Kelly Meding - Requiem for the Dead

"You sure this is the right address?" Tybalt asked.

"Yes." I gaped at a stained glass lamp that sparkled with shades of red, purple and green. "Maybe the sniper got the address wrong."

"He didn't," Marcus said as he came through the kitchen and out into the living room. "Vale was here. I can smell him, as well as several others. The scents are old, though."

We split up to search all three floors of the house, from ground level up to the cob-webby attic. Not a single personal item had been left behind, but we found evidence that at least four Felia had lived here until recently. The trash cans outside were stuffed full of takeout containers and frozen pizza boxes.

"Well, this was a bust," I said, frustrated by our lack of evidence. Vale might be a total coward, but he wasn't completely stupid.

"We should leave a bug, anyway," Tybalt said. "On the off chance someone does come back."

"If nothing else, we need to check the county assessor's office and find out who owns this place. The sniper said it was bank owned, but I want to make sure there isn't a corpse out there who didn't willingly let Vale squat here."

"Agreed."

"Great." No one else was volunteering, so—"I'll go get a bug from the car."

Tybalt handed me the keys without a word.

Each official Watchtower car came complete with an emergency kit that contained basic first aid, extra guns, rope, flares, walkie talkies, and two microphones that synched up to our computer systems at the Watchtower. I fetched the small box with the mikes and hoofed it back to the house.

An angry voice made me stop on the porch, hand on the screen door handle.

"….never meant for him to get hurt." Marcus.

I wasn't generally a fan of eavesdropping, but something kept me from interrupting the conversation.

"Yeah, well, plan unsuccessful," Tybalt snapped back, as furious as I'd ever heard him sound. "Vale nearly killed him, and not because he's part of the Watch, but because of you."

"I care for him, Tybalt."

"I know you do, but he's been hurt enough, Marcus."

"Hurting him has never been my intention. You know that. I would never purposely cause him more pain."

"Not on purpose, no."

"What would you have me do, then? Push him away after what just happened?"

"No! Just…make sure you know what you're risking before you pursue this."

"I know what I risk. My entire family could turn their backs on me."

A jolt of surprise shot through me. Intellectually, I understood that Milo and Marcus had grown closer, had even flirted a little. There was also the kiss. Now everything was starting to fall into place and I could see the shaky ground their fledging relationship stood upon. And how Milo's life had already been put in serious danger because of it. Hearing that Marcus could lose the support of his family surprised me—Felia were intensely loyal to their blood.

Love made us do insane things sometimes, though. I'd have taken on the entire Clan Assembly last month if they'd ordered Wyatt killed because of his Lupa infection.

"Do not let your experience with Astrid cloud your judgment of my feelings for Milo," Marcus said. "The two things are not the same."

"No? A Felia and a human in love? My feelings for Astrid nearly destroyed the both of us six years ago."

"And she's never stopped loving you."

Oh boy. I was really overstepping by not announcing my presence, but I was mesmerized by the information being fed to me about my friends. I started to reach for the screen door handle.

"It doesn't matter how Astrid and I feel about each other anymore," Tybalt said in a cold voice. "The Watchtower is more important than us. The city needs this, and we need to focus on the problems at hand, not our personal relationships."

"I'm sorry, Tybalt, but I won't do that. You know how short a Therian's life span is."

"Yeah, I do. You've got ten years left if you're lucky."

"We all have ten years left, if we're lucky. How many of your Hunter friends have died in the last four years?"

Footsteps slammed in my direction, and I barely got out of the way before Tybalt shoved through the screen door. He didn't look at me as he stalked down the walkway to the sidewalk. In an odd way, I saw both sides of their argument. I'd already died (twice), and so had Wyatt. So many of us had come close to death, and multiple times. We didn't know if we had ten days, ten months, or fifty years left to live. And as much as my job gave me a sense of purpose each day, my love for Wyatt fueled me when things seemed impossible.

I fought for the tiniest chance that we'd have a happy ending one day. Hope was an extremely powerful thing. Without it, my life was too damned bleak.

When had Tybalt lost all hope for the future?

The conversation I'd overheard stayed with me on the drive back to the Watchtower. Marcus's comment about all of us maybe having ten years stuck with me, and it returned my thoughts to Phineas. We hadn't heard a word from him since his disappearance five weeks ago. He'd gone off to find out if any other Coni or Stri existed in the wider world, or if he, Aurora, Ava, and Joseph were truly alone.

A simple text saying "I'm still alive" would be nice, just to alleviate the fear that he'd gotten in over his head. While he'd saved my life several times, I'd also returned the favor and saved his. I missed him and his no-bullshit way of framing things so I could better understand them. Phineas was one of my very best friends, and he only had ten years left.

No, thinking that way did none of us any good. Especially not considering the high-risk job we did, protecting the city and keeping the dark races in line. Adrian Baylor's death today had only proved that no one knew when their time would be up—I'd never expected to outlive Baylor. Like Wyatt, Kismet, and Rufus, he'd always been around, steadfast and strong.

Now he was dead.

The mood at the Watchtower was somber. A third of Cerberus was dead, and the Felia who killed him was locked up in our jail waiting for the Clan Assembly to make a decision on his fate—which I found out when I walked into Ops that evening.

All of the remaining Triad Handlers—Wyatt, Gina, Nevada, Morgan, and Rufus—were in one corner of Ops, talking and quietly mourning their collective loss. Wyatt caught my eye when I entered. I shook my head so he knew we hadn't found anything.

"The house was a bust," I told Astrid. "We left a bug, though, in case someone comes back."

"They aren't likely to," Astrid replied. She looked ready to explode into a fury. "The house belonged to Evan Tuck, the sniper you shot twice. His parents died of the Shadow two years ago and left it in his name. He couldn't make the mortgage payments and the bank foreclosed last month."

"He kept a neat house for an orphan." I also felt absolutely no guilt about having shot him in the leg. Both of them.

He hadn't gotten away, had he?

"Vale is Evan's first cousin, and they're all Bengals. So was the man Wyatt killed back at the police precinct."

"Peck." I blinked. "Wait, that guy's name was Peck Tuck?"

Astrid's eyebrow quirked. "Yes."

"That sucks."

"Evan also has a younger sister named Starr. She may be the other Therian scent from the precinct, and she's been reported by her employer as having not shown up for the last week."

"Do you think other Felia will shelter them, knowing what's happening with Elder Dane and Riley?"

"I honestly don't know. Vale is acting rashly and in blatant violation of both Assembly and Pride laws. I worry for the precedent he's setting among the Pride members."

"What precedent?"

She gazed around the people working in Ops, and I could almost see the ghosts of the vampire allies whose support we'd lost. "They may incite other Clans to challenge their Assembly representatives, and it could force the Assembly to pull all Therian support from the Watchtower."