Dead Sea

by Debbie Cassidy

  Deacon carefully, gently extricated himself from me and then pulled me up off the table. He adjusted my top and smoothed back my hair. “I’ll see you later.”

  That was it? He was back in control, completely unaffected? And this was my cue to leave. Don’t look back, don’t look back. I made it to the door on wobbly legs and out into the quad.

  He’d kissed me again and acted as if it hadn’t moved him, and irritation was an abrasion running over my skin. No. That wasn’t happening again. The next time we kissed, it would be on my terms, and we’d see who walked away unaffected.

  The next time? What the heck was I thinking? I had Micha and Lyrian to think of, my kindred and scalemate, the two males I was bonded to. Guilt washed over me because even though taking several mates was in fashion, even though women did it all the time in the Hive, it still felt wrong to get close to someone new without Micha and Lyrian being okay with it; not that there was anything between me and Deacon, nothing beyond two kisses initiated to drive fear from my mind, and they didn’t matter. All that mattered was finding Genesis and saving my father. The rest … The rest was a beautiful distraction.

  Chapter 5

  Councilwoman Harker

  What am I doing? What have I done? Echo’s face haunts me, her rage reminds me of my younger self, the idealist, the fighter, the dagger-equipped woman who’d believed she could change the world. My actions are based on old fire, on the old me, but now, standing in my office away from her accusing glare, I’m reminded how the world changed without me.

  It changed, and it took from me, it hurt me, and now we are here. We are safe, and this … This must be my priority. Echo can’t understand because she hasn’t lived it. Only a handful of those of us who lived it are alive today, and we made a vow. We made a vow to keep the next generations safe. Only a handful of us know the truth.

  The Hive is more than an underground shelter. It’s an ark of the preferred species. It’s what we, the creatures of this world, have decided will remain when all others are gone. And they will be gone. Because it’s never been about finding Genesis. It’s never been about ending him. We learned a long time ago that attempts to find him were futile. We don’t even have a method to kill him, so finding him … pointless. No, the goal is to survive, to outlast the machine that feeds on souls by hiding the souls it needs, and eventually … Eventually, he will run out of fuel. Eventually, he will simply stop working. But we put on a front, and we tell the Hive that we are searching. We tell the Keep that we need them to look for our nemesis. We play the part.

  And it’s happening. The attack on the potentials, the attack on Haven, they’re both the action of desperation, of a being who is dying and needs power to survive.

  “He’ll go for the Keep next,” Ryker says from his spot on the chair by my desk.

  He’s been so silent I’d forgotten he was there.

  Guilt caresses the back of my neck and slips away. Guilt is nothing to me anymore. “The Keep isn’t my problem. The Draconi and Shedim don’t belong in this world, and if they’re used up by Genesis, then so be it. We all agreed a long time ago that we would wait him out, that there would come a day when there would be no more souls topside and Genesis would die.”

  We will emerge then, and we’ll start anew. That is the plan. I know it is, but this girl, this young woman with fire in her eyes, has relit the fire in me, one that I’d thought dead a long time ago, and for a moment I wonder … I wonder if it could be possible to end this sooner. To really find Genesis and shut him down, but then I remember we have no guardians, save one, and I know the council won’t approve it. They won’t allow me to take the Protectorate topside, but still ...

  Ryker is silent; the only sound is the scrape of a paperweight as he spins it on my desk. I drop my gaze to his golden hair. My blue-eyed warrior, my love. My heart aches to fall into his arms and have him hold me, to tell me it will all be okay, but I stay standing.

  “Our daughter is out there,” Bane says softly from behind me. “If this is Genesis’s death push, then she’s in danger.”

  I grit my teeth. “She knew the risk. She made her choice.”

  “Serenity …”

  He cups my shoulders with his large warm hands and pulls me back against his chest, and for a moment I allow myself to melt into him, to be weak, but only for a moment because the watcher of an ark doesn’t get to be weak.

  “Echo reminds me of you,” Bane says in his gravelly tone, the one he uses to soften me up.

  “I know.”

