Midnight Marked (Chicagoland Vampires, #12)(70)

“Hello, Merit,” he said.

Stick to the facts, I told myself. We’d have only a few minutes before we reached the next stop. He might disappear, or humans might jump on, which wouldn’t help matters. “Who are you?”

“You know who I am.”

I swallowed hard against the bile that threatened to rise. “No, I know what you did to me and to Caleb Franklin. I’m pretty sure I know the why and for whom. But I don’t know who you are.”

In answer, he pulled a matte black dagger from a sheath beneath his T-shirt. His smile was slick and confident, and it made my skin crawl, sent a line of cold sweat down my back.

For the first time since I’d seen his face, I stopped thinking about that night, and started thinking about this one—the fact that I’d chased him onto an empty train. That he’d managed to lead me away from my House, my partners, my allies.

Reed couldn’t have planned it better himself. Unless he had planned it himself.

What, exactly, was I going to do? What was my play? I’d survived the vampire’s attacks. Was I going to kill him then and there for what he’d done to me? Did I even have the right?

I swallowed hard, made myself focus. “Once upon a time,” I said, preparing to relive my darkest fairy tale, “you did Celina Desaulniers’s bidding. You attacked me because she paid you. Who’s paying you this time?”

He made a clucking sound. “Let’s say this one is a freebie.”

Something about the cockiness of his tone, the jocularity, spurred my anger.

And God, anger was so much better than fear.

“For Adrien Reed?”

His eyes tightened, just for a moment. Long enough to know I was on the right track—if the most dangerous one.

I might have been conflicted about the fight, but he wasn’t. Blade at the ready, he moved toward me, began with a swipe of the knife that would have sliced my abdomen if I hadn’t jumped back quickly enough.

While he reset, I remembered the dagger I’d stashed—as always—in my boot, and pivoted to keep him in front of me. He slashed out again, nimble and fast.

As the city blurred past the windows, I took the offensive, feinting to the right before dropping, slicing the dagger along his leg. I made contact, scraped metal against skin. Blood seeped through denim and plopped in heavy droplets onto the metal floor, scenting the air with the tang of fresh blood. If not the type I had any interest in.

The vampire roared, eyes silvering and fangs descending, and swiped at me again, and I rolled forward, switching our positions. I jumped onto the seats, turned back. His eyes were wild, angry.

I smiled at him, but there was nothing happy in the look. It was the smile of a predator preparing for battle, and it gratified me more than a little to see his eyes narrow, reassess.

The first time he’d attacked me as a human, after dark, and when my guard was down. The second time he’d had a gun and a Trans Am.

“Yeah, it’s not nearly as much fun when the prey fights back, is it?” I tilted my head at him. “Does Reed still pay you if you lose?”

He growled, ran forward. And this time, in the full blush of blood fury, he was faster.

How much of him was in me? How much of his skill, his mind, had I absorbed when he ripped into my body?

I jumped again, catapulting over him when he struck out. But he grabbed the hem of my T-shirt, pulled me down on top of him. We hit the floor with a thud, and he snaked an arm around my waist, drawing me against his body. My dagger skittered away.

“Not so funny now, is it, Caroline?” His voice was as close as a lover’s.

His glamour began to seep and sink into the air around us, heavy and cold as fog. His glamour wasn’t like Ethan’s. It didn’t support, build up, elaborate on love. It would tear down, seep in, and infect.

I froze as panic slicked cold sweat over my skin, made my blood pound in my ears. I went back to that dark night, the wet grass, the same arm around me, teeth ripping, pain as hot and sharp as lightning.

He wanted me afraid. He wanted me cowering so he could finish his assignment and clear the black mark of his earlier failure.

“Celina paid me well and good,” he said. “But Reed might pay me double. Depends on what I do, and how crazy it’ll make that boyfriend of yours.”

A small part of me—the shadow that carried the memories of the attack—wanted to let go, to ignore what was happening, to recede into a dark and safe part of my psyche. Into a cupboard of denial. That part of me was moved by fear and magic, which were powerful enemies. It was the same part his glamour called.

But that part of me hadn’t held a sword, found a family, stood for her House. The rest of me was stronger, more experienced, and less afraid. I’d lost battles, and I’d won battles, and I knew the point wasn’t the victory, but pulling yourself together and crawling your way back. That was life.

I might not have been immune to glamour any longer, but I certainly wasn’t going to give in to it like this. Not to him. I pushed down the part of me that wanted to hide, locked it away where even the liquid spill of his magic couldn’t reach it.

“Two things, *. First, anything Adrien Reed could do to you would pale—utterly pale—in comparison to the personal hell Ethan Sullivan will rain down on you if you so much as break one of my fingernails. And second, I don’t need him or anyone else to fight my battles.”