Page 16 of Cold Sacrifice

I reached over to touch Joe’s arm, and Bastien relaxed immediately. He believed Joe was not truly his to discipline or control. Joe was part of my pack, my friend, someone he’d saved for me.

To Bastien, I was Joe’s master.

But I wouldn’t mention that little nugget to Joe.

“It would seem impossible,” he said, “but it is not. This night, I found one of my vampires in his bed with a stake through his heart. I have kept him as he was so you might give your thoughts on the death.”

I nodded, then stood. “Take me to him. There’s not a lot of time before you all need to sleep.” I hesitated, then made a decision. “Joe, I’m going to call someone to take you to Shadowfield to sleep. There’s time to get you there, and with what’s going on, I don’t want you sleeping here.”

Joe was tired. He was a younger vampire, and even if dawn was an hour away, he’d feel the looming heaviness of it. And one of the worst things a vampire could imagine was someone finding his sleeping spot and dragging him into the sun.

He hesitated, but then he gave me a nod. “Thanks, Kait.”

He went out front to wait for the Shadowfield wolves to arrive, and Bastien took me to the woods, where he’d found his staked vampire. Apparently, that was the one that finally made him realize something was going on that he’d need my help with. And I was more than happy to give it.

The vampires would be afraid to go to sleep, even though they had no choice at all.

“His name was Will. He slept with that stake because it was the one that killed his brother thirty years ago. He said the blood that had soaked into it was the only physical link to his brother he had left.” Bastien looked at me, something beyond the usual darkness in his eyes. He was angry, and he was despairing, but there was an almost human sadness at the loss of his vampire.

And he’d had a long, long time to get used to loss.

Will had been special to Bastien. “You turned him,” I guessed.

He nodded but didn’t elaborate. He didn’t want to share the story of Will’s life or his part in bringing him back.

But that made me wonder about someone else. “Where’s Farrow?”

He twitched, just barely, but enough to let me know that he was worried about his favorite. “Safe,” he said. “For now.” He gestured at Will, who he’d pulled from the ground where the vampire had gone to sleep. “What do you feel?”

I crouched beside the staked vampire, trying not to touch anything until I remembered that this was a vampire crime scene. It wasn’t like when humans were murdered and I had to be extra careful.

Will was a small man, maybe five feet five inches tall, a hundred and twenty pounds. He had red hair, which stood out vividly against the extreme pale of his skin, and I had a feeling if I could have seen his eyes, they’d have been a bright green.

His hand was frozen around the stake, gripping it like he’d changed his mind and was trying to pull it back out. His pale skin was like paper, because he’d been dead for hours. If Bastien attempted to move him now, chances were he would either crush Will’s bones or pull them right out of the dusty paper bag in which they rested.

But his people had their ways of dealing with their dead, and it would be far from the first time they’d been forced to.

Bastien knew how his vampire had died. He didn’t need me to tell him that. He needed me to tell him what had killed him. Because his vampires were killing themselves, but not under their own steam.

That wasn’t how vampires worked.

I closed my eyes and reached out to touch the end of the stake, then wrapped my hand around the vampire’s cold fingers. I put my other hand on his ribs, and I shut out everything else as I opened myself to absorb whatever was there.

I didn’t know how long I sat like that, but when the magic hit me, it hit me hard. I jerked away so violently that I landed on my ass, then shot my eyes open and scrambled back, horrified. The magic was still alive, somehow. It felt like fingers reaching into my body, my mind.

Bastien yanked me from the ground and rushed me away from the dead vampire, halfway back to the house before five seconds had passed. He was that fast.

He set me on my feet, but held onto my upper arms, as though I might fall if he let me go. “What happened?” he asked. “What did you feel?”

“I felt…magic that’s alive,” I said, but that wasn’t exactly what I wanted to say. “Controlling magic. You’re right, Bastien. They didn’t kill themselves. At least Will didn’t. He was compelled to kill himself.”

Bastien shuddered, and for a second, dread wafted through his eyes. He said nothing, but his fingers tightened on my arms enough to hurt.

“Ease up there, Bastien.”

He did, immediately. “I apologize.” He dropped his fingers from my arms and took a step back, running his hand over his face. “How do you fight something like that, Kait?” he murmured.

“First,” I said, “you find out what it is. Then you figure out a way to kill it.”