BROKEN BLADE (34 page)

A pale figure stepped out from behind a tree.

For one second, my heart knew nothing but icy terror. Pale hair. Pale face. Terrible power. Vampire—

Another ghost from my past came back to whisper to me…Goliath, his voice deep and gruff, his hands big and gentle as he patted my back and tried to comfort up on that horrid, hellish mountain.

She’s going to remember this, every second of it for months, probably years. And if she can’t think back and remember seeing the box that hauled him away, part of her is going to wonder if he’s after her
.

Goliath had all but forced me to watch as they’d put Jude away.

Jude was gone. Locked up for the next fifty years. Staring across the ruin and rubble at the pale vampire, I reminded myself of that. That vampire wasn’t Jude. And the similarity was only superficial. They were both blond. All vampires were pale, because they never saw the sun.

And this man was handsome but he lacked the completely angelic beauty that Jude possessed. Angelic beauty, unholy evil.

“I take it that’s Amadeus,” I said softly as he started to come toward us, his cloak flaring open to reveal a blood red lining.

“You take it right. Has a flare for the stupid.”

My blood roared, pounded.

“I’ll have you both jailed for this,” the vampire said, his voice cool. “You had no business—”

Shapeshifter magic prickled, rolled, the energy of an angry cat shifter beating against my skin. Doyle stepped between us. Gently, he put Tate at our feet and then he rose and faced the vampire.

“I do,” he said.

Amadeus gave him a bored look. “Go away, cub, before I decide I’m hungry. My quarrel isn’t with you. You’re just…in the way.”

Doyle’s hands hung loose at his sides. A strange smile curled his lips.

“Oh, I don’t know about that,” he said. “We’ve got blood to settle. You owned shares in a company that Jude sold a few months ago—Blood Games. Remember it?”

Something glittered in the vampire’s eyes and a grin stretched across his face. “Oh. Oh, yes…interesting pursuits we had there. Some problems. We had to distance ourselves from it.”

Something uneasy danced down my spine. “Doyle.”

He didn’t look at me.

“You didn’t distance yourself enough.”

He lunged, going from human form to that awful half-monster, half-animal in just seconds. The laughing, taunting boy I was so familiar was gone, and in his place was a killer.

But the vampire was older. Stronger.

Amadeus crashed into him and took him down. “Stupid
boy
,” he snarled, slamming him down so hard I heard bone crunch.

I tensed.

Justin grabbed my arm before I could move.

“Let me go!” I whispered, my voice low and furious.

“Not happening,” he said, shaking his head, his eyes on the two in front of us.

I jerked on my arm again. “Justin, you son of a bitch—”

“Kit…” He looked away for one brief moment, his eyes grim and dark. “This isn’t about the vase.”

I
had figured that much out.

“Look.” Justin jerked his head.

I saw the vampires spreading out behind us.

Eight of them.

We were outnumbered. Cold spread through me.

And I didn’t have to ask Justin how he felt. He was about tapped out. And this…
Blood games—
blood
games. Jude—

Understanding slammed into me. The Everglades. Doyle’s kidnapping…the days he’d spent as a prisoner. Trapped. Helpless.

“He said there was blood between them,” I whispered.

“Yes.” Justin’s eyes stayed locked on the two grappling forms. His hand closed around my arm and his answer came in images and barely formed words. Empathy wasn’t his strong suit, or mine, but it worked.

Amadeus had made it personal. As long as we didn’t get involved from this point on, it would end here.

Otherwise Justin and I were going to have to fight our way through the vampires. And the ones across from us were older. Strong ones. I could feel the weight of their years slamming into me and dread spiraled, climbed inside me as panic threatened.

Justin’s fingers dug in. His magic arced through me, shocked me.

Hold it together, damn it!

I don’t know if he shouted that at me or if I did, but I shoved the panic back, locked it down, locked it away and forced myself to stare at the bloodied tiger as the vampire tore awful, terrible strips from him.

And he laughed. The bastard laughed as he did it.

What was Doyle thinking—

But I knew.

He was just a stupid, idiotic
brave
kid…who saw a way for us to get out.

