Their rebellion had failed—only for the humans to begin their own forty years ago. A different cause, a different group and species of fighters, but the sentiment was essentially the same: the Republic was the enemy, the rigid hierarchies utter bullshit.
When the human rebels had started their war, one of the idiots should have asked the Fallen angels how their rebellion had failed, long before those humans were even born. Isaiah certainly could have given them some pointers on what not to do. And enlightened them about the consequences.
For there was also no hiding the second tattoo, stamped on their right wrists: SPQM.
It adorned every flag and letterhead of the Republic—the four letters encircled with seven stars—and adorned the wrist of every being owned by it. Even if Isaiah chopped off his arm, the limb that regrew would bear the mark. Such was the power of the witch-ink.
A fate worse than death: to become an eternal servant to those they’d sought to overthrow.
Deciding to spare Sabine from Hunt’s way of dealing with things, Isaiah asked mildly, “I understand you are grieving, but do you have reason, Sabine, to want Bryce dead?”
Sabine snarled, pointing at Bryce, “She took the sword. That wannabe wolf took Danika’s sword. I know she did, it’s not at the apartment—and it’s mine.”
Isaiah had seen those details: that the heirloom of the Fendyr family was missing. But there was no sign of Bryce Quinlan possessing it. “What does the sword have to do with your daughter’s death?”
Rage and grief warred in that feral face. Sabine shook her head, ignoring his question, and said, “Danika couldn’t stay out of trouble. She could never keep her mouth shut and know when to be quiet around her enemies. And look what became of her. That stupid little bitch in there is still breathing, and Danika is not.” Her voice nearly cracked. “Danika should have known better.”
Hunt asked a shade more gently, “Known better about what?”
“All of it,” Sabine snapped, and again shook her head, clearing her grief away. “Starting with that slut of a roommate.” She whirled on Isaiah, the portrait of wrath. “Tell me everything.”
Hunt said coolly, “He doesn’t have to tell you shit, Fendyr.”
As Commander of the 33rd Imperial Legion, Isaiah held an equal rank to Sabine: they both sat on the same governing councils, both answered to males of power within their own ranks and their own Houses.
Sabine’s canines lengthened as she surveyed Hunt. “Did I fucking speak to you, Athalar?”
Hunt’s eyes glittered. But Isaiah pulled out his phone, typing as he cut in calmly, “We’re still getting the reports in. Viktoria is coming to talk to Miss Quinlan right now.”
“I’ll talk to her,” Sabine seethed. Her fingers curled, as if ready to rip out Hunt’s throat. Hunt gave her a sharp smile that told her to just try, the lightning around his knuckles twining up his wrist.
And fortunately for Isaiah, the interrogation room’s door opened and a dark-haired woman in an immaculately tailored navy suit walked in.
They were a front, those suits that he and Viktoria wore. A sort of armor, yes, but also a last attempt to pretend that they were even remotely normal.
It was no wonder Hunt never bothered with them.
As Viktoria made her graceful approach, Bryce gave no acknowledgment of the stunning female who usually made people of all Houses do a double take.
But Bryce had been that way for hours now. Blood still stained the white bandage around her bare thigh. Viktoria sniffed delicately, her pale green eyes narrowing beneath the halo’s dark tattoo on her brow. The wraith had been one of the few non-malakim who had rebelled with them two centuries ago. She’d been given to Micah soon afterward, and her punishment had gone beyond the brow tattoo and slave markings. Not nearly as brutal as what Isaiah and Hunt had endured in the Asteri’s dungeons, and then in various Archangels’ dungeons for years afterward, but its own form of torment that lasted even when their own had stopped.
Viktoria said, “Miss Quinlan.”
She didn’t respond.
The wraith dragged over a steel chair from the wall and set it on the other side of the table. Pulling a file from her jacket, Viktoria crossed her long legs as she perched on the seat.
“Can you tell me who is responsible for the bloodshed tonight?”
