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Chapter One Hundred Six

CARMINE

Scout found me an off-duty cop in a dive bar in Bay Ridge. He wasn’t doing anything egregious except playing darts poorly. Apparently, the man was such an asshole that if I didn’t kill him, Scout would do it himself.

It shouldn’t matter. I’d kill the Pope to keep Amon away from Luna.

Amon possessed the drunk man and sent him out to the Narrows to watch the container ships in the distance.

Then I killed him slowly enough to let Amon feel it.

We dumped his body far out into the water.

Scout stayed behind to drain the asshole’s asshole friend, and I flew back to Manhattan to take care of Charles.

I land on the edge of a church across Fourteenth Street.

The club is in the sub-basement of a nondescript building wedged in the middle of a block of more connected nondescript buildings. I fly across the street. There are humans everywhere.

Charles has shielded the building from the liminal on all floors, top to bottom, so a vampire cannot enter as a bird and change into a man, or the other way around.

A raven can fit in the ventilation system built across the entire block in the 1800s, which is where I cross, then change to a human form in an accidental passage the width of my body turned sideways.

I fall down a four-flight shaft used to vent a gas furnace that was probably removed a hundred years ago. At the bottom, I have to punch my way through a brick wall.

The brick wall leads to a basement closet. Banker boxes spill fans of paper. I step on marriage licenses, birth and death certificates, and magnetic cassettes, the likes of which I haven’t seen since waking up.

The front of the closet door has a paper tacked to it that says 1934-1964 (call Ivy for comb.) in Sharpie.

I’ve memorized the twists and turns on the plans. I know where to go, and I know something even more important.

Luna’s not here. I can smell the wolves and humans who were upstairs for the renovation. I can smell the humans dancing, covered in fresh sweat.

In this cacophony of scents, none carry a lick of her sweetness.

She stayed home. Thank the goddess.

The music above thump-thumps on the ceiling and I have to shut out the memory that won’t leave after five hundred years… descending into the horrors of the Roman sewers.

I don’t sense Amon. He better fucking be within arm’s reach when I need him to be.

What was marked as a corridor in the plans is actually a row of prison cells with drains in the floor. Fucking weird.

I take out my phone to make sure I’m on the right track when my phone dings. It sounds like a gong in a church.

In my attempt to shut it off, I end up looking at Ario’s text.

“Fuck.”

Underestimating my wife is always a mistake.