  There is a smile in his voice when he next speaks. “Is that why you riled up Deacon? So he’d get Emory to work on obtaining proof of her story for the council?”

  I tense and then sigh. “Why do I even try to hide anything from you?”

  Ryker is watching me with an unfathomable expression. “You want a plan B, don’t you?” His smile is knowing. “You can’t opt out of your vow, but you can force the council to re-evaluate it.” There is a new fire in his eyes too, the fire of action. “With proof in their laps, they’d be forced to either admit they have no intention of taking action, or they’ll have to take action.”

  And if that didn’t work. If there was no proof, then we’d be no worse off. We’d be here, and we’d survive, because the Hive … The Hive was a fortress, and nothing could hurt those inside.

  A knock at the door is followed by a breathless Orin’s entry. “Harker, we have a problem.”

  “What is it?”

  “Reports of several missing humans.”

  For a moment, his words don’t compute because no one goes missing from the Hive, it’s just not logistically possible, but then comprehension dawns and ice floods my veins because this isn’t something new. This is something old, and if it’s what I think it is, then Genesis is no longer our biggest threat right now.

  Chapter 6

  Micha and Lyrian still weren’t back, and, not wanting to be alone in the lounge, I headed to my room. Slipping into a pair of shorts and a vest, I climbed into bed. The book I’d snagged from the lounge was a good read, but tonight, the words blurred on the page as my mouth throbbed, reminding me of Deacon’s kisses.

  What did it mean? Did it even mean anything? My eyelids drooped, and sleep grabbed hold of me. I was slipping under, pleasant and warm, and then something cold bit the side of my throat.

  My eyes snapped open.

  “Don’t move,” Lira said.

  What the heck was Deacon’s vein doing in my room?

  The cold thing pinched my skin again. A knife. She had a knife to my throat. Shit.

  “Don’t try using arcana on me,” she said. “I can cut your throat faster than you can hit me with your power. This is where your jugular is, you know. You’ll bleed out before anyone can get to you.”

  Fuck. “What do you want?”

  “I want him back. I want my Deacon back.”

  Was she serious? Would she cut my throat? Her voice was steady, and her hand was steady. She meant business.

  “Listen, Lira, I don’t have control over what Deacon does.”

  “No? But you seem to like putting your tongue in his mouth.”

  Damn. Had she seen us in the kitchen? “That was part of my training.” Yeah, that sounded lame. “A distraction. He was distracting me from my fear; it’s complicated and all to do with Rydian and his ability to get into people’s heads.”

  “No. I know Deacon. I know how he operates, and the way he was kissing you, that was no distraction.” The knife nicked my skin. “You have to go. I’m sorry, but you need to die.”

  My pulse skipped. She meant it, she meant to kill me.

  My hands lit up green, and I grabbed her wrist just as the knife slid into my neck. My cry was a gurgle, the pain all-consuming, and then she was gone.

  “Echo! Damn it, Echo!” Hunter’s voice filled my head, and then he was gone too.

  I was dying. Dying so he could be free. Blood. So much blood in my hands, in my throat. The power burned me, trying t
o heal the wound, but not fast enough, not fast …

  “Echo!”

  Deacon’s sweet scent battled with the copper tang of my blood, and then his arms were around me, and his mouth was on my neck, lapping at my skin, drinking … drinking me dry …

  Darkness grabbed hold of me and yanked me under.

  “Echo. Echo, can you hear me?”

  My eyelids felt heavy. My lids stuck together. “Mmmm, what time is it? Morning already?”

  And then memory asserted itself—Lira, the knife, my throat, Hunter, then Deacon. I forced my eyes open to Deacon’s face and his bloody mouth.

  “Lira …” My voice was a croak.

  “Dead.” He glanced to the side, and I followed his gaze to find a crumpled form on the floor.

  Oh, God. My head. I pressed my hand to my temple. “How did you know to come?”

  “Your friend, Hunter, brought me. At least I believe it must have been him. He picked me up and carried me here.”

  Hunter … He couldn’t be heard by anyone, but he could move things. “Hunter? You there?” But there was only silence. “He saved my life when letting me die could have freed him. Now do you believe that we can trust him? He has to protect me, but a few seconds were all he needed to delay to gain his freedom.”

