Dark Debt (31 page)

Catcher’s eyes, suddenly red-rimmed, bloomed with tears. “I love you, Mallory Delancey Carmichael.”

Jeff cleared his throat. “In that case, I think it’s time to say that by the power vested in me, I now pronounce you husband
and wife! You can kiss the bride!”

As we erupted with applause, Catcher drew Mallory toward him, cupped her face in his hands, and kissed her so furiously even I blushed. When he finally drew back, Mallory’s cheeks were pink and flushed, her eyes glazed, a glow of happiness around her.

Love wasn’t perfection. It wasn’t always roses and candy. Hell, it wasn’t even
mostly
roses and candy.
Sometimes it was battling back fear that loomed like a leviathan, trying to find a way through misery, being grateful to have a companion who knew your strengths and weaknesses, and loved you not just in spite of them, but because of them.

Love was acceptance. Love was bravery. Love was sticking it out.

One day,
Ethan said silently, squeezing my hand, promising me what was to come.

When the time is right,
I said, and squeezed back, the agreement between us reached.

When the time is right,
he agreed, and pressed a kiss to my temple.

Still in Catcher’s embrace, Mallory smiled at me, pointed to the peony in my hand. “You know, Mer, you’re holding the bouquet. I think that means you’re next.”

And perhaps sooner rather than later,
Ethan said with a chuckle.

* 
  *   *

When Catcher and Mallory dashed off to their make-do honeymoon, and the rest of the guests had left, Ethan and I walked inside again.

He wanted to check his messages, determine if there was any other business he’d need to attend to before, we’d decided, we’d take the rest of the night off for an evening of pizza and movies in our apartments. Nothing sounded better.

At least
until Ethan’s office door closed, and the lock slipped into place with a quick snap of metal.

I looked up from my seat on the couch, found him staring at me. His jacket was off, his shirt unbuttoned at the top, hands on his lean hips.

“Sullivan?”

“Sentinel.” He strode forward. “I believe we have some unfinished business.”

We did. And with Julien Burrows behind us, the threat of
him gone, the desire I’d banked came rushing back. I rose from the sofa, walked toward him.

“You are the most desirable creature I have ever seen.”

“You aren’t seeing what I’m seeing,” I said. The glamour, the magic of the evening, the defeat of Julien Burrows and the ghost of Balthasar had given me a buzz of power and confidence. I decided to use it to advantage.

“Take your shirt
off.”

He arched an eyebrow. “Are you giving me orders, Sentinel?”

I met his gaze with my own, and when he saw that I wouldn’t back down, he moistened his lip. Given his obvious and growing arousal, he wasn’t opposed to the idea.

“Very well, then.”

He stepped out of his shoes, kicked them away. Then he unhooked one button, then the next, each revealing another inch of his flat and
solid abdomen. When the shirt was open, he slid it off his shoulders, and his eyes darkened to the color of a deep forest.

“Next?” he asked.

My heart was thudding in my ears as I watched him watch me, but I managed a word. “Belt.”

“As you wish.” He unhooked it, slid it through the loops with a snap of sound, looped the black leather around his hand in a manner that was equally arousing.
It was a hint of experiences we hadn’t shared. But if his knowing gaze was any indication, that wouldn’t be the case forever.

“You look intrigued, Sentinel.”

“How could I not be?”

“Indeed.”

“Pants.”

His eyebrow arched. “You’re fully clothed. That would leave me utterly naked.”

“And in your office. Where I plan to seduce you well and thoroughly. I gave you an order, Sullivan.”

His body flushed with desire, eyes hooded with anticipation as he unbuttoned, unzipped, and let the pants fall to the floor. Beneath, he wore boxer briefs, the rigid line of his arousal obvious beneath them.

This time, I wet my lips.

He walked toward me. “I believe it’s time to claim what’s mine.” He reached me and, before I could object, lifted me into the air and crossed the room.
He sat me atop the conference table, stood between my knees, and captured my mouth with a brutal kiss.

