“I don’t get it,” Cora said. “How is that even possible.”
“Magic.” Cain looked at Cora for the first time. “Samael and Eve must have combined a fraction of their essences and sent it into the ether to be born into my bloodline…Samael’s bloodline, when the time was right. You are my sister in all the ways that matter.”
Fuck.
“I did not want to kill you. I’m glad you survived.”
Once again, he sounded sincere.
I wasn’t buying it. “Eve said you’d want revenge.”
He’s eyes narrowed. “Revenge? Yes, I’ve waited a long time for revenge.”
“Look, I can’t let you go around hurting innocent people.”
Something dark flashed across his face. “Innocent people?” His smile was wry. “Of course. The village I slaughtered.” He nodded slowly. “Of course.” There was an edge to his tone now. “Eve and her perspective.”
“Perspective? “You have a different story?”
He looked away and shrugged. “Maybe.”
“Well?” Cora said. “Spit it out then.”
He let out a surprised chuckle. “You’re either incredibly brave or incredibly stupid. Do you know what I could do to you?”
Cora leaned forward across the table. “Nothing. Not in this place. It’s warded.”
His smirk sent a chill down my spine, and then Cora was gagging and clutching at her throat.
What the fuck? What… He was doing this. “Stop. Stop it!”
Cora sagged, glaring daggers at Cain. “You made your point,” she bit out.
The ward didn’t work on him. Oh shit.
He sighed. “I don’t have any quarrel with you, sister. Stay out of my way and you won’t get hurt. Step into my path and I cannot promise you will be left unscathed.” He drained his mug and set it down. “It was nice to meet you properly. Once again, I’m sorry for any pain I caused. But Seraphina, climb into my head one more time and I will not hesitate to snuff you out.”
He was about to leave. Shit. I glanced at Cora. As Cain pushed back his chair and stood, my friend lunged, and the snap of the cuff followed.
Cain looked down at the silver metal clinging to his wrist, and his lip curled in derision.
He slowly raised his gaze to mine and shook his head. “Eve should have stressed, that for this to work, you needed to be the one to place it on me. You,” he said. “No one else, because now,” he grabbed the cuff and snapped it off his wrist easily, “now the only anchor Eve has for me is useless.”
Oh fuck. Oh shit.
His gray eyes glittered with rage.
I backed up, grabbing Cora’s arm and taking her with me. He was going to attack us, and Cora couldn’t poof us out of here because of the wards.
He closed his eyes as if composing himself. “You’re innocent,” he said. “Unaware of the truth, and your mind has given me what I need the most, and so this time, I’ll forgive your idiocy. Next time… Next time, I will not be lenient.”
He vanished.
My mind? What did he mean?
I looked at Cora. “What the fuck do we do now?”
Chapter Eighteen
Fee
Coffee, cake, and feet up in the lounge should have meant relaxation time, but my encounter with Cain, and my failure to capture him, had left me agitated and confused. I’d filled Grayson and Uri in, but I couldn’t shake the feeling of disquiet. It had nothing to do with Cain being out there—free to wreak havoc—and everything to do with…him, the person.
I’d expected a monster. An immortal with evil radiating from his pores. But Cain had seemed almost normal, aside from the mega-powerful thing. He’d seemed weary, jaded, and not as insane as I’d expected someone being trapped in Purgatory for centuries to be.
“There is nothing you can do now,” Grayson said from his spot beside me on the three-seater sofa. “The cuff Eve gave you is destroyed, and if Cain’s powers can’t be contained by the wards on Lumiers, he’s even more powerful than we imagined.”
In other words, please do not go after this guy. I understood his reservations. Hell, I had them too. Cain may have played nice today, but he’d tried to kill me more times than I could count. Even though he’d said he didn’t want to hurt me now, he’d also been clear that if I crossed him, he wouldn’t hesitate to squish me like a bug.
As much as the thought of going after him made my stomach churn and roll, the thought of letting him roam unchecked was a lung crushing sensation of not being able to breathe.
