by Anna Argent
He’d be seen eventually, but not before she had time to find Echo, fulfill her destiny, and make Phoenix proud.
***
Garrick had never been squeamish, but even his stomach turned at the sight of so much blood.
Holt sat on a stool beside him in a kitchen bigger than most restaurants. The trio of screens lined up in front of him cast a gray-blue glow across his stark features. He looked as sick as Garrick felt.
None of the hacked camera feeds in Starry’s mansion had shown them what had happened in the underground prisoner cells, but judging by the amount of blood Reznik was wearing when he came back upstairs, there was no way someone wasn’t dead.
Starry was only a few steps behind the torturer. Her white dress was pristine and unblemished. She closed and locked the steel door that led downstairs and ordered Reznik to strip.
Garrick had lived in that mansion for years, but never once had he wondered why the basement entrance had its own dedicated room—like a mud room—or why the floor was tiled like a shower, with a drain off to one side.
As Reznik’s drenched clothing hit the floor with a wet thwack, the purpose of the space became clear.
Starry slid open what Garrick had always assumed was a storage closet, but inside was a shower. She turned it on, backing away from the spray before it could dampen her designer dress. Reznik, nude and smeared red, limped under the stream.
Pink water spiraled down the drain.
Starry stepped around the mound of discarded clothes as if it were as mundane as a puddle after a rain shower.
She was the most overtly beautiful woman he’d ever seen, with killer curves and an air of confidence that made any man wonder exactly what it was she was so good at that made her so unfalteringly certain of her every move.
There was nothing wholesome about her, nothing subtle, but she radiated power.
Garrick’s mind went to Eliana, the Riven’s healer, as it did more times a day than he cared to admit. She was sweet where Starry was sexy. Eliana was a smile to Starry’s sultry grin, open arms instead of open legs.
Garrick felt a love that was friendship, loyalty and duty when he looked at Starry, but when he was lucky enough to glimpse Eliana, he felt so much more. She was like oxygen, like spring after a long winter, like cool, clean water to a man dying of thirst.
She was everything to him and yet he knew he couldn’t have her. His love for her distracted him, blinded him. He couldn’t lead the Riven when his every waking thought was for the safety of the woman who saved lives by risking her own.
With an effort of will, Garrick shoved thoughts of Eliana from his mind and focused on the scene playing out on the screen.
The snowy white dress Starry wore fitted so well, flattered her figure so perfectly, he knew it had to have been handmade for her body alone. Her makeup was understated, but accentuated her bright silver eyes and the fullness of her mouth. She had no wrinkles that he could see, no sagging skin or age spots, but she was rumored to be old enough to be a grandmother. As far as he could tell, that was just a load of bullshit meant to add to her mystique. She couldn’t have been a day past thirty.
An ornate silver medallion hung from her neck, gleaming under the bright LED lights overhead. Holt didn’t know what the importance of the piece was, but he couldn’t remember a time that she hadn’t been wearing it.
Maybe that was the source of her beauty, rather than genetics or the shards she carried.
“How long before we can question him again?” she asked Reznik.
The man was unconcerned by his nudity. He hadn’t even bothered to close the shower door while he washed. His small, thin body was on open display, including his disfigured knee.
“Sunrise. But don’t expect him to break so quickly. For men as stubborn as he is, I usually have to kill them a few times before they realize there’s no other way out but to give me what I want.”
“How many times?”
Reznik lathered his hair and used the suds to scrub his face. The bubbles turned pink before they sluiced down his chest.
“It’s hard to say. You’re asking him to betray Phoenix. Until he’s more afraid of death than her, his lips will stay sealed.”
“How long?” she demanded, her tone hard enough to make the camera vibrate slightly.
The torturer soaped himself methodically, working from his neck to his toes. “If I have to guess—”
“You do.”
“A week. Maybe two. That’s when most people realize that I’m not going to stop. There is no hope. Once my subject knows that being tortured to death every day is their world, once all hope of escape is gone, that’s when they give up. Not before.”
“Is there any way to speed the process? Kill him more often?” Starry asked, as easily as if she were requesting an extra napkin at a restaurant.
“Once a day is all I can do. We’ll start again at sunrise. I’ll try to go slower this time.” He gave her a chagrined smile. “I got a little excited down there. It’s been a while since I got to play.”
“I hate it when a man finishes too fast,” she said.
He laughed like she’d told a joke.
Starry didn’t.
“You’d better make this happen,” she warned.
His expression went cold as he turned off the water and stepped out of the shower. “Like I told you before, it takes as long as it takes. You can be as impatient as you want, but you’d damn well better pay my fee. I get pissy when the terms of my contract are broken.”
Starry pulled a fluffy, white towel from a cabinet and handed it to him. “You wouldn’t be issuing threats, would you?”
“I don’t have to. I don’t hide what happens to the customers who leave bad reviews. They all get killed in ways they can’t come back from.” He scrubbed the towel over his hair as he looked up at her. “No threat, just facts.”
“I need answers,” Starry said.
“And you’ll get them. I just can’t tell you when. Good thing patience is a virtue.”