His hands slid down my body, cupping my breasts, inciting the fire in my core. His hands found the dress’s zipper, and it fell away, revealing the red bustier. He took only a moment to appreciate it before ripping it away. His eyes flashed silver before he found them with teeth and tongue
until my head dropped back, the pulse in my ears like a timpani drum.

He pulled the rest of the fabric away, stripping me of sense and leaving me breathless and naked. And when we faced each other, naked and vulnerable, he cupped my face in his hands and kissed me deeply.

“Lie back,” he said, and guided my head back to the tabletop, the polished wood cool beneath feverish and heated skin.

He slid down my body, using hands and lips and teeth to drive me to the brink.

When his fangs grazed the inside of my thigh, my head shot up. But the sight of him between my thighs, eyes silver and fangs bared, silvered my eyes.

Timing is everything,
he said silently.

When he bit, fangs piercing tender skin, it was like gold rushed through my veins—hot and metallic and precious.
Pleasure overtook me, blinded me, had me crying out his name.

And then he stood again, and his hand was above my heart, tracing a path to my abdomen. “You are so beautiful.”

I opened my eyes, looked up at him, blond and muscled, his eyes silvered, his mouth swollen. “You are the sexiest thing I’ve ever seen in my entire life. Will ever see, probably.”

“Correct,” he said, and joined
our bodies with a powerful thrust that arched my back. “As you’re mine, and mine alone.”

“Ethan,” I said, and he anchored our hips together. Thrust again, and again, until he’d blocked out all sensations other than the union of our bodies, the arch of his body over mine.

I opened my eyes. “Call me,” I said, and his eyes went dark.

“You don’t need to prove anything to me.”

I didn’t.
But if I was destined to be a vampire, I was entitled to know what other vampires knew. To feel what other vampires felt, and not because of violation or threat. Because, as Lindsey had discussed, of trust, and love, and connection.

I lifted a hand to his face, smiled as wickedly as I could. “I’m not proving anything. I’m taking what I’m owed.”

His eyes flashed with desire.

“I want
that between us, Ethan.”

He nodded. “Very well, then. Close your eyes, Sentinel.”

At first, he only said my name.
Merit
, the word a soft embrace. He was, I knew, acclimating me to the sensation, preparing me for what was next.

And it was something entirely new . . . and entirely different.

He said my name again.
Merit
. But this time, it wasn’t just sound, but a calling. It was
as if his voice were a light in the darkness, the bright world that waited at the end of a passageway. There would be no loneliness for me. No more isolation. Because he had created me, this Master of vampires, and made me something wonderful and magical and immortal.

I felt my lips part, felt sound escape them. He answered with a driving thrust that echoed through me like the
thrum
of a bowstring.

He called my name each time he drove into me, so that every part of my body seemed in synchronicity with his.

“I love you,” I said breathlessly, my body taut with anticipation. “God, I love you. I love you.”

I love you,
he said to me, without sound, but no less meaningful.
Merit,
he said again, calling my body home, sending me over the edge. Pleasure sparked through me like a live wire.
I lost my breath on a gasp, my body bowing like the crest of a wave, the entire universe and its history in my mind.

And Ethan in my heart.

“I don’t suppose,” I said after some long minutes had passed, when he lay beside me on the conference table, breathing in tatters, “that you’d like to tell me about that nickname you had for me.”

Ethan chuckled. “And ruin the mood? No, Sentinel.
I don’t believe I do.”

He rose, covered my body with his. “And I’ve ways of making you forget the very question.”

I let him prove that.

EPILOGUE

H
e messaged me just after midnight, asked for a meeting. And when I walked into Dirigible Donuts, a late-night favorite in the Loop, Morgan Greer sat at a small metal table, a foam cup of black coffee in front of him.

He looked up at the sound of the bell on the door, and the young man behind the
counter smiled, but the look didn’t reach his weary eyes. “Welcome to Dirigible Donuts. How can I help you?”

His voice was monotone, and just as tired.

