Cheyenne McCray - [Lexi Steele 01]

by The First Sin

  Monday morning

  Cabot was history.

  As a good number of the agents gathered in the big lecture hall, I popped a couple of Excedrin tablets and chased them down with a swig from a plastic bottle of water.

  The headache must be from the emotional rollercoaster I’d been on ever since things went bad with Cabot. At least now I had some closure.

  When the agents were seated in the hall, I sat on the edge of a table on the platform at the front. “Agent Randolph’s killer was taken down last night.”

  All of the agents’ satisfaction was evident, but it was hard on each of us because, at the same time, we all mourned our loss. There was no bringing back Randolph.

  “Benjamin Cabot is no longer a problem, nor will he ever be a problem again.” Donovan leaned against the same table as he looked at me. “Thanks in great part to Steele.”

  I raised my bottle in a gesture like I was toasting the clapping agents while a few, who’d been there, made comments like “Should have been there,” “Steele kicked major ass,” “That sonofabitch got what he deserved.”

  “Cabot’s operations are going to tumble like rocks in a landslide,” I said. I could hear the roar of those rocks now. “The guys we didn’t eliminate are spilling a lot of what we need to know about Cabot’s Boston-based ops.”

  Thanks to a little persuasion, and truth serum that didn’t give them the same reaction as Schilling, who probably wouldn’t live much longer. Scumbag.

  An old lady named Grace, who’d been hiding behind a makeup cart, was being particularly informative. Without any special techniques.

  “As some of you know, from Cabot’s hard drive we found out who the so-called ‘ringleader,’ is.” Donovan crossed his arms over his broad chest. “For those of you who don’t, the man’s name is Anders Hagstedt.”

  I set the bottle of water on the table beside me. “Hagstedt’s base of operations is unknown, so far. However we do know that he has numerous individuals like Cabot who run sex slave rings or other forms of human trafficking.”

  I clenched my jaw before I added, “We’re going to find Hagstedt and take him down.”

  May 25

  Saturday noon

  I felt like I could run a mile as I hurried around my apartment to straighten up before Donovan came over.

  Okay, so I’d sorta missed staying with Mr. Neat-Freak-Fabulous-Cook-and-Best-Sex-of-My-Life.

  But I had my own life and I’d needed to get back to it.

  Unfortunately, when he’d come over last weekend that had been interrupted, but all’s well that ends well.

  The Hefty bag in my hand slipped when I chucked an empty pizza box from last night into it. Got a better grip and tossed empty Guinness and Mountain Dew bottles, Pecan Sandies packages, paper plates, along with other crap. Well, I had to pick up every now and then.

  Like when I cleaned up that garbage, Cabot.

  A knock at the door—that sounded a lot like Donovan’s—reverberated in the room.

  I grinned, tossed the bag of garbage near the kitchen, and headed toward the front door.

  A skirt would be real convenient right now, or loose shorts. My jeans felt almost too tight as I headed toward the living room. Could’ve been Donovan’s cooking from when I’d been staying with him, but I didn’t think that was the reason why they seemed so snug. I could strip pretty fast, though.

  “Heya,” I said when I opened the front door and looked at the hot man standing in the doorway.

  Donovan grabbed me with one arm, and kissed me hard and fiercely as he kicked the door shut behind him.

  I tried to get closer to him when I realized something was between us and digging into my chest. And it smelled incredibly good.

  “Food!” I drew away, and he gave me a quirky smile as I took the big casserole pan from him. “Whatever it is, I’m going to die if I don’t eat it soon.”

  He followed me into the kitchen. “Sour-cream-and-chicken enchiladas.”

  “Oh, yeah. You lived out in the Southwest before you came to Boston.” I was already grabbing paper plates out of a cabinet, and plastic forks from a drawer.

  “I’ll make you tacos someday.” Donovan was taking aluminum foil off the top of the casserole pan. I smiled at him. “Like I said, Steele, the way to you is through your stomach.”

