Chapter 20

Summer's face was pale, her freckles dark against her skin, as she sat near the fire in the expansive living room of Katya's wine-country safe house in Ukiah, wrapped in a blanket and holding a warm mug of tea. They'd made it to the vineyard house with barely an hour of night to spare. The human victims, other than Summer, had been dropped off at the local hospital with Baojia's human employees to give statements to the sheriff's deputies.

There was no trace of Ivan, and the guards who'd tried to text him received nothing in reply.

Tiffany, the newborn vampire, appeared to be only days old. She'd been handcuffed and transported in Baojia's SUV and was currently stashed in a worker's house on the property with two of Baojia's vampire guards watching her. They'd given her fresh blood and been able to get a little more information from her, but the young woman still didn't know much and understood even less about what had happened to her.

"Was that where he was taking them?" Summer asked. "When they left the farm, he was making them vampires?"

Carwyn and Brigid exchanged a look. "We don't know, Summer."

Brigid leaned forward, certain Summer knew more than she was letting on. "One of the guards mentioned that you were ‘Ivan's favorite.'" She frowned. "What did that mean?"

Summer curled her lip. "He figured out that I knew about vampires. Well, I told him. I was… I was trying to— It doesn't matter; he took us anyway. He liked…" Her hand tightened in her father's. "He liked to talk to me. Kind of… taunt me. Especially after Dani and I…" Her shoulders curled in and her face collapsed in grief. "You found Dani's body, didn't you? That's why you knew where to look."

Brigid's eyes went wide. "Summer, Daniel's not dead."

The cry that came from her mouth was nearly inhuman. "What?"

Jamie had a hand on his daughter's back. "Honey, I thought you knew. Daniel's in the hospital, but he's not dead. He followed the water; he got out. It must have been incredibly tough, pumpkin, but he did it."

Summer was somewhere between laughing and crying. "Where is he? Are you sure? They told me—"

"They feckin' lied to you," Brigid said. "Or they didn't know. That would explain why they didn't move the farm, actually, so that makes sense. They thought the creek had just washed his body away."

Carwyn let out a long, slow breath. "What a lad. My God. Left for dead, and he made it down to the mouth of the creek. He's still in a coma in the hospital in Santa Rosa, but he's alive. Natalie called as soon as we got signal again. She checked in with the deputy she knows."

Summer's face went blank. "He's in a coma?"

Ross and Jamie flanked her.

"He's strong," Ross said. "You know he is. He gave a message to those fishermen that found him. Helped us know where to look for you. We didn't have any other leads, Summer. We could have been looking for weeks if Daniel hadn't made it out."

She gripped her father's hand. "I want to see him. Let me see him." She stood and started for the door.

"Summer, wait." Brigid looked at Jamie. "Why don't you clean up and rest? Try to get some of your strength back before you go visit Daniel. Let your father take you tomorrow during the day. They won't let you in when it's not visitors' hours anyway. Just… take a breath, yeah?"

She sat again but looked poised to flee at the least bit of provocation. "He told me Dani was dead. I promised I'd kill him."

"Ivan?" Carwyn's arms were crossed over his chest. "Did you know about the new vampire, Summer?"

She shook her head, but then she frowned. "Maybe… I don't know if it could be why, but…"

"Tell us what you're thinking." Brigid crouched next to her, trying to coax the reluctant, angry girl. "I know it's horrible, and I know what it's like to want to forget monsters, but you said Ivan liked to talk to you. What did he say?"

"He told me about the hunts. Told me that's why they took Dani. They wanted him…" She swallowed hard. "Ivan must have wanted him for a hunt. He yelled at the guards when he found out he was dead. Told him Dani was ‘valuable.' I didn't know what that meant; I thought they meant because his family is rich or something."

"But they might have wanted him for a hunt."

Baojia spoke up. "He's done this before, Summer. That's why it's so important to stop him. He abducted girls in Ensenada—waitresses at a bar he ran—and then infected them with a vampire drug that made immortals go crazy. He used those girls for hunts out in the desert."

Summer stared into the fire. "What fun is a hunt if the prey is weak?" She blinked and looked at Brigid. "That's what he told me. I asked if he was taking humans for vampires to hunt, and he said, ‘What fun is a hunt if the prey is weak?' Like humans were boring or something."

"If the prey is weak…" Brigid knew in her gut what Ivan had done, but it was too horrible to say aloud.

"He said he evened the playing field." Tears came to Summer's eyes. Angry, furious tears. "That's why he turned that girl, didn't he? That's why he took us and made us work. To see who was the strongest. To see who could survive."

Ross was the one who finally said it. "That sick bastard sired newborn vampires just to let other vampires hunt them."

"Are we monsters?" Brigid stared at the ceiling of the light-safe room that overlooked the vineyard. "Sometimes I think we're monsters."

Carwyn lay on the bed next to her and draped a brightly colored silk scarf over her eyes. "We're no more monstrous than any other creature, darling girl."

"No, lions don't hunt each other," Brigid said, pressing the silk to her eyes. "I remember when you bought this for me. It was a year after I'd turned."