I couldn’t sit idly by and do nothing. “He’ll hurt people if I don’t stop him.”
“We don’t know that for sure,” Cora said.
Was she serious? “He tried to kill you.”
“Nah, he was just showboating.” Her hand went to her neck. “Although it didn’t feel like that at the time.”
“You don’t think he’s dangerous?”
“Oh, he’s dangerous all right,” Cora said. “But I don’t know that we have the whole story.”
Okay, so she had a valid point here. There’d been something about the way Cain had reacted to my accusations that he intended to wreak havoc that had been off. Of course, I didn’t expect him to throw his head back and cackle maniacally, evil mastermind style, but I’d expected something. Some glimmer of intent in his stormy eyes. A slight sadistic curl to his lip. Something.
I set my mug on the coffee table. “You’re right. We don’t know for sure what his intentions are. I think Eve’s account might not be the whole of it.”
“What do you mean?” Grayson asked me.
“Some stuff Cain said… The way he said it or didn’t say it. Urgh.” It was hard to explain. “I think there are things we don’t know about Cain. Things Eve may have held back on telling me.”
Cora patted my hand. “There’s more to the story, but Fee, you need to stay off his radar. He let us go today, but there’s no doubt in my mind that if we cross him again, he’ll follow through on his snuffing us out threat.”
“I’m sorry I can’t be more help,” Uri said. “The texts on the origins of man are accessible only to the upper circle and The Righteous.”
“They used to be.” I arched a brow at him. “But the Beyond has a new divine. Which means new rules. Oh, and this divine owes me a favor…”
Uri looked thoughtful. “Yes, he does. And this affects the safety of mankind. I’ll go now.” He drained his mug.
I made to stand. “I’ll come with you.”
“No.” Uri pressed me back into my seat. “You need to rest. I’ve got this.” He dropped a kiss on my head and vanished.
There was silence for a long beat, and I was just about to take a bite of my éclair when Cora made a sound of exasperation.
“Eve can’t be trusted,” she blurted. “She lied to you, and that bothers the fuck out of me. What is she hiding and why? I mean why didn’t Cain just clarify shit?”
“Maybe he just doesn’t think you matter enough to explain himself,” Grayson said, speaking from his alpha brain.
I got it. I did. To Cain we must seem like worms. I mean, the ancient power he possessed was incomparable and… Oh god, we needed to stop him from doing whatever nefarious thing he was planning before it was too late, because he had to have a plan. I mean, he’d had centuries to come up with one.
“You have a brother…” Cora said shaking her head.
My gut squirmed. “Cain could be lying about the whole sister thing.”
“You don’t believe that.”
I sighed. “No, I don’t. Fuck. I don’t need this.”
“No, you don’t,” Grayson said. “It’s not your problem. It’s Eve’s problem. Let her deal with it.”
“I can’t just ignore the fact that he’s free and wants to rule humanity.”
“But does he?” Cora asked. “I mean he never said that. Eve said that.”
God, she was a suspicious one, but her gut was usually spot on. I rubbed my temples. “We need to track him some
how. Just to be sure.”
“Leave it to me,” Cora said. “I’ll find him, and I’ll track him.”
“And then what?” Grayson said. “We have no way of stopping him.”
He was right. We were fucked. “Uri might find some answers.”
A crack sounded by the entrance, and then the scent of summer filled the room signaling my doppelganger’s arrival. “Urgh.”
Cora turned in her seat to face Eve before I could.
“You failed,” Eve said. “A simple task and you failed.”
I let her derisive voice wash over me and allowed my anger to surge up to saturate my tone.
“I failed?” I took my time turning to face her. My pack house. My fucking domain. “No, Eve, you failed. You failed to give me all the facts.”
She balked before her expression smoothed out. “What do you mean?”
“You didn’t impress that the cuff had to be applied by me, and me alone.” My smile was thin and empty of humour. “You also neglected to tell me that Cain was my brother.”