  I pinched his butt. “And the sex. Don’t forget the sex.”

  Every time I ate something Donovan fixed I was in sheer heaven. “This is so good. One of the things I miss most about staying with you is the food.”

  “And the sex,” he repeated for me.

  “Uh-huh.” I took another bite, and sighed when I finished. “Can I keep the leftovers?”

  He just gave his quirky smile.

  But then he looked serious. “How are your nightmares?”

  I shrugged. “Not as frequent.”

  He reached up with a paper napkin and wiped the corner of my mouth.

  “Maybe saving Kristin and the girls we could, and bringing down Cabot’s operation . . .” I said quietly. “Maybe somehow that helped atone for my sins.” At least partially.

  “Lexi.” He so rarely used my first name that I knew he had something important to say. “You did what you had to. They didn’t give you a choice.”

  “Yeah, they did.” I sighed. “I don’t think I’ll entirely be free of the guilt.” I shuddered at the thought of the alternative. Being mutilated and chopped into pieces, and forced to live that way day after day . . . “I wasn’t strong enough for the other option. Even now I think I would have done the same.”

  “In reality you were only given one choice.” His tone was firm. “Don’t beat yourself up over it anymore.”

  I won’t say it was okay because at least those people had quick, painless deaths. But it was true that I’d made the only choice I could make. For me.

  “Never being able to see my family and friends again, and the fact that they would never know what happened to me,” I said. “That would have been a form of torture and death for them, too.” So in some ways, saving my own life had saved others from pain and anguish.

  I still didn’t think I’d ever be able to cry again. After that first assassination, every tear left me and had never come back.

  “It doesn’t make it all okay,” I said, “but I have to live with it. And accept it.”

  May 25

  Saturday afternoon

  Air cooled my chest as I pulled my tank top away from my sticky skin. A beautiful day, but on the warm and humid side. Donovan had run a quick errand—probably to get more condoms.

  I smiled. Food and sex with Donovan—and not in that order.

  As moist as my skin was getting sitting outside, you probably couldn’t tell I’d taken a shower after our last bout of hard countertop sex. We had the hardest time making it to the bedrooms.

  The white steps beneath my backside and legs had that bumpy/smooth feeling from someone having painted over older wooden steps without sanding them first. The odor of paint was strong, but I still smelled the neighbor’s freshly mowed grass and the white blooms of the purple sandcherry shrubs to the side of our egg yolk–colored triple decker.

  My cheeks warmed in the sunshine as I tipped my head up and closed my eyes. Donovan would be back soon.

  He drove up in his black Explorer a few minutes later.

  Donovan got out of the SUV carrying a notebook.

  I cocked my head. “Watcha got there?”

  He sat on the steps next to me and opened the notebook. Inside were pictures of tattoos. “We’re going to take care of it.”

  “It,” referring to Cabot’s initials, which neither of us talked about. I just kept a bandage over it, not even looking when I changed the bandage.

  My stomach did a flip-flop. “We can have a tattoo put over it?”

  He flipped open to a page with Chinese symbols on it.

  My gaze met Donovan’s. “The Chinese symbol for dragon.”

  “A symbol of power, mystery an
d intelligence,” Donovan said, then smiled. “As well as bloodthirsty and fire-breathing.”

  I liked it when he gave me a full smile. It was so rare.

  I returned his smile. “Let’s do it.”

  May 25

  Saturday afternoon

  Donovan helped me sit up on my elbows and glanced at my belly. “Take a look.”

  For weeks I hadn’t looked at my bare belly, and my heart rate picked up. What if it didn’t cover the initials?

  When I looked down, it didn’t really register at first.

  No sign of those horrid devil’s initials. Not a single sign.

  I couldn’t stop staring at the new tattoo on my belly, around my diamond piercing. The tatt covered about the same area the initials had—but it was like the B and C had totally vanished.

  A little skip in my heart came out of nowhere.

