He moved forward, onto the mat, and gestured to me. “I’ve been tracking her since she was born.”
Clive looked between Cadmael and me. “What are you talking about? Why would you have any knowledge of Sam?”
Cadmael held up a finger. “The origin line of werewolves. The only female born wolf.” He held up a second finger. “The daughter of the strongest wicche line in existence. Daughter of a wicche who would have ruled the Corey Council had her sorcerer sister not killed her.” He held up a third finger. “A woman who the queen of the fae counts as one of her own.”
How the fuck does he know that? I demanded of Clive.
It seems we have a spy very close to us.
“And by giving this little speech,” Vlad said, walking toward us. “You’ve ensured that everyone in this room will share that information around the globe. That these two will never have a moment of rest from the never-ending attempts to kill them. My question is why she bothers you so much?”
Vlad glanced at me and then back at Cadmael. “Sam is no threat. A two-minute conversation would tell you that. She’s a child.”
“Hey.” I may not be six hundred years old, but twenty-five was hardly a child.
Ignoring me, Vlad went on. “You, a being thousands of years old, have been tracking her since birth? Garyn might have been obsessed with Clive, but you’re the one obsessed with Sam. Why?”
“I don’t answer to you,” Cadmael thundered, sending everyone but Vlad, Clive, and me to their knees.
“No,” Clive said. He was expressionless but I felt the deep betrayal he was experiencing. “But you can answer me. We’ve been friends for hundreds of years. I trusted you, as I trust very few. Why would you do this?”
Cadmael stood silent and then finally said, “This doesn’t concern you.”
“I beg to differ.” Clive’s tone was neutral, but his eyes were vamp black.
“Sam,” Vlad said, holding up my jacket, “may I borrow this?”
I nodded, pretty sure he didn’t mean the jacket.
“Clive?” he said.
“Yes,” Clive responded to whatever Vlad had asked.
Mayhem. Not a moment later, dust piles dropped all around the mat. Sebastian tried to run for the door, but my axe flew through the air and pinned his head to the wall. Beside him, Ava’s headless body dropped and then Chaaya’s.
No more than a minute later, less, blood spattered the walls and pooled on the floor. Dust hung heavy in the air. They’d killed everyone. To protect me, Vlad and Clive had killed everyone who’d heard what Cadmael had said about me.
Stomach turning, I had trouble breathing. They were all dead because of me.
Cadmael grabbed his head, his eyes screwed shut as he grunted in pain. “Get out of my head!” he shouted and then snatched my arm with a force this side of breaking bone and hauled me close to him. “You and I are going to have a talk.” He dragged me from the room while Clive and Vlad stood blood-covered and motionless.
I’d only traveled to the second floor in a dream. I didn’t even know how to get there, but Cadmael did. He hauled me down the hall, through a hidden door, and up stairs. It was pitch-black. The windows had been boarded up long ago.
I tripped on broken tile and smashed my knee against the floor, but Cadmael kept a tight grip on me and kept moving. When we took a turn, I felt it again: the sick, sticky evil from that room at the end of the hall.
I dug in my heels, trying to rip out of his grip, slashing his arm with my free hand. He backhanded me. My head remained on my neck, barely, but my cheek exploded. Dark spots obscured my vision. He tugged my free hand, pulling my wrists together and tightening his fist around them both. Short of chewing off my own arm, there was nothing I could do.
He pushed open the tall wooden double doors, throwing me in. I hit the side of a settee, jarring my broken rib, and a fire roared to life in the stone fireplace. The room looked almost exactly as I’d seen it in my dream. Dustier, perhaps, but the furniture, the artwork, even the candles on the mantle were all the same.
Cadmael shoved me onto the settee and then took the chair by the fire. “Why are you here?”
I didn’t understand the question. “You brought me here.”
“No. Here. In this house. How did you get in?” Cadmael had taken an instant dislike to me when I’d met him almost a year ago, or I supposed his hatred had been growing my whole life. I couldn’t think about that right now, though. The point was I was familiar with his usual look of disdain. This wasn’t that.
He radiated anger. His normally stoic expression had changed to barely contained rage and his eyes were all wrong.
“Clive brought me,” I said.
