The Bone Coven Chronicles: The Complete Series Page 32

  Interesting. But unlike Dorian, I decided not to say that out loud.

  “Alright, good. We’re getting somewhere,” I said with a smile, doing my best to keep him calm and at ease. “Can you give us a rundown of your night? Did you go anywhere? Meet anyone? Do anything out of the ordinary?”

  Something about my words must have set off alarm bells in his head because he stared deep into my eyes, suspicion rolling across his face in waves. “What’s this about? Wait. Let me guess. You think I killed that guy. The one you put in the trunk of your car. No, that wasn’t me. It was your vampire lover there.”

  My eyebrows shot to the top of my head. Any hope I’d hoarded went disappearing into the dim light of the basement. Nathan had just admitted to knowing about the dead blood mage. Which meant it hadn’t been another werewolf at the scene of the crime. It had been Nathan.

  “What guy do you mean, Nathan?” Dorian asked quietly from behind me. “Is this someone you encountered last night?”

  “Oh, please.” Nathan rolled his eyes. “Don’t play coy. You know and I know that we were all in the alley near Descent last night. You grabbed a body, probably to drink all of his blood, and I tried to stop you. The only thing that kept me from kicking your ass was Zoe here.” His voice went soft. “As much as I wanted to stop you, I couldn’t let her get hurt.”

  Well, that explained why he ran off, but it didn’t clear up much else.

  “Nathan,” I said, “we put him in the trunk so that we could take him back to his coven. Dorian didn’t kill him. We’re working a case, and this is part of it. He was a blood mage. And remember the girl who was murdered behind Blue Moon Tavern? Also a blood mage.”

  “Now, care to explain to us why you were there?” Dorian asked.

  “I didn’t kill them. I didn’t even know them.” Nathan sucked in a deep breath and rubbed his hands against his forehead, the chains rattling with every move he made. “They stole the ring from Juno, and I was trying to get it back. So that I could be around my girlfriend. Otherwise, I could accidentally end up passing the venom right back to her, and this time, she might not be immune. And I can’t take that chance. We can’t be together unless I get that ring.”

  That stupid ring, still burning a hole in my metaphorical pocket. It was causing far more trouble than it was worth. But, on a positive note, it was starting to seem more and more unlikely that Nathan had killed those mages. He had an explanation, one that made sense. Sure, he could be lying, but I didn’t think he was.

  “Did you want that ring enough to kill two blood mages over it?” Dorian asked.

  For a moment, the room filled with the kind of tension too thick to be cut by a knife. The two men glared at each other, toxic testosterone bouncing off the walls. A low growl built in Nathan’s throat and Dorian slowly began to rise from where he crouched on the concrete floor. Too late, I realized they were both begging for a fight, their supernatural instincts too strong for them to ignore. They were wired to hate each other, and it was a terrible idea to have them clustered together in such a small space.

  “Alright, guys. You need to chill out. Both of you.” I moved between them, palms held out in each direction. “Dorian, go upstairs. I’ll finish talking to Nathan myself.”

  “I’m not leaving you down here alone with him.” Dorian fisted his hands, trembling with barely contained anger. “He’s a murderous werewolf, and you refuse to learn your spells.”

  Turning my back toward Nathan, I dropped my voice and met Dorian’s eyes. Nathan would still hear every word I said, but I needed this moment to speak through the bond, or whatever it was that was happening between us. If Nathan was innocent, I needed to confirm it. And I didn’t think I could get much more out of him if Dorian stayed in the room.

  “Give me ten minutes with him,” I said, raising my eyebrows. “I’ve got it under control.” Dorian knew I had my dagger on me, not that I would ever use it on my friend. “He ran off in the alley to avoid hurting me. In wolf form. He’s not going to hurt me now.”

  Pain and fear flickered in Dorian’s eyes, but he nodded after a moment. If the wolf in our presence was anyone other than Nathan, I knew he’d refuse, despite my protestations. He was bossy and commanding, and he’d throw me over his shoulder to carry me up the ladder if he had to.

  “Ten minutes it is.” Dorian turned to Nathan, his eyes glittering. “But I’ll be standing just on the other side of the door. If I hear anything at all, I will be at your throat so fast you’ll wish you’d never been born.”

