Chapter Eleven

CHAPTER ELEVEN

W hen the sun was properly peeking over the horizon, Callum pulled on his parka and stepped out of the garage’s secondstory living quarters. As he went to shut the door, he caught sight of something on the newel post at the top of the staircase.

With a frown, he picked up the yellow and white tube. Turning it over, he read the label: Polysporin.

He put the ointment back where it had been left for him—and with the next step he took, he felt the pain in his ankle as if it were a fresh bite.

Funny, how you could ignore something as long as you weren’t fucking reminded of it.

Yup, on the descent, he was definitely limping, and as he exited the garage, he inherited another physical inconvenience: Snow-blindness.

Covering his eyes with his bare hands, he thought, Well, hell, all I need is a good knee to the balls to finish things off.

After his retinas calmed down, he lowered his arms, but still had to fight the squint as he headed to the truck. Overhead, the last of the storm clouds had moved off, and the sky was a brilliant, robin’s-egg blue. With nothing to block the sun’s rays, and everything covered with snow, daylight was amplified to an unbearable brilliance.

Breathing in deep, the inside of his nose hummed, and when he exhaled, he created his own cloud that hung in the still air in his wake. Odd, that there was absolutely no wind. It was like the intensity of the blizzard had used up all the energy in the elements, and there needed to be some kind of recharge before there was so much as a breeze.

Before he got behind the wheel, he looked over at the big house. The safety shields were down for the day all around the rambling structure, the reflective skins providing dozens of snapshots of the winter landscape. Even with them in place and keeping the sunlight out of the interior, he was willing to bet the vampires were all underground, in those newly built subterranean bedrooms.

Screw the creepy crypts of human lore. Modern Draculas had Wi-Fi, nice sheets, and indoor plumbing.

He refused to think about which room Apex had chosen. Or whether the male had decided to sleep on top of one of the king-sized beds . . . or if he’d decided to strip down and get under all the duvets—

“Get going,” he said in a low voice.

Instead, he just stared at the Ford. The truck needed a bath, all kinds of snow streaks and salt grime dusting its flanks and hood and front windshield.

As he considered where he was headed, he recognized that there was a time when he would have shifted and traveled on paws to his destination, but he didn’t trust his other side anymore. A month ago, his wolf had broken out and he’d ended up back on Deer Mountain, where the clan was. He’d woken up naked in the cave he’d once called his home, the heated spring just as it had once been, the furniture he’d put in it more than forty years ago totally unchanged.

It had been the last thing he’d wanted to revisit. And then one of his cousins, who he hadn’t wanted to see, either, had shown up with questions and kindness.

Both equally unbearable.

So, yeah, when he’d merely come to next to the plow last night, he’d counted himself lucky.

Forcing himself into action, he yanked open the door—

And found the keys he hadn’t realized he’d left behind in the drink cup holder.

Hefting himself up, he thought, Well, fuck, some groundskeeper he was, not protecting the estate’s equipment. Although in his defense, no one would have been out in that storm.

On that note, not many were this far north at all this time of year.

After starting the engine, he hit reverse, and then realized the plow was still on—and keeping it on would be a waste of gas, and a pain in the neck on the highway. Getting back out, he went around and disengaged the thing, leaving it where it was, right in the way of the garage bays.

Once more with feeling.

It was not long before he was on the Northway heading south, and he made slow time, traveling the single lane of tire ruts that ran down the center of I-87. Efforts had been made to clear the snowfall in a rudimentary way, and no doubt there would be other passes by the big municipal plows as the day went on.

Maybe he should have left his plow on—

“Just shut up,” he muttered. “And also, stop thinking while you’re at it.”

Unfortunately, all he had was the highway ahead to focus on.

No music to Bluetooth—because he’d left his cell phone on the bureau by the bed on purpose. No radio—because he didn’t want to deal with what would be mostly static. No Sirius—because this was a work truck and the aristocrat who owned it might be willing to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars on the kitting out, upkeep, and human-world taxes of the old Adirondack estate.

But that monthly subscription was too much for a lowly worker.

Not that Callum cared.

In fact, he wasn’t much aware of driving, even though his hand was on the steering wheel and his right foot angled down on the accelerator—and the snow-covered peaks and forests of white-dusted pine trees were streaking by him. He couldn’t have said whether he was hot or cold, couldn’t have cared less if the heat in the cab was on or not. And not even the brightness of the sun bothered him anymore.

In his mind, he was in darkness, and not the kind that came with the night.

And shit was getting darker by the mile.

When he got to the exit he’d come for, he floated down a slippery descent, and as the stop sign at the bottom approached, he pumped the brakes and was gentle with the steering. As much as he didn’t care about his own health and safety, his destination was an obsession and ending up in a ditch on the way was not part of his plan.

Left or right? Of course, right.

He shouldn’t have been surprised that he knew the way so well.

Willow Hills Sanatorium had never left him. Not its location. Not its five stories of patient porches or its tower-like core. Not the rotten, moldy smell of the place, or the layout, or the landscape.

Six miles farther down and he hit the brakes again. Hard.

The turnoff into the unkempt property wasn’t plowed, and as high off the ground as the truck was, he didn’t want to run the risk of getting stuck on his way to the chain-link fence—assuming the thing still ran a circle around the place.

Pulling forward to get closer to the road’s snow-packed shoulder, he measured whether there was enough room for traffic to pass. The county plows, the big boys, had already gone through properly, so as long as none of those had to squeeze by, things were okay.

Getting out and locking the truck, he pocketed the keys and lithely jumped over the mound—

On the other side, he sank into the pack up to his knees—and for a moment, he just stayed there, in a snare of snow. As he looked up, he studied the piercing sky, then he measured the pine trees standing so docilely in the cold.

Once again, he could have shifted or dematerialized.

He didn’t.

As he pulled up one of his boots, and forced his leg down again, he wanted the exhaustion that was going to come with trudging through the acreage. Maybe it would help him finally sleep a little.

Starting across the wintery landscape, he felt like there were miles to go, especially with his bad ankle—

Right on cue, his brain kicked up a memory of Apex, walking through the blizzard toward the garage, emerging from the buffered, blustery night in all that black leather.

Like a stalker.

Then again, the male had been tracking Callum ever since he’d come back to the Adirondacks, a shadow cast by the past that fucked him up at the weirdest moments, the memories the kind of thing where he would be minding his own business, chopping wood, clearing snow off one of the main house’s flat roofs, making a meal . . . and an image of the vampire would slice through whatever he was doing and take over, an opaque shield that he couldn’t see through, couldn’t get around, couldn’t burrow under.

And now that he’d actually seen the male in person? It was worse—

Apex’s voice was the same. Deep, with a slight rasp, his accent characteristic of vampires.

And he was always frowning. Still.

“I didn’t feel anything,” Callum said into the cold, still air. “Not a thing. I did not feel . . . anything . . .”

Except he was lying.

He had felt too much. Which was why he’d had to come here.

To the prison.