When the tension between the men dulled, I filled Bob in, including The Adept’s Den kerfuffle. I avoided the chest of bone, my fireflies, and the near rape. Those… I no longer trusted him.
“His head,” I said. “His gun must have gone off. Pity.”
“Pity,” echoed Larrimer.
Bob downed his Scotch, smiled, and held out his hand toward me. “Another, Young Pup?”
In one fluid motion, Larrimer stood before him, swiped the glass from Bob’s hand, and strode into the kitchen.
Bob looked like he’d chewed a lemon. “You two have been busy campers. Have you fucked yet?”
Shock rippled through me. In the kitchen, Larrimer stiffened.
“Bob,” I said in a quiet voice. “That’s totally inappropriate.”
He frowned. “Have you?”
His jealousy and disgust washed across my senses. “None of your damned business. What’s your problem?”
He swiped his face. “Don’t do it. Promise me you won’t.”
I smiled, sweet as pie. “I don’t make promises I can’t keep.”
Ba-boom. “Dammit, Clea, you—”
“Balfour.” Larrimer towered before him, holding out another Scotch.
Oh, this wasn’t good.
Bob made a point not to touch Larrimer when he took the glass. Larrimer leaned down and rested a hand on his shoulder. Bob’s lip curled, Larrimer grinned. “My pleasure.”
Seconds passed, elastic, ugly.
Grace barked, and the elastic snapped. Larrimer walked to his chair and raised his mug. “Good chocolate.”
Bob’s eyes tracked from Larrimer’s to mine. “Too bad we don’t know what he wants with this girl. The food thing. God, Clea, that must have been hard for you.” Sympathy leaked from his pores.
That was the man I knew. “At least, Agent Larrimer has some answers on the endangered animals.” Knit, purl, knit, purl. “Anything on the men who attacked me this morning?”
He held the glass to his lips and sipped. “No prints in the system, no DNA, no nothing on any of the dead guys, not even in your foster mother’s car. Invisible enemies.”
Lies. Did he think I wouldn’t catch them?
Bob tapped his phone, whistled. “It’s been decided. In six days, the next dinner party, we surround the place, and if we’re lucky, get the girl, and take this Master down.”
I shook my head. “It feels wrong.”
Bob bristled. “What the hell’s that supposed to mean?”
“What if Lulu Cochran isn’t there?” Larrimer said.
“We’ll have The Master.” Bob shrugged. “We’ll find her.”
“And what if you can’t?” I asked.
Bob slapped his thighs and stood. “It’s done. Nonnegotiable. I’ve got to be going.”
“That wasn’t a discussion,” Larrimer said. “Nor was it meant to be one.” He rose to his full six-foot-four. “So what’s your real agenda here, Special Agent Balfour?”
“Assistant Special Agent in Charge.”
Larrimer folded his arms across his chest, eyes dancing.
“Get out, Larrimer,” Bob said. “I need to talk to Clea alone.”
With a look of disdain at Balfour, Larrimer turned to me. “You okay with this?”
“Are you her damned puppy?” Bob barked.
Swirls of anger figure-eighted around the two men. Larrimer stepped forward, deceptively relaxed, eager.
Bob’s body tightened, an old bear about to pounce.
“Guys. Guys?” I rested a hand on Larrimer’s bicep. “James,” I said in a whisper. “It’s okay. Go walk the dogs for me? Please?”
Whatever he saw in my face relaxed him.
“My pleasure.” He nodded at Bob, a promise of violence, and whistled. The dogs trotted after him.
“So, Bob, is this where you tell me you’re putting me back on the roster?”
He drew in a breath, released it. “I can’t. The Bureau can’t. The SAC won’t have it, not until this case is closed.”
I notched my chin. “What is it really, Bob? Why are you holding me back?”
He snared my eyes. “Soon, Young Pup. I promise.”
Lies. Too bad my lie-dar didn’t offer the meaning behind them. Now, one of the truest friends I’d ever known was gone, replaced by no-idea-what. “Your plan for the Adept’s Den feels wrong.”
He straightened, donned that familiar mantle of authority, and spread his hands. “It’s the higher-ups plan.”
