by Tessa Cole
“I don’t want you to do it at all. Guess neither of us gets what we want.” He stormed up the cafeteria steps.
Jacob’s claim jerked in my chest, stealing my breath. Shit. “You have to take me to Amiah.”
“Take yourself to Amiah. You don’t need me. You can handle anything, right?” He left, taking his heat and humidity with him.
“You want to know what’s wrong with me, Marcus Diaz?” I yelled after him. “You.” God damn you and my desire for you.
And that hurt all the more because I knew exactly what he was doing, and I’d still taken the bait. He was pushing me away to protect me. That’s what he’d done the last time. I’d just thought after everything that had happened with the archnephilim and in the elevator that he’d be different.
But everything he’d done had been to protect me and the life he’d thought I wanted, and now here I was back in the thick of the supernatural world, taking the world’s most dangerous job for a human. He might still be trying to push me away to protect me, but it was clear by how hard he was pushing that he was also trying to protect himself.
And even knowing that, his words still hurt, adding to the ache of desire for him.
Jacob’s claim twisted tighter in my chest, begging me to go after Marcus and fulfill Jacob’s command.
I ground my teeth against it, grabbed a turkey club sandwich from the fridge, and took my God damn self to the miniature triage room and Amiah.
The angel, who could have been Gideon’s sister with her brilliant blue eyes and blonde hair, sat on the tan padded-leather couch in the waiting area side of triage. She wore pale green scrubs and had her hair pulled back in a ponytail. She looked nothing like the slick, put-together angel I’d met before, but then it was after four in the morning and she’d already used a great deal of energy that day to save Gideon’s life.
Her eyes narrowed when she saw me.
Swell. Looked like healing my neck was going to be as excruciating as the energy that had seized me and got me bitten in the first place.
“I’ve barely gotten a few hours’ sleep, so I’m not at full,” she said, pointing to the floor in front of her.
“I know.”
Her gaze slid to my right forearm and a hint of the hardness in her gaze melted. “Which is why, in part, you’re not at full.”
“Yeah.” I sat at her feet, facing perpendicular to her and giving her the best access to the wound.
She peeled the gauze away and frowned. “This is nasty. I won’t be able to heal it completely. You’ll have to come back once I’ve had time to rest.”
“Can you do enough so it’s not completely obvious to a master vampire?” That was the whole point in doing this.
“I can, and eliminate any possible infection, but you’ll probably have a nasty scar.”
I cocked my eyebrow at her.
“Which, if you keep the stitches, you’ll have anyway.” She brushed her fingers along my neck, close, not touching the wound, but somehow still making it sting. “Your lack of vanity doesn’t make me feel better about you now being on the team. I still think you’re reckless.”
“What happened with Marcus was because I was an inexperienced rookie.”
“That doesn’t make me feel any better.” Electricity snapped from her fingers into my skin, making me jolt. It sliced pain through my neck and sent my buzz into a wild frenzy. “Your other partner is in the ICU.”
“The ICU?” Oh, thank God. A pressure in my chest that I’d being doing my hardest to ignore released. Hank had made it out of surgery.
Amiah’s power flared and I tensed against the pain, the agony searing into every cell in my body even though it was just my neck she was supposed to be healing. My buzz roared, no longer controlled by the nicotine patches, stinging under my skin as if I were being bitten by a million bugs.
Then the blazing agony of Amiah’s magic vanished. It happened so fast that I was still vibrating with the memory of it surging through me. It felt like this healing had happened even faster than the first time. Of course, maybe it had. This was just a stitched-up bite on my neck, not the broken ribs and collarbone and concussion I’d had before.
The buzz, however, didn’t return to normal. It eased off a bit, but on to pre-nicotine levels even though I’d just applied two new patches. Whatever Amiah had done, her magic must have negated the patches’ effect. Wonderful. Now I was going to have to figure out an excuse to find wherever Kol had taken my bag and replace my patches.
“That’s the best I can do right now.” Amiah sagged back into the couch, her breath a little too fast, as if she’d been physically as well as magically exerting herself. “Grab some tweezers from that trolley and pull out the stitches. They’re just under your skin now.”
I stood and crossed the small hall into the medical side of the triage area and found the tweezers on the indicated trolley. A small mirror hung on the wall over the sink, and I leaned in to get a better look. I hadn’t seen the bite before so I didn’t know how bad it had originally looked, but from the raised, dark pink, jagged scar, it looked as nasty as everyone had said it did.
The bite hadn’t been clean or two simple punctures. It looked more like I’d been mauled by an animal than bitten by a vampire. And there was nothing I could do about it, especially since I didn’t particularly want to go back to Amiah for another session to get rid of the scar.
I plucked the stitches free and was just about to go find my bag and replace my nicotine patches when the frosted-glass sliding door to the main hall opened and Gideon strode in.
Chapter 7
Gideon’s icy gaze jumped to me and my pulse trembled with yearning. The buzz in my body softened and the hum from his brand warmed my forearm. The connection between us made me want to cry and scream at the injustice of being forever bound to an angel, and yet beg him to hold me at the same time and ease my fears.
