Page 30

Chapter Thirty

MALACHI

T he sky above the river is iron. No stars. No moon. Just thick clouds pressing low over the city, the kind of weight you can feel in your sinuses and your bones, as if the heavens are remembering how to crush us. The Barrows always hums at this hour—heartbeat of the city echoing in too-sharp horns, click-tap heels on broken pavement, the pulse of after-dark conversation barely held between alleys and chalk-painted shadows. Tonight, I can’t hear any of it.

All I hear is her.

Blake’s scream is still caught in my chest, frozen there, wrapped around each rib like wire. Charlie is gone. Taken. And the only thing louder than the memory of that scream is the silence in her eyes when she folded herself into me—shaking, yes, but fighting not to fall apart. A mother’s grief held impermeable behind a barricade of fury. I had promised I’d keep her and Charlie safe and I’d failed.

But I will right that wrong.

I am the blade that cuts clean. I am the law carried out. And now—I am the vengeance that will hunt the fucker down into the dirt no matter what shadows he thinks will guard him.

The Nightshade clan house looms before me as Ashe parks in front of it, three stories of history wrapped in stone and silence, its windows lit from within like stained glass impressions of war strategies and ruled empires. I exit the back seat, holding my hand out to Blake. I’d tucked her close the entire ride over from The Place. She’d tried to stifle her sobs, and each one that broke through ripped another jagged piece from my heart.

I don’t stop for the newly posted guards near the walkway. One look at my face and they snap to alert, their shoulders straightening like something ancient just passed by. They don’t salute. They don’t speak. Good. Because I don’t have time for them.

I cross the threshold and sound disappears—deliberate enchantment laid down centuries ago by Joséphine. The kind—a hush to keep noise from leaking out across neighborhoods, even when wars are waged within these walls.

The moment the heavy doors shut behind me, the weight of leadership settles across my shoulders like ice and iron.

The scent of fire and blood already hangs heavy in the air. I round the corner into the formal dining room—repurposed now into war command. Glittering chandeliers have been dimmed to near dark, casting the room into pools of amber and shadow. The enormous arched windows are blocked with blackout drapes, and long oak tables are dominated by tablets, weapons, maps, and the wreckage of strategy: red marker trails, snapped pencils, a half-sipped glass of whiskey being used as a paperweight.

Every heartbeat in the room turns toward me.

Ambrose stands at the head of the long table, posture like a throne’s silhouette—coiled and waiting, every inch of him radiating control. King in all but name. Kasar flanks him to the left, arms folded, posture loose but eyes anything but. Lan leans back in a chair, dressed like he came from a funeral, twirling an open switchblade in one hand while the other flies over the keyboard of the laptop in front of him.

Deidre and Eloise are seated across from him. The journalist-turned-insider is scrolling through a split screen of communication logs and CCTV feeds, her freckles standing out beneath too-pale skin. Eloise peels her gaze from her own laptop when the three of us enter. She rises, immediately coming toward us to wrap her arms around Blake.

“We’re going to get her back,” El whispers into Blake’s hair as the two of them cling to each other.

“I know.” Blake speaks without tremor. Her voice is steady in a way that cuts deeper than grief or panic. It’s not the hollow calm of someone in shock. It’s the sound of a steel beam forged inside hellfire. She’s already breaking apart inside, yet refuses to let it out by sheer will alone.

Eloise guides Blake to take the seat she’d abandoned, her arm still wrapped protectively around Blake’s shoulders. “Do you want anything? Water? Tea? Vodka?”

Deidre snorts a laugh and Blake tries to smile, but doesn’t quite manage to.

I give Blake one final glance, a grounding touch to the curve of her shoulder, before turning away and taking my place at the edge of the table.

Ambrose speaks first.

“Everyone’s been briefed,” he says, voice low and deliberate. “Now, tell us your plan.”

I nod, palms braced on the table, leaning forward. “Kit took Charlie less than two hours ago. He walked in wearing the face of someone Blake’s daughter trusted—Sam. Which means Kit had help. That kind of glamor spell isn’t natural for a lone shifter. It requires magic.”

