Catalyst: Book 2 of The Dark Paradise Trilogy

by Isadora Brown

  Noir turned around to face the woman in question and made a pushing movement with the back of his hands. Had Keirah not been privy to the fact that he would undoubtedly share the information he received at this meeting at a later time, she might have been offended. But suffice it to say, she wasn’t, and as a result, she had no problem standing in a distant corner, adjacent to a tall, slim lamp that was a couple of inches greater in height than she was and was currently in the off position. Nobody could really see her because she was standing in the shadows, but she had a pretty good vision of the men in front of her.

  In total, there were five of the professional-mafia men, forming a half-circle around Noir.

  “We had a deal,” the man in charge said, now snapping his teeth like a feral dog. His blue eyes narrowed and flared like burning ice. “And now I see you’re gallivanting around with some woman, robbing banks. You’re supposed to turn Onyx against itself. You’re supposed to instill fear in every member of the population!”

  “I, ah, do.” Noir looked at him through hooded eyes, as though he was already bored with the conversation.

  “Then why do they still have hope?” The man, clearly handsome, pushed his brow up. Keirah knew she knew him, but how? “Why is Black Wing still prancing around, saving everyone? Why does the city still have faith in him when someone as terrible and as bleak as you is on the loose? Their fear for you is less than their faith in him, and that’s the problem.”

  Noir smirked, his scar twitching. “So that’s why you, uh, well, you commissioned that act, hmm?” he asked.

  What act? Keirah furrowed her brow, and then realization dawned on her. The Vigilante Registration Act. She had watched the press conference last night with Noir after their time together. He had laughed with delight the entire time.

  This wasn’t just any mob, and the man in charge wasn’t just any leader. This was Lucas Burr, the District Attorney. She furrowed her brow. But that didn’t make sense. Why would he want Onyx to turn on itself? Why would he want Noir to terrorize these people? Why did it matter if they had faith in Black Wing?

  Burr sneered at Noir, causing his perfectly sculpted face to mar. “You’re a fucking disappointment, you know that?” he asked. “Since you obviously can’t do anything right, I’m going to have to clean up your mess.”

  “By all means, try,” he said. “Yanno, I’ve been, ah, giving your proposition a lot of thought.” Noir began gesturing wildly with his hands as he usually did when speaking about something he felt strongly about. “And, though the offer is quite, well, it’s quite tempting, I am going to have to refuse it. We tried to work it out, but, uh, you just wouldn’t let me handle things my way. I like running Onyx. I like being in charge. I like people fearing my name without any, well, any underlying meaning. Ya see, fear doesn’t have to mean anything; it is what it is. Fear. And, uh, people, well, people fear me. I could care lessss if there’s a deeper meaning behind it. In fact,” he smacked his lips together, the smacking sound snapping the silence in two, “I prefer there not to be a meaning behind it. My actions should speak for themselves. And they do. Well, I mean, well they would if you ssstopped butting in every time I do something. What fun would I, uh, have if I let you boys jump in and well, jump in and steal my fun? I won’t stand for it.”

  Instead of being upset at the refusal, Keirah noticed that the men remained unperturbed.

  They knew he would refuse, and if Keirah was being quite honest, seemed to expect it. Then why had they …

  That was when Keirah saw it. From her position in the corner, she could clearly see a man calmly stepping behind Noir with something in his hands. Burr was quite good at keeping his composure, at ensuring he didn’t look at the man whatsoever and give him away. When she glanced back at the men, she realized they were doing their damnedest not to do the same, keeping their eyes focused on their guest.

  Everyone knew how smart Noir was. One wrong move and their plan would have been kaput—in vain, really.

  The pieces easily fell together in Keirah’s mind. They had called him here not to strike a deal with him, but to assassinate him, like swatting an annoying fly that consumed everyone’s attention by its pestering buzzing. But they hadn’t been counting on Keirah.

  Like everyone else who came in contact with the couple, they merely took her presence as something preferred by Noir, nothing more. Everyone underestimated her. Normally, she hated it, but right now, she didn’t mind quite so much …

  Keirah squatted down as subtly as she could and unplugged the lamp before sliding back up. Her heart was hammering, knowing that it was her responsibility to save Noir after the countless times he had saved her.

