Realm of Darkness

by May Sage

  Again.

  Being together calmed them down – on the surface, at least. When they felt like exploding, they could just punch each other until it passed. But that didn’t change what was brewing underneath.

  Daphne actually was a prisoner. She could never leave the Agency without authorization and supervision. Jason was under surveillance. Tria, however, was free. More or less. She knew the second she stepped out of line, she would be considered a level five threat, like her cousins. If she disappeared, there was a very good chance the Agency would set their dogs on her. They’d send the First Alpha unit. Gray was the enemy. So, fuck him and his perfect…everything. She knew where they stood. Hunter and prey.

  They could take care of themselves now; better than a decade ago, in any case. Still, running for the rest of their lives had no appeal.

  “Regardless of your qualifications, you’re not supposed to be here without a rea…”

  She didn’t finish that sentence, because he pulled a wood and bronze box out of his pocket. Her eyes zeroed in on it.

  Shiny.

  The dick smirked knowingly. Damn, how had he guessed that this was her Achilles heel?

  “Sorry, what was that?” he gloated, pulling the box high, out of her reach, when she moved to take it.

  She pouted.

  “I’ve had it for a while. No one upstairs knows what it is, I’ve asked.”

  She glared, managing not to stomp her foot.

  “Gimme.”

  He laughed softly and lowered it. She snatched the box quickly, before he changed his mind.

  Tria’s eyes focused on the detailed carvings on the outside of the wooden box, her fingers tracing the fine line of incrusted bronze. Frustrated, she pulled her glasses from her nose, placing them on her head. It was generally not an issue, but they prevented her from using about ninety percent of her abilities. Her eyes now zeroed in beyond the box, beyond what lay inside. In the immaterial dimension, it looked like a blazing amber rune.

  “It’s authentic, but not quite Roman. Byzantine, I think.”

  Her cousins, who’d shamelessly eavesdropped through the entire exchange, didn’t even pretend they weren’t paying attention now; they came closer, both curious.

  “Can I see?” Jase asked eagerly. Of course he would be interested. The seal atop the box would make it of particular interest to him.

  “Careful,” Tria warned him, holding his gaze.

  She didn’t mean that Jase shouldn’t drop it, or damage it, and they both knew it. Jason had to be careful not to let go of his power in front of a potential enemy.

  “I’m always careful. Same could be said to you, though.”

  Jase discreetly tapped his temple, making her aware of something. Shit. She’d just removed half of her damn mask. It had been more than five years since she’d made that mistake in front of anyone at the Agency. Dammit.

  Feeling confused, ashamed, and angry, she pulled her glasses back on top of her nose, and snatched the box back from Jason’s hands, before throwing it at Grayson without looking at him. She couldn’t bring herself to.

  “It’s not dangerous,” she lied.

  It wasn’t – as long as it never returned to Jason’s hands. She walked away, returning to her favorite alcove, but, after a beat, Grayson called after her, “I have more stuff at home.”

  She stopped in her tracks, her attention piqued.

  “My family has an extensive collection. I brought some things with me when I left them. I don’t mind showing you some of it… as long as you actually give me information. Deal?”

  Oh, the man was good.

  With a heavy sigh, she explained, “Back in the day, Christianity was rising and those who believed in the old gods either hid it or died martyrs. Some of those who hid it prayed to their chosen deities.”

  Gray nodded keenly, gesturing her to go on.

  “This,” she pointed to his box, “is an offering to Zeus – or Jupiter. See the symbol, on top? That’s an oak tree. Inside, there’s something that was infinitely precious to its bearer – doesn’t matter what that actually is. Someone gave it up to please their god. It is believed that gods feed off faith, so they’d find that sort of thing particularly precious.”

  To his credit, Gray was a decent listener. “So, you’re saying it could be a decent artifact in working order?”

  “To someone who knows how to make use of it, yes. That’s an ancient sort of enchantment that only grows stronger with time.”

  He asked a bunch of questions and she answered some of them, evading the rest. Then, finally, he was gone.

  Tria eventually told herself that it wasn’t the end of the world. Her little slip was inconsequential. Gray had just seen her eyes, plus the top part of her face, and she hadn’t been looking at him at the time. Maybe he’d also been concentrating on the box?

  She lifted her head from the book she’d been pretending to read and cleared her throat to get Daphne’s attention.

  “Tell me, was that guy looking directly at me when…”

  “Yep. He saw you.”

  Shit. So much for that.

  She couldn’t help it.

  “And?”

  Daphne was smiling like she was enjoying the situation way too much.

  “You didn’t look at him. I doubt he fell for it.”

  Killing a SWAT team now that he was done with Zombies, Jase asked, “Is it really that bad? You never actually told me what happens to mortals who look at you.” Jason had only joined them after she’d started hiding out at work. “Are we talking Medusa bad, or what?”

  Outside of these walls, she didn’t mind being herself, showing her face, but here, at work, it was a pain.