I squared my shoulders and tried to steady the whirl of emotions. If I was going to be an equal member on this team — or as equal as a human could get on a team of supers — I was going to need to deal with my unwanted emotions, or I’d end up proving Marcus and Amiah right and someone was going to get hurt.
“Officer Shaw,” he said, his tone as icy as his gaze.
“I was just on my way to the garage.” So much for replacing my patches. Although it seemed that if Gideon was close, my buzz wouldn’t be so bad and I’d be able to think straight. Which only made me more frustrated at my situation.
“Where’s Jacob?” Gideon asked.
“I don’t know.”
Amiah shifted on the couch, her scrubs sighing against the leather, but Gideon didn’t look away from me, keeping me captive with his gaze.
“He said he’d meet you in the garage,” she said.
“Good.” Gideon’s gaze dipped to my hip. “Do you have enspelled ammunition in that sidearm?”
“About two-thirds of a clip.”
“Only use the gun as a last resort,” he said. “Stick to your light strike. Things will get complicated if we kill one of Victoria’s offspring.” He turned on his heel and strode back out the door.
My buzz flared, and I hurried to follow.
“Your sandwich,” Amiah said, reminding me of Jacob’s command to eat.
The claim twisted tight. Crap. I rushed back to the couch, grabbed the sandwich where I’d left it on the floor, and rushed after Gideon.
“And don’t you dare get any of my guys killed,” Amiah said as I stepped into the hall and the sliding door closed behind me.
“It’s not the guys I’d be worried about,” I said under my breath.
“What was that?” Jacob asked. He stood in the hall between me and the door to the garage. The claim squeezed but the compulsion to answer him wasn’t overwhelming, so I didn’t.
No matter how much my insides squirmed.
I could do it.
Really.
Jacob frowned, the strain in his expression deepening.
“
Are you okay?” I headed toward him, keeping my gait even and not rushing to his side like the claim wanted.
See, I could fight it. Maybe it was weakening and if fate had only waited a few more days before shoving us back together, it wouldn’t have been such a struggle.
“Are you?” he asked.
“I’ve had better nights. But hey, it could be worse. We could be fighting the archnephilim again.” Even with my emotions a complete mess, I had to admit the situation wasn’t as bad as that. Sure, I was still magically bound to someone for the rest of my life, and from the looks of it he hated me, but at least he wasn’t a homicidal maniac.
“The scale of difficult nights does change when you put it that way.”
The door at the end of the hall slid open and we stepped into the cool musty air of the garage. Gideon waited for us beside one of the JP’s SUVs, his posture perfect, his expression hard. He tossed Jacob the keys and got into the front passenger seat.
I climbed in behind him so it would be harder for him to make eye contact. The buzz dimmed ever so slightly again. Yep, being near him affected my buzz, and that made me nervous. It hadn’t before and I hoped it was because I’d had Gideon’s mating brand for two weeks now and not because something within me had changed when the archnephilim had flooded me with power.
Except I already knew something had changed. My eyes still glowed and the damned buzz was harder to mute with nicotine.
“When we get to Rouge, I’ll find out where Victoria is, and we’ll get this over and done with,” Gideon said, without looking at me. “Jacob might have claimed you, but given how that whole… situation came about, there might still be trouble. So keep your eyes open, Officer Shaw.”
“Copy that.”
I ate my sandwich as we drove in uncomfortable silence, heading deeper into the Supers’ Quarter and turning onto the street designed for vampires that was covered with UV-blocking glass. The purple canopy stretching from rooftop to rooftop reflected the street like a dark mirror, hid the stars, and muted the glow from the sliver of moon peeking out from the clouds. It was less than an hour before dawn, and while the street wasn’t packed, it was busier than the last time I’d driven down it. Shops and restaurants were open and the sidewalk patios were full as diners enjoyed the warmer than normal summer’s evening.
Most of the people looked human, although there were some demons present, and while many were vampires, since over ninety percent of the vampires in Union City lived in the Quarter, there were probably a lot of humans in the mix as well. Most of the humans were blood bunnies, happy to give blood and be in the presence of a vampire — and given the sexual euphoria that a vampire could induce during feeding, I wasn’t as skeptical about why someone would want to be a blood bunny as I had been before. There were probably also a handful of claimed humans in the mix as well, those who’d gone even farther than a blood bunny and submitted their will to a vampire, giving up all control of his or her life.
Jacob’s claim inside me twisted, reminding me that I’d submitted to his will. It might have been to save him from being tortured by Victoria and not because I wanted to give control of my life to someone else or because I wanted the benefits of being claimed — such as enhanced hearing and seeing in the dark — but I’d still done it.
We turned onto the last street branching off the UV-protected road before it ended in a UV-protected park, and stopped in front of Rouge. The dance club was a large building with wide front steps and two towering Roman columns that sat at the edge of the UV canopy, and from the sound thumping out of the building was still open for business.
Gideon got out, but didn’t climb the stairs as I expected. He stared at the club’s blacked-out glass doors and a whisper of mist — had to be his grief — curled around me.
My throat tightened in sympathy. Zella hadn’t died in her basement apartment under Rouge, but that fight had started it all, and her injuries had been so severe she hadn’t been able to fight the archnephilim when he attacked Operations and killed her. And now we were returning to where she used to live and reminding him of what had been taken from him.
