Falling to Ash (31 page)

Jace was bent over his father’s body. Murdoch Senior was dead, and although I was glad he was gone, I couldn’t hold onto that feeling for long. Not when I had a full view of the ragged grief and shock on his only son’s face. Thomas Murdoch hadn’t been a very nice man. At all. But he was still Jace’s dad, and since the death of his mother he was pretty much all Jace had.

‘What?’ I said, as I came up close to him and the bloody remains of his father.

I approached cautiously, as though Jace was a wild animal who could be spooked by sudden movements.

‘Help me with him. I can’t carry him down those stairs on my own.’

‘Jace,’ I whispered. ‘I’m so s—’

‘Don’t,’ he said. ‘Just . . . don’t.’ He paused. ‘I saw you fight Kyle, though. You took his stake and seemed fine.’

I couldn’t help feeling defensive. ‘I think that must have been adrenaline.’

‘Because he threatened your sister.’

‘You heard that?’ I shrugged. ‘Yeah, I guess. Anyone
hurts
her – or even thinks about it – has to go through me first.’

‘I get that,’ he said, his voice so quiet I had to lean forward to hear him. ‘I would have been the same – had my sister lived.’

‘What?’ I searched his face. ‘You had a sister?’

He turned away. I wondered if he regretted the revelation. ‘I would have done. My mom was pregnant when she died.’

A lump rose in my throat and I had trouble swallowing past it. ‘Oh, Jace . . .’

His shoulders were rigid. Then he stopped moving, stared across the roof and cursed. Loudly.

‘What?’ My head jerked up and I looked in the direction of his shocked gaze. How could I have forgotten that Theo was fighting for his life? Was it that I had simply assumed that he would win easily?

But Theo had been weakened before fighting Kyle, and that could be the only possible explanation for the scene I saw before me. Kyle had gotten hold of Thomas Murdoch’s sword and my Maker was impaled on the end of it. The weapon had gone all the way
through
his body: piercing his stomach, with several inches of bloody blade protruding from his back. Theo hung on it, eyes blazing and mouth open in a silent scream. No way would he give Kyle the satisfaction of hearing him actually make a sound.

Theo was made of strong stuff, but this was bad. This was really bad. The silver must have been causing him unbearable pain.

I pulled myself up on shaking legs, using Jace’s shoulder for support.

‘Moth, what are you doing?’ He grabbed my wrist and I glared at him.

‘Don’t try to stop me.’

‘You’re crazy! You can’t even walk.’

‘This is my duty,’ I hissed, shaking him off and staggering in Theo’s direction.

Jace looked like he was considering trying to stop me, then his shoulders slumped. He glanced down at his father’s still face.

‘Whatever,’ he said. ‘It’s your funeral.’

‘It wouldn’t be the first one,’ I said, and began a limping jog across the roof. ‘Keep an eye on Caitlín for me.’

Kyle was so focused on making Theo suffer as much pain as possible that I managed to catch him in an unguarded moment. I snuck around from behind, conveniently downwind so that he wouldn’t catch my approaching scent, and used the last of my determination to power my failing body. Theo saw me coming – I know he did – but he didn’t blink. Not even while impaled on a sword.

Without a second thought, I threw myself onto Kyle’s
back
. No reason to fight fair any more, not after the bastard had almost crushed my skull with silver while my
own
back had been turned.

I grabbed his face and dug my nails into flesh. He roared, grabbing my arms and shaking wildly in an effort to dislodge me. My back hit the wall and the pain almost made me let go, but I managed to hold on. I gripped with both arms and legs and my fangs extended. I wanted to bite him. I wanted blood.

Kyle twisted around, trying to buck me off, but I hung on and forced him down onto his knees. He let go of the sword’s hilt and Theo sank to his knees, still skewered.

I didn’t know what to do, now that I was here. I was simply trying to buy my Maker time, but had no weapon other than my fangs and Kyle was moving too violently for me to have any hope of biting him.

Movement out of the corner of my eye made me hesitate.