Not even a hitch of breath. Sabine growled softly.
The wraith folded her alabaster hands in her lap, the unnatural elegance the only sign of the ancient power that rippled beneath the calm surface.
Vik had no body of her own. Though she’d fought in the 18th, Isaiah had learned her history only when he’d arrived here ten years ago. How Viktoria had acquired this particular body, who it had once belonged to, he didn’t ask. She hadn’t told him. Wraiths wore bodies the way some people owned cars. Vainer wraiths switched them often, usually at the first sign of aging, but Viktoria had held on to this one for longer than usual, liking its build and movement, she’d said.
Now she held on to it because she had no choice. It had been Micah’s punishment for her rebellion: to trap her within this body. Forever. No more changing, no more trading up for something newer and sleeker. For two hundred years, Vik had been contained, forced to weather the slow erosion of the body, now plainly visible: the thin lines starting to carve themselves around her eyes, the crease now etched in her forehead above the tattoo’s twining band of thorns.
“Quinlan’s gone into shock,” Hunt observed, monitoring Bryce’s every breath. “She’s not going to talk.”
Isaiah was inclined to agree, until Viktoria opened the file, scanned a piece of paper, and said, “I, for one, believe that you are not in full control of your body or actions right now.”
And then she read a shopping list of a cocktail of drugs and alcohol that would stop a human’s heart dead. Stop a lesser Vanir’s heart, too, for that matter.
Hunt swore again. “Is there anything she didn’t snort or smoke tonight?”
Sabine bristled. “Half-breed trash—”
Isaiah threw Hunt a look. All that was needed to convey the request.
Never an order—he’d never dared to order Hunt around. Not when the male possessed a hair-trigger temper that had left entire imperial fighting units in smoldering cinders. Even with the spells of the halo binding that lightning to a tenth of its full strength, Hunt’s skills as a warrior made up for it.
But Hunt’s chin dipped, his only sign that he’d agreed to Isaiah’s request. “You’ll need to complete some paperwork upstairs, Sabine.” Hunt blew out a breath, as if reminding himself that Sabine was a mother who had lost her only child tonight, and added, “If you want time to yourself, you can take it, but you need to sign—”
“Fuck signing things and fuck time to myself. Crucify the bitch if you have to, but get her to give a statement.” Sabine spat on the tiles at Hunt’s booted feet.
Ether coated Isaiah’s tongue as Hunt gave her the cool stare that served as his only warning to opponents on a battlefield. None had ever survived what happened next.
Sabine seemed to remember that, and wisely stormed into the hall. She flexed her hand as she did, four razor-sharp claws appearing, and slashed them through the metal door.
Hunt smiled at her disappearing figure. A target marked. Not today, not even tomorrow, but at one point in the future …
And people claimed the shifters got along better with the angels than the Fae.
Viktoria was saying gently to Bryce, “We have video footage from the White Raven, confirming your whereabouts. We have footage of you walking home.”
Cameras covered all of Lunathion, with unparalleled visual and audio coverage, but Bryce’s apartment building was old, and the mandatory monitors in the hallways hadn’t been repaired in decades. The landlord would be getting a visit tonight for the code violations that had fucked this entire investigation. One tiny sliver of audio was all the building cameras had managed to catch—just the audio. It held nothing beyond what they already knew. The phones of the Pack of Devils had all been destroyed in the attack. Not one message had gone out.
“What we don’t have footage of, Bryce,” Viktoria went on, “is what happened in that apartment. Can you tell me?”
Slowly, as if she drifted back into her battered body, Bryce turned her amber eyes to Viktoria.
“Where’s her family?” Hunt asked roughly.
“Human mother lives with the stepfather in one of the mountain towns up north—both peregrini,” Isaiah said. “The sire wasn’t registered or refused to acknowledge paternity. Fae, obviously. And likely one with some standing, since he bothered to get her civitas status.”
