He set his empty glass back on the counter. “Christ—it’s not like I asked if you loved me.”
“That’d be a hell of a lot easier to answer,” she muttered, casting him a sidewise look.
Chas’s grin flashed, then was buried as he reached for the bottle and refilled his drink. His hand was steady. “Want some?”
“It’s seven o’clock in the morning.”
He shrugged. “You look as if you had a rough night.”
“Maybe I did.”
“The question is—was it a rough night out, or was it a rough night in?”
He really was too perceptive. Just another reason to find him annoying. But she could turn that around, poke him back. “So where were you for three days?”
“I had things to attend to,” he replied.
Silence settled there, taut and tense and fraught with too many unspoken words.
“Well this is a fine conversation,” she said, suddenly impatient. “Neither of us giving anything up.” She used one hand to vault herself over the counter, landing easily in Sebastian’s old spot behind it. She bent to dig out a short, heavy glass.
“It’s morning here, but somewhere else in the world, where there are no bloody vampires, it’s seven at night,” she said, and slammed the vessel onto the counter. “So I’m in.”
“Best way I know to forget things you’re better off forgetting,” he said, and tipped the bottle to fill her glass with a thin gold stream. “Well…second best way.” He gave her that look again—and this time, the shot of heat went right to the pit of her belly and below. And stayed there.
Macey considered him, considered the offer, and lifted her glass to drink. He was right, dammit. And the way she was feeling—the way she’d been feeling the last few weeks—maybe a good, hard roll in the proverbial hay would be just the ticket she needed.
Because if she was going to keep having those nightmares—
“Ugh!” She pulled the glass away from her mouth and glared down at it. “What the hell is this?” Sharp and bitter and flat was what it was.
Chas’s mouth twitched again. “Hardly a level above rotgut, if you ask me, but I don’t know where Temple is putting the good stuff anymore.”
Macey dumped the thin liquid down the sink and slammed her glass back onto the counter. “I know where she keeps the really good stuff—the bottle Sebastian had been hiding from… Well, hiding. Turn around, if you please.”
He rolled his eyes, but to her surprise, he complied, swiveling on the stool so his back was to her.
Once she was certain he wasn’t watching, she pulled a narrow rack of glasses aside beneath the counter, revealing the thick metal door of a safe. A little twist of the knob and she opened it to reveal the inside, which contained three bottles of the most unusual liqueur she’d ever tasted—not that she was any expert. None were labeled, but one of them had been opened and was corked with a pyramid-shaped onyx stopper.
She pulled it out as Chas turned around. “So that’s where she keeps it.”
They—she, Chas, Temple, and even Wayren—had offered a toast to Sebastian from that very bottle on the night he died.
Macey lifted a brow as she poured the rosy-gold liqueur into her glass. “I think you’d best forget whatever you might think you know, Chas.”
He shoved his empty—again—glass toward her, then—
“What the hell?” Chas fairly knocked over the precious bottle, he moved so abruptly, lashing out to grab her by the arm. “Macey, what the hell is that?”
She was so shocked, she couldn’t form a reply—but then she saw he was staring down at the opening of her robe-, at the red line seeping down the front of her nightshirt. Down the center, along her sternum.
Fresh blood.
From Iscariot.
Her head went light and dizzy. “But it was a dream,” she whispered, pulling out of his grip, dragging the robe away. She brushed wildly at it like Lady Macbeth. Out, out, damned spot… “It was a dream.”
There was another stripe of blood, around the front of her left breast. Her heart began to thud wildly, deep and heavy.
“What the hell are you talking about, a dream? I know that’s from Iscariot. Did you see him? When did you see him?”
“It was a dream,” she said once more, numb and cold. The cotton was damp—the blood was real—and the red lines were growing thicker.
“But you’re bleeding. From your old scars.” Any trace of inebriation in Chas’s voice was gone.
“In the dream, he made me bleed like this. I-I didn’t realize…” Her hands were ice cold. How? Her heart thudded as she stared down at the impossible sight.