“What do you think of it, Bob?”
He shrugged.
“You’re playing politics with the poohbahs again. Be present in your own right.”
He notched his head toward the door. “Is he present?”
“Always.”
A flush mottled his face. “You don’t know the half of it.”
“So tell me.”
“He’s a freak!”
That’s when I got it. That, which made up Larrimer, he wished for it, too. Wanted it so bad, it ate at him from the inside out. “You used to be kinder than that, Old Man.”
Of course, Bob told me nothing. Crawling beneath the sheets before Larrimer returned with the dogs, I rubbed my belly. Sore. Blondie2. His hands, I still felt them. There. The invasion. The pain. His fingers jammed inside me.
I wanted Larrimer to come to my bed again, to tell him what Blondie had done, to have his comfort replace the pain.
He never appeared.
Senses on fire, I jerked awake, grabbed my gun. I wasn’t alone. But I was. Except beneath me, in my office, Larrimer stormed with cold fury as he danced with his swords, so I reached for LoTR beside my bed. No way could I sleep through his passion.
More than an hour later, he stopped, paused, started talking. I shouldn’t. I really shouldn’t.
I lay on the floor, my ear pressed to the boards. Handy that our timberframe had little but wood between the floors.
“Now is not the time to bring her in.” He might be roiling with anger, but his voice was honied smooth and calm.
He laughed. “Flaunting your authority? What authority? You’re my handler, nothing more.”
Even through the boards, I could hear screeching on the other end.
“We’re closing in on The Master,” he said. “Yes, she knows about the chest. She’s hunting it. That’s why it’s too soon.” A pause, then, “Involved with her?” A chuckle. “Balfour is an asshole with daddy issues.”
Pause.
“Go ahead,” he said, precise, cool. “Send Geirr to ‘assist’ me. Fuck up the mission royally. I don’t give a shit.”
The phone clicked off, then something hit a wall. I leapt into bed.
Tomorrow came, and my body screamed at me. After a scorching shower, I slathered on another round of Bag Balm. I should buy a stock. I plundered the pile of jeans on the floor, donned fresh underwear and a t-shirt, and downed three ibuprofens.
And got the shakes.
I slumped to the bed. Dammit, it was over. I wasn’t kidnapped, wasn’t raped.
But that wasn’t it. No, it had been Larrimer’s phone call. Apparently, I was a mission. I should confront him, confront Bob. Except, whenever confrontations happened, people died, most often the confronter. My trusted sounding boards—Dave dead, Bob involved in “the mission,” Bernadette unwell—were gone.
Larrimer was my best bet. But he was torn between helping me and doing something that was shredding him from the inside out. I could use that, except I sucked at deceiving those I cared for. And yeah, my feelings for Larrimer were dark and complex. And I would not use the “L” word.
Every time I used that, someone died. My parents. Tommy. Dave. Lulu?
Shit.
Bottom line, Larrimer would never deliberately hurt me. Soul-deep, I knew that. So I’d have to pick an opportune time and get him to open up. Sure, like using fingernails on a tin can. Yippee.
Bernadette’s Buck it up, cookie made my head ache. Grouchy old woman.
Maybe I was still too soft.
No. I was strong, strong enough to survive Tommy’s death, and Dave’s. To defeat Blondies. To find Lulu.
To love James Larrimer? A man who cared, but one I doubted would ever love me back. I scraped a hand through my shoulder-length curls, which had started to feel like silky dreadlocks. My hair seemed to grow each time I fireflied. Geesh, I could end up a reggae Rapunzel.
Bernadette was right. Time to buck it up.
The aromas of coffee, eggs, and toast drew me downstairs. Larrimer sat at on the couch shoveling food into his mouth, eyes focused on his computer.
“Damned Bruins.” He slammed the thing closed. “Lost again.”
So normal. Like we were regular folks having a garden-variety morning.
“How do you feel?” he asked.
“Nothing’s broken. It could be worse.”
Eyes focused on the screen, he waved a hand toward the kitchen. “I made you a plate. It’s in the oven.”
“You’d make a swell wife,” I said as I beelined for the food.
