by Tessa Cole
I undid the first button of my uniform and Kol shifted, a hint of hellfire flickering in his eyes. “I should wait outside.”
“I’d rather have your company,” I said, not wanting to be alone with my thoughts. Gideon and Marcus and Jacob were all problems I’d eventually have to deal with, but I didn’t know how, and that scared me. Not to mention I couldn’t think of a way out of this situation without losing my job. Besides, it wasn’t as if Kol hadn’t already seen me naked and at most I was barely going to show my bra. “Please. Distract me.”
The hellfire dimmed in his eyes, replaced with worry, as if he could sense the whirl of emotions within me. “What do you want to talk about?”
“Did you manage to shut down the zip lab?” I undid the next button and Kol turned his back to me.
“Only in the sense that I’m sure the moment we dragged Gideon back to Operations, they packed up and moved locations.”
“Just great. I’m getting tired of dealing with zip addicts.” I shrugged my shoulder out of my uniform, clenching my jaw against the movement’s pain.
“Me, too,” Ing said, peeling the gauze from my neck, taking a quick peek, and pressing it back in place. “Lie down on your side.”
I took off my duty belt and handed it to Kol, who took it without looking at me, then I eased back onto the bed. Ing grabbed a needle, a vial of something, and a suture kit from a drawer, set them on the trolley, and pulled it to my bedside.
“And it’s not just the addicts we get in here. It’s their victims, because the damn drug makes them violent and strong.” Ing removed the gauze and numbed my neck.
“It’s worse with supers,” Kol said. “Zip can also enhance their strength and speed. Even with supers who have beyond-human abilities. Their reaction is almost always violent and the odds that they’ll OD is higher.”
“I wouldn’t have thought supers would be interested in zip,” I said.
Kol shrugged, his back still turned to me. “A high is a high.”
Jeez, a human with enhanced abilities in the throes of a terrifying hallucination was hard enough to handle. I couldn’t imagine trying to deal with a super thinking he was being attacked from all sides. Would I have to deal with that now that I was on Gideon’s team?
Only if I stayed on the force.
Which if I was smart, I wouldn’t.
My throat tightened at that thought. Damn, think of something else. Anything else.
But I couldn’t make my mind think past it. “Will there be a lot of cases that are that dangerous?”
Kol shifted and glanced at me, the hellfire still burning, tiny pinpricks in his eyes. “Gideon made a promise. He doesn’t break his promises. He’ll find a way to get you off the team back to your normal life.”
Except he’d broken a promise before. He’d said he’d be able to protect me from the archnephilim, before he’d known we were up against an archnephilim and he’d realized he wouldn’t be able to.
“And until then, we’ve all got your back.” He flashed a smile and sensual heat warmed my chest.
“Did you have her back tonight?” Ing asked.
“If we’d been there tonight, you wouldn’t be stitching her up,” Kol said, his tone fiercely protective, reminding me of Marcus, and an intensity filled his eyes, changing the hint of hunger to something else, something I couldn’t quite recognize. Then the intensity vanished and he flashed another heart-pounding smile before turning his gaze away from me. “Are you done?”
I heard the snip of scissors, and Ing taped a fresh piece of gauze to the side of my neck. “You’re free to go. Get this filled at the pharmacy.” He peeled off his latex gloves, scrawled a prescription for a painkillers and antibiotics on his pad, and handed it to me. “Don’t get your stitches wet for twenty-four hours and make an appointment with your GP to have them removed in about a week.”
I sat up and rebuttoned my shirt.
“Your file says this is your second super attack in just over two weeks,” Ing said as he typed something into the tablet. “I hope it’s your last.”
“Me, too.” But with my luck, I doubted it. “Can you tell me where my partner, Officer Hank Dacosta, is?”
Ing tapped on the tablet a few times. “He’s still in surgery.”
“Do you want to wait?” Kol asked, his gaze once again averted.