  When the cool metal was in her hands, she picked up the lamp and held it like one would hold a baseball bat. She could still hear Noir speaking, though now she wasn’t concentrating on what he was saying. As silent as she could be, she managed to sneak behind the gunman without him knowing. Then, without a single hesitation, she swung the lamp around and knocked him with the metal on the back of his head. A loud thwap rang through the basement as the man dropped to the floor, and Keirah quickly descended as well, grabbing the gun that had fallen out of the now-unconscious man’s hands. She popped back up, stepping next to Noir and pointed her gun at the crowd of men.

  In all honesty, Keirah had no idea what the fuck she was doing, but she didn’t care. Someone had just tried to kill her man, and she was none too pleased about it. In all her haste, she hadn’t noticed that this gun wasn’t like any gun she had ever seen before.

  “Well, well, well,” Noir said, his eyes bronzing, clearly furious at what was about to have transpired. He said no more, but looked at each individual man before finally resting his gaze on Lucas Burr himself with a glare that could probably kill if he so chose it. “I think,” he began after a long moment, “that we shall take our, hum … leave.” He took the gun from Keirah who was glad to be rid of it and continued to point at the baffled mafia as he pushed Keirah behind him. “I would, well, I would be careful if I were you, boys. Ya never know what kind of, hum … freaks are waiting out in the, uh, streets.” He began walking backwards, heading for the exit, with Keirah following his lead. “Although such a meet might be quite fun-ah, if I do say so myself …”

  And just like that, he vanished, his woman by his side.

  Why wasn’t he saying anything?

  Was he upset with her?

  Keirah, for once, couldn’t tell what was going on with Noir in that mind of his. They had just left the club moments ago, and Noir was driving his stolen vehicle in a direction that appeared to be home. Keirah’s car had been returned to her apartment once he had acquired this one so it wouldn’t look suspicious that her car had vanished. She wondered if her mother knew she was missing yet.

  Keirah carefully looked at him from the safe vicinity of the corner of her eye. He was gripping the steering wheel, but because he was wearing his usual gloves, it was hard to tell just how strenuous he was being. His close-cropped hair fell into his face, and she resisted the urge to reach over and brush the stray strands away from his line of vision in order to give him a better view of the road. His chapped lips tugged down into a disgruntled frown—a sight uncommon on Noir’s usually self-assured face—and the scar on the left side of his face appeared to be even more menacing than normal. However, that could mean anything, really. Noir’s facial expressions changed daily depending on his mood. It was the eyes that allowed Keirah to infer how he was feeling, but she couldn’t get a good hold of them.

  “You saved me,” he finally said once he slowed the car until it stopped. His face was now tilted in her direction, and he slithered his tongue across his lips so they smacked, filling the silence that had consumed the car after his ominous statement.

  Keirah wasn’t exactly sure how to respond, so she didn’t. Instead, she merely looked at him, met his stare with her own, and rubbed her lips together as he studied her face.

  “You, uh, really are mine-ah,” he
concluded, and Keirah saw the corners of his lips twitch up.

  Noir reached out and gently caressed the side of her face before softly tracing the J littering her cheek with his gloved fingertip.

  “Yanno,” he began, starting the car back up once the light had shifted from red to green. “I’ve been, well, I’ve been thinking a lot lately, about how you and I, I and you, we, us …” He grinned at his little inside joke. “How we would rob banks, hum … together. I always felt we had so much fun. And you, you were dressed to the nines, doll, and I was too. We, uh, matched. Of course, you were always the, hum … driver in such situations, but I, well, I feel that your talents have not been put to … proper use.”

  Keirah furrowed her brow, unsure of what he was saying. “What are you asking me, exactly?” she asked in a soft murmur. She made it a point to keep the suspicion out of her voice, but she wanted him to know she wasn’t quite sure what he wanted from her.

