by Dannika Dark
“And that shit is why I fucking left,” Levi announced, pressing his finger against the table.
Justus threw his weight on his forearms and his biceps hardened. “The interrogation was cut short, but it was enough to give us Nero’s name. Ray turned up dead, as did the interrogator.”
“How did you know there would be another attack?”
“Ray gave up the name of a man he was working with. It took a day to track him down. The details he provided led us to believe something big was about to go down. We sent word to the Mageri, uncertain if Nero knew we were onto him.”
Novis tapped his finger on the rim of his glass. “You have our gratitude, Justus. Your perseverance saved lives. Had we not received a warning, more lives would have been lost as many increased their security upon the Mageri’s recommendation. There is no way you could have known the attack would occur so soon, if at all. Not every plot discovered is realized.”
“Why would Nero attack your leaders?” Logan inquired, gripping my leg beneath the table. I glanced up at his strong profile and admired the man who had once considered a Mage his enemy. Now here he was by my side, genuinely interested in our affairs.
Novis flashed his teeth as he tore the wrapper away from a mint. “Nero craves what all outlaws want: power. They will never have power as long as there is organized law. These ancients have tasted the freedom of lawlessness for centuries—now they are struggling against conforming to a higher authority. Social order limits what they are capable of achieving. This is true even among your own kind, Chitah.”
Logan nodded and I caught his eyes on Adam again, his nose twitching. I gripped his wrist and he looked down at his wine, lifting the glass and swirling the liquid inside.
Adam looked at Novis with concern. “Was anyone on our Council lost?”
“No.” After chewing his mint, Novis rolled up the silver wrapper and placed it on his plate. “I was the only one attacked. It leads me to believe he is targeting the most influential leaders—that seems to be the only commonality. What troubles me is finding out he had already bought his way in with Merc. It makes me wonder how many more he has bribed and what is going on in that ambitious mind of his,” Novis said, his words trailing off.
Adam slanted his eyes toward Levi. “You should have stayed in.”
Levi rolled something between his fingers. “How ’bout I shove this cork up your nose so you’ll quit sticking it where it doesn’t belong?”
“I know a guy in the same situation, but he chose to stay and do the right thing. If you leave corruption, then corruption takes over. Don’t get mad at me just because you pussied out.”
Levi slammed his fist on the table and rose to his feet, two of his canines sliding out. “Wanna take it outside?”
“Sit down, Levi,” Logan said. “We both know he’s right.”
“That doesn’t mean shit,” he growled through clenched teeth. “It’s none of his business.”
“Levi, sit. We’ve discussed this at length.”
With a hard sigh, Levi sat down and shoved his plate out of the way, leaning toward Logan. “Well, I can’t take it back, now can I? There’s no returning once you leave. You don’t think I wonder about it? I have nightmares about what kind of man I might have become if I’d stuck around.”
“Gentlemen,” Novis interrupted. “We’re going off course. Adam is correct. A man should stand his ground against all obstacles, even if it seems justice will not prevail. It’s why I will retain my position on the Council, despite the corruption, despite the dangers. But I respect where you are, Levi. The service you provide is invaluable and perhaps there is a greater purpose to your life.”
The tension in the room made me sick to my stomach. Just knowing that Nero had played a hand in dividing these friends and brothers caused my energy to spike. I thought about Sunny, who’d lost the love of her life. With Novis as a target, she might be in more danger than ever before. And now he was going after Finn!
“Learner, level it down,” Justus said between clenched teeth.
My eyes darted up to his and I caught Adam craning his neck to look at my silvering eyes. Logan was no longer touching me, and everyone at the table ceased their talking. Anger funneled through my veins and more than ever, I wanted Nero dead. The man who’d chained and beat me. The man who’d taken lives and continued to slay anyone who mattered to me. A man older than the time of Christ, who sought to divide and conquer. A man of wealth. A man of power. Untouchable.
“Learner…”
My hands were shaking as threads of blue light leaked onto my lap. I couldn’t level it down. Overcome with emotion, I was seconds away from the energy spiraling into a black hole and sucking me into unconsciousness—right there at the dinner table in front of everyone.
A chair scraped back and hit the floor. Justus grabbed my wrists and yanked me out of my seat.
“Get your hands off her!” Logan roared.
“Stay out of this, Chitah. She’s about to lose control if I don’t draw out her energy.”
Adam cleared his throat. “I don’t know if that’s a good idea. Have you ever tasted her light when she’s that juiced up?”
No, he hadn’t. My power had gradually become more potent since the time of my creation. I yanked my hands back and heard a low-decibel hum in my head as a buzz tickled my palms.
“Give me your power,” Justus commanded.
“Justus,” Novis said, rising from the table. “Let it consume her. It could do more harm than good if—”
Without warning, Justus jerked my hands forward and placed them on his blue button-up shirt. A loud crack sounded and he flew back and hit the wall.
“Jesus!” Levi shouted, standing up with the rest of us.
I shuddered as an icy wave chilled my bones from the energy loss. Before I could move, bodies were rushing toward Justus, who was slumped on the floor with smoke rising from his chest.
