by Addison Fox
And then she’d met Kane and all her internal fears and insecurities vanished under his touch. Instead of focusing on the job, all she could focus on was him. It was all-consuming, this need for another person. For the first time in her life, she had needs. Deep, soul-stirring needs that consumed her with the unforgiving flame of desire.
Needs that had gone unsatisfied since she’d double-crossed Kane.
For six long months, she’d cursed herself for her own folly. In her vengeful insistence on going after Themis—attempting to harm the goddess through her Warriors—Ilsa seemed to have inadvertently set herself up for more heartache.
Yet another brilliant moment in a lifetime full of ignorant foolishness.
Kane’s groan pulled her from the weight of her guilt, an ever-present state since she met him those long months ago. Concern stabbed through her as he struggled to right himself. Even if he wouldn’t admit it, Ilsa could see he was fighting off something horrible. The pallor of his skin and the hollowed-out cheekbones she’d seen earlier in the moonlight looked even worse under the light of the streetlamp they’d landed beneath.
“Where do you think we are?”
Kane pushed to his feet, his movements so exhausted he looked as if he had weights attached to his limbs. “Can you smell the bread baking?” At her nod, he added, “We’re behind Harrods. Which means I didn’t take us very far from where we started.”
“Do you want me to take us to the safe house? I can—” She hesitated, not sure how much to share, then decided it probably didn’t matter. “I can sense where the souls are that I need to transport to Hades. I know how to get to Alex.”
“I’ll get us there. I just need a minute. Besides, you can’t be feeling all that hot right about now.” Kane swiped at his jeans in harsh, clumsy movements as those wicked, dark eyes raked the length of her body. “Isn’t there a soul rattling around in there somewhere?”
“It’ll keep for a bit longer. Getting to Alex is more important.”
More important, maybe, but agonizing all the same. Robert’s soul continued to scream, the noise her own personal symphony of the damned in her head. The rotted tendrils of his essence clawed at her in a vain attempt to free itself.
Clearly whatever sensual magic Kane managed to weave around her couldn’t keep the disgusting, soul-marring feelings at bay for long.
“Kane. Tell me. What is wrong with you?” She held up a hand before he could protest. “Before you go all manly on me, you look like you’re going to fall over. Let me help you.”
“The way you helped me six months ago?”
“That’s beside the point.”
“It is the fucking point!” Like aftershocks from a volcano, she felt the reverberations to the very marrow of her bones. “You don’t have any right to ask me how I feel. Or what’s wrong with me. And you sure as hell don’t have the right to offer me help.”
“But, Kane—”
He moved up into her personal space until their faces were so close they practically touched, his breath coming in harsh pants. “You. Don’t. Have. The. Right.”
Before she could reply, his large hand had wrapped firmly around hers and he dragged her toward the edge of the building. He might appear weakened, but there was pure steel in his grip. Ilsa fought the warmth wending its way through her body as they walked hand in hand. Fought the fact that her focus on their physical connection quieted the screams in her head.
With the hard-core attitude and tough-girl routine that were her hallmarks, she started her campaign to get rid of Kane. “Why don’t you go on your merry way and leave this to me? It’s clear you’re not on your game. I can handle this.”
Please, please take the hint. If you get mad enough, maybe I can send you far, far away from here. Away from Emmett’s clutches. Away from that ridiculous bargain I made with him.
Please let me do what I can now to keep you safe.
“Alex is mine. And you and I have a few things to clear up after I take care of him.”
Abandoning the bitch-on-a-mission approach, she softened her voice and opted for honesty. “He’s already spoken for, Kane.”
“He’s not spoken for until he’s caught.”
Desperate for something—anything—to make her point, Ilsa pressed on. “You don’t belong here. How many different ways do you need me to prove it to you? Add to that the fact that you’re clearly sick. You need to go home to that nice, sleek black-and-chrome apartment of yours, curl up in that mile of silk sheets on your bed and sleep off whatever is eating away at you.”
