Nether: Hidden Book Five

by Colleen Vanderlinden

  "He's an idiot," Shanti said, her voice muffled against my shoulder, and I had to smile. I patted her on the back.

  "A few hours, then?" I asked Ronan, and he nodded.

  He reached out and gave Shanti's hand a squeeze. "I'll take care of him. I swear it," he told her, and I liked the vampire even more in that moment.

  Shanti nodded, and he left, going up the stairs Shanti and Zero had taken earlier. Rayna excused herself to deal with one of the vampires who'd been caught attacking the previous night. That left me and Shanti standing awkwardly in the den.

  "Well, we may as well take a load off or something. Ronan said it'll be a while," I said.

  Shanti clasped her hands in front of her. "Um. Can we fight instead? I can't just sit here and wait to find out if he's dead or not."

  "He's not gonna die. If he does, I'll kill Ronan myself," I said. "But, yeah, we can fight."

  Shanti nodded and led me through the house. I wondered if Rayna had a decorator somewhere on staff as well. The house was freaking perfect, and they'd barely had time to get settled. Meanwhile, I had the feeling our apartment would be sporting the cardboard box look for quite some time.

  Shanti led me down some stairs.

  "I know how much you hate basements. Sorry," Shanti said.

  "It's fine," I said. "Do you guys sleep down here, too?"

  She nodded. "At the other house, all of the rooms were reinforced so we could sleep in them. Here, we haven't had time to do that yet."

  We reached the bottom step, and I took a look around. The main part of the basement was open, and there was a punching bag in one corner. Along both ends of the basement, there were doors, which I guessed led to the private sleeping quarters for each vampire.

  "Must be dinky rooms," I said, and she nodded.

  "It's like sleeping in a closet. But it's not like we notice that, once day breaks, so…" She shrugged. "Once things settle down, Rayna said she can work on having the upstairs rooms reinforced like the old ones."

  "Hopefully it won't come to that, and you guys can move back soon."

  "Hey," Shanti said. "Knock it off, Molly."

  "Knock what off?"

  "Blaming yourself for everything. We'll move back, or we won't. It doesn't matter."

  I looked away. "Pretty much everyone thinks I went easy on her when I faced her downtown," I said.

  "Did you?"

  I threw my hands up in exasperation and started to pace. "Have you ever known me to go easy in a fight?"

  "When you feel kinda sorry for the person, yeah."

  I glared at her. "Now you sound like my mother. 'There's no room for pity in the life of a Fury,'" I intoned in a terrible imitation of Tisiphone.

  "You didn't answer the question."

  "No. I wasn't going easy on her. She was throwing me around, bashing my head against the side of the building, and I could barely even muster the strength to try to shove her away. She's ridiculously fucking strong, Shanti."

  "Is she stronger than you?" she asked quietly.

  I looked down, irritated, mostly with myself. After a moment, I nodded. I hated admitting it to her. I knew Shanti would worry about me.

  She was silent for a moment. "Can you use your mindflaying stuff on her?" she finally asked.

  "I'm not sure," I answered. "I didn't try." I kept to myself that I felt filthy every time I used that ability. Wrong. I also didn't tell her about how broken Nether was, and that I had probably had the chance to take her out and blew it. I waved it off. "I'm supposed to be distracting you by kicking your ass, not giving you more to worry about."

  She let out an irritated breath. "Oh my god, Molly," she muttered.

  "What?"

  "Give me shit to worry about, okay? Don't shut people out thinking you're protecting them, because that's absolute bull crap. Any of us; me, Brennan, Nain, any of us would give our last breath fighting by your side. And we'd be proud to do it. All right? So don't do this whole lone hero thing, because that's stupid. It's what you had to do once upon a time. It's not the way it is anymore."

  I shook my head, touched by her words, hating the idea that any of them would ever die by my side. "It's not that. It's just that I know I'm way more badass than the rest of you, so…" I shrugged.

  She rolled her eyes. "All right. Let's go then, badass."

  I laughed, and we started circling one another. When Shanti struck out, I barely ducked in time.

