by Tes Hilaire
Before he could react to that WTF moment, Jessica stepped in front of him. Her arms rose, bringing with them a wall of flame. The creature skidded, howling as it brushed up against the fiery inferno, and scuttled back. Instinct? Or did the fire actually harm it?
Together they lunged at the creature, Jessica’s blade biting first across the creature’s neck, practically decapitating it as Logan’s blade drove deep into the eye socket where it pulsed with another burst of light.
The creature fell, its limbs twitching, the black shroud crackling from the pulsing light buried in its skull, still the evil clung.
“The heart,” Logan growled, pushing more energy into his blade.
Jessica was already on it, her blade sinking deep into the chest cavity and carving the pulsing organ out. It wasn’t until it was out and her blade had fully incinerated the fleshy muscle that the shroud finally fell, the light from Logan’s blade sending a pulse of light out of the creature’s skin that was so bright that for a moment Logan had to close his eyes.
“Think it did this?” Jessica asked tentatively after a few moments.
He frowned, opening his eyes to take in the pool of black oily blood staining the alley before them. “I don’t know.”
“Think it’s a new type of merker?”
He looked down again at the creature, shaking his head. It had taken a strike to the heart and the brain with a Paladin blade to kill, just as a merker would, but he’d never known a merker to look like a dog and this creature, now that the shroud of evil had fallen, resembled a dog more than anything else, a starving dog at that.
“Think it ate them and was poisoned?”
Logan sighed, wiping his blade with a cloth he kept just for that purpose and sheathing it once more. “I don’t know. But I don’t think we dare leave these bodies for some other innocent to find.”
Not if it could do that to a stray dog. He shuddered at the thought of what might happen to the human crime unit who would be called in to clean up this mess, though maybe simple touching wouldn’t harm a soul. Maybe it required ingestion of the poison to taint the next victim.
Jessica sheathed her knife and stood, hands propped on her hips as she studied the breadth of the massacre. “That’s a lot of cleanup work, and not all these buildings are fire resistant.”
“I’ll shield you,” he offered, moving behind her as she raised her hands and planted her feet. Closing his eyes he placed his hands on her waist, concentrating on building his shield to start at the edge of her wrists and move out around them to the edges of the alley where it circled the area of greatest bloodshed. There was some blood on the buildings themselves, but he and Jessica could touch those small splatters up after.
He sensed the moment when she tied her own shields into his, shoring up the miniscule gap between his shield and the skin of her wrist and forming another layer around the potential breaking point as a secondary containment. Though her fires wouldn’t harm her, it could harm him, and it would definitely harm her clothing. It had taken her the longest time to learn how to cast her fire while maintaining her own shields, and she’d never gotten good enough to fully contain the full power of her gift if and when she chose to. Thankfully Logan excelled at shielding, making clean ups like this easy.
“Ready?” she asked when their shields had settled into accord.
He nodded, bracing against the heat he knew would still sink through their shields when she let her cleansing flame loose. Still he wasn’t expecting the resultant blast that occurred the moment her fire touched the edge of the viscous lake. It caught immediately, and exploded, the force of her power multiplying exponentially as the tainted blood was consumed, its energy releasing behind the wall of his shield like a nuclear bomb.
He grunted, his fingers gripping deep into Jessica’s waist as he fought to withstand the onslaught and not fall. Just when he thought he might lose grip on the shield the fury of the blast ended. Silence, other than the harsh wheeze of their labored breaths, descending on the alley.
“Holy crap.” Jessica collapsed back into his arms, her hands shaking slightly as she laid them over his.
Logan blinked at the charred and cracked pavement that had recently been covered by the bloody lake. No traceable evidence remained, but there was also going to be no hiding something had happened here.
“Well...I guess we know the black oily stuff is reactive to your flame now,” he said, trying to make light of the destructive force of her gift.
Jessica made a noise like a grunt, her gaze drifting over the numerous blood splatters still on the building walls that they had to remove.
“Perhaps a little less power will be necessary for the rest,” he suggested.
“You don’t say?” she shook her head, but her lips had curved up at the corner so he knew she realized he was teasing.
“Well,” she sighed. “I guess there is no time like the present, right?” she asked, stepping out of his embrace and toward the first streak of dots.
“Right.” He fell into step beside her.
***
Jessica wearily stumbled past Logan into the anteroom of Haven’s hall, then jumped as the heavy wooden doors banged closed behind them.
“You okay?” Logan asked, his hand gently cupping her elbow. As much as she wanted to lean into the offered support, she knew she shouldn’t. Logan was having a hard enough time with her being out in the field. She didn’t need him thinking she couldn’t handle her half of their partnership.
“I’m fine,” she said, straightening. “Just tired.” And drained. Bone-weary, heart-thudding-sluggishly, muscles-cramping drained. Which kind of confused her. That black oily substance that was polluting the blood had been highly flammable, explosively so, as evident by the first big blast when she’d fired the bodies and gore. So it shouldn’t have taken a lot of energy to clean up the rest of the alley. After that first big whammy she’d inadvertently set off, she’d set to work using just the barest minimum of flame to burn the rest of the evidence away. Tedious and time consuming, but it shouldn’t have been exhausting.
