BRINGING DOWN THE HOUSE

It was a good thing it wasn't yet close to dawn, since my way home was open air. I took a moment to use the bar phone and put in a quick phone call of my own while Gabriel prepped his bike. By the time I made my way outside, he sat on an Indian motorcycle, a low and long line of gleaming chrome, black studded leather, and silver enamel.

I pulled the extra helmet from the back of the bike, then swung a leg over.

"You ever ridden before?"

"Not in a while," I said.

Gabriel snorted, then revved up the engine. "Then I suggest you hold on tight." I pulled on the helmet, climbed on, and wrapped my hands around his waist.

"Not quite that tight, Kitten. We're only going to Hyde Park."

"Sorry. Sorry."

The bike thundered, a hollow, rumbly sound. But even over the din of it, I thought I heard him mutter,

"Vampires."

Ten terrifying minutes later - on a trip that should have taken twenty - we made it back to Hyde Park.

Gabriel drove as if the fires of hell were on his tail. From the column of smoke we could see rising from the neighborhood even blocks away, I worried they were. The street was riotous - trucks and bikes were parked in the middle, probably to keep out the cops, who were nowhere to be seen. But the paparazzi were plentiful, snapping pictures of the vehicles and the shifters that emerged from them.

And, more important, from the smoke that billowed from the first floor of the House. My chest felt hollow. I was the Sentinel. This was my House. And I had been tricked into leaving it unsecured - leaving the vampires inside unsecured.

God, please let him be safe, I prayed, whipping my dagger from its sheath and jumping off before Gabriel had time to come to a full stop. He called after me, but I was already running, dagger in hand.

I made it only steps before a shifter came at me, bearing a katana that had probably been pilfered from one of our vampires. My vampish ire rising quickly and fiercely, I dropped to one knee, fangs descended, and forced the attacker to vault over me. As he stumbled through the air, I stuck an elbow upward into his chest and yanked the katana from his loosened grip.

I stood up again and rolled the katana in my hand, its weight comforting even if it wasn't my own. I turned on the man, who'd rolled to a stop, but in the most inconvenient location - at the boots of the Apex predator of the North American Central Pack.

"I got this one, Kitten," Gabe said, his narrow-eyed gaze on the shifter before him.

I hoped the man had sense enough to stay down.

With a nod of acknowledgment, I set off at a run, katana before me, sirens finally ringing out behind me.

It was the fire department, I hoped, if I was still going to have a place to bed down before sunrise.

As I slashed at two more attacking shifters, I tried to quiet my mind enough to connect to Ethan. But although I called his name twice, then three times, I couldn't find him.

He wouldn't answer me back.

I made my way through marauders to the House's front gate, and found Luc there with two fairies, the three of them battling back the crowd of shifters who were trying to push through. Given the smoke, some must have made it, or else they'd snuck over the wall on other parts of the grounds.

"Luc!" I called out, giving an attacker a foot to the chin and watching him crumple.

Luc glanced around. "Sentinel, thank God. Some of them are humans, but I think the rest are shifters.

They attacked the House!"

I had to yell out over the din of sirens and clanging steel. "It was Adam! He had a plan - we'll talk about it later. Is everyone okay?"

"I don't know. We left Lacey at the back of the House with Lindsey. Ethan, Juliet, Kelley, and Malik are inside."

"Merit!" I glanced behind me. Catcher, Jeff, and my grandfather, his gait a little slower, moved toward us amongst the dark-clad cops who were finally beginning to emerge from cars and wrangle the perpetrators together.

That raised a good question: how in God's name were we going to explain this to the cops? I guessed that was my grandfather's department.

"Just worry about your duties," my grandfather said, as if anticipating the question. "Nick called and explained. We'll get this calmed down out here. You do what you need to do to keep your people safe." I nodded, then pointed a finger at Jeff. "You ready to fight?" He grinned wildly. "Damned skippy."

"Then let's do this."

