Chapter 16

Leather Guy stood with his back to me, studying the dead man. Voices and the rumbles of engines drifted around the building from the parking lot. Here out back, the only sound was blood dripping from his sword.

Without turning, he finally spoke. "Do you like to watch?"

I cleared my throat. "Sometimes, but generally I prefer to participate."

He pulled a dark cloth from his pocket and cleaned the blood from his blade. "I suspected as much."

The fact he'd suspected anything of me at all was intriguing. I'd gotten the impression he didn't think much of mages.

"I hoped you'd follow me out here," he added when I didn't respond.

"Why?"

"So we could have a chat, away from your Guardian friend and bound ghost."

Somehow he knew Malcolm was bound to me, though that binding wasn't usually visible to anyone but us. My eyes narrowed.

He slid the sword into its sheath on his back with practiced ease and turned. His eyes still had that hint of silver I couldn't identify. "I'd hoped to take care of this business first, but you wasted no time tracking me down. I'm flattered."

"Don't be," I told him. "I just came out to get a breath of fresh air. Why lop off this guy's head? He was killing it on the drums."

"That wasn't all he killed." He nudged the drummer's head with his boot. It rolled into the flickering glow from an overhead light. He took a photo with his cell phone and sent it to someone. I was beginning to suspect what his profession was, even if I still had no idea what he was.

He pulled a large plastic bag from his inside jacket pocket, picked up the head by its hair, and dropped it into the bag with a nasty squelch. He tied the bag, took it to a Harley parked in the grass near a fenced area, and put the bag in one of the saddlebags.

I emerged from the shadows and studied the body as he locked the saddlebag. I sensed a puff of parchment-scented magic; the saddlebag had some kind of witchy wards, in addition to the lock.

The skin around the drummer's chest wound was black. "You stabbed him with silver so he couldn't shift," I said.

"He liked to bite people and infect them. He'd been doing it for almost a year, leaving a trail of ruined lives and messes for people like me to clean up." He joined me beside the body. Outside, without all the competing odors of the bar, he smelled like leather, tequila, and—strangely—the sea. What was he? "It's a good bounty. Would've done this one for free, but it would set a bad precedent."

I was right about him: a bounty hunter. I had no quarrel with bounty hunters per se; the good ones played an important role and filled a gap in law enforcement. Whether Leather Guy was one of the good ones remained to be seen.

His ice-blue gaze met mine as we stood over the drummer's body. "Of all the strange, dangerous, and fantastical things I have found here, you and your wolf companion are the most interesting I have encountered in a long time."

By here , did he mean the roadhouse? His intonation made me think he was referring to something else. In any case, I didn't want this man to find me interesting. "Well, this has been fun, but I should get back inside. My friends will wonder where I am."

"You don't need to worry about them." His smile chilled me like an Arctic wind. "I've arranged a diversion to keep them occupied for a few minutes so we can chat. No harm will come to them," he added when I started for the back door. "Nor to you, if you tell me who you are, and why you've come here."

"I came to hear the band and sample some of the local moonshine."

His eyes went from glacier blue to dark storm clouds.

"I guess the band's done for the night, unfortunately," I added, glancing at the drummer's body. "There's still some of the good stuff left in that bottle on our table, if my friend hasn't finished it off."

The back door swung open. The light from inside the bar framed the figure of a slim man in the doorway, wearing a T-shirt and jeans. A cigarette glowed in his hand.

"Thank you for not making a mess inside this time," the newcomer said. His voice was all too familiar. He gestured at the drummer's body. "You can throw that in the incinerator before you leave."

"Charles," I breathed.

Charles Vaughan stepped outside and let the door close behind him. "Hello, my dear," he said, his eyes glowing like soft moonlight. "Have we met? Surely not, or I would remember." He approached. "Ronan, introduce me to your lovely friend."

Of everything I had seen since arriving in the Broken World, Charles in a T-shirt and jeans, smoking a cigarette and smelling of beer, was the most thoroughly disconcerting sight of all.

Leather Guy—Ronan—said nothing.

"My apologies. He is an ill-bred man," Charles said to me, shaking his head. He flicked his cigarette into the gravel and extended his hand. "I am Charles Vaughan, owner of Hawthorne's. And you are…?"

"Alice," I managed to say.

