Chapter Twenty-Two

Brigid heard Tenzin land on the roof of the house in Juneau and started when she heard a second set of feet.

Thunk.

Thunk.

She pulled her Hellcat and unlocked the trigger, taking position across the room within sight of the door that led to the stairwell.

"Brigid," Tenzin called, "I brought Ben. Don't shoot us with your gun."

She relaxed a tiny bit, somewhat certain that Tenzin wasn't being coerced but still cautious.

"It's me, Brig."

She recognized Ben's voice and released the breath she'd been holding.

Tenzin walked through the door, quickly followed by Ben.

Brigid lowered her weapon. "Took ya long enough to find us."

Her old friend rolled his eyes. "As if we didn't know exactly where you were for weeks now."

"Sure ya did."

Tenzin looked at him. "You said that you didn't know until I called you."

"I mean, it wasn't exact but…" Ben looked at Brigid.

"Don't expect me to cover your arse for ya."

He lifted an eyebrow. "Like the hair, baldy."

She flipped him off. "It's practical."

"And cold."

"Because I had such a mane before." She walked over and held still as Ben enveloped her in a hug. He was such a touchy-feely person, and she tried not to mind.

She didn't find it easy to touch people save for her mate. "Where is he?"

"Last I saw, he was climbing back on an old fishing boat and heading to Ketchikan."

"Which is where we're going," Tenzin said. "You should come too."

"Did you find Zasha?" Brigid asked. "Is that where they are? Ketchikan?"

"Not exactly, but?—"

"Then it's premature." Brigid was quick to correct them. "I can't fly. Juneau is centrally located. Until we know where Zasha is, I don't need to be wastin' time moving round."

Ben frowned. "But Carwyn is headed back to Ketchikan."

And the pull for him was a tangle in her gut. "Until we know where Zasha is, I'm stayin' put. The last thing we need is for all of us to relocate south and then be stuck there when Zasha attacks farther north."

Ben leaned against the wall. "Katya thinks Oleg is working with Zasha."

"Go foirfe." Brigid threw up her hands. "Because Oleg thinks Katya is working with Zasha. This is perfect." She knew someone had to be pulling strings behind the scenes, but this was getting ridiculous.

Ben walked over to the refrigerator. "Do you have any blood here?"

"Scourge of the refrigerator," Tenzin muttered. "So fitting."

"I'm hungry." Ben flashed his mate a grin. "Someone wore me out."

Brigid held up a hand. "And I don't need to hear about it, so hold yer whist!"

She wasn't jealous but…

Who was she kidding? She was jealous as hell.

Ben grabbed for a bottle of blood-wine in the refrigerator door. "Right now Katya's people have identified four different raids on compounds in her territory. Only one survivor so far."

"There were three in Oleg's… not-territory," Brigid said. "Maybe more we don't know about because it's all shadows and rumors in that part of the state."

"And there are boats missing," Ben added. "And billionaire vampires."

Brigid frowned. "Are you talkin' about Paulson? What's his role in all this? Victim or ally?"

"We don't know for certain," Ben said, "but he's looking suspicious. Did you ask Oleg about him?"

"No, but I asked Gavin. He said that Paulson was a fringe thinker who wants to make vampires into emperors again or some such shite. No conscience, according to Gavin, but he didn't sound like he liked the fella, so he might be unreliable."

"Gavin can be very judgmental." Tenzin sat down at the table. "We need to put all of our information together. Right now there are too many threads, and they're all frayed. Brigid, we have three hours before light. That's enough time to take you to Ketchikan with us."

Brigid blinked. "As in… carry me? While you're flyin'?"

"That has to be how Zasha is moving around so quickly," Tenzin said. "Didn't you say they were picked up in the desert by a wind vampire? They clearly have allies."

"We're not going to drop you," Ben said. "And even if we did, you'd survive. It would hurt like hell, but you'd survive."

Tenzin lifted a finger. "René du Pont once survived a fall from seventy stories in New York. I saw it."