"You were missing the sun," he said. "Bright things. Flowers don't look the same at night." He hooked his arm around her waist and pulled her close. "Lions do hunt each other. When a male lion battles for dominance of a pride, the first thing he does after he wins is to kill the cubs the previous male sired. It makes the females go back into heat so he can mate with them."

Brigid blinked. "That's horrible."

"That's nature." He pulled the scarf away. "We're creatures of animalistic nature, but that's not all we are. Ivan is an aberration. You know that."

"Sometimes the things our kind are capable of make me wonder."

Carwyn frowned. "What do we do that's more monstrous than what humans do to each other?"

"It doesn't matter what humans do; we should be better than that," Brigid said. "That's the point, Carwyn. Think about how many years you've lived. Think about the wisdom and experience and perspective you have. And there are vampires who are so much older than you."

"Thanks for remembering that," he muttered. "Was starting to feel like a fossil."

She smiled and turned her head. "What does it mean if we don't evolve? We should be better. We should be wiser, more patient. Kinder. We don't have the petty worries of humanity; we should be above that somehow. Keep our heads above it."

He brushed the hair back from her forehead. "Becoming immortal doesn't make you better or worse, darling girl. It just makes you old. If anything, it makes you more of what you always were. If you were always a creature obsessed with justice" —he pinched her chin— "you become even more obsessed. And if you loved family and fun and treasured joy, you become more of that."

"So Ivan is who Ivan always was," Brigid said. "He was always going to exploit the vulnerable; becoming a vampire just made him able to exploit for more years."

"We'll stop him." He captured her mouth in a fierce kiss. "We'll end this for good."

"I think if we don't, Summer might rampage through the Pacific Northwest until she has his head on a pike."

"Now that's a picture." Carwyn narrowed his eyes. "This is the first time I've ever really spent much time with Cathy's clan in the Americas."

"It explains so much."

"So, so much." His eyes were somewhere away from her, somewhere in the distance that she couldn't reach.

Brigid kissed him softly. "I'm glad you treasure joy."

"And mayhem. Not everyone sees the connection between the two."

"Is that how you're justifying the havoc your hounds are wreaking on Deirdre's gardens in Wicklow?"

Carwyn had tended a pair of breeding wolfhounds in Wales, only to move them to Ireland after he and Brigid had married. They'd run joyfully around their estate outside Dublin, along with their expanding progeny, until Carwyn and Brigid had moved to the United States. Then they became the oversized problem of Carwyn's daughter Deirdre.

"Shhhh." He pinched her lips. "Deirdre loves the dogs. Loves them. The angry emails are just a little game she's playing with me. I promise. Also, I miss my dogs."

"I'm sure they miss you too." Brigid grinned. "You did it again."

"What?"

She wrapped her arms around his neck. "Made me smile when I was feeling broody. Made me think about home. Made me remember some joy on a very heavy night."

"That's my superpower." He pulled her close and let his kiss spin her out and turn her around.

When Carwyn kissed her, everything else disappeared. Brigid floated in a shimmering place where their joined amnis elevated both of them, making her feel as if she'd been speeding in circles on a carnival ride.

How did he still do this to her? He made her feel like a sappy teenage girl!

Ten years together and Brigid thought she should be just a little bit used to her mate by this point. But Carwyn was a constant surprise; a glorious confusion that teased her with unerring affection only to confound her when his protective nature was riled. He was a nexus of mirth until he was utterly lethal.

It was a dichotomy that fascinated her.

Despite his size, her husband knew how to put people at ease. Unless he wanted to intimidate them. She had never met a creature more in tune with his physicality and the way others, human and vampire, perceived it.

Children and dogs adored him. Even cats had a soft spot for the giant. Insecure human men mostly avoided him, and the truly dangerous watched him warily.

And Brigid?

She played her fingers across the planes of his face. He had scars from his human years and even a little silver touched his beard and temples. His deep red hair curled in a wild explosion that reminded Brigid not just a little of a wood fire.

"Why do you love me?" she asked him again.

He turned and kissed her fingers. "I love your passion for doing the right thing even when it's the most difficult thing. I love the way you see people. You call yourself a cynic, but at your heart, you're an optimist."

"I'm an addict," she said. "I have to be an optimist in order to justify my existence."

"I love that you wear your scars like the badges of honor they are. I love that you're so damn stubborn when you know you're doing the right thing. You're this tiny immovable object in the face of doubt."

"I have to be stubborn to be married to you."

"And I'm ridiculously fond of your arse, which I know you think is on the ample side for your size, but I'm telling you, it really is perfection."

She had to bite back a smile. "No arse is perfection. They're arses."

"Clearly you do not have my perspective when we're making love and you're—"

She slapped her hand over his mouth. "Leave room for the Holy Ghost, Carwyn ap Bryn. Or your mother'll be shamed."

He grinned and bit the heel of her hand, his fangs growing long as she watched him.

I'm going to ravish you. Brigid only thought it, but she knew Carwyn heard. He always heard her. Always saw her. He always had.

"I love you quite madly, Carwyn ap Bryn."

"That's good," Carwyn said. "Because I'm definitely going to fuck up something you've carefully planned in the next few days."

She closed her eyes. "I'd like to say you're exaggerating, but you just never are."