  Deacon nodded. “Yes. A few seconds more and it would have been too late. Hunter got me here in time to stop the bleeding with my saliva. It bought the arcana in you time to do the rest. This is my fault. I did this.” He glanced at Lira again. “I used her for blood and sex, and I didn’t consider her feelings.”

  I didn’t have the energy to argue with him, because he was right. He’d done a bad thing, and I’d almost paid the price. Her love for him had driven Lira mad, mad enough to kill. He should have seen it, he should have known, but the reality was he hadn’t cared enough to really look.

  “I can’t remember … I think I may have thrown her off with my arcana blast … Did I kill her?”

  “Her neck is broken.”

  “I feel sick.”

  Deacon pulled me into a sitting position, and my head flopped onto his chest. Shit, how much blood had I lost? The front of my vest was soaked in it.

  “You need to drink water, we need to hydrate you, the arcana will do the rest.”

  Movement in the periphery of my vision alerted me to Micha’s arrival. He stood in the doorway, and his gaze tracked from my neck to Deacon’s bloody mouth, and then he attacked.

  “No.” I wrapped my arms around Deacon. “Micha, stop.”

  Micha froze on the bed with his hands reaching for Deacon’s throat.

  “He was saving me. Look.” I jerked my head in Lira’s direction, and Micha finally took in the whole scene.

  “Fucking hell.” He sat back on his haunches on the bed.

  Lyrian came barreling into the room a moment later and then dropped to his knees.

  “You’re alive. Thank God, you’re alive.” His hand went to his throat, and then he pulled himself to his feet and bridged the gap between us, almost knocking Micha off the bed, and wrapped both Deacon and me in a hug.

  His fear and relief filled my mind, pushing away the numbness that had settled there. I’d almost died again, so close this time. I could have been gone in a blink. My thoughts mingled with Lyrian’s, and then Deacon was retreating, and I was in Lyrian’s arms, cradled on his lap while my tears stained his shirt. Micha’s scent mingled with Lyrian’s as he moved closer, his hands smoothing my hair. But a new emotion was blooming inside me, a mixture of exasperation and frustration with the hard edge of anger.

  “Echo?” Micha sounded wary, and Lyrian released me in time for me to climb off the bed and storm across the room to where Lira lay.

  The knife was on the ground, coated in my blood and glinting dully in the lamplight. Lira was up against the wall, her body folded in on itself with Deacon hovering over her.

  “Echo?” He held out his hand warily.

  I glared from him to the dead body of the human who’d just tried to kill me, and a scream locked in my throat.

  Fuck this. Fuck that I couldn’t even rail at her. Fuck that I couldn’t pound on Genesis.

  “Fuck it all. I’m a good person, dammit. I’m a damn good person, and I don’t deserve for things, and people, and stuff to keep trying to kill me.”

  My words were all muddled, and my head ached. I needed to sit.

  “Get her hydrated,” Deacon ordered. “Someone needs to stay with her.” He lifted Lira and slung her over his shoulder. “I’ll report this.”

  Was this what Hunter had meant when he said something was afoot? What possible reason would there have been for him not to warn me? I needed to know what he’d meant. “Hunter. Dammit, Hunter, where are you?”

  There was silence.

  I stepped back, head fuzzy, and parked my butt back on the bed.

  Deacon slipped from the room, leaving me with my scalemate and my kindred.

  “Echo?” Micha crouched in front of me. “Who is Hunter?”

  How easily we accepted attempted assassination in the Hive? An hour later I was tucked into bed with a jug of water on my bedside table and Lyrian to keep watch over me. The guys had been filled in on Hunter, and Micha looked less than pleased about a shade being bound to me, but the fact that a shade had just saved my life made it impossible for them to deny his good intentions. But Hunter hadn’t turned up, he hadn’t spoken to me. Anxiety nibbled at the back of my mind. Where had he gone? The sooner he returned, and the sooner I freed him from the curse, the better. There were no doubts in my mind now about breaking the binding on him.