We moved inside the gate, my borrowed katana in hand and a shifter at my side. They swarmed us as we entered - half of them bearing the electric sizzle of agitated shifters, but none of them in animal form.

"Why haven't they shifted?" I asked him, raising the katana and preparing to strike.

"Paparazzi," he said, which made sense. Jeff bounced on his heels, fists curled. It was an odd-looking position for the lanky computer programmer, but I knew Jeff could take care of himself.

And unlike the convocation, where we fought on different sides of the room, this time I got to watch.

While I fought off the perps on the right, Jeff took the left.

And he brought it.

It was like watching a monk do battle - complete calm in his expression and his eyes, but every move perfect, every move precise. He was a fantastic fighter, his strikes and kicks on target and his blocks perfectly timed to defend against the blows of his attackers. At one point, he caught my stunned gaze and offered back a cheeky grin.

"Sorry, babe. I'm taken."

I rolled my eyes and swung my katana, and together we fought back the army of people and shifters hell-bent on destroying our House. I'd taken down four attackers when I finally heard his answering call in my head.

Merit?

I said a silent thank-you to the universe. Ethan, where are you?

First floor. My office. Get here if you can. If not, find Malik and keep him safe.

My stomach sank. Malik was basically Ethan's vice president, the vampire charged with taking over the House if anything happened to Ethan. Had Ethan given up? Was he already trying to establish a line of succession?

I let out a curse that should have blistered Jeff's ears.

Stay where you are, I told him. I'm on my way.

Merit -

I am the Sentinel of this House, Ethan. It's my call.

That was met with silence.

"Jeff, Ethan's in trouble. I need to get inside. Can you find Malik and make sure he's okay?"

"Hands are full, Merit," he said, using a strike to the chest to push someone back. "Can you wait until we've secured the front yard?"

I glanced around, wondering how much longer that would take - and smiled.

I'd made the call, and the cavalry had arrived.

Six of them strode into the gate in black and red leather jackets, Noah at the front, five other vampires behind. Together, they looked like avenging angels, katanas bared, expressions fierce, ready to fight for vampirekind. Jonah wasn't among them, and I assumed he'd skipped the fight so he could maintain his anonymity as a member of the Red Guard.

Some of the tension left my shoulders at the sight of them.

Noah signaled that they'd take the outside perimeter. When I nodded my agreement, he began to bark orders to the rest of his crew. They broke formation and dispersed into the crowd.

"Merit - to your left!"

At Jeff's warning, I immediately threw up my katana to block the attack. The perp's blow was deflected, and Jeff's punch to the guy's kidneys brought him down.

"Fun, fun," he said, smiling down at his fallen prey.

"Yep," I said, leaning forward to kiss him on the cheek. "You and Fallon are gonna get along just fine." With that, I mounted the stairs and headed into the House.

Gray smoke was now spilling down from the second floor, vampires evacuating as firemen ran down the hallway, hoses in hand. One of them paused on his way up the stairs and lifted his hood. "Ma'am, you need to evacuate!"

"Vampire!" I yelled out. "I'm immortal."

He winked at me. "Grey House," he said, then flipped down his hood and proceeded up the stairs with his comrades.

"Carry on, my friend," I said, then hustled down the hallway to Ethan's office.

His suit coat was discarded, spots of blood and smears of smoke a sharp contrast against the white of his shirt. He stood at the back of the room, the office's velvet curtains now shredded and smoking behind him, a fan of four shifters in front of him.

But even the direness of the situation couldn't trump my relief at seeing him hearty and hale.

Need some help, Sullivan?

He scanned my body, looking for injuries. A look of relief crossed his face. Thank God, he said.

I offered him a smile before turning my attention to the shifters. "Aren't you kids a little outnumbered?" I asked. When they turned to look at me, Ethan took advantage of their distraction, sending two of them to the ground with lethal slashes. I edged around the other two, putting myself between them and Ethan.