“Damn,” Levi said, ripping the buttons free on Justus’s shirt. “It singed the fabric all the way through.”
Adam remained seated, wiping his face and looking toward the door.
“Are you all right?” Logan asked from behind me, his fingers tense around my shoulders.
“I’m fine,” I said, breathing heavily.
He turned me around and examined me with intense eyes, lifting my chin with the crook of his finger. “I’m not kidding around, Silver. Are you all right?”
Logan turned my palms up and brushed his hands over them. I shuddered and my teeth began to chatter. He pulled me against his warm chest and wrapped his arms around my body, talking to the men who were busy helping Justus.
“Is he conscious?”
“Worry not, Chitah,” Novis said.
When the room fell silent, I struggled to turn my head and see what was going on. Novis rolled up the sleeves of his black shirt and placed his slender fingers on Justus’s chest. I could see bright red marks where I had burned him.
“Oh my God,” I whispered in a horrified voice. Nothing like that had ever happened before.
Threads of blue light emanated from Novis’s fingertips as he brushed them against my Ghuardian’s chest, moving in slow circles.
“I don’t get that shit,” Levi said. “She just blasted him with the same light and you’re putting more in him?”
“This is healing light,” Novis explained. “Our energy comes in different forms and it requires concentration to pull the right kind out. What Silver released into him was her full power.”
“I thought that juiced up another Mage,” Levi said, his tone more a statement than a question.
“Normally, it would. But her light exceeded what a Mage would take when juicing another.”
Novis carefully tiptoed around the truth that I was a Unique. It was something neither Levi nor Adam was privy to and not a fact we advertised in the local paper.
Justus coughed several times and sat up, taking in a few ragged breaths.
Novis laughed softly and
turned to look up at me from his squatting position. “I’d say this was a splendid dinner, Silver. Well done. Perhaps next time you’ll throw us a barbecue?”
Levi hammered out a hard laugh, wheezing into his fist. “I have to get back to work. We’ll keep our eyes and ears on the streets. If I come across any information, I’ll let you know.”
“I appreciate that, friend,” Novis replied.
Adam threw his napkin on the plate. “I’ll head out with you.”
“And where are you going?” Novis tilted his head to the side and an uncomfortable tension hung in the air.
“To find a job.”
Novis squinted and I wondered what was going on between those two.
“Then I wish you luck and hope you will consult with me on any offers you receive.”
Levi raised his hand. “Later, Lo. Call me when Finn is feeling himself. I’m sure he doesn’t want everyone bugging the shit out of him.” Levi swaggered out the door, grabbing a handful of mints on his way and Adam following close behind.
I pulled away from Logan and knelt in front of Justus. He clumsily tugged his shirt off and gripped the table to stand up before exchanging a private glance with Novis and nodding. Novis touched his shoulder and kept eye contact for a nanosecond before turning away.
Justus towered over me like the Hulk.
It was that oh shit moment where I was about to get reamed by my Ghuardian for having embarrassed him in front of a Councilman.
“Get changed, Learner. You’ve been holding back on me. I want you downstairs in the training room in five minutes.”
Chapter 10
Adam returned to the motel without delay. He should have declined Justus’s dinner invitation, but Novis had important information about the recent attack. The girl had tossed and turned most of the day, which he’d felt was a good sign. After healing his cut arm, he’d had no choice but to leave the unconscious girl alone and attend Justus’s gathering. But his mind had been on her the whole time and he’d taken the first opportunity to return.
His cheap motel room was paid up through the month. Outer stairwells and walkways led to the rooms like any motel, and each room included a television and coffee machine. It became Adam’s retreat when things got crazy. Now he finally understood how Silver felt when she’d begun living with Justus. A human spends their adult life alone, making their own decisions. To have all that suddenly stripped away—where decisions are made for you—was a difficult life to adjust to. Novis was a fair Creator, but Adam was feeling stifled by the dependent lifestyle.
When he entered the room, the young woman was still asleep in the bed nearest the bathroom.
Adam had been in his fair share of scuffles—one had knocked him out for three days. Of course, he’d been in the medical unit under observation. When he awoke, he’d overheard the doctors saying he was lucky he hadn’t gone into a permanent coma.
Coma. Man, did that word scare him.
Adam adjusted the heater in the room, impatient for the girl to wake up. Maybe it wasn’t a good idea to let her sleep this long.
So she wakes up, and then what? “Hi, I’m Adam. You don’t know who I am, but I brought you to my motel room.”
He shook his head and looked around the room. The bedspreads were mauve with zigzag patterns in pastel blue. The beds were on the left side and the television sat atop the dresser on the right. It didn’t get more basic than this. Adam usually ate dinner at the wooden table by the exterior door. He tossed his wallet and keys by the ashtray and flipped on the bathroom light, then knelt by her bed in the dark room. The light from behind him allowed Adam to get a closer look at her face.
His heart skipped a beat when her eyelids fluttered and she turned her head toward him.
“Hey,” he said, brushing a long strand of blond hair away from her face. “Time to wake up.”