  “I can’t believe they’re gone.” It wasn’t registering yet. “Really gone. Like they’d never been there at all.”

  “It’s something to give you only good thoughts whenever you see it.” Donovan’s expression was soft when I looked at him. He brushed some of my hair from my face and behind my ear. Then he smiled in that sexy way I liked so much. “And to remind me to watch out so I don’t get my ass fried when you’re breathing fire.”

  Damn. An ache behind my eyes. I sat up, wrapped my arms around Donovan’s waist, and pressed my cheek to his chest. “Thank you.”

  CHAPTER 42

  Family and friends are everything

  June 22

  Saturday afternoon

  The power in my swing sent that ball straight out of Foley to win the game. Grand slam, baby. My family, Donovan, Kristin, and some of my cousins cheered as I made the round, and my mother and two of my brothers touched home plate.

  My other cousins were on the losing side, but they only shouted with good-natured jeering.

  Donovan slapped me on the butt as soon I stepped onto home plate. “Good job, Steele.”

  I laughed. “Despite the fact you’re on the losing team? Just like the Skanks,” I added with a wink. “Oops, I meant the Yanks.”

  He gave me a harder pat on the butt.

  Warmth centered in my chest as I looked at my family. Including Mammy and Daddy we made a team of nine—with the exception of my brother, who’d had to ship out again not long after that dinner with the whole family together.

  My parents, who were in their early sixties, were wicked good at softball. Mammy could catch a pop-up fly and hit a line drive with the best of them. Daddy was home run king.

  Donovan and I walked to where Kristin was sitting with her back to a tree. She looked melancholy, but happy to be with us.

  I looked at Kristin. “It’s been about seven weeks now.” It seemed like the days had gone by fast since the end of her ordeal, but I imagined they hadn’t passed quickly enough for her.

  “She’s a long way from being healed,” Donovan said with a sigh. “But she’s tough.”

  I’d warned my brothers off from flirting with her. She was still skittish around men and probably would be for a very long time. So they treated her like one of our many cousins, aunts, and uncles who were at the park for our annual beginning-of-summer baseball game.

  Yesterday had been the first day of summer and, with the heat and humidity, I could really feel it.

  Sunshine warmed my skin, and I ran my fingers over my diamond belly button piercing and dragon tatt. I’d taken to wearing crop tops when I wasn’t on duty so that my tattoo showed.

  It felt good to look at it. Only fond memories came when I did—somehow that dragon tatt, that gesture from a friend, washed away every bit of what had been done to me.

  Mammy handed out corned beef and cheese sandwiches while my aunts gave out whatever they’d brought. Donovan’s thigh brushed mine as he sat between me and Kristin. Since he’d found her, he didn’t seem to let her too far out of sight.

  “So you’re staying for a while?” I asked, before biting into my sandwich. Yum.

  He finished chewing his bite and glanced at his sister before looking back at me. “I’m taking Oxford up on her offer and staying with RED.”

  Okay, so I felt absurdly pleased. More great sex!

  “Are you going to live with Kristin?”

  “Just a little while longer. Until she’s better, and not scared to be alone.” He crossed his legs at his ankles. “There’s a brownstone not too far from her place that I’m looking into buying. I’d like to move her in and let her have one of the floors so that we’ll be close, but she’ll still have her own place.”

  “A whole brownstone?” I widened my eyes. “Not just an apartment in one?”

  He shrugged.

  “Christ, you have to have a little money tucked away somewhere,” I said, and tossed aside a sliver of an onion onto the pile of garbage we were going to clean up. Ewww. Since when did Mammy put onions in our corned beef sandwiches? “Any of the Big Men hanging around Boston?”

  “Doubt it.” Donovan took a swig from a bottle of lemonade. “Those guys have been freelancing forever. Not sure any one of them would like any kind of tether.”

  I cocked my head to the side. “Do you think you’ll feel tethered?”

