Roaring Dawn: Macey Book 3 (The Gardella Vampire Hunters 10) (3 page)

“Couldn’t sleep,” was all she said.

He looked up at her from beneath a thick lock of blue-black hair without moving his head. Just his eyes: dark, bloodshot, heavy-lidded. Nevertheless, they were lit with something that made her pulse leap and her mouth go dry again. “I know a remedy for that.” His lips quirked up a little on one side.

“And so you do,” she replied, holding his gaze while her insides flipped and dove, and a sizzle of heat shot through her. But it was ruined by a pang of sadness.

She looked away. “When did you get back?” He’d gone off somewhere for a few days without warning. But at least he’d left a note, so she didn’t wonder whether he too was gone for good.

“A while ago. Did you miss me?”

No. Yes. A little. Maybe. More than I should’ve, you arrogant, frustrating bastard.

After all, it was just he and Macey now left to face Nicholas Iscariot. To find a way to destroy the powerful vampire lord. And unless one of them turned out to be the so-called “dauntless one,” Macey wasn’t certain of their chances at success, as foretold in Lady Rosamunde’s prophecy:

“Upon its unleashing, a root of malevolence shall marshal such power as never before known. It shall permeate far and deep, and only the dauntless one and his peer shall rise up to it.”

Thus, without Chas…she was on her own. So he’d better stick around.

And without the dauntless one and his peer—who Al Capone, at least, had believed was Macey herself—what were their chances of stopping the “root of malevolence,” which could only be Nicholas Iscariot? Perhaps not enough.

But
no.
She hadn’t missed Chas. Not in the way he implied.

Macey chose not to respond, and the question sat there between them, seeming to pulse in the silence.

He set his empty glass back on the counter. “Christ—it’s not like I asked if you loved me.”

“That’d be a hell of a lot easier to answer,” she muttered, casting him a sidewise look.

Chas’s grin flashed, then was buried as he reached for the bottle and refilled his drink. His hand was steady. “Want some?”

“It’s seven o’clock in the morning.”

He shrugged. “You look as if you had a rough night.”

“Maybe I did.”

“The question is—was it a rough night
out
, or was it a rough night
in
?”

He really was too perceptive. Just another reason to find him annoying. But she could turn that around, poke him back. “So where were you for three days?”

“I had things to attend to,” he replied.

Silence settled there, taut and tense and fraught with too many unspoken words.

“Well this is a fine conversation,” she said, suddenly impatient. “Neither of us giving anything up.” She used one hand to vault herself over the counter, landing easily in Sebastian’s old spot behind it. She bent to dig out a short, heavy glass.

“It’s morning here, but somewhere else in the world, where there are no bloody vampires, it’s seven at night,” she said, and slammed the vessel onto the counter. “So I’m in.”

“Best way I know to forget things you’re better off forgetting,” he said, and tipped the bottle to fill her glass with a thin gold stream. “Well…second best way.” He gave her that look again—and this time, the shot of heat went right to the pit of her belly and below. And stayed there.

Macey considered him, considered the offer, and lifted her glass to drink. He was right, dammit. And the way she was feeling—the way she’d been feeling the last few weeks—maybe a good, hard roll in the proverbial hay would be just the ticket she needed.

Because if she was going to keep having those nightmares—

“Ugh!” She pulled the glass away from her mouth and glared down at it. “What the hell
is
this?” Sharp and bitter and flat was what it was.

Chas’s mouth twitched again. “Hardly a level above rotgut, if you ask me, but I don’t know where Temple is putting the good stuff anymore.”

Macey dumped the thin liquid down the sink and slammed her glass back onto the counter. “I know where she keeps the really good stuff—the bottle Sebastian had been hiding from… Well, hiding. Turn around, if you please.”

He rolled his eyes, but to her surprise, he complied, swiveling on the stool so his back was to her.

Once she was certain he wasn’t watching, she pulled a narrow rack of glasses aside beneath the counter, revealing the thick metal door of a safe. A little twist of the knob and she opened it to reveal the inside, which contained three bottles of the most unusual liqueur she’d ever tasted—not that she was any expert. None were labeled, but one of them had been opened and was corked with a pyramid-shaped onyx stopper.

