“What about Quinn?” Harper asked. “And Nikolai?”
Hunter said, “If I remember correctly, they didn’t have any magical abilities in their lineage. Based on this mythology, they’re straight-up children of science.”
Harper’s brain was working so fast now it almost gave her a headache. “Anton said the children of magic and science can save us. So, he means Riddick and Seven can save us?”
Hunter tipped his head to one side thoughtfully, then said, “Not only Riddick and Seven. Haven is a child of science and magic, too. So is Adrianne.”
“Holy shit,” Riddick muttered. “What does this dude think we can save everyone from?”
Hunter continued to skim the book for a moment before raising his eyes to meet Harper’s. Her stomach dropped into her combat boots. She didn’t like the look on his face. Not at all.
“Apparently,” he began, pausing to lick his lips, “the veil between the worlds can…tear, making it possible for those on the other side to slip through into our world.”
Riddick sat up straighter. “Just what the fuck is on the other side of this veil, Hunter? What are we dealing with?”
Harper swallowed hard as Lane’s words ran through her head, mingling with Anton’s.
“Demons,” she whispered.
We burn. Burn, burn, burn. One and all.
***
Riddick looked tenser than Harper had seen him in a long, long time as they sat in the car outside the Harper Hall Investigations building.
“I never wanted either of them involved in…all this,” he said quietly.
Harper sighed. She knew he was talking about the kids, and all this meant their daily lives and the supernatural hijinks that ensued. Some days were definitely more fun than others. And today? Not one of the good ones. “I know. I didn’t either, but whether we like it or not, they are involved. My father tried to take Haven and recruit Addy. He must know about the veil and the…demons.”
She swallowed hard. Demons. Jesus. Who knew she’d fondly remember the days when vampires were the biggest threats to human safety? Good times.
“I wanted them to have normal lives,” he said.
Harper offered him a half smile. “With us as parents, was normal ever really an option?”
His smirk was about ten percent less…smirk-y than usual, but it was still potent enough make her body temperature shoot up a few degrees. “Maybe normal was overreaching a bit,” he said.
She held up her thumb and index finger, indicating a smidge.
He slid his hand under her hair to cup the nape of her neck and leaned over, resting his forehead against hers. “And just so you know, I wouldn’t give up a second with you for normal.”
Harper smiled. “It’s stupid how much I love you.”
“Definitely. You could do way better.”
She kissed him instead of telling him he was an idiot and that there was no one better for her. “Come on,” she said, reluctantly pulling back and opening her door. “Let’s go in and make sure everything is OK with Anton so that we can go home and give our girls a big hug and kiss goodnight.”
“That’s the best fucking idea I’ve heard all day.”
Just as Riddick rounded the front of the car and hooked his arm through hers, she let out a sharp gasp. Something had hit her neck. It felt like the time she’d gotten stung by a wasp when she was ten, but the sinking feeling in her gut told her it wasn’t a grumpy wasp this time.
Her vision blurred almost immediately and her limbs started tingling from her neck down to her feet. With shaking fingers, she reached up and plucked a dart out of her neck.
“Riddick,” she mumbled as her legs crumpled beneath her.
With a growl, he scooped her up before she could hit the ground. A second later, he lashed out with a front snap kick in the jaw to a man who rushed them, lifting the guy right off his feet. Riddick shifted Harper’s weight to one arm, throwing a punch at another man in front of them before spinning around and kicking yet another who came at them from the shadows.
She could barely lift her head, but let out a little cry of dismay when she saw that three—no, four—darts like the one that had hit her had hit Riddick. He had one in his shoulder and two in his neck.
And men kept coming at them. Riddick kept fighting, but his movements were hampered by holding her dead weight against his chest, and he was starting to slow down from whatever was in those damn darts.
With nothing more than sheer willpower, Harper pressed the panic button on her watch, just as a fifth dart struck Riddick in the arm. He dropped to one knee with a roar of outrage, still holding her in his arms, as more men than she could count surrounded them.