“Yes.” But as soon as I said it, Jacob’s claim twisted. There’d been nothing in his instructions about sticking around to ensure Hank got through surgery, only that I could check on him. God damn it. “But I need to get to Operations.”
“We can wait.”
“The waiting area for surgery is on the second floor, straight down that hall,” Ing said, opening the curtain and pointing down the hall before he headed in the opposite direction to the nurse’s stations.
“I can’t wait. Jacob’s command won’t let me.” I slid off the bed, too tired to generate any real anger at that. “Let’s just go.”
“Sure.” He handed me back my duty belt.
We filled the prescription, left the hospital, and drove to my apartment, which sat in the top corner of a four-story walkup on a street of four-story walkups. When I’d returned home after being unconscious at the Joined Parliament Operations Building for five days, I’d found my place as good as new. Better than new, actually. The hole in the wall between my tiny bedroom and my slightly larger living room had been patched and all the walls were covered in a fresh coat of paint. And the skylight in the ceiling above my living room had been replaced, and so too had the bedroom window, where the archnephilim had crashed through to attack. Any furniture that had been broken during the fight had also been replaced and this was the first time I’d ever had a couch, TV, or bed that wasn’t secondhand.
Because of the stitches, I couldn’t take a shower like I desperately wanted, but I could certainly get out of my clothes — now tacky, and in places crunchy, with dried blood — and wipe most of the gore off.
Kol hadn’t said anything on the ride over, and I wasn’t sure what he was thinking. I, on the other hand, hadn’t wanted to be thinking, but, like it had been all night — or rather morning — I just couldn’t avoid my thoughts.
Stay or leave. That was what it came down to.
I grabbed a change of clothes from my brand new dresser and headed into the bathroom. Kol flopped on my couch, making even that look sexy, found the remote, and turned on the TV.
Stay or leave.
God, it was a horrible choice. I didn’t want to do either.
I shrugged out of my shirt, my reflection in the bathroom mirror catching my attention. At least this time I didn’t look as stunned as I had the last time something had happened, and I stared into the mirror. I had thought things had been bad when I had just been branded with a wraith’s unnatural angelic mating brand, and then everything had changed. The wraith hadn’t been just a wraith, and Gideon’s brand had seared into my skin.
I turned my arm and looked at my left biceps, where the archnephilim’s angry red mating brand had been. The brand was still thick and slightly raised, but it was now silvery like an old scar, with a spiderweb of silver threads around it. I turned to my other arm, where Gideon’s brand marked my right forearm. If I didn’t think about the sigil forever binding me to an angel, I could see its beauty. Gold threads wove a complex design from the middle of my forearm up to my elbow and shimmered with a hint of light. A gentle heat and a soft electric hum, both barely noticeable, pulsed around it and into my soul.
If I stayed, I’d be able to be with Gideon.
My heart squeezed. But not Marcus.
Jacob’s claim gave a fierce twist. If I stayed, I’d be able to please Jacob.
Which wasn’t at all what I wanted, God damn it.
If I quit the force, the chief would either have to accept that he couldn’t have a human on Gideon’s team or assign the next expendable officer.
That thought made my stomach churn. If a human officer was going to be an equal member
of Gideon’s team and not a dead man walking, he was going to need extensive training to deal with supers. Whoever was picked would be in just as much danger as I was, more so because they didn’t have an angelic mating brand that could help save them. They’d also have a family, certainly they’d have friends. I didn’t have either. I never knew my father, and my mother was dead. She had a sister somewhere in New Mexico, but I’d never met her and didn’t know how to contact her.
Well, that just sucked.
If I quit, I’d put someone else in danger.
Which meant once again I didn’t have a choice.
Well, I supposed I did. I could go against my every instinct and let someone else be seriously injured or killed. But then I wasn’t sure how I’d be able to live with myself. I didn’t purposefully hurt people. I protected them. To the expense of my well being.
I could only pray, like the last time I’d worked with the guys, that I’d be able to fly under the radar and protect my secret.