Unfortunately, the perpetrators picked that moment to call out to four or five of their friends, who appeared at the door with weapons - guns and what looked like pieces of Cadogan House furniture - in hand.

They realized they had us cornered, and began to work their flanks, encircling us so that we stood in of the middle of them. Back to back, I told him, and he nodded, then turned so we stood with our backs together, our swords horizontal in front of us, surrounded by foes. And then we fought.

Whatever miracle of vampire genetics I might have been was nothing compared to the miracle of our fighting . . . together. We both swung out, the magic and power surrounding us seeming to actually increase as we fought, bullets flying as we battled back the interlopers who'd threatened our home. The Master of Cadogan House and its Sentinel, their steel honed, tempered, and raised against a common foe.

We made quick work of the first couple of attackers, but then they started getting creative, moving around to make it more difficult for Ethan and me to coordinate our movements, even when we could give each other silent directions.

On the other hand, that also forced us to get a little more creative. Eventually, we were fighting side by side, Ethan slicing out with his katana to keep an attacker off balance, and me kicking him into submission. Ethan would spin into a high kick, and I'd use a low throw to force him to the ground when he tried to dodge Ethan's attack.

Eventually, the room was cleared, and we stood there together, chests heaving, a spray of shifters and humans on the floor in front of us. We weren't entirely undamaged - I'd taken a bruising shot to my right thigh, and Ethan had slices across his belly where he'd been caught with the edge of a bar of steel broken from someone's office chair.

But we were alive.

We glanced over at each other. I was just about to speak, but before I could get out words, his hand was at the back of my head, his mouth pressing against mine. The intensely possessive kiss left me gasping for breath, but even as he pulled back, his fingers stayed knotted in the back of my hair.

"Christ, Merit, I thought you were dead. You left after we talked, and no one could find you. And when they attacked and you didn't show - where the hell were you?"

"I was at the bar," I said. "I'll give you the details later. Long story short, this is all Adam's doing. He set it all up, had a plan to kill Gabriel and frame the House." Ethan smiled wickedly. "And you figured it out before Adam could take you both out, but he'd already started the attack."

"Well, I am the Cadogan Sentinel."

"Indeed you are," he said, then kissed me with brutal force again. "This isn't over," he growled, and then he was gone, ready for battle again. I wasn't going to waste the time arguing with him, but as soon as his back was turned, I raised my fingertips to my mouth, the feel of his lips still there. I could feel it coming.

The sun wasn't far from making its way above the horizon, and it had begun to pull at my shoulders.

Fortunately, the combined strength of the Chicago Police Department, the Chicago Fire Department, the Ombud's office, half the North American Central Pack, the vampires of Cadogan House, and the Red Guard had finally managed to stop the attack.

Ethan seemed to take the Red Guard's participation in stride. He didn't bat an eyelash when he saw them, but he also didn't have any reason to tie their presence to me.

That meant if I decided to join them, I could still keep my secret under wraps.

But positives aside, the House wasn't without its casualties. Seven shifters and humans had been killed in the attack. We lost three vampires. I didn't know any of them to speak of, although two lived on the second floor not far from my room. Two were lost to wooden stakes; their ashen remains now mingled with the destruction in the House.

The third, however, had met a more gruesome end. She'd been the victim of an old-fashioned torture. A crazed human attacker - one of the deceased

- weakened her with an ill-placed stake and removed her heart.

In honor of her sacrifice, her body had been placed in the garden behind the House, to be given to the sun when it finally breached the sky. As for Cadogan itself, the marauders had worked to bring down the House around us. While the sturdy stone construction had thwarted the worst of the damage, the furnishings and woodwork on the first and second floors had been damaged, some of the rooms rendered uninhabitable. Helen and Malik had been working the phones, making arrangements with Grey, Navarre, and the other Cadogan vamps in Chicago to find temporary homes for vamps whose rooms had been torched or were too wet and smoky to stay in. My room, in a back corridor of the second floor, had fortunately been spared. As Ombudsman, my grandfather had jurisdiction over the city's response to the chaos. He helped sort out the good shifters from the bad, explaining the politics to any CPD cop he could corral long enough. He managed to keep them from arresting every shifter and vampire in sight; given the destruction and chaos, I called that a victory.

