“Oh?” Tate placed the paper on his desk again.
“I have it on good authority that you changed a human into a vampire without her consent.” He lifted his gaze to me, and I felt the blood rush to my cheeks. “I also have it on good authority that while you and your vampire council promised to keep Celina Desaulniers contained in Europe, she’s been in Chicago. Are those actions such a far stretch from murder?”
“Who suggested Celina was in Chicago?”
Ethan asked. The question was carefully put. We knew full well that Celina—the former head of Navarre House and my would-have-been killer—had been released by the Greenwich Presidium, the organizing body for European and North American vampires. We also knew that once the GP let her go, she’d made her way to Chicago. But we hadn’t thought she was still here. The last few months had been too drama free for that. Or so they’d seemed.
Tate arched his eyebrows. “I notice you don’t deny it. As for the information, I have my sources, just as I’m sure you do.”
“Sources or not, I don’t take kindly to blackmail.”
With shocking speed, Tate switched back from Capone to front-page orator, smiling magnanimously at us. “ ‘Blackmail’ is such a harsh word, Ethan.”
“Then what, precisely, do you want?”
“I want for you, for us, to do the right thing for the city of Chicago. I want for you and yours to have the chance to take control within your own community.” Tate linked his hands on the desk and looked us over. “I want this problem solved.
I want an end to these gatherings, these raves, and a personal guarantee that you have this problem under control. If it’s not done, the warrant for your arrest will be executed. I assume we understand each other?”
There was silence until Ethan finally bit out, “Yes, Mr. Mayor.”
Like a practiced politico, Tate instantly softened his expression. “Excellent. If you have anything to report, or if you need access to any of the city’s resources, you need only contact me.”
“Of course.”
With a final nod, Tate turned back to his papers, just as Ethan might have done if I’d been called into his office for a friendly chat.
But this time, it was Ethan who’d been called out, and it was Ethan who rose and walked back to the door. I followed, ever the dutiful Sentinel.
Ethan kept the fear or concern or vitriol or whatever emotion was driving him to himself even as we reached the Mercedes.
And I meant “driving” literally. He expressed that pent-up frustration with eighty thousand dollars of German engineering and a 300-horsepower engine. He managed not to clip the gate as he pulled out of the drive, but he treated the stop signs between Creeley Creek and Lake Shore Drive like meek suggestions. Ethan floored the Mercedes, zooming in and around traffic like the silver-eyed devil was on our tail.
Problem was, we were the silver-eyed devils.
We were both immortal, and Ethan probably had a century of driving experience under his belt, but that didn’t make the turns any less harrowing. He raced through a light and onto Lake Shore Drive, turned south, and gunned it. . .
And he kept driving until the city skyline glowed behind us.
I was almost afraid to ask where he was taking us—did I really want to know where predatory vampires blew off political steam?—but he saved me the trouble when we reached Washington Park. He pulled off Lake Shore Drive, and a few squealing turns later we were coasting onto Promontory Point, a small peninsula that jutted into the lake. Ethan drove around the tower topped building and stopped the car in front of the rock ledge that separated grass from lake.
Without a word, he climbed out of the car and slammed it shut again. When he hopped the rock ledge that ringed the peninsula and disappeared from sight, I unfastened my seat belt. It was time to go to work.
The air was thick and damp, the sharp smell of ozone signaling rain. The lake looked like it was already in the middle of a squall: whitecaps rolled across the water like jagged teeth, and waves pounded the rocky shoreline.
I glanced up at the sky. The anvil-shaped marker of a gigantic thunderstorm was swelling in the southwestern sky, visible each time lightning flashed across it.
Without warning, a
I jumped and looked back at the building, thinking it had been struck by an early bolt of lightning. But the building was quiet and still, and when another
I walked around to investigate and found Ethan standing at the base of a pine tree like a fighter facing down a forty-foot-tall opponent.
His fists were up, his body bladed.
“Every time!” he yelled. “Every time I manage to bring things under control, we become enmeshed in bullshit
And then he pivoted and thrust out—and punched the tree.
The tree wobbled like it had been rammed by a truck, needles
And that, I thought, explained why he’d driven here instead of the House. With that much anger banked, there was no way Ethan could have gone home. Cadogan’s vampires—even those who weren’t as sensitive to magic as I was—would have known something was wrong, and that certainly wasn’t going to ease the anticipatory mood. It was an obvious downside of being a Master vampire—to be all riled up with nowhere to go.
“Do you have any idea how long—how
Ethan reared back for a second strike, but he’d already split his knuckles and the poor tree probably wasn’t faring much better. I understood the urge to rail out when you were being held accountable for another’s evils, but hurting himself wasn’t going to solve the problem. It was time to intervene.
I was standing on the lawn between the building and the lake; I figured that was a perfect place to work off a little tension. “Why don’t you pick on someone your own size?” I called out.
He looked over, one eyebrow defiantly arched.
“Don’t tempt me, Sentinel.”
I peeled off my suit jacket and dropped it onto the ground, then put my hands on my hips and, hopefully for the last time tonight, pulled out my vampire bravado. “Are you afraid you can’t handle me?”
His expression was priceless—equal parts tempted and irritated—the masculinity warring with the urge to tamp down the challenge to his authority. “Watch your mouth.”
“It was a legitimate question,” I countered.
Ethan was already walking closer, the smell of his blood growing stronger.
I won’t deny it—my hunger was perked. I’d bitten Ethan twice before, and both times had been memorable. Sensual, in ways I wasn’t entirely comfortable admitting. The scent of his blood triggered those memories again, and I knew my own eyes had silvered, even if I wasn’t thrilled about bring tempted.
“It was a childish question,” he growled out, taking another step forward.
“I disagree. If you want to fight, try a vampire.”
“Your attempts at being clever aren’t serving you, Sentinel.”
He moved within striking range, blood dripping from his right knuckles, which were split nearly to the bone. They’d heal, and quickly, but they must have hurt.
