Stiletto Read online

  And it would lead me to the next moment.

  And the next moment was going to be the hardest.

  “I’m going to stop her.” I stared at Grandma, and she stared back at me, and there was something in her eyes that was heavy and solemn and suggested she felt exactly like I did. “Whatever it takes. That’s the choice I have to make next.”

  Grandma didn’t say anything for a long moment. Then she let out a long breath.

  “I hope it’s me, when it comes down to it,” she said. “I hope no one else has to face it. But if it’s you—if you’re the one who gets the chance—”

  “I know,” I said. “I’ll take it.”

  “Come help me mix these herbs, sabre.” Grandma held out a hand.

  I took it, and she pulled me in close and dropped a kiss on the top of my head.

  “We’re going to have to fight our way through a lot of vampires. Garlic smoke bombs might take the edge off,” she said.

  “Tasty. We should bring bread and pesto as housewarming gifts.”

  She removed a thick braid of garlic bulbs from their hook on the ceiling. “Crush the cloves and set them in a bowl with a handful of garnet nuggets,” she instructed.

  There was no more to say. I got to work.

  36

  It didn’t take much to convince the rest of the Daggers that we had to go storm Sienna’s castle. It took a lot more energy to convince them that we shouldn’t do it the very night the idea was announced.

  The mothers were furious. I’d seen angry Daggers before, but I’d never witnessed this level of rage. Rose clutched Sakura to her throughout our first meeting like she was prepared to fight off anyone in the room who so much as breathed wrong. Sakura was two years old, resilient, and not much in the mood to be clutched, but she knew better than to get into a battle of wills with her mom, and so did the other girls.

  It wasn’t just them. Each of the kidnapped girls had sisters, cousins, aunts, godmothers, and playmates, and we had all been affected by their ordeal. Knowing that there were other families out there going through the same hell we’d just emerged from had us on edge. But eventually, after plenty of heated arguments and Grandma putting her foot down more than once, we came to a consensus.

  We had a date. We had a plan. All we had left to do was train and wait.

  “You have to wonder how many other baddies have been going free while we’ve been prepping for this,” I said to Brendan a week after our first coven meeting.

  The days had been creeping and racing by all at once, and each day I was impatient to go after Sienna and equally in dread of the risks that came with our plan. Now, we had only one night to go—one night, and then, when the sun broke over the horizon, we would break into Sienna’s stronghold and attempt to tear her kingdom apart.

  Brendan drew the blanket I’d brought out closer around his shoulders. We were on the roof outside my bedroom with an enormous enchanted umbrella hovering over us, shielding us from the inevitable evening drizzle. There weren’t stars out here, not with the sky as overcast as it was, and there wasn’t much of a sunset, either. But the steely skies and grim forest that stretched out in front of us held their own kind of beauty.

  “You’ve all been busy,” he said. “But I figure we’ll get rid of close to a hundred vampires tomorrow, so it should even out your numbers.”

  “It’s not about numbers,” I said. “It’s about—”

  “Protecting the innocent, I know.”

  “But we’ll still protect a lot of innocents by getting these vamps off the streets,” I said.

  “We’re going to save a lot of innocents if Rowan is right about Sienna’s little factory farm.”

  I shuddered. “It’s a disgusting thought.”

  “I’m sure you’ve dealt with worse.”

  “I don’t think so,” I leaned back until my spine nudged against the frame around my bedroom’s dormer window, then rested there. “I think, in terms of sheer evil, this one is definitely the worst.”

  “What about the werewolf pack that we chased away from that kid’s birthday party?” he said.

  I shook my head. “Those werewolves were vile, and I hope they rot in jail, but at least they were hunting. Following their instincts.”

  “Those aren’t my instincts,” he said sharply.

  “No, I know,” I said. “Sorry. But these vamps are…” I shook my head. “There’s something so cold and premeditated about it.”

  Brendan sighed and gazed out to the horizon. “I guess the question is, which is worse? A quick, early death or a lifetime of trauma?”

  “They’re both worse,” I said.

  There was no question. And there was no point to ranking evil, either. It was all bad. It was all the worst. It was all something we had to fight.

  Brendan nodded, and a long silence descended as we watched the rain.

  “I’d tell you to be careful tomorrow, but you’ll handle yourself better than me in there,” he finally said.

  I looked sidelong at him and raised an eyebrow. “You having a self-esteem crisis over there or are you trying to flatter me?”

  He laughed. “No, I mean it. I can go in there and dispose of vamps, but it’s genetic for me. I’m a werewolf. We’re big with teeth. You’re something else.”

  “A witch?”

  He gave me a crooked smile. “It’s not about that. I’ve been blown away over the past few months at how hard you work. Not just you, but the Daggers, all of you. The hours you put in, the sacrifices you make.”

  “It’s what we do.”

  “It’s incredible. It makes me feel better about the world, that you’re willing to do all that to protect strangers.”

  A soft warmth stirred in the pit of my stomach. It flared into heat a moment later when Brendan reached a hand out and took mine.

  “I wish you didn’t have to make some sacrifices, though.”

