by D. Laine
Before she thought it would be funny to start a fight.
Not like we would have been able to have much fun anyway. The water was a lot colder than I anticipated. The hot sex I had hoped to have wouldn’t have been all that hot. Nor was it likely to happen anytime soon.
Not until she got over whatever shit she had to get over. Not until she realized how hard I was trying to be the guy she deserved.
And definitely not until I came clean about Maria—which I had fully intended to do before Thea went crazy on my ass. My one opportunity to prove she could trust me, even if the revelation was a tough one to swallow, and she hadn’t even given me the chance. I was pissed, for a damn good reason.
“So are you going to tell me what’s going on?”
I finished yanking on my pants before turning to Jake. “What?”
“I didn’t realize your clothes offended you so much.”
I blinked at him. “Seriously, what?”
“You’re glaring at your clothes like they committed some crime against you.”
“Maybe they did.” I slid my arms through the sleeves of my shirt with forced control, like a normal person would do.
“Hmm. Okay.” Jake turned his back and shook out his coat. “I thought maybe it had something to do with why Thea is trying so hard to block me out.”
“Trying?”
Jake peered over his shoulder. “Not very well. She’s upset, and I know it. You’re pissed, and it’s obvious. Spill it.”
I jammed my foot into a shoe without responding. The tread on the soles had worn through. I would need to find new ones soon.
“You’re not going to tell me what happened?” Jake pressed.
“Nope.”
He nodded at the floor, and suddenly my mouth started moving without my consent.
“You know what?” I huffed. “I’m fucking trying. You know that. Everybody knows that . . . except for her. I can’t be perfect, and I know I screwed up before, but I didn’t this time. She’s being unreasonable, and she”—I jabbed my finger in the general direction of the cabin—“had the nerve to ask me if we were done. Like we’re just some meaningless object that can be thrown away.” I finally permitted myself to take a breath. “I don’t understand women.”
Jake didn’t look away until I finished. Tying his own worn shoes, he muttered, “Nobody does, man.”
“I swear they take special classes to learn how to screw with us.”
Jake snorted softly. “Just talk to her. She feels guilty about something, so I know she didn’t mean whatever she said about you guys being done. And she’s anxious, so maybe she thinks that’s what you want.”
My jaw came unhinged. “But I—”
“Girls are weird like that,” Marcus chimed in. Glancing toward the pool, I found him wading toward the stairs. “They take every little thing we say and turn into something we didn’t even come close to saying. Maria does it to me all the damn time.”
“But I didn’t say anything that . . .” I trailed off as my argument with Thea replayed in my head. Shit. Had I given her a reason to doubt my commitment?
“Even if you didn’t say anything, you should still apologize.”
I squinted at Marcus, wondering what kind of reasoning that was. “What am I supposed to say I’m apologizing for?”
He shrugged. Clearly he hadn’t thought it through.
“No. Don’t . . .” Jake shook his head and shot Marcus a look of exasperation. “It doesn’t work like that.”
“This is why I don’t do the girlfriend thing.” Marcus jabbed a finger at me. “I told you that you were fucked.”
“He’s not . . .” Jake spun from Marcus to me with a groan. “Everything is so screwed up right now, she probably just needs reassurance. That’s all.”
By telling her that I had knocked up her archnemesis? Yeah, that wasn’t going to work out the way he thought it would.
“He has a point. We’re all on edge,” Marcus admitted as he put his shirt on. “She is a pretty cool chick most of the time, so I’m sure that’s all it is.”
“See?” Jake flashed me a forced smile. “Easy to fix.”
Little did either of my friends know how potentially wrong they could be. I was dealing with enough drama without factoring in the apocalypse and Lucifer and the Watchers.
Thea had been the only glimmer of light on the otherwise dark horizon. One argument didn’t change how I felt about her—no matter how irrational she had been. I couldn’t let what we had go without a hell of a fight.
That was what being in a relationship was all about, right?
EWING CALLED a meeting the moment we walked through the door, putting a kink in my plan to work shit out with Thea. With the smell of chlorine still in my nose, I glared at him with unmasked annoyance while he took control of the group upon himself.
“Obviously those of us who carry both blood types have gone through some sort of change,” he started. “Other than what we’ve all seen, nothing bad or significant has happened—”
I snorted. “Especially not for you, huh, Ewing?”
Other than a slight eye twitch, he continued, unfazed by my interruption. “We all suspected that this change would happen when the Watchers were close. I think it’s safe to say that a showdown between them and Lucifer is imminent.”
A cold ripple of fear coursed through me, peppering my skin with goosebumps, without my consent. I groaned when I realized the source. “Dammit, Sadie. Knock it off.”
“You’re in danger, Dylan.” She spun around to pin me with her big, green eyes. “I can’t help but be terrified by that.”
“She’s right. You all need to take measures to protect yourselves before you’re taken hostage by a Watcher.” Ewing addressed me and the three other untagged vessels in the room.
