Several more hours passed, and a telltale sluggishness began to flow through me. Dawn was on its way, ignorant of my need to stay awake. If I’d had more than just a sip of blood at nightfall, I might have been able to stay awake longer, but as it was my grip started loosening on the iron, and I didn’t have much wakeful time left.

I heard footsteps and the heavy metallic noises of the trunk being unlocked. I had the will to fight but was running out of the power to follow through. The trunk lid lifted, and I swung with all the energy I had left.

There was a satisfying sound of metal meeting flesh and a cry of surprised pain. I vaulted out of the trunk, but my foot caught the body of one of my kidnappers, who was now nursing his bloody face, and I fell. I tried to break my fall, but my hands were locked around the tire iron, and I hit the ground face first. Gravel and bits of broken beer bottle bit into my cheek. I pushed myself up with my palms and managed to find more shards of glass when they pierced the dry pads of my hands and jabbed into my fingers. Still, I fought to regain my footing, warm blood dripping off my chin and onto my yellow tank top, creating a grim Rorschach test over my cleavage.

I tried to get a bearing on where I was but couldn’t orient myself. The car was parked on an old highway in the gravel lot in front of a motel. My heart sang with hope for help, until I saw the large, aged For Sale sign with evidence of many unsuccessful price reductions.

Abandoned.

Around us was nothing but forest, empty road and the purple threat of sunrise peeking over the trees. My werewolf half told me to run and take my chances in the bush. My more logical, less-impulsive vampire half told me running into the woods meant certain death at dawn, while my captors might actually want me alive.

I slumped to the ground, my limbs unwilling to push me in either direction. This allowed the werewolf I’d smashed in the face to grab me under the arms and drag me towards one of the motel rooms.

“What do you want?” I rolled my head back, loose as a rag doll, to look at him. His face was familiar, but I couldn’t place how I knew him. He was young, not even twenty, and had probably been handsome before I’d broken his nose and part of his cheekbone. He had catlike green eyes and a mop of dark hair. He looked away from me, but his expression was calm, not angry.

“I just want to do my job. Are you hurt bad? I’ll catch hell if you’re hurt.” His voice sounded of the South, but not like Grandmere’s. He wasn’t Louisiana South, more like Texas South. Again, I struggled to remember how I knew him.

His attitude surprised me too. I’d shattered his nose, and he was worried about me? I groaned and moved my jaw. Nothing felt broken, and the glass and gravel were already being forced out of my skin. Healing would be slow this close to sunrise and with no blood in me.

Blood.

I noticed the fresh spill of it on his face in a new, different light as he paused to knock on the door marked 9 but had most likely once been 6.

“I’ll live,” I whispered, licking my lips. My darkening eyes must have given me away, because he knocked on the door more urgently, not stopping until it opened. The witch was waiting inside and looked a little paler when he saw me slumped on the ground and both the pup and I covered in blood.

“Holy Hecuba,” he swore. “What happened?”

The pup grumbled something and hoisted me over the threshold into the dark room.

“Is he here?” the boy asked.

“I think so. But he said to leave her in the room at sunrise and get the hell out.” The witch had a suitcase in one hand. “He’s going to be pissed about her face.”

Their voices were getting slow and deep, like the world was going the wrong speed. I crawled out of the wolf’s grasp and towards the bed but only made it a few inches before my strength abandoned me.

“Should we help her?” the wolf asked, giving me a worried look.

I wouldn’t know what the witch was about to reply, because a new voice interrupted.

“Leave,” was all it said, and I couldn’t understand how it came from everywhere and nowhere all at once.

I turned my face on the rug so the uninjured side was against the soft, musty fibers and watched them both leave the room without closing the door. I had to close it before sunrise, but I didn’t know how I would get to it. Before I could come up with a plan, a tall silhouette filled the frame and then disappeared when the door shut.

It was mere seconds to sunrise, and I didn’t have any time left.

“Secret, my sweet, have they hurt you?” a familiar male voice asked, and my blood ran cold.

I looked up at him, his blue eyes showing cool compassion. His blond bangs were brushed off his forehead. The honeyed tones of an ancient accent sweetened his every turn of phrase.

Seeing Death himself would have filled me with less fear.

“Sig?” I asked, unable to believe he was here.

He touched my face, and I winced. Pulling his hand away, he looked at the blood on his fingers, then placed each impossibly long digit in his mouth, cleaning my blood from them with a smile.

