Blood Games

Chapter Seventeen BRONX TALE

For a moment I simply stared at the closed door, at the wood grain, as if my staring at it would endow him with whatever strength he’d need to safely make it through this.

“Sentinel?”

I looked back, found Luc in the doorway.

“They won’t start for a few more minutes,” he said. “They’ll discuss ground rules, and the psychics will need to calibrate their thoughts to Ethan’s and Nicole’s. In the meantime, I need you to do something.”

I nodded, glad for anything that might take my mind off what would happen in that room. I walked toward the Ops Room, but when he gestured me back toward the stairs, I stopped, shook my head.

“I’m not leaving him.”

He walked back to me. “I just need you to go upstairs.”

I shook my head again. “What if something happens and I’m not here? What if something happens? What if he needs me?”

“I’ll be here, Merit, right next door, where I have to be. Where I have to be,” he repeated, “which means I can’t take care of Lindsey.”

And the fear was in his eyes, too.

We walked silently to the third-floor room they shared, and Luc opened the door.

Lindsey sat on the small bed in the wildly colored room they shared. Novitiate quarters—like the ones I’d first had in Cadogan House—were much smaller than ours. A single room with attached bath and closet. Bed, bookshelf, bureau, nightstand. One or two windows, depending on the location.

She wore long pajamas and had wrapped herself in a fringed fleece Yankees blanket. There was no accounting for taste, I supposed.

“What’s going on?” I asked, looking between them. Because something was definitely going on; I could tell by the nervous magic.

“They’ll be testing Ethan and Nicole,” Luc said. “But they’ll use magic and their psychic connection to do it. It will bleed over.”

Lindsey was psychic; Luc meant the trauma they put Ethan through would bleed over to her. It hadn’t even occurred to me that would happen. I looked at Lindsey. She wasn’t one to look worried, but she definitely looked worried now.

“How much will bleed over?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” Lindsey said. “It could be bad.” She also wasn’t one for showing fear, but it was clear in the set of her jaw and the pale cast to her skin. “We’re connected since he’s my Master, and I’m the most sensitive person in the House.”

It could be bad, and she’d be getting only the overflow of Ethan’s emotions—not the raw bulk of them. That increased my worry exponentially.

“We put her up here,” Luc said, “hoping the physical distance from Ethan would help. It’s as high as you can get in the building, other than the widow’s walk.”

And you didn’t want to be in the middle of a psychic crisis while perched on the edge of Cadogan’s roof.

I took a seat beside her on the bed, brushed her hair over her shoulder. “What can I do?”

“Just be here,” he said. “Malik’s in the room with Ethan. I’ll be right next door. He’ll come through this.” He eyed Lindsey, the love between them obvious. They’d danced at the edges of love for a very long time. But something had happened to solidify their connection—something neither had shared with me, but which I suspected involved a visit to the House from one of Lindsey’s living human relatives. They’d gone away for a few days and come back practically inseparable.

“I’ll be here,” I promised him, and when he left us alone, I unbelted my katana and propped it up against the bed, then unzipped my boots and let them drop.

“Geez,” Lindsey said, leaning back against the wall. “Make yourself at home, Merit.”

“If you’re going to lose it, and I’m going to deal with it, I’m doing it in comfort.” Worried, I looked at her. “Are you going to barf? Because I am really not good with barf.”

“I don’t know.”

She didn’t sound confident, so I glanced around the room, spied a small New York Yankees trash can in one corner. I hopped off the bed, grabbed it, and put it on the nightstand beside her.

The look she gave me was unpleasant. But as a lifelong Cubs fan, I knew I was in the right.

“Really.”

“Absolutely,” I said with a grin, and pulled her toward me. “Come here. We might as well get comfortable.”

She lay down, put her head in my lap. I stroked her blond hair and made sure the blanket covered her shoulders.

“You’ll be fine,” I said. “You’ll be fine, and he’ll be fine, and in an hour, this will all be over.”

I hoped to God I was right.

It was obvious when the test began. Magic flowed, arced, rushed through the House with the force of a tsunami. The House shook with it, a low rumble that felt like someone was jackhammering in the core of the building. And with it, a cacophonous bubble of tension, malaise, and anger that settled over the House like a low-grade fever.

Those were, I assumed, the emotions that the psychics dredged up at Lakshmi’s command. It made a horrible kind of sense. There was little point in testing the effects of joy on a vampire. It was the ability to fight through fear, sadness, anger, that mattered.

I was suddenly freezing, my hands shaking with cold. I pulled another blanket over us.

Lindsey screamed—the sound high and mewing—and clamped her hands over her ears as if the magic was something she could block out like sound. Tears pricked my eyes at her pain . . . a pain that mirrored what Ethan was feeling.

