by Tessa Cole
“Only a kill shot will take them out,” Gideon said.
“A non-kill shot will make them stumble.” I met his gaze. “I believe I saved your ass at least once in Rouge with that technique.” I also saved your ass by feeding my strength into your body when you were shot.
“Marcus, take Officer Shaw to the armory and set her up with an M4 and a vest.”
“One point for the human,” Kol said under his breath.
Gideon shot him a fierce glare, then rolled his eyes and shook his head. “Be in the garage in ten minutes, and I better see everyone with a sword and a vest.” His attention jerked to Marcus. “Even you. Your wolf isn’t going to be an asset in this.”
Gideon grabbed his empty burrito wrapper and coffee mug, set them on the stainless steel counter by the kitchen door, and marched out of the cafeteria.
Jacob shot me a worried glance and followed him as Marcus rolled his burrito wrappers into one ball and tossed it into the garbage can twenty feet away.
“Let’s get this over with,” he growled, standing and heading to the stairs.
I stood to follow, but Kol grabbed my wrist, his hand hot against my skin from his heightened demonic body temperature and the air still a bit chilly from his fear.
“What the hell are you doing?” he asked.
“My job?” Jeez, I hadn’t thought Kol would fight me on this like Marcus.
“Jacob isn’t your job.” A hint of hellfire flickered in his gaze and a trickle of sensual heat slid up my arm before his eyes narrowed and it vanished with a flash. “You might have washed away the scent so Marcus can’t smell it, but I can still feel the residual energy radiating off the both of you. If I’d been here when you guys had—” His gaze jumped to Marcus, who was now at the top of the cafeteria steps. “Jeez, I could have been anywhere in the building and it probably would have brought me close to full.”
“We didn’t have sex,” I said, keeping my voice low. It had been awfully darn close, but technically there had been no intercourse.
He raised his eyebrows, clearly not believing me. “The situation is complicated enough.”
“No shit. And Jacob’s part of that complication.”
“He is now.”
“He was before. You know what his bite feels like. I fed that into you when I was saving your life.” That was when the archnephilim had nearly killed them and I’d been desperate to save them. I shuddered at the memory of that moment, along with the memory of being in the shower with Jacob.
Kol’s breath hitched and the hellfire in his eyes flared. “Jesus.”
“Stop making eyes at the incubus, Shaw, and get a move on,” Marcus barked from the top of the cafeteria steps.
Kol’s attention jerked to Marcus, but his volume didn’t rise. “You have to stop. Marcus is going to lose his shit when he finds out.”
“Well, I’m going to lose my shit if Jacob’s claim doesn’t ease up. If Jacob was any other kind of guy, I’m sure we would have finished what we’d started last night.” Which was one of the reasons I was attracted to him and knew that wasn’t because of the claim.
“I need this team,” Kol said.
“For fuck’s sake, Shaw,” Marcus snarled.
“You have to work it out with Marcus.”
And that was the truth. If I wanted to stay with the team, I’d be miserable if Marcus was constantly trying to push me away. Except how did I convince him I was there to stay, that I wanted to be a part of his world, when the brand on my arm said I belonged to Gideon?
Chapter 12
I hurried up the cafeteria steps to Marcus, and he jammed his thumb against the elevator call button, the air around him searing with his frustration.
“This is the stupidest thing you’ve ever done,” he said.
“I’m pretty sure shooting an enormous blast of divine light into myself to kill an archnephilim was the stupidest.”
“Yeah, and how many lives are you down to now, kitty?”
The elevator door slid open and we got in.
Marcus hit the button for the basement and desire unfurled low within me at the memory of what we’d done in there only a few weeks ago. Add that to his emotional heat, and I was instantly covered in sweat.
“You’d rather I be fired from the force?” I asked, determined to ignore my attraction to him.
“I’d rather you be alive.”
“I could be killed just as easily walking the beat.”