I grabbed and paid for a bottle of water, sat down in the aluminum chair across from Morgan.

He smiled nervously, scratched a hand through his hair. He looked tired. That didn’t detract from his handsomeness—it sharpened the edges in
a pretty nice way, actually.

“Thanks for coming.”

I nodded. “I’m not really sure why I’m here.”

“I guess I wanted to talk through some things.” He paused. “I think you got to know me, Mer. For a little while, anyway. Before things got complicated. Before all this—the drama, the spectacle. I’m not perfect. I’m not aiming to be. But I’d like to be better than I was.”

“I can’t give
you redemption.”

“I know.”

“Celina changed everything, Morgan. Hopefully, they’ve realized by now the amenities will have to change. Belts will have to be tightened. But even beyond that, this isn’t the Chicago she ruled two years ago. She changed the landscape, with other Navarre vampires beside her.”

“I know,” he said. “I think one of the reasons they loved her is that she kept them
in the dark. Everything was wonderful—even when it wasn’t—because she didn’t tell them the truth. Because she sold them a very complicated lie about who they were and what the world believed of them.

“They may not want to hear the truth,” he admitted. “And they may not let me back in because of it.” He paused, seemed to firm his determination. “If that’s what it comes to, so be it. But I can’t
do this anymore. Trying to play her, to cajole people I don’t agree with. If they want someone else as Master, they should have it. I want to run the House differently. Not like Celina, not like Cadogan. Like me. Like Navarre.”

With those four words, he sounded more like the Morgan I’d known before he bore that mantle of authority. He’d still been rash even then. Jealous and a little prickly,
especially about me and Ethan. But he’d also been happy. And I hadn’t seen him happy in a very long time.

“If worse comes to worst,” he said, “I’ll go my own way. Go Rogue, maybe hook up with your grandfather again.”

I blinked. “My grandfather? What do you mean?”

He grinned at me. “Didn’t you know? When he started out, I was the vampire who gave him information about the Houses.”

My eyes widened with shock . . . and appreciation. “That was
you
? You were reporting to the Ombudsman’s office while standing Second to Celina? Did you have a death wish?”

Morgan laughed full out, so that even the clerk, now wiping down a counter probably sticky with powdered sugar and stained with coffee, smiled a little.

“Maybe I was doomed from the beginning,” he said. “Maybe there
was no way I could have held the House.”

“You hold it,” I reminded him. “And you’ve held it since she died. Cadogan and Navarre may never be best friends. But there’s got to be a middle ground between friends and enemies, or for Navarre vampires, between narcissism and self-abnegation.”

Wasn’t that, after all, precisely what Ethan had done? He’d avoided the worst of Balthasar’s selfishness,
but was confident enough to make his own way in the world. To pick a route and undertake it, and damn those who disagreed. They could captain their own ships.

“I’m sure there is,” Morgan said. “The question is, will they go for it?” He took a sip of his coffee, glanced at me over the rim with amusement in his eyes. “You interested in becoming Second of a new Navarre House?”

There was literally
zero chance I’d leave Cadogan House, much less for Navarre. It was an impossibility.

But still . . . there was something in his question that intrigued me.

I frowned down at the table, trying to unpack
why
it was interesting. Why the thought of standing Second was something I couldn’t just dismiss.

I let myself imagine what might have happened if Morgan had asked the same question
when he originally got the House, before I’d been committed to Ethan.

If he’d asked, and I’d said yes, I’d be second-in-command of the oldest vampire House in the country, a House established the same year the U.S. Constitution had been ratified. (Joshua Merit
could choke on that.) I could admit it—the possibility of helping lead a House was attractive.

And if we were playing out this
alternative history, I’d have become a kind of enemy to Ethan just as he’d been wooing me with seductive promises (and, admittedly, the occasional backslide into haughty arrogance). I imagined furtive glances at meetings between Cadogan and Navarre staff, a stolen kiss in the Navarre garden, a brush of fingers beneath the conference table, a pilfered night in the stacks of the Cadogan library.