“The finesse work takes time to master,” he reassured, as if reading her thoughts.
“Well then, I guess it’s no wonder I feel like crap.” She smiled wanly. “I am okay, though.”
He cupped her jaw, his thumb caressing her lower lip. “You did great out there.”
His words warmed her and she allowed herself to lean into him this time. His arms closed around her, his warmth seeping into muscles that couldn’t seem to get warm.
“I wish I could have brought you home first. Let you rest.”
“Just rest?” She tipped her head up, wiggling her brow. His hands had been rubbing her back and getting closer and closer to her butt with each path up and down the tense muscles.
“Well…rest first.” His hands slid the rest of the way down, cupping her ass as he pulled her up for a deep kiss. The familiar taste of him wakened her nerves in a way nothing else could. Tingles ran across her lips where his caressed hers, the touch of his tongue on hers eliciting a shudder of pleasure that zinged through her entire body. How could it be that each day her need for this man didn’t lessen in the least, but if anything grew?
Her hands tightened in his hair, trying to pull him closer. He chuckled, and she found herself panting as he eased her back down. “Glad we know what to do to revive you if needed.”
“Hmmm… I’m still feeling kind of weak…” Jessica leaned forward, intent on testing this new theory of her mate’s when behind them a throat cleared.
“Um, hate to break this up, but Alex was wondering if you could join us.”
Jessica spun. Behind her Logan sighed, his hands easing off her as he addressed the warrior.
“Hello, Warren.” Ever the politician, her mate did not add the Now go the fuck away that accompanied the greeting in his head, though she suspected, guessing by the way the warrior shuffl
ed from one foot to the other, looking down at his own feet, that Warren kind of got the gist anyway.
“Good to meet you, Warren,” Jessica added, trying to ease over the moment with her offered hand.
In the last week Logan had given her a crash course on the entire Paladin brotherhood. For some all the info he’d tried to cram into her head may have been overwhelming, but her former cop brain had been honed to store Intel. Warren was one of the quote, unquote lesser Paladin. According to Logan, the lesser title was more a matter of his father’s prejudice to a diluted gene pool than anything else. Warren may have had less Paladin genes, and therefore less special abilities than most, but he was not lesser in spirit, heart, or skill. His one talent, to read another’s thoughts, only worked when he was touching them and the person wasn’t shielding. He was an amazing warrior though, so he’d earned his place multiple times over within the Paladin ranks.
Warren took her hand, giving her a tentative squeeze. She felt the brush of his mind, but she didn’t take offense. He didn’t probe at her shields and she suspected it was more instinct than intention on his part to pry. Still he must have noticed her noticing because he quickly jerked his hand away.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean…” he trailed off, his gaze flashing to Logan, as if Logan had the right to take offence.
“It’s okay, Warren. I’ve about trained him out of the barking and biting.”
Warren blinked back at her, his eyes wide and mouth gaping. Logan leaned in close, stage whispering in her ear. “Darling, we talked about this. No ruining my bad-ass reputation.”
The warrior snapped his mouth shut, the corner of his mouth tugging slightly. “That’s hard-ass, sir. Roland is bad-ass, Bennett’s the wise-ass, Valin is thee ass, and you’re just a hard-ass like your dad.”
“Ah. I stand corrected.” Logan straightened, the teasing light extinguishing from his eyes at the comparison to his dad. “You said Alexander was waiting?”
“Uh… yes…” Warren stammered.
Logan gestured towards the hall behind Warren, his brow quirked. “Then lead the way.”
Warren didn’t bother with a reply this time, but spun about, probably in a tizzy over Logan’s quick shifts between annoyance, teasing, and major hard-ass routine. Jessica sighed. Once she would have taken her mate to task, or at least teased him, for being so prickly, but now she could feel everything he felt and what he felt was a mix of frustration, shame, and sheer terror that the other Paladin considered him one and the same as his father.
Logan Calhoun Senior was, indeed, a major-general hard-ass. To him the order was all that mattered. His pathway to any emotion beyond frustration and anger was so rusty it would probably break if he tried to tap into it. Nothing got in the way of his goals: preserving the Paladin line and someday killing Ganelon.
Jessica suspected that the elder Calhoun’s intentional break from all feelings warm and fuzzy had been done out of necessity at some point. Still it didn’t change the fact that his lack of heart had not only earned his name of hard-ass extraordinaire, but she, at least, felt it actually hindered his ability to lead. Case in point: the fact that he still wouldn’t accept his daughter, Karissa, and her mate, Roland, into the Paladin ranks, just because they happened to have elongated canines.
Logan sent a mental shrug. Not a disagreement, more of an I-agree, but good luck changing that. Jess figured her mate knew by now that she didn’t give up that easily, but he was right in that now was not the time to brainstorm ways to tap into her daddy-in-law’s human side.
