“According to the writings of Thutmose the Third’s high priest, the stones carry great power for the chosen few who can harness them. One in every age, is the core message of the prophecy.”
“And you think my father was chosen somehow?”
Her words hung heavy in the air, as if their weight could actually be seen.
“Yes, he was. And someone clearly wanted to stop him before he fully understood that power.”
“But who? Enyo?”
Small frown lines worked their way across his forehead. “We’re still working on that. Presumably, Enyo didn’t know about the stones’ power when your father was still alive. None of us did. So it’s likely a different threat.”
“But she knows about it now. Knows about me.”
“Yes.”
“But what does it mean? To be a Chosen One?”
“It’s why you see visions when you see the stones.”
The lovely equilibrium that had infused her limbs since letting herself go in Brody’s arms vanished, replaced by the harsh reality that was her life.
That was always her life.
“Chosen One? Were you planning on telling me? Planning on letting me in on yet another little secret?”
“It wasn’t a secret, Ava. And I wasn’t trying to keep it from you. Hell, I just pieced it together late yesterday myself.”
“This is why those Destroyers are after me? Because Enyo knows who I am?”
“Yes.”
“So I’ll never be free of it? Because something like this isn’t about putting a few stones together or getting a museum exhibit off the ground. This is about my life.”
“I’ll take care of you, Ava. We all will. We’ll find a way to keep you safe.”
She heard the words and wanted to believe them. She wanted to believe the safety she felt in Brody’s arms could exist in the real world and could be a real, present part of her life.
With a strangled cry, she moved away from him, needing some distance to think. She crossed one row of graves, then a second, when the sudden sound of gunshots rang out.
With a scream, Ava dropped to the ground, then turned immediately to find Brody.
Her large, powerful Leo lay on the ground in front of her family’s crypt, blood pouring from his shoulder.
Chapter Thirteen
Brody reached for his shoulder, trying to hold the wound closed to speed up the healing process. As another bullet slammed into the crypt, barely missing his head, he realized he had bigger things to worry about.
Someone wanted him dead.
He had to get to Ava and get them out of here.
Heavy footfalls and the rustling of winter coats echoed off the walls of granite in erratic patterns as their attackers stalked closer.
“Ava! We need to get together.” Brody belly-crawled toward her, his progress slowed as another bullet ricocheted off the crypt next to the Harrisons’.
Her screams lit up the cold morning air, adding to the echoes of battle.
Who were these people? He hadn’t felt any wisps of stray electricity. No, this had a very real, very human feel to it, with modern-day weaponry and modern-day thugs.
How had they found them? And how did they know to keep them apart, eliminating his and Ava’s chances to port together?
And how did they know to go for his head?
Brody reached for his Xiphos, grateful he’d remembered to put it on before they’d left the house. The friendly skies might abhor personal weaponry, but he’d flown for the first and last time. From now on, Air Talbot was his only mode of international travel.
All the carry-ons he wanted and no lines in customs.
Ava motioned at him, her gestures indicating the closest man was nearly in range. Every instinct he possessed urged him to keep moving toward her, but he held himself still and waited.
Wait . . .
Her gaze focused on the attacker, she kept a hand up as though waiting to launch cars off a finish line.
Wait . . .
Taut lines of tension rode her beautiful face as her hand stayed still.
Now!
Ava’s hand dropped as Brody saw a large thug turn the corner. The heavy steel of the Xiphos whistled through the air as it flipped end over end in the early-morning cold.
The force of the blade threw their lead attacker to the ground, where he landed on his back about five feet from where Ava lay. Brody leaped across the remaining space, covering Ava’s body and ignoring the potential threat from the other two guys moving through the clearing.
He reached for the hilt of his weapon, pulling it from a very-human chest that hadn’t shrunk at all. The moment he had the Xiphos free of their attacker, Brody sent them into the ether, headed for London.
“Where have you—” Kane stopped midsentence as Brody held Ava close to his chest, absorbing their fall into the loft.
“Shit!” Quinn dropped his BlackBerry and in less time than it took her to blink, Ava felt his gentle hands lifting her off Brody and cradling her in his arms as he moved her to the couch.
“I’m fine. Fine. It’s Brody. He’s the one who’s shot.”
Quinn loomed over her, his large frame blocking out all light as well as her view of Brody. As she struggled to sit up, he kept his hands on her shoulders, holding her down.
“Shhh. Hold still. Just hold still for a minute.”
“I have to get to him.”
“I know. Shhh. Let Kane look at him.”
Ava calmed down under the continued restraint of Quinn’s hands. Despite his overwhelming size, his hold was gentle and his voice soothing as she watched Kane minister to Brody’s wounds.
“What the hell did you do, Talbot?”
“We were ambushed,” Brody grunted.
“By who? Where?”
“In a cemetery. And I’m not sure who it was. At least one of them was human.”
Quinn’s fingers flexed as his grip tightened. She reached for him. “I promise. I’ll stay put.”
The big man glanced down at his hands, an embarrassed flush creeping up his neck. “Sorry.” Before she could say anything, he was up and pacing around the apartment. “What the fuck were you doing at a cemetery?”