He chortled, then coughed.
“That’s what you get for laughing at me.”
He closed his laptop and carried his plate to the kitchen table. “C’mon.”
I retrieved the plate and my coffee, and joined him.
“How do you not miss this?” He chomped on a piece of bacon.
Beside his chair, Grace, Mutt, and Jeff sat at attention, a rope of drool dripping from Grace’s muzzle. They liked bacon, too.
He chewed slowly, thoughtfully, and swallowed. “Wife, huh?”
“You’d be ideal.” I put perky into my smile.
He didn’t return it. I caught a simmering something beneath the morning routine. Something bad.
“Tell me,” I said.
He set his fork on his plate. “Ronan never came home last night.”
I sucked in a breath.
He nodded once.
Maybe we were wrong, maybe Ronan stayed over at a friend’s. But my gut knew he’d been taken.
“Balfour knows,” he said. “His guys are on it.”
“You should have told me right away.”
“And what would you have done?”
“Why haven’t they contacted us, dammit?”
He tilted his chair back. “They keep trying to steal you. They want you.”
“I guess I’m not so stealable, huh.”
His eyes iced over.
“I don’t know why!” I said.
The ice cracked. “Did he rape you?”
The fork I threw at him bounced off his chest. “You’ve been waiting to ask that, haven’t you? Haven’t you? Would it disgust you because we haven’t screwed yet? Because you haven’t…” What was I spewing? “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean those things.”
His phone played, and played and played and…
He exploded from the chair and crushed the phone into a hunk of metal and glass. Fury blew from him like a tsunami, stealing my breath.
I stood, hand outstretched. “James.”
A hard stare so primal, waves of fury so intense, I stumbled back. He wrapped his hands around the chair. It snapped in two.
“I wasn’t there to protect you.” His voice, a guttural growl. “Didn’t have your back. Someone touched you. Hit you. Hurt you. He hurt you. And I wasn’t fucking there to stop it.”
“I’m okay,” I said. “It’s okay.”
“No,” he ground out. “It’s not.”
He ignited, his gaze, lethal blades aimed at me. Except he wasn’t seeing me, not a bit.
I took a step toward him.
“Stay the fuck away.” His voice, gravel low, filled with savagery. “I’m a killer. They created me for violence. Stop.”
I moved closer, and he was a blur, slamming me against the wall.
Pain arced up my back.
His hands splayed beside my head, body pressed against mine in some hideous parody of making love. Confining me, smothering me, imprisoning me, and I pushed and pushed against his chest, a mouse trapped by a tiger.
“Stop this!”
Deaf. He was deaf to everything but some inner howl, his rage seething, his flames biting me. I wasn’t Clea, but a foe he ached to erase.
I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t see, couldn’t escape. Had to. He pressed me harder, deeper against the wall, our bodies fused. In this mindless fever, he’d kill me.
Then I felt them, the fireflies, swarm my palms. I’d be free.
I inched my trembling hands up his chest, flattened them above his pounding heart, to stop it beating, to end this. Yes, I could do that.
Never.
With all that I was, I projected outward, pain and pleasure and power, cycloning my thoughts, my feelings, my heart, while inhaling his terrible anger, pulling it to me, drawing it in.
And in a blinding rush, fireflies, citrus and light, streamed from my fingertips to swirl and dance and tornado around us, gaining power, leaching the pain, drinking it in, deeper and deeper, his rage, splinters beneath fingernails, razors on palms.
Fireflies knit together, to form a Tree of Life pattern, thick-trunked, wending branches that bowed and swayed, meandering roots that met the branches to form Celtic knots. The fireflied tree mantled around us, speed blurred.
Dizzy, I pulled the cyclone impossibly tighter as the golden fireflies vortexed, until a scream bubbled up, my body shaking with its force, scalpels scything flesh, scoring bones. Release it. Release it. I must.
I would not.
The tempest intensified, and I screamed, silent, the blackness, malevolent, hungry, sucking me in, swallowing me, blinding me.
And I saw it then, down in that deep and dark place inside of him, a red-gold dragon, keening and writhing and screeching in pain.
