Midnight Marked (Chicagoland Vampires 12)

They disappeared him? Ethan asked silently.

Or convinced him to walk away, I said. Or worse, convinced him to go with them.

“And so you came here,” Gabriel said. “With Humvees and automatic weapons.”

“We protect our own.”

Gabriel sighed. “I’m sure you believe you were protecting the Pack, Kane. Unfortunately, you’re protecting it from the wrong people. You got played.”

“No, but they said—”

“And they were lying. The vampire you saw is the one who killed Franklin, but Cadogan House didn’t do it.”

“They were there when it happened.”

“They were there after it happened because they’d been going to a goddamn night game. And instead of leaving our man where he was, they chased the vampire and got shot in the process.”

Kane looked suspiciously from Ethan to me. I almost showed him my bullet wound, but decided I wasn’t going to justify my existence to a man so ready to believe the worst of us.

“But the vampire said—”

“You got played,” Gabriel said again. “You attacked innocents who’ve been trying to find Caleb’s killer. And when you had a chance to take him down, you were dazzled by magic and let him go.”

Kane deflated like a balloon, like all the piss and vinegar and righteousness leaked out of him at once.

“Haul him up,” Gabriel said to Fallon and Eli Keene; Gabriel had called them into action, probably because he knew they were trustworthy. “Put him with the others.” There was sympathy and disappointment and anger in his voice.

They escorted Kane to the holding area for the other shifters, stepping over broken and bloody pavement to get there.

“Tell me the rest of it,” Gabriel said, watching his men. Ethan glanced at me, nodded. This was my story to tell.

“We think Reed has two main players—the sorcerer and the vampire. We don’t have an ID for the sorcerer. We believe the vampire’s a Rogue”—I paused—“and we know he’s the Rogue who attacked me the night I became a vampire.”

Gabriel went very still. “Last night—your fight on the train. That was him.”

I nodded.

“You’re all right?”

ouse looked like an apocalypse had rolled through. The entryway was a disaster. The front doors were gone, and most of the front windows had been blown out. The stone was pockmarked with bullets. It hadn’t looked this bad since the last time the shifters attacked us. That had been Adam Keene’s doing. And for that and other sins, he hadn’t lived to talk about it.

Gabriel Keene would have much to answer for.

Kane had been gathered up, deposited on the other side of the lawn away from his friends or minions, whoever he’d gotten to follow his crusade.

Ethan and I stood around him, katanas unsheathed and at our sides. Gabriel stood in front of him, his anger unmasked, hot waves of furious magic spilling through the yard like an angry tsunami.

“We were at Bill’s Eat Place,” Kane said.

“Where’s Bill’s Eat Place?” Ethan asked.

“What does it matter?” Kane asked, frustration ringing in his voice. I imagined from his perspective we were ignoring the obvious.

Gabriel crouched in front of him. “I told you to answer whatever questions he asked you. You don’t answer his questions, and I’ll turn your ass over to Sullivan and his Sentinel right now, and let them decide what to do with you.”

Kane turned his brown eyes on me. I let my eyes silver and my fangs descend, and showed them off.

“Wrigleyville,” he said. “It’s in Wrigleyville.” He looked back at Gabriel, as if that might make the horrifying specter of me disappear. “We were having drinks, and Kyle Farr and me went out to the alley to piss. We finished up, and I’m going back inside. I look back, and Farr’s squinting at people down the alley a little ways. Sups. They start walking toward us—vampire and another guy—I didn’t get a good look at him.