“Did you hurt him?”
Gabriel didn’t need to ask who Madoc meant. “I was going to kill him,” he said. “I haven’t. Take that and walk. Or don’t.”
After a moment, Madoc lifted the sword from Gabriel’s throat. There was a bare line shaved down to the skin just above his jugular.
“I’ll just tell Kit you were here,” he said. An ordinary wolf he could take out, but Gabriel had a reputation and it wasn’t Madoc’s job to fight him. And he’d receive no thanks if he stole that from Kit.
“Go on,” Gabriel encouraged as he slowly let go of Madoc’s hand. The possibility of betrayal kept them slow and careful as they stepped back from each other. “It’ll amuse me to think he’s scorching his ass off here while I’m in a Cali vineyard.”
Madoc smiled thinly. “What, are you moonlighting as a watchdog now?”
The silver and black snarled and lurched forward with a garbled “fuck you.” Gabriel scruffed him and—almost casually—tossed the six feet of heavy muscled monster toward the smashed window.
“Tell Bennett he won’t get a pass again,” Gabriel said. “I’m not a sentimental man. And give Agent Kitaen my regards. I’m sorry I missed him in Casper.”
He spun on one heavy paw and dropped onto all fours as he ran for the window and into the dark. Old habits made Madoc take a step after him, but howls broke out like music in the night. Gabriel had more backup.
Madoc picked up the silver wolf’s dropped shotgun and broke it open. The homemade shells dropped out and hit the ground. He tossed it aside and glanced around the room. Someone whimpered on the floor, and there were people who could still breathe, but no one looked like they were about to get up.
Good.
He ditched the shotgun and stalked over to Took. Whatever he’d been about to say dried up in his throat as Took tipped back his head to peer up at him out of bloody eyes.
“Madoc,” he rasped as he curled his mouth in a crooked smile. “I knew you’d come.”
Love sucked, Madoc thought dimly as he dropped onto his knees. All that anger and justified frustration—Took knew better than to walk into a trap—drained away, and all he was left with was the desire to fix this. Fix everything.
“Really?” Madoc rasped as he wiped blood from Took’s cheek. He grazed a finger over the raw hollow pierced just under his cheekbone. “Because it’s not like you left a note.”
Took laughed, the sound rough in his throat, and grabbed Madoc’s shoulder to push himself to his feet. He wobbled, winced, and grabbed his side as the smell of his blood filled the air.
“We need to go back to Charleston,” he said. “You were right. Someone did set me up, just not who you thought or for the same reason.”
Madoc unfolded gracefully and wedged his shoulder under Took’s arm. “So I wasn’t right at all?” he said.
“Not about much,” Took said with a laugh as they staggered out of the bar. “If it helps, I fucking missed it.”
The truck was still parked outside. Madoc half expected it to have four flat tires, but apparently Gabriel’s offer had been genuine. The vehicle looked unmolested. Madoc didn’t trust how long the truce would hold. Gabriel might not have cared much about his dead, but once whoever was out there learned that the cardinal had killed them all, that might change.
He shoved Took into the passenger seat and then boosted himself over the hood to get the driver’s side. The keys were in the ignition. Madoc revved the engine, the growl of it in the dark a challenge answered by wolves that sounded closer than they’d been, and spun it around to head for the dirt track back to what passed for a main road.
Halfway there, the headlights caught yellow eyes at the side of the road. Gabriel stood in the shadow of the trees and watched them approach. He dropped his long muzzle in some sort of acknowledgment as they passed him, but those acid-yellow eyes weren’t focused on Madoc.
A dozen questions occurred to Madoc. He weighed them all and then deliberately discarded them. Immortality was best navigated when you knew what answers you could live without. Took had come to VINE with secrets—a con man’s sharp mind and the stomach for a kill—and if Madoc had ever chased the answers, he’d have had to do something about it.
Or should, he supposed. Since whatever the answerwasabout what connected Gabriel and Took, Madoc knew he wouldn’t act on it.
Silence made the facade of his loyalty to the Accord, to the deeper ties of the boyar, easier to keep up. He wouldn’t be easier to kill, and there would be a price to pay one day, but if the Senate found out he had something to live for—to want—outside of duty and death, they might decide to empty their pockets.
“I’d tell you the truth,” Took offered from the passenger seat, “if you asked.”
Madoc shot him a look. “You know me that well?”
“Better than my own father,” Took said dryly as he rubbed his hand through his hair and blood streaked through it like wax.
“Yet you really thought I’d ever hurt you?” Madoc asked as he spun the truck hard around the turn at the end of the road. It left a dark track of rubber etched onto the sun-bleached gray. That would make it easier for The Salt guards to find it.
He didn’t get an answer from Took. Maybe, he thought sourly as he called Tac to report the werewolves, Took knew he’d rather not know.
