by Jenny Allen
“It doesn’t look good.” The coincidence hadn’t escaped her. The FBI wouldn’t use an anonymous mercenary squad to pick them up or fly them to some unknown destination without reading them their rights. Not to mention the supernatural creature in the back of the plane. If Cohen’s family was behind this, it would make sense. He said they had limitless resources and would stop at nothing to keep their secrets protected.
Then reality hit her. If it was Cohen’s people…Even if they didn’t know everything, one piece of the puzzle alone was enough to damn them. Hell, they could just pick one randomly from a hat. Gregor killed off an entire family line of their species. Ashcroft risked complete public exposure. Cohen told them what he really was, complete with a few specifics. Both Lilith and Chance knew first-hand about the healing effects of their demon blood. On top of all that, both of them were suffering from some rare side effect that let them draw energy from people like emotional suckerfish. They didn’t even have a clue if these side effects were temporary or permanent. One part alone could definitely lead to an order of execution from everything Cohen had said. How did she not see the connection earlier?
Lilith was in the middle of her brooding thoughts when the look on Chance’s face stopped her cold. There was a twinge of anger hidden in there that she didn’t think was aimed at Cohen for some reason. “What?”
Chance’s jaw clenched again, loosely, but she could see the tension pulling at every muscle in his face. “Why didn’t you listen to him?” The question seemed calm and reasonable but her confused look seemed to completely abolish any restraint he had left. “Dammit, Lily. What the hell were you thinking? The cab was right outside! Why didn’t you run?”
Chance let out an aggravated sigh when she simply stated blankly at him. His hazel eyes fixed on her cuffed wrists and she could see the pure exasperation rolling off of him in waves. He was actually angry that she hadn’t been able to escape, that she’d come back for him. All of his frustrations were mounting into a big ole’ ball of prickly anger with only one target in front of him. Oh joy, her lucky day.
Chapter 2
“Are you serious?” Lilith was just floored. After everything they went through in Tennessee the last thing she expected was to get bashed for running into the metaphorical fire to save his ass. Okay, well maybe she didn’t exactly save his ass, but A for damn effort.
His eyes closed for a second and when he opened them, they bored straight into her. “Yes, I’m serious, Cher. Cohen told you to run. Whether he’s on our side or not, you should have taken the warning. You could have gotten away.”
That was it. She finally had a valid target for all that pent up anger eating away at her. Chance wasn’t the only one that could lash out.
“Oh, no. Don’t you dare. First of all, you don’t know that. If they know where you live they sure as shit know where I live. The odds were better with you upstairs, not that I even stopped to think of that.”
Lilith took a deep breath to try and steady her quaking muscles. She was beyond angry, she was vibrating with fury. Chivalry was nice and all, but she wasn’t gonna be railroaded for doing the right thing.
“Do you seriously think I could have even seen running as an option?! You would have done the exact same thing, so do not sit there and lecture me, Chance.”
“It’s my job to protect people, not yours.” Chance snapped the words instantly with a steel-like certainty.
Lilith couldn’t help but laugh, but it wasn’t a friendly one. Her jaw set in determination and her olive eyes narrowed. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know I needed a super-secret bodyguard union card to give a shit about people. Maybe if I ask that guard nicely he can knock you out. I think I prefer you unconscious right now.” Lilith did notice a slight smirk on the guards face out of the corner of her eye. At least someone was finding this entertaining. It sure as fuck wasn’t her.
That seemed to knock some of the wind out of his sails, at least momentarily. Chance just stared at her, slack jawed, while Lilith suddenly found the closed window next to her infinitely intriguing. This whole thing was a nightmare. Fighting with Chance wasn’t going to help their situation at all. They needed answers, leverage, something, anything but this.