And the blackness absorbed that, too. No light, no scent, no fireflies. Only a dragon’s agony. Except, there, a spark of magic that flickered—almost out—and I fanned that flame so it brightened. Brightened to a warm, comforting glow. The dragon chuffed twice, then settled. Watchful, but appeased.
Pain bladed my spine. And I leashed my mind, fed the calm, evoked James stroking my cheek. Surrounding my body. Soothing me.
A hint of light, a flicker, a stream, then a billion stars exploded the blackness.
he kitchen. Standing in the kitchen. With Larrimer, the true Larrimer, a massive man, sweaty, chest heaving, eyes aglow with a blue fire that dissolved to confusion. He relaxed his muscles, and I moved my hands up and around his back and held him tight.
He rubbed his stubbled cheek against the curve of my neck. “Sorry. Sorry.”
“No biggie,” I said, digging for humor.
He snared my eyes and scowled. “You are the one person who can wind me up like that.”
“Just a girl of many talents.”
He released me, and I felt chilled.
He scraped his hands through his hair, face tight, cheekbones blades. “I said I’d have your back, and I didn’t.”
He reached for the mudroom door.
“Don’t you dare!” I gripped his forearm. “I’m a big girl. We deal with lots of crap. Things happen. We survive.”
“What you just saw,” he said, words a clipped whisper. “That’s who I am. That thing. The anger. The violence. That’s me.”
“Kinda sexy.”
He shook his head. “You are blind, woman.”
“Twenty-twenty, big guy.” I wasn’t having any of his bullshit.
There went the eyebrow. “I’ve killed dozens, Clea. Without a blink. I almost killed you.”
“My ass, you did,” I said, with an arrogance I didn’t feel. I swiped my coffee and tossed a snarky look over my shoulder. Somehow, I made it to the living room couch. I sprawled, my back against the arm, needing the support. Tired didn’t come close to describing my state.
But no nosebleed, eyes okay. Just a residue of pain. My body was acclimating to the fireflies.
Please don’t leave, James. Please. I listened for the click of the mudroom door.
Long minutes passed, and when he appeared, he took the other end of the sofa, matching my position, his long legs surrounding mine.
Mr. Cool and Calm and somewhat Ironic was back.
“That was… different,” he said.
“What?”
He snorted. “What? Those light things swirling around us.”
In for a penny. “Oh, you mean my fireflies.”
“Fireflies.”
I shrugged. “That’s what I call them. Could you smell them? Um, they’re what took off Blondie’s head.”
He winced. “Jesus. And I’m not charbroiled because…?”
“Um, I’m not sure. I never did precisely that before. Every other time—”
“Every other time.”
“You saw with the bus,” I said, a little snippish.
“Not really,” he said. “Not like this.”
“Mostly, I project outward. This time, with you, I pulled inward. It worked.”
“Christ.”
“I don’t think he’s involved.”
He pinched the bridge of his nose. “You didn’t fix me, not permanently. But it helped. Did something good. What did it feel like?”
Pain. The horrible pain. The pleasurable power. The blackness. The dragon. Worth it. “Different.”
Before he could respond, I told him about the fireflies. The vague memory at Dave’s house. The dinner. Blondie. My tattoo. The cobrathings and the wolves.
His lips thinned. “I knew something was wrong that day.”
“I have no idea what any of it means, but I’ve accepted it, the weirdness, the magic.” I paused, took a plunge. “You have magic, too.”
He frowned, nodded, silence.
“And?” I finally said.
His finger traced his scar. “A spark. A Fae animated me. Without him, they couldn’t have brought me back.”
“I can feel it. The Fae. I’ve felt it from the beginning.” I leaned forward and rested my hands on his knees. “And…”
All I got was one of those flat stares I really disliked.
“I saw it,” I said. “Um, him.”
“You saw the Fae,” he deadpanned.
I shook my head. “The dragon. Your dragon.”
“Not possible.”
“He’s red-gold. Pointy things along his spine and rounded scales and razor teeth dripping drool like Grace. The drool part, I mean.”
Chest of Bone (The Afterworld Chronicles Book 1) Page 28