She pulled it out as Chas turned around. “So that’s where she keeps it.”

They—she, Chas, Temple, and even Wayren—had offered a toast to Sebastian from that very bottle on the night he died.

Macey lifted a brow as she poured the rosy-gold liqueur into her glass. “I think you’d best forget whatever you might think you know, Chas.”

He shoved his empty—again—glass toward her, then—

“What the
hell
?” Chas fairly knocked over the precious bottle, he moved so abruptly, lashing out to grab her by the arm. “Macey, what the hell is
that
?”

She was so shocked, she couldn’t form a reply—but then she saw he was staring down at the opening of her robe-, at the red line seeping down the front of her nightshirt. Down the center, along her sternum.

Fresh blood.

From Iscariot.

Her head went light and dizzy. “But it was a dream,” she whispered, pulling out of his grip, dragging the robe away. She brushed wildly at it like Lady Macbeth.
Out, out, damned spot…
“It was a
dream
.”

There was another stripe of blood, around the front of her left breast. Her heart began to thud wildly, deep and heavy.

“What the hell are you talking about, a dream? I know that’s from Iscariot. Did you see him?
When did you see him?
”

“It was a dream,” she said once more, numb and cold. The cotton was damp—the blood was
real
—and the red lines were growing thicker.

“But you’re bleeding. From your old scars.” Any trace of inebriation in Chas’s voice was gone.

“In the dream, he made me bleed like this. I-I didn’t realize…” Her hands were ice cold.
How?
Her heart thudded as she stared down at the impossible sight.

“You didn’t see him except in your dream?” Chas repeated. “Iscariot made it happen…from a dream? Good Christ.” His eyes were filled with shock.

Macey had already begun to unbutton her nightshirt—just to make sure. She had to make certain…she had to see it with her own eyes.

“My God,” he whispered when she pulled apart the top of her shirt.

She looked down and saw the line of blood, somehow—
impossibly
somehow—erupting from her skin.

“It’s real,” she whispered. The realization made her cold with terror. “It’s
real.
” She looked up at Chas to see the same emotions reflected in his eyes.

“He wants the rings,” she said, putting into words what they both knew.

“Yes. And until he gets them, or we destroy him…” He shook his head, his lips flat and grim.

Neither needed to put it into words. Iscariot would bring hell to Chicago, hell to them all, in order to get those rings.

And it was only the two of them to stop him.

TWO

~ Solitude in the Sanctuary ~

But the Rings of Jubai
were as safe as they possibly could be.

Nicholas Iscariot had no hope of retrieving them on his own, for at Wayren’s suggestion, the five copper bands had been secreted in the sacristy of St. Patrick’s, a very small, unremarkable church Sebastian had visited on a regular basis.

It was into this church that Macey stepped, two evenings after she had the nightmare, cutting off the symphony of Chicago by night. The distant echo of gunshots, accompanied by the sounds of automobile horns and squealing tires, was left behind as she moved into the silent space.

She eased the heavy wooden doors closed—denying them even their normal soft thump as the solid walnut panels settled into place. Inside, the place was quiet and dim, filled with flickering candles and traces of the essence of frankincense. The Easter lilies were gone, and a large red banner had taken their place.

This evening, the church was empty but for a solitary figure near the front.

Her heart squeezed, for the person who knelt in prayer was not the elderly woman whom she’d come to know—and who’d given her the rosary that saved her life twice. No, that wise woman was gone, and Macey had lost yet another guiding mentor in her life.

Now all she had was Chas—and much as she cared for him, Macey knew he was just as damaged as she herself was. He was searching in the same way, too—and was just as lonely, just as solitary.

Just as angry.

And he didn’t even belong here, in Chicago or in 1926. He’d been “transferred” to this time and place several years ago with the help of Wayren. So his very presence here felt frighteningly transitory.

Macey wasn’t Catholic, but she genuflected nevertheless—because that felt like the right thing to do—then settled in a pew about a third of the way from the back.

