by Tessa Cole
“And sent your other clothes down to be laundered.” He jerked his chin toward my shoes without fully looking into the room. “Come on. Let’s get you to Amiah to take care of that gash on your cheek.”
“Bathroom first, then I’m all yours.” Fully and completely. I pushed back the claim’s urgings, palmed two nicotine patches from my bag, and hurried into the bathroom.
I raked my fingers through my hair, trying to get some of the tangles out, and retied my ponytail, all the while trying to not think about being in the shower with Jacob. The gash in my cheek had stopped bleeding — thanks to Jacob’s magic — but it still throbbed and stung.
At least I didn’t look so exhausted. It had only been three hours, but it felt like eight. I was back to myself and ready to face my new terrifying job.
I could do this.
I’d squared off with the archnephilim and won. I just needed to be smart about how I worked and dealt with supers.
I peeled off the old patches — and I wasn’t going to ask Jacob what he’d thought of them — and slapped on two new ones, then shoved my feet into my runners, pocketed the keycard, and clipped my holster to the waistband of my jeans.
We took the elevator back down to the main floor and strode into triage to find Amiah and Marcus in a tight embrace, the temperature in the room sweltering. Desire. But I didn’t know whose. Amiah’s cheek was against his shoulder, her hand over his heart, and her eyes closed. His arms were wrapped protectively around her and his lips pressed against the top of her head.
Chapter 11
Marcus’s gaze lifted and captured me, stealing my breath and making my chest ache for him. For not having him. For everything between us. His eyes were filled with the ferociousness I recognized as his wolf, but I didn’t know what it wanted. Hell, I never knew what it or Marcus wanted. Maybe he’d been pushing me away because of what he had with Amiah. Maybe I was imagining the heat between us—
No, the attraction sizzling within me had been there from the moment I’d seen him, and I could see it simmering in his eyes right now. But that didn’t mean anything. Just because you were attracted to someone didn’t mean you had or even should have a relationship with him.
Except my soul hurt just thinking about him moving on. He’d said in the elevator that I was his. That he didn’t care if I had Gideon’s mating brand or not.
And then he’d given me up.
Because that was what I’d wanted.
If I cared for him, I’d give him up. But I didn’t want to. I’d been dreaming of him for years, of the desire burning between us and his ferocious passion, and I didn’t want him to focus that passion on anyone else. He was supposed to be mine.
“Is Gideon up?” Jacob asked.
“He’s waiting in the cafeteria,” Amiah said, not moving from Marcus’s embrace. She sounded exhausted, and if I concentrated past my jealousy, she looked exhausted, too. Sure, she might have gotten as much sleep as I had this morning, but then she’d had to get up and heal Gideon again. I might not like her in Marcus’s arms — which was really none of my business since Marcus and I weren’t anything, honestly, really — but I did feel bad about her barely being able to recover before needing to use her magic again. “I’m just waiting on Officer Shaw.”
“My cheek has stopped bleeding. I’ll be fine.” That, and I didn’t want her to ruin the effects of my new nicotine patches.
“It doesn’t look fine,” Marcus growled.
“I didn’t say it looked fine, only that I’ll be fine.”
“It has to still hurt, Essie,” Jacob said.
“Jeez. Guys. On the scale of fine to dying, I’m fine.”
Amiah pushed out of Marcus’s embrace and sat on the arm of the couch. “Just come here.”
Marcus glared at me as if he was daring me to refuse medical attention so he could let his wolf loose.
“Fine.” I stepped up to Amiah. “I don’t care if I have a scar.”
“Good, because given how Gideon seems to be a bullet magnet at the moment, I’m doing the bare minimum with everyone else.”
“Works for me.”
She pressed a finger to my cheek and a flash of heat exploded across my face. I gasped and staggered back, bumping into Jacob’s broad chest. He grabbed my upper arms and steadied me, then quickly stepped back as if he didn’t want to stay too close to me.
“Let’s go,” Marcus growled, and he headed deeper into the hospital section of Operations, taking the smaller halls to get to the cafeteria.