I shared a furtive glance with Jake. I doubted anyone else detected the minimal shake of his head, but his thinly pressed lips were visible to all. Beside him, Maria’s fiery gaze burned a hole into Ewing’s forehead while Marcus widened his stance, somehow making himself appear larger. Empowered by the clear display of resistance by my fellow assassins, I folded my arms over my chest with a smirk. As a group, our body language portrayed a loud and clear “fuck off.” I chose nicer, but equally effective, words to speak out loud.
“Not going to happen.”
Sadie jumped to her feet. “Dylan, you have to—”
“No, I don’t have to do anything.”
“If you don’t, then you run the risk of being possessed by a Watcher,” she argued.
I shrugged. “If that’s what it takes to save everything from going to shit, then yeah, I guess so.”
“Look outside, Dylan!” Sadie waved a hand at the window. “It’s already gone to shit.”
I stared at my sister. “And it can get a lot worse. We all know that.”
“If we tag ourselves and take the Watchers out of the equation, who will be left to stop Lucifer?” Jake threw his question out to the group softly.
Furtive, and somewhat wary, glances passed between Sadie, Ewing, and Robbie. I had dealt with enough shady characters in dark alleys over the years to recognize what those looks meant.
“What are you not telling us?” I demanded, looking pointedly at my sister.
“We aren’t keeping anything from you.” Sadie shot to her feet. “It just hasn’t come up yet. We’ve been on the run and hiding . . .”
“And knocked unconscious,” Ewing muttered under his breath.
My heated gaze didn’t waver from Sadie. “What is it?”
“The Preppers,” she said. “Our camp . . .”
My patience wearing thin, I took a step forward. “What about it?”
Robbie took over for Sadie. “The Preppers are guarding the gate.”
“What gate?” Maria snapped behind me.
“Hell’s gate,” Ewing answered. “They are the last line of defense, entrusted with the task of preventing Lucifer from walking the Earth.”
; I eased back until I was standing shoulder to shoulder with Jake. “And why didn’t Calvin tell us that?”
All three of them shrugged.
“You didn’t think that was important enough to tell us, oh, I don’t know, the day we ran?” The last few words came out as a growl, causing Sadie to flinch.
I tried to reign in my temper, knowing she could feel it, but I was too pissed. There was no censoring my anger.
“Calvin made it sound like only the Watchers were capable of stopping Lucifer,” Jake pointed out. “How can the Preppers do it?”
“We . . .” Sadie darted a nervous glance in my direction. I started counting backwards from ten, and gave her the most reassuring nod I could muster. “Lucifer’s vessel must be the one to open the gate, to release Lucifer from Hell. Only then will they join as one, and Lucifer can walk on Earth.”
“The Preppers will stop his vessel from opening the gate,” Robbie added. “We don’t need the Watchers because the vessel will still be vulnerable at that time.”
“If the Watchers come into power, it will be just as bad as Lucifer walking among us,” Sadie said. “You can’t let them do that.”
“Hmm.” I shared a glance with Jake. This was an interesting development. But was it accurate? I didn’t doubt Sadie or Robbie . . . or even Ewing.
I doubted the word of a man like Calvin.
“So this mojo you guys got going on now?” I asked. “That’s power you need to stop the vessel, and whatever army he brings with him, from opening the gate?”
Robbie nodded. “We believe so, yes.”
“Then you’re screwed, aren’t you Ewing?” I smirked at him.
His head snapped around so fast I had classic horror movie flashbacks. “No more than you will be.”
“You don’t know that,” I said smoothly. “In fact, how can we be sure of anything Calvin says? What if you guys can’t stop him? What then?”
Sadie and Robbie exchanged troubled glances.
“We don’t know,” Robbie admitted softly. “Failure was never discussed as an option.”
“So you have no idea what would happen if the vessel got by you?” Maria questioned harshly.
When no one offered a response, I said, “They do know. They just don’t want to admit that it could happen.”
“Lucifer may still come out of that gate,” Jake concluded. “We may need the Watchers if he does. What will happen if we take them out of the equation now?”
When no one answered, Marcus murmured, “Lucifer wins.”
From the looks on the faces around us, you would think we had just admitted to being in alliance with Lucifer. I darted glances over each and every one of them, finally settling on the subtle shake of Thea’s head. She was just now learning about this, same as we were. But it was obvious she had reached a conclusion that differed from ours, and she was not happy.
“Sounds like you have given this some thought.” She looked at Jake. Then me.
In the silence that followed, I heard Jake swallow. “We’re not going to rush into any brash decisions.”
“Going to the Preppers is not brash,” Robbie argued. “It’s self-preservation. The Watchers—”
“And saving ourselves from the Watchers could leave the door wide open for Lucifer,” Jake countered. “We’re assassins first and foremost. We vowed to do everything in our power to keep this from happening. Things have changed, but our objective is the same. We will do whatever it takes to stop Lucifer.”
Beside me, Maria and Marcus nodded in agreement. If there was one thing I could always count on them for, it was this. Put others before ourselves. Strive to succeed for the better of everyone. Humanity came first.
Even if the others weren’t happy about our decision.
But it wasn’t like we were doomed. Not yet.
“All we need to do is find Lucifer’s vessel,” I offered. “Once we take him out, then we will do whatever it takes to deal with the Watchers.”