She looked around aimlessly and realized she was waiting for something to happen. At the same time, she fought the sense of bewilderment and fear that had come over her since her dream two nights ago. Every time she thought about that nightmare-turned-real, her hands went cold and her stomach churned.

How could Iscariot have such a hold over her? How could he have drawn blood in a
dream
?

Months ago, during their first encounter, he’d fed on her in an automobile—rough and violent—while his goons held her down by the wrists and ankles in the back seat of the car. That was when he sliced into her skin with his dagger: tearing through her dress, her undergarments, and her flesh, and circling one breast as well. But those scars had healed, as had his bites, thanks in part to Chas’s application of salted holy water.

When Macey faced Iscariot again a few weeks ago in the city morgue and seared him with her cross, he’d somehow managed to make her bleed again from the same healed scars…but he’d been
there
, in person. That alone had been frightening.

But now he’d done it again,
in a dream
.

How? And what did it mean?

She wasn’t certain she really wanted to know. She was a Venator, a vampire hunter descended from the most powerful ones who ever lived. She was skilled, strong, smart—and had been
chosen
for this life. It was her vocation. She was
made
for this.

Yet the slick, evil Nicholas Iscariot terrified her—mainly because no one seemed to comprehend the depths of his power. His abilities seemed to be beyond what other vampires had ever been capable.

And more importantly, more frightening of all, was how he would use that power to get the rings.

How many innocent people—ones she knew and loved, ones she had never met—would die or be mauled before this was resolved?

What perhaps concerned her the most was that, other than his appearance in her dream, as of late, Iscariot had been all but invisible in Chicago. If she didn’t know better, she might have thought he’d left.

There’d been no major vampire attacks—there were always random ones, of course, like there were muggings on dark street corners, but in this case with blood and fangs, but nothing terribly newsworthy. Nothing that gave her a clue what to expect next, or even anything to focus on.

Macey felt as if she were simply
waiting
for Iscariot to make the next move—just as she was
waiting
in this church for something to happen.

Neither thought sat well with her at all.

That had to change.

She would make it change.

She would
do
something.

She would turn the battle into one
she
controlled.

Macey was drawn sharply from her thoughts at the sound of a kneeler being raised into place with a soft thump. The other person in the church rose and walked along the pew, clearly ready to take his leave.

It wasn’t until he’d turned down the aisle and was nearly to her pew that she recognized him in the dimness.

“Chas. What are you doing here?” She met her friend in the aisle.

“What do you think I’m doing?” he replied with a sting of irony that told her he probably
had
been praying. He was such an oxymoron of a man.

“I thought you might be here to check on the rings. Maybe try them on?” She was only half teasing. No one had tried on the five rings since Sebastian left them, for there was the chance the bands would seal to their fingers as they’d done to Sebastian’s for a century.

“Right. I offered to do it previously, you recall. To wear them, and to go to the pool at Munții Făgăraș.”

“But Wayren declined your offer.” She looked up at him, trying to read his expression. “So maybe you were tempted to try it anyway.” It wasn’t as if the thought hadn’t occurred to her as well.

He inclined his head. “I wouldn’t presume to argue with Wayren. I mean that,” he added when she lifted her brow to give him a sardonic look. “Wayren is…” He trailed off, and Macey was struck by the bald sincerity in his voice. It was in his eyes as well. “She’s the closest thing we have to perfection.”

She couldn’t argue with that, but it didn’t mean she had a lack of questions for the mysterious woman.

“We need to find a way into Iscariot’s den,” Macey said, formulating into words her most terrifying and determined thoughts. She started to walk down the aisle, to the back of the church. “Because that’s the only way to catch him by surprise and destroy him.”

Chas lifted a brow as he walked along with her. “Bold and brassy. I like it. But never say you think you’ll just waltz right in and stake the bastard.”

She rolled her eyes. “First we have to find where said bastard is hiding before I can waltz right in and then stake him.”

“This might help.” He produced a folded newspaper, and it smelled of fresh ink.