Given that it was just after ten in the morning, the cafeteria was empty with the exception of two women — one with the glowing eyes of an angel, the other looking human — who sat at a table in the sunroom side. Gideon and Kol already sat at the six-person table, with three mugs in the center, along with a carafe that smelled like it contained coffee, and half a dozen tinfoil wrapped somethings that smelled like eggs and bacon.
Gideon was eating one of the wrapped somethings — best guess a breakfast burrito — looking as if he hadn’t almost died last night. His gaze jumped to me.
Just like Marcus, he could stall my pulse with a glance. His summer-sky eyes were icy. Any warmth I’d glimpsed last night was gone. And just like Marcus, that made my chest ache with a yearning that could only be compelled by his mating brand etched onto my arm, because we didn’t really know each other.
His attention slid to my cheek and his eyes narrowed. “You should get Amiah to heal that.”
I brushed my fingers over the gash. I hadn’t bothered to look in a mirror to see how much she’d healed it. I was just grateful her magic hadn’t manifested as searing lightning and that my nicotine patches still kept my buzz manageable — and hey, now that I stood only a few feet from Gideon, my buzz had quieted even more. Besides, my cheek no longer throbbed and didn’t sting when I touched it, so I considered it a win all around.
“It’s fine.”
“It’s not fine,” Gideon said.
“I’ve already had this argument with Marcus. I’m not having it with you.” I sat in the chair beside Kol and across from Gideon, and grabbed one of the breakfast burritos from the pile at the center of the table.
Marcus and Jacob sat on either side of Gideon. Now all three of them could glare at me. Wonderful.
Kol shifted in his seat, his attention sliding from Jacob to me, his eyebrows raised.
And just great. The incubus had figured out something had happened between me and Jacob. I wondered if he’d felt the sexual energy of my climax when it happened, or if he was just now noticing the residual energy that probably still clung to me.
He jerked his gaze away from me and took a long sip of his coffee.
“Jacob, why don’t you tell us what’s going on?” Gideon said.
My pulse stuttered, my mind jumping to what we’d done in the shower, and Kol choked on his coffee.
Gideon frowned at him. “I’m assuming that vampire at Victoria’s is connected to the feral vampires.”
“Logan Dunn.” Jacob poured himself a cup of coffee, didn’t add anything to it, and hunched forward over the table, the cup captured between his palms.
He still had the tightness around his eyes that I’d seen last night, and while I was sure he’d eaten — now that I was paying attention and not still fantasizing about how he’d made me feel — he still looked worn down.
“He’s making them,” Jacob said. “He was a witch before he was turned and afterwards he made a deal with a hellfire prince.”
Kol’s eyes widened and the room’s temperature dropped. “Oh, shit.”
“We’d know if one of the princes was free,” Marcus said, reaching for a breakfast burrito and digging in.
“Ibizual isn’t free. That was Logan’s deal. A taste of the power promised by the prince for his freedom and then the rest of the promised power upon release.” Jacob ran his thumb over the rim of the mug. “Logan is supposed to be dead.”
“That’s what Victoria said,” Gideon said.
<
br /> And was probably why Jacob hadn’t mentioned him when we were last sitting around this table trying to figure out who was making the ferals.
“If the seal imprisoning Ibizual is weak enough,” Kol said, “he would have the power to bring a vampire back.”
Jacob raised his gaze to Kol, and a hint of misty grief curled around me. “Even if that vampire was burned to ash?”
Or the mist could be guilt. Probably a combination of the two. Jacob had said he and Logan were brothers, they’d grown up together, and in the end Jacob had killed him.
“If Ibizual had claimed that vampire’s essence, then yeah, he could.” Kol’s hands trembled, and he gripped his mug tighter. “There’s a reason demons imprisoned the princes two millennia ago, and why Lucifer didn’t try to free them to escape the Realm of Celestial Darkness.”
“So we have to assume Ibizual is attempting another escape,” I said between bites of burrito, hoping Jacob’s mist would ease up before it gathered on my cheeks and drew suspicion. “I can’t imagine any other reason to bring Logan back.”
