“All of those are out of the ordinary,” she protested.
“For humans. Not for us.” He cocked his head and looked toward her again. “Why you? Because you can help us figure out the how of what we do. More importantly, you can give me the one thing I need.”
His words softened something inside her she hadn’t realized even existed. “What do you need?” she whispered.
He released her hand and ran his palm along her face, gently cupping her jaw. “I need you to send me back to hell. As soon as possible.”
Chapter Fifteen
After a day of securing the campground, Ivar finished scouting the area beyond the river and made his way back toward a firepit near the cabins. His brothers, all of them except for Quade, sat around it. He took an empty seat, easily catching the beer Garrett tossed to him out of a dented cooler covered in bumper stickers. He popped the top and drank down several swallows. “Area is secure,” he said, when he’d cooled his throat.
Adare kicked out his feet toward the fire, letting them get close enough that the rubber on the bottom of his boots started melting. He pulled them back slightly. “The Kurjans won’t look for us here.”
Ivar took another drink, appreciating the full moon shining down. It was nice to have a cloudless night for a change, and it certainly helped when keeping an eye out for the enemy. “I didn’t think they’d search the middle of town.”
Ronan crumpled his beer can and tossed it in a garbage bag set up yards away. “Logan? I should give you a warning before your mate finds out. Just received word that the Kurjans blew up our entire building. Well, to be more accurate, they set fire to every floor and shattered the windows.”
“Ah, damn it.” Logan’s head went back, and he shut his eyes. “Mercy is gonna be so pissed. She believed we’d make a fortune from rent.”
Chuckles erupted around Ivar, and he tried to find amusement in Logan’s comment, but it just wasn’t in him. Had joy been in him before? He vaguely remembered it. And he had thought Promise was amusing on a few occasions. Perhaps humor was coming back to him. Or maybe it was just Dr. Promise Williams. He felt more in her presence than he had for centuries, even before going through so many hells. It was too bad he couldn’t explore that attraction. “Where is your mate, Logan?”
“Talking with Faith and Grace,” Logan said, his overlarge body sprawled in his chair. “She’ll be out here when they go to check on Promise. You know, you’re gonna need to teach her to shield her mind because she’ll want to get close and interview beings who can teleport.”
“Or I could teach her,” Garrett offered, a slight smile playing on his lips.
Spots danced across Ivar’s vision. “No. I’ll teach her.” He clenched his teeth until his jaw hurt and then forced himself to relax.
“So it’s like that, is it?” Ronan asked, turning away and barely masking a laugh with a lame cough.
“No.” Ivar crossed his arms. His ears started to burn, and he growled.
Garrett tossed his beer can in the garbage and reached into the cooler for a purple drink. “Sorry, Ivar. Just messing with you.”
Ivar glanced at the drink. “Grape?”
Garrett shrugged. “Yeah. Damn things are addictive. I stole a couple from my uncle Dage last month, and before I knew it, I wanted a grape energy drink every morning.”
“I hope you get fat,” Ivar returned, losing his tension. He’d forgotten how friends liked to banter; it was a skill he needed to work on. Maybe at some point, he’d actually feel amusement. It was possible. “I’ll teach Missy what she needs to know.”
“Missy?” Adare asked, turning his head.
Ivar’s back straightened. “Yeah. It’s a nickname. But I’m the only one who gets to call her that,” he hastened to say. It was special and just for him. He didn’t want to analyze why that mattered.
Garrett snorted and took a deep drink. “In all seriousness. My aunt Amber, who’s mated to Kane, can shield from a demon mind attack and could do so even when she was human. We’ve studied her ability but can’t really explain it. She might be able to help you with…Promise.”
Ivar stretched out in the chair but kept away from the fire. He’d been burned enough in this life. “I haven’t told her that demons can attack minds.” He hadn’t wanted to scare her any more than he already had. Oh, she’d kept calm and collected, asking tons of questions. But behind each query was fear. He couldn’t blame her. “I figured since her mind was already being attacked, I’d skip that part of her introduction to our world.”