I shook with chills as hot tears slipped down my cheeks. Keep him safe, I silently said, and as the storm of emotions battered the House, as Lindsey sobbed in my lap, I cocooned her in my arms and repeated the mantra again and again.

Keep him safe.

Keep him safe.

Keep him safe.

It was undoubtedly hard on him. He was, after all, the man who endured it. But I hadn’t known how hard it would be on the rest of us.

For an hour we fought it, battered by waves of emotions that pushed the air from our lungs, that plunged us into sadness, that tested us with pain. It was an irritating tingle to me but obviously painful to Lindsey, as she absorbed the heady emotions and magic that flashed through the House.

However skilled the psychics might have been, they weren’t especially good at keeping their efforts geographically confined. Maybe they should have been tested, I grouchily thought.

An hour passed. And then, like a wave sweeping back out to sea, it was over. The sky cleared, the magic lifted, and the House was free again.

I closed my eyes, released an hour of pent-up tension. Lindsey, hair damp and eyes swollen and bruised from crying, sat slowly up.

“Careful,” I said as her body shook with exhaustion. “You all right?”

“I’ll be okay.” She closed her eyes and leaned back against the wall. I hopped off the bed and went into the small bathroom, dampening a washcloth and filling a cup of water.

I came back, handed her the cup, watched her sip greedily. When she emptied it, I set it aside, handed her the washcloth.

“Thank you,” she said, and pressed it to her face. A sob escaped her. I put the cup back in the bathroom, stalled to give her a few moments of privacy. I stared back at my own visage in the mirror, the dark circles under my eyes. I looked tired. Drained by drama and murder and tests. Drained because Ethan and I weren’t connected right now, and that both scared and frustrated me.

When the room quieted again, I walked back in, sat down next to her.

“It was bad,” I said, and she lowered the cloth again, nodded.

“It was pretty bad.”

I hesitated to ask for details, thinking she wouldn’t want to relive it. But I’d have to face Ethan and needed to know what I’d be walking into.

“What can you tell me?” I asked her.

She fisted the washcloth in her hands, squeezing it rhythmically. “I don’t know details. Just general feelings—fear. Loss. They want to see if he can work through it. How he deals with it. If he can be manipulated by it—if someone can use his love against him.” Her eyes widened as if she’d just remembered something, and when she looked at me, her gaze skittered down to my belly.

“You’re going to—you and he are—”

“Not yet,” I said. “Sometime in the future. Not yet. Not now.”

She just blinked, head shaking as she tried to process the possibilities. “Sometime is soon enough. Jesus, Merit. That’s huge. Do you know how big that is? What an historic achievement that is?”

“My getting laid isn’t an historic achievement.” I knew that was not what she’d meant, but I’d meant to put a smile on her face, and I incrementally relaxed when her lip curled, just a bit.

“I didn’t mean that. But a child . . . My God. How did you find out?”

“Gabriel had a prophecy, a vision. But that’s all it is—it’s not a guarantee, so please don’t mention it to anyone else. No one else knows. You can’t even tell Luc.”

She nodded. “Okay, okay.”

Then she closed her eyes again, shuddered.

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing. Nothing.” She opened her eyes, smiled. “He passed.” Her smile blossomed. “I can feel his relief.”

Fear loosened its hold on my heart, just a bit. “Thank God.”

She chuckled. “You’re not showing a lot of confidence in your Master and lover.”

“I was worried. Not because I didn’t think he could handle it, but because we aren’t exactly in a good place right now,” I confessed. “I didn’t want us—where we are—to make it harder for him.”

Lindsey smiled softly. “He didn’t make it in spite of you, Merit. He passed it because of you. Because that’s who you are to him. You may not feel it—not right now—but he’s changed. He is happy because of you.”

Tears blossomed. “Not always.”

“Of course not always. I’m sure you’re a righteous pain in the ass at times. But most times, he’s happy. Ethan is a man of a type: strong, powerful, honorable. But he has always held himself back from the rest of his vampires. Partly because he’s a Master, sure, but partly because he didn’t quite fit. With you, he fits. He’s no longer alone. He’s part of a pair, and that’s a really good thing.”

I knuckled away the escaping tear. “Thanks for that.”

“Of course. You were going to clean up my barf. We’ve had a whole new level of bonding tonight.”

I grinned, pulled on my boots. “I’m going to go downstairs. You’ll be all right?”

She nodded. “I’ll be fine. Want a shower. A skin-blistering shower and maybe three liters of blood. Send Luc up when you can?”

I picked up my katana, headed for the door. “Of course.”

“Merit,” she said, and I glanced back. “Thank you for staying with me. For being here for me.”

