Stone Chameleon (Ironhill Jinn #1) (17 page)

The strange echo made me think my bedroom had grown several sizes before cold tile registered against my face. Why was I lying face down in my bathroom? No, mine didn’t smell of chlorine, nor were the tiles in such a broken state.

“This is bullshit,” a woman said in a tone laced with acid. Harper? “Are you blind? If not, you must be the densest vampire, like, ever.”

Someone snarled. I knew that snarl.

“Isaac!” That was Gerry. “Put the fangs away. If you bite her, you’re in violation of section two. Don’t make this worse than it already is.”

“This is a hive matter.” Isaac’s rage swept over the room like a firestorm, drawing me further awake and making me wish I wasn’t. “She’ll remain mine until the trial, but given the evidence, I doona see the point of holding one at all.”

Why would Harper have a trial?

“You can’t let him do this, Gerry.” Harper again. “You know she didn’t do this. Fine, take her to jail, but a human jail where this arsehole won’t go off and kill her before he figures out she’s been set up by some psychotic bitch with a water fetish.”

Oh.
They were talking about me. I scrambled to remember, but after I’d found Dominic, my memory held nothing but weightlessness and pain.

A heavy sigh came from Gerry as I peeled my lids open, wondering why there were six people but only three voices. Bright fluorescents shone down from the ceiling, highlighting a pool to my left, filled with bloody water.

Right. I’d found Dom at the pool. I lay in a crater, as if I’d plummeted from the sky. Good lord, the stone. I glanced at my foot that had lost its shoe at some point, relieved when it appeared pink instead of black like my rock. Had I killed the woman? Was it her blood in the pool, or mine?

“There’s nothing I can do, Harper.” Worry dragged against Gerry’s voice. “The law is clear. This is Isaac’s jurisdiction, and human law no longer applies to her.”

Harper’s breath hitched. “But what about Dom? He’s not a damn vampire. And why can’t the paramedics come in to look at her, or at least let me check her out? She’s still not awake. By the look of her, she might have a cracked skull for all we know. And explain to me how she fell so hard she broke the floor, dumbass. You can’t let her die like this.”

Every muscle in my body screamed when I tried and failed to rise onto my hands and knees. “Dominic.” I’d heard him screaming. “Where is he?” I talked around a fat lip, and my nose was plugged—or broken. The metallic tang of blood filled my mouth.

A rush of air ruffled my hair, and blue plaid fabric filled my vision. The push of power against my skin announced Isaac’s arrival beside me, and he was no happier to see me than the last time.

“I thought we were friends.” His voice had fallen low, like an echo from a nightmare, the venom in it setting my guts to boil. “How dare you attack the hive like this?”

“What’s happening?” I tried to focus on him, making out only a vague outline of his face. “What are you talking about?”

Footsteps pounded tile. “Get away from her or I’ll kill you myself,” Harper said.

“No.” I tried to get up again, but only managed to roll over, blinking at the brightness and wincing at the jackhammer going to work within my head. “Stop this nonsense. Where’s Dominic?”

Isaac scooped me off the floor into his arms, drawing a scream from me. My spine creaked, and my world spun until I retched. “Playing the fool does not become you, Lou Hudson. I claim you in the name of hive justice.”

“Lou?” Harper spoke through a sob. “I’ll find that bitch. I swear I will, and this arsehole will be begging for forgiveness.” She came nearer and shoved her face close to Isaac’s, though I couldn’t see her expression. “I don’t care if you’re the king of the new fucking world—if you hurt her, even a little, I’ll enjoy carving out your heart and wearing it as a necklace. You hearin’ me, dead man?”

I
opened dry eyes to a foreign ceiling composed of slate-colored stone of the type I imagined old dungeons to have. Water seeped through cracks and
plinked
onto the primitive wooden bench I lay upon. I turned my head to find out where I was, but the flash of fireworks within my skull stopped me cold. A moan burned in my parched throat.

“Tell me why.”

I took a moment to decide if I’d actually heard Isaac’s voice. “Where am I?”

“The hive.”

I’d never heard his voice so devoid of inflection, so dead.

“In the…but why? How did I get here?” A search of my foggy memory only turned up snippets of angry voices and blurry images.

“Tell me why! And your own man? Did he find out what you were doing and try to stop you? Is that why you smashed his skull in and spilled his innards all over the school like a grisly Halloween prank?” His bellow caused me to jerk and roll into the damp wall.

She killed him? Grief welled up like an angry beast in my soul. A tiny rumble shook the stone beneath me. Oh, God. I fully understood what Amun had said about the jinn being walking natural disasters waiting for a trigger. If I gave in, destruction would follow. I imagined my emotions as a black tide, forcing it down into my soul so it wouldn’t bring the building down around us.

