Page 26 of The Rogue's Curse

“Uh…Avery,” he replied. His dirty, bloody shirt might have been white once. The short sleeves and torn neck revealed dozens of scabbed-over bite marks and bruises.

Paris reached past him to offer a hand to Avery. “Come on. There’s a much more comfortable place for you to sit,” he said. The young man looked back and forth between them, then took Paris’s hand and followed him through the ransacked club. Paris led Avery into a small lounge just down the hall, where he coaxed him to sit on a big leather couch. After handing over his jacket, Paris glanced up at Misha and said, “You go check the Covenant marks. Make sure we didn’t miss anything.”

Misha swallowed his irritation and nodded. As he went from body to body, he listened in on the conversation. There was a warmth and kindness to Paris’s voice that made his heart ache. Even if he was here purely for business, it was lovely to imagine being on the receiving end of that radiant warmth, like standing in the sun.

Back in the club, one of the vampires was pinned down with a fat wooden stake through his back, one leg broken. After confirming that none of the vampires here bore Shea’s mark, Misha nudged the man, producing a deep groan. “Wake up,” he said sharply.

The man rolled onto his side and spat a mouthful of blood at him. “Fuck you.”

How original.

Misha drew his athame and said, “I’ll give you one chance to do this easily. Tell me everything you know about Carrigan Shea. Where is he? How are you connected to him?”

“You’re not worthy to speak his name,” the man said, eyes following the sharp point. “Fuck off.”

“I thought you might say that,” Misha said. He slashed his palm and murmured a quiet spell. With his eyes closed, he plucked at the threads of ambient magic and used them to connect the vampire’s will to his own.

“What are you—” the man protested.

He sliced into the back of the man’s neck, carving a simple sigil that glowed with fiery red light. With an inhuman scream, the man convulsed, then went corpse-still.

Paris bolted into the room, gun drawn. “Are you—”

“Quiet,” Misha said. In his arcane sight, a shimmering red cord now emerged from the man’s neck, twining around Misha’s knife and up his wrist like a ribbon. “I told you I was giving you one chance. You chose poorly. What’s your name?”

“D-D-David,” the man stammered. “Please let me go, it hurts.”

It sure as hell did. Misha knew quite well what David was feeling, but he’d passed up his opportunity to do this without a magical noose around his neck.

“I’ll let you go when we’re done,” Misha said. He glanced up and caught a strange expression on Paris’s face. Was he impressed or disgusted? “David, is Carrigan Shea your Maker?”

David’s red eyes found his and he shook his head. “I wish he was.”

“Did he make anyone here?”

“I don’t think so,” David said.

“Where did you come from?”

David shook his head, lips pressed together in a tight line. Misha sighed and gave the thread a firm tug. It felt like a sharp pain down his spine, but it was infinitely worse for David, who let out a shriek like a little girl who’d seen a snake. “Okay! Okay! A couple of us defected from the Casteron in Vancouver. We made some new vampires on the way here, and we wanted to join up with Shea.”

“So why aren’t you with him?” Paris asked.

David shot him a look of disdain, which seemed rather foolish given his position. Misha tugged lightly and said, “Answer him.”

“The king only wants vampires who prove themselves worthy,” David said. “His Covenant is not freely given, as his blood is earned.” There was a religious reverence in the way he spoke of Shea, which unsettled Misha.

“And how do you prove yourself worthy?” Misha asked.

With one shaky hand, David pointed at Paris. “That’s Number Two. Bringing him any of the Shroud will earn a guaranteed place in his court.”

“Is that why you were here in their club?” Misha asked.

David shrugged. “It was convenient, but yeah. We figured that eventually one of you might show up.”

Paris had gone ashen. “You’re saying if you delivered me to Carrigan Shea, he’d bind you into his Covenant?”

“That’s right,” David said.

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