“I…I shouldn’t have said that. I’m sorry, Cherie.” His Cajun accent was slightly thicker as the words escaped with a deep sigh. She finally tore her eyes away from the window and knew there was more on his mind. The tight pull of his jaw and stiff posture was a dead giveaway. He was trying to play nice and part of her just wanted to take his peace offering and ignore the messy stuff under the surface. Unfortunately, that wasn’t the part currently in control.
“But…” Lilith fixed him with a glare when he had the good grace to appear confused. “Just finish what you were going to say, Chance. Let’s have it.”
He couldn’t help but smile, damn him. That smile was enigmatic. It began to chip away at her anger instantly and she secretly hated that about him. “And I thought Gregor was stubborn.”
“Cut the crap, Chance. This whole night had been a total disaster. Hell, Alvarez’s funeral was enough trauma for one lifetime.” She was in no mood to play games. She clenched her jaw and kept her eyes firmly fixed on him.
Chance just watched her for a moment, his own internal battle raging behind his eyes. He definitely seemed calmer, not that she could say the same. Her heart was running like a rabbit on a case of 5 hour energy drinks.
She was beginning to think Chance was never going to answer when he finally shifted in his seat and let out a sigh. “When those guys busted through the window, my first thought was ‘At least Lily is safe’. I could handle whatever they threw at me as long as I knew that you were in that cab, heading to your apartment.”
Chance glanced over at the book-end guards again, twisting his wrists against the cuffs. It was obvious that he was less than comfortable talking about this in front of an audience. “When I heard you scream my name, everything changed. I wasn’t fighting for myself anymore. I was fighting just to keep them away from you.” Chance leaned his head back against the seat and gazed at the ceiling of the plane as if it had all the answers. “I was terrified that I wouldn’t be able to keep them away from you. I didn’t…”
The tone in his voice pulled at her anger, drawing it away. She tried to hold onto it, but it slipped through her grasp like grains of fine sand. That’s when the panic started to sink in. Her conflicting emotions were flinging around in her brain like ping pong balls stuffed with explosives.
“Chance, from the moment we got on that plane to Tennessee, we’ve been a team, whether either of us wants to admit that. You need to stop seeing me as a client and start seeing me as a partner. Can we please just drop this white knight complex? It isn’t going to change the fact that we’re handcuffed to a plane heading for god knows what.”
“Lilith.” Chance sighed again with an edge of frustration and just looked at her. “You don’t get what I’m trying to say. It’s not my ‘white knight’ complex…it’s you.”
Lilith flinched and tried to swallow the sudden lump of tears in her throat. It felt like an accusation, something she should apologize for. Chance kept talking but for a few seconds it was all white noise as she struggled to get a grip on her fragile psyche. Most of her life she’d relied on her logical side and now it was failing her.
“I can’t lose you, not now. That sense of panic doesn’t exactly come with a side order of logic. When it comes to you, I can’t be objective and that’s what I need in a fight.”
It was all too much for her to handle and she couldn’t think of a damn thing to say. Thankfully, Chance wasn’t staring at her waiting for a response. What kind of response could she even give? Thank you? I’m sorry? To hell with you? Get a grip on your issues? What the fuck do you expect me to do about it?
The silence seemed to stretch on forever as Chance just sat there contemplatively staring at the ceiling with a faint blush to his cheeks. Maybe he was trying to figure out what to say
or maybe he was trying to figure out why she hadn’t said anything. Maybe he was cursing himself for saying anything at all. Lilith didn’t trust her voice or her head. She kept searching for the right words but she had nothing.
Chance finally leaned forward with a puzzled look on his face, the blush completely gone now. He stretched as far as he could and lowered his voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “If this is really Cohen’s family, why go through all the trouble?”
Okay. That definitely wasn’t what she was expecting. Truth be told, Lilith was infinitely grateful for the abrupt subject change. She’d never been particularly skilled at handling emotionally ambiguous moments of vulnerability. She always felt like someone trying to diffuse a ticking bomb in oven mitts. After everything that had happened in the past few days it was more like trying to disarm a planet-killing nuclear warhead with a beach ball. She’d much rather focus on things she could actually do something about. “How so?”