“Seems fair,” Benny agreed, which meant the plan was probably crazy. He rubbed his flat belly, his gaze on the dancing flames of the fire. “We don’t do this enough. Just us hanging out and not talking about the world ending.” He rubbed his whiskered chin, his eyes morphing from their normal metallic color to his secondary color of blackish green. Most immortals switched eye colors during extreme situations. Not Benny. Contentment brought the change out in him. “I like spending time with you guys when we’re not ripping necks out of people.”
“Yeah,” Ronan said, looking around the fire. “This is nice. I mean, all six of us in one place.” A roughness deepened his voice. “Someday we’ll have my brother, I mean our brother, here with us. Quade will survive, and we’ll help him start a new life. Right, Viking?”
Ivar nodded. “Yeah.” It did feel good being with his brothers again. Almost complete. Their ages ranged from fourteen hundred years old to Garrett and Logan’s mere twenty-five years, but each had survived an unsurvivable ritual to create their own brotherhood. Age didn’t matter, and neither did family lines, because now they shared blood, which made them brothers. For the first time since he’d returned so broken, he felt a sliver of hope. They were strong enough to save Quade and kill Ulric. They had no choice. “I, ah, wanted to say thank you. For the last three months.”
Adare reached over and clapped him on the back hard enough to rattle his teeth. “Of course. We’re family.”
They were. It was true. Ivar stared at the fire, no longer needing to run away from flames. Who did Promise have? She didn’t have this type of support system. A part of him, one he would not examine, wanted to draw her into the fold. Give her a secure place.
But that wasn’t his to give. Not if he was going to live out the rest of his days in Quade’s hell dimension.
He glanced at Adare, who was the last remaining O’Cearbhaill remaining on earth. The clan had been one of the deadliest of the Highlanders, and surely he had plans to continue his line. “Your mate asked me to take her to Realm headquarters so she could be infected with that new virus.” Would Adare allow such an act?
“No,” Adare said shortly, reaching for another beer. “The virus has only negated mating bonds in mates that have been widowed for centuries. A new mating bond would be too strong, and she’d end up getting killed. The woman needs to be protected from herself.”
Ivar cut a glance at Ronan, who shrugged. For centuries, Ivar had tried to pull Adare out of self-destructive and dangerous situations after Adare’s shifter love had mated another shifter. Was he still in love with that twit? “Is it your decision?”
“She’s my mate. Everything about her is my decision,” Adare said.
Huh. Ivar wasn’t certain Grace Cooper would agree with that. She was a modern woman from this century, even though she was now caught in a war between immortals. Was Adare staying distant because the final ritual might kill them all? Even the human women they called the Keys; the ones who’d be involved in the blood ritual that could kill Ulric? Ivar didn’t understand females, and he sure as shit didn’t understand relationships. But something told him Adare was fucking this one up but good. “Why don’t you try for a real matehood?”
“With a human?” Adare mumbled. “Not a chance. They’re too fragile.”
Ronan shook his head. “She’s immortal now, numbnuts. And she’s
a Key, which is well known by the Kurjans. Without her and the other Keys, Ulric can’t be destroyed.”
“So she’s in constant danger and has no choice but to let me protect her,” Adare snapped. “Discussion is closed. Now.”
Ivar shrugged. “Fine. How about a status report? Any news on the Cyst?” The white-faced monsters were supposedly a monk-like sect within the Kurjan organization, but they were also a fierce fighting force, determined to rescue Ulric from his prison world. “The two last night fought well.”
“They’re still kidnapping Enhanced women across the globe—probably to force matings and increase their numbers,” Garrett said somberly. “The Realm is tracking each disappearance down, but no luck stopping the kidnappings so far.”
Ivar shook his head, his chest aching. They had to take out the Kurjans and their Cyst fighting force for good.
Mercy emerged from her cabin and made her way toward Logan, who pulled her down onto his lap and snuggled her close. She leaned back into him with a sigh of contentment, her long hair brushing down his arm.