The crackling of static sounded behind me. A steady stream of tears leaked out of my eyes as I turned in search of Isaac. He stood beside the bench. Beyond him, bars extended from floor to ceiling on three sides of what appeared to be a prison cell with no visible door.

I shook my aching head, unable to move air through the squeeze on my throat. “She was there. I tried to help him, but I-I don’t remember what happened. Tell me it isn’t true. Tell me he’s all right.”

Isaac fisted his hands into my shirt, tugged me to my feet, and pushed me against the wall. Another kaleidoscope of colors lit up my eyes with the resulting pain. “She did nothing to you. None of them did.” His fangs showed below his curled lip. Instead of gold, his eyes flared crimson. “They were mine. Tell me why you killed them!”

Entirely lost, I begged him with my eyes to listen. “I swear to you I hurt no one other than the woman who called me there, and she wasn’t a vampire.” If I hurt her at all. The blood in the pool might have been Dom’s.

“Lies!” His fist twisted my shirt collar, putting pressure on my throat.

In a panic, I searched my memory for proof to give him. “What did you find me doing the first night we met?” My voice trembled. “Do you remember?”

Releasing me, he stepped back and scrubbed a hand harshly over his face. “Two men had shot Gwenyth and chained her with irons laced with fae silver.”

“Yes.” I fought the agony of Dom’s loss that simmered in the heart of me. “And they were about to cut out her heart when I came along on my way home from my last class of the day.”

The rigidity of his shoulders relaxed enough for me to notice. “You snatched the knife away and stood in their way.” He glanced at me with eyes that held more sadness than anger. “They outweighed you by a hundred pounds, yet they cowered before you. An eighteen-year-old girl with as much grace as she had nerve. It was a sight to see.”

I pulled my shirt away from my neck, still suffering a sense of strangulation. “And when that group of religious zealots sprayed you in the face with fae silver, who cared for you?”

A shadow of a smile broke his frightening mask. “You read Shakespeare to me until my eyes healed.”

“Yes, and I hate Shakespeare, I’ll have you know. I also peeled the burned flesh from you while you swore at me, I might add, or you’d have been scarred for life if your skin had healed around the silver.” Nobody else had been able to get near the raging vampire lord that night, not even his own people, but he’d calmed at my voice, surrendered to my touch. It was the first time the two of us connected in the strange way we sometimes did, when I caught a glimpse of the man he might have been without the curse. “Now tell me—as someone who’s gone to so much trouble for you and your people, why would I hurt you this way?”

The smile faded as fast as it had appeared. “That’s what I need to know before I kill you.” A pop sounded, and he vanished.

It took minutes for the fear-induced stars to leave my eyes. I glanced down at my bare arms and found them covered in crusted blood. My clothes, too, hair, and my bare feet. Dom’s blood. The grief finally overcame me, slammed into my chest like a storm surge upon an unsuspecting ship. I collapsed onto the bench and held my stomach, shaking with the effort of holding myself together. Letting my power erupt would feel so soothing, so good, but I couldn’t. Ever.

Every muscle in my body tightened into a painful knot. Dom had been an innocent, little more than a boy in a man’s body, and he was mine to protect. His grandmother exuded a stern sort of kindness that had become a substitute for Mum’s mothering. How could I have wounded her this way? He was all she had left in the world, having lost her son, Dom’s father, from cancer years before. I’d shattered her world.

Whatever had happened after I passed out had given Isaac what he needed to kill me. My black chariot would be along for me sooner than I thought.

When my tears ran dry, leaving me with a stuffed head that continued to throb, I stared in numb disbelief at my prison cell, most likely the last room I’d ever see. He’d taken everything: my daggers, my wallet, my keys, even my dignity, leaving nothing but a stained bucket as a toilet and a wet rag to wash myself with.

I’d never been inside the hive, nor did I know the location of the entrance. Nobody but Isaac and his people knew, according to him. By the look and old voice of the surrounding stone, the building was ancient, so it wasn’t in downtown Ironhill. If it wouldn’t have endangered Amun and the rest, I’d have made myself an exit in the rock. But if I broke out, Isaac would figure out what I was and hunt me down, along with the last of my people.

A glint of green on the far side of the room caught my attention. Sniffling, I pushed myself to my feet and peered through the bars. A vampire lay on a table on the far side of the rectangular space with its ribs yawing open like the others I’d found. The handle of my elven dagger protruded from the edge of the wound. A closer inspection of her face and stringy blonde hair brought recognition.

Marina.

I covered my mouth, my gorge rising. So young, innocent. Now she was dead. After all her heartache to save her mother from losing a daughter to cancer, the serial killer had taken her, anyway. Marina was the “she” Isaac had meant. He thought I’d killed Marina and Dominic. The water witch murdered them, covered me in their blood, and put my dagger in the body, but why? Who hated both Isaac and me enough to do such a horrific thing? I had to work it out before Isaac returned, or more of his people would die.