  "Getting slow and soft, chica," Shanti said, and I took the opportunity to kick out at her. Which she dodged.

  It went on like that for who knows how long, the two of us circling, jabbing, kicking. Every once in a while, we'd each land a hit, and I was impressed by how strong she'd gotten, how disciplined she was as a fighter. I was still all smash. She actually strategized.

  I'd have to try that some time.

  All I knew was that however long it took, I was eventually sweating and panting. Bruises had bloomed on my thighs, stomach, and arms, and had since healed. She didn't look tired at all. Brat.

  We kept sparring, the only sound in the basement my breath, and the occasional "oof" as one of us landed a punch or kick. After a while, Shanti called time out, and I nodded and backed up, wiping sweat from my face. She went to a small refrigerator nearby, took out a bottle of water and tossed it to me.

  "Thanks."

  "Sure," she said. She rooted around for a moment more, and brought out a small bottle of blood for herself. Synthetic. Rayna owned a company that made that, too.

  I looked away as she drank. Yes, one of the people I love most in the world is a vampire. Yes, some of my closest friends and allies are vampires. Doesn't mean the whole blood-drinking thing isn't totally disgusting.

  "So what's this stuff E's telling me about you adopting a baby?" she asked after a moment, as she tossed her empty bottle in the trash.

  "We did. Well. Her pack wouldn't take her in. Her mother are dead. So I brought her home."

  "Why do I feel like there's more to the story than that?"

  I sat on the basement floor, leaning my back against one of the concrete block walls. She settled in next to me. "Because there is, I guess," I said.

  I filled her in on everything. How I'd found Zoe, her pack's reaction, Nain and Bren's reaction when I brought her home.

  Her brow furrowed as she listened. "So, this demon shifter thing, then?" she finally asked.

  I nodded. "Yeah. Nain isn't happy about that. He's making this work, because I want it so badly."

  "I can see where he's coming from, though," Shanti said. "And before you get pissed at me, I think you did the right thing, okay?"

  I nodded.

  "But I see his side of it, too. She loses her mind someday, and she goes nuts and starts hurting people. Who's gonna have to take her down if that happens?"

  She left the question hanging. There was no need for an answer, because we both knew whose job it would be.

  "You think you can destroy someone you love?" she asked, more gently.

  "I know," I said, rubbing the back of my neck. "And I get it. But that doesn't change the fact that she needs us and I already love her."

  "I know. It's how you are." We sat in silence for a bit. "Maybe it won't happen the way they think," she added.

  "Maybe," I said. "I'll figure something out."

  "Can you take her out if it happens? Could you let Nain do it, and still love him afterward?"

  "That's not something we'll have to worry about for a while," I said, not wanting to think about it. "I'll figure something out."

  She didn't respond, and we let the matter drop. We went upstairs again and sat in the den, watching the flames in the fireplace, sitting mostly in silence. I called once to check in with Nain, and he filled me in on the meeting he'd just had with some of the shifters at our house.

  "How's she doing?" he asked.

  "Okay. This is stressful. I can't believe how well she's handling it," I said, knowing Shanti would hear me.

  "I'd be out
of my mind if it was you," he said, voice low.

  I closed my eyes. Remembering what it had been like, losing him. The fear of that ever happening again was almost more than I could take. "Same here," I finally said.

  "Zoe's asleep," he said, changing the subject, both of us clearly not wanting to take that particular trip down memory lane. "She woke up right after you left, and she wasn't happy. She was fussing a lot for E, and even Brennan was kind of lost. He took over for E after a while while I was talking to the shifters."

  "So what finally worked?" I asked.

  "I picked her up and started walking her back and forth. She likes walking," he said.

  I smiled. "I think she likes you. That whole demon thing."

  "Maybe."

  "I like you too," I said.

  "Just like, huh?"

  "Eh. Maybe more."

  He laughed, and the sound of it had my heart skipping. "How much longer?"

  "Shouldn't be much longer," I said. "Really, we're waiting for him to wake up now. As soon as he does, they told me I have to leave because of the whole delicious immortal blood thing."