Ivar studied them. Was that what happy looked like? It seemed like it. Logan handed her his beer, and she took a drink, her gaze caught by the fire. She kicked out small feet, her legs only extending to Logan’s calves. She turned her head and smiled at Ivar. “Faith and Grace are going to talk to your lady. Make sure she’s okay.” Mercy’s bottom lip pouted out. “I wish I could go.”
“I’ll teach her how to shield her brain,” Ivar was quick to reassure her. “Then you can become friends.” He’d like to secure some friends for Promise before he left. “I think she needs that.”
Mercy’s eyes sparkled. “That’s sweet, Ivar.”
Sweet? He’d never been sweet. Not even before—not even the old him. When he was organized and made sure they had what they needed for headquarters. The old him never would’ve never put Promise in a high-rise building in the middle of town. “Thanks?” he murmured.
Logan chuckled and dug his face into Mercy’s neck. “I’m sure Ivar will teach her, and then you can take her through dimensions, baby.”
“No,” Ivar said instantly. “Missy, I mean Promise, can study the issue all she wants, but nobody is transporting her anywhere. That’s final.” He hunched his shoulders and stared into the fire, pointedly ignoring all the chuckles masked by coughs around him. What did they know?
Chapter Sixteen
Surrounded by scraps of yellow legal paper, Promise finished drafting the string solution for an open string, leaving the ends open and what was commonly referred to as floppy. Oh, she had so much work to do. The wind blew gently outside, while the bright moonlight streamed in through the windows. During the day, Ivar had installed a powerful generator, so she had plenty of electricity and was using the internet on her phone. Even so, she missed her office at the university.
Somebody knocked on the door, and she called out for them to come in. It was probably Ivar. She had so many more questions for him and turned to start asking.
“Whoa.” Grace Cooper stepped gingerly over several loose pieces of paper. The brunette wore a thick green sweater and jeans with hiking boots, her hair piled high on her head, giving her that classic look some women just seemed to have naturally. “Obsessed scientist at work.” Lifting her camera, she sidled three steps to the right and leaned forward to take several candid shots.
Promise blinked. She’d met Grace earlier in the day before the young woman had disappeared down the river to photograph wildlife. “Hello.”
“Hi.” Grace smiled, her hazel eyes sparkling.
Her sister walked in behind her, holding a bottle of red wine and three red plastic cups. “Promise.” Faith wore a light gray sweater over darker gray jeans with spectacular cream-colored boots. Just how many pairs of stunning boots did she have, anyway? Her dark hair was long and loose around her slim shoulders. She looked around at the disheveled papers strewn about the room. “Working hard, I see?”
Promise looked at the mess she’d made, for the first time seeing the jumbled confusion. Even the bed was covered with solutions, equations, and theories scribbled over yellow legal paper. “I need my chalkboards.”
Grace snorted and gingerly gathered papers off the old sofa to stack on the coffee table. Then she moved closer to the fire, turned, and snapped several more shots. “I’d love to get a few photographs of you in your work area, surrounded by chalkboards, your hair full of chalk.”
Promise calculated the available light, dimensions of the room, and space. “You’ve studied fractal light?”
Grace lowered the camera. “Huh?”
“Your positioning for both series of shots. They made the best use of light and space,” Promise said, her interest piqued.
Grace shrugged. “I’m a photographer. That’s my job.”
One she apparently did instinctively. Fascinating.
Faith set the wine bottle on the rickety coffee table, twisted it open, and started pouring three cups. “This is a decent Shiraz. Nothing to set your hair on fire, but it’ll do.” She motioned for Promise to get off the floor.
“Oh.” Promise let the papers slide off her knees and stood, stretching her back. She’d changed into dark jeans and a red silk shirt that Ivar had procured from her home earlier. She had twice the curves of either woman, a fact that had always been fine with her. She was healthy, and her brain worked well, so life was good. But her neck ached. Just how long had she been sitting on the floor? What time was it?