  I didn’t have to ask what he meant. It was there between us all the time, in the walls I put up and in the way he and Alec jostled for my attention without anything ever coming of it.

  I was a Dagger. Even if I hadn’t reminded him of my responsibilities at every turn, it couldn’t have escaped his notice that not one of the women in my coven had a boyfriend or husband.

  He ran his thumb across the back of my hand, and my skin tingled in the wake of his touch.

  “At least you know why,” I said. “The other Daggers can’t even tell people why they can’t commit to relationships. Or regular dates.”

  “You’re all married to your mission.”

  He ran his hand up my wrist, and his thumb caught under the sleeve of my jacket. My breath caught. I hadn’t realized how sensitive the skin of my wrist could be.

  “Do any of you know your dads? Or your biological dads, I mean?”

  “Some of us do. It’s not too common.” I shrugged. “Usually only if the dad has worked with us and has a reason to know we exist.”

  “What about you?” he said. “Can I ask that?”

  “It’s not a big deal,” I said. “My dad was a one-night stand. My mom and her sister have different dads, both people Grandma knew over the years.”

  “But she never stayed with any of them.”

  “It doesn’t work.” I sat up straighter, and Brendan’s hand fell away from my wrist. “People want to be in relationships with other people. Daggers can’t make those kinds of promises.”

  He turned around on the gently sloping rooftop and knelt in front of me. His shoulders were broad enough to block the whole overcast landscape from my view. “I’m not asking for promises, Scarlett. I know you can’t give them. I can’t either, not until I know for sure my pack is safe on our own land, and I don’t know how long that’s going to take.”

  The sound of the rain picked up, and delicate water droplets poured from the edges of the umbrella that floated over our heads. “So where does that leave us?” I asked.

  He reached out a hand and touched my chin. His fingertips were g
entle, the caress an experiment, and I couldn’t stop myself from leaning into it.

  “I think it leaves us right here,” he said. “Right now. I think we have tonight, and we’ll figure out tomorrow when we get there.”

  “And then, what, we’ll just keep doing that forever?”

  “Seems to be how most people live. One day, then another.”

  He leaned forward, and my heartbeat quickened. When his face was just an inch away from mine, he stopped, even though my lips were already reaching out toward him.

  “I’m going to kiss you now.” His hazel gaze searched my face, and he held still, waiting, until I gave him the tiniest of nods.

  Then his lips claimed mine. His heavy, muscled body pushed me back against my bedroom window as heat flared between us. A whimper that surprised me rose in my throat, and I pulled him closer.

  I had no idea what was going to happen tomorrow. But tonight was ours. After that, we would take it one heartbeat at a time.

  37

  Cool morning light filtered through the trees overhead. I peeked around the edge of a tree at the vampires’ gloomy mansion and let out a breath. Everything was quiet. The lights that had flickered in the windows for the past hour had all been doused. If they weren’t asleep yet, they would be soon.

  Asleep, that was, except for the single guard Mom had seen patrolling the mansion halls in her scrying mirror last night, and we already had our best archer poised to take him out. Robin could hit two people walking a foot apart from a hundred yards away without thinking twice, and I knew she would have no problem popping the vampire guard the instant she caught his movement around a corner.

  “Doesn’t matter how many missions I take, the moment right before we head in always makes me tingle,” I said.

  Ginger tightened the leather strap that held several sheathed daggers against her thigh. “That feeling never goes away.”

  It had taken Ginger a while to heal from her last encounter with Sienna, even with Clancy’s expert ministrations. Now that she was here, I knew there was nothing I could have done to stop her from coming and I’d have been a fool to try. She was angry—as angry as I was, as angry as every one of our sisters—and ready to fight.

  “Waterfall Palace guards are on their way,” Grandma said in an undertone when she came to find me a few minutes later. Her white hair was slicked back out of her way, and her lips were as red as fresh blood. “The queen wanted the palace to handle this one personally. They’ve got a team of healers who can take care of the children’s injuries. Once we get the first child past the boundary line, that’s enough evidence that the guards can dismantle the wards at the edge of the property and come in to help us.”

  A phone call or texted photo of a child in a prison cell should have been enough in terms of evidence. But Sienna had tightened the wards that guarded this place since we’d been here last. We had reason to believe individual witches could break through the property line without alerting the whole house, at least with a little support from Saffron and our other most advanced spell casters. But cell phone signals got scrambled around magic at the best of times. With wards like this up, the chances of any message getting through were slim to none.

  “They’ll focus on the kids, though, right?” I asked.

  Grandma nodded. “No matter how stealthy we are on the way in, we’ll have to fight our way out. By the time anyone from the palace can cross the property line, I think the battle will have been decided one way or the other.”

  “I hope you’re more optimistic than you sound.”

  “I’m always optimistic and always cautious.”

  It seemed like good life advice. I made sure my dagger, wooden stakes, and pistols were all in place and popped the collar of my jacket. Grandma had made this red leather coat for me when I’d first been initiated into the coven, and I’d spent most of last night enchanting it with protection spells. It wasn’t exactly armor but it would be enough to keep vampire teeth from getting too close to my skin.