I couldn’t let him do this. He’d saved me once already. It didn’t matter what happened to me—

Vaguely, I felt the weird, familiar prickle of magic. Although my mind was so painfully, painfully quiet.

Justin shot me a look. “Kit—”

My breath hitched.

Light exploded—
from Doyle
.

And Amadeus screamed, his body jolted upright as Doyle drove the wooden handle of an axe through his chest.

Doyle
…

I stumbled against Justin as the shock slammed through me.

Doyle’s upturned face…when I first saw him in that hole. So much like a face from my past. My cousin, Rathi.

His fascination with weapons. That unnatural affinity for them…

From the back of my memory, a moment out of time rose. Goliath’s voice, as we crouched in the forest, waiting for Justin and Banner.

Doyle’s a tracker, Kitty. Almost as good as you. Never seen the like of it. He didn’t track you by scent. It was...It was amazing. I ain’t never seen anything like it.

“Like me,” I said numbly.

Doyle shoved Amadeus’s lifeless body to the side and with a savage snarl, he jerked the axe out. “Blood debt,” he growled at the vampires as they swarmed closer. “Fuck with me and the cats will eat you alive. Your house will die.”

Blood debts, another old, archaic law of the council, but one they hadn’t done away with. Some part of my mind tucked it away—I’d process it all later. Much, much later. Doyle came toward us, still in his half-form, clutching an axe that looked like a toy in his giant paw-like hand. There were runes, I realized. Runes on the bloodied blade.

And in his blue eyes, I saw confusion when he looked at me.

“Kit—”

I gave him a minute shake of my head.

“Get Tate. You got your blood. And then some. Let’s go.”

* * * *

“What do you make of it?”

It was the first time Justin had managed to corner me alone since…
it
.

I held Doyle’s axe in my hands while the clan’s healer, Ella, finished patching him together. Amadeus had done him some damage and he’d lost enough blood that he actually
needed
the healing.

“Damn it, Kit.”

Slowly, I forced myself to drag my eyes away from the axe and meet Justin’s.

“It’s…” I stopped and rubbed a hand over my face. “There’s power in it. The runes are familiar, although they aren’t
exactly
like mine. The weapons come down a family line and these are...” I touched one of them, felt the answering burn of magic. It was alien and didn’t like me touching it. No. Not
it.
He. 
He
didn’t like me touching him. “Think of them as family crests. Somebody meant for Doyle to have this. But I don’t know who. One of my aunts, my grandmother, even my cousins could have read this, told you who his family is. I can’t. None of that even matters, though. Because the axe is his. He calls Doyle…and Doyle calls him.”

“Calls him.” Justin turned his head and stared at the young man on the bed. He was pale, almost as pale as the sheets. On the far side of the bed, Damon sat down, his mouth a thin, flat line as he listened to Ella.

We hadn’t told him yet, how this had happened.

Did Doyle even know?

But then I remembered the shock in his eyes as he came to me. He hadn’t known. At least not about the weapon bond.

I
hadn’t known. Because nobody had told me. Nobody had told Doyle, either.

Like me
…

* * * *

Once more, we were back in Damon’s quarters. Ground zero.

“How is Doyle?” I asked, even though we’d just left him to the tender mercies of Ella and several of Damon’s bodyguards.

Gray eyes burned into me. “He’ll be fine. He’s a cat, baby girl. Blood loss and an ass-kicking from a vamp isn’t going to slow him down for long.”

Before I could think of anything else to say, the door opened and Chang slipped in.

I blinked, caught off guard at the sight of him. He was dressed in battle gear, I suppose. Black shirt that hugged close, black utility pants that would have looked right at home in my closet…if they were an inch or two shorter and broader through the hips. “I didn’t know you owned anything other than suits, Chang.”

A ghost of a smile danced around his lips as he settled himself at Damon’s shoulder. Ever the shadow.

“So, Doyle’s resting,” I said, parsing out the words while I tried to figure this out.

Next to me, Justin sighed.

I shot him a murderous glare.

He lifted his hands. The silver in his sleeves looked tarnished, dull.