They came to the storage room at the end of the eastern basement halls. To Jessica, these rooms were the true sanctuary. Some were storage rooms, some impromptu hang outs, but her favorite was the large sparring room that stretched beneath the grand hall above. The upper rooms may have been where the business was done, may even be where a handful of Paladin crashed after a long day, but here was the breathing heart of the order. Of course, she had been a cop, so maybe she was just biased towards places that resembled coffee and donut hangouts, sweaty gym rooms, and stockpiles of kick-ass weaponry.
They entered the room, an equipment storage room, with cabinets lining the back wall and the utilitarian table and hardwood chairs surrounding it. The only homey touch was the soft glow of a fire flickering in the fireplace. It was also the only real light source and barely enough for her to make out the other warrior standing behind the table in the center of the room. Still, she recognized him. Hard to miss those tree-trunk muscles, or the flicker of red highlights on the towering giant.
“Hey, Alex,” she said in greeting.
Alex looked up from where he was peeling off his bracers and whistled. “You two look like something the cat dragged in.”
“Just tired.” Jessica moved in to the room to give the warrior a quick kiss on the cheek, which was returned with a real smile. Out of all the Paladin, Alex was the one she knew the best. Probably because she’d known him before her death and subsequent rebirth as a Paladin. Of course, back then she’d thought him a criminal.
To put it in perspective, she’d also thought Logan one, too. Oh and she’d thought her mate insane as well. It had taken a very real wake-up call in the form of a demon for her to realize that Logan was not crazy, but also one of the most honorable men she’d ever known. Too bad that call had occurred too late to save her mate from twenty-one days of living hell. Twenty-one days of clinging to his sanity by the barest of threads while she was up in Heaven tripping over her new wings and trying to get an audience with the Big Poohbah to plead her case.
It all worked out, she told herself. You’re here now and a true partner rather than a handicap.
“Fun night?” Alex asked, thumbing some soot off Jessica’s cheek.
“You could say that,” Logan grumbled, his hand snaking around her waist and pulling her back into his embrace.
She felt his chin touch the top of her head, felt his shoulders sag a bit as he expelled a breath.
It was because she understood that instinct all too well now that she let it go, linking her fingers through his in a gesture of reassurance. Honestly, it was kind of flattering to have her logical leader lose his mind and go all caveman on her. Sometimes at least.
“Is Bennett in?” Logan asked.
Alex exchanged a look with Warren.
“What?”
“Nothing. He’s in. Just in a mood tonight.”
Warren grunted. “Isn’t he always?”
Jessica bit her tongue, though she exchanged a knowing look over her shoulder with her mate. After talking with Karissa and Roland about the events that had unfolded while she’d been gone and Logan had been emotionally incapacitated, she suspected she knew the cause of that mood, but also figured it wasn’t her right to be sharing her speculations with others.
“How did it go tonight?” Logan asked, moving the conversation on.
“Same ole, same ole,” Alex said with a shrug, though there was a set to his shoulders that said it was anything but.
“How it went was crappy,” Warren offered as he worked at his own bracers. “We ran into another one of those knifes.”
Jessica felt Logan’s heart rate spike against her back, eagerness zinging across their bond.
“Did you get it?” he asked.
She held her own breath in anticipation of a break in this case.
Not a case. You’re not a cop anymore and this is bigger than a case, Jess.
The black blades were a new weapon on the street. They’d first seen one in the hands of a vampire who’d subsequently gotten away. Twice since then they’d been seen being carried by merker. The
first time the Paladin had been in a public area and couldn’t do anything, the second had resulted in the Paladin staggering back to Haven, uttering the barest details of his encounter before he’d collapsed, his hand falling from a shallow stomach wound that had blackened at the edges.
Normally a Paladin could have healed from that sort of injury, but not this time. The blackness had grown, slowly radiating from the wound, the Paladin never truly waking, though he had taken to feverishly writhing upon his bed in the infirmary. They all feared what it would mean when that blackness eventually took over his entire body, though nothing they’d tried had seemed to eliminate or even stall its advance.
Alex shook his head, his jaw twitching.
“There were complications,” Warren offered.
“What sort of complications?” Logan asked.
“Of the human variety. The human cop variety to be exact.”
Alex grunted, tossing his bracers onto the table. “What he means to say is I was the complication. I screwed up.”
“I wouldn’t say that. How could you have known he was a goner?” Warren asked, swiping Alex’s bracers up with his own.
“Because I could sense that blade’s power! There was no way a human could hold that thing for that long if his soul wasn’t already turned. And I fucked up. I let him… let him…” His voice cracked, his eyes closing as his jaw muscle rolled again.
“Oh Christ, here we go again.” Warren shook his head, turning his back on Alex as he started towards a cabinet in the back of the room to store the gear. “You really need to get over yourself, Alex. You couldn’t have stopped him.”
Alex was on Warren in two seconds flat, spinning him around so he was in his space, his hands fisting around the warrior’s black t-shirt. Warren’s eyes widened, then narrowed dangerously.
Oh boy.
“Don’t tell me what I could have or couldn’t have done. I screwed up. It’s because of me people are dead and we don’t even have the fucking knife to show for it.”