He took my hand. I expected him to kiss it, as the Charles I knew had a habit of doing, but instead he shook it. "Lovely to meet you, Alice. You are here as Lieutenant Stone's guest, I understand. She is dealing with the little rumpus inside that Ronan cooked up." He raised an eyebrow at Ronan's glower. "Am I interrupting?"

"You know damn well you are," Ronan said icily. "Alice and I were discussing the reason for her presence."

"Actually, I was heading back inside to rejoin my friends. If you'll excuse me?" I said to Charles, who stood between me and the door.

He smiled, his eyes glowing softly. "I would consider it a great honor if you would join me later for a drink. Any friend of Ronan's is, of course, an even more cherished friend of mine."

Fresh on the heels of finding out the Charles I knew had influenced me for years, my instincts made me want to get far away from this man. My rational self reminded me this Charles was not the one who'd betrayed me, however, and I didn't want to insult our host when our things were still locked in one of his storage closets.

"I'll think about it," I hedged.

Charles glanced over his shoulder at the back door. "I will need to inform the other members of his band that their colleague has fallen to the hand of justice. A pity you could not have waited until the end of their second set."

Ronan scowled.

The back door banged open. Lucy emerged, her Guardian seal visible on its chain around her neck. Malcolm and Daisy were right behind her.

Malcolm flitted to my side. "You okay?"

"I'm fine," I assured him as Daisy trotted over to stand beside me. "I was just a bystander."

"What the hell is going on out here?" Lucy demanded.

"This was a bounty kill," Ronan said curtly.

"Show me your credentials and the posting," Lucy said, her hand half-raised as if reaching for a sword on her back, though there wasn't one there.

He took a black leather wallet from his jacket and handed it over. While she studied his license, he pulled up something on his phone with the dead man's picture. She read it over, had him show her the bagged head, and then returned his wallet and phone.

"Thank you for the kill," she told him. "Looks like it was quick. Better than he deserved."

"He never should have lived this long." Ronan's eyes were glacial blue again. "He should have been dead a year ago."

"I don't disagree," Lucy said. "I don't know how he eluded justice this long."

"I think the reason is obvious. The Guardians aren't doing their job."

Her expression went flat. "We're working around the clock, seven days a week. None of the Guardians I know have had a day off in months. There aren't enough of us to go around."

"And whose fault is that?" he asked.

"Not mine." She stepped toe-to-toe with him. "I've driven ten thousand miles in three months, bloodied my sword a dozen times this week. Don't blame me or the League for this, Bounty Hunter. Claim your bounty and move on to the next one. Look at it this way: the status of the League is job security for you."

She flicked the collar of his leather jacket. He tried to grab her hand, but she was faster and eluded his grip.

"And one more thing," she added as he glowered. "If you bring up my dead friends one more time, I will make damn sure you regret it."

Ronan pulled his sword.

For a moment, I thought he intended to attack Lucy. Instead, he turned toward the woods behind the roadhouse. "Incoming."

Daisy growled.

"Oh, shit," Malcolm breathed.

A pack of enormous snarling wolves erupted from the trees. Eyes bright gold, ears flattened, and teeth bared, they crossed the distance between us and the tree line in a matter of seconds.

Behind me, the back door to the roadhouse shut with a bang as Charles darted inside. Maybe he was going after a weapon—or maybe he wanted nothing to do with the impending attack. Either way, we were outnumbered three or four to one.

"Stay in this form," I told my wolf firmly. If she decided to get big, Lucy and Ronan might think she was a threat too. I couldn't be sure Ronan wasn't capable of killing Daisy.

In a blink, Lucy reached up behind her head and drew a sword out of thin air. I had no time to think about how the hell she did that because the wolves were on us.

"Go inside," Lucy snapped at me. Without waiting for an answer, she and Ronan ran ahead to intercept the wolves, swords raised. They fought, moving almost as quickly as dhampirs.

Running away had never been my style, and despite their super-speed and training, she and Ronan were grossly outnumbered. No way in hell I was joining Charles inside.

Malcolm and Daisy flanked me. Daisy tore into two wolves who got past Lucy and Ronan, while Malcolm used air magic to fling back any wolves that got near. Like me, he couldn't use his power with any kind of finesse, but finesse wasn't required—just blasts of air to send attacking wolves flying, where Lucy and Ronan waited to cut them in half.