“You mean the bed you drugged me in?”
The bitter aftertaste of his words floated between them. Unwilling to cop to the bait, she simply lowered her voice another notch. “Are we really back to that again?”
“We keep coming back to it, because it’s the only thing between us. And I’m not letting you go until I figure out why you did it. Mark my words, princess—you will tell me why you burned me.”
“Why did you call me that?”
He turned to look at her. “Call you what?”
“Princess. I’m not royalty.”
“It’s a turn of phrase.” Forehead crinkling, Kane added, “Haven’t you heard it before?”
She shook her head in return, surprised to see his shoulders relax, the question altering the direction of their conversation. “No.”
“Just like you never heard of monkey sex before, either. You might be some great big mystery of the Pantheon, but you’re here. In modern times. How’d you miss out on basic colloquialisms?”
“Again you’ve lost me.”
A slightly bemused expression replaced the lines that ran across his forehead. “My mistake.”
How did this happen? This odd compatibility between them could defuse even the most challenging situation. She’d felt it in his bed, too. Had thought about those odd moments of warmth as many times, if not more, than she’d recalled the feel of his big body filling hers.
The moments spent in his arms, laughing or simply engaged in idle conversation. Those three days of carefree abandon in body, heart and soul.
Now, as then, the simple ease of being with another person comforted her, even as it puzzled her.
And just as before, she had to be the one to end it.
Ilsa allowed herself another moment to savor the feeling. To savor the time with Kane that did more to shut out the agony of carrying Robert’s soul within her than anything she’d ever experienced.
And then she made her choice.
Although the scenes changed, the ending remained the same. Like the Casablanca Ilsa who had to make her dutiful choice of her husband over Rick, Ilsa faced the same thing. There could be nothing between her and Kane, because she’d already ruined their chance for happiness.
What a joke.
The very sin Hades punished—hubris—was now her own punishment.
Her earlier decisions had already set in motion their intertwined destinies and the only way she could save him was to let him go.
So she’d face his ire again, face the consequences of a vow she made before she’d met him, by taking matters into her own hands.
Tightening her grasp on Kane’s fingers, Ilsa imagined them in the safe house on the opposite side of London. As the port began and the air grew heavy, enveloping them, she let go of Kane’s hand.
Chapter Six
The rush of air ended with abrupt finality as Kane landed, belly flop style, on the roof of a car. Lifting his head from its face-plant, he fought the urge to moan long and low.
And released, instead, a string of curses that would have turned Quinn’s hair blue.
“Son of a fucking bitch, I don’t believe this.” Rolling toward the edge of the car—some government-issued piece of shit, if the metallic gray color was any indication—he did a mental accounting of his body parts.
Stomach on the verge of nausea. Check.
Back muscles screaming. Check.
Headache that could resurrect the
dead. Check.
“Fucking beautiful job, Monte. You sure know how to manage an op.” The scorpion tattoo on his right shoulder twitched its stinger in vague annoyance. “So glad to see you’ve finally woken up,” Kane muttered. “Fat lot of good you’ve been doing me.”
The tattoos—one of Themis’s gifts to all her Warriors—were literally that. Ink that rode high on the shoulder, shaped in the sign of the zodiac the Warrior represented. In addition to identification, the tattoo served a far more serious purpose. It lived within each Warrior’s aura, coming to his aid, fighting alongside him in the heat of battle.
One hundred fifty-six men in all had been marked. Twelve for each sign, with double that for Gemini.
Barely one hundred of them still existed today, scattered across the globe.
Some had defected for what they believed to be greener—and more lucrative—pastures, while some were killed in battle. He and his Warrior brothers had eliminated one of the traitors the previous November, when they discovered the believed-dead brother of their Leo had aligned himself with Enyo.
The bitch had dealt him a death blow before any of them had gotten there to do the job. Which had galled Kane’s assassin’s sensibilities to no end until he’d come to the realization that Enyo had done them all a favor. For a change.