Unfortunately, he hadn't been able to keep the paparazzi from snapping pictures. They didn't venture into Cadogan House, but they hadn't needed to - one of Adam's shifters had been so grievously wounded in human form that he'd shifted in the middle of the front lawn to heal himself. I might have been the first vampire to witness the shifting of a Pack member, but I hadn't been the last . . . and the paparazzi wouldn't be the last, either. They'd reportedly snapped pictures of the biker turned coyote - and the biker turning into a coyote. Having seen the transformation myself, I doubted the final photographs would show much more than lights and colors.

Regardless, it was obvious to the reporters that something supernatural had happened, something they hadn't seen before, and that set off a journalistic feeding frenzy. That's why my grandfather, at Gabriel's request, had cordoned the reporters into an area in front of the House. He stood behind a make-shift podium, Gabriel at his side, a bevy of uniformed cops surrounding them.

Waiting.

Gabriel raised his hands, and the crowd of reporters quieted just as the shifters had the night before.

"I have something to say," he announced, then used the back of his hand to push a trail of blood from his eyes. He paused, the weight of the looming confession in his eyes. I knew what he was going to say, but I also knew what it would cost him - emotionally and politically.

"You'll soon see pictures that tell quite a tale. That prove that vampires are not the only supernatural beings in the world. We are shape-shifters," he said,

"beings who can take animal or human form."

Ethan stood beside me, and at the mention of the magic word, slid his fingers into mine. I squeezed back. The area erupted into a cacophony of camera flashes and questions. Gabriel ignored them, holding up a hand again so that he could continue speaking.

"We are shifters, and some of my number are responsible for this attack on Cadogan House - an attack on a band of citizens who have done nothing but assist and protect us. This attack was unjustified. We have already submitted the organizer of this attack into the custody of the Chicago Police Department.

As he has violated the trust between our peoples, you may deal with him as you deem fit." He paused, letting the weight of that statement sink in.

And when he was ready, he looked into the crowd and found Ethan and me. "And may God have mercy on us all."

A few minutes before dawn, I found Ethan in his office, poking through rubble. The ruined curtains had already been replaced by shabbier models, the switch necessary to block the coming sunlight.

He glanced up when I walked in, then scanned my face and body. "You're all right?"

I nodded. "As much as anyone can be. I'm sorry about the Novitiates you lost today." Ethan nodded, then righted a chair that had been flipped onto its side. "It's not unforeseen that we would face violence. But that doesn't make the violent act any less shocking." He put one hand on his hip, then rubbed his temple with the fingers of his free hand. "I spoke with your grandfather about the events at the bar. Nick filled him in."

I waited for the inevitable lecture about leaving campus, or engaging in shifter-vampire dialogue without permission, or putting the House at risk.

"Well," he philosophically said, "Adam isn't the first narcissist to have put us in a bind. Has everyone been resettled?"

It took me a moment to realize I hadn't been chastised. "Scott and Morgan sent buses to pick up everyone. There's about a dozen vampires at each House. The rest of them are tucked in and accounted for. The front wing of the second floor needs airing out, but the fairies have agreed to keep guard so workmen can get started at dawn."

He nodded officially, but didn't meet my eyes. It was clear he had more to say, but he hadn't quite gotten around to it.

"Is there anything else?" I asked, giving him the chance to voice his thoughts.

Ethan opened his mouth, but then snapped it shut again. "We can talk tomorrow. Find a spot to rest.

Get some sleep."

I nodded. "Good night, Sullivan."

"Good night, Sentinel."

My evenings were beginning to have the same endings, it seemed.