Crimson Daggers- The Complete Trilogy Read online

  I shook my head at Blaze, whose face was hard and had gone deathly white.

  “Go,” she screamed.

  A main trail was just up ahead. I zoomed forward, silently praying that the wolf wouldn’t be able to keep up with us once we were on level terrain, but the creature only seemed to get faster. It galloped off to the side in a wide arc and ran ahead of us. I was almost beginning to hope it was chasing something else, something far in front of my motorcycle, when it spun to face us.

  The wolf held its ground even as we hurtled toward it. The monster’s eyes were a piercing yellow, and the thick fur around its neck stood on end. The wolf snarled, baring its giant teeth, and its muscles tensed as it poised to spring.

  And then, as if from out of nowhere, another wolf launched itself at the first one. Their massive bodies hit each other with a sickening thud, and the one that had been chasing us yelped. The new attacker growled and turned its gleaming, golden eyes on me.

  There was nowhere to go. On one side, the ground rose to a dirt embankment riddled with the protruding roots of trees overhead. On the other, the earth disappeared in a sudden drop.

  My bike wouldn’t make it.

  I skidded to a stop and pulled my wand from my jacket. I pointed it at the werewolf while Grandma muttered a string of ancient words under her breath.

  The beast crouched, and we both froze, staring at one another. Then, so quickly I couldn’t quite tell what was happening, its form shifted and shrank until the eyes staring at me were small, human, and hazel.

  Brendan strode toward me, his broad shoulders scratched and bleeding. Only a ragged pair of trousers clung to his muscled frame, and his face twisted in rage.

  My mouth opened and closed, but nothing came out.

  “You invaded my home,” he growled.

  This kicked me back to life, and my blood boiled. Fire leapt to my palms, and I squeezed them into fists to douse the flames.

  “You kidnapped my grandmother.”

  A gunshot echoed through the forest behind me, then another. I flinched.

  A second later, the muttering behind me stopped. Grandma shouted a final word and threw out a hand, and a massive wall of energy pulsed from her toward Brendan and the other werewolf.

  They both flew back. Brendan landed on his back and skidded, unconscious, to the side of the trail. The werewolf stumbled off the edge of the path. Its heavy body rolled down the steep hill, crushing ferns and saplings on the way with heavy crashes and thuds, and it came to a stop far below.

  “Ride,” Grandma ordered.

  My hands trembled on the handlebars, and the world filled with sparks and stars as I tried to catch my breath.

  But I leaned forward, and I rode.

  27

  “The man who stopped us on the way out wasn’t just a wolf,” I said, pacing back and forth in front of the empty fireplace. I looked at Grandma, who sat in a chair with tea in hand. “He’s the alpha, isn’t he?”

  She nodded.

  “Where are the other Daggers? Why aren’t they back yet?”

  “Take a deep breath, Scarlett,” she said. She sounded calm.

  How could she be calm? How could anyone be calm when half the coven was still out there? Half the coven, including my mother?

  I tried to take a deep breath, but it came too quickly and stars spun in my vision. My skin tingled. Grandma reached out and patted the arm of the chair beside her.

  “Sit, sabre,” she said. “Settle down.”

  “I can’t.”

  “You can and you will,” she said. “You are a witch. Use your training. Sit down and control your mind.”

  “It’s not my mind causing problems.”

  I dropped into the chair and put a hand on my heart. It was pounding so hard the world seemed to tremble a little with each beat.

  “Pepper disappeared,” I said. “She didn’t come back with us.”

  Grandma took a sip of her tea and nodded slowly. “Sometimes that happens.”

  “Is she dead?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “How are you not freaking out right now?”

  She looked at me. “Will it help?”

  Of course not, but what did that have to do with anything? I stood back up and paced again. Grandma caught my hand and pulled me back down into the chair.

  I drew my feet up to my chest and listened to the clock tick.

  Finally, after longer than seemed possible, the front door opened. The handle clicked and I launched myself out into the hallway. Mom came in first, and I threw myself into her arms.