And that’s when everything went black.
Chapter Eleven
Riddick came to with a start, pissed off and ready to kill anything that stood between him and his wife. He leapt to his feet only to be jerked back by the thick length of chain that was wrapped around his ankles and wrists and attached to the stone wall of the cell he was in.
Although, as he glanced around, cell was probably too generous a term for the medieval torture chamber the bastards who’d taken Harper had dumped him in.
He’d done time in a maximum-security prison outside of Whispering Hope, and this place made that hellhole look like Club Med.
The stench of unwashed flesh and mold and God-knows-what-else was strong enough to fight back, and the bars on the eight-by-eight space looked to be silver-coated titanium. They’d be strong enough to withstand anything a vampire, werewolf, or dhampyre could throw at them.
He gave his chains a hard yank, testing their strength. The metal groaned, but didn’t give.
And as if that wasn’t bad enough, his head hurt like a bitch. It felt like someone had poked a hole through his skull and right into his brain. Through his eye sockets. Jesus, what the fuck had they shot him with?
And more importantly, where the fuck was his wife?
“Relax,” a deep, rumbling voice uttered behind him. “She’s fine.”
Riddick whirled around to face the owner of the voice, who was cloaked in shadows at the back of the cell. Shit, he really must be off his game. He hadn’t even seen the guy sitting there. “How the fuck do you know she’s fine? Where is she? Who the fuck are you?”
The other man chuckled, then Riddick heard the clatter of chains as he leaned forward out of the shadows a bit. “Which question do you want me to answer first?”
The dude sounded remarkably calm for someone chained to a fucking wall in a cell with an enraged, panic-stricken dhampyre. “My wife,” Riddick said, barely able to force words out from behind his clenched teeth. “Where is she?”
He raised his head, closed his eyes, and took a deep breath. Then he smiled and Riddick felt decidedly…edgy. Edgy wasn’t something Riddick was used to feeling. There weren’t too many men a dhampyre couldn’t take in a fight for survival. But this guy? He was a predator, through and through. Riddick might be able to take him in a fight…but it probably wouldn’t be pretty.
“She’s four floors up. In a room much nicer than this one. She’s safe,” he said in that same maddeningly calm tone. “For now, at least.”
Riddick forced himself to take a deep, calming breath. She was alive. He could deal with anything else. “Where are we?”
“Guests of the government. This is an army base. The off-the-books kind.”
In his experience, there was only one off-the-books kind of government installation. “The supernatural kind,” Riddick murmured.
Fuck. They really were rebuilding Sentry.
His cellmate nodded. “Your wife is lucky. The general doesn’t want her dead. He needs her for something.”
The general. Her father, Riddick realized. “What does he need her for?”
He shrugged one shoulder. “Best I can tell, she has the scientist who knows how to seal the rift.”
“The one between this dimension and…the other?”
“One other.”
Which implied there really were other dimensions. Maybe even many other dimensions. Riddick decided to stow that information away for later because frankly, he didn’t give a fuck about any of that at the moment. All he wanted was his wife.
Giving his chains another tug, he decided he wouldn’t be able to break them. But he could break his wrist, then his ankle, and maneuver his way out of the shackles. Then he’d only have to contend with the bars. It was doable. The broken bones would make getting to Harper harder, but he could manage. He’d done more with worse injuries. And his dhampyre blood would heal the breaks in a few hours. Hopefully.
Now…should he break his wrist first…or his ankle?
“I wouldn’t do it if I were you.”
Riddick glared at him. “Well, you’re not me, and I have to get to my wife.”
He rolled his eyes. “The bars are unbreakable. You can’t brute-strength your way out of them. But they can be melted.”
“Too bad I’m not pyrokinetic,” he said with an eye roll of his own.
“You’re not. But I am.”
Riddick couldn’t hold back a snort. “Right. Then why are you still sitting here, chained to the fucking wall, pyro boy?”