  Micha had gone on patrol, and Lyrian would be switching out with him in a few hours. They’d both wanted to stay, but if they were going to be allowed to remain in the Hive, they needed to pull their weight, and with guardians depleted, the Protectorate were picking up the slack on all areas of security duties. It was standard protocol to have nightly patrols between Chamber H and the nephilim chamber. I guess the council could never completely rule out the possibility of a nephilim turning and wanting a human snack. Or a human deciding it would be fun to sneak into forbidden territory. We lived together in a tentative peace, but we were never meant to live so close, so intimately. Humans were never meant to mingle with the nephilim like this.

  Micha left me with a soft kiss and promise of snuggles on his return.

  Lyrian pulled a chair close to the bed and took up a station. I arched a brow at him.

  “Really? You’re going to sit in that chair till Micha comes back.”

  “I’m not leaving you,” he said gruffly.

  “No. I know you won’t, but…” I patted the bed. “You could come lie with me.”

  There was a flash of longing on his face. “You’ll be more comfortable this way.”

  He wanted to come over, he wanted to lie with me, it was a certainty in my mind, and then it was blocked off.

  “Why did you do that?”

  “What?” he asked innocently.

  “You know what. You keep pushing me away, blocking me out.”

  His throat bobbed. “I’m sorry.”

  Yes, he was sorry. That much was sincere. “Please, I’ll sleep better if I know you’re comfortable too, and I know that chair is not comfortable.”

  He hesitated a moment longer and then rose from the chair and climbed onto the bed beside me. Not giving him a chance to withdraw, I rolled onto my side, slung an arm around his waist, and lay my head on his chest. His heartbeat was fast beneath my ear.

  “Lyrian? What is it? What’s wrong?”

  His huge hand cupped the back of my head. “Nothing is wrong, Echo. Everything is … it’s perfect.” The timbre of his voice had dropped an octave and thickened. “This. This is perfect.”

  The door between us swung open a crack, and gentle heat swelled out to fan across my mind. It was comfort and security and home, the same connection that Micha and I shared. I pressed closer, rubbing my cheek against his pectoral and reveling in t
he scent and feel of him. Whereas Micha was stocky and muscular, Lyrian was lithe, slender-waisted, and broad-shouldered.

  I slipped a hand up his shirt. I needed to feel skin against skin and marveled at the bunch of abdominal muscle beneath my fingers. It rippled and clenched as I moved up and across his body.

  “Echo.”

  The door opened a little more, and this time, the sharp hook of desire caught me in the chest and tugged.

  I lifted my chin. “Lyrian?” This … this wasn’t friends. This need and want were so much more.

  His arctic gaze was liquid and warm as it grazed my face. I pushed up, teasing the air between our lips with my breath. I wanted him to kiss me so bad it hurt.

  His hand slid up my arm, over my shoulder, and into the hair at the nape of my neck. His fingers splayed across my scalp, but still, he held back.

  Frustration, confusion, sadness coursed through me, flooding my mind. “Lyrian, please, I … I don’t under—”

  He cut off my words with his lips, holding his mouth over mine, not moving, not teasing, just his lips on mine as if he were frozen, as if it was taboo, and then he broke contact and brushed my nose with his.

  “I can’t give you what you want. I can’t take it.”

  My mouth moved against his cheek. “What I feel for you is more than friends.”

  “I know.” He rolled his forehead against mine. “I fucking know.”

  My heart was aching, but I didn’t understand why. I had him, he was mine, so why … Why did it feel like I was losing him?

  “You won’t,” he said. “You’ll never lose me. I’m yours, Echo, always yours.”

  I kissed him, and he froze. For a moment, I thought he’d break away, but with a ragged moan, he sank into me, lips and tongue and heart. He gave it to me in that one kiss that pushed me back against the pillows, and finally offered me the weight of his body as he slanted his mouth across mine. He was honey and cinnamon, and he was mine, but then he was gone, tearing himself from me and placing himself in the chair he’d vacated just a few minutes ago. I scrambled into a sitting position, heart in my mouth, blood pounding in places that told me I’d been ready to give myself to him.