She’d also proven—yet again—one of the world’s universal truths. No one slept with a cobra and lived to tell the tale.
Ajax certainly hadn’t.
Kane couldn’t help noticing how the betrayal had changed their Leo. Brody was still his jocular, jovial self, but it was clear the family bullshit had gotten to him. His wife, Ava, had gone a long way toward helping erase the new shadows in his eyes, but they still showed on occasion.
As his scorpion twitched again, Kane had to wonder if he was heading down a similar path, albeit with better intentions than Ajax. Was he walking into a trap because he believed himself immune to harm? It had happened to him before and he’d paid the price for his hubris.
They didn’t call good intentions the path to hell for nothing.
No one, not even Themis, had had any idea the tattoo could be turned against the Warrior. To the best of his knowledge, he was the only one who’d ever had it happen.
Of course, it wasn’t like they spent a lot of time having group therapy about it, either, so maybe some of the others had suffered through their own problems over the years since their own changing. Problems that affected them that they were afraid to mention.
To talk about.
Just because they were an immortal band of warriors didn’t mean they all knew one another. Trusted one another. Their deployment across the globe meant they didn’t know all the ins and outs of each Warrior’s life.
His brothers—the contingent he fought with—were the only ones who knew about the poison and they kept the knowledge to themselves. They had his back and they ensured he had someone watching out for him when the poison reached its zenith.
As if on cue, another round of pain lanced through his muscle fibers, a heated wave of stinging pain.
Fuck.
Each and every time he thought he could handle this, the damn shit managed to drive another spike into his central nervous system.
With agonizing movements, Kane deftly ignored the poison and reached for his cell phone. He shot a quick text to Quinn with his location, gritting his teeth through the pain.
Believe it or not, he had bigger problems at the moment.
It ate away at him, this need to call for help. Not for the first time, the thought hit him that the acid of his stubborn pride stung far worse than the poison ever could.
A rush of air stirred next to Kane where he lay sprawled on the roof of the car. And then Quinn’s six-foot-five frame loomed next to him. “What happened to you? Where’s the woman? And why the hell did you think you should go after her in your condition?”
Add Quinn’s tactless, bullheaded questions to the mix and Kane’s stubborn pride went from frustrated to explosive in less time than it took to blink.
“Shut up and help get me the fuck off of here. Ilsa’s inside the safe house. I’m, as you can see, outside the safe house and I need to go inside to get her and the bad guy currently wasting the oxygen in there.”
Quinn’s hand latched around his biceps, pulling him forward like a freaking toddler. Shit. Had it really come to this? He wasn’t even strong enough to see an op through to completion.
There was a clear dent in the roof where Kane’s body had landed, a fact that didn’t escape either of them once Quinn had helped him into a standing position.
“How’d you land here?”
“Ilsa took matters into her own hands.” At Quinn’s pointed stare, Kane added, “I tried porting us out of Hyde Park and landed us behind Harrods by mistake. I guess she got tired of our little tour of London because she ported us to the safe house before I could argue any longer.”
“She ported you?”
“Yeah. That’s the one wee little detail we didn’t know. She’s an immortal.”
“Who is she?”
An involuntary shudder ran the length of Kane’s spine. “She won’t tell me. But she can absorb a human soul into her body and she has some agreement with Hades.”
“No shit.” Quinn shook his head; his mouth dropped in surprise. “I’ll do some digging. She’s got something to do with the Underworld. It doesn’t make me feel any better about her, but at least we might begin to understand who she is. I still don’t get her connection to you and MI6, though.”
“She was with me at the first observation of the scientists.”
“Yeah, but why drug you? I’m still not buying she’s squeaky clean.”
“Of course not.” In his increasingly weakened state, Kane had started to focus on the things that were vitally important, leaving the rest to stew somewhere in his subconscious. Clearly he was worse off than he’d thought, because he was all too ready to give Ilsa the benefit of the doubt.