  "Make sure you do, then. I don't want to have to kick Zero's ass for freaking you out."

  The man knew me. That's all there was to it. I could pretend to be okay with vampires. I could pretend I didn't still have nightmares about being nearly drained. I could love Shanti as much as I'd loved just about anyone, and he still knew that, at heart, I was freaked the hell out by vampires.

  "I will," I said. "I don't want to add to the stress."

  We talked a bit more, and then I hung up. Shanti stood up and started pacing. "What the hell is taking so long?" she finally asked. "I should go up there…"

  "No, you shouldn't," I said. "Ronan said to stay put."

  She gave a growl of irritation, then kept pacing.

  When we heard steps on the staircase a few minutes later, we both stood up. Shanti clasped her hands. Ronan entered the room and took her hand.

  "It's done. He's feeding now. Come on," he said to Shanti. Then he looked at me. "Time for you to go. He can smell you already."

  I nodded, hugged Shanti.

  "Thanks, Molly. I'll call you as soon as I can," she said, hugging me hard.

  "Anytime."

  I walked myself out, then focused and rose into the sky, toward our rental house.

  I checked on Zoe, and walked into our room to find Nain already stretched out on the bed, chest bared, and, I could just imagine, bare elsewhere under the white sheet. I stripped, knowing he was watching me. By the time I crawled into bed beside him, the hunger coming from him had my heart pounding, my stomach clenching.

  As soon I was beside him, he pulled me on top of him, holding me tight.

  "Eager, huh demon?" I said as I lay kisses across his chest and collarbone. He pressed his hips up, just a little, making it even more obvious than it already was what I was doing to him. I laughed and kept kissing him.

  "Molls," he said, his voice hoarse.

  I sat up so I was straddling his waist. "What?"

  "Considering this is me, I've been really patient about this shit. You need to tell me, though: what happened with Nether? What haven't you told me?"

  I just looked at him. I'd really hoped he had put the whole Nether thing behind him. We'd gone days without talking about her, and I was more than happy to keep it that way.

  "I don't want to do this now," I said, waving him off.

  "You're keeping shit from me. We said we weren't gonna do that," he said, voice low. Being reasonable. I hate that. "There's something keeping you from trying to go after her. Maybe you feel sorry for her, and I'm not going to argue about that with you. You decide how you want to handle her. But I've been sitting here tonight thinking, and I realized something. You're afraid of her. I've never seen you afraid of anyone. Not like this. And it's more than just the beating she gave you, because you've been beat up before and it usually just makes you pissed off. I didn't realize that until I stopped to think about it."

  I closed my eyes. Remembering. It wasn't the beating. He was right about that. The thing that really scared me about Nether was what she'd tried, what she'd come so close to doing.

  I took a deep breath. "She tried to take my powers. Don't freak out," I added, feeling his anxiety level rise immediately.

  He made an effort to calm down.

  "Thanks," I murmured. "She started to try to use the mindflaying powers she absorbed from me. I never knew what it felt like to be on the other end of them." I swallowed as I felt my stomach turning at the memory. A shiver went through my body.

  "What does it feel like?" Nain asked, holding me tighter.

  "Like you're drowning, and no matter how hard you try to surface, you can't. You're at the mercy of everything around you. Powerless."

  "She stopped."

  "Yeah."

  "Why?"

  I lifted my shoulder in a shrug. "I don't even think she knows why she stopped. She was almost there."

  "Maybe it's for the same reason you don't seem all that keen on hurting her."

  "Maybe. I didn't know it felt like that," I said, still thinking about my mindflaying ability. So many times, I'd been on the other side, I'd been the one with the power, and I'd never bothered to wonder what it felt like. "I don't want to use that any more," I said, closing my eyes, as if doing such a simple thing would shake free the memory of what it felt like.

  "But you will if you have to."

  "If I have to. I don't have to, though. It was a lazy fallback."

  "What about when you face Nether again? When it comes down to a fight, because you know damn well it's going to come to that?" he asked, and I shoved his body away from mine.

