Midnight Marked (Chicagoland Vampires 12)

“Kyle starts walking down the alley toward them. I’m thinking he’s going to confront them, and I’m up for some action. They get closer. I can see the vamp, but the man hangs back, stays in the shadows. Then he whispers something, does some abracadabra. Draws this symbol in the air, and it glows like neon.”

“What kind of symbol?” Ethan asked.

Kane shrugged. “Nothing I recognized. Some kind of shapes. Square or triangle or something? I don’t know. Anyway, soon as he did that, Farr got this faraway look in his eyes. And then he starts whaling on me. I’m like, what the hell, man? I give him a punch of my own, but he just keeps coming. And the entire time, the vamp and sorcerer—I’m figuring that’s what he is at this point—they’re just standing there with this symbol just glowing. And every time the sorcerer moves a finger, Farr does something else. He just keeps coming and coming and wailing on me.”

Gabriel shook his head. “That’s not possible.”

Kane pulled down his shoulder, showed a jagged wound that I hadn’t put there. “Absolutely possible. Absolutely happened.”

I felt the sharp shock of Ethan’s magic. He’d been under the control of a sorcerer once—brought back to life by Mallory when she’d been under the influence of black magic. She’d tried, and failed, to make him a familiar, but the magic had left a temporary link between them, one that allowed her to work through him and feel her emotions. This sorcerer was using alchemy, but the power sounded just as disturbing.

“Anyway, Kyle keeps coming and coming, and I finally get him on the ground. By this time, Twitch has come out of the bar, and Rick, and all those guys. They see Farr on the ground and these sups down the alley, and I say, let’s get these guys. The vampire says he also took out Franklin and we can thank Cadogan House because they paid for both.”

Gabriel worked his jaw in obvious frustration. “And did he say why Cadogan House would pay him to kill a shifter?”

Kane slid his gaze to Ethan. “Because Sullivan wants control of the city, and he’s proving to you that he’s in charge.”

And wasn’t that ironic, coming from Reed’s minion?

“Where’s Farr?” Gabe asked.

Kane finally looked regretful. “Don’t know. That symbol disappeared, and so did they. When we looked back, he was gone.”

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.”