by Tessa Cole
Rubble shifted behind me, but everything within me screamed he wasn’t going to get through fast enough.
My mind whirled. There had to be something. All I had was the light strike, but I needed more power. The gold in Gideon’s brand on my arm flickered. I’d given him strength to save his life. Please, God, let him be able to give me power to save Jacob’s.
“Gideon, give me power.”
“What?” he asked.
“I need power.”
“How can I give you power?” he asked.
“You can—” Shit. There wasn’t time to explain this. It had to happen now or Jacob was going to die.
I shoved back all my racing thoughts and concentrated on my connection to Gideon. I imagined drawing every ounce of magic I could get from him into my body and focusing it in my palm.
The electric hum from his brand grew stronger, but it wasn’t enough. I needed more.
Come on. Come on. Give me your God damn power.
I mentally yanked with everything I had, and Gideon’s power exploded into searing white lightning in my hand. I clung to it, forcing the pressure to build into a blinding agony until I couldn’t hold it any longer and then blasted it at Logan.
It slammed into the vampire and smashed him against the chamber wall. He sagged to the floor, his face, neck, and shoulders blackened and bleeding. One eye was completely gone and the skin on his cheek burned down to the bone.
He stared at me, what remained of his face a mask of shock and horror. My whole body shook with electric tremors, and my buzz screamed to life, burning past the nicotine patches.
Rubble tumbled past my head and Marcus scrambled into the chamber.
Logan wrenched to his feet and bolted down the tunnel. Jacob collapsed, blood rushing from the gaping tear in his neck, and didn’t move. Please, God, don’t let him be dead.
Marcus rushed to me, splattered in blood, his body covered with bleeding gashes.
I waved him off. “I’m fine. Check Jacob.”
He glared at me but hurried to Jacob, who, thank God, was now groaning, which meant he was still alive.
Kol bounded in next, looking as beat-up as Marcus. He heaved the piece of concrete off my back and left arm, and I gasped in a full breath, my chest aching but not enough to suggest I had broken or cracked ribs.
Gideon staggered in last, also covered in blood and gashes, but his complexion was gray and he clutched his brand. The light radiating from his icy glare flickered and heat from an emotion — I’d place money on anger — surged around me.
“What the hell was that?” he asked.
“One massive light strike, at least as powerful as a blast from a divine light ring,” Marcus said. “I didn’t think a human could cast a combat spell with that much power.”
Kol pushed aside the concrete pinning my legs and helped me shift into a sitting position, my body throbbing and on fire with the buzz.
“They can’t. She stole mine.” The muscles in Gideon’s jaw tightened. “Don’t ever do that again,” he said, his voice low.
“He was going to kill Jacob. I had to do something.” Blood wept from a wide gash in my right leg and I could also feel it trickling down my neck from the slices in my jaw.
“I could have been in the middle of fighting ferals,” Gideon snapped. The temperature rose even more, the heat making sweat bead on my forehead and flush my cheeks. “Marcus was almost through the cave-in. Taking all my magic without warning was reckless.”
“Marcus wasn’t going to be fast enough.” I wasn’t going to justify my decision to him. Okay, maybe I’d taken more than I should have, but I hadn’t even known I could and I’d been desperate.
“You didn’t know that. You couldn’t see him. Marcus was right. You are a liability.” The frustration and disgust in his tone stung. I saw that same look in his eyes that I’d seen in the cops gathered in the basement of the abandoned school. I was dangerous, a death sentence to anyone who worked with me.
I shoved myself to my feet and wobbled, my legs aching. Kol reached to steady me, but I gritted my teeth, fought for my balance, and shoved his hands away. “I made the right call.”
“You made a bad call. I’m calling the chief when we get back to Operations and having you replaced.”
If he had me replaced, the chief would fire me. Everything I’d worked for, everything I wanted, would be taken away. I’d be a pariah. Even if Gideon’s brand did let me leave town, no police force would ever hire me again. God, and here I’d thought Gideon learning I was a nephilim was what would ruin my life.