Be quiet
, I said, focusing my thoughts, my emotions as hard and loud as I could. I didn’t know if he’d pick them up without me touching him, but he ought to pick up on
some
of that.

“Something…weird…happened,” I finally said, slumping in my seat as exhaustion crept in.

“Weirder than…what? You using a gun to take out a vase? Or the evil bitch?” A sly smile lit Damon’s face. “Although, kitten, I didn’t realize you had such a thing against interior decorating.”

I narrowed my eyes at him.

He leaned forward, elbows on the table. “Why don’t you just ask what you need to ask?”

“Who was Doyle’s mother?”

“We don’t know.” Damon shrugged, his eyes darkened to almost black. “She left Doyle’s dad. Nobody ever saw her after she took off.”

“Actually…” Chang spoke up, drawing my eyes to him. “Few people saw her
before
she took off. Doyle’s father, Malcolm, was rarely seen anywhere with her. She was…shy, I’ve heard. Once the baby was born, she stayed long enough to wean him, then she left.”

“She just abandoned him?”

Damon shrugged. “Not unheard of with half-breed kids, baby girl,” he said, his voice low and edgy. “After about a month or so, the shifter parent can tell if the gene is going to be recessive or not. The kid may never
shift
but it becomes pretty damn obvious if the child will be more...or less…human. She probably looked at Doyle one day and decided she didn’t want see him coughing up hairballs.”

I had a dagger buried in the surface of the table before I realized I’d drawn it.

Next to me, Justin went still.

Chang’s eyes were cautious.

But Damon just smiled. “Why so angry, kitten?”

“How long have you known?” I demanded, forcing the question out.

His lashes swept down low, shielding his eyes.

He sighed and rubbed his hands over his face and then looked up at Chang. “Chang and I…we always knew something was different on him. We didn’t know
what
it was, though.”

“When did you know?” I shouted.

“The day Harry Potter brought you back from Wolf Haven,” Damon said, his voice flat, level. “It was after you’d been attacked—you had that big bite taken out of you.”

The day he’d marked me
…

I tensed. Against my will, I reached up and brushed my hand down my neck, feeling the ridge of the scar.

I saw Damon move but I couldn’t get away fast enough as he came across the table, landing on the balls of his feet in a crouch just in front of me. Body bent in a position no human could hold, he put his face in mine. “No,” he murmured. He reached up and covered the bite with his palm. “It had nothing to do with Doyle. Everything that ever happened with us is just because of us. Nothing else.”

“You sure about that?”

He brushed his thumb against my lower lip. “Never been more certain of anything. And I’ll keep waiting until you’re ready.”

With a whisper of sound and a sigh, he was gone, moving back into his seat and it was like that moment had never happened.

Chang cleared his throat. In his smooth, perfect voice, he said, “There was an…incident. Sam took it upon herself to try and discipline Doyle and he was bloodied. Nothing major, but the scent of his blood…and yours. Too much alike.”

“He’s got
aneira
blood,” Justin muttered.

“You just now figuring that out, Harry Potter?” Damon curled his lip.

Justin flipped him off.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Two days later, I stood in my apartment and realized I’d come to a decision.

Or maybe the decision had been made a while ago. I couldn’t go back to Wolf Haven. TJ and Justin were right—I wasn’t made for standing behind a bar. There was only one thing I was really good at.

So I guess that meant I was back in business.

But first, I had to attend to a personal matter.

If life hadn’t kicked me in the face, I would have done it months ago. Now, though, thanks to TJ, I finally felt strong enough. All because she’d kicked me in the butt. Again.

Her voice, so sad and gentle, echoed in memory.

Kit, you’re stronger than I am. Please don’t turn into me. Don’t let him win like this.

There were much, much worse things, in my mind, than being like her. She’d been the first person to show me any real kindness. The first to care about me. She had given me my first real home and whenever things were really bad and I needed to hide, needed to get away from anything and everything, she would
always
have a place for me.

She had been there for me after a monster had broken me, and then, when the time was right, she’d forced me to face myself.

It was time to pay that kindness back…and take down the monster who had broken her.