  He smiled at her question, as though he knew she wouldn’t decipher the meaning in the undertone of his words. Noir reveled in the fact that the young woman could be so naïve at times. It really made him chuckle.

  “I, hum … want you to be my partner in crime,” he told her, making a left at the light. “I’ve been, well, I’ve been thinking, as I have said. And you are the only person I trust when it comes to certain situations. I haven’t had any of the, uh, henchmen try any funny business during a robbery yet, but who knows? It could happen, well, tomorrow, for that matter, and as you can ob-vious-ly see, I am sorely outnumbered. But with you there, my dear, I would feel much better about my odds …”

  “Aren’t people too intimidated by you to actually try anything though?” Keirah wondered aloud, touching her fingers to her chin. “I mean, I don’t know how to fight or shoot a gun or anything. I don’t even know if I could kill someone.”

  Despite the fact that he was driving, Noir turned to face her and gave her a lazy, doubtful look. “Are you saying, my love, that you wouldn’t kill for me if you saw my life was threatened?” he asked her, his hazel eyes wide as he feigned surprise. “Because I would kill for you. Without hesitation.” He glanced at her. “And I have …”

  “I wouldn’t have to kill just for the sake of killing?” she asked him. “If I saw that you were being threatened, I could shoot and that was it?”

  “Have I, uh, ever made you kill before?” he asked in a slow drawl.

  He was right. She never felt as though she had been forced to take someone’s life, and she never had to, to be honest. Nobody had ever had the guts to try and take out Onyx’s most notorious criminal until moments ago, and that was the spiritual mafia. Because the demon mafia actually existed and Lucas Burr, the District Attorney of Onyx, was the devil. Even the police, Commissioner Jarrett, had never actually tried to kill Noir, though there were times Keirah believed he wanted to.

  “It would be as though you were like a, hum … bodyguard of sorts,” he explained before placing a hand on her upper thigh. “A sexy, distracting bodyguard.”

  Keirah hid a smile as she felt her skin tingle in the way it normally did when he touched her. “Okay,” she said, her voice wavering only a tad. “What do you need me to do?”

  Noir smiled as he tightened his hold on Keirah’s thigh. “I need you, princess, to become, well, to become somebody else,” he told her, his tone darker than it was before only because he felt as though it was a triumph for her to have agreed.

  17

  She couldn’t sleep. She had followed Ollo back to the tent and crawled into the sleeping bag. She even closed her grey eyes and pretended to sleep for a bit. He was sturdy and warm, comfortable and safe. He smelled woodsy and familiar that it would have been so easy to drift away for a little bit. Lord knew she needed the sleep. That dream she had of her house being burnt down and her brother telling her … No, she didn’t want to think about it. She had cried enough tonight.

  Now that Daphne was gone—however creepy her disappearance was, and maybe she’d analyze that more later—the dream was her sole focus, and she couldn’t fall asleep because of it. Could she have dreams that were also visions? Maybe she should ask Ollo about it when he woke up. She didn’t have the heart to do it now; he needed the sleep as much as she did.

  But time passed, and she still couldn’t sleep. She tossed and turned and was certain the pillow was wrinkling her face and causing the ends of her blonde hair to split. It was time to forget about her thoughts by doing something productive. She stood up and put on appropriate clothes and shoes this time before leaving the tent. Before she knew what she was doing, her feet led her to the pickup truck, and she opened the door. Why Ollo refused to lock the doors to his pickup truck when there were psycho stalkers on the loose, she didn’t know. However, with this one small instant, she didn’t mind because it actually helped her. Leaning into the truck, she reached in the back and pulled out her bow and arrows. If she had some destiny she had to fulfill, she better be as prepared for it as she could be.

  Reese went through the motions of grabbing an arrow, nocking it to the bow, drawing the bow back, and releasing her fingers from the string, letting the arrow fly. Dawn was just breaking, so bits and pieces of sunlight trickled through the tall trees, giving her ample amount of light to see. She didn’t have a particular target in mind; as long as she hit what she was aiming for, she’d be happy. The repetitive motion kept her warm. When she ran out of arrows, she collected them and set up farther back. Over and over and over.