“You’re awfully quiet over there.”

I looked up at him, grinned. “Just thinking about history. Morgan, you need a Navarre vampire. You need one of your own, someone you respect, someone of the same blood. Someone who can challenge you when necessary, but present a united front when you face the enemy.”

“If it were that simple, I’d have done it by now.”

“You’ll find someone,” I assured
him. “You’ll find someone, and they’ll help you build the House.”

Morgan nodded, took the final sip of his coffee, three-pointed the empty cup into a nearby trash can.

“Come on,” he said, standing up. “I’ll buy you a donut.”

Now, that was an offer I could accept.

*   *   *

I walked back into the House, only mildly embarrassed that I’d chased two donuts with a bottle of blood
and seriously considered stopping by Portillo’s for a cake shake. I managed to overcome the temptation, not in part because of the memories of our Mallocake Massacre. I still bore the mental scars.

I walked into the House, found Helen straightening the foyer table in preparation for the next night’s supplicants.

She looked up, stood up. “Oh, that’s convenient.”

I closed the door, too
high on sugar to be bothered with what I expected would be an insult. “Is it?”

She nodded, picked up a brown paper package, extended it. “A CPD officer left these for you.”

I took the package, felt nothing ticking, no sense of metal or weaponry. “Who?”

“It’s not my business,” she said haughtily, as if managing my incoming mail—limited though it was—was too much of a burden. “It was
left with the guards. They’re hardly going to interrogate an officer.”

Must have been from Detective Jacobs or my grandfather, although it was an odd way to get something to me.

“Okay, then,” I said, and started for the stairs. “Good night.”

A glance down the hallway said Ethan was still in his office—the door was open, the light on. So I took my package to his office, found him sitting
in one of the club chairs with a bottle of longneck blood in one hand and a book in the other.

I paused in the doorway, smiled at him. “Now, that’s a sexy picture.”

He glanced up, smiled. “Hello, Sentinel. How was your meeting?”

“Morgan’s going to give Navarre House another try. And I got a donut.”

“Only one?”

He knew me too well.

“What’s in the package?”

I glanced
down at it. “I’m not sure. Helen said a CPD officer left it for me.”

Ethan took the final drink of blood, put the bottle and book on the coffee table. “From your grandfather?”

“I don’t know. It’s a little weird,” I admitted, and sat down in
the chair beside him, put the package on the table in front of us. It was tied with twine horizontally and vertically, as a Christmas gift might have
been wrapped with ribbon. I untied it, slipped the tape around the paper with a fingernail, and drew open the edges.

Ethan’s magic spiked beside me.

Six leather-bound books, the same size as the one I’d seen in “Balthasar’s” room the night he’d attacked me. These had covers of taupe leather with burgundy spines, well-worn with age. A grinning skull was embossed in the cover above the letters
“M.M.”

“The Memento Mori’s ledgers,” I said, opening the cover of the top book delicately with a fingertip, and a piece of thick cardstock fell to the floor.

THE GAME IS AFOOT
, it read.
MAY THE BE
ST
WIN
.
AND
IN
THE
ME
ANTIME
,
A
TOKEN
OF
AP
PRECIATION
FOR
OUR
F
IRST
ROUND
.
I
BELIEVE
YOU
’
LL
FIND
THESE
I
NTERESTING READING.

The card was signed, in bold slashes, “AR.”

So Adrien Reed had
come full circle. A few weeks ago, he’d drawn us into his world with a note from one of his players. And now he reminded us that he held the trump card—a card he’d gotten a member of the Chicago Police Department to deliver to our House. But he hadn’t just held the card; he’d stacked the entire deck.

“Ethan,” I said quietly after a moment, not sure what else to say.

But Ethan Sullivan
was rarely at a loss for words. “Every move he makes,” he said, quietly and carefully, “is another bit of evidence against him, and it brings us one step closer to his downfall.”

He pulled me into his arms, his breath warm against my cheek. “Let us be still, Sentinel. And let us help him toward
defeat.”