“Preferably before he gets anywhere near this gate,” Jake added. “That’s cutting it too close for me.”
“How do you plan to do that? We have no idea who he is, let alone where he could be,” Sadie said.
“Not to mention we have to dodge tags and might still have some vengeful Preppers looking for us,” Thea added. “It’s not like we can do a Google search to find him.”
I directed my next question to three specific targets: Sadie, Ewing, and Robbie. “You have no idea who it is?” The three of them exchanged perplexed expressions. “Think about it. Whoever it is has to be a vessel, and a relative of Spence and Calvin.”
“That is assuming it isn’t actually Calvin,” Maria grumbled.
Rolling with that hypothesis, I asked, “How sure are you that your leader took the precautions that he said he did? That he can’t be Lucifer’s vessel? That he wasn’t lying to you, and leading you exactly where he wants you?”
“You don’t know Calvin like we do,” Sadie said. “It’s not him. He wants this to be over as much as you do.”
“I thought I knew Spence, too,” I pointed out. “I was wrong.”
Sadie’s eyes narrowed. Along with her glower came a rush of anger invading my head. Too late to put the wall up. Sadie let me know exactly how she felt—without saying a single word.
“If it’s not Calvin, then it has to be a blood relation of his.” Jake glanced at me. “Spence knew who it could be, but he wouldn’t tell us.”
“Either of them have a son?” I asked.
All three ex-Preppers shook their heads.
“There has to be someone he knows,” Jake whispered to me.
“We need to find a way to get to Calvin,” I concluded. “Either it’s him, or he knows who it is. But we can’t just go walking into their camp. We need to strategize first.”
“This place is secure enough for now,” Marcus offered. “I vote we stay here until we come up with a plan to get the intel we need.”
“And I vote we go to the Preppers now,” Ewing countered. “I’ll make sure you’re taken care of the right way. You’ll get the injection. No imprisonment. We’ll intercept the vessel when he comes, and we will stop him.”
As expected, Sadie and Robbie sided with him.
All eyes shifted to Thea—the one with the power to split the vote, or settle it. Her attention shifted from Jake, to me, then back to Jake. Her mouth didn’t move, but she communicated plenty with her eyes. I didn’t need to peek inside her head to see that she was scared and unsure. We may have been fresh out of a nasty fight that left her feeling a host of insecurities about me, but she still cared. She still loved me.
Beside me, Jake shook his head softly.
They were communicating, and only they knew the details of their exchange.
Whatever vibes Jake sent her through their bond worked. With a barely discernible nod of Thea’s head, it was settled.
We were not turning to the Preppers for help.
7
DYLAN
I spent the duration of my turn on watch that night sensing my sister’s resentment. Wave after wave rolled into me from eight yards away—some stronger than others. Fortunately, I had twelve years of experience dealing with it before I had lost her. Times like now, it seemed as if the past ten years had never happened.
I understood why we had to take watch with our bonded partners—especially at night when it was too dark to communicate the old-fashioned way—but I really missed Jake. It took every ounce of self-discipline I had to stick to my side of the cabin, and not march over to Sadie’s side to demand that she stop pouting about not getting her way.
It was worse than the time Mom and Dad took us to Motocross instead of some lame princess parade when we were seven. Wasn’t my fault princesses were boring then, and it wasn’t my fault Lucifer had us backed into a corner now.
I glanced at my watch. Only fifteen minutes before we changed shifts. I could make it.
I sent out a mental request for reassurance—and prompt
ly got the confirmation from Sadie that all was still clear on her side. As the familiar swell of bitterness washed back into place, I started my march from the rear of the cabin to the front for the hundredth time that night.
Though the trees that surrounded us were bare, their skeletal branches still managed to block out what little light the sky permitted. The last time I looked, nine stars still twinkled dimly against the dark canvas. The moon was a hit or miss depending on the thickness of the ash circling the atmosphere. Tonight, it was a miss.
Visibility was exceptionally poor, forcing me to rely more on my sense of hearing. Other than my feet moving over the thin carpet of ash and my own steady breaths, I heard nothing. Despite the silence, goosebumps danced across my forearms and a tickling sensation raced across the back of my neck.
I whipped around, gun raised and ready for the threat, but nothing loomed behind me.
I held my breath and listened intently. Nothing moved.
I tried to calm my involuntary reaction, but realized it was too late when Sadie came to a stand by my side, staring in the direction I looked.
“What is it?” she whispered.
“Nothing. Go back to your side.”
“I know something spooked you,” she insisted.
“You’re wrong.” I didn’t get spooked.
“Dylan.” She gave me a familiar glare. Pretty sure all women were masters at it.
“I don’t know.” I sighed. My eyes fixated on the patch of woods behind the cabin, unwilling or unable to look away. “I just had a feeling that something was there. It’s gone now.”
“It wouldn’t be tags. They’re hardly stealthy.” I heard the warning in her voice.
If it wasn’t tags, that left either the Preppers or the Watchers—assuming it was anything at all. It could have been a breeze. And it was bitterly cold. That made more sense.
“What if it’s the Watchers, Dylan? You can’t exactly hide from them. You’re connected, whether you want to admit it or not. They know where you are—”