“It wasn’t a bad call,” Jacob said, his voice weak, his hands clamped to his neck to staunch the bleeding. But blood still oozed between his fingers.
The fury in Gideon’s eyes didn’t soften. “She abused the connection of the brand.”
“And you’re going to destroy my career because of it?” I said.
“You’re a danger to everyone you work with.” He jerked toward me, using his taller, bigger stature to glare down at me.
“I’m not the one who keeps getting shot,” I said.
“My problem. Not yours. Taking all my magic without warning could have killed me.”
“And you getting shot almost did kill me. I just about had my throat ripped out by a feral because of you. Consider us even.” The color drained from his face, and I jerked away and staggered to Jacob’s side. “Let’s get out of here.”
Marcus stared at me with his piercing green gaze, his expression just as hard as Gideon’s.
Well, fuck you, too. I’d reached the end of my emotional rope and just couldn’t handle them any more. I hurt, inside and out, and the buzz—
God. It was so hard just to think straight.
Marcus shoved between me and Jacob and helped the vampire stand. Kol drew close to me, but didn’t try to help me walk. Thank goodness, because I was just as likely to start yelling at him as I was Marcus and Gideon, because I was barely holding my frustration and anger at bay.
I grabbed my Glock, climbed over the rubble now partially blocking the doorway, and marched as best I could back to the SUV. Kol and Gideon gathered the rest of the discarded weapons, and without a word, we piled in and headed back to Operations.
If I’d thought the tension in the vehicle had been tight before, it was practically suffocating now, with drastic temperature fluctuations that made me sweat and shiver at the same time.
Gideon called ahead to alert medical of our situation and have a clean-up team head back to the abandoned subway station to deal with the remaining bodies. When we arrived, Amiah was waiting for us with a gurney and a scowl, and Marcus jerked the SUV to a stop just outside the garage’s glass door. He climbed out, leaving the keys in the ignition.
“I’m shifting out the rest of my injuries. Kol, park this,” he growled, and stormed to the far end of the garage and out the heavy metal door at the back to the rest of Operations’ property.
Gideon and Kol helped Jacob out of the back of the SUV. The vampire was ashen. His hands were still clamped to his neck, blood still seeping between his fingers and soaking into his T-shirt. What the hell had Logan done to him? His neck should have at least stopped bleeding by now. The gashes on his hand from a feral’s swipe hadn’t healed either, and they were much shallower than the tear in his neck.
“I’m fine,” he said.
Amiah huffed. “Get on the gurney so they don’t have to carry you.” Her attention jumped to Kol. “Can you manage?”
He wiped the blood off his cheek, revealing mostly healed gashes. “I’m good.”
“Good.” She turned to Gideon, raked her gaze over him, then turned to me, her scowl deepening. “Let’s go, you two.”
Gideon helped her push Jacob into the triage room and I hobbled along behind. I was going to lose my job, and I hadn’t even screwed up this time. Jacob would have died. I didn’t understand why Gideon was so angry.
Of course, maybe it wasn’t anger that was driving him. Having all his magi
c stolen for the time it took me to cast that light strike could have been terrifying. He was Mr. Icy-In-Control-Angel, and I’d made him helpless. That must have been terrifying.
And I was the target he could take that fear out on. I wasn’t really a team member, I was just the human fate had bound to him, reminding him that the woman he loved was dead.
Well, I didn’t want to be bound to him either. God, I wanted to scream out all my rage and frustration and heartache.
Amiah grabbed two blood bags from the fridge and shoved them into Jacob’s hands. “Drink both of those.”
“Sure.” He moved to hop off the gurney.
“Here. Now. You don’t get to leave until both those bags are empty.” She wrenched around to me, grabbed my wrist, and agonizing lightning screamed through me then vanished so fast it left me dizzy. I had no doubt this was the barest minimum healing Amiah could do and my bleeding had been stopped and nothing more.