I flicked my right hand to summon my cold-fire whip. Instead of a six-foot coil of concentrated and deadly earth magic, however, the whip was pulled apart by the ambient magic around us. It split into thin strands that flared like lightning bolts. I gritted my teeth and fought the wild magic around me for control of my whip, my best weapon against the attack.

Or was it?

Dark magic surged inside me. Unlike my earth magic, which didn't work like it should here, the sorcerer magic I'd absorbed from Mira? seemed unaffected by the ambient power of the Broken World. I feared using this magic. My instincts told me once it started to take hold of me, I might not be able to control its effects.

A black and gray wolf came at me from the side while Malcolm was busy trying to keep another at bay and Daisy fought two other wolves. No time to debate; I'd have to deal with the consequences later. I stopped fighting the dark magic and let it rise.

My vision turned red. The noise of the fighting faded as my senses sharpened and focused. Void-black magic edged with red glyphs spiraled around my arms and from my fingertips, forming dual whips made not of earth magic, but sorcerer power. The force of the magic seared the air.

Malcolm said something, but I didn't hear him. I spun, lashing with my whips, and cut the approaching black-and-gray wolf in half in mid-leap. Shifter magic, tinged with the same madness I'd sensed in Isaiah, pulsed up my whip and into my body as the wolf's power transferred to me. The rush was like four espressos straight to my bloodstream. I sucked in a breath as the energy infused my own.

Flush with magic I could command even in this place, I waded into the battle with whips blazing. Ronan and Lucy fought back to back, their swords moving almost too fast to see. The air stank of shifter blood and death.

One by one, our attackers died. One got past my whips and came so close to biting me that one of his teeth sliced my sleeve.

Lucy brought her sword down and the wolf's head hit the ground next to my boot. She was scratched and bloody, but I didn't see any bite wounds.

The last wolf to die was the alpha. Half again bigger than the second-largest wolf in the pack, his power and size were unmistakable even from a distance. Daisy threw him to the ground and ripped out his throat. She raised her head and howled, drowning out the sound of his death throes. Finally, the alpha lay still. It was over.

I stood in the middle of the scattered bodies, breathless and covered in shifter blood. My whips snapped and sparked at my sides like broken power lines. Daisy stood to my right, Malcolm on my left.

Lucy and Ronan turned to me, swords in hand. Daisy licked blood off her muzzle and showed them her teeth. Malcolm's tension prickled on my skin.

"Are we going to have a problem?" I asked. My eyes were warm, indicating they were glowing.

"That depends." Lucy studied me. "That magic you've got…it's not from here. Neither are you. And don't tell me you're from a couple hours north of here . You three are from somewhere a lot farther away than that."

Though they were wary, neither she nor Ronan seemed all that surprised that Daisy, Malcolm, and I weren't natives of this world. Then again, their world's fractured boundaries meant people, beings, and creatures came and went all the time, so that revelation would be less strange than in my own world.

"What if we were from somewhere else?" I asked. "Does that make us enemies?"

Lucy tilted her head. "Some people I know would say yes, but I've always been of the opinion that where you come from matters less than what you do once you're here."

"We're in the same business, for what it's worth. I'm trying to stop someone from killing a lot of people." I drew my whips back into my body and let the dark magic settle back into my bones. "Since Daisy insisted we come with you, there may be a connection between the person I'm after and these attacks by what you call gravelings. Once we find the person we're tracking, we'll take her back with us. I'm not here to cause trouble."

"Maybe not, but you may cause it anyway." She took a cloth from her pocket and cleaned her blade. "It might not seem so to you, but this world has a balance, just like yours. When people and things cross boundaries between worlds and realms, that balance is thrown off. Things that weren't supposed to happen do, and what was supposed to happen doesn't."

She returned her sword to its invisible sheath on her back. The steel blade vanished as quickly as it had appeared. What the hell?

"The pain you felt during the flare means you aren't supposed to be here," she added. "Your magic and your body aren't of this place. You won't survive here long term. The more magic you have, the faster you'll die."

Damn Valas. I flexed my hands. She'd consigned me to a slow death here unless I brought back her triple-damned scroll. Though I'd never given her any reason to doubt me, she hadn't trusted me to keep my word and bring back the scroll without the added impetus of locking the mirror-door behind us.