The door slid open, revealing the study area straight ahead with a wide wooden table and a couch illuminated by two hanging fluorescent lights. Across from the couch stood a security door with a keypad lock, and through the safety glass window, I could see a long rack filled with different kinds of rifles.
“No, pretty sure chasing down supers is more dangerous than walking the beat.” Marcus headed to the security door and pressed his thumb to the fingerprint pad.
“It would be less dangerous if I knew you had my back.”
“If I have your back, then I have all of you.” He opened the door and stormed inside. “And I already know I can’t have all of you.”
“Marcus I—”
He wrenched around, his gaze jumping to Gideon’s brand on my arm, his wolf darkening his green eyes, making him look dangerous.
I crossed my arms and glared back at him. “You said you didn’t care about the brand.”
“And you said you wanted your life back.”
“What if I was wrong?”
Horror flashed through his expression and the room’s temperature plummeted. “Don’t ever say that. You don’t belong here. You deserve a normal life, a normal husband, normal kids, normal friends, normal God damn everything.”
I pressed my hand to the brand. “This says differently.”
“You already know what I think about that.” He jerked away from me, opened a wide locker beside him, and grabbed a bulletproof vest with the letters JP printed on the front and back in blocky white letters. He tossed it on the long narrow standup table that stood in the middle of the room, headed to the end of the rack with the rifles, and pulled down the M4 carbine.
And while I knew he didn’t care that I wore Gideon’s brand, he also knew, whether I wanted to be or not, I was always going to be bound to Gideon. “I—”
“We’re not having this discussion,” he said, setting the M4 on the table and heading to the shelves filled with boxes of ammunition and extra magazines. “Focus on not getting us killed.”
“I’m not the one who’s been shot twice in the last twelve hours.” I drew my Glock and ejected the magazine.
Marcus set extra magazines, a box of enspelled 9mm, and a box of 5.56mm on the table. He grabbed one of the magazines for the M4 and started loading it. His frustration simmered around me as he filled the first magazine then started on the second one.
I reloaded my magazine, my fingers slippery with sweat, slid it back into my Glock, and reholstered my weapon.
The heat in the cramped armory kept growing. Marcus and I needed to clear the air, but I knew if I opened my mouth, he’d stare me down, so I started on filling the second 9mm magazine, my lips pressed firmly together.
I tried to concentrate on something else. Anything else. I didn’t have deep enough pockets in my jeans for the extra magazines and was going to need to run up to my room to grab my duty belt. At least I wouldn’t also have to bring along my Taser or flashlight. All the guys knew the effects of Jacob’s claim, and if we ended up in a location with low light, I wouldn’t need to hide my enhanced night vision. And if we ended up someplace with no light, the light on the M4’s scope would do.
But Marcus’s heat made staying focused on the task at hand impossible.
He popped round after round into the magazine, the muscles in his jaw getting tighter with each passing second.
“If things go south,” he said, his voice low, “you get the hell out of there.”
I couldn’t tell if this was him compromising or not.
“Promise me,” he growled.
“I’ll promise if you promise.”
He set the magazine on the table and captured me with his gaze. “I’m smart enough to know when to leave.”
“You leave because you’re afraid.”
His eyes narrowed, his expression clear that he knew I wasn’t talking about leaving a fight but leaving me. “I leave for you because you’re too stupid to know you’re supposed to be afraid.” He stormed past me and out the door. “Put the ammo boxes away before you leave,” he growled over his shoulder and headed for the stairs instead of taking the elevator.
I bit my lip, stopping myself from yelling after him again and reminding myself that he was just trying to protect himself.
And I wasn’t too stupid to know I should be afraid. I was afraid. But some things shouldn’t be avoided even if they were terrifying. Fate was determined to keep me in this world. And foolish as it was, I was now determined to stay, too. I wasn’t going to fight it any more.
When this situation was over, I was going to need more training. Whatever it took to not be a liability to the team.