Time ticked by unaccounted for. With no window or watch, I had no way of telling how long I’d been there, or even what time of day it was. At least my jinn spirit had ceased its constant assault on my steadfast control and festered in the background, waiting to claim me later.

By the grumbling of my stomach, I had to guess a day or two had passed at least, during which two bottles of water had appeared during my brief moments of sleep. Tears fell often as I lay on the hard bench and tried to think my way out of the death trap I’d stepped into, and to find a way of dealing with knowing Dominic would never again crunch chips in my ear. He would no longer have Sunday dinners with his grandmother. He would not find his dream job of working for one of the largest video game designers on the west coast. I’d taken his life from him. Not directly, but close enough his loss seared itself onto my psyche.

Of all whom I could have been worrying about, Benny came to the forefront. I always left a stash of pellets and hay in his enclosure, but it wouldn’t last forever. I missed my little pig. And my ebony stone, which was missing along with the rest of my belongings.

“I saw myself in you.” Isaac’s voice drew my mind back to the present. He stood next to Marina with his back to me, his hand stroking over her hair as he spoke softly. “In need of a firm hand, too busy worrying about the past to dream of the future. I spent two centuries like this, drained and withered. That wasn’t to be your fate, you silly girl. Why did you run from me?”

My God, he loved her, loved her as a father would love a daughter. If I hadn’t seen it for myself, I’d never have believed him capable of such tenderness. Perhaps the sentiment he’d expressed about Daniel at the precinct had been genuine after all.

I moved to the bars and wrapped my fingers around them, having a desire for contact, even of the vampire sort. “Did you ever tell her how much you cared for her?”

His voice came from behind me, having zapped there when I’d blinked. “How many times do I have to tell you? Doona try to paint human feelings on me, Ms. Hudson. Every loss of power is a blow to the hive.”

I whirled about, ramming my rear into the bars. Isaac sat on the bench, his head hanging forward, his face shrouded by his wavy hair. Had I been mistaken about his posture and the grief in his whispers? All of it had vanished to leave him the brooding beast I knew well. I wondered if he hadn’t meant me to hear him. Or perhaps I was looking for humanity that simply wasn’t within him.

“I’m sorry for your loss,” I said.

“Doona say another word.” His tone snapped like a whip.

While the adrenaline waned, I ordered my thoughts. “I’ve been thinking of ways to prove what I say is true.”

He raised his chin and stared at me with tired black eyes. “And?”

“There’s a voicemail on my machine from the woman who took Dominic. If you listen, you’d at least know that part is true. She lured me there with the intention of setting the scene as you found it. I knew it was a trap, but she’d made it so nobody could help me, and I wouldn’t leave Dominic at her mercy, or I’d never have been able to live with myself.”

I considered telling him about the water samples or the possibility of her blood in the pool water, but if she turned out to be jinn, it would only result in further bloodshed. “And Harper said flooding caused the accidents last night. There must be police reports detailing them and Dom’s apartment, also flooded and trashed. And if I killed Marina and Dom, then how did I end up unconscious? You must know this doesn’t add up.” At his silence, my anger tumbled out. “Or maybe you’re just looking for an excuse to kill me. You’ve always hated me, I just don’t know why.”

He was suddenly on his feet. His fist smashed into the stone, punching a hole a foot deep. “I said I
would
kill you, not that I wanted to.” He cursed at the ceiling. “The council demands I end you immediately given the evidence.”

I stared at him for seconds, trying and failing to make sense out of him. “Then why haven’t you?” It wasn’t like Isaac to hesitate, especially with permission from the vampire nation’s highest authority.

Isaac’s deadly stare pressed upon me like a thousand needles. “You must give me something concrete. Let me take your mind.”

“No.”

He came at me like a huffing bull and clamped his hands around the bars on either side of my head, trapping me against them. “If you’re not guilty, what is so terrible a secret you’d give your life for it?” He pounded the iron with the heel of his hand, his cool breath sending shivers along the left side of my face and throat. “Dammit, lass, do you want to die?”

Fear must have been messing with my hearing, because yet again those human emotions seemed to be tumbling out of his mouth. Since when did he care what happened to me?

I released a shuddering breath. “There’s more at stake here than just me. You must give me a chance to prove my innocence, or I’ll die anyway, along with others who don’t deserve it.”

Stillness settled over him, as if he’d shut down his body to consider my words. Half suffocating and half comforted by his solid weight, I remained motionless so I wouldn’t draw a strike from his fangs hovering so near.

“You belong to me now, so I can take you by force under the law.” He cradled my face in his hands as he would a fragile egg, forcing it in line with his as he had at the precinct.

I clamped my eyes shut. The gentleness he exuded, contrasting with his violent nature, disturbed me on a primal level.

“It would hurt, but you’ll heal in time.”