The guy leaned forward a little more so that the dim light from the one bare bulb screwed into the ceiling outside their cell fully hit his face, and it was then that Riddick took his first good, long look at his cellmate.
He’d been here a long, long time. That much was obvious. His clothes looked like maybe they’d been jeans and a T-shirt a few decades ago, but at the moment, they were little more than torn, filthy rags that were disintegrating off his body, piece by piece.
Riddick guessed the guy was about six-two or six-three, and probably had weighed two-ten or two-twenty in his prime. But even though he looked like he was no more than twenty-five years old, this man wasn’t anywhere near his prime. The way his clothes hung on his frame and the way his cheekbones stood out like knife blades above the sunken hollows of his cheeks spoke of years of wasted flesh and muscle.
His eyes were as black as the years-past-a-trim hair that hung past his shoulders in messy, greasy tangles. His beard was equally unkempt and grubby looking. And he looked…hungry. Not just because of his loose clothes, but because of the barely contained desperation in his eyes. He talked a good, calm game, but he was as close to losing his cool as Riddick was. This was the face of a guy who’d kill for his freedom.
Excellent, Riddick thought grimly. He could use that desperation to his advantage.
“I’ve been in here about as long as you’ve been alive, boy,” the guy said. “I was here when the new general killed the old general to take his job. I haven’t fed once in that time. Starvation has weakened me to the point that I couldn’t light a candle, let alone melt those bars.”
Well, there was a lot wrong with what he’d just said, Riddick realized. First of all, if he’d been in here that long and hadn’t fed, he should be dust. There wasn’t a supernatural thing he’d ever seen that could survive that long without food.
Vampires, even old ones, could go a few years without blood if they weren’t injured or very active. Werewolves and other shifters could go maybe a month or two without food. Dhampyres? Shit, Riddick would be lucky to last two weeks in this cell without food and water.
And more importantly, none of the paranormal species he knew of were pyrokinetic. Which begged the question…
“What are you?”
He smirked. “I’m not all that different than you. I’m just…from another place and time.”
The veil. Demons. Burning.
The fog the drugs had caused in Riddick’s brain finally lifted. “You’re a demon,” he hissed. “You came through a tear in the veil.”
He sat up a little straighter and lifted a brow. “Demon? That’s a little harsh, I’d say. But I’ve been called worse by the bastards who run this place. I have a feeling you and I will become close, though. So you, my friend, can call me Gabriel.”
“Gabriel? Like the angel?” Riddick snorted. “Well, that’s ironic.”
Another smirk. “Isn’t it, though?”
Riddick shook his head. He was so over this shit it wasn’t even funny anymore. “OK, Gabriel from the veil, I’ve decided I don’t really give a shit who or what you are. Are you saying that if I feed you my blood, you’ll be able to recharge enough to get us out of here?”
Gabriel looked horrified. “Good God, man, why would I want your blood?”
That gave him pause. “Um…because every paranormal in the history of…ever…wants blood?”
“It doesn’t work that way for my kind. We feed on energy. But I have to have contact with the energy source to feed.”
Now it was Riddick’s turn to look horrified. “If you’re saying this is some kind of sex thing, well, that’s gonna be a hard pass, man. We’ll just have to figure out something else, because—”
Gabriel rolled his head around on his neck and let out an exasperated sigh. “I really wish it’d been your wife they put in here with me, because frankly, the way your mind works confounds me. I don’t have to have sex with someone to feed off their energy—just a touch. And whatever emotions you’re feeling at the time…flavor your energy, for lack of a better term. So, what are you feeling right now?”
What was he feeling? His wife was somewhere, here, away from him, and the fuckers who threw him in a cage had shot her in the fucking neck with a drugged dart. “Rage. Murderous fucking rage.”
The creepy bastard actually licked his lips. “My favorite. That’ll do nicely.”
“Let me get this straight. I feed you my murderous rage, you get strong enough to burn us out of here. Right?”
