The only thing that saved her was diving behind the sofa. She heard the blade chop into it, then Bran cursing when the sword stuck in the old frame. He pulled it away with a splintering of wood.
She was panting, still more angry than afraid. She looked around for something to use as a shield. Someone kicked the sofa, scraping it across the floor. She moved with it, still searching for something to counter the sword.
“Leave her,” she heard Bran order. “She’s nothing. We got what we came for.”
She didn’t really know how to fight men with swords. She would have to improvise and hope for the best.
Smoke from the spell clung to the floor, tickling her nose. She turned her head, looking under the sofa for their feet to see how close the guardsmen were.
She gave up on her hunt for a shield and started working her way forward, crawling on elbows and knees, picking her exit point. She wanted enough room to get to her feet before she had to defend herself.
They moved away, the clank of their armor a soft percussion under the rumble of their voices. She couldn’t hear Sylvius. That silence was worse than a cry of pain.
Now that they’d moved, there was more space to maneuver. Crawling from behind the far end of the sofa, she kept low to the ground and out of sight. Frantically, she tried to make a plan. If she whistled for Viktor, would he come? Could she attack Bran from behind? Surprise him with a single swift snap of the neck?
She gathered herself and peered over the arm of the sofa at an empty room.
They were gone.
Sylvius was gone. She was too late. Her throat burned with the urge to scream.
She clutched the arm of the sofa like it was the last solid thing in her world. She cursed herself for letting Sylvius stay in the Castle. I
The doorway gaped like an empty eye socket. The room was a shambles. Her room. The place where she and Mac had made love.
A horrible thought hit her.
She sprang to her feet, half flying to the bed. It was largely untouched, but her heart thumped wildly, fright ened into life, until she reached beneath the mattress and found her secret treasure. The key.
It was safe. She’d not had the courage to use it before. She’d not had the courage to face the world outside the Castle door by herself. She was going to have to do it now.
A plan flowed together in seconds. Mac was meeting with the council. They needed to know what had just happened. She needed to convince them to help. She needed to bring back enough people to defeat the immortal Castle guards.
But that meant she would have to search for Mac on the streets of Fairview, alone with her hunger. The very idea of it filled her with nauseated terror, but fear was something she could overpower. Now she had faced her vampire side. She knew what to expect, and it wouldn’t trip her up again. She would be stronger this time.
Brave thoughts didn’t stop her hands from shaking. Panic felt like a beast clawing her from the inside, but she squashed it. She was the fiercer beast now. She was a true vampire.
Constance rose, grabbed the stack of magazines Mac had brought her, and shuffled through them until she found the one she wanted. It was filled with news and sporting events and was the one he said he had delivered to his home. She ripped the address label from the cover.
Chapter 24
“This is Oscar Ottwell, your daytime host filling in tonight for the incomparable Errata. We’re at 101.5 FM at the beautiful University of Fairview campus. For the next hour I’ll be talking communities. I know many of the listeners out there live and work in the area some call Spookytown. Is it a business district, a ghetto, or a neighborhood? Can it be a community with so many different species in so small a space?
“To put it another way, what makes a few square blocks more than a place on a map? The cafe that remembers you like your tea with lemon? The grandma down the street who lets the kids climb her tree? Or is it the guy down the street who always gives your car a push when the battery goes dead?
“Folks, our lines are open. Call and tell me what makes a neighborhood a community.”
“That’s not the answer!” retorted George de Winter, tossing back his dark mane of overstyled hair. “Fairview is not a homeless shelter. We can’t open the door to an unlimited flood of refugee trash who can’t even feed themselves.”
Mac glared across the scuffed table at the representative for the Clan Albion vampires. The crappy overhead lights in the CSUP boardroom were giving him a demon-sized headache. “Look, dickhead, we can’t just wall the Castle up and forget about everyone inside. We have to do something.”
“The Castle has survived for who knows how many thousands of years.”
“So?”
“Perhaps it’s meant to self-destruct. It’s a prison filled with the dregs of supernatural civilization.”
“Which you don’t want in your backyard.”
“Of course not. And I don’t like your tone.”
Once upon a time, he’d sat as police liaison on assorted committees and actually enjoyed it—but somewhere between chowing down souls and turning into Mac the Barbarian, he’d lost all patience for idiots.
He took a deep breath, refilling his water glass from the pitcher on the table. The others in the room exchanged glances. Mac knew he was there on sufferance, only there because he was Caravelli’s guest.
He tried for a conciliatory tone. “I appreciate your concerns and every effort will be made to minimize the impact on Fairview as a whole.”
De Winter gave an eye roll. “I don’t see how that’s possible. Let the rabble out of the Castle and the humans will quickly find out there’s a supernatural prison on their doorstep. Right when we’re pushing for equal rights and trying to convince them we’re good little law-abiding monsters. Good thinking.”
Mac cast a sideways glance at Holly. She was doodling on a legal pad, drawing a bat with a cartoon bubble over its head. The bubble said, “blah, blah, blah.” She caught Mac smirking and moved her hand over the drawing to hide it.
“Oh c’mon, George,” said Errata, the werecougar radio host. She was in full kitty Goth regalia, somehow managing to make stretchy faux snakeskin—black, of course—look tasteful. “Sooner or later someone’s going to start talking to city hall. Right now they think it’s an urban myth, but what are they going to say about us when they