Starry shook her head. “Not one of mine.”
She left and took the elevator to her third-floor suite where no cameras reached. Reznik walked naked through the house to one of the guest rooms on the main level. A young woman in an apron came to clean up behind them. She shoved the bloody clothes into a trash bag as if it were something she did every day. Then she started to scrub the shower clean.
Garrick sat there for a moment, too stunned to speak.
Starry had gone darkside last August. She’d killed one too many bad guys, and in doing so, had absorbed their dark shards and become one of them. All these months Garrick had been certain that the woman he knew—the one who’d saved him and mentored him—was still in there. He believed that her light shards would fight back and take control, that they’d somehow manage to bring back the selfless, courageous woman that all of them knew and loved—the one they looked to for leadership.
Until this very moment—until seeing the bloody proof of what she’d been willing to do to get what she wanted—he’d believed that the old Starry was still alive.
But now he knew the truth. That woman had died. She’d lost the battle raging inside of her and succumbed to the potent forces of the Vires’ shards she carried. No matter how much time he gave her, no matter how many pleading voice messages or emails he sent, Starry was gone. If anything of her had been left, she never would have let that man inside her home.
Something in Garrick’s chest broke and shifted. The pain stole his breath, but also set him free.
His hands had been tied for months. He’d been unwilling to make any move against her that might hurt her. Everyone had told him that the Starry they all looked up to was dead, but he’d refused to believe it, and that fantasy had cost the Riven dearly.
He hadn’t been leading the team wholeheartedly. He’d simply been filling a role that belonged to someone else. A substitute teacher.
But Starry wasn’t coming back. She wasn’t secretly on their
side.
He couldn’t save her.
That meant it was time for Garrick to step up and start making some hard decisions. No one else wanted the job of leading the Riven. No one else knew Starry as well as he did.
She was their enemy and it was time for him to fight back.
He straightened his spine and turned to Holt. “It’s time to figure this out. We need to know what she’s doing and why.”
Holt leaned back on the stool and rubbed his eyes. “All I know is that was ten kinds of fucked up.”
“At least,” Garrick agreed. “I’d heard rumors that there was a guy who could kill people and they’d come back to life the next day, but I had no idea he’d gotten himself a job as a torturer.”
“No question which way his shards swing,” Holt said.
“You’ve been watching these cameras for days. Any idea who the not-so-lucky torture victim is or what it is Starry wants from him?”
Holt shook his head. “I have footage of at least four prisoners being set free. I was on the west coast finishing a job when Starry turned, so it took me a few weeks get here. She may have let out others before I arrived. Since then I’ve had to move around a few times. The lovely couple who owns this house are returning in seven days.”
“Who were the four prisoners that Starry released?”
“One was a woman. I didn’t know the other two men, but one was Ansel Watkins.”
The hair on the back of Garrick’s neck stood up in warning.
Ansel had been a good man once. He’d been loyal to the Riven, fighting the good fight. But the last time he’d checked in with Eden, she’d judged him a danger to himself and others. His dark shards had taken over and there was nothing they could do but lock him up.
He’d vowed to kill Eden for what she’d done, for betraying him.
“Did you warn Argo?”
Holt gave a single, rigid nod. His jaw tightened. The tendon’s in his neck strained as if he were tugging at an invisible collar. “I wanted to go after him myself, but there was no one else to man my post.”
That was Holt. Loyal to a fault
“I’ll see if Marvel can rig up some way of monitoring the cameras from a distance. Then we can go after Ansel together.”
Holt shook his head. “Won’t work. I already asked her. This setup is the best I’ve had since I got here. Most of the time I’m hiding in a storage shed or in some dense landscaping. I have to dodge groundskeepers, security teams and dogs. There’s no permanent place for my receivers.”
“How were you eating? Bathing?”
“I wasn’t.” The statement was bland, with no hint of how the man felt about what he’d endured.
Garrick suddenly realized just how hard Holt’s job had been. For months. He had no backup, no bed to sleep in, no way to prepare food.
Not once had he complained or asked for help. He simply did the job he was asked to do and kept his mouth shut.
Garrick was going to have to do better by this man. He was going to have to step up and start thinking about the people he now led. He needed to make sure their needs were met, and that they had whatever resources necessary to do the tasks he asked of them.
As he thought through those out in the field, he realized that he had a lot of catching up to do, starting with Holt.
“Go get some sleep,” Garrick said. “I’ll keep an eye on things.” And while he did, he was going to start making things right.
Starry wasn’t coming back. He was now on his own.
Chapter Twelve
Stygian didn’t get them to Wichita before dark. A wreck on I-35 slowed them down to the point that they decided to stop and get a decent meal—something he was in desperate need of after weeks of being away from home, hunting.
Echo had fallen asleep after a quick dinner, and it had taken him considerable willpower not to follow her lead.
By the time he hit the southern edge of the city, he was too tired to keep going, so he made the executive decision to book them rooms for the night.