Eve’s eyes narrowed. “I was clear in my instruction that you should place the cuff on Cain. As for your heritage, yes you do carry mine and Samael’s essences, but you were born of a mortal womb.” She shrugged.
“You could have told me.”
“What would be the point?” She looked over her shoulder. “I have to go, but you must find him, and you must bring him to me.”
“Do your own dirty work,” Cora said. “Leave Fee out of it.”
Eve’s lips flattened. “If I could I would. I’ve already lingered too long. If Cain is left unchecked, your world will fall into ruin, trust me on that.” She threw something toward us. “This will bind him. It’s the final anchor I have. All you must do is place it on him somehow. You must do this, Fee. No one else can.”
She stepped back and vanished, taking summer with her.
“I don’t like her,” Cora said.
I pushed off the sofa and retrieved the object. It was length of dark hair woven into a slender braid. Cain’s hair.
“Now that’s not creepy at all,” Cora drawled.
Fuck my life.
Grayson joined me. “You’re not alone. We’ll do this together. We’ll get eyes on the streets. I’ll contact Hunter now. We will find Cain.”
Cora rubbed my back. “Go have a bath, babe. A long soak, and then we’ll have a nice dinner.”
Oh god, I loved these guys. I tucked the braid into my back pocket. “Yeah I think I’ll—”
Movement caught my eyes, and I froze with my gaze on the figure in the doorway.
Azazel grinned at me, and my heart jumped into my throat. I leapt over the back of the sofa and threw myself at him. He was quick to catch me and gather me to his taut chest. His strong arms held me securely, enveloping me in the scent of an upcoming storm, and I wasn’t even going to try and analyse the portentous nature of that observation. Instead I buried my face in his neck and resisted the urge to lick him.
I sighed against his skin and nuzzled him. “You’re here. I can’t believe it.” Wait a second… He was here. Why was he here? I pulled away. “What is it? What happened?”
He cupped my face and kissed me firmly on the mouth. “I’m here for you. Samael is lucid, and we have a map of the pit, but we need you to get us into the fortress.”
I stared up at him. “You need me?”
Grayson growled low in his throat and Azazel’s gaze flicked over my head. “Do we have a problem?”
I looked back at Grayson to find him standing with his fists clenched and his chest heaving. “Fee’s been through enough.” His voice was a low almost-growl.
Azazel tracked my features with a frown. “Cain found you, didn’t he?”
“How do you know about Cain?”
“Samael told me.”
Grayson made a sound of impatience. “Fee almost died fighting Ulrich for the alpha spot for Rising Pack.”
Azazel’s face paled. “I knew I felt something. Fee…” He sank his hand into my hair and tilted my head up as he looked down at me. “Fuck.”
There was a world of torment and regret in that word, but I wouldn’t allow him to feel guilty for a situation outside of his control. The Loup world was mine, and its trials and tribulations were also mine.
“I’m fine. I’ll be fine.”
His grip eased so that I could focus my attention on Grayson, who looked like he was holding back from tearing me out of Azazel’s arms. This was his alpha nature wanting his mate by his side. It was stronger now that the Tribus was complete, and it was probably a good thing Hunter wasn’t here to add fuel to the spark that begged to morph into an inferno.
It was up to me to defuse this situation.
I kissed Azazel’s lips lightly tasting the bitter tang of the sea on his skin, before bridging the distance between me and my fated mate.
“Babe.” I touched Grayson’s cheek lightly and he blinked before slowly tearing his gaze from Azazel and settling it on me like it was a blanket of protection.
Because that was all this was, a primal instinct to protect me from whatever fate might await me in the Underealm—a place he couldn’t go.
“I’ll be fine. Azazel will take care of me. You know he will. The packs are safe, but the Underealm isn’t. I have to do this.”
He gave a shuddering sigh and the tension in his shoulders melted. “I know. I just… I can’t lose you.”
“You won’t,” Azazel said. “I won’t let that happen.”
“And Cain?” Cora reminded me. “What do you want to do about him?”