“You didn’t see him except in your dream?” Chas repeated. “Iscariot made it happen…from a dream? Good Christ.” His eyes were filled with shock.
Macey had already begun to unbutton her nightshirt—just to make sure. She had to make certain…she had to see it with her own eyes.
“My God,” he whispered when she pulled apart the top of her shirt.
She looked down and saw the line of blood, somehow—impossibly somehow—erupting from her skin.
“It’s real,” she whispered. The realization made her cold with terror. “It’s real.” She looked up at Chas to see the same emotions reflected in his eyes.
“He wants the rings,” she said, putting into words what they both knew.
“Yes. And until he gets them, or we destroy him…” He shook his head, his lips flat and grim.
Neither needed to put it into words. Iscariot would bring hell to Chicago, hell to them all, in order to get those rings.
And it was only the two of them to stop him.
TWO
~ Solitude in the Sanctuary ~
But the Rings of Jubai were as safe as they possibly could be.
Nicholas Iscariot had no hope of retrieving them on his own, for at Wayren’s suggestion, the five copper bands had been secreted in the sacristy of St. Patrick’s, a very small, unremarkable church Sebastian had visited on a regular basis.
It was into this church that Macey stepped, two evenings after she had the nightmare, cutting off the symphony of Chicago by night. The distant echo of gunshots, accompanied by the sounds of automobile horns and squealing tires, was left behind as she moved into the silent space.
She eased the heavy wooden doors closed—denying them even their normal soft thump as the solid walnut panels settled into place. Inside, the place was quiet and dim, filled with flickering candles and traces of the essence of frankincense. The Easter lilies were gone, and a large red banner had taken their place.
This evening, the church was empty but for a solitary figure near the front.
Her heart squeezed, for the person who knelt in prayer was not the elderly woman whom she’d come to know—and who’d given her the rosary that saved her life twice. No, that wise woman was gone, and Macey had lost yet another guiding mentor in her life.
Now all she had was Chas—and much as she cared for him, Macey knew he was just as damaged as she herself was. He was searching in the same way, too—and was just as lonely, just as solitary.
Just as angry.
And he didn’t even belong here, in Chicago or in 1926. He’d been “transferred” to this time and place several years ago with the help of Wayren. So his very presence here felt frighteningly transitory.
Macey wasn’t Catholic, but she genuflected nevertheless—because that felt like the right thing to do—then settled in a pew about a third of the way from the back.
She looked around aimlessly and realized she was waiting for something to happen. At the same time, she fought the sense of bewilderment and fear that had come over her since her dream two nights ago. Every time she thought about that nightmare-turned-real, her hands went cold and her stomach churned.
How could Iscariot have such a hold over her? How could he have drawn blood in a dream?
Months ago, during their first encounter, he’d fed on her in an automobile—rough and violent—while his goons held her down by the wrists and ankles in the back seat of the car. That was when he sliced into her skin with his dagger: tearing through her dress, her undergarments, and her flesh, and circling one breast as well. But those scars had healed, as had his bites, thanks in part to Chas’s application of salted holy water.
When Macey faced Iscariot again a few weeks ago in the city morgue and seared him with her cross, he’d somehow managed to make her bleed again from the same healed scars…but he’d been there, in person. That alone had been frightening.
But now he’d done it again, in a dream.
How? And what did it mean?
She wasn’t certain she really wanted to know. She was a Venator, a vampire hunter descended from the most powerful ones who ever lived. She was skilled, strong, smart—and had been chosen for this life. It was her vocation. She was made for this.
Yet the slick, evil Nicholas Iscariot terrified her—mainly because no one seemed to comprehend the depths of his power. His abilities seemed to be beyond what other vampires had ever been capable.
And more importantly, more frightening of all, was how he would use that power to get the rings.
How many innocent people—ones she knew and loved, ones she had never met—would die or be mauled before this was resolved?