“And most of them resented my existence. They are vampires, Thomas. You know as well as I that unless you specifically told them to put my calls through, they weren’t going to do it.”
“I did,” he yelled and she cringed from the sound. If that was true, gods help whoever it was if he ever found out. No one disobeyed a direct order from Thomas Kendrick. Well, except her. And Sara. Thomas slammed his hand against the steering wheel.
She sat for several moments without moving or speaking. She spent years convincing herself that she hated him for leaving her. For abandoning her to the monsters. He broke her heart, but the remaining pieces still loved him. As much as that sucked, she couldn’t help it.
He turned dark eyes on her. “What else aren’t you telling me? What secrets are you keeping?”
“If I told you, they wouldn’t be secrets, would they?”
He snarled, revealing fully extended fangs. “You and my sister think it’s so amusing to play with me. To push me to my limits. You always have. I need an answer, Juliana.”
Closing her eyes, she took a deep breath before answering. “And I need you to remember that it’s not me you’re pissed at right now. Get yourself under control and maybe we’ll talk. Good night, Thomas.”
She swung her legs out of the car and her feet thudded against the pavement in the quiet of the night. She took a deep breath as she stood. A piercing, mournful howl cut through the dark causing a cold chill to run up her spine. It was a distant sound, well faded by the time it reached her ears, but her eyes searched for its source out of habit. That’s when she noticed two things.
First, the spot where her bike usually stood was empty. There was no sign of it anywhere. Second, no light shone inside or outside the house. She glanced across the street behind her. Even the lone street light that offered relief from the darkness on her block was out. That in itself wasn’t unusual. Kids were always busting it with rocks or bullets depending on their level of criminal maturity. Combined with the events of the week and the utter lack of illumination from her house however, it was disconcerting to say the least. She wrapped a hand around her gun and readied it.
Chapter Ten
Juliana took a couple of steps toward the house and paused, searching the shadows for any movement.
“What is it?” Thomas asked from just behind her.
“The house is dark,” she answered. “It’s never dark.” The porch had a dusk-to-dawn light and one of the lamps in the living room was on a timer. Never mind the nightlights in the hallway and bathroom. Growing up in a vampire coven had cultivated a paranoid dislike of the dark in her. She wasn’t afraid of it per se, just of what it might be hiding.
“The breaker?” Thomas asked, ever the voice of reason.
It was too coincidental that it would trip when she wasn’t home. She didn’t believe in coincidences. “Anything’s possible, but the streetlight’s not attached to my power supply and it’s out, too.”
Thomas glanced at the light in question. Tension tightened his shoulders. He turned back and gave her a small nod.
She rolled her shoulder and flexed her arm, testing her injuries. Not healed but good enough.
“I will be accompanying you to the door, Juliana. I will brook no argument on the matter.” His voice was hard. She had no doubt he would have ordered her to stay in the car if he thought it would do any good.
She shook her head. “You’re not accompanying me anywhere. You’re going around and coming in the back.”
He rested a hand on her spine and placed a chaste kiss on the back of her neck. “Be careful,” he said in her ear and then he was gone.
She fired up her gift but saw nothing other than the signatures of a couple of small animals. Most likely rats knowing the neighborhood. She crouched down, moving low to the ground. When she reached the door, she stood to one side and tried the knob. Locked. A twitch of her fingers and it gave way. She threw open the door.
Peeking around the doorframe she saw nothing except one bright lavender-blue signature down the hall by the back door that hung crookedly from one hinge. Thomas. He tilted his head in question.
“Door to your left. The box is on the back wall,” she told him.
He moved so fast his signature was a blur of color. Seconds later the nightlights flared to life and she shut down her gift. She didn’t need it to see the disaster that used to be her home. She flipped the switch on the wall next to her.
Thomas appeared back in the hallway, the lines at the corners of his eyes drawn tight with worry as he looked around at the destruction. “Were they looking for something?”
She grunted. “Yeah. Me.” Her house hadn’t been searched, it had been demolished. Claws shredded her couch, tore into the walls. Large claws. She was going to be hard pressed to find anything salvageable. She walked through the living room, stepping over things in her way and doing a mental inventory of everything that would need to be replaced. The tally made her head spin and she wondered how much she could get the Agency to pick up. Surely this would count as work-related destruction.
She laid a hand against the burning pit of her stomach. The sanctity of her home had been violated. This was her space, her life. It wasn’t much but it was hers. No, not someone, a demon. A demon powerful enough to tear through the wards that protected her home as if they were paper. She was so screwed.
A well-placed kick sent a speaker bouncing off the wall. It wasn’t as if anything would be in worse shape from her abuse. She might as well take the opportunity to vent some frustration.
Digging her fingers into her hair, she pressed them into her scalp as she ran them back and down to her neck. She huffed out a breath and dropped her hands then headed across the hall to her office. Her sword still hung above the front door and appeared to be the only thing untouched. She ran a finger along the length of it as she passed.
The office looked no better than the living room. In fact, it might have been worse. Every article of clothing she owned was destroyed, shredded. She didn’t look too closely at the clothes by the dresser, content in her ignorance of what had been done to her undergarments.
She went down the hall to the bathroom. Her mirror had been struck, leaving a spider web of cracks behind. Carved into the wall beside it was one word, Pup.
“Pup?” Thomas asked, appearing in the door behind her.
“Nathaniel.” She choked on the word. “They call us hounds, right? The first time they assigned me to work with Nathaniel, he was mad. Said I was more puppy than hound. Granted I was young and untried. I wouldn’t have been happy either in his shoes. When I proved myself to him, showed I wasn’t going to be a liability, he turned Pup into a nickname instead of an insult.”
“Nathaniel?”
“My demon-ridden werewolf.” Her heart froze for a beat and panic scrambled inside of her as she remembered the one thing Nathaniel knew that no one else did. She pushed Thomas aside. Running down the basement steps, she jumped the rail at the bottom. A bloodstained block was set in the wall behind the stairs. She laid her hand against it and closed her eyes. “Let me pass.”
The wall shifted, making a hole big enough for her to walk through. She held her breath and stepped into her sanctuary. She released it only when she saw that, at least here, nothing had been disturbed. Thomas walked up behind her but she didn’t look at him. She ran her eyes over everything, making sure all was in place. The wall to her left served as the armory. In front of her, there was a portable closet, her workbench and supplies. To her right stood the only bed in the house.
If Nathaniel was still strong enough to hide this place from the demon, there was hope she could get him through this. She started pulling things from the shelves to her left and piling them on the workbench.