Fuck. I’d almost forgotten about the new potential pain in my ass. “Cain will have to wait. Track him for me and ask Uri to send a phoenix if you find him. I’ll come.”
“We got this, babe,” Cora said, placing a hand on Grayson’s shoulder. “You go save Lilith.”
I took Azazel’s hand, revelling in the abrasion of the callouses that spoke of years of wielding a sword.
I was going home.
Chapter Nineteen
There was no way Azazel could make the flight back to the Underealm straight away. He’d need to rest, so we went back to the Dominus quarters. We’d be alone there, and my stomach dipped and flipped with that knowledge and all the potential it held.
It was strange being here without the others, and with the imps on temporary leave, the place was as silent as a tomb.
Azazel closed the doors to the pinnacle behind us then took my hand. “Are you hungry?”
“Not for food.”
His eyes lit up in a smile.
I ducked my head, suddenly shy. “I was about to have a bath when you arrived.”
He looked thoughtful. “I have a large bathtub…”
Oh. ”Yes, please.”
He scooped me off my feet and strode toward his chambers. I clung to him, looking up at his profile. The thick dark lashes, the straight nose, and the dangerous looking scar that crossed his cheek. He was perfection. He was beautiful, and he was mine.
“Like what you see?” Azazel’s voice was a low rumble that vibrated through me.
It was his I’m-going-to-do-deliciously-wicked-things-to-you voice, and I was instantly wet.
I caught my bottom lip between my teeth and gave him the innocent eyes. “Conah could have come to get me.”
His smile was knowing. “Yes, he could have.”
Say it…
“But I wanted to come. I wanted this time with you.”
I hugged him tighter. “You lurve me.”
He chuckled. “I totally do.”
He climbed the steps with me and then we were in his chambers. The smell of turpentine evoked nostalgia and memories of our time here together. He kept going, through the bedroom and into his huge marble-tiled bathroom. Azazel liked his creature comforts, and the bathroom was of epic proportions. There was a shower that could fit three people and a bath that was more of a jacuzzi than a regular tub. I mean, it had steps to get in for god’s sake.
He set me on my feet and began to run the water. The Dominus quarters had excellent water pressure, and it wouldn’t be long before the tub was full. I grabbed the berry-scented bubble bath I’d left here the last time I used this tub and squirted a shit load in. Azazel laughed, and my heart felt too full.
I loved this man so fucking much it hurt. He stroked my cheek. “Can I undress you?” His tone was almost tentative.
Azazel was a take charge lover, an alpha in the bedroom like Grayson, but when this softer side of him peeked out, it melted me, turning me to putty in his hands. When this side of him showed, the payoff was always epic and my body, already thrumming with anticipation, went into hyper mode.
He grazed my jaw with his knuckles and then down the column of my neck and heat surged up to flush my skin sensitizing every inch of me.
“Can I take off your clothes?” he asked again, husky and low.
I nodded mutely.
He set to work, taking his time undressing me, peeling my clothes from my body in a way that sent tingles racing across my skin. His fingers barely grazed me, and I bit back a moan of protest because the less he touched me, the more I wanted him to. Soon I was naked except for my panties. He took a moment to run his gaze over me, slow and filled with heat. He lingered on my breasts, which swelled, nipples straining as if begging for a kiss.
My breathing grew shallow as he hooked his thumb into the waistband of my panties and slid them slowly down my thighs. I was wet and throbbing, wanting him to touch me, but he didn’t take his eyes off my face and didn’t allow his fingers to stray to the hungriest spot on my body.
Fuck, I ached for him. “My turn.”
I gripped the hem of his T-shirt and slowly raised it up, exposing his taut abs and powerful pectorals. He raised his arms, but he was way too tall for me to get the shirt all the way off without help.
Once again, his warm chuckle sent pulses of desire shooting through me. I licked my lips and reached for his pants buckle. I wanted to be all smooth and practiced, but my heart was pounding so fast with anticipation that my fingers fumbled.
Reaper Unleashed: Deadside Reapers: Book 7 Page 10