Except this time I also had to protect my heart.
Chapter 5
I popped the antibiotics and painkillers as prescribed, cleaned up as best I could without being able to shower, and stuck two new nicotine patches to my left side. Pain sliced through my neck as I tugged on a black T-shirt and it brushed the bandage, but I gritted my teeth and finished dressing into a pair of jeans. From everything I’d seen, the guys’ work clothes were casual and easy to move in. I’d stand out if I wore my uniform or a suit, and while I was sure the chief and mayor would love it if I stood out, I wasn’t going to make myself any larger a target than I already was. And with my essence telling supers who could sense essences that I was a human and therefore the weakest member of the team, I was a pretty big target.
I packed a bag with an extra set of clothes, my box of patches, and my new prescriptions. Even if Jacob hadn’t implied that the situation with the vampires was bad, I would have known it was. Which meant the team was going to work this case at top speed. Best case scenario, I’d find a few minutes here and there to return home and change, but I wasn’t going to hold my breath on that.
After the clothes, I added the gear from my duty belt, then rummaged through my top dresser drawer to find the waistband holster for my off-duty sidearm that I never used, secured it to the waistband of my jeans, and holstered my service weapon — still loaded with the rounds of enspelled ammunition. My off-duty Glock, which was in my gun safe, could stay in my gun safe since I was still on duty.
Kol watched without saying a word and then held the door for me when it looked like I was ready to go.
“Got everything?” he asked, a hint of mirth in his eyes.
“Are you making fun of me?” I hadn’t packed that much. The small duffle bag wasn’t even bulging.
“Actually I was wondering if you packed enough. I didn’t see any toiletries go into the bag.”
“If I’m staying at Operations long enough to want my own toothbrush, things have gotten really bad.”
The mirth vanished. “You want to avoid us that much.”
A whisper of cold and mist breathed through the air around me. I’d hurt Kol’s feelings.
“It’s not that—” Well, actually it was. Except I wasn’t trying to avoid Kol because of who he was but because he belonged in the supernatural world. “It’s complicated.”
I grabbed a fitted, stretchy — for free movement — jacket from the hook by the door, spiking more pain through my neck, and stepped into the hall.
“Marcus said you were afraid of supers.” Kol closed my door and stepped back so I could lock it.
“He did, did he?” It wasn’t a lie, but I wasn’t thrilled at the idea of Marcus sharing personal details like that about me.
“Gideon wouldn’t agree to his terms without an explanation, and I overheard them arguing.”
Did that mean Gideon hadn’t been happy when I left? No, his reaction had to have been because of the brand and not being able to control me. If I died, he’d die or go crazy. Except, since I was mostly human, my death might not affect him at all.
Kol shot me a wary look. “I know you had a… difficult experience with the archnephilim—”
I snorted and headed down the hall for the stairs. “Difficult is putting it mildly.”
“But you’re not afraid of us — the team, are you?” He fell into step beside me.
I was as much afraid of them as I’d been of the archnephilim.
But for entirely different reasons.
Nephilim were enemy number one, responsible for the slaughter of thousands upon thousands of humans and supers. Even though I’d been a child, not even seven during the war, according to angelkind a naturally born nephilim was impossible, which meant they’d think I was one of those monsters, and I didn’t want to find out what they’d do with me. If they thought I was from the war, I’d be sentenced as a war criminal, imprisoned, or executed. If they believed I really was natural, I could be turned into a lab rat to find out why I existed.
And now I was going to work with the team and increase the risk of being discovered.
The chill and mist deepened as we headed down the stairs.
“You know I wouldn’t hurt you,” Kol said.
I’d been quiet too long, and now Kol feared I was actually afraid of him because of who he was and not what he represented.
“I know you wouldn’t hurt me.” Jacob wouldn’t either, not until he learned the truth. But the jury was still out on Marcus and Gideon, regardless of whether they knew my secret or not.