Brigid snorted. "You prob'ly caused it."

Ben said, "Seventeen, Tenzin. I don't think it was seventy."

"Either way." Brigid was cringing inside. "I don't think that's a good idea."

"The last I saw your mate, he was climbing onto a fishing boat in rough water." Ben sat next to Tenzin and stared at Brigid. "You're going to make Carwyn travel by boat, and you're too afraid to travel by air?"

"We can carry you." Tenzin shrugged. "If it comes to it, I can carry you and Ben can carry that block you're married to."

Brigid pulled her gun faster than a vampire could blink and pressed it right to Tenzin's knee. "I told you, insult him again?—"

"It's not an insult." Tenzin glared at her. "He's built like a concrete block and is just as hard to get through."

"Ladies." Ben sounded nervous. "Can we not threaten bodily injury while we're catching up on news? Just a suggestion."

Tenzin kept her eyes locked with Brigid. "I followed you up here because I know that Zasha wants me dead. I know that I'm the cause of this, and I'm sorry that you and Carwyn got pulled into a mess that I created—even though I thought I was doing the right thing."

Brigid tried to wrap her mind around the idea of Tenzin apologizing. Had she ever done it before? Brigid couldn't remember.

"I can't lose him," Brigid said. "I could lose my own head, but if I lost him, I'd turn into a monster."

"No, you wouldn't." Tenzin brushed the barrel of the gun away. "You need to leave this thinking in the past. I've seen monsters. I've been a monster. You're the opposite of one, Brigid Connor."

"Who told you that, Brigid?" Ben's voice was soft. "You're one of the most honorable people I know, mortal or immortal."

Brigid blinked back heat in her eyes.

"You love it. Fire, temptation, bloodlust. They're the only things that make you feel alive."

"I'm no monster. I am nothing like you!"

"I never said you were. But you said it. Because deep down, you believe it. In your heart, you know what you are."

"Whoever told you that is playing with your mind," Tenzin said bluntly. "And it's working. I've used that tactic myself. Was it Zasha?"

Brigid said nothing.

"They are perceptive," Tenzin said. "If they know you fear being a monster, they'll use it against you. Don't let them win."

"Come with us," Ben said. "Go to Carwyn. Right now he's working on his own, angry at you for leaving him behind."

"We can chase this ghost together and win, or we can split up and probably lose." Tenzin leaned forward. "But there's no way to keep them safe. Not Ben and not Carwyn. Not from this. He won't let you, and you're only making him hurt because of your stubbornness."

Brigid pulled her hands from the table; the edge was singed and black, but it wasn't burnt.

Tenzin glanced at the burn marks on the wood. "Your control is improving. Even a few days working with Oleg helped."

Brigid felt the fire in her belly, felt the burning snap of it reaching from inside, aching to get out. Aching for her mate. The fire wanted Carwyn, and the longer she let it smolder, the worse it was going to be.

"Fine," she whispered. "I'll go with ye."

Flying across the Inside Passage on the back of a wind vampire was as completely terrifying and freezing as Brigid could have imagined. She tried to close her eyes, but her relentless curiosity had her peeking over Ben's shoulder more than once.

"It's amazing, right?" Ben was obviously in his element. "People dream about flying all the time, and now I can actually do it. Do you know I called you from the top of a cathedral in Russia once?"

"I did not know that."

Jesus, she was turning into her Aunt Sinead with the number of times she'd held her breath only to let it out in a minor explosion.

"…but once I figured out how to keep the bugs away, it got a lot better."

"Completely missed the first part of that one." She gasped and ducked down as a bird nearly sideswiped them. "Dear God in heaven."

"My uncle and aunt refuse to fly with me, but my sister loves it."

"That's mildly terrifying." Ben's sister was something like thirteen. Perhaps she had a death wish.

"Nearly there." He pointed off to the left. "I recognize that old lumber mill."

"Great!"

