Biting Cold: A Chicagoland Vampires Novel (CHICAGOLAND VAMPIRES SERIES)

massive sword—like a samurai fighting a medieval knight.
    They battled in a circle, Jonah moving spritely up and down the stairs as Tate moved after him.
    The cop who’d given me my sword back was moving toward the released cop, who still lay motionless on the ground.
    It was my turn to tap in. “Tate!”
    He stopped and glanced back at me, eyes narrowed like a predator. Or a crazed angel.
    I crooked a finger at him, then loosened my knees and positioned my sword. “Come and get me.”
    Tate took a step forward, but it wasn’t to get to me. Instead, he launched toward the cop who’d given me my sword back and lofted his sword in the air.
    There was no way I was going to reach him in time. I said the only thing that occurred to me . . . and did the very thing Ethan had forbidden me to do.
    “Tate!”
    He looked at me, ferocity in his eyes.
    “Let him go,” I said. “Take me instead.”
    I’d hoped to throw Tate off his mark or at least gain a little time. But he didn’t pause to think.
    “Very well,” he said. Before I could move away, Tate lunged forward and grabbed my wrist.
    My skin flamed beneath his touch, and everything went black.

C HAPTER F OURTEEN

    YOU LIGHT UP MY LIFE
    I woke to searing pain and blinding light. My leather jacket was gone, and sunlight poured over my bare arms. I pulled them back into the shadow that covered the rest of my body.
    Tears sprang to my eyes as blisters lifted down my arms, but the pain was the least of my worries. My mind fuzzy, I squinted against the glare and looked around.
    I was in a square concrete room with a window on one wall. The window was uncovered, and sunlight spilled across the room. I was tucked into the only shaded corner, a little ball of vampire . . . and my phone had been in my missing jacket.
    “Handy, isn’t it?”
    I also shouldn’t have been awake at this hour. Slowly and groggily, I looked toward the sound of Tate’s voice. He stood in an open doorway that was twenty feet of sun-drenched concrete away from me.
    The doorway led directly outside. Even if I managed to cross the room, there was nowhere to go.
    Tate had imprisoned me with sunlight. He’d even left me my sword, because what could I possibly do with it? I had no room to wield it, unless I hoped to spare myself the pain of death by sunshine.
    “You’re a sadist,” I said.
    “Hardly. I’m a realist,” he said. “The world could be better than it is. I intend to prove that.”
    My mind was dull and slow. “Where are we?”
    “That’s not important,” he said. “The more important question is why we’re here.”
    “Because you’re a vindictive son of a bitch?”
    Tate laughed and walked into the room. He wore dark pants and a T-shirt. His wings had disappeared, but his T-shirt was mottled with blood. I guessed Jonah had gotten in a few shots.
    He chuckled and moved closer. It was disturbing to watch him move. So handsome . . . and so deadly. I looked him over, scanning his face and body for any detail that would help me differentiate between the two of them. But I saw nothing.
    “I prefer messenger of justice, thank you.”
    I guessed the librarian had been right. “Prefer it all you want. Playing judge, jury, and executioner doesn’t make you just. It makes you arrogant.”
    “I’m not the arrogant one, Sentinel of Cadogan House.”
    “You’re a fallen angel, aren’t you? A Dark One? That’s arrogance by definition. You thought you knew better than everyone else.”
    “I know right from wrong.”
    “Is this right? Punishing me because I tried to help save four police officers? Putting me in this room, where I’ll burn to ashes in a couple of hours?”
    “Those men were corrupt,” he said. “Their souls were corrupt.”
    “Those men have families. They have wives and children.”
    “They hurt others. They deserved punishing,” he insisted.
    “That’s not your call to make.”
    He stilled, and it was almost scarier than arguing with him, like I was staring back at a furious man suddenly frozen in marble.
    “Those who say we cannot tell right from wrong have no courage. They have no will to make the decisions that must be made. Justice should be meted out by those who have the willpower to act, the stomach for punishment. No one forced those men to their actions. They chose their own paths. They should bear the burden of the consequences.”
    “They would have. That’s why they’d been imprisoned.”
    “And they were released. The human