  He took another bite of his sandwich and seemed to consider my words for a moment as he chewed. He swallowed. “Not the way RED operates. Oxford doesn’t manage with a leash.”

  “True.” Thoughts of what I’d done three months ago came to mind and I gave a rueful smile. “Unless you beat the crap out of your ex-boyfriend’s truck.”

  Donovan snorted then laughed. “That won’t be a problem for me.”

  At the realization of what he meant I laughed so hard my stomach hurt.

  “Still paying the car company Gary owes for the damage to their merchandise?” Donovan asked.

  I jerked my thumb toward one of my cousins. “Lucky for me Dean owns a body shop and did the repairs for cheap. Nothing like having a big, loving family. The car company resold that piece of crap, and I’m down to owing them just a few hundred more.”

  He nodded and looked at his sister, who was talking with one of my female cousins. He turned back to me. “Even though Kristin’s the only family I have, I wouldn’t change a thing.” His expression darkened. “Except the last few months. If I could take them back—I’d do anything.”

  I sighed. “It doesn’t make up for a damned thing that Kristin went through, but at least Cabot’s personal slave auctions are history.”

  “There are more Cabots out there for us to find and take down.” Donovan wiped his hands on a paper napkin before reaching for another plastic-wrapped sandwich. “Your mother makes a mean corned beef.”

  “You should try her shepherd’s pie.” I glanced at my mother. “Nummy.”

  “Oxford intends to pair you and me up on the next operation,” Donovan said, drawing my attention back to him. “Eventually Operation Cinderella will go international. You up for it?”

  “Ha.” I smiled and rubbed my Chinese dragon tattoo. “We’ll just see if you’re up to it.”

  Donovan’s mouth had that quirky little smile. “I’ve requisitioned fireproof gear to work with my fire-breathing dragon of a partner.”

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  DEMONS

  NOT INCLUDED

  Coming Summer 2009 from St. Martin’s Paperbacks

  Olivia, T, and I arrived at almost the same time in the Upper East Side Manhattan neighborhood where the NYPD officer’s family had been murdered. We parked a distance from the home—couldn’t get any closer due to the large number of emergency vehicles.

  At least four police cruisers, three ambu
lances, a fire truck, and two unmarked vehicles had arrived at the scene. Standing outside the fringes of the crime-scene tape and police barricades were neighbors, most still in their bathrobes.

  Everyone and everything was motionless. Frozen.

  Thanks to a Soothsayer’s power to control air and the minute water particles in it, the moment an onlooker happened by, that person instantly “froze,” too. The Soothsayer also would use an air spell to put a glamour over the entire block.

  Of course, the spells excluded paranorms.

  A strange scent came from the house, and I grimaced as Olivia, T, and I walked toward the scene. Burned flesh and the additional sickly sweet scent of burned sugar.

  I’d seen dead bodies before. Lots of them. But with each step I took, my back and arms felt tighter. I had to bite my bottom lip to hold back a powerful retch.

  There was more here than dead bodies. Something else. Something . . .

  Evil?

  I shivered as I walked. Tried to remind myself that there was no such division as good and evil. Only dark and light, and all the shades in between—but that was my Drow mind talking. The human part of me definitely wanted to scream and run away from this place.

  Crime-scene tape remained as motionless as the people. We made it to the front door of the home after dodging our way through motionless NYPD officers, an FDNY response unit, paramedics, and on past crime-scene investigators, including a photographer and a sketch artist. Our Soothsayer would have to take care of them later when she wiped their memories of the paranormal parts of the crimes.

  The lurch of my heart was no less painful than the churning in the pit of my belly when I saw four body bags outside the home, two of the bags small.

  The moment I entered the home, the stench hit me even harder—along with a sick, slithering feeling of something wrong, something unnatural and more terrible than I could put into words.

  The smells and sensations were absurdly followed by the Soothsayer’s gardenia scent, along with a hint of vanilla candles that must have been lit when the humans were attacked.