“I agree,” Gideon said. “Logan said his hundred and fifty years were up. Any idea what that meant?”
“I think it has something to do with the key to break the seal on Ibizual’s cage. It’s also why he came after me. We’re magically connected. I felt where the key manifested the last time. He must believe I’ll feel it this time, too.”
“Does this magical connection allow you to find him?” Marcus asked.
“No. But he can’t use it to find me, either.” Jacob glanced at Gideon. “From my guess on the decay of the bodies we found in the nest, he’s been back for about a month and a half. The new moon is tomorrow, which means the key will manifest in this realm tonight.”
“Of course it will,” Marcus said, finishing his burrito and taking another one. “Because a bunch of ferals and a witch-vampire-sniper just isn’t enough.”
Gideon shot him a dark look. “Is he as good a marksman as you, Jacob?”
“We were close in skill, but I was always better,” Jacob said.
“That doesn’t make me feel better,” Marcus said around a mouthful of food. “You’re the best marksman I’ve ever seen. Even if he has half of your skill, he’d still be damned good.”
“Okay.” Kol took a steadying breath, but his fear still dropped the temperature, mingling with Jacob’s mist. At least it wasn’t absolute terror, and I didn’t have to hide the frost on my hands, although much more and the mist might start to freeze in the air around me. “You beat him before. You can beat him now.
“Except I didn’t really beat him. He’s still alive.” Jacob pursed his lips, the tightness around his eyes deepening and his mist thickening. “We fought over the key until sun up. I got in a lucky strike and managed to get to cover before I burned up. Then I watched the sunrise turn him to ash and stared at that ash until the sun set.”
I wanted to reach across the table and grab his hand, let him know it would be okay, and it wasn’t just the claim tugging at my heart. But the horror of the situation was that he’d killed a man who’d been his brother and now he was going to have to do it again. I couldn’t even begin to imagine what that felt like. That, and he hadn’t mentioned that specific detail to the guys, and I didn’t know if he wanted them to know.
His gaze lifted to mine as if he could hear my thoughts. “Am I going to have to kill him every hundred and fifty years?”
“We need a witch who knows about the cages,” Gideon said. “I’ll talk to—” Despair flashed across his expression, exploding in a mist so thick I couldn’t see across the table, before it vanished and his expression hardened into an icy mask. He’d been about to say Zella. She’d been an angel able to cast spells and, from the fact that he’d instantly thought of her, must have had knowledge, or a way to find information, about the cages imprisoning the hellfire princes.
And now I wanted to hold his hand. But I was a reminder that no matter how much he’d loved Zella, they were never meant to be.
“Bane might know,” Marcus said, his tone even, as if he hadn’t noticed Gideon’s reaction, even though I’m sure everyone at the table had.
Jacob shook his head. “We’ve already asked him to get us that coalescence snare at the last minute to deal with the archnephilim. He’ll raise his price if we come to him again so soon with another rush job.”
“Then he raises his price,” Gideon said.
Jacob opened his mouth to argue, but Gideon stopped him with a sharp look before he could speak.
“Even if you weren’t connected to this, we’d still need the information. We need to know everything we can about Ibizual and his cage, and most important, we need to find out if we can prevent Ibizual from bringing Logan back again. There were over two dozen bodies in that nest and at least a dozen ferals at Rouge. That’s already thirty-six people he’s murdered at a minimum. We need to permanently stop him before he kills more people.”
“And Marcus and I think we’ve found another nest,” Kol said.
Gideon gave him a questioning look.
“The place reeks of human decomp,” Marcus said.
“We didn’t go inside to confirm, just in case there were a lot of ferals, but if it’s anything like the first one, there’s another pile of bodies in there,” Kol said.
Gideon turned his hard gaze to Marcus. “Call Bane and get him on this. And I don’t care what the price is. The JP will understand the expense.”
Marcus pulled out his phone and tapped out a text.