  Once Dorian disappeared through the door, I settled back down on the floor beside Nathan, reaching out a hand to pat his knee. He flinched, pulling away when my skin came into contact with his.

  “I realize this is pretty rich coming from me, but you really shouldn’t get involved with that guy, Zoe.” Nathan’s voice was tight. “He’s a vampire.”

  “And you’re a werewolf.” With a sigh, I gave him a sad smile. “I’m sorry, Nathan. I wish you’d come to me about this. I know there’s not much I could have done, but…” I shrugged. “I can understand what you must be going through right now, trying to wrestle with that beast inside of you. I know it must be difficult not to give into it. Don’t blame yourself for shifting. It’s not something you can help.”

  Nathan gave me a funny look, something resembling surprise or confusion. “But, I wanted to shift, Zoe. Juno has been talking me through it so that I could manage it on the full moon this month. It’s the first time I’ve been able to fully shift into wolf form.”

  My eyebrows knotted together as I tried to wrap my mind around his words. “I don’t understand. You wanted to shift? But why?”

  Nathan lifted his shoulders, the chains rattling. “Because that’s who I am now. If I don’t shift, I struggle through the rest of the month. Insomnia, chest pain, intense hunger. Embracing the wolf within clears my head and makes me stronger. Or at least it would if you’d let me out of here.” He pulled on the chains.

  “But aren’t you worried that you’re dangerous?” I asked. “That you’ll do something that the human side of you will regret? I mean, I hate to be blunt, but you have the capability of ripping someone to shreds, Nathan. What if the wolf side takes over? What if you lose control?”

  He winced, clenching his jaw. “You wouldn’t understand, Zoe. Like I said before, it’s not two separate things. I’m in control of it because it is me. When I was trying to fight it? That was actually when it was worse. I felt rage. I felt bloodlust. My hands would turn to claws, and hair would pop out on my arms. I wasn’t in control until I decided to embrace what I am.”

  Nathan’s words shook through me. He couldn’t be right. Embracing the beast shouldn’t be the best thing he could do. “I saw how you attacked Dorian, remember? You’re telling me that was you in control?”

  “I thought he’d made the kill so he could drink his blood,” Nathan said. “I’m sorry if I scared you, but it’s in my instinct to fight vampires. If I’d realized you were in the car, I never would have attacked. You have to believe me, Zoe. I would never in a million years hurt a single hair on your head. Or anyone else’s.”

  “Unless they were a vampire,” I said, raising an eyebrow.

  “Well, yeah.” His cracked lips finally broke into a smile, and I let out a silent sigh of relief. He probably felt cornered and trapped and in desperate need of a long nap and a shower, and yet here we were, chaining him up in a basement and grilling him. Like a murder suspect. Because he was one.

  “So, I hate to turn the subject back on to this, but…I want to get you out of here as quickly as possible,” I said. “I don’t think either coven will be okay with me letting you go unless you can offer some kind of proof. An alibi, maybe?”

  Nathan’s smile vanished in an instant. “You mean you want proof that I didn’t murder those two mages. I can’t believe this, Zoe. How long have we known each other? Do you really think I could do such a thing?”

  “No, I don’t,” I said quickly. �
�But Dorian doesn’t know you like I do. And the Bone Coven council members don’t either. Not to mention the mages in the Blood Coven. They’re a wild card, and one I’m not sure you want to play. If it were up to me, I’d unlock the chains and take you home. But at the end of the day, I’m not the one in charge. Do you understand?”

  Nathan met my gaze, unblinking. It was impossible to know what he was thinking, but I had a hunch. He thought I didn’t trust him. He thought I was turning on him, after all this time. He probably thought I was so sucked into Dorian’s world that I couldn’t see up from down and right from wrong. To him, all vampires were evil incarnate. And I didn’t think I would be able to change his mind.

  “You know what? As it turns out, I do have proof.” He crossed his arms over his chest and leaned back against the wall. “Video evidence of the killer with the body. Want to see it?”

