but Roger knew the mantle on his shoulders. A survivor’s weight. It didn’t tear away his youth by adding the burden of years but created that odd juxtaposition of an old soul in a young body.
“You’ve done this before,” Roger murmured.
“Yes, master. Do you have a water bottle?”
“Don’t bother with calling me that.” Cracking the small bar fridge open in their current setup was hard, but Roger managed to dig out two bottles of water.
Vincent peeled away the blanket and set to work flushing the wound and closing it. Rather than steeping in his guilt, Roger let it make him steadier. He tore open Kit’s beautiful dress farther so that Vincent would have easier access to the wound. He sifted through the scent of Kit’s blood after Vincent washed the wound to ensure he was right that nothing serious had been nicked. If anything deeper had been damaged, Kit had healed the worst of it. They might live.
The last conversation Roger had had with them, they were wishing that Roger had been more for them. Roger paid them and Carver to be exclusive donors for him and Takashi, but that wasn’t what Kit had dreamed of having with a vampire. The words felt like they’d been spoken months ago instead of hours. Another eternity passed while Vincent worked to stitch the wound closed. His movements were precise, practiced.
Roger had to close his eyes. Not because of his hunger. Seeing Vincent stitch another’s flesh while his own was marred caused an echo reaching back into the earliest of Roger’s nights. Seamus had always had a collection of pets. He had always treated them abysmally.
Abused them , Roger corrected himself. He had avoided words like that. Manipulated. Abused. Raped. Those and more applied to him just as much as others. He was certain they applied to Vincent. Roger had seen Seamus do so to other pets and done nothing for fear of his own life.
Bloody tears colored his vision, and he had to sit back against the bar. Vincent had Kit’s wound handled. But Roger was passing off responsibility again , he was becoming useless again , and worse yet was the way his heart ached for Zack or Takashi to miraculously appear, hold his hand, and tell him what he needed to do next. For anyone to give him guidance because his own wisdom was fucking terrible.
Centuries doing nothing but partying and pretending that the world couldn’t be changed when the truth was he could have done anything. His fucking monster of a sire would’ve fought to keep him alive just to spite his lover.
No, no, his pain was his own fault because he let his fear pen him in.
Others would have suffered. Like they did tonight.
He had a fraction of solace before his mind countered, Others did suffer. You simply chose to ignore their pain because it wasn’t yours.
“I’m sorry,” Roger murmured to the boy before him. “I am so sorry that I did nothing for so long.”
Vincent frowned. He finished taping a bandage over the stitches. “Huh?”
“I know what he’s like better than anyone other than perhaps you,” Roger continued. He wasn’t speaking to just the boy but to all of them. The long-ago ones whose faces he couldn’t recall. “I am so fucking sorry.”
“You got me out, master,” Vincent said quietly. Carefully.
Because they didn’t know each other and Vincent was scared he was treading into dangerous waters. Roger could feel that pulse of fear in him, feel as Vincent attempted to morph it into some sort of desire. Because he had lived for years with a monster who would be able to sense those inner workings and make demands of him.
Roger’s only respite had been his months away in Taliville. He’d had freedom only to come back to this wretched coven and realize just how awful this corner of the globe was. Instead of taking his loved ones and running as far as he could, he had stayed and waited and played his fucking part and attempted to scheme for coven leadership, and now … now his plans were nothing.
Kit’s pulse was becoming stronger, steadier. Their breathing was deeper. They were still too pale—a full recovery from the wound might take days—but they weren’t in more danger than Roger and Vincent were.
Which left Roger to face the other horrors waiting for him in the suite.
“Vincent, what happened to them?” Roger asked.
“I told you. Seamus drove Zack’s blade into them.”
“Not Kit,” Roger rasped. “Zack. Takashi. I need to know where I’ll find their bodies.”
Vincent stilled like a mouse hoping a cat hadn’t spotted him. The fear emanating from him became an electric, salty mixture that was alluring to the thirst burning in Roger. I will never hurt another innocent.
“Please,” Roger whispered.
“They took them,” Vincent replied.
The answer was harsher than a slap. Roger was stunned into silence, left with the beating of Kit’s and Vincent’s hearts. A glimpse of waking in bed with his lovers—Zack between him and Takashi—came to mind, and he held on to it. They were his stars. His wind.
And they had been abducted.
The meaning slithered into Roger and coiled around his chest. It compressed his spirit and bound it in iron and threw it to the bottom of the sea. Zack and Takashi weren’t dead, but that would have been a mercy because Seamus and Anton had perfected the cruelties of torture in their eight hundred years together. Roger had seen them at it over and over. Had been forced to participate. Had pretended he’d liked what was happening so that his mind might believe he was all right. But even he had suffered under those hands.
Now, they had his lovers.
A resounding note of anger cleared the storm from Roger’s mind. Grief was too new a thing. Anger, oh, that had been buried in him, but he knew it from his mortal years. He had smothered it in his early decades as a vampire, but it had never truly died. It had waited for him to open the chest and pull out the sharp sword of rage.
A bottle rattled off the shelf beside Roger’s shoulder, and he let it hit the floor with a thud. He picked it up. It was a bottle of Dolorous Rum, an Unseelie liquor made in the fey realm and brought to the mortal plane. One of his least favorites because it always brought out a drinker’s sorrows.
He wondered if he could find some way to set Seamus alight with it. I could burn that fucking mansion . Perhaps it was a flash of madness, perhaps it was the rage pouring through him, but new wants were forming.
Roger would find his lovers.
Then he would repay Seamus for the painful centuries by burning everything he cared for into ashes.
And then maybe, maybe , he would grant the bastard his well-deserved death.