“No.” The other hound returned the stare without flinching. “We’re here to free you.”
“Can’t trust myself, being free. Can’t control it. Can’t control me.” Wilder closed one gloved hand around the padlock, testing it with a hard tug. “What’s your name?” he asked, though he already knew.
“Nate said I needed a new one. That all bloodhounds get new names.” He stepped away from the bars.
“He named me Hunter.”
“Hello, Hunter.” With Archer’s help, Wilder twisted the lock until the metal gave way with a snap.
“I’m Wilder, and I came here to kill Lowe. Want to help?”
Hunter’s gaze fixed on the broken padlock. He sucked in a heaving breath, then nodded once, jerkily.
“I can kill vampires. I think I’m good at it.”
“We all are, even him.” Wilder jerked a thumb at Archer. “Think you can wait ’til this is all over before you kill him?”
Archer watched Hunter. Hunter watched Archer. A quiet understanding seemed to pass between them before Hunter nodded. “He made me. But they made him do it.” A surprising concession that belied his feral appearance. “Then we’ll fight together, and the two of you can settle your scores later.”
“Later,” Hunter agreed. When Wilder pulled the cage door open, the younger man stepped into the hallway and flexed his fingers. “The ballroom.”
“That’s where Lowe’ll be,” Archer elaborated. “Used to be the common room. He sealed off the windows and tore down the floor above, damn near turned it into a crypt. They spend the days there, with ghouls guarding the doors.”
Thaddeus Lowe would have enough ghouls to guard against one bloodhound, perhaps even two, but he wouldn’t be prepared for three. “Let’s go.”
Chapter Ten
Nathaniel was a vampire.
She wasn’t supposed to know, but Satira had never been stupid. She’d also never been as obedient as Nathaniel might have liked, not when obedience fought curiosity—or concern.
So she’d eavesdropped, and she wasn’t ashamed. Oh, perhaps she was a bit ashamed that her focus on the conversation inside the lab had allowed Archer to all but ambush her, but it didn’t alter her conviction that she’d done the right thing. Now she knew how desperate Nathaniel was. How ready to die.
Now she knew how hard she’d have to fight to save him.
The bloodhounds had disappeared back the way they’d come, and Satira walled off her heart and her worry about Wilder and turned her attention to the oddities on the workbench in front of her.
A large glass sphere dominated the center of the table. A second sphere was suspended inside by thin metal rods, and filled with a hopeless tangle of copper wires that obscured whatever mechanism must lie inside. Sloppy, crowded work that looked nothing like Nathaniel’s usual neat and orderly inventions. A sign of his fracturing mental state or a subtle attempt at self-sabotage—it could be either. It could be both.
She touched the surface, sliding her fingers up to the top, where a metal plate had been fixed. It held an indent where one could affix a crank handle to wind…something, and two small openings just large enough for the end of a funnel. Something that required a chemical addition, perhaps.
“A weapon?” she asked, not looking at Nathaniel. It was easier not to. His voice was the same, but he appeared younger. Closer to thirty than fifty, and the effect was unnerving at a time when she needed every bit of nerve she had.
“A weapon, yes.” He sounded distracted. Tired.
A glass sphere. A chemical reaction. Satira froze, then lifted her head, so startled she forgot to keep her gaze averted. “You solved the sustainability problem. You solved it, didn’t you?” For a moment, his eyes sparked like they always did, and he leaned forward. “It’s the charge created by the copper coil. Do you see?”
She rocked up on her toes to get a better angle. Beneath the wires and coil sat a delicate, miniature version of the same mechanism that provided power for the reading lights Nathaniel had built several years ago. “You must have altered the chemical ratio, though. A charge run through the composition we have in our rounds would cause an explosion.”
“Mmm, not through these.” It was odd to see his strangely youthful hands trace over schematics and formulas. “I’ve added a stabilizer.”
It was elegant, for all the awkwardness of its construction. Whatever they’d done to Nathaniel, they hadn’t taken his mind.
They had taken something else, though. Satira let her fingers fall away from the sphere and met his gaze squarely. “I heard everything, you know.”
He nodded. “You didn’t go far enough not to have.”
“Oh, I did at first. Until I thought of all the things you’d only tell Wilder if I wasn’t around.” She gathered her courage about her. “Do you have fangs?”
“Yes.” Nathaniel hesitated. “I’ve never bitten anyone, though.” It might explain why he looked so exhausted in spite of his sudden, explicable youth. “But they gave you blood. They must have, to transform you.”
“They did.” Nathaniel turned away. “There’s a hound here, a new one. I named him Hunter.” The man in the cage. A hound’s blood should have been toxic to a vampire—it was one of the founding principles of the Guild, and why Archer’s defection was so unbelievable. Never create a weapon the vampires can turn against you. If drinking from a hound provided youth and vigor, they’d be handing their enemies too much power.
But the Bloodhound Guild hadn’t created Hunter. Archer must have, presumably as a side effect from an attack during the full moon. The Guild claimed that the bloodhound’s curse couldn’t be passed along through infection, but it was true only because the infection tended to kill a human quicker than a mortal wound.
Hunter had survived—and his blood had never been tampered with by the Guild. Something in it had given Nathaniel a different sort of life.
Life. Could a vampire be alive? Her gut said no. Screamed it, even. Her mother had instilled principles in her from the time she was old enough to walk. Prejudices. Vampires were evil, whether they stole across the border or not. They preyed on the innocent, killed without feeling and had no soul.
They’d never been Nathaniel before.
Satira eased around the table and laid a hand on his arm. “Look at me. Please.”
“No, because I know what you’re thinking.” His shoulders hunched, stiffened. Shook.
Telepathy. Satira closed her eyes and leaned her forehead against his arm, a meaningless, impersonal touch when she wanted to throw her arms around him. “I’m thinking all the things a girl raised by Ada and Levi is supposed to think. And I’m thinking they wouldn’t care a damn about how I’m thinking they might have been wrong, because it’s you. I don’t care what you are, Nathaniel, as long as you’re you.” His shaking intensified, and his arm slid around her, steely hard instead of comforting. “I’m sorry, Satira.”
At first she thought he was apologizing for not believing she’d believe in him. Then his arm tightened, jerking her back against his chest with enough force she’d have bruises across her midsection. “Nathaniel?”
“I can’t fight him,” he grated out harshly. “Not when he commands me to obey.” Him. Thaddeus Lowe.
Damn it all, Wilder was going to throttle her for getting herself killed.
The residents of Clear Springs hadn’t been run out.