Building From Ashes

It was the middle of the night when she heard the name. She blinked and her head shot up from the desk where she had fallen asleep for a few minutes. Declan and Jack were muttering nearby in Irish.

“What was that?”

Declan frowned. “I thought you spoke Irish.”

“No, that name. What was that name you just said?”

Jack shook his head. “What name? Lorenzo?”

Lorenzo.

Lorenzo, Lorenzo, Lorenzo…

Declan said, “He’s an old enemy of Carwyn’s. Ioan had no enemies that anyone can think of. It’s the only other thing that makes sense. He must have been targeted because of his sire. Lorenzo has had a vendetta against Carwyn and his friend Giovanni Vecchio for years now. He’s dangerous, but has stayed out of sight, so he’s—”

“In Dublin.”

In the blink of an eye, both vampires sped to her and Declan lifted her by the shoulders. His fangs were bared. “Where? When?”

“I didn’t know who he was. You didn’t tell me his name. No one did.” She shook her head. “Why didn’t you tell me before? I went to a party with friends. He had a penthouse.” She shook off Declan’s grip and stalked across the room. “Why the hell didn’t you tell me his name?” She pointed to the location on the large map that spread across the back wall. “It was right here. Why didn't you tell me before?”

Declan sped out the door, and Jack ran over to her. “I’m sorry, darling. I didn’t know… I’m so sorry, Brigid.” She saw his fangs descended and he clutched at her shoulders. “Can you think of anything else, Brigid? Anyone you saw. Think! Any locations? Associates who—”

Her heart was racing. She brushed off Jack’s hands and the amnis she felt him trying to use to calm her. “He—he had two of his children with him. An American and an Irishman. Both young. And—and there was something…” She scoured her memories.

“…hangs with us at our building over by the river sometimes. It’s kind of our after-hours place.”

“What, like a pub?”

“More like a private club. It’s no big deal…”

She blinked and looked up. “There’s a building by the river. One of his children said they had a building by the river where they went sometimes. Like a club. It was on the river.”

Near water. Away from the earth. Away from the element Ioan used to draw his strength. A place they could hurt him.

Jack clutched her arms again, but he was rubbing them, trying to warm her. Brigid felt like she’d never be warm again. Declan burst back into the room.

“We already have people going to the house. It was rented under the name of Josh Smith, and—”

“Declan,” Jack said. “There’s a building by the river. One his boys use. We have to find it.”

“Connor!” Tom shouted as he strode into the room. “Get your wits and get on the computer. Let’s find that building.”

Days later, after more fruitless searching, there was a tapping on her door. Brigid cracked it open. She could see the truth splashed across Murphy’s face.

Brigid had found the building. They wouldn’t let her search it, but she knew Carwyn and his Italian friend had gone. They had found some vampires there, but none had known anything about Ioan or Lorenzo. In fact, they had found nothing at the warehouse except for too much blood and Ioan’s scent everywhere.

Deep in the silent, scared part of her heart, Brigid had known the truth. She took one look at Murphy’s grim face and shut the door. Her back slid down the wall as her legs gave out from under her. She forced her fist into her mouth and bit until she tasted her own blood.

“Brigid?” Murphy called. “Brigid, darling, open the door.”

She shook her head and dug her small teeth into her hand again as silent tears ran down her cheeks.

“Brigid, please.”

She shook her head and continued to sob quietly, remembering the gentle man in the library who had been the rock-solid center of everything that was safe and secure.

“I’m very brave, you know. I never cry.”

“I know, Brigid…”

Her protector was gone.

“I know you’re very brave.”

Chapter Eleven

Wicklow Mountains

April 2010

Carwyn stared at the pictures on Ioan’s desk. His son and Deirdre, smiling at a Christmas dinner. Ioan with Brigid in a playful headlock as they sat in a pub somewhere. Wearing a tuxedo with his sister Gemma at a glamorous party in London. Ioan and him, a candid shot that someone had captured. They were laughing. He didn’t remember about what.

Now he knew. Knew the agony of loss his sire had felt when she lost her sister. Knew the creeping despair of losing his most ancient friend.

And in his grief, what had he become?

“Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. I don’t remember when my last confession was…”

The whispered words of confession as his son’s murderer detailed Ioan’s last hours.

The beating. The torture. The quick slice at the neck that had ended nine hundred years of a beautiful life.

“Bless me, Father, for I have sinned…”

Didn’t they realize? He offered their prayers up to God, but harbored the memory of their sins for eternity.

“Bless me, Father, for I have sinned…”

Carwyn closed his eyes and heard the quick twist of the boy’s neck as Gemma took her vengeance on her brother’s murderer. The young vampire paid in the only currency their brutal world understood. And in Carwyn’s mind, he realized it wasn’t only vengeance. It was a warning. A necessary declaration of power that kept all of them, and all the humans under their aegis, safe from those who intended harm.