He hated how Seamus’s words soothed something deep in him. How he wanted someone to approve of him. Roger, Takashi, and his friends all did, but at the same time, they always looked down upon his hunter’s training. At the violent side of him.
Zack still had his silver dagger burning in Seamus’s shoulder, and the fucking bastard waspraisinghim.
Zack sagged against Seamus and sobbed.
Seamus wrapped his arms around him and held him. After the worst of the sobs eased, he pulled the dagger from his shoulder and put it into his coat pocket. “Shh, son. It’s all right. Let’s get you home.”
CHAPTER 12
The broken-down house seemed more forlorn than the last time Roger had crossed its threshold. Clouds covered the moon, leaving little light to filter into this place. The boards creaked under his weight as he drifted between the long shadows. Their dry, rotted sounds were nothing like the way a ship would moan its aches on the open ocean. This complaining was a soul-weary deepness within the house. Age and decay had worn away the place. No one had taken the time to care for it. Likely, no one ever would, and it would tumble into dust.
Roger laid his hand upon the wall beside the second-story window. A kindred exhaustion was in him since leaving the mansion with Dmitri in his arms. He rested his other hand on Zack’s pendant. A shop down the street from the Last Deal had fixed the chain’s clasp for him.
Dmitri was lying on Nathaniel’s bed and, the last Roger had checked, hadn’t moved in the two nights since Roger had put him there. In his boredom—or anxiety—Vincent had cleaned Nathaniel’s shabby apartment, filing off the layer of crud of a hardworking bachelor living alone. The Wrights were safely housed in a hotel not terribly far from the Last Deal, but Roger couldn’t bring them directly into the building. That would berude, considering Thomas’s grandfather had tortured Nathaniel for years.
He had promised Thomas and Amber that he was working on another plan, but he was unsure of what direction to push. He was breaking another promise. Failing yet again.
How many storms had the abandoned farmhouse weathered? How many more could it withstand before falling entirely?
How much more could he take on his own?
Headlights drew his attention out to the gravel road leading up to the decrepit house. The car was quieter and a sleeker, more expensive model than it had been before. He waited until it pulled in alongside his own before he dropped from the window to the ground below.
Josefina stepped out of her car and slammed the door shut. The crunch of her boots—first on the gravel and then on the dry grass—was thunder rolling toward him. Her voice carried, no hint of it lost to the wind or darkness. “I risked my life and my lover’s domain for you, and you didn’t have the decency to text me when your mission was done!”
“I had my hands full.” His voice was hollow, reverberating through the nothingness growing inside him.
“Anton departed in the middle of my evening at the Chateau. I had to sit there and pretend I had no notion of why he might suddenly have to leave. I had to smile and make nice with that bastard Seamus, who I hate above all others, and then you leave me to wonder what occurred for two nights! And make me drive back out here to the middle of nowhere!”
“I couldn’t say the words where anyone else might hear me,” Roger said hoarsely. “I owed you more than a text.”
Josefina paused. Her anger had always been a liquid steel, cold and brutal, but one that she controlled with finite precision.She continued to glare at him, but her hardness was no longer one of pure rage. “What happened?”
“I went into the basement and found Dmitri.” Roger had let his numbness shield him, but speaking that fragment fractured his self-control. Bloody tears slid down his cheeks, neither hot nor cold. They simply were. “I and the girl were freeing him while the other two continued to search. But before we could release him, Anton arrived. I had to make a choice, Josefina. I could take Dmitri and the others and leave, or he would tell me where Zack and Takashi were. The girl’s life would have been forfeit. All of them would have been. Anton’s bargain didn’t guarantee I would be able to reach Zack or Takashi either. You should have seen that room. I couldn’t leave Dmitri. Nor could I sacrifice Zack’s blood family.”
Josefina moved in a blur, and Roger prepared himself for the blow. Instead of striking, she wrapped her arms around him in a tight embrace. He slowly returned her hug. He had never stopped to consider he needed to save his former lover. And now, Zack and Takashi might be facing the same or worse, and Roger had left them to it. They might not even be alive. He may never see them again.
Something unfurled inside him, and his strength left. His knees gave out. If not for Josefina, he would have fallen to the ground, but she held him upright.
He had never stood a chance at all, had he? His mortal family had been a nightmare, his life at sea mired with violence and that life stolen from him. All for the sake of two bastards’ game. He was no prize, no vampire worthy of becoming a captain in a coven, let alone its leader. He was nothing but failure through and through.
When he closed his eyes, he could picture the five of them together—Carver, Kit, Takashi, Zack, and himself. They had had a few nights in, a few times where they relished each other’scompany and forgot about the outside world. In those moments, Roger had wished that might be their ever after. That in some way, they would be able to hold on to that sanctuary, no matter what.
But Carver was dead. Kit had left. Roger had been fooling himself then and longing for that fake peace now only hurt all the more.
“All right,” Josefina said with sympathy but an element of firmness. “Pull yourself together.”
He was a million pieces of dust floating into the wind, tiny fragments scattered along three centuries of living. His last hope of holding himself together had faded. He was broken.No. No, I won’t let Seamus win. If I can’t have them, then I will destroy him. Even if I die in the attempt. What else is my shoddy life good for?
He withdrew from Josefina’s hug and found the will to stand on his own two feet.
But suddenly, she latched onto his forearms and kept him close. Worry filled her brown eyes, and she shook her head. “Whatever you’re thinking, don’t.”
Roger traced his mental focus along the edges of his usual walls. At some point, he had slipped and let them fall. Josefina wasn’t pressing into his mind, but she’d be able to read whatever he was emanating. Which meant she likely picked up on his desire to burn the world in his desperation.
“He has takeneverythingfrom me,” Roger growled. He yanked his arms away from Josefina and began to pace toward the house.
The old rotting wood whispered secrets in its darkness. Its shadows were deep, never-ending, and reached toward someplace cold. A place beyond fury, beyond light. He sensed a lurking power, not in the house, but in that strange connection.A fragment within himself screamed, and the scream became a howl.