Jace
approached, wiping blood from his face. I stared at him, shock leaving me momentarily frozen. I’d thought his father’s death had broken him – thought that he’d left me to pick up the pieces of this battle alone. But, once again, the young hunter surprised me.

He gripped the hilt of his father’s sword and, without warning or any sign of squeamishness, pulled it out of Theo’s gut.

Theo fell back and lay on the roof, blood-soaked, but still . . . alive. Still here.

Jace spun the sword once, single-handed, in a flamboyant gesture that almost made me smile.

Almost
. There really wasn’t much to smile about in Jace’s expression. His eyes were the darkest I’d ever seen them.

Kyle elbowed me in the stomach, and the sudden sharp pain brought tears to my eyes. But I wasn’t about to let go of him. I had a pretty good choke-hold on him – even though he couldn’t exactly choke – and I’d managed to wrap my legs around his waist to stop him taking another shot at me. I was determined to hang on until Jace did what he had to do.

The sword trembled almost imperceptibly in the younger Murdoch’s hands, whether from exhaustion or fear I wasn’t certain.
Had Kyle noticed?
I hoped not. Beheading a vamp with a sword wasn’t the easiest way to end our existence. Jace’s father’s sword had better be sharp. Just thinking about it made me want to throw up, but it wasn’t like Kyle didn’t deserve it.

Of course, Theo chose
that
moment to – impossibly – rise to his feet.

He looked amazingly calm and collected for a guy who’d been stabbed twice in the same night. He also had a set of chains in his arms.

Kyle thrashed in my grip like a shark rolling its prey.
Luckily
for me, he didn’t have teeth quite as deadly as a shark’s and we weren’t anywhere near water.

Theo ignored Jace and continued to approach Kyle – and me – with the chains. His expression was grim. ‘Why don’t we restrain him in a more . . . appropriate way?’

I had to admit, my arms were freaking killing me. I’d been thrown in every direction for the past couple of minutes, including being rolled on the ground and smashed against concrete. Letting go and leaving Kyle in Theo’s capable hands seemed like a pretty good plan to me, although I wasn’t sure that Jace would agree.

My eyes were irresistibly drawn to the chains that Theo cradled against his chest. He held them awkwardly, and I realized that it was because they were made of silver.
Oh, nasty
, I couldn’t help thinking. Kyle was in for some bad times.

Jace had other ideas. ‘Back off, he’s mine.’

Theo narrowed his eyes. ‘You’re mistaken.’

‘That monster just murdered my father. Nobody ends him except me.’

‘No, child.’ Theo was using his extra-soothing voice – the one that left a thrill of pleasure running through his willing blood donors. ‘Kyle belongs to me, and only to me. Your involvement is . . . unfortunate.’

‘
Unfortunate?
My father is dead.’ Jace made it a statement, his voice ice-cold and controlled but his face twisted with hate.

‘This one disobeyed me and tried to remove me as the head of Boston’s Family. He risked uncovering our existence to the world at large. That is a far more serious crime than the death of a
hunter
.’

Fury poured off of Jace in sickening waves. Kyle had frozen in my arms, waiting for judgment. I released him and backed away, shaking my arms to try getting some feeling back into them. I touched Jace’s back and he spun around and glared at me.

I shrugged, facing my Maker. ‘We could stake him,’ I said, ‘but I dropped the one I had.’

‘Staking’s too quick,’ Theo said.

I shivered at his tone, wondering what punishment he had in mind for the man he’d trusted with his life for almost fifty years.

But then, to immortal vampires, a decade is just the blink of an eye. Kyle had been biding his time – five decades must have seemed a cheap price to pay for gaining Theo’s trust. Or perhaps his shift in loyalties had been more gradual. Perhaps it hadn’t all been a lie.

Theo knelt by his fallen Enforcer and endured the silver-burn on his hands while he secured the chains around Kyle’s chest and arms. The fact that he lowered himself to do the task himself held a significance I couldn’t help noticing. He was showing Kyle a small measure of respect by doing the binding with his own hands.