Most of the offspring born to human mothers took their peregrini rank. And though Bryce had something of the Fae’s elegant beauty, her face marked her as human—the gold-dusted skin, the smattering of freckles over her nose and high cheekbones, the full mouth. Even if the silken flow of red hair and arched ears were pure Fae.
“Have the human parents been notified?”
Isaiah dragged a hand over his tight brown curls. He’d been awoken by his phone’s shrill ringing at two in the morning, hurtled from the barracks a minute after that, and was now starting to feel the effects of a sleepless night. Dawn was likely not far off. “Her mother was hysterical. She asked over and over if we knew why they’d attacked the apartment, or if it was Philip Briggs. She saw on the news that he’d been released on a technicality and was certain he did this. I have a patrol from the 31st flying out right now; the parents will be airborne within the hour.”
Viktoria’s voice slid through the intercom as she continued her interview. “Can you describe the creature that attacked your friends?”
But Quinlan was gone again, her eyes vacant.
They had fuzzy footage thanks to the street cameras, but the demon had moved faster than the wind and had known to keep out of lens range. They hadn’t been able to ID it yet—even Hunt’s extensive knowledge hadn’t helped. All they had of it was a vague, grayish blur no slowdown could clarify. And Bryce Quinlan, charging barefoot through the city streets.
“That girl isn’t ready to give a statement,” Hunt said. “This is a waste of our time.”
But Isaiah asked him, “Why does Sabine hate Bryce so much—why imply she’s to blame for all this?” When Hunt didn’t answer, Isaiah jerked his chin toward two files on the edge of the desk. “Look at Quinlan’s. Only one standing crime before this—for public indecency during a Summer Solstice parade. She got a little frisky against a wall and was caught in the act. Holding cell overnight, paid the fine the next day, did community service for a month to get it wiped off any permanent record.” Isaiah could have sworn a ghost of a smile appeared on Hunt’s mouth.
But Isaiah tapped a calloused finger on the impressively thick stack beside it. “This is part one of Danika Fendyr’s file. Of seven. Starts with petty theft when she was ten, continues until she reached her majority five years ago. Then it goes eerily quiet. If you ask me, Bryce was the one who was led down a road of ruination—and then maybe led Danika out of hers.”
“Not far enough to keep from snorting enough lightseeker to kill a horse,” Hunt said. “I’m assuming she didn’t party alone. Were there any other friends with her tonight?”
“Two others. Juniper Andromeda, a faun who’s a soloist at the City Ballet, and …” Isaiah flipped open the case file and muttered a prayer. “Fury Axtar.”
Hunt swore softly at the mercenary’s name.
Fury Axtar was licensed to kill in half a dozen countries. Including this one.
Hunt asked, “Fury was with Quinlan tonight?”
They’d crossed paths with the merc enough to know to stay the Hel away. Micah had even ordered Hunt to kill her. Twice.
But she had too many high-powered allies. Some, it was whispered, on the Imperial Senate. So both times, Micah had decided that the fallout over the Umbra Mortis turning Fury Axtar into veritable toast would be more trouble than it was worth.
“Yes,” Isaiah said. “Fury was with her at the club.”
Hunt frowned. But Viktoria leaned in to speak to Bryce once more.
“We’re trying to find who did this. Can you give us the information we need?”
Only a shell sat before the wraith.
Viktoria said, in that luxurious purr that usually had people eating out of her palm, “I want to help you. I want to find who did this. And punish them.”
Viktoria reached into her pocket, pulled out her phone, and set it faceup on the table. Instantly, its digital feed appeared on the small screen in the room with Isaiah and Hunt. They glanced between the wraith and the screen as a series of messages opened.
“We downloaded the data from your phone. Can you walk me through these?”
Glassy eyes tracked a small screen that rose from a hidden compartment in the linoleum floor. It displayed the same messages Isaiah and Hunt now read.
The first one, sent from Bryce, read, TV nights are for waggle-tailed pups. Come play with the big bitches.