AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“You, too, Lis. I hope we see more of you while you’re in town.”
“We’ll see how the talks go.” Because that would figure largely in whether I had free time.
I glanced at Connor, was prepared to offer a polite goodbye, but he was chatting with Tabby, who’d rejoined him when she’d given up on William Dearborn.
“He wouldn’t hear you, anyway,” Theo said with a grin.
“Can’t argue with that,” I said. I grabbed my glass and headed toward the empty tray standing at the edge of the tables.
The crowd was thinning some, delegates having returned to their Autos and hotels, the Cadogan vampires returning to their rooms upstairs.
I lost sight of Seri, turned a circle to find her again, and detected the scent that vampires were most familiar with.
Blood. And a lot of it.
I picked up my dress to keep the silk from dragging along the dewy grass of early morning, walked toward the brick patio that surrounded the House’s outdoor kitchen.
Tomas lay on the ground, blood soaking into the brick beneath him.
He’d been divested of his head, which lay two feet away from the rest of his body.
Standing over both, eyes wide, tuxedo shirt splattered with blood and clutching a blood-smeared knife, stood Riley Sixkiller.
TEN
I stared at the scene, tried to process what I was seeing. “Riley. What the hell—what did you do?”
My heart was racing, and not just because of the blood on the ground. The hunger was ruled, fortunately, by the part that had no interest in the blood of a dead man.
Riley looked at me, then down at the body, and his eyes went huge. “Elisa. What is—” And then he seemed to realize he was holding a knife and took two halting steps backward, as if he could simply walk away from it.
“Riley,” I said again, my throat so tight I could barely manage a whisper.“What did you do?”
Before he could answer, a scream split the air. I spun around, found a female vampire—one of the German delegates—shrieking behind me.
Metal struck stone, and when I looked back again, Riley had dropped the knife, was backing away. He made it two steps before he ran into Connor.
“What the fuck?” Connor said, his voice harsh. And then he turned his eyes, huge and cold, on Riley.
“I didn’t do this,” Riley said, but there was more than a little uncertainty in his voice. “I didn’t kill him. I don’t even—I don’t even know him. He popped his cork earlier, and that’s it between us. I didn’t fucking touch him.”
All evidence was to the contrary, which made my stomach roll in greasy waves.
Connor nodded, but put a hand on Riley’s shoulder, and his fingers were white with tension. Riley wasn’t going anywhere.
The German delegate screamed again, and people began running over, creating more noise and more chaos. I scanned the crowd for Kelley or my parents, or someone from the Ombuds’ office. But while there’d been plenty of people to meet earlier, no one had yet appeared to handle this crisis.
“Ma’am,” I said, “please stop screaming.”
But she didn’t stop, and the sound triggered more rounds of yelling from the people who joined us.
“Step back!”Connor yelled over the din. His hand was still on Riley’s shoulder, but this time the move looked protective. “Everyone step back and shut the hell up.”
The vampires closest to us, to Tomas, were smart enough to follow the angry shifter’s instructions. But the other delegates from Spain arrived, and the ear-piercing screams—this time joined by wails—began in earnest again.
“¿Que paso?Who did this? Who has hurt Tomas?”
Someone tried to pull a delegate away, but he yanked his arm back, making contact with another vampire who stood nearby. Thinking he was being attacked, the second vampire struck out.