“We also need to clean out that nest,” Jacob said.
“Do you think Logan will be there?” Kol asked.
Jacob shook his head. “I doubt it, but he’s clearly making himself an army and it’d be better to deal with them now when they’re at their weakest than tonight when they’re stronger and the key is manifesting.”
“Okay.” Gideon folded his burrito wrapper into a perfect square and smoothed out the foil. “We clear out that nest now. With luck, there’ll be a clue there pointing to Logan’s location. Regardless, tonight we’ll secure that key then wait it out until the new moon has passed.”
“Any idea what kind of magic the hellfire prince gave Logan?” Kol asked. His fear had eased up a bit, but the coffee in his mug still quivered, revealing the tremor in his hands.
“He has power over the dead,” Jacob said.
“Of course,” Gideon said. “That’s how he resisted Victoria’s power over him.”
“Does that power over the dead include you?” I asked.
Jacob met my gaze, and I knew instantly the answer was yes.
Gideon stiffened and Marcus swore.
The claim started screaming, but I shoved its voice to the back of my head. “Is there a way to protect yourself?”
“I don’t know. It happened so fast last time, I didn’t have to figure much out,” he said. “And I’d thought I wouldn’t need to think about it ever again.”
“Get Bane on that, too.” Gideon stood. “These ferals are hard to kill and blades are our best bet. Marcus, take Officer Shaw down to the armory and get her situated.”
“Essie isn’t coming,” Marcus growled.
And after the fight at Rouge, a part of me wholeheartedly agreed with him. But another part knew they’d need all the help they could get.
The muscles in Gideon’s jaw tightened. “Our orders say differently.”
“Fuck our orders.” Marcus stood and met Gideon eye to eye — or almost eye to eye since Gideon was a few inches taller than Marcus. “She’s not running in there with a fucking sword decapitating ferals.”
Put that way… Yeah, that seemed like a terrible idea. “Can any of the ferals be saved?” Maybe there was a way to prevent a bloodbath.
“No.” Jacob downed his coffee and squared his shoulders. The grief and guilt he’d felt earlier had been shoved down and he was back to business. “The magic that makes a feral is incomplete. Their minds are gone, and they’re driven only b
y the command of their sire and their base feral hunger.”
“Like Michael’s nephilim,” Kol said.
“Michael’s nephilim were worse.” The light in Gideon’s eyes darkened. “We say they were animals because of their merciless brutality, but when Michael didn’t have full control of them, they could think for themselves. And when they could, they still slaughtered humankind. That’s what truly made them monsters.”
The room’s temperature rose, Gideon’s anger burning through Kol’s fear, and my fear tightened within me.
This was why I had to resist the pull of the mating brand. I couldn’t let myself forget that. It was bad enough I had to work with the team to keep my job. Letting myself get closer to Gideon would just increase the risk of him discovering the truth. At least my only magic was my screwed-up empathy and now my glowing eyes. The eyes I could say glowed from blasting all that divine light into my body, and because of the mating brand, it hadn’t faded. As for the empathy… I might be able to pass that off as having a bit of supernatural DNA somewhere in my family tree.
It was a risk, but it let me keep my job, and it let me stay with the guys—
Holy shit. As terrifying as being a JP agent was, I didn’t want to leave. I didn’t want to go back to my old life. I couldn’t go back. And while I could argue that was because I was magically connected to Gideon and Jacob, that didn’t address my desire to face my fears and explore what could be between Marcus and me, or the friendship I wanted with Kol.
That, and a part of me, a small voice in the back of my mind, wondered if Gideon would really despise me if he knew the truth. Fate claimed we were soul mates. Was that enough for him to see me differently?
“—kindest option for a feral is a quick death,” Jacob said, and I jerked my attention back to him.
He frowned at me. All the guys were staring at me. Did they know what I was thinking? Was my realization clear on my face?
A blush of embarrassment crept up my neck even though I had nothing to be embarrassed about. “If they can’t be saved, load me up with an assault rifle with enspelled ammo and I’ll cover your backs.”