The swelling on her left eye didn’t look as bad as it had earlier. She had a nasty cut on her lower lip in the center, but nothing that would require stitches. The knot on her head told him they must have slammed her against the concrete until she stopped fighting.
God, did that burn him. In all kinds of ways any decent man would feel.
“Hey, you need to wake up now. Can you hear me?”
He touched her right cheek with his rough hand and rubbed it a few times until she moaned. Then he remembered as a kid how his sister would pinch him in the same spot until he’d wake up.
Adam continued rubbing his fingers across her face until her hand suddenly flew up and slapped his wrist.
“That’s it, Kitten. Keep fighting until you wake up. You can do it, just open your eyes. I won’t hurt you—you’re safe. Open your eyes, come on,” he said, coaxing her and still running his fingers along her jaw.
“Mmmrrr, stop,” she mumbled. “Stop it.” Several grunts and groans vibrated in her throat as she swatted at his hand.
Adam wouldn’t stop. Not until her eyes opened.
She suddenly turned her head and bit his hand.
“Ow! Why the hell did you bite me?”
“’Cause I told you to stop,” she complained in a raspy voice.
Her eyelids fluttered and she touched her face with her right hand. Then she hissed when her tongue swept across the cut on her lip.
Adam backed up because he knew what was next. She was going to remember.
The young woman swallowed a few times and moved her mouth around, her hand exploring the bruise on her face. She finally rolled onto her back, quieting for a moment.
Adam waited for an outburst of screams when the memory of what those bastards had done slammed into her thoughts. He sat motionless as her chest began to rock. She lifted her arms with the elbows up in the air, palming her eyes.
Crying.
It broke his damn heart. “I found you,” he began in a soft voice. “I took care of those animals and brought you here. You’ve been unconscious for about a day now, but the bruise on your face seems okay. How’s the knot on your head?”
She sniffed her stuffy nose and gasped in quick succession as she tried calming down. “It hurts a little.”
“I’ll run downstairs and grab a bucket of ice. Is there anyone you want me to call to come get you?”
He already knew the answer to that. A woman living in a van didn’t have a place to go. No decent person would allow a friend to live in her car.
“No. My things… my guitar.”
“Your van is in the parking lot, locked up tight,” he said.
“My guitar?”
Last he remembered, it had been leaning against the brick wall at Northern Lights.
“Outside at the club.”
She actually began to swing her legs off the bed. “I have to go get it.”
“No, you’re going to get back in the bed,” he said, rising to his feet and looming over her.
She didn’t listen and began to sit up, leaning on her elbows. Adam lightly pushed her shoulders back and she hardly had any fight in her. She squinted at him, but the light from the bathroom bothered her eyes.
“That guitar means more to me than that shitty van outside.”
“You can get another one.”
“No, I can’t,” she argued. A braid of hair slipped in front of her face and she knocked it away. “Ever had something that meant the world to you? That completed you in a way that nothing else did?”
Adam stepped back and rubbed the back of his neck.
“Well, that’s my guitar. There are a million others out there that I could replace her with, but she’s special. She’s unique. She’s irreplaceable and she’s mine. Now give me my keys.”
He snorted. “You’re in no condition to drive. Stay in the bed and…” Shit. Was he really going to do this? “Stay in the bed and I’ll go get it.”
“Promise?”
His brow furrowed and he folded his arms. “You’re a trusting woman. You don’t have any questions about how you got here or who I am? All you want is for me to take off in the midd
le of the night, sneak around the back of a bar, and retrieve your beat-up guitar?”
She eased back onto the bed with her eyes closed, touching her face. “You got it.”
“And how do I know you’ll still be here when I get back?”
One eye popped open and even in the dim light, he could see the beautiful color that looked milky green. They were either hazel or green, and he wished he could flip on the light to find out.
“Because, Scratch, I am giving you my word and that’s all I got in this world.”
“I’ll be right back,” he said, swiping the keys from the table and smelling the leather from his coat as he slipped it on. “Don’t wander downstairs. It’s a cheap-ass motel and the blockheads who hang out in the parking lot are nothing but trouble. If you’re thirsty, the bathroom is right there. I’ll bring back something to eat.”
He swung the door open, unable to believe he was stupidly trusting she wouldn’t bail on him. Then again, what did it matter? Adam glanced over his shoulder as he went out the door, certain he’d never see her again. “And my name’s Adam, not Scratch.”
“If you say so,” she murmured in the darkness.
“You come with a name?”
“Everyone knows me as Jasmine—it’s what I put on the flyers and I don’t like people knowing my real name. That’s for friends only, and I don’t have any friends.”
“I’m not a friend?” He leaned against the doorjamb.
“Maybe. I haven’t decided yet,” she said, her voice softening around the edges.
Adam’s hand tightened on the handle and he lowered his eyes. “The guy on top of you almost didn’t walk away alive. The other two have a few broken bones in their faces, and if you want to know the truth, they’re not going to be so lucky if I run into them again. They seem to be regulars at that bar, and there’s a chance you could see them again. If that happens, call me and I’ll take care of it, you hear? I’ll give you my number.”
He turned around and gripped the keys tightly as he swung the door closed.
“Sadie.”