  Rowan came up to me as Grandma moved silently away to check on the rest of her troops. She was even paler than usual in the watery morning light, and her dark eyes were hard.

  “You ready for this?” I asked.

  “I’ll sleep better once it’s done,” she said. She gave me a sharp look. “Which is something I do intend to do during the day, but only because I’m on overnight missions most of next month.”

  I held up a hand, and she bumped my fist with hers.

  “I’ll join you in the daytime naps,” I said. “Once Sienna’s gone, I think I’ll sleep for a year.”

  A distinct bird call sounded between the trees nearby. The call was repeated farther down, and then again from Daggers and Wildwoods hidden in the trees surrounding the property. The faintest shimmer rippled across the lawn as one of the glamoured witches stole toward the house. There was a long pause, then a window to the side of the building wavered. It melted into water, and within a minute the window was nothing more than a damp stain on the side of the building.

  The bird call sounded again, and another shimmer darted across the lawn. That one had to be Robin.

  I forced myself to maintain deep, steady breaths while we waited. Then a tiny glowing light zipped out of the window and dissolved into the damp grass like a firecracker going out.

  “Let’s kill some vamps,” Rowan muttered.

  I waved a glamour over myself and the Wildwood who’d been assigned as my infiltration partner. I’d met him a few times before; he was young and angry and ready to tear this place apart.

  Rowan threw her glamour over Alec when he approached to take his place behind her.

  I hadn’t spoken much to Alec since my kiss with Brendan last night. I didn’t know how. I swallowed and looked away as he disappeared.

  Figuring that out had to wait. I took a deep breath and moved forward.

  It was easy work getting in through the empty window frame. Once inside, it was a little more difficult not to run into one another’s glamoured forms. We’d chosen strong glamours for this mission. That meant we couldn’t even see one another well through them, although I could still hear the footsteps of the werewolf behind me.

  “You’re good to go,” I whispered, my voice barely louder than a breath. “The glamour won’t dissolve for a good ten minutes or until you shift, whichever comes first. Make the most of it.”

  He squeezed my arm in gentle acknowledgment, and then he slipped past me, his steps fading the moment he reached the carpet in the hallway.

  We were a silent infestation, an army of pale shadows invading the home, spreading to every corner, and taking out as many vampires as we could manage before one of them sensed something wasn’t right and raised the alarm.

  We didn’t usually kill as a first choice. If a Dagger could talk through a problem, Grandma had always said, she did that first. If she couldn’t talk, she would subdue. And if she couldn’t subdue, then, and only then, she would escalate to lethal measures.

  But this wasn’t an ordinary situation, and these weren’t ordinary stakes. There might be innocent children here—dozens, if Rowan was to be believed—and their captors had already lost the privilege of our mercy.

  There were many doors leading to the dungeon prison, or so Mom’s divinations had suggested, but my first job was to check the place where the Dagger prisoners had been held. I made my way down the deceptively empty hallways in a silence broken only by occasional faint footsteps from my invisible comrades. I passed at least one vampire body lying in the hall. A wooden stake had been driven through her heart; it was one of the only ways to keep her from reviving. I averted my eyes and kept walking forward until I reached the enormous throne room where I’d first seen Sienna holding court.

  The door was unlocked, and the prison room was pitch-black. I took a chance and snapped my fingers to send a quick glow of light around the room. The blankets and the television set in the Dagger children’s cell were still there, lying abandoned.


  I turned to creep back up the stairs, but the dim light from the central hall was blocked by a shadowy figure. I reacted on instinct. My dagger flew through the darkness, and the time between the moment it left my hand and the moment the vampire cried out told me his distance and position in a way my eyes couldn’t. I ran forward, stake outstretched, and my arm jolted and then gave as the weapon sank into his chest.

  He let out a gurgling sound and crumpled. I pulled my dagger free and ran over his body and up the stairs.

  One down. Goddess only knew how many to go.

  Shouting echoed at the top of the stairs, followed by a series of piercing screams and the unmistakable boom of an explosion.

  The vampires knew we had arrived.

  38

  I took the stairs two at a time. My heart thundered, and adrenaline roared in my ears.

  The wide double doors on the opposite side of the throne room banged open. A stream of shadowy figures poured in, along with the sounds of more screams.

  It was too dark in here; it gave the vamps an unfair advantage. I threw my hand above my head and cast light toward the shadowy ceiling. Flames lit in the giant chandeliers, doing little to fight the gloom of this cavernous space but giving me enough to see by.

  My glamour was intact. They wouldn’t be able to see me unless they happened to look right at me when I moved, but they’d be able to smell me. Vampires had a sense of smell rivaled only by werewolves, and I was already stained with the blood of my first victim.

  The throne room was in chaos. A bolt of light shot toward me, and I threw myself to the floor. The spell missed the vampire it had been aimed for but blasted through the back of Sienna’s throne, splintering the high seat back and sending shards of wood flying through the air like shrapnel. I crawled on my belly out of the line of fire and pressed myself against a wall.