I shrugged into the vest, put the ammunition boxes back, and with the M4 in hand, headed to my assigned room. It hadn’t changed since I’d last been there — not that I’d expected it would. It had looked like a hotel room then and it still did now, decorated in blue-grays and creams, with a queen-sized bed, a panel TV on the wall, and a couch near the large window that took up most of the back wall. My duffle bag sat on the floor at the foot of the bed and the clothes I’d been wearing last night were clean and folded on top — including my bra and undies.
I grabbed my duty belt from my bag, took off everything but my holster and two pouches for my extra magazines, and headed down to the garage.
All the guys were waiting for me, even Marcus, who’d only left to go up to his room a minute before me. They all wore vests, even Gideon — thank God — and Marcus and Jacob wore sheathed swords at their hips. Gideon didn’t need one since he could make one out of pure light, and Kol had a pair of long daggers in sheaths strapped to his back and hidden beneath his shirt. Jacob also had his pair of 92 FS Berettas holstered at his hips, but had left off his duster, making him look a little less like a Wild West gunslinger, but not by much.
Jacob handed me an earpiece, his fingers brushing mine, making the claim sing and Kol scowl. We piled into a JP SUV, Marcus driving, Gideon beside him, Jacob in the back, and Kol and I in the middle, and headed to the second nest.
The tension and whirl of emotions from the guys made the air thick and hot, and I scrambled out of the vehicle the moment Marcus parked in front of a squat brown-brick subway station entrance. Three of the four doors were boarded up, along with a wide window that belonged to the attached variety store. This had been the last stop for the red line before explosive magic from Michael’s nephilim army had destroyed the tunnels halfway between there and downtown. And while it was beyond the borders of my precinct, it was still less than three miles from the abandoned school.
All of the buildings on the street, two-story storefronts with a smattering of three- and four-story office buildings, were boarded up. Redevelopment hadn’t reached this far from the downtown core and until the city’s human population rebounded, it probably wouldn’t.
Gideon got out of the SUV and strode past me to the door that wasn’t boarded up. The glass had been broken and lay in chunks, half on the concrete outside and half on the gray tiles inside. He glanced into the darkness, the glow in his eyes billowing. “I can’t smell anything.”
“Trust me, there are a lot of dead things in there.” Marcus joined him, his nose scrunched in disgust.
“I don’t doubt you,” Gideon said. “You take point with Kol and get us to that nest. Jacob, you and Essie have the rear.”
Marcus drew his sword, dipped under the handrail, and stepped inside, his boots crunching on glass. Kol followed, drawing his matching daggers, then Gideon, then me with Jacob close behind.
Inside the air was cool and musty and clashed with the flickering heat of the guys’ emotions. I couldn’t smell the decomp Marcus had mentioned, but I also didn’t have the senses of a wolf. To my right, the metal grating in front of the wide entrance to the variety store had been forced open wide enough for a large person to get through. The space had already been picked clean by scavengers, anything metal that could be melted down and reused — including shelves and racks — had been taken, and most of the ceiling panels had been pulled down and the wires ripped out.
I swept my gaze over the empty storefront, pausing at the open door at the back — likely leading to the stock room — then along the wall to the front beyond Gideon’s arm and the wide stairs leading down. There wasn’t anywhere else to go.
We crept down the stairs. Someone had cut off the metal handrail and many someones had covered the tiled walls with graffiti. The air grew cooler, but it did nothing to ease the emotional heat from the guys. I didn’t know if it was better or worse that the heat wasn’t steady. I wasn’t boiling, but the fluctuations made it harder to ignore.
The stairs led down to a wide platform with sunken subway tracks on either side. A colorful abstract tile mosaic covered the walls and the arched ceiling in a drastic difference to the austere brown exterior.
I scanned left and right, searching for any hint of movement. There was almost no light down there — the only illumination came from the stairs behind us and somewhere far ahead down the right-hand line — and while my vision wasn’t perfect, it was still pretty good.
Jacob shifted closer to me. “You should switch on your light.”
Marcus swore. “That’ll fuck up my night vision.”
