Duh, stupid, a voice in Zack’s mind teased him. It sounded like Cal. Zack hated that voice. It had been popping up in his head lately. “Okay, so, I think this ritual is like taking a piece of my soul that would flake off and putting it in amber. But, like, not totally like amber because I’ll be able to reach out and connect with it. I’m not losing anything. I’m keeping somethingforever. I’ll always know who I am no matter what.”
Dad was silent so long that Zack was afraid he’d said something wrong. Then he shook his head. “I worry about you, kiddo.”
“Why?” Zack asked.
With a sigh, Dad put the truck in gear, and they gently rolled on toward the witch’s house. “Because the smart hunters are the ones that die young.”
Zack snorted. “Mom says dumb hunters are the ones that die early.”
“Them too,” Dad replied.
“Then you should be worried about Cal,” Zack said.
“I worry about all my kids.” As Dad parked the truck in front of the witch’s house, he said, “Just promise me one thing, Zack. Promise me that you won’t lose your heart in this business.”
That seemed like a weird thing to ask. But hunters sometimes did worse than die. Sometimes, they became the creatures they hunted. Cal had certainly been changing lately. He was meaner. Zack wanted to be like him but not entirely like him. “I promise I won’t turn into a monster, Dad. I’m going to be the greatest hunter since Mary Gladwell.”
Dad ruffled Zack’s hair and smiled at him. “All right. Guess we should get you that blade.”
CHAPTER 1
L’Hotel Monde De Nuit, Chicago, Illinois, 2021
“Roger, please! I can’t do this on my own!”
The pleading voice sliced through the oblivion that clouded Roger’s sight all the way through to his soul. Pain so intense that it scalded, froze, and then thawed him shattered the shreds of reality attempting to stitch themselves into consciousness. Every nerve and fragment of his body ached with an agony that threatened to pin him to a wall in an abyss of unknowing.
“Roger!”
Grasping for the waking world was like groping for a loose rope in a storm, the length rain-slick and constantly bandying about in the wind. He was reaching, but it kept slipping away from him. The harder he tried, the further life seemed to be, until finally,finally, he saw a bit of carpet beneath him. His hand was pressed against it. He had a body.
With consciousness came the fragments of memories. Pieces tumbled away from him, but he fought to form a picture of himself. He had been in a fight. In a hotel room. Before a ball? No, after going to a ball. He’d walked into a party with Takashion his arm. Spun Zack around the dance floor in an elegant waltz. Then fled. Ran to the hotel room because Seamus was angry. Because Anton had declared that the gamble was settled.
Strange that the thought of the flaxen-haired ancient vampire was what brought focus to the downpour of memories flooding through Roger. For over three hundred years, he had believed that he survived the cruelty of his sire because he had become someone that his sire at least tolerated, if not liked. That he had cut away enough bits of himself that Seamus didn’t hate him, that he had spent night after night smiling away his pains because that was the only way to stay alive.
But he had been nothing more than a plaything. Seamus and Anton had been competing with each other to see whose sireling would live longer, Roger or Dmitri. Their lives had been a damn game for their sires.
Even now, he was coming back to consciousness because their bet wasn’t over. At the Grand Winter’s Ball, he’d shown off his ability to incite desire in others in order to shut down the fear that Seamus had been spreading. He’d humiliated Seamus in what he’d thought was a coy move, but he hadn’t survived because of any skill or talent of his own. He’d lived as long as he had becauseSeamuswilled it.
Seamus couldn’t stand for the humiliation to go unpunished. He would have ripped them to shreds inside the Chateau de Vampire, except the Lady Belladonna, an Unseelie noble, had interrupted and demanded he remain civil as it was a party to honor the fey.
Roger and his group had fled the party. On their way out, Roger had scooped up Vincent into his arms. The boy had been one of Seamus’s pets, and Seamus had beaten him. Roger wasn’t sure he could save the boy’s life in the end.
He wasn’t sure of anything anymore except that someone was calling to him.
“Roger!” The voice was unfamiliar, climbing in pitch with desperation.
The sharp pain in Roger’s neck was subsiding. The last wound Anton had dealt was to snap his neck. Not deadly for a vampire, but inconvenient. How long had he been out?
Roger pushed himself to his hands and knees. His vision swayed like the world was the deck of a ship before settling. The blades he’d wielded from the fight were gone. The one he’d made of shadows must have melted away when he lost consciousness, but he didn’t spot Callum Wright’s magical Bowie knife either.
Callum Wright. The name of that monster was the key to unlocking another flood of memories. Bits of Zack appeared, fragments of visions. Now, Roger could hear the echo of his laugh, remember the feel of him in his arms.
Was the voice calling out to him Zack’s?
No.
Did Zack need his help?