  Mom wasn’t much of a hugger, but she drew me in and patted my back. “I got your message that Grandma was home safe,” she murmured against my ear. She touched the dagger charm that dangled around her neck on a golden cord. “You did good.”

  “How is everyone else? Are they okay?”

  Mom’s expression clouded over. Her lips pressed into a thin line, and she glanced past me and into the parlor. “Is Grandma in bed?”

  “She’s waiting to see everyone.”

  Mom took my hand, and something about it made my heart fluttered with fear again. We went into the parlor while the other Daggers filtered into the foyer behind us and dissipated off to their rooms. Mom and Grandma embraced, and then Mom said in a low voice, “Pepper didn’t make it.”

  My heart clenched.

  “What happened?” Grandma’s voice was steady, like she’d been expecting it.

  “Accident,” Mom said. “She was keeping one of the dogs away from you, and her bike hit a tree.”

  My knees felt wobbly. I melted back into the chair.

  Pepper was gone. One of the Daggers had died—died—and it was all because of me. She’d been protecting me so I could get out, and she was dead.

  The word echoed in my head, and I couldn’t get it to settle.

  I sat on the chair, frozen, while Mom kept talking in a low voice.

  “We couldn’t carry her out on a bike, of course. Not without getting stopped. Ginger’s going back to bring her home in a day or two once the dogs have cleared the area.”

  Finally, Grandma’s fingers had gone rigid against her teacup. Anger rose slowly around her, thick enough for me to feel in the air like I might feel static or heat.

  “What are we going to do about her little girl?” I said. I pictured tiny, curly-headed Peony, and my throat closed up.

  “We’ll take care of her,” Mom said. “We always do.”

  This had happened before. Sometimes—not often, but sometimes—Daggers didn’t come home. But we hadn’t faced this since I was a child. I hadn’t understood what was happening at the time, but I remembered the cloud of grief and anger that had filled the mansion for weeks after it had happened.

  “Cherry and Clancy will handle her affairs,” Mom said, as much to herself as to me and Grandma. “Clancy will examine the body and write up a coroner’s report for the Humdrum officials.”

  That was Pepper, now: the body. I felt dizzy.

  “I’ll address the house tonight,” Grandma said. Her voice was hard, and something about that comforted me. She should be angry. We should all be angry.

  Mom let out a deep sigh. “I’m going to shower,” she said. “It’s been a long day, and tomorrow won’t be easier.”

  I watched her go. Grandma was back, but the weight on Mom’s shoulders hadn’t lifted. I felt it on my shoulders, too, a heavy guilt that made me want to cry or scream or maybe just go hide in a hole for the next twenty years.

  “It’s my fault.”

  Grandma frowned at me with her eyebrows drawn up. She looked the worse for wear, no thanks to the wolves. Her hair was a mess, and her skin looked dry and thirsty for its usual regimen of potions and creams. Under it all, though, she was strong, and her back was ramrod-straight.

  “Nothing about this is your responsibility,” she said. “Pepper did her job. She acted with honor. You all did.”

  “I didn’t,” I said.

  I couldn’t
wipe Brendan’s face from my memory. I kept picturing him standing there, his hazel eyes dark and his expression full of fury.

  I’d trusted him. Maybe not much, maybe not with anything important, but I’d trusted that he was what he’d claimed.

  It had been such a tiny amount of trust to offer to another person, and he’d still shattered it.

  How long had he been lying? Had it been the first time we’d met at Gilt, or even before? What had he intended to eventually use me for? And why had I let him in?

  I wrapped my arms around my knees and rested my chin on them.

  “Grandma, I know him,” I said. “The alpha.”

  28

  The words felt like they’d opened me up too much, like I’d been sparring and let my guard down and now a punch was coming. I let the confession hang in the air.

  “The alpha?” she said. “The one who crossed our path today?”

  “Yes.”

  “How?”

  She wasn’t angry. Not yet.

