Хлоя Нейл: Hard Bitten

Malik held me as the ashes of my enemy and my lover were collected in black urns, as they were sealed and carefully escorted from Tate’s office.

He held me until the room was empty again.

“Merit. We need to go. There’s nothing more you can do here.”

It took me a moment to realize why he was there. Why Malik was on the floor beside me, waiting to escort me home.

He’d been Second to Ethan.

But he was Second no longer.

Because Ethan was gone.

Grief and rage overpowered shock. I’d have hit the floor if Malik hadn’t put his arms around me, holding me upright.

“Ethan.”

I struggled, tears beginning to stream down my face, and pushed against them to get away.

“Let me go! Let me go! Let me go!” I whimpered, cried, made sounds better suited to the predator than the girl, and thrashed against him, skin burning where his hands clamped my arms. “Let me go!”

“Merit, stop. Be still,” he said, this new Master, but all I could hear was Ethan’s voice.

That night we mourned publicly: eight enormous Japanese taiko drums lined the sidewalk outside the House, their players beating a percussive dirge as Ethan’s ashes were moved into the House.

I watched the progression from the foyer. Out of respect, and to guard Ethan’s progression into the afterlife, Scott and Morgan took the lead, Malik behind them, a new Master engaged in his first official act—transporting the remains of his predecessor into a secured vault in the Cadogan basement.

When the urns were placed inside and the vault was closed and locked again, the rhythm of the drums changed from fast and angry, to slow and mournful, covering the range of emotions I slipped through as the night wore on.

The grief was heavy and exhausting, but it was equally matched by anger and fear. As much as I grieved Ethan’s loss, I was afraid that he’d communed with my father, sold me into a life of vampirism to ease some financial concern.

I wanted to rail at him. Scream at him. Cry and yell and bang my fists against his chest and demand that he exonerate himself, take it back, prove his innocence to me.

I couldn’t, because he was gone.

Life—and mourning—went on without him.

The House was draped in long sheets of black silk like a Christo sculpture. It stood in Hyde Park like a monument to grief, to Ethan, to loss.

We also mourned privately, in a House-only ceremony by the shores of Lake Michigan.

There were circles of stones along the trail beside the lake. We gathered at one of them, all wearing the black of mourning. Lindsey and I stood beside each other, holding hands as we stared out at the glassy water. Luc stood at her other side, his fingers and hers intertwined, grief breaking down the walls Lindsey had built between them.

A man I didn’t know spoke of the joys of immortality and the long life Ethan had been fortunate enough to live. Regardless of its length, life never quite seemed long enough. Especially when the end was selected—perpetrated—by someone else.

Malik, wearing a mantle of grief, carried bloodred amaranth to the lakeshore. He dropped the flowers into the water, then looked back at us. “Milton tells us in Paradise Lost that amaranth bloomed by the tree of life. But when man made his mortal mistake, it was removed to heaven, where it continued to grow for eternity.

Ethan ruled his House wisely, and with love. We can only hope that Ethan lives now where amaranth blossoms eternally.”

The words spoken, he returned to his wife, who clutched his hand in hers.

Lindsey sobbed, releasing my hand and moving into Luc’s embrace. His eyes closed in relief, and he wrapped his arms around her.

I stood alone, glad of their affection. Love bloomed like amaranth, I thought, finding a new place to seed even as others were taken away.

A week passed, and the House and its vampires still grieved. But even in grief, life went on.

Malik took up residence in Ethan’s office. He didn’t change the decor, but he did station himself behind Ethan’s desk. I heard rumblings in the halls about the choice, but I didn’t begrudge him the office. After all, the House was a business that he needed to run, at least until the receiver arrived.

Luc was promoted from Guard Captain to Second. He seemed more suited for security and safety than executive officer or would-be vice president, but he handled the promotion with dignity.

Tate’s deputy mayor took over for the city’s fallen playboy, who was facing indictment for his involvement with drugs, raves, and Celina.

Navarre House mourned her loss. The death of Celina, as a former Master and the namesake of the House, was treated with similar pomp and circumstance.

I got no specific rebuke from the GP for being the tool of her demise, but I assumed the receiver would have thoughts on that, as well.

The drama had no apparent end.

Through all of it, I stayed in my room. The House was virtually silent; I hadn’t heard laughter in a week. We were a family without a father. Malik was undoubtedly competent and capable, but Ethan, as Master, had turned most of us. We were biologically tied to him.

Bound to him.

Exhausted by him.

I spent my nights doing little more than bobbing in the sea of conflicting emotions. No appetite for blood or friendship, no appetite for politics or strategy, no interest in anything that went on in the House beyond my own emotions and the memories that stoked them.

My days were even worse.

As the sun rose, my mind ached for oblivion and my body ached for rest. But I couldn’t stop the thoughts that circled, over and over, in my mind. I couldn’t stop thinking about him. And because I grieved, because I mourned, I didn’t want to. Events and moments replayed in my mind—from my first sight of him on the first floor of Cadogan House to the first time he beat me in a fight; from the expressions on his face when I’d taken blood from him to the fury in his expression when he’d nearly fought a shifter to keep me from presumed harm.

The moments replayed like a filmstrip. A filmstrip I couldn’t, however exhausted, turn off.

I couldn’t face Malik. I don’t know what he’d known before following Ethan onto campus that night, but I couldn’t imagine he didn’t wonder about the strangeness of the task—or its origin. I wouldn’t deny him the right to run the House as he saw fit, but I wasn’t ready to make declarations of his authority over me. Not without more information. Not without some assurance that he hadn’t been part of the team who’d sold me to the highest bidder. My anger became a comfort, because at least it wasn’t grief.

For seven nights, Mallory slept on the floor of my room, loath to leave my side. I was hardly capable of acknowledging her existence, much less anything else. But on the eighth night, she’d apparently had enough.

When the sun slipped below the horizon, she flipped on the lights and ripped the blanket off the bed.

I sat up, blinking back spots. “What the hell?”

“You’ve had your week of lying around. It’s time to get back to your life.”

I lay down again and faced the wall. “I’m not ready.”

The bed dipped beside me, and she put a hand on my shoulder. “You’re ready. You’re grieving, and you’re angry, but you’re ready. Lindsey said the House is down another guard since Luc took over as Second. You should be down there helping out.”

“I’m not ready,” I protested, ignoring her logic. “And I’m not angry.”

She made a sound of incredulity. “You’re not?

You should be. You should be pissed right now.