I shuddered.

“Sleep,” he ordered. “You’re going to need it.”

I don’t know if it was meant to sound so threatening, but as I slipped into the abyss of vampire sleep, I found myself wondering if I’d ever wake up again.

Chapter Five

I awoke hungry, with only a faint recollection of where I was. Someone had moved me off the floor, and I gathered it was the same someone whose chest my head rested on and whose fingers were tangled in my hair.

My mind went blank, and for a moment I let myself enjoy the feeling of being in someone’s arms without worrying about whose they were. Then, bit by bit, the events of the last several days started coming into sharper focus, until I could no longer ignore them. I couldn’t pretend I was safe in my current embrace.

“Why didn’t you kill me while I was sleeping?” I hadn’t opened my eyes yet, so for the time being I could still think of this as a dream. I knew better, of course, because it lacked the surreal, hyperrealistic feeling my usual dreams had.

The motel room smelled stale and musty, and there was a harsh fungal aroma laced in with the decay. The blanket under us reeked of age and stagnation. I was glad to be on top of it rather than underneath.

Sig, on the other hand, smelled clean, like fresh air-dried linen. There was no warmth coming from his body, only the feel of hard, room-temperature flesh. Like a corpse. Sleeping next to a vampire was a strange feeling.

He sighed and stopped playing with my hair. “Now, why would I want to kill you?”

“Why does the Tribunal do anything it does? Why kill Holden?” I opened my eyes and was looking at his stomach, which was covered in a soft, ribbed, gray shirt. I brushed my cheek against it, wondering how it felt. At the same time, putting pressure on my face allowed me to judge how my healing was coming along. A+ on both counts.

“I didn’t bring you here to kill you, Secret. It is time for your sabbatical to come to an end.”

“Sabbatical?” I couldn’t help but make a derisive snort at the word. “That’s a polite way of saying ‘ran away from home’.” I turned my head so my chin was resting on his abs and I could look up to meet his gaze. Without the typical blond bangs obscuring them, his ice-blue irises were alarmingly bright. I’d seen them before, but they looked more serious without the hair to soften their edge.

Sig wasn’t interested in softening any blows tonight. He hadn’t kidnapped me so we could have a polite chitchat in bed. He meant business.

“Sig,” I began, my voice losing its childish sarcasm. “I can’t.”

He closed his eyes and leaned his head against the wall, sighing. You haven’t heard a sigh until you’ve heard one two thousand years in the making. All the frustration and angst of a hundred generations worth of lives was compressed into that escape of air. It did what it meant to, because I felt guilty. Overwhelmingly guilty for telling him I couldn’t kill my best friend.

“Maybe…” As I started again, he opened one eye. “Maybe if you could tell me why?”

I still had no idea what Holden stood accused of. At first I’d believed he was being punished for refusing to abandon me at the brink of death, as a council representative had demanded he do. But his loyalty to me wasn’t the cause for the warrant. I’d learned that much by bombarding my immortal caretaker, Calliope, with ten thousand questions until she confessed what little she knew. Holden had betrayed the council somehow. And it was for something much more serious than being a dutiful friend. With Sig here, I thought I might be able to get real answers.

Now he was fully focused on me with a chilling stare. His hand tightened into a fist in my hair, and the extra pull hurt.

“Why?” He tugged my head back so I couldn’t look away. I found myself both fascinated and terrified. I’d never seen Sig angry. He had a particular gift, which was to make those in his presence feel at ease. Intuitively I knew I should be terrified of what a two-thousand-year-old vampire could do to me, but with him this close I had to fight against the unnatural calm washing over me.

I shivered, and my whole body trembled from it.

I couldn’t back down now. He’d already claimed he didn’t want to kill me, so why shouldn’t I ask him what I wanted to know?

“I need to know why you put a warrant out on Holden. I need to know or I can’t kill him.”

“It is not your place to know why,” he said flatly, pulling me into a sitting position so we looked at each other face-to-face. “You’ve never needed or wanted to know why before.”

“This is different and you know it.” I put my hand on his, where he was locked into my curls, and attempted to coax his fingers to relax. I didn’t have any vampire gifts, so I couldn’t force him to do anything. I was simply hoping for a reprieve from the growing ache on my scalp.

“I can’t tell you why.”

“You’re the Tribunal leader, Sig. You control everyone. Don’t tell me you can’t.”