Wait for Dusk

Chapter Sixteen

The next night, the hotel room looked like a bomb had gone off. The walls were pockmarked with bullet holes and the furniture had been trashed. Glass from broken picture frames littered the floor so that the carpet now sparkled in the light coming through the window. Releasing Valerio, I took a couple of cautious steps into the room, my mouth hanging open as I dragged my eyes over the chaos. Danaus sat on the floor with his back pressed against the door that led into my bedroom. His clothes were torn and bloody. A knife was held loosely in one hand while a gun rested on the floor next to his other hand. He looked up at me, confusion filling his face.

“How the hell did you get here?” he demanded, pushing slowly to his feet.

“I stayed with Valerio during the day. He just brought me back.”

He pointed at the bedroom door with the knife. “You mean you were never in there?”

“No.” I shook my head, my eyebrows snapping together over my nose at his tone. “Didn’t you ever look in on me? You never checked?”

“No!”

“You left me!” I shouted back, refusing to feel guilty that he had defended what amounted to an empty room. “I told you that Veyron’s men would attack me during the day. Did you think I was going to stay here unguarded and vulnerable during the daylight hours while you went after Sofia?”

“I didn’t go after her,” he admitted, lowering his voice to a normal level again.

“But you left.”

Danaus narrowed his eyes on my face as his frown grew darker. “And you thought I would choose her life over yours.”

“Yes.” There was nothing else I could say. He left. He left the hotel room and I assumed that he was going after Sofia. Where else would he have gone after our argument? “Your leaving the room signaled to me that you were going after her. I would have been alone during the day, left vulnerable to . . . to this,” I said, extending my hands to encompass the destroyed room.

“I went down to the hotel bar for a drink,” Danaus snapped. “How could you think that I would honestly leave you alone? I stayed at your side in England when the naturi attacked. I was with you in Venice and Peru. Why would I leave you now?”

Because I thought you cared about Sofia more than you cared about me.

I was spared from having to answer out loud by the sudden appearance of Stefan in the center of the room. His eyebrows were raised and his lips twitched as if he was unsuccessfully suppressing a smile. “Had a bit of trouble during the day?” I wanted to smack him. Now was not the best time for jokes. Not when both my temper and Danaus’s were already burning away on a short fuse.

“Who came here?” Valerio asked in the growing silence as Danaus and I glared at each other. I wouldn’t feel guilty about leaving. He had left me with no indication that he planned to return to the room before sunrise, and I wasn’t going to roll over and die to suit him.

“Lycans,” Danaus replied slowly, finally lifting his gaze from me to Valerio, who stood just behind my right shoulder. Stefan’s face was wiped clean of the smirk that had been twisting his lips. The lycans were currently harboring the blame for Stefan’s missing assistant, and they had already been on the top of my list of things to take care of. If they had attacked Danaus with the intent of killing me, then the local pack didn’t stand much chance of surviving the night.

“Are you sure?” Valerio inquired.

“He knows a lycan when he sees one,” I replied as I walked through the room, toward the windows that looked out on the city. Lifting my eyes up to the black sky, I frowned at the full moon that shone down on me with her shimmering silvery light. The shifters would be at their peak strength tonight. It was fitting.

“Faster than normal humans,” Danaus said. “Stronger. They carried with them a thick sense of power that couldn’t be missed. The air smelled like a forest after the rain. There was no doubt that they were all lycans. There were three of them. However, one held back at the door during the fight. He may have been a warlock.”

“Warlock?” I spun around to look at Danaus again, blocking some of the light that tripped into the room from the window. My black shadow was swallowed up in the dark room, adding to the bleak atmosphere.

“Warlock,” he repeated. “He didn’t cast any spells, but there was something about the way he stood and carried himself. As if he was above it all.”

“Sounds like a nightwalker to me.” I crossed my arms over my stomach as I leaned my shoulder against the window frame.

Danaus looked up and flashed me a grim smile. “I know a vampire when I see one.”

“Yeah, I guess you would. Warlock, then,” I grumbled.

“That’s . . . unexpected,” Valerio added.

Stefan shook his head, frowning. “Werewolves don’t form hunting parties with anyone else. They hunt in tight formation with only their own kind.”

I stared at the floor that sparkled with glass strewn over the thick carpet. The appearance of the warlock made me think that maybe he had been sent to make sure the job was done properly. I was beginning to believe that maybe Ferko had not been the one to send them. I had always believed that Veyron would send someone to kill me, but I’d been anticipating humans—not lycanthropes or warlocks. I found this development even more unsettling.

