Roaring Dawn: Macey Book 3 (The Gardella Vampire Hunters 10) (13 page)

Macey’s cheeks heated, for when she reached the sanctuary of her room, she’d realized her blouse had been unbuttoned far lower than was proper.

Surely her father—No, he was no father to her. He was just
Max.
Max Denton. Legendary vampire hunter.

Cold, violent, solitary.

Like every vampire hunter must be.

Like she and Chas were.

Macey looked down at her gapping blouse. Surely Max Denton wouldn’t have noticed the telltale opening of three buttons in the flurry of her shoving Chas away and stalking from the room.

And she’d definitely stalked, not fled.

What the
hell
is he doing here?

Upon first entering her room, she’d flung herself onto the bed and stared blindly at the ceiling, fighting
tears
of all things.
Tears.
From a Venator? Had Victoria Gardella ever cried? Surely not.

By God, if Macey hadn’t cried over what happened with Sebastian—and, oh God, Grady—why would she cry over the unexpected,
unwanted
appearance of Max Denton?

Though she was shaky and upset, she couldn’t lay all that at Max Denton’s feet. No, part of it had been the incident with Chas there in the pub before they were interrupted.

In fact, perhaps it would be better if she gnawed and brooded over
that
interlude instead of her father’s arrival. As a topic on which to ruminate, Chas and his moods—along with their mutual yet strained attraction—was far less disconcerting than Max Denton’s arrival.

And the man—Chas—certainly had a way with his hands and mouth. He definitely knew how to stir up her heat, even when she wasn’t thinking in that direction. Even if she didn’t love him.

But he also knew how to use his seductive skills as a barrier, and a weapon. A detour.

Would they have done it right there, right in the middle of the pub? Macey’s face heated again. If Max had waited another five, ten, fifteen minutes before making his grand exit, what would he have discovered? More than three undone blouse buttons, she suspected.

Her insides shifted and sank, and, furious with herself, with Chas, and most definitely with Max Denton, she rolled off the bed. Her feet hit the floor with two sharp thumps of finality.

She was getting out of here. Now. Before one of those idiot men decided to come looking for her. She didn’t know which one of them she wanted to see least.

She just wanted to get away. To get some air, some space, to clear her thoughts.

Macey swiped a forearm over her eyes. Dammit, she wanted someone to hold her. To gather her close and tell her everything would be all right, to help her pare through these wild, confused thoughts. To tell her she was doing the right thing, had made the right decisions.

She wanted to beat the stuffing out of something. To kick and hit and slice and punch. To break things. To stab. To scream.

Panting with emotion, Macey dragged on a pair of men’s trousers and a set of braces to hold them up, tucking her rebuttoned shirt inside the waistband. She shoved a stake and a knife into her pockets, jammed a fedora on her head, and flung a trench coat around her shoulders.

She was going out.

+ + +

Macey could hear the rain still pouring down in sheets as she made her way through the corridors—some underground, some not—that led from the collection of rooms adjacent to The Silver Chalice with the other side of the block, where Cookie’s Smart Millinery was located.

When she first learned of her Venator calling, she’d quit her job at the University of Chicago’s Harper Memorial Library and spent day after day with Temple in a large practice room. There, Temple took her through traditional fighting and self-defense techniques that had been passed down to the Venators through their Comitators for ages. The techniques and weapons used had come from distant corners of the earth—
qinggong, karate, tae kwan do
—and required mastery of the mind as much as the body.

Those days, Macey realized as she passed through the empty practice room in the basement—known as a
kalari
—had been easier. So much easier.

“Macey.” Temple looked up in surprise when she opened the door at the top of the stairs to the
kalari
. Temple was sitting at a large table with books spread out around her and sheaves of paper stacked and curling next to her.

Rain pelted a window that emitted a smoky gray light. Thunder rolled in the distance. A car horn bleeped below.

Macey thought maybe she wouldn’t go out after all. No one was likely to be on the streets, let alone a vampire. Not that she wouldn’t be satisfied with pummeling mortal flesh, but only miserable people with no other choice would be out on a day like this. It was Sunday, after all.