  I searched, trying to find the best say to say it, and Grandma watched me in silence. But there was no good way to share something this terrible.

  “He was a friend,” I finally said, but that wasn’t right. I raced ahead before I could change my mind, but every word felt like it was choking me. “I think he was trying to be more than a friend, and I was about to let him. I met him the day I got arrested.” My mouth was dry. I swallowed. “We’ve been talking. He took me to dinner a few days ago.”

  Goddess, I’d been so stupid.

  “Did he ask you about your family?” Grandma said.

  I ventured a glance at her, then looked away before I could identify the expression on her face.

  “A little,” I said. “Not much. Nothing that seemed out of the ordinary.”

  “He’s clever,” Grandma said. “He wouldn’t do anything to tip you off.” She took a slow sip of tea. “It’s likely he identified you long before any of this happened,” she finally said. “He’s like any good predator: he tracks his prey and waits patiently.”

  “I should have noticed something was wrong.”

  “No,” Grandma said. “He wouldn’t have tipped his hand.”

  She should be furious at me. I wished she’d start shouting; at least then I wouldn’t feel so confused.

  “I’m sorry about my first mission,” I blurted.

  Grandma shrugged. “Not every first mission goes to plan. You did exceptionally well this time around.” She tilted her head, thoughtful. “You haven’t done anything wrong, sabre. We all make mistakes, especially at the beginning.”

  “I broke Sienna’s arm!”

  Her eyebrows flashed up. “You what?”

  “It was an accident,” I said. “But I still broke it. I didn’t ride fast enough to keep Pepper safe. I might have mentioned something about the Daggers to Brendan when he got me drunk.”

  “Don’t for an instant think that was an accident,” she said. Her jawline hardened. “That young alpha would have done anything to get to me, no matter who he had to go through.”

  “I can’t believe he would use me like that.”

  “I can,” Grandma said. “He has his reasons.” She held her teacup out toward me. “Pop some more water in there, would you, dear?”

  I took the cup with trembling fingers and filled it from the teakettle on the sideboard. Steam rose from the cup, and I held on for an extra moment, letting the ceramic warm my fingers. I handed the cup to Grandma and fixed a mug of chamomile for myself.

  “Brendan Rawlins is the only son of a very powerful werewolf,” Grandma said, while I was still pouring the water with my back to her. “Who wasn’t a good man. I can’t fathom what Brendan thought of him. The boy would have been young when his father died.” She peered into her tea like she was trying to read the leaves, even though the cup was full. “I killed him. The father. It wasn’t intentional, but I did it.”

  I turned around and examined her face. It didn’t reveal much. “What happened?”

  “He was trying to turn a young Humdrum girl,” Grandma said.

  I sat back down and clutched my hot mug as I waited for the herbs to steep.

  “It was a coincidence that I was even there. I’d been sent to the forest to search for evidence of a Sasquatch that was rumored to be hiding out. A young Humdrum girl had gone hiking with her parents that day and gotten separated from them, and Jonathan—that was his name—saw the opportunity to add to his pack.”

  “I can’t believe they would attack children,” I muttered. “It’s disgusting.”

  “Jonathan had strong beliefs about the superiority of werewolves,” she said. “From what I learned of his ideology later, it’s possible he thought he was giving her a gift. An entrance into the Glimmering world, the opportunity to know what it’s like to run through the forest under a full moon—he believed their way was better.”

  “That wasn’t for him to decide.”

  “No, it wasn’t. So I protected the girl. And Jonathan died.”

  “You shouldn’t feel bad about that.”

  “I don’t,” she said. “Or at least I’ve forgiven myself for it. But that action had echoes. It left wounds. And Brendan feels I need to pay my debt to his pack.”

  “Brendan is the one who’s going to pay,” I said. My hands trembled, and the surface of my tea rippled.

  Grandma nodded, but not like she was actually agreeing. She was thinking.

  I couldn’t imagine just thinking right now. Pepper was dead. And I was furious. I was shattered. I wanted to murder him.

