“I can’t wait to get back to the Keep,” I growled.
“So the two of them would start bickering again?” Robert asked.
“Exactly.” This united Derek and Ascanio team was getting on my nerves.
Robert rolled to his feet. “Thank you again, Jardin.”
“I could ssshtay,” the wererat offered.
“No.” Robert said. “You’re going home. Your job is done. Now it’s time for us to do ours.”
He was right. Time to get it done and get out of here.
7
WE FOUND DESANDRA sitting in a tree above Cuddles. Her clothes were splattered with blood. She grinned at us.
“Lovely perfume,” Robert noted.
“Glad you like it.” She hopped off the branch. “I call it Dead Vampire.”
“How did you get away?” Ascanio asked.
“Please.” She gave him a look. “I’m a werewolf raised in the Carpathian Mountains and they can’t smell or track for shit. I can outrun them in my sleep.”
I mounted and we headed east. Twenty minutes later we turned south and made our way into the dense tangle of streets that was the Warren.
I rode Cuddles. Derek pulled ahead to scout; Ascanio ran on my left, Desandra and Robert on my right. The Warren peered at us with the black eyes of broken windows: mean, suspicious, and predatory, like a thug who’d gotten his face bashed in and was looking to get even. Jonesboro, the most direct route, was out of the question—too obvious and too well patrolled—so we wove our way through the twisted back streets. Long scars gouged the walls of the run-down houses, as if a tornado of steel blades had brushed by them. On Harpy’s Drive we passed a row of trees, each one with its trunk unnaturally bloated and covered with black fuzz. I had no idea what the fuzz did, but we steered clear of it. The law of navigating post-Shift Atlanta was simple: if you don’t know what it is, don’t touch it.
The moon was rolling down. It had to be around three in the morning. The winter night had caught the city between its teeth and bit down hard. Here and there an ancient vehicle hunkered down. The tips of my fingers had turned to painful icicles. Any colder, and I’d have to dismount and walk next to Cuddles just to warm up.
I wanted Curran back here with me. It was a completely selfish need, as urgent as breathing. I wanted to know that he was fine. I missed him. If I concentrated enough, I could conjure his voice in my head. Funny, yesterday I couldn’t wait to escape the Keep with him and run away to Black Bear Lodge. Now I would happily sit through a hundred Council meetings back to back for a ten-second phone call from him letting me know he was okay.
In the distance something screeched. It was the triumphant violent shriek of a predator that’d connected with its prey. The Warren was in its usual form tonight. Come to think of it, that was the first sound I’d heard in a while. It was too deserted and too quiet. The cold or the People must’ve driven the Warren’s scavengers indoors.
I could feel two vampire minds behind us. They were about a mile and a half back and not moving. Most likely an observation post that got staffed after we passed through.
We passed a rusted wreck of a truck. Ice slicked the road. Probably an overflowing sewer or a busted waterline that spilled water over the street before it had frozen solid. Up ahead a hole gaped in the pavement, about five and a half feet wide. A manhole cover lay frozen in the ice. Looked like something tore out of the sewers and pulled a good deal of soil with it. If some mysterious mole people cornered us, I’d point them toward the Casino and tell them that’s where our leader lives.
A man in dark clothes walked out into the middle of the road and blocked our way. He was lean, with short dark hair. He raised his head and looked at me. I developed a sudden urge to check for the quickest exit.
“That’s the bastard who shot me. Well!” Desandra cracked her knuckles. “Let me just take care of this . . .”
“Wait,” I told her.
“What? Why?”
“Yes, why?” Robert asked.
“Do you remember the Red Stalker thing? The serial killer who collected and tortured women and ate vampires?”
“Yes,” Robert said.
“He ate vampires?” Ascanio asked.
“Before your time,” Derek told him.
The Red Stalker also killed Greg Feldman, my legal guardian and the knight of the Order who took care of me after Voron died. It was my first time interacting with the Pack, my first time meeting Derek, and the first time, but not the last, I had felt an irresistible need to punch Curran in the arm. “During the investigation, the Pack captured a crusader.”
“I remember,” Robert said. “He smelled like rotting food. I think we had to dip him. He had lice.”
I nodded toward the man. “That’s him.”
Robert squinted. “It can’t be.”
Back then Nick looked like a hobo. He wore a filthy coat smeared with trash and old food, had greasy hair down to his shoulders, and cultivated the kind of hygiene that guaranteed him loads of personal space from anyone with a nose or a pair of eyes. Cleaned up, he looked fit and athletic, but average. The man in front of us now looked hard and mean, stripped of all softness. His hair was cut so short, it was almost stubble. His triangular jaw was clean shaven. He looked like a soldier or a fighter, clean, spare, and hard.
“It’s him,” I said. “I’ve seen him before with Hugh at the Midnight Games.”
So this was Hugh’s game plan. He wanted to separate me from the Pack. When we had talked during the Black Sea trip, he’d said that prying me from the Keep would be too difficult. He dangled the crime scene in front of me like bait, stationed his people along the approaching routes, and waited. Nick wasn’t here to kill me. He was here to delay me. He probably sent a signal to Hugh, letting him know he’d sighted me, and now he would do everything he could to stall until Hugh got here.
Derek stared at him. Their expressions were almost identical, flat, carrying an awareness of how vicious life could be and knowing they would never forget it.
“He looks like he’s been through some shit,” Derek said.
You’d know.
“What’s a crusader?” Desandra asked.
“Crusaders are knights of the Order,” Robert said.
“Aw crap,” Desandra growled.
The knights of the Order were strictly off-limits for the Pack. You might as well walk into a police station and shoot a cop.
“They’re not assigned to any chapter,” I said. “They go where needed and they bend the rules. They’re like janitors. Got a nasty problem, throw a crusader at it. He’ll cut it to pieces and leave town.”