I'd done a lot for the Court over the years: hunted down rogue vamps and their makers, custom-built intricate wards to their specifications, solved cases, saved Valas from Mira? and Charles from the Tepes stone, and a dozen more tasks of varying levels of danger. My repayment was betrayal at every turn.

Never again, I vowed. If I made it back home, this was the last time Valas or anyone else from the Court would stab me in the back.

"If that's the case, we should get back to tracking," I said finally. I glanced down. "Hear that, Daisy-dog? The clock is ticking. Now's the time to let me know why we're here."

Daisy walked around the bloody bodies of the wolves. She stood between Lucy and Ronan.

"What's this?" Ronan demanded, glowering at her.

"Wolf charades," Malcolm said with a sigh. "We've been playing it a lot lately. Alice?"

Daisy looked up at Lucy and Ronan, then stared at me.

I frowned. "Um, I think she wants us all to follow the trail. Together."

The wolf showed me her teeth. I was getting better at deciphering her expressions. "I think that means I guessed right," I said.

Ronan sheathed his sword with practiced ease. "I have no interest in joining your merry band. I have bounties to claim."

Daisy growled. He stared down at her, his eyes taking on that strange silvery hue again. "I don't know what you want from me, wolf, but you'll have to find someone else for your quest. I've received five job notifications just since I've been here. Whatever you're here to do, between the lot of you, I'm sure you'll have it covered."

The back door of Hawthorne's opened. Charles emerged, a bottle of beer in his hand. He surveyed the carnage with a raised eyebrow. "Congratulations to all on your hard-won victory."

"Coward," Ronan said, but without rancor.

"As the proprietor of this establishment, I must be neutral. I can hardly become involved in disputes between werewolf packs and the constabulary." Charles saluted us with his beer. "The drummer's pack, I take it?"

Ronan nodded. "Lurking nearby, waiting for him to finish playing so they could hunt together. They must have known what he was doing, and they protected and abetted him."

"Good riddance to the lot of them, then." Charles set his beer on the step so he could light a cigarette. "I would be obliged if you would dispose of the bodies once you document the scene." He took a drag from the cigarette, exhaled, and smiled at me. "Alice, you are quite a sight—resplendent in the blood of your enemies. Would you care to use the bathroom in my apartment to shower? Perhaps we would have time for a bite while your clothes are laundered."

"Am I not also resplendent in the blood of my enemies?" Ronan asked, his tone dry.

Charles flashed his fangs. "Indeed you are, but your beauty cannot compare to this warrior queen. And for all your charm, I am quite sure your blood would not be half as sweet."

Lucy rolled her eyes. Daisy chuffed in what might have been amusement.

This Charles lacked the smooth sophistication—not to mention the sartorial flair—of his counterpart, but there was something strangely charming about him. I could only imagine how the Charles back home would react to the news that another version of him existed and had invited me upstairs "for a bite" while my clothes were in the washer. I had no intention of speaking to my Charles again, but the possibility of seeing him die of sheer horror at such a lame vampire come-on was almost enough to make me change my mind.

I wished I had some way to take a picture of this Charles and Hawthorne's back to show Sean. He wasn't likely to believe me otherwise, even if Malcolm supported my story.

"Thank you for the offer," I said. "That's very generous, but I think Lucy and I will have to leave immediately before the trail we're following goes cold."

"How cold-hearted you are." Charles's smile revealed a hint of fang. "I will be doomed to be alone tonight."

"I rather doubt that." I had a hard time envisioning any version of Charles who slept alone unless it was by choice.

While we were talking, Ronan and Lucy documented the scene with their phones, recording video and taking photos. Daisy remained fixated on Ronan, watching him as he put his phone away and set to work bagging the wolves' heads. It was a gruesome chore. I found myself standing near the back door with Malcolm, trying to ignore the activity going on behind me. Meanwhile, Lucy was in her jeep, talking to someone on the radio. Probably reporting the deaths to her superiors.

Malcolm touched my arm. I'm worried about you, he said in my head. That sorcerer magic is black magic, Alice.

My choice was to either use it or get chewed on by a werewolf again, I countered. And since my magic doesn't work right here, the odds that I'd be able to burn out the werewolf virus are slim to none. I didn't want to use it, but I didn't think I had much of a choice.