“I’m assuming that no one was killed, considering that there are no bodies,” I resumed, pushing my thoughts to the back of my mind for perusal later. Our main concern at the moment was the shifters. I could worry about their alliances later when I had a chance to beat the information out of Ferko.

“No one was killed,” Danaus stated, “though I have doubts as to whether one of them would survive the next few hours, considering I stabbed him near the heart. He was bleeding pretty heavily.”

“Did the warlock attack you?”

“No.” He finally shoved his knife in the sheath on his waist and then returned the gun to the holster at his lower back. “He never moved from the closed door.”

“His job was to get them in and out of the hotel unnoticed,” Valerio commented. “Silence any noise that rose from the room while they took care of their little task. When word gets out that they failed to kill you, they are likely to try again. You can’t stay here.”

“I’m not leaving the city again until this matter is taken care of,” I told him. “This is my domain, after all.”

“That’s ridiculous!” Stefan snapped.

“After we take care of the lycans and Ferko tonight, anyone else will be reluctant to approach me, regardless of who is giving the orders.” I pushed off the wall and walked back across the room toward Valerio and the door. A frown pulled at the corners of my mouth as my eyes strayed over the stuffing that protruded from the sofa cushions and the blood that had soaked into the carpet. It had been a pretty little room, and it was a shame that it was destroyed by the shifters. Of course, I was even more surprised to discover that Danaus had come back to the room, that he’d protected me without ever looking in on my helpless form.

“Shall we go?” Stefan asked, motioning toward the door. Danaus reached for his coat on the floor, while Stefan stepped around me.

“Danaus, you can remain here,” I said. “Get some rest. You’ve already had a long day.” I preferred to keep him with me, but if he had been trapped in a fight with three lycanthropes earlier in the day and unable to sleep, he wasn’t going to be at his peak fighting ability. We were going after an entire pack of lycans during a full moon. This was one of more dangerous things I had done. I wouldn’t be able to watch his back.

“I’m going,” he growled, shoving one arm into the sleeve of his coat before fully pulling it on. “I can identify the ones that tried to kill you.” He wasn’t going to bother to change clothes. I, on the other hand, had acquired new clothes and a coat while in Vienna, thanks to Valerio.

“They’re all going to be in wolf form,” I reminded him. “By now they would have all met in the woods and shifted. We’re going to have to hunt them down one by one in the woods.”

“Yes, but they change back when they’re dead or unconscious,” Danaus countered.

The smirk returned to Stefan’s lips. “We’ll get the ones that tried to attack Mira. We’ll get them all.” It was the ugly truth I was hoping that I wouldn’t have to reveal to the hunter. Lycanthropes had attempted to attack not only the keeper of a domain, but also a member of the coven. We had to wipe out as many of them as possible to make an example of them to anyone else in the region who thought to rebel against my rule.

“How many of them are there?” Danaus asked, seemingly unmoved by our intent.

“Unknown.”

Valerio shifted from one foot to the other, his expression grim. “Judging by other packs in large European cities, there should be at least a dozen of them, but it’s unlikely that there are two dozen.” My expression matched his as I looked at my old friend. Valerio wasn’t the type to get his hands dirty. The few fights I’d seen him in, he had been positively vicious. But then, the fights had been one-on-one with another nightwalker. I didn’t know if he had any experience fighting a pack of shifters. Unfortunately, I did. It wasn’t going to be pretty.

“Then you’re going to need my help.” Danaus said, heading toward the door. As Valerio and Stefan started to leave the room, I grabbed Danaus’s sleeve, stopping him.

Thank you for protecting me, I said silently, so the others could not invade this private moment.

I protected nothing, he replied, anger still filling each of those words.

You protected me. Few have done so, I pressed, holding him still when he tried to take a step away from me.

Valerio—

Valerio gave me a place to sleep. He did nothing more. You fought for me.

I promised to protect you. His words softened in my brain to something that resembled a lover’s caress as his anger dissipated. I will protect you above all others. I promised.

“Save the longing looks for another time,” Stefan called from the doorway, snapping us out of our brief moment.

Danaus and I still had a long way to go, but at least I knew that he hadn’t abandoned me for a human. The giant black chasm that still separated us needed to be closed, and I had my doubts as to whether that was even possible. But I was willing to try. He had not left me for a human. It was a start.

For now, I had to put thoughts of my rocky and fragile relationship with the hunter aside. I had to hunt down some lycanthropes, and I was sure that Danaus was going to see a side of me I preferred to keep hidden from him. I didn’t want him to discover that I was struggling to hide the smile of excitement pulling at the corners of my mouth. I didn’t want him to know I was eager to be in the woods, chasing them down, hearing their screams of pain. They had attacked Danaus, tried to kill me. I was ready to make them pay.