I didn’t think the disgraced vampire deserved even that gesture, but it wasn’t exactly my place to argue. Theo would do as he pleased whatever my opinion, so for once I decided to keep my mouth shut.

It turned out that Theo’s plan for Kyle was to truss him up, Thanksgiving-style, in heavy silver chains, and leave him on the roof to wait for sunrise. At his age, the sun would be intolerable – it would burn him to cinders. It was a harsh but appropriate judgment, and one I was certain the Elders would approve of. There would be no need to speak to Solomon first – Theo knew that there was no mercy for traitors.

To Kyle’s credit he didn’t beg for mercy and he didn’t try to resist.

Sickened, I turned away and let my Maker finish securing the bonds.

Jace had walked away. He sat by his father’s body with his back to me. I wanted to comfort him, but it didn’t take a genius to figure out that he wouldn’t want me to touch him right now. The tension in his shoulders and the way he held his body told me everything I needed to know. We’d locked eyes just once in the past few minutes, but he had turned away from me as though I was a stranger.

My stomach clenched with the injustice of it:
This was hardly
my
fault
, I wanted to scream at him. But that wouldn’t matter to him right now.

I swallowed and took one more look at Kyle, wrapped in his silver cocoon like the victim of a giant spider. The sun would rise in a matter of minutes and Theo had already headed back down to his half-wrecked home. Kyle’s eyes were open and I knew why. He probably hadn’t seen the sun in at least half a century – this would be his last chance.

His only chance.

I shivered as a sharp breeze lifted the hair from my face. Thin fingers of sunlight inched their way from between gray clouds, pushing through nearly invisible gaps. I turned away from the shining aura that slowly began to surround the restrained vamp. His blond hair looked brighter than I ever remembered seeing it. The sun was already surprisingly intense; a few stray beams hit the glass of neighboring windows, and I winced in reflexive sympathy as Kyle screwed up his eyes against the glare. His skin began to blacken and shrivel, like meat on a barbecue. Bones cracked and melted. His body gradually collapsed in on itself, the decay of the grave taking minutes rather than years.

He burned under the sun, falling to ash in the first light of dawn.

Silence spread like a balm. Kyle was gone.

I crawled across the roof to Caitlín, reaching her after what felt like hours. I collapsed beside her, pulling her into my arms and propping myself up against the low
wall
. I checked her breathing again then rested my cheek against hers. I could take her downstairs when my legs felt like working again. Theo was most likely waiting for me before he slept; I needed him to wake her.

The morning sun on my face felt like a blessing. I didn’t know how much longer I would be able to experience this – I couldn’t take it for granted and I would need my shades on very soon, but for the moment I just felt human again as the sun stroked my skin. I held my sister tightly and thought about what might have happened, how bad things could have been.

We were lucky, I knew that.

I couldn’t take
anything
for granted, and I didn’t think I ever would.

Chapter Twenty-five

I FELT JACE
approach before I saw him.

His arm pressed against mine as he sat next to me, looking out at the slowly rising sun. We didn’t speak for a long time, and there was a treacherous part of me that wished we could stay here forever. If we left the roof, I’d only have to go back downstairs to face Theo. I didn’t want to have to live this life anymore.

While I could still survive under the sun – a winter dawn couldn’t do more than hurt my eyes – I wanted to make the most of it.

‘I’m so sorry about your dad, Jace.’

He took a deep breath; I felt it in the rise and fall of his body. ‘Yeah, because he was such a great guy.’

I glanced at him sharply, but had to look away at the intensity of anguish written in his eyes.

‘He was still your dad.’ I thought of my own father, safely tucked away with his grief and his memories, picturing his drink-lined face and his fading red hair.

Jace stirred against me. ‘Why did he have to be working with that . . . thing?’

I shivered and clutched Caitlín a little more tightly. ‘Thing’ was a pretty good word for Kyle, but was Jace referring to his being a vampire or just the fact that he was a back-stabbing, murdering bastard? I was sort of hoping for the latter, but if I was honest I couldn’t be sure of anything right now. Least of all how Jason Murdoch might feel about me after everything that had happened.