I wanted to tell him how sorry I was, how I wished Zella had been his mate. Maybe the mating brand would have been enough to save her. But his shoulders squared before I could work up the nerve to say anything and the mist vanished.
He strode up the stairs without looking to see if Jacob or I were following.
Jacob shot me a worried look, but there wasn’t anything either of us could do right now save watch his back.
Inside, past the vestibule and the bouncer who’d taken one look at Gideon and bristled but didn’t say anything, was a writhing, pulsing mass of people dancing, standing, talking, or making out in the booths or shadows clinging to the edges of the room. Strobe lights flashed over the dark walls and ceiling, heavy music vibrated into my bones, and the room’s sweltering temperature came from a mix of natural heat, along with the empathic heat of joy, desire, and need wrapping tightly around me.
Sweat slicked my forehead and pricked under my arms and between my breasts. I unzipped my jacket and shoved my sleeves up, but it did little to cool me down. And in all honesty, I’d either have to leave or strip to my underwear to alleviate the heat.
Gideon wove his way through the crowd to the archway leading into the pub-style room at the back of the club, and headed straight to the bar. Jacob and I followed and leaned against it, staying close, while Gideon asked the bartender about Victoria’s location.
I slid my attention over the room. The temperature was still too hot and now my insides were churning with fear. This was where everything had gone sideways last time. The polished wood furniture and brass accents gleamed in the light, its cozy English pub feel doing little to ease my discomfort. People played at four of the five pool tables and one of the three dart boards. A group in a large booth cheered at a baseball game on one of the big screen TVs, while more groups of varying sizes, taking up about half of the tables and booths, chatted and drank and ate.
If I hadn’t been put in the position to make Jacob claim me, threading his essence into mine and control me body and soul, the pub would have looked like any old pub. But I knew how dangerous its occupants were, and I could see the intensity in their gazes and the unnatural stillness in the bodies of almost everyone in the room. I was surrounded by vampires. More than the handful from last time. And that terrified me.
I hooked my thumbs into the waistband of my jeans. I really wanted to wrap my fingers around the grip of my sidearm, but someone could take that as a threat and the whole point of this was to get in and out without causing a fight.
Jacob shifted closer to me, but I didn’t know if it was to reassure me or enforce his claim on me to the vampires staring at us.
“Victoria is in her suite.” Gideon’s gaze jumped to me.
“Shit,” Jacob said, his voice low. “This isn’t going to be pleasant.”
“I’ll pay her price. You don’t have to worry about it,” Gideon said. The mist returned for a second then vanished as he turned and headed for the stairs at the back of the pub.
Upstairs, we headed down a wide hall with gilded frescoes on the ceiling and a marble floor. At the very end stood a set of intricately carved wooden doors, and a bulky vampire who stood guard. He was as tall and as broad as Gideon — so not nearly as big as Jacob but still imposing. His body covered a third of the carving, but not enough for me to miss that the image depicted a woman and two men in the throes of a threesome.
The guard opened his mouth to say something, but his eyes flashed wide, and he reached for the door handle instead, his body jerking as if controlled by someone else — and given that Victoria had been able to squeeze her fist and make Jacob drop to his knees in agony, it was likely she was the one in control.
“Come in, Gideon,” Victoria called in her sultry alto.
The guard finished opening the door, revealing Victoria lounging in a massive bed that sat in the middle of the room,
completely naked, the red silk sheets only covering one leg and only up to her knee.
She was stunningly beautiful, everything I’d imagined a master vampire to be, with pale skin, dark hair, red lips, and curves that would make a man drool. If she’d had horns, I would have thought she was a succubus. But she didn’t, and the intense energy radiating around her, along with the mesmerizing darkness in her eyes, told every cell in my being that she was an extremely powerful vampire.
Two men, naked as well, were in the bed with her, one behind her kissing her neck as if we hadn’t just entered and interrupted, and the other sprawled face down beside her, bloody rents scored into his back, blood smeared on his neck, and his body limp, but his expression dreamy and satisfied.
The room was as opulent as the hall outside suggested, with four marble pillars at each point of the bed, and massive frescoes that covered the vaulted ceiling and poured down the walls. The floor, what could be seen beneath thick Persian rugs, was marble, and the furniture was heavy and dark and swirling with ornamentations and gold leaf. Floor-to-ceiling windows towered to my left and directly across from me, all with long gauzy curtains swaying in the early morning breeze, every one of them open.
“Have a drink, Gideon.” She gestured to a sidebar against the right-hand wall, stocked with crystal decanters filled with liquids of various colors and glasses of all shapes and sizes.
Gideon met her gaze, no indication in his expression about what he thought about the master vampire receiving him without any clothes. “You know I don’t drink on duty.”
“Well, your other option is to join me.” She ran her nails down the back of the guy beside her, drawing more blood and making him moan in pleasure. Her gaze drifted over Gideon’s muscular body, pausing at his crotch before sliding back to his neck. She licked her lips. “I’ve always wondered what angel tasted like. Your choice.”