“Any progress on the research about Rekk’s Pyramid?” Macey asked. She wasn’t quite ready to talk about Max’s arrival, even with Temple.

“Some. But I keep falling asleep.” A small smile curved Temple’s lips.

“Late night last night, hm?” Macey felt a bump of happiness for her friend. At least one of them was pleased about the men in their lives.

“Mm-hm.” Temple yawned and glanced out the window. “Maybe I won’t open the Chalice again tonight. No one’s going to venture out in this mess. I can go to bed early. Did you and Chas finish cleaning up in there?”

Macey hesitated. “I left before it was quite finished. So what have you found about the pyramid?”

“It appears to have the power to control a person through an undead’s thrall. Like a sort of powerful hypnosis. But in order for the pyramid to work, it has to have its power connected, I suppose you’d say, to an undead—its master has to be created or defined.”

“So the ability to use it as a hypnosis and control tool lies dormant until it receives a master? Like Aladdin’s lamp in
A Thousand and One Arabian Nights
—it waits for someone to rub it.”

“Right you are, sister. And, fortunately for us, it takes the master more than a bit of rubbing on the pyramid to connect himself to it. There’s a whole process, though I’ve not found the recipe yet.”

“Surely Iscariot would know how to do it.”

“As sure as the day is long.”

“What about vulnerabilities? Any information on how we could destroy the pyramid?”

“That’s where I’m having the trouble so far.” Temple brushed a slender hand over the aged parchment in front of her. “No information on that yet.”

“And once it’s been connected to a master, how can we disconnect it?” Macey asked, relieved to have specific questions on which to focus, as unpleasant as their implications were.

“Again…no information on that yet.” Temple narrowed her eyes, as if really seeing her for the first time. “Are you planning to go out in this weather?”

Before Macey could respond, they heard footsteps in the hall outside: quick and light, and a soft clink when the footfalls paused at the door opposite the one through which Macey had entered. The knob turned.

“Thought you might be likin’ some coffee there, missy,” said Aunt Cookie as she pushed her way into the room backward, using an elbow to edge the door open. “And I needed a break from the cloche brim I was stitching. Eyes ain’t as good as they used to be.”

She was carrying a tray laden with teapot, a cup and saucer, and a plate piled with powdered beignets. Once fully through the entrance, she turned around and her face lit up. “Macey, child, bless your heart. I’m so happy you’re here. I was wantin’ someone to tell me about the exhibit last night, and Temple, ornery miss she is, won’t give me one real gossipy detail about the latest in millinery!”

Aunt Cookie was a tiny, will-o’-the-wisp of a woman, fairy-like in her manner and movements. Her hair was thin as a spider web and puffed out in a soft, dark cloud around her head. Her nose, the most substantial thing about her, was long and broad.

She was a genius when it came to fixing up a chapeau, sewing a cloche, or decorating a headband with just the right amount of frills and furbelows, and she was more than competent in the kitchen. But her head was most often in the clouds—likely imagining her next creation—and her thoughts scattered as easily as an overturned container of pins.

She was, in short, just the sort of superficial diversion of which Macey was in need.

She gladly took the tray, making only a token protest when Aunt Cookie decided she should go get two more cups and saucers—and a pot of jam, too, and some crackers—so they could all have coffee and talk about whether ostrich feathers were coming back and whether the veils were cutting as low as the nose, or ended just over one eye.

Sitting with the only two females in the world—besides Wayren, and Macey had severe doubts whether the blond woman was actually
of
this world—who knew the truth about her life was comforting and relaxing.

But then in the next minute, that comfort and relaxation came crashing down.

“Oh, and did your father find you, Macey, dear? He came around, looking for The Silver Chalice, so I went on and told him how to tell it by the finial on the stair post. Hard to see in this weather, bu—”

“Your
father
?” Temple fairly shrieked, looking from Macey to her aunt and back again. She’d half risen from her seat. “Max Denton is alive? He’s
here
?”

Macey could do nothing but nod.

“How? I thought he was dead!”