“I do have to give her credit,” Quinn added. “She’s levelheaded and cold as ice. Truly frosty.”
Except, Kane thought, when she was all hot and sexy for him. Then there was nothing cold about her. Nothing that even remotely suggested she had ice crawling through her veins.
Quinn spoke again, thankfully breaking into what was likely to become another trip down Fantasy Lane. “So if she ported you, how is it that you’re outside and she’s inside?”
“She let go.”
Without warning, the usual hard-ass look on Quinn’s face morphed into a broad, shit-eating grin. “Seriously?”
“She didn’t want me along, but I never thought she’d actually throw me off right into the port. I’d have held on harder.”
Great, loud guffaws of laughter penetrated the early-morning London air as Quinn fought to catch his breath.
Kane balled his hands into fists, the urge to slug Quinn for the second time in one day rising up on him immediately. “So glad you’re having such a blast at my expense.”
“She’s really got you torqued up, doesn’t she?”
That was the hit to his pride that hurt most of all. In all his years of immortality, he’d never felt this bruised—hell, gut-deep wounded—over a woman. And now . . . now everything he did was tainted by these feelings for her. This idiotic, desperate need to be around her. To follow her. To find out who she was and what she wanted with him.
To maybe see if she wanted to stick for a while.
He really was a joke. Scorpio, the great lover of the zodiac, felled by the one woman he couldn’t have.
“Just help me, would you?”
Quinn slapped him on the back. “ ’Course I’ll help you. I always have your back, whether you want me to or not.”
Kane nodded toward the far end of the alley they were in. “It’s that split-level at the end of the street. On the far side of the house, there’s a tunnel that’ll run us into a secret basement. It’ll give us the element of surprise.”
&n
bsp; With a nod, Quinn pulled out his own BlackBerry. “Hang tight for another minute. Grey’s shaken himself loose from the club and he’s got Drake with him. I need to tell them where we are.”
“When did the Pisces show up? I thought he was discovering himself in the wilds of Wyoming?”
Quinn shoved the device back in his pocket. “Guess he found what he was looking for.”
“I thought you had to think deep thoughts for a long time to make any sense of them.”
“That approach work for you?”
“Hell no. I prefer action to sitting around feeling shit.”
Quinn shrugged. “Guess it didn’t work for Drake, either.”
As if conjured up by their conversation, Drake and Grey appeared next to them in a rush of air, both landing solidly on their feet.
Drake extended a hand, his greenish gold eyes lit with wry humor. “You look like hell, Monte.”
“Yeah, so everyone’s been telling me.”
Those genie’s eyes narrowed, the humor fleeing along with his convivial tone. “How do you feel?”
“I’ll feel better once we deal with the terrorist scum inside the safe house and I get my hands back on that woman. And I’ll really feel better when you all stop asking me how the fuck I feel.” With a glance at Grey, Kane added, “Did you fill him in on Ilsa? On the rules?”
Grey’s hands went up in an “I’m innocent” gesture. “Yeah, yeah, yeah. She’s yours. All yours. We know.”
“He’s selfish that way,” Quinn added. “And just so we’re all in on the great cosmic joke playing out before our fine friend here, he discovered this evening that his Ilsa is actually a mystery member of the Pantheon.”
“She’s an immortal?” Grey’s jaw dropped, the move so uncharacteristically uncool of him, Kane felt the first stirrings of a laugh in more days than he could count.
Quinn reached for the Xiphos at his calf, the rest of them following suit. “That she is. So don’t underestimate her.”
Kane loved the feel of the weapon in his hand. The Xiphos, a lethal fighting weapon gifted to each of them upon their turning, was a blade a little over a foot in length, nestled in a hilt fit perfectly to each Warrior’s grip. Worn at the calf, they were small enough to stay out of public view, and long enough to do some wicked damage.
