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I turn my head slowly. Luca looks at a shelf with impressive devotion. ‘I will deal with you later,’ I tell him.
His expression turns pious. ‘Of course, sire.’
To Vey, I say, ‘I will not give you my blood, but I will allow you to take a sample from one of my Twelve. With a warning I believe I do not need to spell out?’
He opens his mouth, then shuts it at my feral glare. His gaze moves around the room, then settles on Iskander. ‘Him.’
My war-hound steps forward immediately, bites his thumb and presses one drop of blood onto Vey’s contract paper.
The wards flare gold.
Vey flinches as the contract drinks, then exhales with visible relief. ‘Briarhook Lower. Saint Merrow’s sealed station. Platform three. There is an old chapel behind the western wall. Tavish uses it to meet couriers and receive instructions. He is there tonight.’
‘And the woman?’
‘She was seen two months ago in the same corridor, speaking with a vampire who made every ward in the district bow its head.’
One of the other two – Marek Volkov or Elian Sorell.
‘You will show us the debt-door,’ I say.
Vey does.
The debt-door opens beneath the apothecary through three locks, one spoken confession, and a brass key made from a child’s tooth that Eira eyes with open disgust. We descend into tunnels old enough to smell of rail smoke and river silt. The city’s forgotten bones stretch around us.
Eira remains close. Too close for strategy and exactly close enough for me.
The sealed station waits in darkness. Platform three is cracked, graffitied, lined with dead tiles. At the western wall, behind a mural of saints with scratched-out eyes, a hidden chapel breathes damp air.
As Vey stated, Tavish Drennan is inside.
Rafe’s missing sired turned rogue traitor. When we enter, he rises to his impressive height, looking nothing like a cornered man.
Tall, red-haired, sharp-featured, dressed in dark wool and old blood. His eyes lift from a small table covered in papers, wax seals and a silver bowl filled with ash.
He smiles when he sees me. ‘Valentin Moretti,’ he says. ‘I suspected we would meet sooner or later.’
I smell Tezra on him. Old. Faint but unmistakable and something in me becomes very calm.
Eira feels it and steps forward. ‘Valentin—’
I am already across the chapel.
Tavish moves fast but I move faster. I seize him by the calf when he attempts to vault up the wall, drag him down and drive him into the altar hard enough to crack stone, one hand crushing his throat, the other fisted in his hair.
‘You were in the alley in Brooklyn,’ I say.
His smile widens despite the pressure. ‘Yes.’
Eira’s breath catches behind me and the chapel fills with the stillness of my Twelve waiting for slaughter.
‘Did you kill Tezra?’
He shrugs. ‘Maybe. Maybe not. Either way, I watched him die.’
That is answer enough.
With a growl at feeling the echo of Eira’s sharp anguish, my fangs tear into his throat.
