Хлоя Нейл: Twice Bitten

“We know what you call us,” Gabriel said. “Pretenders.”

I lifted my eyebrows. “I don’t call you that. Ethan doesn’t call you that. And even if there are vampires who use that term, we certainly don’t have a monopoly on prejudice. There are plenty of shifters with some grade-A hatred of vampires.” Nick used to be one of those shifters. And here I was protecting him.

“You lied to me. I do not take kindly to treachery, Merit. I do not take kindly to being set up. Why should I let you escape that with impunity?”

Screw this, I thought, and darted for the dagger. Gabe let me get it; he didn’t lift toe one from the floor as I came back and stood in front of Nicholas, weapon in hand.

I moved around, keeping my body and blade between Gabriel and Nick. It’s not that I had a lot of lost love for Nick, but Gabriel was higher up on my shit list at this point. I was going to have to figure out what was going on, but I was damned sure going to do it with steel in my hand.

“Don’t come any closer,” I warned him, my dagger tipped out toward his chest. “I don’t want to have to hurt you.”

He grinned at me, wolfishly. “I’m amused you think you could hurt me, Merit. You’ve fought some shifters, sure. But they weren’t alphas.” As if to prove his point, he stood up and threw out a hand. I think he meant to casually disarm me, to push the dagger from my hand, but he underestimated my speed.

I slashed at him and made contact, a crimson line appearing across his forearm. His eyes instantaneously widened, and he looked down, surprised that I’d done it, but still not intimidated.

I, on the other hand, was feeling pretty damned intimidated.

“As you’ll no doubt recall, I got shot yesterday. This is only a scratch. I’ll just have Berna bring in a Band-Aid. Berna,” he called out, his head half tilted back toward the door.

There was no answer.

“She’s not out there,” I told him. “The bar’s empty.”

“The bar’s not empty,” he said. “They’re still working out there. Berna,” Gabriel yelled again, but his call was met with silence.

He looked back at me, bewilderment in his expression.

The pieces fell together. “Adam,” I whispered.

Gabriel’s voice wavered. “What about Adam?”

“He picked me up at the House in a limousine and drove me here. He said you wanted to talk to me. He showed me a text message you sent. He dropped me off and said he was going to circle the block to give us a few minutes to talk.”

“I didn’t send a text message.”

“I get that now. I think he set us up.” I looked at Gabriel. “Did he tell you that Nick and I set you up?”

There was a flash of alarm in Gabriel’s golden eyes, at least until he closed them again, his expression haggard. “He said you two were working together to create problems for me in Chicago.” He glanced at Nick. “He said he had proof you were going to use your family’s money to put yourself in charge of the Pack.”

Nicholas scoffed and looked away. “I would never. Never.”

“He is my brother,” Gabriel added quietly, frustration in his voice, as if willing Nick to understand why he’d trusted Adam, even if the story was a little too soap-operatic to be entirely believable.

“I assume he was trying to get you pissed at me and Nick,” I said. “Maybe so you’d incapacitate us or just take us out altogether. And then what?”

“And then he tries to take me out while you’re here—”

“And they’ll think I did it,” I finished for him. “Adam will take me out and claim he caught me in the act of killing you. And that’s the first shot in the war between shifters and vampires.” I softened my voice. “Gabriel, if you didn’t call me here, why else would he have arranged for me to come?”

While Gabriel considered my question, I considered the fortuity that had put me outside the House. What if I hadn’t been there? Would he have come into the House looking for Ethan? Would Ethan have been drawn into the trap?

“Did he tell you Ethan was in on it?” I asked.

Gabriel nodded. And then, as if the weight of his brother’s betrayal had suddenly hit him, his eyelids fell shut. “Dear God,” he said, shaking his head, as he puzzled it out. “You’re right—why else would he have arranged for you to come?”

“Could he have been behind all of it?” I asked. “Tony’s death? The attack on the bar? The convocation? The hit? I mean, he’s your brother.”

“I would assume that’s the motivation. He’s family. He’s in line for the position of alpha—but last in line. He must want the position, and I’m the current obstacle to that plan. Not the only obstacle, since Fallon and the rest of them fall in line before Adam, but a current obstacle.” He swore out a string of insults that reddened my ears and made Nick whimper from his spot on the floor.

“He killed an Apex, for Christ’s sake.” Gabriel crossed himself, two fingertips moving from head to heart, then across his chest, as if protecting himself from the karmic backlash that Adam’s mortal wound would have incited . . . or perhaps apologizing to the universe for it.

“He’s good,” I said quietly. “He never directly implicated Tony, but he pointed us in the right direction so that we implicated him ourselves.”

“Which made the idea that much more believable.”

I nodded, then glanced around. If Adam was still circling the block, waiting for Gabriel to take me out, we were going to need a plan, and fast. “Is there another way out of here?”

He shook his head. “There’s a fire exit, but it’s through the door on the other end of the bar.”

I blew out a breath, squeezing and resqueezing the dagger’s handle. We’d been set up, and some really, really bad shit was about to go down in this bar in Ukrainian Village.

Better yet, no one knew I was here, and I didn’t have a phone on me. Adam had a phone, the little shit, but a fat lot of good that was going to do me now.

I tried to slow the hammering of my heart and hold back the silvering of my eyes. I did not want to be stuck in the back of a bar with no exit. I felt like the stupid heroine in a horror movie, willingly walking into the lion’s den without phone or sword, now stuck in a family squabble between an Apex and his Cain-like brother.

Backup, I figured, was my only bet. I could call Luc or Ethan—or even Jonah—and report that Adam was trying to take us out. “Do you have a phone?”

“Behind the bar,” Gabe said.

As we glanced at the red leather door that led back into the bar, preparing to make our move, the bell over the front door rang.

“He’s back,” Gabriel said.

My effort to hold them back notwithstanding, my fangs descended and my eyes silvered. The blood began to rush through my veins as my body prepared for the fight.

“Sire?” Nick called out. “Please?”

Gabriel moved to Nick, put a hand behind his head, and pressed his lips to Nick’s forehead. He whispered something I couldn’t hear, but the words were low and earnestly spoken. Then Gabriel glanced back at me, as if my presence affected whatever answer he was going to give to Nick’s plea. “Shift,” he said, “and do it quickly. I don’t know how much time we’ll have.”

Nick closed his eyes in relief and began the slow process of standing.

“No vampire sees this and lives,” Gabriel said, his voice gravelly. “I allow it now because one of my own put you in this position. But you saw none of it.”

I nodded. Even if I hadn’t taken his words to heart, the expression in his eyes signaled clearly enough that he was trusting me with something momentous—the right to watch a shape-shifter work his personal magic.