“Why the private jet? Why risk a damn kidnapping? Cohen told us that if they got wind of any of it, they would come after us and kill us. If it really is his family, then why the hell aren’t we dead?”
“Well, I kind of prefer our current state of alive and breathing, thank you.”
“Smartass.” Chance half frowned and half smirked. “You know what I mean. Why didn’t they just kill us? One assassin could have taken us both out easy enough and a hell of a lot quieter. Just a couple sniper shots from the rooftop, or rig a fire in my building. Obviously they have the resources to make it happen.”
“Maybe they like to handle things personally. Perhaps they want to find out what we know. Impossible to say with my psychic powers on the fritz.” She managed to dial her sarcasm back from scathing to playful by some miracle. Sharp tongued humor was her default defense mechanism and she was trying desperately to keep from slipping into that mode. Chance deserved better than that and it sure as hell wouldn’t be helpful right now.
“Seems like an awful lot of trouble to just handle things personally.” As strange as it sounded, that was the most optimistic thing she’d heard all day. If this family of demons wanted something, then maybe they still stood a chance of making it out of this alive, assuming Cohen’s family was really behind all this.
“By the way, how did they knock me out? I don’t feel hurt and I don’t feel groggy from any drugs.” Chance shifted back into his seat, twisting his neck, stretching, trying to find some source of pain. Out of one awkwardly painful conversation right into another. Awesome. The subject just kept coming back up like the worst white elephant gift ever. Still, Chance needed to know. He needed to be prepared, no matter how much it hurt to talk about it.
“There’s a woman on the plane, she was in your apartment.” Lilith struggled to figure out just how she was going to explain this. She barely believed it herself and she’d been conscious for the whole thing. “I don’t know who or what she is, but she’s seriously dangerous.”
An odd feeling of curiosity tickled across her skin and it wasn’t coming from Chance. Lilith side-glanced across the aisle to see the minions obviously watching them for the first time. Damn. They hadn’t seemed the least bit interested in anything else. Not even when she mentioned the call from Cohen, which may have been a mistake with an audience. Too late to take it back now. She didn’t need to dig herself any deeper by advertising what she knew about the banshee chick, which, admittedly, wasn’t very much.
Chance seemed to pick up on her line of thinking somehow and just nodded his head in agreement with her silent statement. “Did you see where they took us? What airfield?”
“Nope. The windows were blacked out on the car.” Lilith shivered slightly, remembering the awkward car ride with the Marilyn throwback inspecting her like one studies an intricate diagram. Uncomfortable would be an extreme understatement. “I didn’t see any signs, just the plane. It’s private, but if they can afford their own squad of anonymous goons then a private jet on a remote airfield isn’t all that surprising.”
She couldn’t help but look over at the guards but they were facing toward each other again. There was no flicker of a reaction on their faces. The men honestly didn’t care. It was odd that the only real reaction she’d felt from them was about the banshee in the back of the plane. Maybe she was just fascinating to all men, even her own. That didn’t exactly make Lilith feel any better. Loyalty wins out over money as a motivating force every time.
“Lily, I shouldn’t have gone off on you like that.” One more unexpected turn in the conversation and she’d have mental whiplash. “It’s just… this night didn’t go exactly as planned.” Chance’s mouth quirked into a half-hearted smile of disappointment.
“You mean you didn’t order the dangling SWAT team? I think if you were trying for the Cirque du Soleil, you misdialed.” She managed to flash him a smile and Chance chuckled before relaxing into his seat. It felt like a weight was slowly lifting off her shoulders.
An easy smile slipped across his lips with the same glint of smartass humor that had always intrigued her. “Well, you know, I started to dial that number, but figured what the hell. We haven’t had enough excitement since we got back to New York. A man can’t just fall back on the old standards when the bar has been set so high. Who wants dinner, roses and clowns when you can have martial arts and guns. Romantic right?”