“Witch?” Lan asks, still twirling his blade. His body language is lazy, lounging, exquisitely disinterested—until you look at his eyes. Cold fury glints behind them like ice poisoning a bloodstream. His mother was hit. That makes it personal for all of us, but especially Lan. He never reacts with heat. Only clinical detachment. It’s always worse. “Does Cassandra have any leads on who it could be?”

“She says charms are available on the black market,” Ashe answers, tapping something into his tablet. “Bloodcraft-level glamour charms—rare and expensive. You need a drop of blood from the person you want to impersonate, and the spell doesn’t hold long unless it’s stabilized with a binding agent. Still . . . if Kit has enough money, it would be enough to pull this off.”

Ambrose hums low, barely audible. The sound is more of a vibration than a noise. “Expensive enough to not be purchased on impulse. Which confirms he’s been preparing for this for some time given what we’ve learned of his finances.”

He doesn’t say it outright, but the implication hangs in the silence.

He’s been planning this longer than I’ve been sleeping with Blake. Longer than I’ve been pretending I haven’t already started building a life around her and Charlie without saying it aloud.

I think back on the night I told him Blake was my girlfriend and my fangs lengthen again at the fury striking up again inside me. If she’d refused him and I wasn’t there, would he have moved against her earlier? Taken Charlie because of Blake’s rejection?

Fucking coward.

“Do we have any idea where he might go?” I ask, forcing the words past the pressure crushing my lungs.

Ashe lifts his eyes from the tablet. “No confirmed location yet. Kit left his phone at his place. Cassandra’s trying a proximity trace, but whatever glamour charm he’s wearing—it’s strong. Foot soldiers are combing the Barrows. Best we can say for certain? He hasn’t crossed any of the bridges into Topside that we’ve seen. He’s still here. Probably stopped somewhere to wait us out.”

I reach forward, pull a fresh map toward me, and flatten it over the edge of the table. My fingers draw a quick circle around the four major outer districts, a spiderweb of alley-coded thoroughfares. “If he’s holed up and knows he’s being hunted, he’ll try to mask. Derelict areas. Neighborhoods that aren’t for territorial shifters. Somewhere we don’t own. Yet.”

Eloise leans forward. “Garner used some of those zones when he moved modified Rapture,” she mutters, her voice dry with memory. “They were outside our regulation zones—barely patrolled, let alone enforced by any Pack or Nightshade loyalists. Half of them are condemned, the rest unofficial gray zones.”

Lan’s typing slows. “The shipping docks Garner moved the rapture at. Ambrose, that project a few years back, the smuggling route through Low Hold and the old textile sector. We never had the new cameras installed.”

Ambrose gives a slow nod. “They’re quiet since they’re being demolished. No patrols right now, but they still fall under our jurisdiction.”

“Which makes them ideal for hiding a child,” Kasar says grimly. “Low visibility, low foot traffic. Enough structural wreckage to lose a team in for hours if we don’t know the layout.”

I nod, bile hot in my throat. “Then we start in the outer ring south of the bridge above the docks. Dredge every possible blind spot. Pull satellite from the fucking government if we need to.”

“Already done,” Lan murmurs. His voice is all frost and calculation now, the blade finally still between his fingers. He looks at me under his lashes. “Facial recognition just got a ping near the area. A man matching Kit’s build but Sam’s appearance near the old Sandmoor textile warehouse about an hour ago. No sign of Charlie with him. But there’s enough movement around the warehouse to suggest something’s being protected inside.”

Eloise’s eyes narrow, her grip tightening until the tablet casing creaks, no doubt recalling the firefight she was in the middle of a couple of years ago. A stillness settles over the room, sharp and expectant. Around the table, the Nightshades exchange glances—eyes hard, movements stilled. They’re just waiting for permission to lash out.

I set my palms flat on the table, pressing down as if I can absorb all the information into my very bones.

“All right,” I say. “Here’s what we’re going to do.”

It’s not a request. It’s not an opening for suggestions.

I am General of the Nightshades.

I was forged in Ambrose’s flames and have slaughtered monsters wearing men’s faces. I can scent a drop of blood buried in the chaos of a cityscape and kill without raising a whisper. But this is not a war plan against an enemy faction. This is for my mate’s daughter.

