His feelings didn’t much matter to me. But the fact that he was more than willing to accuse Nessa, one of his Clan members, of being the killer and leave her festering underground for the rest of eternity moved him right up my suspect list.
If she was dead, the blame could be easily tossed her way, and who’d be the wiser?
Vincent, on the other hand, I hadn’t given enough credit. We moved rocks for an hour, and he worked without so much as an irritated grunt despite air that was far from fresh, disconcerting rumbling above and around us, and fingers raw and bleeding from digging through jagged rocks.
“You love her,” I quietly said, breaking companionable silence.
Vincent’s smile was melancholy given form. “She loves another. That’s my particular cross to bear.”
Had it been? I wondered. Or had it been Taran McKenzie’s?
“Perhaps,” he said after a moment, “you’re thinking that would give me ample motivation to kill Taran.”
I looked back at him with surprise. “Actually, yeah.”
Vincent lifted a rock flat as a pancake and half as big as a microwave, handed it to the vampire behind him. His burden lifted, he put one hand on his waist, wiped the sleeve of his other across his forehead. “I think you’d be right about that. But you’d be missing the crucial part.”
“Which is?”
“This,” he said, gesturing at the rocks and dirt. “The fact that we’re running from Taran’s people. We are in the midst of a feud. Suspicion for Taran’s death would fall immediately on us, including Nessa. Especially Nessa, since she was closest to him. I’m a vampire, Merit. I am capable of murder. But killing Taran would hurt her, so I wouldn’t do it.”
“And it’s that simple.”
Vincent nodded. “For me, it is.” He leaned forward, plucked out a rock, then another, tossed them away. “For me, it is,” he repeated, quieter now.
I moved one more rock, and a shaft of light and dirt shone through a slit in the cave-in. Fingers—amazingly, miraculously—forced their way through.
“Ethan!” I said, reaching out, touching them, squeezing them. “You’re all right? Is Nessa okay?”
The half second it took him to answer felt like an eternity.
I am here, Sentinel. A bit worse for wear, but here. And I’m going to Scotland with you.
I hiccupped a half sob, half laugh, that was one hundred percent relieved.
***
We dug through the rest of the rock, careful to create an opening only just wide enough for Nessa and Ethan to squeeze through. The more stone that remained, the more stable the structure would be. Or so we told ourselves.
Ethan helped Nessa through the tunnel, then followed her through. He was filthy when he emerged into the beams of our flashlights. Blood dripped from a cut at his temple, and he held his left arm carefully. But he was whole, and he was alive.
“A mild concussion,” Damien diagnosed as he looked Ethan over. “Broken arm. Two broken ribs. Plenty of contusions. You’ll heal soon enough; faster if I could make you shift.”
“Why would that matter?” Vincent asked, the question as remarkable as it was sad. It was telling that a man engaged in a centuries-old feud knew so little about those he feuded against.
“Shifting heals shifters,” I said. A shifter’s transformation from human to animal form—a magical whirlwind I’d been lucky enough to witness—had the side benefit of healing any wounds suffered in human form. The reverse, oddly, wasn’t true.
“Thank you,” Ethan said. “Perhaps,” he said, nodding toward the darkness on the other end of the shaft, “we should focus on the present and get the hell out of here?”
“That,” Damien said, “is my kind of plan.”
***
Another fifteen minutes of moving and the shaft took a sharp upward turn. It was tough going, but we kept walking, with quiet footsteps and occasional grunts when we slipped in dirt or tripped on unseen rocks.
Slowly, gradually, the tunnel ahead of us began to softly glow.
“Moonlight,” Ethan said quietly said, his relief obvious at seeing something so familiar. “That’s moonlight.”
Seconds later, we burst into the world, as if the earth had found us lacking and spit us out again.
We emerged onto a small plateau scooped from a hill at the head of Elk Valley. The view was nearly worth the trouble. Moonlight poured into the valley’s basin, collected there, illuminating meadows and trees and the silver ribbon of the stream.
“It’s a beautiful place to be so full of hatred,” Damien said.
Vincent nodded. “It is,” he said, his words grim. I hoped he was taking stock, considering whether more drama, more deaths, more close calls, were worth whatever Pyrrhic victory the McKenzies and Marchands had hoped for.
Ethan sighed heavily, put a hand at my back. “If cats have nine lives,” he quietly asked, “how many do vampires get?”
“That’s a question for the ages,” I agreed, glancing at him. “How’s your arm?”
He gently lifted it up and down, winced at the action. “Sore, but no longer as sensitive. I suspect the bone is knitting.”
“You need blood,” I said, equally relieved and disturbed that I was giving the instruction, not receiving it.
“What do we do now?” Nessa quietly asked.
“On it,” Damien said. He pulled out his phone, must have had some success getting reception. With military precision, he put in the request.