Page 26 of Mortal Heart

“Yeah, I figured you were.” She poured them each a cup of coffee and added whiskey to both. “Somehow, people like us always seem to end up working for people like that.”

Mugs in hand, they returned to the living room. She curled up next to him on the couch, her head against his shoulder. He didn’t put his arm around her because he sensed that wasn’t what she wanted, so he sipped his coffee and waited for her to start talking again.

“I’d wanted to leave the Court for about two months before it happened.” Arkady smiled without humor. “I guess it was only a matter of time before one of them got me. If you lie down with dogs, you end up with fleas, as the saying goes. Or in this case, you cross paths with a strung-out vamp, you end up with hidden scars and PTSD.”

Ronan frowned. “Strung-out vampire? What do you mean?”

She went quiet and pondered the coffee in her cup. She had a reasonably good poker face, but he couldn’t miss the little furrow between her brows. If he had to guess, her internal debate focused on whether to violate the Court’s NDA.

And as he’d expected, she decided to tell him the full story. She struck him as the sort who now only gave her loyalty to those who showed loyalty to her.

“The Court sent me after what they called arogue vampire,” she told him. “As I’m sure you know, that term can mean a lot of things—a young vamp whose maker has died or cut them loose without oversight, a vamp who’s run away from their maker, someone who’s broken Court law and is hiding from punishment, et cetera. I’d done several of those cases for them, so I didn’t think much of it. The dossier they gave me basically indicated this was a young vamp who had a habit of spending his days outside his master’s home and his nights ‘carousing with negative influences,’ as they called it.” She sighed. “I knew vampires were liars, but usually when I got an assignment the information was at least accurate, even if it was heavily redacted. In this case, however, the redacted part turned out to be very,veryimportant.”

Ronan’s anger had built steadily as she spoke. When she paused, he growled quietly. “I was led to believe the Court sent its dhampirs, if not its Hunters, after rogues. Surely mages at least. Not humans—no matter how highly skilled they are.”

Dhampirs, also known as half-turned vamps, were still technically human, but fed on so much powerful vampire blood regularly that they had senses, speed, reflexes, and healing power almost equal to that of a newly turned vampire. Most older vampires and all members of the Vampire Court had multiple dhampirs as part of their security details.

Hunters were a form of dhampir. Unlike other half-turned vamps, they were driven to near insanity by cycles of blood intoxication and then starvation until their master controlled them completely. They were the Court’s most feared and single-minded trackers. When triggered or released from their master’s control, they became merciless killing machines. Many believed Hunters to be a vampire’s only true predator, other than creatures like the fae.

“I’d brought in young rogue vamps before. The challenge appealed to me.” She eyed him. “Don’t tell me you’ve never gone after something out of your league, just to see if you could take it down.”

He smiled. “Touché, Miss Woodall.”

“Plus I have a theory about why they sent me and not a dhampir, but let’s put a pin in that for now.” She sipped her coffee and swirled it in her cup. “The vamp’s name is Henry Farrell. He works at Nyx. It’s a vamp-owned club here in the city—the kind you have to sign a lot of waivers to get into.”

“I’m familiar with Nyx.”

“Might have known you’d find time to go there, even though you’ve only been in town a few weeks.” She raised her eyebrows. “Were you there on business or pleasure?”

“Is there a difference?”

“Another shockingly honest answer.” She chuckled. “I’m starting to think you can’t lie at all.”

“Oh, I certainly can. I simply choose not to lie to you.”

“Sooner or later, everybody lies. Even you.” Her smile faded. “Anyway, Henry Farrell worked at Nyx first under its original owner, Josiah Harrison. Henry became manager of the place after the Court sentenced Harrison to death by sunlight for making rogues and letting them attack humans.”

“To what end?”

“It was all apparently a dumb ploy to unseat Valas, who was the head of the Vampire Court at the time.” She clinked her mug against his. “May the bitch rot in hell.”

“What personal grudge do you bear against Valas?” He tilted his head. “The vampire Charles Vaughan deposed her and she is dead, is she not?”

She glared at him. “If you’d bothered to check in with Alice at any point in the past few weeks, you’d know on New Year’s Eve Valas had Alice and Daniel Holiday kidnapped. She tried to force Alice to help her regain her throne. Alice and Daniel almost died.”

Stunned, he said, “I didn’t know.”

“Yeah, well, now you do. You can ask Alice about it if you ever nut up and face her.” She set her coffee cup on the side table. “Anyway, it was Henry Farrell who’d gone rogue, the vamps said. So I was supposed to round him up and deliver him to the Court for what they callcorrection. They gave me his dossier, a list of possible haunts, and instructions to deliver him alive and onlyreasonably damaged.” She put air quotes around the latter. “Long story short, I found him the next night—or I guess I should say, he foundme. He got the drop on me, literally. He jumped off a roof and landed right in front of me. I stabbed him with silver, but it didn’t even slow him down. He was out of his damn mind.”

“You mentioned that before.” Ronan rubbed his bristly chin. “I believe you, but as far as I know, vampires are more or less impervious to illicit drugs, whether taken directly or contained in the blood of their victims.”

“Yeah, that’s the official word. But you know the vamps—they’d walk into the sun before admitting they have any of the same vices as us lowly humans.”

Again, he thought of Michael. The archangel of archangels would likely turn Ronan to dust for saying so, but it occurred to him that Michael had much in common with vampires. “So vampires have a drug, or drugs, of choice?”

“Besides power? Of course they do.” She snorted. “Have you ever met a species of supemorelikely than the undead to need an escape from reality? Look past the façade of sophistication andsavoir-faire, and they’re really a bunch of miserable fucks. And where there's a will, there’s a way.”

In all his time and travels Ronan had never heard of a drug capable of affecting a vampire, but he couldn’t argue with either Arkady’s logic or eyewitness account. “What is the name of this drug?”

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