My own daughter, in all the ways that matter.

“All right,” I say again, low but sharp enough that the room tightens around it. Mood shifts. This isn’t an inner circle now—it’s an army waiting for orders.

“Lan,” I say, fixing my gaze on the vampire lounging like death given a pulse. “You’ve got the last known movement. I want real-time surveillance on that location and surrounding sectors—every building within a two-block radius.”

Lan’s mouth curls—not quite a smile. “Do you want drones?”

I nod once. “If you can get them there fast enough.”

He starts typing instantly, posture not his usual lazy stretch of boredom, but tight and efficient.

“Ashe,” I continue. “I want every Nightshade street soldier pulled from non-essential posts and deployed. We clear this quadrant first, sweep clockwise. No rest until every fucking inch of this town is searched.”

Ashe nods once, already activating the Nightshade comms on his screen. “I’ll set up six-man rotations. Two teams at a distance if Kit doubles back or we lose his trail again.”

Kasar doesn’t speak, as I turn to him last. His stillness is crafted from centuries of contained murder; silent, patient, horrifying in its purity. He gives me one look, and I don’t need to say the words. Not really.

“Take flank.” I nod toward Lan’s updated map, now projected across the far blank wall like a vein-spread wound beneath track lines and warehouse overlays. “If he tries to bolt before we move in, you snap his fucking spine.”

Kasar dips his head once, low and deliberate. “With pleasure.”

“We’ll go dark on comms the moment we’re inside,” I continue. “He’s likely got more magic. We’ve already underestimated him once. No mistakes this time. We strike hard. We strike fast. We get Charlie back.”

“Do you want prisoners?” Kasar asks.

“If they talk, let them breathe,” I say, my voice like grinding steel. “If they don’t, make a fucking example.”

Ambrose steps forward with all the power of a sovereign, and when he looks at me, there’s something older than edicts in his eyes.

“They’re yours, Malachi,” he says. “All of them. You carve the path. We’ll follow.”

A quiet sweep of assent moves through the room like steel whispered against silk.

Kit doesn’t know what he’s up against. We’re not just a clan of vampires.

We’re a reckoning.

I nod at Ambrose without flourishes or pretense—king to general, general to king. Then I pull away from the table.

“I want the Sandmoor sectors secured within the hour,” I say, striding toward Blake as she stands. I take her by the hand and pull her into the hall.

The others shift into motion behind us.

We’re reaching the stairs when she tugs me to a stop before releasing my hand.

“I want to come with you.”

The words land hard. I turn slowly, still a breath behind the surge already building in my chest. When I meet her eyes, her face is set with fury. Her arms are crossed, legs braced like she’s not moving, even if the floor under us feels like it’s about to give.

“We don’t know what we’re walking into,” I say carefully, slowly, stepping close enough that the heat from her sinks into me.

“I don’t care.” Her jaw tightens and she drops her hands to her sides, flexing and balling them up. “She’s my daughter. I can’t sit here waiting.”

“You think I don’t know that?” My voice is quieter now—a threat of thunder rather than the thunder itself. “You think I haven’t torn myself apart already at the thought of you pacing these walls in silence while we turn over every inch of this city looking for her? But if I lose focus—if my attention splits for even two seconds because I’m trying to keep you safe too?—”

Her breath catches, and I see it—the first hesitation. “I can hang back?—”

“No.” I cross to her again, setting my hands on the railing beside her, caging her without touching, forcing her to feel the heat of me without letting her forget why I’m here—why we’re both here. “Because if I hear you scream while I’m chasing the bastard who took your daughter, I will turn around. I will tear the world in half, and I won’t care how many get caught in the blood.”

She flinches like I’ve struck her, but she doesn’t step back. Doesn’t shrink. She meets my gaze, fire for fire.

So fucking brave, this woman. Brave enough to see her life at risk of collapsing and still square her shoulders as if she could punch fate in the throat.

“Then promise me you’ll bring her back,” she says, voice rough with smoke and steel. “You swear that to me, Mal. Because if this ends with a body bag?—”

“It won’t,” I bite out. “Because I will turn this entire city into rubble. There is no world where I let him keep her. None.”

Then I crush Blake’s lips with mine.