“Welcome to the club,” Macey replied, wishing now that she’d made her escape—rain or no rain. How could her father not be dead…and her not know
because no one told her
? No one except Nicholas Iscariot. Sebastian was gone, but she’d believed him when he told her he didn’t know, and so had Chas…but then there was Al Capone. He’d seemed almost frightened when she mentioned her father, come to think of it. Macey gritted her teeth. Maybe a visit to old Scarface was in order.

“Wait—are you sure it was really your father? Not a trick?” Temple’s eyes were a little wild, and Macey wasn’t certain whether it was from fear or awe that the so-called “great” Max Denton had arrived.

“It’s definitely him.”

“What’s wrong, child? Aren’t you happy to see your daddy again?” asked Cookie.

“Am I glad to see the man who’s ignored me for thirteen years?” she replied tartly, reaching for a cup of coffee. “Who made me think he was dead? Why should I be?”

Temple stirred milk into her coffee and moved away from the desk, appearing relieved to have a break from her studies. “What did he say? Why is he here?”

“I don’t know. I left.”

Temple and Aunt Cookie looked at her without speaking.

Macey sighed. “He just showed up here without a word, and expects me to welcome him back into my life? To pretend nothing happened?”

“He is your father,” Cookie admonished.

“He’s Max Denton. He’s not my father.” Macey shrugged and reached for a beignet, ignoring the trail of powdered sugar that followed the pastry’s path. “He’s pretended to be dead for thirteen years.”

“I’m sure he had a reason for doing so,” Cookie said tentatively.

“We all have reasons for what we do,” Temple said quietly. “Or think we have.”

Macey looked at her and saw a glint of judgment in the other woman’s expression. “To just cut someone you love out of your life without letting them have a chance to…” She hesitated, then looked away.
Damn
.

Temple lifted a knowing brow. “You were saying?”

“What happened with Grady—what I chose to do, what I had to do—was a completely different situation.”

“Sounds pretty much the same to me, sister. A person—in this case, you or your father—decides to protect someone they love—that would be Grady or you—by walking out of their life, blocking them off. No choices or explanations given, correct? No chance for the person being left behind to decide whether
they
want to be left or not.”

“But—”

“But you were only little, that’s true, I’ll give you that. So maybe you weren’t old enough to make a decision about what was best, at that time. But Grady—he was. He is. He’s more of a man than ninety percent of the fellas in this city.”

Macey’s chest felt tight. “It’s not the same. Grady isn’t a Gardella, he isn’t a Venator—he doesn’t know what he’d be getting into.”

Temple was shaking her head, and her expression was steely. “He was just as instrumental as you were in getting out of that theater with Sebastian, wasn’t he? And he right as rain made a difference when you and a hundred other people almost got blew up at the museum.” She leaned forward. “All I’m saying to you, sister, is that you made the same decision about Grady your father made about you. And so you, my dear pot, should not be calling the kettle black.”

Macey settled back into her chair, firming her lips. Suddenly the beignet and its sweet dusting of sugar tasted like dirt. It was different with Grady. He wasn’t part of a family that had been called to a dangerous duty for centuries. He was an outsider. He wasn’t equipped to protect himself from the undead.

“Poor, darling child,” Cookie said, patting Macey’s hand with her soft, cool one. “And you having to get over the loss of your mama at the same time as your daddy leaving you.”

“That’s right,” Macey said, tears suddenly springing to her eyes. “He left me—when I needed him…the most. He sent me…away. They told me he…died. I grew up thinking I was an…orphan.”

“Aw, Macey, I’m not saying your daddy didn’t do you no wrong. But he had his reasons, just as you did with Grady, and him being a man… Well, he might not have made the right choices. They hardly ever do. I just think you ought to consider his side of the story, since you’ve got a similar one yourself,” Temple said.

Cookie handed her a lace-edged handkerchief, and Macey wiped her eyes and then her nose. All of a sudden, she was more sad than angry. It was as if all of the grief from when she was a child came rushing back, pushing away her feelings of righteousness.

“I’m sure your daddy loves you very much—and he did what he did for that reason,” Temple added.

Just as you did to Grady
.

She didn’t actually say those words, but Macey heard them as clearly as if she had.

“And now he’s come back,” Cookie said brightly—as if that solved everything.