  “The Wildwoods have been getting more aggressive lately,” Grandma said. “The Waterfall Palace keeps me apprised of disappearances—kidnappings, possible murders, anything that seems suspicious. Runaway statistics, too. They’ve been going up.”

  “The Wildwoods have been trying to grow their numbers,” I said, and my stomach turned. “A friend told me that’s what they want. To have their own society with a role in the Faerie Court and everything.”

  It made me ill to think about monsters like that demanding a leading role in our world. They didn’t deserve to live, let alone have a place in the queen’s court.

  “I regret that the alpha pulled you into all this,” Grandma said. “It’s difficult when our missions get mixed in with our personal lives.”

  My mind raced over everything I’d ever told Brendan. Had he really been stalking me for longer than I’d realized? Had I been the reason Grandma had been kidnapped and Pepper was lying dead in the forest somewhere?

  “You rescued me,” Grandma said. She leaned over and put a hand on my knee. “You and your sisters.”

  “We lost Pepper.”

  We sat in silence. The reality was heavy and clung to me like the smell of fear that still mingled with my sweat.

  29

  I couldn’t sleep. I couldn’t think. But I could design, and write press releases for Glimmering news agencies, and act as an intermediary between Grandma and Josette while we pretended Grandma was still recovering from kraken virus in the Maldives.

  I wished I’d picked a lie that was easier to wrap up, but then, I wished a lot of things.

  The spreadsheet in front of me in Grandma’s Carnelian office felt about a thousand miles long. It held the names of guests who’d been invited to our Fashion Week show, and I had no idea how to start paring this behemoth down to match the number of seats in the venue. Grandma had wanted to keep this show exclusive, but how was I supposed to decide whether to nix singer Dior Miller or unexpectedly beloved pan flutist Petra Sharpei? I sighed deeply and blinked. I’d been staring at my laptop screen so long my eyelids felt like sandpaper.

  My phone buzzed.

  Grandma: Would you contact Julian Sterling to confirm his staff for hair?

  I responded, then noticed I had another unread message.

  Brendan: How you doing? Thinking of swinging by your grandma’s house to say hello today.

  A cold, clammy feeling flooded my skin. My ha
nds shook.

  I wanted to say a thousand things back, and none of them would come out as words. Finally, fingers trembling, I typed back the only thing that really mattered.

  Scarlett: Stay away from my family.

  His reply was instant, as though he’d been waiting for me.

  Brendan: Some of my pups saw one of your girls back in my woods. Your people aren’t welcome here.

  I pictured Pepper’s body lying there, and Ginger trying to find her way back to it. I suddenly struggled to breathe. I stared at the message and the phone shook in my hands.

  I couldn’t. I wouldn’t.

  I hurtled my phone across the room. It hit the studio wall with a crack and clattered to the floor. I gripped the arms of my office chair and stared ahead at my laptop screen while the lists of names swam in front of my eyes.

  In the pit of my stomach, heat began to wake. This was a rage I had never felt before, a kind of fury I hadn’t known existed. My skin radiated with warmth, and I felt as though I could summon an explosion to my fingertips if I tried.

  So I did try. Tiny crackling flames lit in my palms as if they’d only been waiting for an invitation, and I watched them dance and spin across my hands.

  Then I squeezed my hands into fists and clenched them against my stomach.

  Brendan would not control me like this.

  I would not go after him, not unless the Stiletto gave the order.

  I would focus on my work at Carnelian, and I would do everything possible to honor Pepper’s memory and the coven’s mission.

  But I would give him a warning.

  Slowly, I walked across the room and picked my phone back up. The screen was shattered, a spiderweb of cracks running across its surface.

  Scarlett: My girls already killed your worthless father. Don’t make us come after you.

  I sent the message, and then I turned my phone to silent.

  I had work to do.

  Alec was at the downtown office before I arrived. I found him sitting in the lobby with a small box in his hands. He didn’t have a phone or any other distraction out and gazed softly into the distance as if deep in thought.