Page 37 of Smokescreen (Knight & Daywalker #1)

F or some reason, the first thing that came into my head when I woke was a fear that I was going to drown.

I gave a little jerk and gasped in a breath, clearly destroying any chance I had at pretending to still be unconscious, but I couldn’t move any part of my body freely.

From the steady pull of gravity, I could tell I was upright, standing on my feet. But I was also tied at ankle, waist, and shoulders to a pole behind me, and my hands were tied together behind it.

A wooden pole, I realized from the painful splinters in my bare arms.

I was still in the same comfortable outfit I’d been wearing in the office, and given the cold seeping into my legs from the hard floor beneath me, I was doubly glad I’d managed to put my socks on.

The burning in my throat was somehow even worse than before, and I started to think that maybe I did eat too much hot sauce.

It was just so good.

I didn’t eat the weird “look how manly I am” kinds that measured their heat in millions of Scoville units, just tasty hot sauces. It wasn’t fair I was in pain because food was delicious.

The thought of food made me think of Twist, and my heart thumped painfully in my chest. People said this was how random pet acquisition worked. They came out of nowhere, and suddenly they were everything.

If Mary had killed Twist somehow...I didn’t know what I would do, but it wouldn’t be good. I would find a way to take her down, no matter what I had to do to get it done. All of my teachers had always given me crap about how I was so very clever but just not applying myself.

For this? I would apply myself, completely. No one hurt my cat.

“Are you even sure it’s true?” Mary’s voice sounded nearby, dragging me out of my hopefully premature revenge plans. “He looks exactly like Fiona. Mercer was better looking by far, even if he was a complete?—”

“Be careful how you speak of my family, dead thing,” another voice said. A male voice, and a weirdly familiar one.

“I didn’t have to offer him to you, you know,” Mary said, her voice haughty and arrogant. “This is a kindness on my part.”

I’d always thought her cold, but this was a different level. This was...it was that moment when she said she was related to royalty and Mother was no one.

What, like the English royal family? Who the hell cared if she was related to them? There were a shit-ton of them. It wasn’t like she was in line for the throne. She was a vampire who’d been dead for centuries.

Wait, had the Windsors even been calling themselves the Windsors for that long?

Maybe she was a complete con artist and not related to anyone.

The man, whoever he was, made a rude noise, which.

..okay, I’d just been thinking some shit about her, but what did he have to complain about?

I cracked one eye, trying to be circumspect, since they hadn’t given any indication they were aware I was awake, even though I hadn’t been subtle about waking up.

The lighting was low, which was helpful, since my eyes weren’t used to any light.

This guy looked like money. He was wearing an expensive suit and a long wool coat over it, in dark colors I couldn’t pick out in the low light.

He didn’t wear them with that unease like some of the people who’d come to try to rent the space next door to my shop.

He looked more comfortable in his skin than anyone I’d ever seen before in my life.

He also looked . . . like me.

Like me in a suit, with a thousand dollar haircut.

No, that wasn’t quite right. Given the haughty expression on his face, he looked like evil me.

Like maybe we were in the Star Trek mirror universe, and all he needed was a goatee.

Except that in one of the great shames of my young life, I’d never been able to grow facial hair. Not like I had a sad wispy little mustache that made me look like a teenager who was trying too hard, but like I didn’t even own a razor, because there wasn’t a single hair.

I wondered if this guy shaved.

Something told me that the answer was no.

He turned toward me, and I snapped my eyes shut once more, trying to breathe evenly.

Somehow, it seemed to work.

“So weak,” he muttered. “If he were truly his father’s son, he’d be awake by now.”

“I injected him with enough propofol to keep him out for hours,” Mary denied. “And he’s no vampire. He’s a weakling. If he’s truly your uncle’s son, then I don’t know how he missed inheriting any power at all.”

“Oh, he’s Mercer’s,” the man said, and my heart jumped with something oddly happy, given the horrific circumstances. Mercer. My father’s name was Mercer. Maybe. The man continued, and I hung on every word. “He may look more like your vampire woman, but he feels like Mercer.”

It was strange to me that neither of them acknowledged it; while I did look quite like my mother, I also looked very much like this man.

Something brushed against me then, but.

..but it was something nonphysical. Like fingers stroking my brain, I could feel it caress, and then push, lightly, as though trying to gain entry.

Almost without my order—though I’d have certainly given that command—my brain shoved back, and I could feel the presence pushed away, hard.

Nearby, the man took a quick, harsh breath.

“No, I take it back. He feels stronger than Mercer.” He didn’t sound annoyed, though, or even just impressed.

No, what I was hearing in his voice was avarice, there was no doubt in my mind. Whatever it was that had pushed him away from me, he wanted it.

Worse, I suspected he thought he had a way to take it, and that wasn’t going to be pleasant for me. The acid burn in my throat rose even higher, and I started to worry it was just going to eat its way through my esophagus.

“Ten million,” Mary said, and the same avarice was in her voice.

The man scoffed. “Ten million? Fine. Ten million. You humans are so pitiful. You have no idea what a real treasure is.”

“I don’t give a fuck what you think is a treasure,” Mary snapped back, apparently done being disrespected.

Something told me she was making a mistake, but I wasn’t going to tell her that.

