Biting Cold (Chicagoland Vampires #6)(28)
Author: Chloe Neill

Catcher provided an address, so I assumed I was supposed to meet him there. Wel, we were supposed to meet him there.

Paige actualy seemed like she had a level head on her shoulders, and she surpassed Simon in common sense by a large margin.

That made her the better of the two potential Order representatives who undoubtedly wanted to check in on Malory.

The choice was clear.

I grabbed my sword and dropped by the guest suite to let Paige know we were ready to go. She was in trendy clothes this time: skinny jeans, a long cardigan, and furry boots.

"Helen did good," I said. "With the clothes, I mean."

She looked down at her ensemble. "I was pleasantly surprised. Vamps seem to wear a lot of black. I was afraid she’d put me in head-to-toe waiter wear." She seemed to remember I was wearing black, too, and winced a little. "No offense."

"None taken. Black is the House uniform." I gestured toward the stairs. Paige fel into step beside me and we headed back down to the second floor.

"Color is the new black."

"Not according to Ethan Sulivan."

"So where are we going exactly?"

I glanced down at the address Catcher had given me…and smiled a little. If we were going where I thought, Gabriel had been right about my knowing Malory’s caretaker.

"Someplace familiar" was al I said.

We drove into a neighborhood in the western part of the city known as Ukrainian Vilage. It was a working-class neighborhood with churches and food and people from the old country, and it was home to the unofficial Chicago headquarters of the North American Central Pack, a bar caled Little Red.

That’s precisely where we were headed.

The bar was on the corner of a strip of run-down buildings.

Shifters tended to favor substance over style…and hearty Eastern European food over delicate snacks. We hadn’t even parked the car when I could begin to smel the tangy, meaty goodness.

I puled into a spot at the end of a line of diagonaly parked motorcycles. Shifters also preferred bikes to cars and prided themselves on the leather and chrome of their usualy custom rides.

"They’re holding her in a bar?" Paige asked.

"I’m not entirely sure. But it’s the Pack’s bar, so we’l see."

We got out of the car and skirted the bikes for the sidewalk.

Out of respect, I left my sword in the car. Cadogan House vamps had a delicate aliance with the NAC, and I had no interest in screwing that up, especialy since they were doing us a favor by keeping Malory safer and more secure than the Order had been able to.

Catcher puled up on the other side of my car in his hipster sedan. He popped out of the driver’s seat, looking completely exhausted, his eyes red, his cheeks gaunt. He was another casualty of her obsession with the Maleficium. He’d probably spent more than a few sleepless nights lately worrying about Malory and wondering what he might have done to prevent the trauma.

We stopped on the sidewalk. "Jeff gave me the basics," Catcher said, "but I want to hear it from you, because it makes no sense to me."

"If he told you the Maleficium was destroyed, and in the process Tate split into two, he was teling the truth. It was as simple and insane as it sounds."

Paige stepped beside us.

"Catcher, this is Paige, who I believe you’ve heard of. The Tates burned down her house and her entire research library."

"I’m sorry to hear that."

Paige didn’t seem impressed with the apology.

Eager to change the subject, I nodded toward the bar. "Did Gabriel say anything about what she’s doing here?"

He shook his head. "Not a thing, which doesn’t thril me. I’m not happy about what she’s done, but I also don’t want her mistreated. I’m here to make sure she’s okay."

"If you don’t like it," Paige suddenly burst out, "you’l have nothing to say about it. You neither observed her nor stopped her, which is exactly what the Order predicted would happen.

You want to know why you were prohibited from coming back to Chicago? For exactly this reason. The prophecy was made – that if you came back to Chicago, things would go bad. You ignored the Order’s requests, and now you’ve fulfiled that prophecy. And look where that’s gotten us."

Awkward silence descended.

We’d been told Catcher had been kicked out of the Order because he’d wanted an HQ in Chicago, but the Order was being too stubborn to let him do it. I guessed we hadn’t gotten the entire truth. But it also seemed unlikely we were going to get the truth outside a bar in Ukrainian Vilage, so I pressed on.

"Let’s just get this show on the road," I said, and started walking toward the door.

Guitar-heavy music accompanied the smels of food that spiled onto the sidewalk and announced to the world that the bar’s patrons were serious about their food, their drink, and their rock.

We walked inside, a bel on the door announcing our existence, but no one paid us any mind. The bar was lined with tables in front of a giant picture window. Members of the NAC nursed drinks and chatted quietly, completely ignoring our trespass into their territory.

They must have known we were coming, because shifters were rarely so nonchalant about intruders in their homes,aliances or not.

"You. Come. Sit."

We looked over at the long wooden bar that lined the other side of the room. A heavy woman stood behind it, her formerly bleached blond hair now a vibrant shade of crimson. This was Berna, Little Red’s resident den mother and barmaid.

I walked over to the bar. "Hi, Berna."

She immediately scowled at me. "Stil too thin. You eat?" she asked, her voice thick with an Eastern European accent.

"I eat constantly," I promised.

She shook her head and muttered something under her breath.

Then she pounded a fist on the bar and stared at al of us. "You wil eat now."

I sat down. Paige was smart enough to do the same.

"Where’s Malory?" Catcher asked.

"She is not ready yet. You sit; you eat."

"She’s my girlfriend," Catcher said, as if that information would be enough to change Berna’s mind.

He was incorrect.

The entire bar went silent, and a fog of prickly magic crossed the room. Catcher may have been a friend of Jeff’s and a friend of mine, but he wasn’t one of them. He wasn’t a shifter, and he wasn’t a known aly. He was the boyfriend of the woman who’d unleashed evil on the city and brought them another round of trouble they hadn’t asked for.

But Berna didn’t need the glares of the shifters at tables around the room to enforce her wil. She put a hand on the bar and leaned over it, her bosoms nearly touching the counter as she stared Catcher down.