“Then you?—”
“The two people on this planet who may have been able to outsmart him are already his prisoners,” Roger snapped, his voice carrying more than he meant. The echo of it came back to him, and the rage bubbling in his depths roiled toward the surface.
But Nathaniel had been exceedingly kind.
Roger couldn’t afford to be tossed to the street or to ruin Kit’s chance to recover. Though he had only promised Vincent what he could, he had taken him under his protection as well. The boy deserved a life of peace after everything he had gone through. They all did. He had to smooth over the turbulence with Nathaniel before it became an excuse to rescind his help.
“I’m sorry,” Roger said. His rage wasn’t so easily packaged away, but he tried. “I have to get them back. Until I do … I can’t think of doing anything else. Seamus will find ways to torturethem that would make a devil pause. I have to save them before he breaks them. If I move against him before I have them back, he will use their safety against me.”
“All right,” Nathaniel said slowly. “What do you need from me?”
“A place to stay. A car if you have one.”
Nathaniel leaned against the bar. “I remind you that I’m over two hundred and served on a few frontlines.”
“I don’t need a soldier,” Roger replied. “I need a brilliant SWAT team, and I think I know who to call. I only hope they answer.”
CHAPTER 4
The light of the tent barely touched the heights of the trapeze act. Takashi stepped onto his platform and lifted his hand as the ringleader continued his long speech about the performers’ pedigree. All of it bullshit. All of it just a lie for the audience. Takashi hadn’t brought any “mystic arts” to their act; he had learned everything from Sergei and his family when he joined the circus at twelve.
But he acknowledged the crowd, then his fellow performer, and waited for his cue. The circus’s musician hit a gong, and Takashi was off, flying through the air on the trapeze.
Memory took on the elements of dream; what had been warped with what his mind concocted. Instead of Sergei, Takashi clapped hands with Zack at the end of a flip. Zack nodded to him and held on to him with a strength that eased Takashi’s worry. When the time came, as they soared through the air to the next maneuver, Zack released him on cue.
Takashi flew, twisting as he had in practice a thousand upon a thousand times, and stretched for his next partner. Nothing brushed his fingertips. He searched the sky and saw Roger grasping for him but failing. Takashi was sinking, plummeting, becoming a comet for the hard-packed earth that made the ringof the circus. It was dozens of feet that morphed to hundreds, the fall ever continuing.
He knew what came at the end of the fall. He didn’t want it. Didn’t want to remember. Didn’t want the memory to morph further. He wanted to wake.
He landed with a crack against the dirt. Shattered. Broken. Forsaken. Until Nell gave her blood and he became a vampire.
She never came in the nightmare. Instead, he began again, stepping onto the platform. The crowd cheering. The ringleader lying.
“Evigilas,” a voice whispered in Takashi’s ear.
Details of the dream world slipped away as Takashi shuddered out of his sleep. Urgency struck him, but he couldn’t pinpoint whether that was the remnant of the nightmare or a reminder of reality. A groan worked its way up from his core, and he fought to lift his head.
“Seems you put him under a little too far, love,” Seamus said.
“You wanted him out, I put him out,” Anton replied.
Anton had whispered that first word to Takashi. Recent memory sparked, fanning his panic into a brighter light. Anton and Seamus had attacked the suite. Takashi had fired a shotgun loaded with silver pellet at Anton. That hadn’t slowed him down, and though Takashi had struggled, Anton had snapped his neck.
Takashi attempted to move, but his wrists were bound to a heavy wooden chair. He was a captive.
The rest of his grogginess cleared. He was in a well-appointed study with all the trappings of a long-acquired wealth. The rug was a plush Persian in deep reds with black, gold, and blue weaved into scrolling patterns. Seamus’s desk was a heavy Victorian monstrosity. He had an arrangement of notebooks, a leather-bound journal, and two laptops across its surface.
Zack’s notes. And mine. Takashi fought to keep his expression neutral. This wasn’t the first time a coven master had hauled him into a study and demanded to know more of him.
But this was the first one that Takashi had been actively plotting to kill.
Takashi swallowed his urge to demand answers. Seamus had brought him here for a reason when he could have killed him outright. Before Takashi played any of his remaining cards, he needed to know what the damn game was.
Seamus met his gaze. The tales of his evil deeds tended to leave out how ordinarily handsome he was. If not for the muddled red in his blue eyes and his ice-cold aura, he would have fit into human society without a problem. He kept his brown hair to modern style, he could turn on a smile that disguised the nature of his soul, and he had a preternatural grace that made him a pleasure to watch. His current attire was simpler than his formal tuxedo; a white dress shirt and black slacks gave him a professional air, though he had rolled the sleeves of his shirt. He stood behind his desk and exuded a level of command Takashi had come to expect of ancient vampires.
Anton stood before the desk, though he leaned his backside against the heavy furniture. His pale blond hair hung past his shoulders, and he still had on the white tuxedo he’d worn to the ball. His jacket was missing, and dried blood marred his clothing. He was the sort of rare vampire whose skin seemed to glow porcelain white, and his eyes remained a darkened red that spoke to his power as a vampire. Along with that magic, he was proficient in the arcane arts.
The two of them were among the most terrifying creatures Takashi had ever known—possibly worse than the dragon lord of Lake Michigan. They had been together for over eight hundred years. Takashi admired that their relationship had lasted andwas envious of the years of living, but he hated nearly everything else about them.