  “I was going to tell you about this footage earlier, but then the tavern got shut for a few days. And the full moon happened, as you’ve seen.” He pointed at the surveillance footage on the screen. I hadn’t even known there were cameras in the bar, but apparently, the police had come asking to see video evidence the other day. Nathan had told them we didn’t have any security cameras, but then he’d gotten curious.

  And he’d found footage of the night in question.

  Pressing my hand to my mouth, I leaned closer to the screen, barely believing my eyes. A hooded figure with a shovel strapped to his waist dragged the blood mage’s body through the back alley. My heart skipped a beat. I knew the strong jaw that peeked out from the hood, the slight curl of wicked lips.

  “You recognize the man?” Nathan asked, glancing up at me.

  “That’s no man,” I said with a shudder. “His name is Belzus, and he’s fae.”

  Chapter 15

  We waited until nightfall to confront the fae. Overhead, the waning full moon hung like a glowing ball in a black sky, pinpoints of stars flickering far in the distance. A wintry breeze caressed my skin as we stood outside of the chain-locked cemetery gates, the looming metal shooting jagged spikes into eerie shadows.

  “This is where I last saw Belzus,” I said quietly to Laura and Dorian. Nathan had opted to stay at home while the moon’s powers transformed his body from human skin to wolf fur. “He said he was the guardian of the graves. Whatever that means.”

  Laura frowned and looked up at the top of the gates, twice the height of Dorian’s massive frame. “How the hell do we get in?”

  “Last time, I climbed.”

  So climbed we did. First Laura, then me, then Dorian. We pulled ourselves up and over and dropped onto the soft grass that padded the other side. Crickets buzzed all around us even in a clogged city in the middle of the winter. It was like the cemetery was more alive than the streets, tall trees with branches curling webs overhead.

  “Maybe he isn’t here anymore,” Laura said as we began to move down the path I’d taken the last time I’d come. “Wasn’t it like a year and a half ago that you took on that case for him?”

  “About that, yeah,” I said, remembering the fae who I had met in Descent. He’d asked me to banish a demon from a crypt, a spell that had brought on my shadow mark. And then he’d cast the illusion on my skin, forever hiding what I truly was. “But he acted like he’d been here for a very long time. And that he’d be here for even longer.”

  Laura shivered, and I understood the reaction. Belzus had been odd, to say the least. A handsome fae with glistening skin and glowing eyes, he hid his true form from the world. Instead, he decked himself out in a dark and billowing cloak and cast an illusion of an old and withered man, wrinkles stretching out from his dim eyes. Fae were known for their trickery. If they weren’t lying, then they were probably coming up with a way to twist things and make their words mean something else. They might not outright lie, but the truth wouldn’t be what you thought nonetheless.

  “How do we find him?” Dorian asked. “Is there some kind of house on these grounds?”

  “I don’t think so,” I said, glancing around at the ageing headstones and the large mausoleums lining the edge of the path. “I got the feeling he kind of popped back in and out of here, going into the realm of fae when he wasn’t here guarding the graves.”

  “That’s really creepy,” Laura said with a shiver. “What’s he guarding the graves from?”

  “Yeah, it’s a lot creepier than you think,” I said. “He said he’s not guarding the graves from anything. He’s guarding the world from the graves.”

  Laura’s face blanched, the color of her skin matching the glowing moon overhead. “What? Like zombies? But that can’t be real. He must have been messing with you.”

  “There are rumors,” Dorian said as we continued to walk. “Not of zombies but of mages with the power to command the dead. I don’t know how true it is, of course, because it’s the shadow mages who own that kind of power.”

  “Shadow mages.” I sighed and closed my eyes, my heart squeezing tight. “Of course it is. Who else?”

  “Like I said, I’m not sure how true it is,” Dorian continued. “And the grimoire with that spell may be lost forever, even if it’s true. Some say it’s how the Shadows were able to win the Battle of the Four Magisters back in the 1400s. They rose corpses from the grave and had them fight as part of their army. But no one knows for sure. We didn’t keep good records at that time, and the human history books don’t cover supernatural wars, even ones that humans knew about then. They skipped over all that, like much of their own history.”

  “But if the grimoire has been lost and no one is practicing that kind of magic, then why would a fae be guarding this cemetery?” I couldn’t help but ask, though a part of me didn’t want to know the answer to that question. If someone out there knew how to raise an army of the dead, I hoped to hell I wasn’t around to see it.