  "No. No. Never again. I didn't know—"

  He stood up, raked his hands through his hair. "Baby, what did you expect? That when you mess someone up, when you drain them, when you burn them to a crisp, that it fucking feels good?"

  "Don't take that tone with me," I said. I stood up and walked toward the bathroom that was connected to our room.

  "What tone? The tone where I remind you that your enemies aren't fucking around and you can't either?"

  "Do you think I'm stupid? I know that," I said, completely irritated by that point. "She's broken, Nain. You should have seen her this morning—"

  "What happened after you got her off the freeway?"

  "I took her to my old neighborhood to get her away. She's a mess. She was out of it, and it was probably the perfect chance for me to kill her, and I couldn't. I couldn't goddamn do it," I said, irritated with myself, and with him for making me think about it.

  "This isn't the time to become a pacifist, Molls."

  "My god, you are such an asshole sometimes," I muttered.

  "Sometimes? Sometimes? You know me better than anyone else. You know damn well I'm an asshole all the time."

  I bit back a laugh.

  "You are an asshole," I said, watching him as he walked around the bed toward me. It was enough to make my knees weak, all of that naked maleness closing in on me, his muscles bunching with each movement, his eyes on me, always on me. He pulled me into his arms, bent his head and claimed my lips.

  "I know I am," he said, kissing me again. "And I love you. Everything else can end right now, but losing you is not an option. You promised me forever, remember?"

  "Christ. What in the hell ever made me do something like that?" I asked, though my sarcasm was somewhat tempered by the gasp I let out when his teeth grazed the sensitive skin at the side of my neck.

  "I wonder," he murmured. He leaned his head down, rested his forehead against mine. "If it's them or you, you always make sure you're the one walking away alive. Always. You can feel guilty later if you really need to."

  "You old men are very bossy," I said.

  He picked me up, pressing my back against the wall. He hooked his forearms under my knees and held me there, helpless.

  "Very bossy," he said. "And we tend to know exactl
y what we want."

  He entered me, slowly, stretching me, filling me, and, just like every time we were together, I was amazed I could take all of him. I knew what was coming. He had that look in his eye. I'd scared him with that news about Nether and the mindflaying thing, made him face the prospect of losing me again. Because if she ever did manage to strip me of my powers, I was a goner. She wasn't the only danger out there, and there were more than a few beings who would love to see me powerless.

  He needed to reassure himself that I was here, I was his, and we were together. I needed it, too.

  "What are you waiting for, demon?" I asked, my voice already hoarse with need. "You know what I need."

  He thrust into me again, hard, deep, and I cried out.

  "Now who's the bossy one?" he growled. Oh, hell, yeah. His eyes were glowing, his muscles bunching as he tried to hold on to control. He'd lose it soon.

  I ran my fingertips over his shoulders, gently scraping his flesh with my fingernails. Then I leaned forward and started kissing his neck.

  I sucked his earlobe between my lips, sucked and nibbled it, gently, and his hips started moving faster. Harder. He pushed my thighs open as wide as they could go, trying, always trying to be as deep in me as he possibly could.

  "Good thing you're so flexible," he growled.

  I couldn't answer. He was seated all the way inside me, pressing me hard up against the wall, and every grind of his hips sent waves of pleasure through me. I knew, too, that he was making damn sure to stay in close contact with me, trying to give me as much strength as he could. He was protecting me in his own way as he loved me. I was feeding from him, taking strength, but when he was like this, when his power was swirling around us and his eyes were glowing and his heart was pounding, he had more than enough for both of us.

  He was doing it again, claiming ownership, taking what he needed from me, and damn if it wasn't everything I needed.

  "I need to be under you," I whispered. He carried me to the bed, lay me down and settled himself between my thighs again.

  Gods. Having his cool, heavy weight pressing me into the mattress was one of the best sensations in existence.

  When he entered me, slowly, agonizingly so, after the way he'd already brought me to the edge of ecstasy, I was reminded of what one of the other best sensations is.