“I wanted to go see my father.”
Quinn’s retort was fast and unapologetic. “Hell of a time for that, Ava.”
She stood, cold fury and raw fear driving her to act. “It was a cemetery at seven o’clock in the morning. In a city where neither of us is supposed to be.”
“So how the hell did someone know to find you?”
Air knocked out of her, she sat back down on the couch. “I don’t know.”
Brody waited until Quinn had ported to New York to try and figure out who was responsible for their attack. Ava had already gone up to shower, the distant hum of running water assuring him they wouldn’t be overheard.
Damn it, but his shoulder still hurt like a bitch and he was shoveling in another carton of their earlier Chinese feast in the hope of speeding up the healing. Even the softness of the leather cushion behind his back wasn’t doing much to ease the discomfort. He turned to Kane. “I need to know what happened to you this morning. Why’d you miss the meet?”
“You think it’s relevant?”
“Seems like a hell of a coincidence that you’re prevented from joining us, and Ava and I are ambushed in a place no one expected us to be.”
“Although I’m usually more than willing to agree with your theory that there are no coincidences, I think this one may be the exception.”
Brody saw the tired, bloodshot eyes of his friend and asked his question again. “So why’d you miss the meet?”
“I was played. Royally.”
“How’d it happen?”
Kane’s bloodshot eyes told part of the tale, but it was the frustrated swipe of his fingers through his four-hundred-dollar haircut that clued Brody in.
“I swore she was legit. I knew she was probably undercover and I figured her name was bogus, bu
t she’s MI6. No way I expected her to burn me like that.”
“Do you think they’re trying to get rid of you?”
Kane leaned his head back against one of the couch cushions. “MI6?”
“Yeah.”
“How the hell should I know? I’ve gone over it in my mind since I finally regained the ability to put a coherent thought together. Damn, but she nailed me good. It’s insulting.”
“Any jobs gone bad?”
“Nope. Every one’s gone flawlessly. Got in, got out and got the job done.”
“Maybe you’re too good. Ever think maybe they’ve started to wonder why?”
Kane dropped his head in his hands as he stared down at the floor. “I haven’t fucked up like this in a long time. It chaps the ass, ya know.”
Did he know? The timing of Kane’s question was uncanny, coming on the heels of the shoot-out he’d just been in with Ava. Every moment was burned in his brain, tattooed in each neurofiber in indelible ink.
His very identity was wrapped up in his ability to protect people. And here was the one woman he wanted to see safe above all others and he’d nearly gotten her killed. Almost left her vulnerable to gods knew what.
Talk about an ass chapping.
Unbidden, a question popped to mind. “Do you ever think about before?”
“Before what?”
“Before Themis. Before we became her Warriors. Just . . . before.”
“Not often.”
Where had this come from? Maybe it was all Ava’s questions from earlier. Or maybe it was just a sense that they kept going around in circles without ever really getting anywhere. One battle ended and another began. “No, me either.”
“On the rare occasion I do think about it, I’m grateful she saved me from that hellish life.”
“She saved all of us. Different reasons, I’m sure, but the end result’s the same.” He grew quiet, glancing around Kane’s ultramodern apartment as his thoughts took root.
“Ever wonder why?”
Brody shifted his gaze from the plate of half-eaten food, back to the Scorpio. “Why we weren’t each left to die in our own miserable little lives?”
“Yeah.”
“Maybe she has a sense of humor.”
Kane’s bloodshot eyes bored into his. “You don’t really believe that, do you?”
“No. No, I don’t.” Brody stood and headed for the second floor. The ultramodern loft, decked out in chrome, exposed walls and enough concrete to lay a parking lot, always left him slightly ill at ease. There was a coldness here he’d always associated with Kane, as if the Scorpio’s living space had absorbed his personality and then reflected it back at him.
Cold. Unyielding. Deadly.
Kane had always been their loner, but in the last decade he’d spent with MI6 he’d changed—grown darker, more desperate, somehow, as though he crawled along the edge of a precipice and wasn’t sure he wanted to keep himself from falling.
Are the rest of us that far behind him?
“Don’t move too fast and open that wound.”
“There’s not enough time to wait for it to fully heal. We have to get ready for the meet at the museum. I’m borrowing some clothes.”
Kane’s voice reverberated off the acres of chrome and concrete. “You’re not touching my shit.”
“I don’t want your fucking Armani. I need a pair of jeans and a T-shirt. Preferably something that didn’t fall off a designer rack.”
“Port your ass to Rafe’s and raid his wardrobe. The Cancer has no style and more T-shirts than he knows what to do with.”
“I’m here. I’m taking clothes. Either you pick ’em or I’ll choose them myself. Get over it.”
Brody rifled through a rack of clothes, the fine silks and designer labels barely registering as he hunted up something that looked designed for comfort. Projecting his voice in the general direction of the stairs, he bellowed at Kane. “All I want is a damn pair of jeans and a T-shirt!”
“Bottom drawer!” The response came flying back at him, echoing through the loft.