“Get out of here,” she snarled at me.
Absolutely. The best idea ever. I needed to figure out how to save my job, and I couldn’t do that with Gideon’s fiery emotions and icy glare drilling into me.
I marched out of triage and down the hall to the elevator. My buzz gnawed at my senses, growing stronger the farther I got from Gideon, but the heat of his emotions didn’t cool.
God damn. How was I going to fix this?
An achy cold thread seeped into my chest.
Could I even fix this?
I took the elevator up to my room, pulled off my bloody and filthy borrowed vest and clothes, and turned to take a shower, but stopped before turning on the water. I didn’t want to stay there long enough to have a shower. I wanted to go home, get away from Gideon and Amiah and everyone. If I had a moment of calm, maybe I’d be able to figure a way out of this mess.
I scrubbed the blood and dirt from my face, neck, and arms with a washcloth, changed into my only set of clean clothes, reapplied two new nicotine patches, and shoved my dirty clothes into my duffle bag. I left the vest, the extra magazines, and the room’s keycard on the bed.
I wasn’t coming back. The only person on the team who wanted me there was Kol, and quite frankly he could spend time with me without me being on the team. In fact, me leaving would be better for him. He wouldn’t have to worry about me fucking up the team dynamics.
Marcus might have been right that I didn’t fit on the team, but he’d been wrong about me and the world of the supernatural. I hadn’t been terrified like I thought I would be facing those feral vampires as part of the team. I hadn’t frozen, hadn’t broken down, hadn’t done anything but stand my ground and do my job. Physically I might have been the weakest link on the team, but I’d still managed to hold my own.
I took the elevator back to the first floor and headed to the garage, my buzz easing just a bit as I drew closer to the sliding glass triage doors.
“Good, now the second bag,” Amiah said, her voice sharp.
“I’m fine,” Jacob growled.
“The second bag.”
And Jacob was alive because of me. They were all alive because of me, because I’d faced down that archnephilim and killed him. Of course, I’d thought I was going to die, too, but that was beside the point.
I strode out into the garage and headed to the door, my buzz growing with each step that I took away from Gideon.
God damn buzz. God damn Gideon.
I jerked back toward the glass door to the building.
This was giving up, and I hated giving up, especially when there was no victory in it. I was more than willing to do what was necessary and sacrifice myself for the good of the many, but this wasn’t anything. It was just losing. The team might not be worse for my departure, but it wasn’t necessarily better. They were still going to be stuck with a human officer and that human wouldn’t have the few supernatural advantages that I had.
Except leaving protected my secret. The longer I stayed with the team, the better the chance that someone would discover the truth. And I needed to protect my secret. Didn’t I?
I stormed back to the big garage door and the way out of Operations.
Gideon clearly despised nephilim. They were responsible for horribly disfiguring Zella and the archnephilim had been responsible for murdering her. His hate for me would turn into outright loathing if he learned the truth.
And Marcus would be furious. I’d been so adamant about protecting my perfectly human life, afraid to have anything to do with the supernatural world, and he’d sacrificed his feelings for me to give me that. Of course, he had also been an asshole about ensuring I kept my human life, but I knew that was to protect himself.
Except a part of me didn’t want to be protected any more. For the last week and a half my soul had hurt. The man I yearned for had given me everything I thought I wanted, and it had been horrible.
I jerked back to the glass doors leading into the building.
God, Marcus. The look on his face when I’d said I’d been wrong about leaving. He’d been so angry, so horrified, that I’d changed my mind and wanted to be in his world. He thought I was weak. Maybe I was weak.
I wrenched back toward the way out.
I was not weak. I’d struck a serious blow to Logan when even Jacob couldn’t. Another blast like that, and I might have taken him out and ended this whole mess.
I was not God damned weak. I spent my life in hiding, being afraid because I was a nephilim without magic, unable to defend myself against any supernatural beings but the weakest ones. I was practically human with the exception of my father, an angel I’d never met, who my mother had never mentioned by name. And I had just stood up against a vampire possessing magic from a hellfire prince and struck a damaging blow.