“All of our night vision, and I don’t want to waste power to make a light,” Gideon said. “Switch the scope on your M4 to thermal, and I’ll order gear for agents without night vision when we get back.”
“How about not ordering the gear and not bringing Essie into near-blackout feral vampire nests,” Marcus said.
“Let it be,” Gideon said, his voice more low and dangerous than I’d ever heard before. “Officer Shaw is staying. Those are our orders.”
“I’ll be fine.” I thumbed the switch on my scope to thermal. “Thanks to Jacob’s claim, I can see as well now in this almost-no-light as I could before at night with a streetlight and no flashlight.”
Gideon’s back stiffened. If I hadn’t been close and right behind him, I might not have noticed. “The claim is that strong?”
The emotional heat around me flashed hotter. I glanced at Jacob, who frowned, but I didn’t know if the frown meant he was worried about how strong his claim was or if my night vision was better than it was supposed to be — which might give away my partial angelic nature.
A thread of fear curled small and tight in my gut, and I vowed to ignore it. It was Jacob’s claim, not another side effect of having the archnephilim trying to awaken any nephilim magic I didn’t possess.
If asked, I’d chalk it up to an unexpected effect of the brand and blasting all that divine light into myself.
But a part of me feared that excuse would only go so far and last so long. Being here with them was playing with fire, and yet just the thought of changing my mind made my chest ache with loss.
And now wasn’t the time to deal with it.
I ground my teeth against my whirling emotions — and the heat from theirs and my God damned buzz — brought my scope to my eye, and glanced into the dark tunnel behind us.
Marcus led us forward and to the tunnel on the right toward the only other light source. We hopped off the platform, Marcus and Kol landing without a sound. Gideon’s feet crunched slightly in the gravel, mine definitely crunched — even though I was the lightest in the group — while Jacob’s didn’t make a sound.
I was beginning to have a good idea why humans weren’t on JP teams. Aside from the fact that they barely stood a chance against the more powerful supers, a lack of night vision and the inability
to move silently over noisy terrain made the human the weakest link. Which stung my pride. I might have made one error in judgment when I was a rookie and turned Marcus into a werewolf, but I’d never before been the weakest link. Even when my buzz had first manifested and been out of control, I’d still managed to hold myself together and do my job.
I scanned the tunnel behind us. No sign of movement or heat signatures — and the scope would still pick up the ferals even if they hadn’t recently fed and had low body temperatures.
The tunnel gently turned and ended fifty feet down at a cave-in, the pile of concrete and earth from the ceiling scorched black from some kind of magical attack. Sunlight streamed through a hole edged with the ragged ends of a wide broken pipe and twisted tree roots. A narrow doorway, the metal door ripped from its hinges and lying on the ground a few feet away, stood to the right.
“The nest is probably less than a hundred feet this way,” Marcus said, and he headed into the narrow access hall.
Ten feet down the hall, I could smell the bodies. The reek of decomposition thickened the air and clung to the inside of my nose. The temperature in the hall was even cooler than the subway tunnel and a starker contrast to the heat coming from the guys. Moisture clung to the walls, dripped from the seams in a pipe running along the ceiling, and pooled on the concrete floor.
We hit a T-intersection, turned right, and reached a narrow set of concrete stairs, its metal railing still intact. The stairs led down into a wide area, three stories tall, with a bright band of sunlight slicing from one of a dozen grates close to the ceiling into the mouth of a large sewage pipe on the third story. More pipe mouths peppered the walls, some caved in and shallow, but most black maws that I could only see a foot or two inside. They were all big enough for a human or bigger, and more than I could keep an eye on at any given time.
The floor was tiered, as if the area had been built in a patchwork. A few of the highest ones looked like landings, while the rest had slopes, all directing to the lowest level and the widest, floor-level tunnel. Water pooled on the lower levels, and the reek of decomposition was nearly suffocating. Bodies littered half the landings, the piles more haphazard than the one in the school. There were easily three times as many victims here than there had been at the first nest.