Let her die. She'd had a good life—she could just die now. Surely it was possible for vampires to have heart attacks. Was that possible? What about a stroke? If he dropped another time to avoid a seagull, something in her head was bound to explode.

"You're not getting tired, are you?" Ben yelled over his shoulder. "Tenzin and I exchange blood, so the short days have been great. But I don't need as much sleep as most new vampires."

"Yeah, it's fine."

It wasn't fine. None of this was fine. She wanted her feet on the ground. Even a boat would be better than this terror.

"Banking to the right, then going down."

"Okay."

For the love of all things holy, let that mean they were almost there.

Brigid saw lights in the distance, a cluster of them sitting between a peninsula and an island, straddling a narrow strait dotted with smaller lights that were probably boats.

Beyond that strait was a vast stretch of dark water as they looked over the cold Pacific Ocean. As they'd crossed the maze of land and sea dotted with tiny moving lights, she'd had one thought repeating in her head over and over.

Well, one thought other than contemplating death.

How the hell were they supposed to find Zasha Sokholov in this huge stretch of wilderness? She'd thought the Alaskan interior was vast.

This maze of islands was so much worse.

When Brigid's feet finally hit land, she understood the humans who kissed the ground. Despite the pouring rain and the mud that squelched between her boots, she was tempted.

In the distance, she saw a house clinging to the edge of land, a dock sticking out into relatively calm waters while two wooden decks wrapped around a wood-clad house.

Behind the house was a raised cedar-plank longhouse with smoke pumping from a stone chimney, and next to it rose a mound with a door cut into the earth.

"I see Clovis's boat," Ben muttered, "so they must have gotten back already. I wonder where?—"

"He's here." The moment she touched the ground, a pull in her blood had started. "He's comin'."

The door to the mound house swung open, and silhouetted in the gold glow, she saw Carwyn's outline.

Her blood leaped, and she felt the whisper of Ben and Tenzin as they took to the sky, leaving her alone in the drizzling rain.

While Brigid's blood was a riot, he walked slowly. Deliberately.

It took a lot to make her mate angry, but when he was, he went stone-cold and silent.

Brigid walked to him, halting a dozen feet from him, lifting her chin and pushing back the hood that protected her head.

Carwyn stopped and stared, his face a mask.

Brigid lifted her hand. "Hello." She wanted to cry. She wanted to leap into his arms. She wanted to hide in the safety of him, and he was cold as ice. "Carwyn?—"

"Do you need to feed before daylight?"

That was the first thing he asked her?

"No." She swallowed hard. "I've been feeding regularly. I haven't been skipping. I've been?—"

"Good." He looked her up and down. "You flew."

"I did." Please don't do this. Please don't shut me out.

"I wondered where Ben disappeared to." He glanced up. "I should have known it was her."

"Carwyn—"

"It's almost dawn." He started walking toward the house. "There are rooms on the ground floor that?—"

"I'm sorry!" Brigid choked on the sob that erupted from her throat. "I'm sorry. I love you so much, and I'm sorry, mo chroí. My heart, tá brón orm. So very sorry."

He spun on her. "You left me!"

The ground beneath Brigid shook with his anger. "I know."

"I begged you not to leave me behind. I called you and I begged you to let us do this together and you left me, Brigid." The corner of his lip curled up and his fangs fell. "You are my mate."

"I don't deserve you."

"Oh fuck off!" The ground shook again. "I'm not a saint. I'm not a savior. I'm as selfish as the next bastard, and you left me." He stomped toward her, the ground firming under his feet, lifting up to meet him as he stalked her. "Why?"

She whispered, "I wanted to protect you."

"But you can go to Oleg?" He threw out an arm. "You can call on Tenzin? You can call in favors from any number of the worst criminals in our world but?—"

"Yes!" She lifted her chin, not caring if he saw her cry. "I will call in any favor and rake the absolute muck of our world if that means keepin' you alive and away from Zasha Sokholov."

"I'm not weak, Brigid." He stood up straight and lifted his chin. "But apparently you think I am."