Take that, Gideon and Marcus, and your Essie is too weak, a liability to the team. God, I wanted to scream that at them. I, a human, took out an archnephilim. I, a human, seriously hurt Logan when no one else could.
I stormed back to the inside door.
I was God damn strong. And I belonged.
God, why the hell did I want to belong so much? Why did I care? Why couldn’t I just leave? I needed to leave. Now. It was for the best.
I screamed. Jerked to face the way out. Jerked back to face the way in.
The brand filled me with yearning for a man who hated me. My heart ached for another man who was determined to push me away for my own God damned good, as if I didn’t know what was best for me.
And I was stupid. So fucking stupid. I wanted to stay. I finally knew where I belonged, knew what my purpose was. Even at the expense of my own safety, this was where fate said I belonged.
And Gideon was going to end it all. Hell, he’d probably already made the call. There was probably a message on my phone from the chief, firing me. Don’t bother cleaning out your locker. Don’t bother showing your face at your precinct. Disappear, Essie Shaw. Disappear like you always did when things got dangerous or scary.
I screamed again, and my eyes burned with tears.
Except even if I could disappear with Gideon’s brand on my arm, I didn’t want to.
My throat tightened and my threatening tears made my legs tremble. What the hell was wrong with me?
Just leave. Just God damn leave.
I took a step closer to the inside door.
I couldn’t go back inside. And yet I couldn’t leave. I couldn’t do anything, and even when I did everything right, it was wrong.
I jerked past the door, storming deeper into the garage.
Fuck Gideon. Fuck Marcus. And fuck my father for falling in love with a human.
Shaking with rage and heartache, I ducked into the hidden alcove made by the door leading into the building. It hid a black metal locker recessed into the wall, secured with a fingerprint scanner. I pressed my back against the concrete wall beside it and slid to the asphalt.
Fuck all of this. This was no way to fix any of it.
Tears streamed down my cheeks, and I didn’t care. I had to release m
y frustration and heartache and fear or I was going to shatter. My throat and chest and heart hurt, squeezed tight with too much emotion that I couldn’t release fast enough.
The door to the hall shushed open, and I clamped my hand over my mouth, trying to muffle my sobs. Any of the guys but Kol would see me crying in the garage as proof of how weak I was.
Jacob hurried into sight, and his claim twisted, ever so slightly, in my chest. He might have drunk Amiah’s bags of blood and his stride had evened out, but there was something still wrong with him. I didn’t know what. That tightness around his eyes that had been there all day? His still slightly ashen complexion?
He glanced back to the glass door, then rushed deeper into the garage and not out the door to the street like I’d expected.
I pressed tight against the concrete wall, even though I knew he’d see me regardless if he glanced my way.
But he didn’t look. Instead he rushed to the sewer grate a few feet away, dropped to his hands and knees, and threw up blood.
Chapter 15
My essence locked onto Jacob, fear rushing frozen through me as his back heaved and his body shook. He threw up more blood, again and again, until he was trembling and gasping and dry heaving. My breath caught in my throat, an almost inaudible gasp, and his gaze jerked toward me, capturing me with his vampiric intensity.
“Essie,” he said, his voice a low rumble, making the claim vibrate with joy. “You shouldn’t be here.”
Him too? Of course he’d want me gone, too. He’d been forced to bind his essence to mine to protect himself from Victoria. I was a reminder of his weaknesses, and now I’d witnessed another one.
And yet I couldn’t make myself stand up and leave him. Something was horribly wrong. He shouldn’t have been throwing up blood. He needed it to survive. Amiah had told him to drink the blood to heal from whatever Logan had done to him.
Except he’d also snuck the blood bag he was supposed to have taken after the first fight with Logan at Rouge back into the fridge without drinking it.
“You can’t consume bagged blood,” I said, the realization hitting me. “I thought vampires could.”