A voice whispered to him that he should get only one room, but he ignored Hazel and her plans for his unborn offspring. No way could he share a room with Echo and not be tempted by her. The more distance he put between them, the better. And yet he couldn’t bring himself to go farther than adjoining rooms, because what if she needed him? What if the rat man found her in the night? He couldn’t reach her in time if she was on the other side of a hotel.
He hurried back out to the Mustang where he’d left her sleeping right outside of the glass doors of the lobby. Even though it had taken him all of four minutes to check in, he’d still been worried about that rat man finding her again.
Stygian didn’t know how the man kept tracking her down, but the next time it happened would be the last.
Eden had warned him not to kill again—that his balance of good and evil shards was too precarious to risk tipping—but he didn’t see much choice. He’d try to take the rat man alive and lock him up below Asgard, but if that didn’t work, Plan B was his only option.
He couldn’t leave Echo to fight the man by herself. She was too vulnerable, too weak—though he’d never say that to her face for fear she’d misinterpret what he meant.
Her spirit was strong and vibrant. Her mind was quick. Her legs were fast. But she was not physically strong. He’d felt that clearly when he’d had her pinned beneath him on his bed—a thought that still had the power to make his cock swell against his will. She was also not very big. A sturdier woman might be able to survive an attack long enough for help to arrive, but Echo was willowy and breakable.
She was also valuable to their cause. He didn’t know of anyone who could do what she did—locating prophecy, finding that map, reading it. Those were rare skills, and his people needed any edge against the Vires they could get.
After parking the Mustang under a security light, he turned and put his hand on Echo’s shoulder to wake her. “Echo?”
She startled awake and slammed her head against the glass window in an effort to get away from him. Before she had time to blink she was already scrambling to make her escape.
He held her arm so she wouldn’t fall out of the car. “Easy. You’re safe. It’s just me.”
She settled quickly, took a few deep breaths, and rubbed her eyes. “Sorry. How long was I asleep?”
“A few hours. You needed it after missing out on sleep last night.”
“Where are we?”
“Wichita, but it’s too late to find that park. We’ll hole up for the night and set out at first light.”
As reality settled in and she realized where they were, she shifted uncomfortably. “This is a hotel.”
“It is.”
“Uh.” She squirmed more. “I’ll just sleep in the car. I’m used to it.”
“Not an option, Echo—not with the rat man on your trail.”
“Leave the keys. I can outrun him in this car.”
Stygian sighed. “I’m not going to throw myself at you or take advantage of you while you sleep. I’ve got more honor than that.”
“I never thought you would.”
Maybe if he warned her about Hazel’s plans, she’d think twice about trusting him so quickly.
Then again, if he warned her, she might take off the first chance she got and be out there all alone with no one to watch her back.
He had to stay distant. Keep his emotions in check, like he’d been trained to do. He couldn’t forget that Hazel had an end game here that involved Echo in a huge way.
The image of the infant glowed in his mind, every detail of the tiny little face perfect and pure. Pale teal eyes stared up at him, filled with complete trust. With love.
Stygian’s chest tightened with a feeling he couldn’t name. It was sweet and warm and filled with need. If he hadn’t known better—if the emotion hadn’t been beaten out of him at a young age—he would have said that it was longing.
Only there was no way he longed to bring a child into the chaos a
nd danger that made up his life. It just wasn’t fair. It wasn’t right.
Whatever he was feeling, it was artificial—a construct Hazel erected in his head to get him to go along with her master plan.
“Why don’t you want to sleep inside?” he asked.
“Too many people. If the rat man comes, I don’t want anyone else getting hurt.”
“So, you’re willing to expose yourself out here?”
“Fewer witnesses. Fewer victims.”
While he knew her logic was flawed, he was too tired to explain the reasons why.
“Come on,” he said. “We’re both exhausted. The chances of the rat man finding you inside among all those people are slim. And if he does, I’ll be there to deal with him.”
“It’s not safe.”
“Let me worry about safe. We both need a bed and a shower.”
And just like that, his mind filled with the image of her naked and wet in the shower, her body gliding over his as she grappled for control over the temperature and then, later, over the pace of him moving inside of her.
The scary part was, he knew that last image wasn’t a gift from Hazel, but one of his own making. He wanted Echo and there wasn’t a damn thing he could do to make the lust go away.
***
Gooey chocolate chip cookies, hot out of the oven were Echo’s undoing.
She hadn’t wanted to stay here and realize just how much she was missing in her life of shitty motel rooms and truck stop showers. She’d seen TV shows filled with all the lavish trappings that high-end hotels could offer, but those were about as real to her as visiting outer space. She knew it existed, but had no hopes of ever experiencing it first-hand.
But now that she was here in this giant chain hotel filled with gleaming chrome and a lobby boasting a sparkling crystal chandelier and a freaking fireplace, she knew that she was going to be spoiled for the rest of her life.
She would have been fine with a clean room, clean linens and no mold growing in the shower. She would have accepted that the vents were free of clumpy dust and that the air conditioning worked in silent perfection. But not, in her most vivid daydreams of a life of luxury, had she ever envisioned that their room would come with a side of fresh, hot, gooey chocolate chip cookies.