His Cheshire cat grin warmed her right down to her toes and for a moment she felt like they were someplace else. This is what had always drawn her to Chance. Why she always found him fascinating. That wit and humor felt comfortable, it felt like home. It was a balm to her raw emotions.
“Eh, well. I hate clowns anyway. They give me the damn creeps.” Lilith visibly shivered in her seat and it wasn’t a complete act.
Chance crooked an eyebrow at her and grinned like a kid in a candy store. “Oh really? A clown phobia, uh?”
“No, no, no. A very strong fear. Not the same thing. A phobia is irrational. Getting spooked by grownups in primary color face paint parading around with weird, creepy voices is not irrational, it’s a completely healthy fear.”
“Killer Klowns from Outer Space or It?” Chance settled into his seat with a calm grace and confidence that she hadn’t seen since they first arrived in Tennessee. Apparently they both needed the familiar banter.
“It. I had nightmares for three months straight. Still can’t walk over open storm drains.” Chance burst out laughing and Lilith even felt a twinge of humor from the human statues across the aisle.
“Okay, now how is that not completely irrational?”
“Hey, stranger things have happened. In New York City anything could be in those storm drains ready to strike at your ankle.” Lilith managed to keep her serious look screwed into place…barely.
“Yeah, like the enormous killer crocs that live in the sewers?” Chance could barely control his laughter.
“Don’t be silly.” Chance wiped at his eyes and just grinned at her stern expression. She waited until his laughter died down into sporadic chuckles, somehow managing to keep her chastising look.
“They’re too big to fit their jaws through the opening.” That one earned her a huge laugh from Chance and even a few chuckles from the stone henchmen. “With a reaction like that, maybe I should just quit my job and become the first vampire stand-up comedian. Get my own HBO special and everything. Perhaps I’ll even get a movie deal for a romantic comedy with Gerard Butler.” She flashed a cheeky wink at Chance and settled back into her seat, feeling a million times more relaxed.
“A Scotsman, huh? Appears I have the wrong accent, Cherie.” There was a twinkle in his hazel eyes that just made his grin even more enigmatic.
“Oh don’t you worry.” Lilith flashed an impish smile as she leaned forward to whisper. “Before Gerard Butler there was Gambit. Now there was a Cajun that could make a girl swoon.”
His warm chuckle filled the cabin and eased the war raging in her head. Everything else melted away and for a few moments they both forgot a
bout the fight, Chance’s soul-baring confessions and even the handcuffs.
Chapter 3
As soon as the plane landed there was a flurry of activity. The aisle-pacing guard took his position at the plane’s exit, eyeing the cabin with a calculated stare. The bookend guards were hastily uncuffing and re-cuffing Lilith and Chance. Much to her relief, there was no sign of the supernatural ‘thing’ in the back of the plane. Maybe she was still fighting to get on her feet in that skin tight white sheath dress and those mile high stilettos.
With her out of the picture, Lilith and Chance could try to make a break for it. Just shove the guards down and run, but there were several problems with that idea, among which, dying was pretty high on the list.
They were in an unknown place at the will of an anonymous enemy. A very powerful enemy that had zero problems finding them at Chance’s rather secretive home. They needed to know exactly what was going on before they could act. Besides, their mystery hosts still had her father. Lilith hadn’t abandoned him to Ashcroft’s grimy clutches, and she certainly wasn’t about to just ditch him now.
As terrifying as it was, Lilith allowed the guard to lead her slowly off the plane, her keen eyes scanning everything. The air strip was blanketed in the dark, ominous shadows of night obscuring any possible clues to their location.
She remembered Security Officer Coffee telling her that Detective Cohen moved to Knoxville from a small town in Alabama. Maybe that’s where they landed. Of course, it could have been Cohen’s home and not necessarily his family’s center of operations. Hell, it could have just been part of his elaborate cover. Lilith was the first to admit that Cohen had a million different faces and none of them screamed ‘Trust me.’
