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Unfortunately, the perpetrators picked that moment to call out to four or five of their friends, who appeared at the door with weapons - guns and what looked like pieces of Cadogan House furniture - in hand.
They realized they had us cornered, and began to work their flanks, encircling us so that we stood in of the middle of them. Back to back, I told him, and he nodded, then turned so we stood with our backs together, our swords horizontal in front of us, surrounded by foes. And then we fought.
Whatever miracle of vampire genetics I might have been was nothing compared to the miracle of our fighting . . . together. We both swung out, the magic and power surrounding us seeming to actually increase as we fought, bullets flying as we battled back the interlopers who'd threatened our home. The Master of Cadogan House and its Sentinel, their steel honed, tempered, and raised against a common foe.
We made quick work of the first couple of attackers, but then they started getting creative, moving around to make it more difficult for Ethan and me to coordinate our movements, even when we could give each other silent directions.
On the other hand, that also forced us to get a little more creative. Eventually, we were fighting side by side, Ethan slicing out with his katana to keep an attacker off balance, and me kicking him into submission. Ethan would spin into a high kick, and I'd use a low throw to force him to the ground when he tried to dodge Ethan's attack.
Eventually, the room was cleared, and we stood there together, chests heaving, a spray of shifters and humans on the floor in front of us. We weren't entirely undamaged - I'd taken a bruising shot to my right thigh, and Ethan had slices across his belly where he'd been caught with the edge of a bar of steel broken from someone's office chair.
But we were alive.
We glanced over at each other. I was just about to speak, but before I could get out words, his hand was at the back of my head, his mouth pressing against mine. The intensely possessive kiss left me gasping for breath, but even as he pulled back, his fingers stayed knotted in the back of my hair.
"Christ, Merit, I thought you were dead. You left after we talked, and no one could find you. And when they attacked and you didn't show - where the hell were you?"
"I was at the bar," I said. "I'll give you the details later. Long story short, this is all Adam's doing. He set it all up, had a plan to kill Gabriel and frame the House." Ethan smiled wickedly. "And you figured it out before Adam could take you both out, but he'd already started the attack."
"Well, I am the Cadogan Sentinel."
"Indeed you are," he said, then kissed me with brutal force again. "This isn't over," he growled, and then he was gone, ready for battle again. I wasn't going to waste the time arguing with him, but as soon as his back was turned, I raised my fingertips to my mouth, the feel of his lips still there. I could feel it coming.
The sun wasn't far from making its way above the horizon, and it had begun to pull at my shoulders.
Fortunately, the combined strength of the Chicago Police Department, the Chicago Fire Department, the Ombud's office, half the North American Central Pack, the vampires of Cadogan House, and the Red Guard had finally managed to stop the attack.
Ethan seemed to take the Red Guard's participation in stride. He didn't bat an eyelash when he saw them, but he also didn't have any reason to tie their presence to me.
That meant if I decided to join them, I could still keep my secret under wraps.
But positives aside, the House wasn't without its casualties. Seven shifters and humans had been killed in the attack. We lost three vampires. I didn't know any of them to speak of, although two lived on the second floor not far from my room. Two were lost to wooden stakes; their ashen remains now mingled with the destruction in the House.
The third, however, had met a more gruesome end. She'd been the victim of an old-fashioned torture. A crazed human attacker - one of the deceased
- weakened her with an ill-placed stake and removed her heart.
In honor of her sacrifice, her body had been placed in the garden behind the House, to be given to the sun when it finally breached the sky. As for Cadogan itself, the marauders had worked to bring down the House around us. While the sturdy stone construction had thwarted the worst of the damage, the furnishings and woodwork on the first and second floors had been damaged, some of the rooms rendered uninhabitable. Helen and Malik had been working the phones, making arrangements with Grey, Navarre, and the other Cadogan vamps in Chicago to find temporary homes for vamps whose rooms had been torched or were too wet and smoky to stay in. My room, in a back corridor of the second floor, had fortunately been spared. As Ombudsman, my grandfather had jurisdiction over the city's response to the chaos. He helped sort out the good shifters from the bad, explaining the politics to any CPD cop he could corral long enough. He managed to keep them from arresting every shifter and vampire in sight; given the destruction and chaos, I called that a victory.
Unfortunately, he hadn't been able to keep the paparazzi from snapping pictures. They didn't venture into Cadogan House, but they hadn't needed to - one of Adam's shifters had been so grievously wounded in human form that he'd shifted in the middle of the front lawn to heal himself. I might have been the first vampire to witness the shifting of a Pack member, but I hadn't been the last . . . and the paparazzi wouldn't be the last, either. They'd reportedly snapped pictures of the biker turned coyote - and the biker turning into a coyote. Having seen the transformation myself, I doubted the final photographs would show much more than lights and colors.
Regardless, it was obvious to the reporters that something supernatural had happened, something they hadn't seen before, and that set off a journalistic feeding frenzy. That's why my grandfather, at Gabriel's request, had cordoned the reporters into an area in front of the House. He stood behind a make-shift podium, Gabriel at his side, a bevy of uniformed cops surrounding them.
Waiting.
Gabriel raised his hands, and the crowd of reporters quieted just as the shifters had the night before.
"I have something to say," he announced, then used the back of his hand to push a trail of blood from his eyes. He paused, the weight of the looming confession in his eyes. I knew what he was going to say, but I also knew what it would cost him - emotionally and politically.
"You'll soon see pictures that tell quite a tale. That prove that vampires are not the only supernatural beings in the world. We are shape-shifters," he said,
"beings who can take animal or human form."
Ethan stood beside me, and at the mention of the magic word, slid his fingers into mine. I squeezed back. The area erupted into a cacophony of camera flashes and questions. Gabriel ignored them, holding up a hand again so that he could continue speaking.
