“Neither am I.” A list of their crimes would take too long. Anson was surely aware of the horrors at High Citadel, the dungeon, the torture, and the chase through the passage. Levi would have reported the details to Grayson when he had the chance. And since Laura was now in Westvale, Anson—or Elijah—would have questioned her about the experience.
Anson sighed, and said, “Ago is no longer pinned to the wall.”
Ago. The oily, repulsive vampire with the gold chains. He’d been determined to turn me until I had him by the throat.
I’d never experienced pure hatred like what I’d syphoned from Ago. Then the relief, when his sire, Daegal, offered to punish Ago for me.
No longer on the wall, Noa.
The words were a white noise. Nothing registered as I stared at the repeating loop on the video monitor. The camera panned along a ruined street, and Anson droned on about something completely unrelated. The one-eyed woman—Angel—was a mercenary. A witness to a meeting between Grayson and Set. Wolves, gathered in a frost-encrusted field, surrounded by vampires.
That much registered over the sweat gathering on my skin. Angel answered each question Anson asked while the video looped to the beginning. While the white screen turned into the first shaky image and the camera panned.
Ago’s sire was working with Barend.
I let it sink in while a building burned once again. Red flames launched through the same window, charring the wood, licking up toward the roofline.
Daegal only stepped in to keep me from killing Barend’s enforcer. Not to help me.
Black smoke roiled.
Ago was now hunting me with a team of Barend’s vampires. His hybrids.
A wall collapsed, starting on the left, falling like dominos into the same rubble.
Amal was most likely hunting, too. Using vampires and hybrids.
Ten birds circled upward in the same swirl.
Grayson was hunting hybrids because it was his job, his obligation, his heightened ability as alpha or dread lord… the words blended. The droning was the same noise as the man, gripping his microphone. Silently, I counted the three steps the man took when he moved to the side. Then the three trees, passing as the camera panned toward the lake and the burning raft, focusing in on the same orange shimmer across the water.
Fallon asked a question as the loop began a third time, and I jolted at Angel’s answer.
“Brin’s level of destruction—imagine that magnified by someone like Noa, if Amal finds her.”
“She won’t break through my wards.” Pure alpha arrogance from Anson, but I understood the substance beneath that threat.
“Amal has more allies than you expect,” Angel pointed out.
Anson’s tone sharpened. “Like you?”
Angel held his gaze without flinching as she said, “I save lives. I go into the Cariboo, the Alpen, and I bring those lost souls out when they have no one else to help them. What do you do, Alpha? Can you prove you’re not allied with Amal?”
Anson’s military advisor bristled at the insult. “You bring in wretches—a female who risked two pups with one on the way—and we’re supposed to be impressed?”
Angel’s one-eyed stare shifted to Elijah. “I don’t give three fucks about impressing you.”
What rumbled in the merc’s voice iced through my veins. Elijah stiffened.
Anson took control. “What else did Set say?”
“When vampires burn, the smoke is blood red.”
Shock spread, then boomeranged back until only my thudding heart registered. The images were of smoke and fire and destruction… the satisfaction on Brin’s face… and what I thought was Julien, my friend…
“When that thing burned,” I whispered. “It was black smoke. Set wouldn’t have said that if she didn’t think Julien was alive.”
“No,” Fallon said, her hand moving gently to cover mine. “Grief does that, Noa. Gives us pointless hope.”
