Jame swallowed, a thick, hard motion. Then he dropped his gaze from Rossi and slumped, his eyes closed, his shoulders hunched. Whatever energy it had taken for him to demand, to beg, was gone now, leaving him exhausted.
I wanted to reach out and comfort him, wanted to wipe away the tears running down his face. Fawn shifted on the couch so that her arm was across his back, and pulled his face into the curve between her shoulder and face, hiding him with her body from all eyes in the room. She held him, whispering comforting things.
“You have the magic that monster demands and you haven’t given it to him?” Granny snarled. “You have refused? You have left one of mine to suffer?” Her words rumbled, the undertone a sound no little old lady should be capable of, a sub-audible growl that I felt in my spine, base of my skull, the shivers of fear.
“Peace,” Rossi said. “I have reason to keep the book hidden from him all these years. Surrendering it to him would sign our end. Not just one of yours. Not just one of mine. All of us.” Rossi’s hands clenched so tightly on the arms of the chair, trying to hold him to his seat, I heard wood creak.
“Give the book of dark magic to me.”
Her words were an order. A demand. A threat. Werewolves shifted, moving out from behind the couch, shoulders tipped, muscles bunched, ready. Ready to fight for their own, even if it meant killing people who had been, if not exactly friends, neighbors.
The vampires did not move at all. They went impossibly still, focused as arrows drawn home, taut and ready to fly.
In about half a second we were going to see the two biggest supernatural factions in our town broken and bleeding on the lighthouse floor. Ended not by the ancient enemy outside our border, but by the mistrust in each other.
Maybe that was why Than was here. There were about to be a lot of vampire deaths to not overlook.
“Who wants tea?” Jean stormed into the space between the vamps and weres with a tray of six steaming mugs in her hands, putting herself square in the middle of the battle zone.
Myra stood. I was half a second behind her. Ryder surged to his feet too, all of us clogging the space next to Jean, putting our mortal bodies in direct firing range of the other creatures.
No one spoke. There was only breathing, too loud, the rush of my heartbeat, also too loud, and the muted sound of feet walking up the metal spiral ladder to the lantern room.
There were civilians here. Innocents who had no part of the vampire werewolf war. People I was sworn to protect.
“Ease off,” I said to Rossi. I turned my gaze to each vamp. “We have humans out there, and I will not have this historical landmark go down in the record books for mass murder.”
Rossi twitched just one eyebrow as a fang slipped down to press into the soft mound of his lip. He otherwise didn’t move or look away from me. Didn’t challenge my authority.
Yet.
It was an acknowledgment. Not a big one, but enough to let me know he didn’t want to fight the werewolves. Not over this.
Just enough to let me know he was furious that his old enemy, his one-time brother-at-arms had taken Ben, who Rossi thought of as a son. There was hunger in the killing gaze Rossi leveled at me. The hunger for revenge.
“If any of you draw werewolf blood I will kick you out of Ordinary. Permanently. We do not kill our own within this border. We do not kill each other.”
I turned to Granny. She stood now, the illusion of age flung away so that all I could see was her strength, her power.
“You will not draw vampire blood on my soil. If you do, the Wolfe family will be exiled.”
She narrowed her eyes, weighing the truth of my words against her need for violence.
“We will wipe Lavius off the face of this earth,” I said. “That is our war. That is the fight we take on together.”
“When?” It was still a challenge. Still an alpha wolf furious for one of her own enduring pain she could not end.
Jame pushed up to his feet, breath coming too fast and shallow, every fiber in his body, every beat of his battered heart unable to stay still, needing instead to rise, to stand, to fight.
To save his love.
“Two days,” I said to Jame. “On the full moon we will kill Lavius and burn his bones. But tonight, tonight we will use this bite, my blood, and dark magic to find Ben.” I could feel Rossi tense behind me.
No sound filled the space except for Jame’s soft groan and the distant sound of Mason droning on about the lighthouse keeper’s broken-hearted daughter who, having received word that her beloved sailor had perished at sea, threw herself to the rocks below.
“You must rest, Jame.” I was close enough to him to press my fingers on his arm. “You are going to have to put Ben back together when we bring him home. You need to be as whole as possible for him. Strong for him.”
Jame was a big man, built wide and thick like most of his family. He was as fit and hard-muscled as any firefighter in his prime. But under the stress of his internal and external wounds, he seemed smaller, more vulnerable. It was painful to see him working so hard just to stay on his feet.