“You’re welcome. But it would have been more fun if you’d barfed on the Yankees.”

The House was still quiet but seemed to be coming back to life. Doors were opening, vampires peeking out into the hallway.

“They’re done,” I told them. “He passed.”

Their relief was palpable.

I jogged down the stairs but found the training room door still shut. Luc emerged from the Ops Room, put up a hand.

“Give him a minute, Sentinel. He’ll need to get his bearings first.”

I didn’t want to wait but knew he was right.

“Lindsey?”

“She’s okay. It was rough, but she made it through. No barfing. She’s waiting on you, when you’re ready.”

I looked back at the closed door, then Luc. “What should I do?”

“Why don’t you go back upstairs? Maybe grab him some blood, some food, a shot or two of the oldest Scotch you can find?”

Now, that was a plan I could execute.

I found Margot at a prep station rhythmically chopping celery—and at a speed considerably slower than I’d seen from her before.

“It looks like you made it through,” I said.

She turned tired eyes on me. “Strong psych. I’m exhausted, and the rest of the team’s pretty wiped out, too. I sent them to their rooms during. No one needed knives in hand while that emotional tornado was swirling.” She gestured toward a giant stockpot. “I hope you like chicken soup.”

“That seems like just the thing.”

“Have you seen him yet? Is he okay?”

“I haven’t seen him yet. He’s—well, emotionally debriefing, I guess.” I glanced around. “I thought I’d take him a tray.”

“A good idea. We always have things. And speaking of—don’t you owe him a dinner?”

She was right; I hadn’t had a chance to make good on our race bet. “Unfortunately. And it will probably be French. And fancy. And require a knife.”

“He does like French,” she agreed, pulling a silver tray with handles from a tall wire shelf. “But because he likes classic preparations, not because he likes fancy. You know, I tried modernist cuisine on him once. Chicago’s a hotbed of it, and I spent a little time with a certain very popular chef . . .” She wiggled her eyebrows, waiting for me to guess. Unfortunately, my knowledge of the Chicago food scene ran to deep-dish and Italian beef, not fancy.

“Oh, no kidding? Did a little tutoring, did he?”

“Lots of tutoring,” she said, opening a glass-doored refrigerator and pulling out two bottles of Blood4You. She lined them up on the tray along with a glass and a napkin, then put a small basket of croissants beside it.

“Anyway, I gave Ethan a really nice petite filet with some foams—parsnip and beet, I think. He was not impressed. Kept asking why I’d served him bubble bath for dinner.”

It was nice to know there were limits to even Ethan’s pretentions.

“Comfort food, comfort food,” Margot said, tapping her chin as she returned to the refrigerator. “Ah,” she said, diving inside. She pulled out two ramekins. “Crème brûlée. I presume your objection to French doesn’t include custard.”

“I have no basis to object to custard,” I confirmed, my stomach rumbling in agreement.

“Nor should you. I mean, unless it’s fish custard.” I couldn’t hold back a grimace, but she waved it off. “It was more of my unfortunate molecular gastronomy phase. But it’s over now. Back to simple, delicious foods. And speaking of, we could probably use something with more substance.”

She walked back to the stove, pulled the lid off a pan, and scooped pasta and cheese into small, square bowls.

“Macaroni and cheese with prosciutto,” she said, sprinkling bread crumbs over the top and using a white towel to clean the edges of the bowls. When she was satisfied, she put them on the tray, and we looked down at the meal she’d assembled, heads cocked.

“Lot of beige there,” she said.

“Lot of beige,” I agreed. Custard, macaroni and cheese, and croissants.

“Normally, I’d trade carbs and cheese for some green vegetables, maybe a little spice, or something with a little vinegar. But I think tonight he’s going to want the cheesy and familiar. I’d throw on a grilled cheese and some butterscotch ice cream if we hadn’t already loaded him up with dairy. Here,” she said, crossing the room to the prep area, where she worked with something for a moment before carrying it carefully back.

She revealed two plump red strawberries, sliced into fans, and placed one atop each ramekin of custard. “Voilà.”

“I think that will do it,” I agreed with a smile, picking up the tray. “My compliments to the chef.”

Margot snorted. “It’s traditional to eat the food first before thanking the chef.”

“I know you and your cooking,” I said, making my way to the door. “Consider it payment in advance.”

I had food, but I was still lacking a crucial ingredient on Luc’s Chicken Soup for the Vampire’s Soul list. I made my way into Ethan’s office, set the tray on his desk, and headed to his bar. He had a full stash of bourbons, whiskeys, Scotches, so I pulled the oldest open bottle I could find—eighteen-year-old Glenmorangie—and added the bottle and a clean glass to the tray.

My stomach knotted with fear and anticipation, I made my way to the stairs.