I know. His cool fingers tightened on my arm. Promise me you will listen to me if I tell you the magic is changing you.

I promise, I told Malcolm. And if I don't listen to you, you have my permission to do whatever you need to do to save me from the magic, and myself.

He didn't reply for a long moment. Finally, he said, That could mean something pretty serious.

I know. That's why I'm telling you this now, while I know I'm thinking clearly. Sean and I made the same promise to each other before I left.

He squeezed my arm again, then let go.

With the wolves' heads stowed in his saddlebags, Ronan carried their bodies to a fenced-off area on the other end of the roadhouse. That had to be where the incinerator was. Daisy watched him work, her eyes bright. He ignored her pointed stare.

"Daisy," I said.

She walked around the bloody area to join us near the door. I got down on one knee to bring myself eye level with her, grimacing at the various aches and pains from a rough day. "I don't think he wants to come with us," I told her as Ronan disappeared into the fenced enclosure with the last body. "And I'm not sure we want him to. I don't know what he is."

Her stare was unblinking. Clearly, my argument had failed to convince her.

Ronan emerged again and shut the gate to the enclosure. Daisy nudged me hard. I sighed and got to my feet.

Charles met Ronan near his Harley. Ronan handed the vampire a roll of cash and said something in an undertone. Charles's eyebrows rose, but he tucked the money into his pocket. I wondered what the payoff was for: Ronan's bar tab, or something else?

Ronan swung his right leg over the bike and settled into the seat, raising the kickstand with his boot. With a wink in my direction, Charles went back inside the roadhouse.

Daisy gave me a push that nearly knocked me over. I headed in the bounty hunter's direction with her at my side.

Surprisingly, even standing next to the saddlebags, I couldn't tell what was in them. The witchy wards must hide their contents—even the smell.

As he took a pair of black leather gloves from his pockets, I said, "Look, I don't know how she knows what she knows." I gestured at Daisy, who stood in front of his bike. "I don't know how she's tracking the person we're after, how she knew where we were headed or that you'd be here, or why she thinks you should come with us."

He raised his eyebrows. "Sounds like you don't know much."

"Screw you, Ronan."

He rested his gloved hands on the bike's grips. "I've got a long list of people and creatures to track down. Lieutenant Stone isn't the only person working around the clock and putting in the miles. I'm not going to put all that aside because you think your wolf wants me along."

Daisy growled.

"I'm pretty sure that's what she wants," I told him. "You don't think it's the least bit strange and significant that a wolf wants you to do something?"

"I think it's plenty strange. Significant, no." He turned his icy stare on Daisy. "Move," he warned her.

She bared her teeth.

"If I don't find this person in time, a lot of people are going to die," I said.

He turned on the Harley's gas. "If I don't find the people on the list I just got, a lot of people are going to die."

"Is that why you're leaving? Or is it because of the money?"

"Both."

The Harley's deep rumble drowned out my short and rather profane response.

"Be seein' you, Alice," Ronan said over the roar of the engine.

He put on his helmet, flipped the visor down, and took off. Daisy jumped aside, but snapped her teeth at his leg as the motorcycle went by. He raised his hand as he passed Lucy. She gave him a one-finger reply.

The motorcycle and its rider rumbled to the end of the roadhouse and disappeared around the corner. I listened to the sound of the engine as it faded in the distance.

"What an asshole," Lucy said when she joined Malcolm, Daisy, and me. "With things in the League being what they are, the bounty hunters are a necessary evil. Some of them are like Ronan. The rest of them are worse. Still, better than the Spartoi." She rubbed her face. "We can't go on the road looking and smelling like this. Let's see if we can charm Charles into letting us clean up."

"Ronan said he arranged some kind of disturbance in the bar to distract you while we talked out here. What happened?"

She raised her eyebrows. "A fight broke out in the back room over a poker game. I had no idea that was Ronan's doing. Crafty bastard. Gotta respect his ingenuity, if nothing else. Well, and his ass."

"It was pretty fantastic," I admitted.

"Bordering on legendary," Malcolm agreed.

Lucy sighed. "Come on—let's go get washed up again and then we'll hit the road. Next stop: a mass grave near Oakdale."