  For a bit, she forgot everything: her family and the potential danger they were in, Daphne, her conflicting feelings for Ollo. Her only goal was hitting her target. She could do that. In order to hit the intended target, she was required to do two things: release the arrow with all three fingers at the exact same time, and, most importantly, breathe.

  By the time the sun was up, murky rain clouds had blotted the light out. There was a very good chance it was going to rain, and soon.

  The minute the thought formed in her head, a big, fat raindrop plopped on the tip of her nose. Before she could even raise her hood to shield her hair from the water, she was already soaked. Her first instinct was to run back to the tent and immediately dry off and get warm, but something made her pause. She couldn’t say for sure what the weather was going to be like when the war broke out, but she would bet it wouldn’t be as easy as shooting a stagnant tree trunk. If she was supposed to fulfill her duty as an archer, she needed to improve now. So she stayed in the rain and continued to practice.

  “I think you’ve had enough, darl.”

  Ollo’s voice was gruff like thunder, and somehow she heard it clearly, even over the rain. She turned and felt her stomach skip at the way he was looking at her. Though his eyes were dark, there was a fire there, a hunger. He, too, was soaked, his shoulder-length dark blond hair was now a deep chestnut brown that clung to his skin the same way her fingers longed to. His egg white thermal clung to his long, broad body as did his grey sweatpants. He had his worn boots on his feet, but no sign of a jacket. He hid it well, but she was absolutely certain he was nearly as cold as she was.

  “I thought you hated the cold.” When he spoke, the whiskers around his mouth helped form the words, only adding to his ruggedness. Reese couldn’t help but stare.

  “I do.” Reese didn’t even want to think about what kind of wet dog she resembled. Her hair stuck to her face, but once she got somewhere dry, it would most likely start to frizz up. Her jacket was loose on her, but every other article of clothing on her person was soaked to the bone, even her Nikes. If she hadn’t been as focused on taking out the targets, she was certain she would hear them squeak. “But I couldn’t sleep.”

  “Bad dream?” Ollo asked, perking his brow.

  Reese chewed her bottom lip until she decided to ask: “Can my dreams also be visions?” She shifted her weight; the cold was starting to get to her. “Like, when I dream, are they set in stone?”

  Ollo tilted his head to the side and peered at her fr
om over his nose. “Come back inside,” he finally said. “We’ll talk about it there, where it’s nice and warm.”

  Reese grabbed her bow and arrows and followed Ollo back to the tent. They both took their shoes off outside, but made sure the tent’s awning shielded them from any more rain. Reese did the same with her jacket once she stepped inside, making sure to hang it close to the door so the blankets and dry clothes wouldn’t get wet. She set the bow and arrows down in an empty corner of the tent for the same reason.

  When she was finished, she turned, and found Ollo standing right behind her. He was close, too close; if she moved a mere inch, they’d be touching. She wouldn’t tell him to move, though. Especially not when he was looking at her like that.

  “You’re shivering,” he said. Perhaps it was just her imagination, but his voice came out almost husky. She had been so enraptured by the sight of him that she didn’t notice until he pointed it out. It was true; her teeth were chattering and her body was shaking. She was freezing. She needed to get out of her clothes and into some dry ones before she got sick.

  “You need to get warm.” He tilted his head to the left so a strand of wet hair clung to the side of his face. “Do you trust me?”

  Reese knitted her brow together. “For what?” she asked.

  A smile tugged his lips into a grin. “Do you trust me, darl?” he repeated once more, an amused twinkle lighting up his murky eyes.

  Her heart slowed the longer she looked at him. He had to be asking her this for a reason. Was it a test? Did it matter? Ollo asked if she trusted him; she could only answer one way.

  “Yes.”

  His smile deepened, and she thought he looked … relieved. Why, she couldn’t say. Did he question her faith in him? Maybe after everything that had happened tonight, he expected a hesitation of some sort, but faith was faith, and if she wanted to show him that despite everything, her faith in him wasn’t shaken. She would do whatever it was he wanted her to do.