I offered Kol the warmest smile I could muster given my thoughts, strode out my apartment building’s front door, and headed to the SUV parked at the curb.
Kol unlocked the vehicle with the key fob and got into the driver’s seat. “The rest of the guys wouldn’t hurt you, either. You’re officially part of the team now. Not that they’d have hurt you before.”
“I’m the powerless human member on the team, and I just about had my throat ripped out by a crazed vampire tonight. I’m not sure any human belongs in the supernatural world.” My throbbing neck was proof of that.
He started the SUV and pulled onto the street. “Lots of humans do just fine living in the Quarter.”
“Lots of humans aren’t part of a JP team. Are you trying to convince me to live in the Supers’ Quarter?” I couldn’t figure out his emotions or this train of conversation.
“Not live, just visit.”
Hunh? “Okay, why are you trying to convince me to just visit?”
His grip on the steering wheel tightened and he stared out the windshield. The temperature grew colder, forcing me to fight my shivers and spiking agony through my neck.
Not the reaction I’d expected. “Kol? You wanna share?”
The muscles in his jaw clenched and his attention remained locked on the road.
“Kol?”
“I like your energy,” he said, the words rushing out.
“You what?” I wasn’t sure what I’d expected him to say, maybe that Marcus and Gideon were difficult to work with now that I was gone or something, but ‘I like your energy’ wasn’t even close. “I thought I was off limits because of Gideon’s brand?” Kol had made that clear when I’d offered to kiss him to help him restore his magic. Of course that had been before I’d burned his face with divine light and used the sexual euphoria of Gideon’s bite to save him. Maybe things had changed.
“Not that energy,” he said, still not looking at me. “I need that to survive, but some incubi have heightened attunement to essences and we feel essences more acutely than just about any other super and are drawn or repelled by certain energies.”
My pulse skipped a beat. How much could he actually feel about my essence? Did he know I was a nephilim? He wasn’t acting like I was, and he’d said he liked my energy. Would he still like it if he thought I was a monster?
“My attunement,” he said, the words still rushing out as if this wasn’t something he liked to share, “is ironical
ly for essences on the light end of the spectrum.”
“So divine light.” Shit. He had to know I was a nephilim.
“Not just divine light. That’s at the top of the spectrum, but there are varying degrees.”
I resisted expelling a relieved breath. So he didn’t know. Except— “You’re a demon and you’re drawn to the light and not darkness? Is that even possible?”
“I know. It’s completely messed up. I’m completely messed up. I’m a being of celestial darkness and I feel better hanging out with an angel than my own kind. It’s why I gave in and joined Gideon’s JP team.” His gaze finally jumped to mine and the temperature dipped a bit more with fear. He was terrified about what my reaction would be, and I sensed that he’d never told anyone else about this.
He jerked his gaze back to the road. “I hadn’t realized how easy it was to be around you until everything was over with the archnephilim. Being around you is like hanging out with an angel without the attitude.”
Gee, I wonder why that is? I struggled to keep my expression even. Out of all the guys on the team, I hadn’t expected Kol to be the one best able to figure out I was a nephilim.
And what did I say to him? I liked his company. He was funny and charming, and his emotions were usually steadier than this. But now he was the one on the team I needed to avoid the most. He wasn’t dumb. He’d eventually figure out why my energy was different.
“Jeez, it’s not like I’m asking you out. Even if I dated, I wouldn’t ask you out. You’re Gideon’s.” The mist vanished with a snap and the cold turned bitter. His attention locked back on the road and his grip on the steering wheel tightened again. His expression hardened, but with my empathy I could see the hurt tightening around his eyes. And was that fear?
It couldn’t be of me. It had to be of Gideon. But that didn’t make any sense.
But then his reaction to me once he’d learned I wore Gideon’s brand flashed through my mind’s eye. He’d been quick to refuse me, adamant to keep his distance. I’d assumed that was because he was Gideon’s friend and not wanting to hit on his friend’s girl, but maybe there was more to it than just that.