Faith motioned her forward. “Let’s chat a little.”
Promise stiffened and then stretched over different stacks of papers to reach the sofa and sit. Girl talk. Wonderful. She never knew how to do this, unless one was discussing entropic gravity or something similar. But Faith was a world-renowned neurologist. She could go with that. “I’ve been thinking about the possibility of moving through time and space and wondering why motor functionality doesn’t seem to be diminished in the subject afterward.”
“Probably because that study about going to Mars only involved humans.” Faith handed her a cup and sat on the sofa. “I thought we’d start a bit more generally with getting to know each other. Like, what do you do for fun besides study baryogenesis?”
“I can see I’m going to be mostly lost in this conversation once it gets started.” Grace chuckled, took her cup, and moved to sit on the floor by the side of the fire. She extended her legs. “Any hobbies, Promise?”
Promise looked down at the thick red liquid. “I work for fun.” Her mind scrambled for some sort of connection. The women were attempting to make her feel welcome, and the pressure to please them rolled her stomach over. “Though I did spend some time working on supersymmetry just for a break.” She smiled, looking up.
“Well,” Faith breathed into her cup. “That would make for a relaxing hobby.”
Oh, good. They’d connected. Promise took a drink of the wine, finding it full bodied and delicious. “I thought about studying yoga or Pilates for a bit, but then scientists at JGU reported finding a new spectral line with an energy of 3.5 keV in x-ray light from distant galaxy clusters. So, it was back to studying dark matter.”
Grace lifted her glass. “That’s exactly why I stopped going to the gym too.”
Promise started and then laughed. She took another drink, her shoulders slowly relaxing. These were nice women, and they wanted to spend time with her. “What do you do for fun?”
Grace played with her camera. “I used to travel and take pictures, but then I ended up in a coma for a few years, got mated to a vampire-demon to come out of it, and now am regaining my sea legs, so to speak.”
An unusual warmth filtered through Promise’s blood. That was a subject she hadn’t had the courage to broach with Ivar. “What exactly does mating entail?” Such a barbaric word.
Faith blushed prettily. “Well, usually it entails a whole lot of crazy vampire-mo
nkey sex, which is a phrase coined by the vampire queen that truly nails the experience. There’s also a bite that slashes right to bone, and a branding. A marking appears on the male’s palm, at least on a demon’s, and it ends up on the female mate’s body.” She turned and tugged down her shoulder to show what looked like a deep tattoo of an intricate K surrounded by sharp and somehow beautiful lines. “The letter comes from the demon’s family surname.”
Promise nearly dropped her wine. “It’s a brand?”
Faith shrugged. “They call it a marking.”
Promise looked toward Grace. “Adare had sex with you when—”
“No.” The woman held up a hand. “Not at all. He bit and branded, but no sex. I’m unique. One of the three unfortunate Keys.”
Okay. Information overload. Promise sat back and mused over the problem for a minute. “I understand that mating made you immortal.”
“Mostly,” Faith said. “We can be beheaded.” She cleared her throat. “Also, mated beings can’t touch a member of the opposite sex for more than a minute or so without suffering an extreme physical reaction that’s like a horrible allergy.”
Promise sat back. What type of mathematical solution would explain that? So much happened on the chromosomal level that nobody knew about. Maybe that could be her next hobby. Explaining the genetic changes from a mating that seemed impossible based on current science.
Grace sighed. “She has that look on her face again.”
Faith nodded, smiling. “I know that look. I get it when I’m close to a discovery. Or when I find a new path to take that scientists haven’t gone down yet.”
Promise focused on Faith. “I’m confused. I understand that the Seven are all demon-vampire hybrids. But they call Logan a demon while calling Ronan a vampire.”
Faith swirled the liquid in her cup. “Right. Apparently, immortal hybrids take on the traits of mainly one species. So Logan is a lot more demon than vampire, and vice versa for Ronan. Even if their genetics say otherwise, they’re usually one or the other. Which makes Adare kind of different.”
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