As Brody turned toward the dresser, his eyes caught on something on the floor, near the edge of the bed. It peeked out from under the bedspread that lay crumpled in a tangle on the floor. Intrigued, he reached for it, shocked when he realized it was bigger than he had first been able to see.
He picked up the syringe, the plunger fully depressed, the wicked, gleaming, sharp end of the needle shooting a wave of nausea through his stomach.
Port him all over the universe and he’d take that over an injection. Any day.
Muttering, he marched downstairs to a closed-eyed Kane. “What the hell is going on?”
Kane murmured a few choice expletives before opening his eyes again with a sigh. The moment his eyes alighted on the syringe, he scrambled to sit up, reaching for the plunger end of the device. “Fuck. I knew she got me, but why’d she leave the damn thing behind?”
“She?” This was getting more interesting by the moment.
“I told you I got played.”
“Yeah, but you didn’t mention this. She drugged you?”
Kane inspected the small syringe, holding it up to the light, then turning it over in his hand. “What the hell did she give me?”
“Save it for Quinn. He can run the tests, find out what it was.” Brody watched as Kane continued to turn the syringe over in his hands. “What’d she do to you?”
“Nothing.”
“Looks like a hell of a lot of nothing.”
With a sigh, Kane ran a hand through his hair again. “Three days in bed and she ends it by playing me like a Gibson.”
“Was it a good tune?”
Time hung suspended as the Scorpio sat there and stared at him, those bloodshot eyes unblinking as they locked on his. And then the corners wrinkled up as Kane’s face broke into a broad smile.
“It was a fucking symphony.”
Ava wrapped the towel tighter around her midsection and took another look at the clothes laid out on the bed. A beautiful box lay discarded next to the clothes, the box top embossed with the name of an incredibly expensive boutique usually reserved for celebrities and royalty. Kane hadn’t missed anything when he’d called in this order. Clearly he was used to buying clothing for women.
When she’d opened the box before her shower, Ava couldn’t help but be impressed at Kane’s exquisite taste. The black, hammered silk dress and matching bolero jacket from Dolce and Gabbana was soft to the touch. The Christian Louboutin black pumps had her salivating. The La Perla black lace bra, matching panties and garters had sent her thoughts winging right back to her morning with Brody.
She’d quickly buried the underwear underneath the dress as she thought about the discussion the men had had after she and Brody returned from New York.
After she’d assured herself he’d begun to heal, she’d shifted her focus to the discussion. Their focus and discipline. Their planning and strategy. Their innate belief they’d win.
Ava fingered the edge of the bolero jacket and wondered what it must be like to be that confident.
“You ready?”
Brody’s gaze assessed her from where he stood in the doorway of the bathroom, a towel riding low on his hips. Even as heat arced between their nearly naked bodies, she reveled in the fact that he looked at her face as he spoke to her. She blossomed under his care and concern.
“As ready as I’m going to be.”
“I have to say this.” He moved into the room, placed his arms around her and pulled her close. “You need to take this seriously. Enyo is determined to win this battle and after what happened in the cemetery, we can’t afford to risk thinking this is a cakewalk.”
“I’m not.”
“If she gets control of those stones, she’ll use the power they can harness to control everything. Forget life as you know it. Forget freedom and order and reason. Forget love and laughter. Forget everything you know. She is a soulless, heartless bitch, and she would love nothing m
ore for all humanity to live in darkness and anarchy.”
Ava felt a shiver course the length of her spine. “And this is what you fight?”
“Every day. The stones have only made it worse. Usually she incites wars and starts problems. This is different. If these stones have one tenth of the power she believes them to, we won’t be able to stop her.”
Ava tightened her arms around his waist, allowing the warmth of his body to seep into hers, to give her much-needed strength. “How do you do it?”
“Do what?”
“Live with this? Live with this knowledge. Fight against it, always believing you will win.”
“Because I do believe I can win. With a good dose of caution and recognition of my opponent’s strength thrown in.”
As they stood there, Ava thought about all she’d lost, all the pain she’d already suffered because of those stones.
Her father. Her innocence. Very nearly her sanity, if she were honest.
But it brought you Brody, too, a small inner voice whispered to her.
As she stood in the circle of his arms, she couldn’t help but wonder if he was as invincible as he claimed to be—or if he could survive in the face of her track record.
No one she loved lived. Her father, her mother; both were gone. She was alone.
Was immortality really a match for the undeniably bad luck that seemed to live under her skin?
Chapter Fourteen
“You still didn’t get her? I thought these Destroyer things you all were always throwing around were invincible. Is it just Enyo’s Destroyers who can get the job done?”
Ajax shoveled in the Big Mac as he stared down Wyatt Harrison. Although it chafed to keep the little fucker around, Ajax knew he was playing a dangerous game. He needed all the allies he could get. “As I’ve told you,” he mumbled around a mouthful, “your niece has some powerful protection.”
Wyatt huddled into his jacket, his back against the base of Cleopatra’s Needle. Erected during Thutmose III’s reign in Egypt, the obelisk had been gifted to the United States in the latter half of the nineteenth century as a gesture of goodwill.
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