“Yes.”
“And what happens to everyone who tries to stop us?”
Gabriel smiled his predator’s smile. “They burn.”
Riddick couldn’t say that thought bothered him at all. But Harper wouldn’t like it. He couldn’t imagine his wife ever being OK with killing people, even if they were the dumb motherfuckers who’d shot her in the neck with drugged darts. And she especially wouldn’t be OK with letting a monster out of a cell and inflicting him on the population at large.
“And what would you do when you’re out?” Riddick asked. “Planning to burn more people out there?”
And in the blink of an eye, Gabriel’s cool façade cracked wide open. He lunged forward as far as his chains would allow. “I never wanted to burn anyone,” he hissed. “How do you think I ended up in here in the first place? They never could have captured me when I first stepped into this dimension. They couldn’t even comprehend my power, let alone control it. I came to them. I wanted to help close the rift so that others on my side of the veil couldn’t come here.”
Riddick wasn’t the most intuitive dhampyre, and he wasn’t a breathing lie detector like his sister. But he was willing to bet that Gabriel was telling him the truth. He’d come to Sentry to help close the rift, and instead of accepting his help, they’d captured him, drugged him, starved him, and kept him prisoner in their dungeon for decades.
“The, uh, people on your side,” Riddick began. “How bad are they?”
“Imagine the most vile humans and supernatural creatures you’ve ever seen, then know that the other side of the veil? A hundred times worse. Why do you think I came through that rift without having any idea what was on this side?”
Wow. Gabriel wasn’t one to mince words or sugar-coat anything.
Riddick sighed. He was low on time, patience, and options. “Well, Gabriel, it would seem we’re on the same side. I have family out there, people I love more than anything in this world. I’ll do whatever I have to do to keep them safe, even if it means fighting everyone in this building and everyone on your side of the veil to do it. I want that rift closed as much as you say you do. So, I’ll feed you and I’ll get you out of here. But you have to give me your word that we don’t kill anyone in the process. We can terrify, threaten, break b
ones, maim, …whatever. No death, though. My wife would be pissed if we left a trail of bodies through this place, and trust me, you don’t want to mess with my wife when she’s pissed.”
Gabriel cocked his head to one side and studied him with an inquisitive gleam in his dark eyes. “You would trust my word? The word of a demon? A monster?”
Riddick shrugged. “From one monster to another? Yeah. I would.”
Gabriel gave him a slow nod. “I can agree to those terms.”
He sounded sincere. That was good enough for Riddick. What other options did he have? He held out his hand to Gabriel. “I’m Riddick, by the way.”
Gabriel gave him another smirk. “Well, I would say it’s nice to meet you, Riddick, but…you know.” He gestured to their cell.
Riddick rolled his eyes. “Just hurry up and feed, would you? I don’t have all fucking day.”
“As you wish,” he murmured before reaching for Riddick’s hand.
Riddick yanked it away at the last second and narrowed his eyes on Gabriel. “Just know that if you’re lying to me, I’ll kill you. You might be able to melt steel, but that won’t matter when I rip your fucking head off.”
Gabriel looked mildly amused, but still sounded sincere when he said, “You’re my only friend in this world and in the one I came from, Riddick. Why would I lie to you?”
“That’s just pathetic, man,” Riddick said as he grabbed Gabriel’s hand.
The hairs on Riddick’s arms stood at attention as…something flowed over his skin. Power? Electricity? The transfer of energy? He had no idea. But it was a strange feeling, to say the least. Kind of like the pins-and-needles sensation he always got when he tried to move his arm after Harper had slept with her head on his shoulder all night.
It wasn’t long before Gabriel’s appearance started to change. His cheeks filled out a bit, as did his body. Lean muscle quickly took the place of wasted flesh. But the strangest—and most disconcerting—change? His eyes.
Gabriel’s once black-as-midnight eyes danced with flames. The man had actual fire burning in his eyes.
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