Page 82 of Wicked Hour (Heirs of Chicagoland 2)

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Forest bluffs gave way to rolling hills, and eventually to a shadowed house that waited on the crest of a knoll for its vampires to return.

The house was stunning even in the dark. Pale golden stone, symmetrical with white windows, tall white chimneys on each end, and a columned portico. With no other buildings nearby, it looked like a dollhouse a child had left behind. Or maybe the site of a Gothic horror novel.

Two Sup communities in this small slice of rural Minnesota, but their homes couldn’t have been more different. The sprawling and aging resort, hiding among the trees beside the lake, versus this castle on a hill, a stark and unavoidable mark on the landscape.

The limo followed the drive to a covered portico at the side of the house, with more white columns and molding. One of Ronan’s vampires hopped out first, opened the door. Connor and I climbed out, and then Ronan negotiated Carlie out of the vehicle and toward the house.

Quiet as ghosts, we followed him inside.

The house was clad in dark wood—floors, ceiling, paneling—and the front room was home to an enormous stairway in the same wood. Light filtered through an opaque ivory dome at the top of the first landing, and dark red velvet swagged in generous loops above the windows.

A vampire came down the stairs. She was slender, with pale skin and long raven dark hair that swirled around her shoulder in a loose braid. She wore a fitted red dress and black heels. She reached us, cast a quick glance at us before looking at Ronan. “I’ve prepared a room.”

Ronan nodded, carried Carlie upstairs. When he passed her, the woman looked back at us. “I’m Piper,” she said, and didn’t ask for our names. “Bathroom’s just there, if you want to clean up.”

I nodded, feeling physically jumpy and emotionally numb. I looked back at Connor, found his gaze on me, concern clear in his eyes. “I’ll be right back.”

He nodded, crossed his arms in a way that showed off his muscles. Legs braced, he looked like a man prepared for another battle. But since two vampires followed me down the hall, I didn’t think he’d be the one who’d need to fight.

I found the bathroom, closed the door, and shut my eyes for a moment in the darkness. The monster was quiet, exhausted, satiated by violence and blood.

When my heartbeat began to slow to a more normal rhythm, I turned on the light, then stared at myself in the mirror. I barely recognized what I saw. My cheeks were flushed, my lips swollen, my skin pale but for the already healing scratches of battle. My eyes were still silver, and there were twigs and leaves and probably worse in my hair.

I washed my hands and face, finger-combed my hair. And felt nearly normal when I opened the door again—if I didn’t think too much about the vampires waiting to throttle me outside it, and the human somewhere above us who might not survive the evening.

By the time I made it back to the central room, Ronan stood with Piper, quietly conversing. Connor stood exactly where I’d left him, arms still crossed.The alpha being alpha,I thought, and joined him.

His expression was still carefully blank, but anger shimmered in his eyes. He was a man riding very close to the edge of fury. I just wasn’t sure at whom he was going to direct it.

Ronan turned to us, moved closer, hands clasped behind his back. “Take me through it again,” he said.

So I did, step by step. From firepit to screaming, from the clan’s territory to the Stone farm, from the hell of battle to the agony of finding Carlie, alone and broken. And then I told him of the decision I’d made and what I’d done.

“What attacked the humans?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” Connor said. “They’re clan members affected by some kind of magic, turned into wolflike creatures that attack on two legs. They aren’t similar to any wild animals or Sups we know about.”

“Why did they attack?” Ronan asked.

“We don’t know that, either,” Connor said. “The Stone farm is at the edge of the clan’s territory. Maybe they believed the humans were getting too close. Maybe the magic has affected them. Or maybe they’re just homicidal assholes.”

“Are they dead?”

“Not that we’re aware of,” Connor said. “We hurt them, but they survived. They ran away from the resort, deeper inland and into the woods.”

No one spoke for a long time.

Finally, Ronan broke the silence. “This will put pressure on the communities. Ours and theirs. Yours potentially. She was changed without her consent. She was changed within earshot of humans. And she was changed without my consent.”

“It wasn’t your territory,” I said. “It was the clan’s territory.”

“And as Cash will certainly point out, you didn’t have his consent, either.”

Heat began to rise again, to speed my heart and call the monster who’d already had its fun tonight. Who was getting harderand harder to push down. “I was not going to leave her on the ground, bleeding out.”

“It wasn’t your choice to make.”

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