  “I expect this is his permanent station. I doubt he feels there is a particular need for it at this time,” Dorian said with a frown. “But don’t take my word as truth. It wouldn’t be the first time that a fae has tricked me.”

  My feet slowed, and I raised my eyebrows. “You? Dorian Kostas, the perfect, all-knowing vampire? Say it isn’t so.”

  “Very funny.” Dorian’s lips quirked. “But yes. As much as I abhor to admit it, they’ve even pulled the wool over my eyes at times. Though certainly not much. You deal with them enough, and you can start to understand how they think.”

  Even though Dorian sounded confident, unease slithered through my bones. Last time, I’d been here on the bidding of the fae, and I’d always felt there was more going on than met the eye. It seemed inevitable that I would end up back here, and I had to wonder how much of the past events in this cemetery had led to this.

  How much of this was on purpose?

  Belzus must have known we’d see him on the recording. A fae wouldn’t make a mistake like that. Which meant he would have known we’d end up here, skulking through his cemetery to hunt him down. An uneasy shiver slid down my spine, and I stopped dead in my tracks, swallowing hard as I stared up at the old stone crypt where I’d banished the demon.

  This all felt like a trap. One we’d walked straight into.

  My voice was a hushed whisper on the wind. “Guys, I’m not sure we should be here.”

  Heart hammering hard in my chest, I grabbed my dagger. Power sung in my veins, filling up my soul with a magic I tried so hard to push aside. It was the fear bringing it out of me, whispering in my ear that it was there to help me, no matter what came next.

  “Why not?” Laura whispered back, taking my cue to be as silent as we could. “He’s the killer, isn’t he?”

  “Because he has most definitely set this up so we would come here,” Dorian answered for me. “That’s what you’re thinking. Isn’t it, Zoe?”

  Swallowing hard, I nodded. “I feel like he’s set us up somehow. I’m not sure I want to know what’s on the other side of that door.”

  “Well, if he’s set this up on purp
ose, then we have to find out. Don’t we?” Laura sucked in a deep breath and took several steps closer to the crypt, a determined set to her shoulders. Because of who the victims were, it seemed as if she’d been taking this case much too personally. She considered herself a blood mage, even if she hadn’t yet joined their coven. They were her people, and they were dying.

  “Laura,” I warned, reaching out to stop her. But she’d put her hand against the stone door before I could catch her arm. With a deep breath, she pushed hard, gasping when the door swung open. Dread pooled in my stomach as we stared into the depths of the crypt, and my intuition twitched in the back of my neck. When I’d been here last time, the crypt had been locked. Belzus had the set of keys, and he’d had to let me inside.

  But now, it just opened.

  “Come on,” she whispered. “Let’s see what’s inside.”

  Despite my protestations, the three of us crammed into the stone enclosure. Dorian was so tall that his head brushed against the top of the door when we stepped inside, and he looked large and commanding in such a small space. Everything else was just how I remembered it. A raised coffin sat on a stone pillar in the center of the room, and the walls were etched with deep grooves that were evidence of the many years that had passed.

  Suddenly, the door slammed shut behind us, and the temperature dropped at least twenty degrees. Wind howled around us, the icy air stinging my skin. Dorian grabbed my arm and pushed me behind him as a dark shifting form rose in the air from behind the smooth stone pillar. Heavy wings flapped as the demon roared, sending a new cloud of bitter air swirling around the crypt.

  “Stay behind me,” Dorian said in an urgent whisper. “I’ll cast the spell. When I begin to banish him, get Laura out of here.”

  “What? Why?” Laura asked, her voice high-pitched and frantic. This was her first encounter with a demon, the first time seeing one up close and personal. Like me, she’d practiced the banishment spell at home, but she’d never had the chance to cast the real thing. And I didn’t think that now was the right time to start. Through our bond, I could feel Dorian’s emotions and get a hint of his thoughts. If this fae was targeting blood mages, we’d just walked one straight into his carefully set trap. The demon might go straight for Laura instead of us, the one among us who didn’t know how to fight back. In which case, we needed to get her the hell out of here now.