She’d killed Charles and Kate. She deserved whatever she got.

“Give me my money and then you can eat his brain for dinner, or whatever it is you monsters do. As long as I don’t have to deal with him anymore. ”

“Of course,” the man agreed. “It will be a waste, though, because you may all be ants, but the other dead woman will destroy you when she finds out what you did to her son. You should have seen what she did to Rome when they killed her daughters.”

“What the hell are you talking about? She doesn’t have daughters.”

He scoffed again, but didn’t offer any more information. There was a little buzzing noise, and then a generic text ringtone. “There. You have your money. Now leave. My cousin and I have business.”

A moment passed, and Mary’s voice was smug when she spoke again. “A pleasure doing business with you, Sexton.”

Her footsteps clicked against the floor as she walked away, and a moment later, there was a resounding thud as a door opened and slammed shut.

“I would apologize for this,” the man, Sexton apparently, said a moment later, “but the truth is that you’re not going to survive to see forty no matter what I do. I need this if I’m going to survive, but there’s no way more than one of us will.”

I didn’t say anything, and after a moment, he sighed. “I know you’re awake. Only that ridiculous dead human was convinced by this act.”

So I opened my eyes and met his. They were a strange shade of almost-green. Hazel? Was that what hazel looked like? I’d never paid that much attention, but this guy was apparently my cousin, and also, his eyes were fucking glowing.

“There’s no reason we can’t both survive,” I said, though I had no idea why he’d suggested otherwise. I had to feel my way through this carefully, since he had all the information and I had none.

He rolled his eyes. “Fuck, you could be his twin. Do you always think there’s a way out of everything?

That every tragedy has a silver lining? How did both a son and grandson of Tadhg end up so uselessly optimistic?

” He stepped in close, his almost-green eyes blazing with something that looked like anger.

“A tragedy is just a tragedy. Bad things always happen. There’s no good in them, and they can’t be avoided. The world is a cruel, awful place.”

For a moment, all I could do was stare at him, because...how could anyone live like that? Sure, he was right that sometimes tragedies couldn’t be avoided. But to think that the whole world was a terrible place? “Then why keep going? Why try to survive at all?”

His eyes narrowed as he looked at me, slightly confused. Apparently that wasn’t something my father would have said to him. Good. I didn’t like it when someone I didn’t know seemed to know me.

He took a step back, and that? That was very good. I had him off guard, and that was what I needed in this situation.

So I continued. “No really, I mean it. If the whole world is so terrible, why try to survive?”

“Because that’s the point of life,” he said, but he didn’t seem as certain anymore.

I shook my head. “What are you, some kind of non-sentient animal? A sea cucumber? A worm? Survival is all that matters? No. Survival without joy is a waste. It’s pointless.

” I had to work not to cringe at my own words, because of course survival mattered, but I didn’t know how he could comprehend that part without also knowing that there was good in the world.

There was happiness. There was hope. Survival mattered because it was hope.

Because tomorrow might be better than today, and if you didn’t keep trying you’d never know.

Survival was a search for joy.

There was a shout outside, followed by screaming, and then gunshots.

Fuck me. Time was up.

“Dammit,” Sexton hissed, then he shook his head and stepped in so close I could feel his hot breath on my cheek. He was shorter than me, and part of me took a weird sort of pleasure from that. “You won’t distract me. I will live. And your power will help me do it.”

He pressed so close that our chests brushed together, grabbing me by the side of the neck, and once again I could feel his disgusting mental touch. This time it wasn’t subtle or tentative. It was violent, and it felt like he was trying to shove his hand right inside my brain.

I gagged at the sensation, but my mental defenses pushed back without thought.

When that wasn’t entirely enough to repel him, I consciously pushed.

He pushed back, but almost immediately, I could see beads of sweat forming on his forehead.

Instinctively, I knew that whatever this fight was, he couldn’t beat me.

“Not possible,” he muttered. “You’re half human. You have no training. You can’t.”

I met his eye, grinning wide, and I imagined in that moment I looked utterly unhinged.

“Maybe that’s the difference between you and me, Sexton.

My vampire mother taught me that I can do whatever the fuck I set my mind to.

I just have to show up and do the work. And here I am. This is me, doing the work.”

His eyes narrowed and he shook his head. “Humans are weak. Breakable. Pathe—” He broke off and grabbed his belly like I’d punched him in the gut.

I grinned. “Pathetic, huh? Well, one of us seems pretty pathetic. Not sure it’s me, though.”

He reached down into a pocket on his heavy wool coat—and how was he wearing a coat that heavy in Southern California in the middle of April? That distraction fled when he pulled a heavy jeweled dagger out of the pocket.

“Let’s see how well you can fight me off when you’re busy bleeding to death.” He held the dagger up, yanking the sheath off and putting a wicked two-edged blade on display.

The fire in my throat bubbled up again, and I was afraid I was going to vomit all over him. Or...maybe it was okay if I did that.

Fuck this guy, right?

Instead of bile, though, what pushed its way out of my throat was thick black smoke. Burning hot smoke.

There was a clatter as something metal hit concrete, and a shriek of pain, then running footsteps, but I couldn’t see anything.

I couldn’t see anything, because the smoke belching forth from my burning throat was filling the whole fucking room.