Midnight Marked (Chicagoland Vampires 12)

“How, exactly, do you think that’s going to happen?”

He shifted into Master vampire. Mouth slightly quirked in a grin, one eyebrow arched imperiously as he looked back at me. “I’m fairly certain you know exactly how it happens, Sentinel.”

What was it with people and the conception jokes? “You know I didn’t mean that. I meant, you know”—I circled a finger toward my lower half—“the unproven mechanics of vampire gestation. To not put too fine a point on it, what’s going to keep him or her in there?”

His face went utterly serious. “Sentinel, I honestly do not know.” He pressed his lips to warm skin. “Shall we try to let nature take its course?”

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

SALEM’S FIRE

Jonah’s message was waiting the next evening, a single question mark that somehow managed to query and chastise at the same time.

It was so easy to have opinions, and so much harder to actually do things. Which was one thing I planned on talking to the RG about.

I offered a time that would give me a chance to get dressed, changed, and fed. I still felt low after the past night’s battle, despite the good that being on the same page with Ethan had done.

After grabbing a breakfast wrap in the cafeteria with Lindsey and Juliet, I stopped by Ethan’s office. He, Malik, and Luc were chatting when I walked in.

“Did I miss a meeting?” I asked.

“No,” Ethan said, Malik and Luc splitting apart to let me join their circle. “We were reviewing the photographs of last night’s perpetrator.”

Ethan extended the portrait-sized color photograph to me, and I could feel him watching my reaction.

Luc had been right last night. The video was grainy, but it was definitely him. The brooding eyes, the beard, the muscles.

“Yeah.” I looked at Ethan first, nodded just a little to assure him that I was okay. “Recognizable enough. Does he look familiar to either of you?”

“Not to me,” Malik said. “Not as a Novitiate or an attacker. It was dark that night, and he moved quickly.”

“No dice for me, either,” Luc said.

“Nor me,” Ethan said. “You’re going to talk to Noah?”

“I’m working on a meet, yeah. Can I borrow the photograph?”

“Take it,” Luc said. “I’ve printed a few more, and we’ve alerted the Houses. We’ll also run it against the database of Housed vampires, just in case. It’s always possible he was a Housed vampire once upon a time and left.”

de those waves together, bodies linked and hearts finally reunited. Love wasn’t a battle, and it wasn’t a war. It was a partnership, with missteps and miracles and all the rest of it.

When we were both sated and languid, Ethan lay naked beside me, his head on my abdomen. I ran my fingers through his hair as he traced a fingertip across my still-heated skin.

“Do you remember, Sentinel, the first words you ever said to me?”

I grimaced. “No. But I bet they were rude.” I hadn’t been a fan of Ethan Sullivan the first time I walked into Cadogan House.

“Oh, it was.” His eyes glinted like shards of green glass. “Your life had changed, and you were furious at me. You said you hadn’t given me permission to change you.”

“Which, in fairness to me, was accurate.” I paused, remembering my seething dislike for the Master of my new House. “I didn’t like you very much.”