  “Drop it.”

  “But…”

  “Just drop it.”

  Answers

  Holy fucking shit.

  Gray splashed some more water on his face, trying to get back to reality.

  What was she? Or more like, what were they?

  Her eyes.

  She’d been right, they were black; deep, endless, smothering, pure black - so much so they shone blue in the light, just like the messy curls pulled up on her head. And he’d never seen anything as painfully perfect in his entire existence. She wasn’t real. She couldn’t be. It had to be some sort of illusion, a spell, a curse.

  He got the mask now. He prayed he never saw all of her face. He prayed she never turned those eyes to him. Yep, he was that much of a coward. Beauty shouldn’t be such a potent weapon, but it was. In those seconds when he looked at her, he knew he’d do anything she ordered. Anything.

  What was she?

  He just couldn’t get her out of his head.

  “Have you seen the way she looks at you? You should tap that.”

  Gray lifted his gaze long enough to look at the idiot to his left, and the woman he was talking about. Brook, a beautiful, flawless, and tall nixie he knew pretty well. He returned to his report, ignoring Ralph. He’d said it a thousand times, at least; he didn’t tap any colleague. There was no strict regulation against it, but he just didn’t need the complication at work.

  “Dude, do you bat for the other team, is that it? I mean, that would explain so much. The way you dress, for one.”

  “I’m not the one who persists in buying pink shirts.”

  “Pink is manly,” the misguided fool argued, throwing balls at Remus.

  “And, no, I’m not gay. I’m just not going to fuck anyone from our department.”

  “It’s idiotic,” replied Ralph. “Where are you supposed to meet anyone, then? We’re always on call.”

  Ralph had been his partner for two years, eight months and seventeen days, if memory served. They’d had this conversation four hundred and twenty-nine times so far. For the first time, though, Gray replied, grinning, “Oh, don’t get me wrong. If I met someone I wanted to keep, I’d definitely tap that, anytime, anywhere, regardless of where she works. I just don’t believe in hitting and quitting a colleague.” />
  Ralph’s eyes bulged, and Gray froze. That wasn’t the sort of thing he normally said. He thought it – of course he did – but Gray was a gentleman. He’d been raised as one, and he took an enormous amount of pride in the image he’d carefully cultivated, despite the fact that it went against his nature.

  His grin faded. Shit.

  The words were inconsequential. The issue was that he wasn’t the one who’d said them. He’d let that thing inside him have its say. That hadn’t happened in years.

  It was the third time that the monster’d pushed to the surface since the beginning of the week.

  The first time had been when he’d walked through a door in the basement of the Agency headquarters, and found her on the other side.

  He couldn’t stop thinking about her, his strange obsession. Not later that day, as he worked his frustration out on his punching bag – rather than kicking his stupid partner’s ass. Not yesterday evening, when he attempted to distract himself at the paranormal club. There were plenty of women; some beautiful, some wild, and a rare few that were both – his favorite kind. But he couldn’t even pretend to pay them any mind.

  He would have loved to blame his recent demonic injury for his lapse, but if he’d acted because of the poison, why hadn’t he stayed out of control in the evening? He should have pounded his way through all the very willing, alluring females that night.

  He frowned, confused again. He hadn’t even seen her by then. The woman had, for all intents and purposes, worn a gas mask. There wasn’t more than a square inch of flesh visible on her face. Well, he’d seen her slim, elegant neck. She wore jeans that made her legs look like they belonged around his waist, and red cowboy boots. Her loose top miserably failed at hiding perfect tits. But, at first, when he’d started thinking about Tria Winters, all he knew was that she had a decent body.

  Then this morning, he’d seen her obsidian eyes, her little nose, those cheekbones; removing her glasses had only uncovered half her face, but he already knew the woman was a goddamn stunner. Which only added to the mystery. She made zero sense. Besides, Gray had met hot girls before – plenty of them. He worked with vamps, and he’d killed a damn demon of seduction a few weeks back. None of them had made him feel like this, though. No one, nothing, had. When she’d touched his back, ever so softly, he almost exploded.

  Unhinged. On edge. Not wanting to restrain himself.

  That was dangerous.

  Gray had been raised to expect what had happened to him on his twenty-fifth birthday, but no one had suspected how powerful the creature inside him was. Since it had emerged three years ago, he’d done his damnedest to control it. After three years of battle, he was the master of his body, and, more importantly, his mind.

  But she made the beast come to the surface. She made Gray want to let him.

  “Fuck.”

  He needed a goddamn distraction.

  “Oh, my, was that a four-letter word? I didn’t realize you knew any of those, Grayson. Did someone steal your pipe?”

  He moved to hit the back of Ralph’s head; anticipating it, the man evaded him at the last moment.

  Thankfully, the alarm on his wrist beeped, signaling an alert. After a quick glance at the details, he pressed a green button, accepting the mission.

  “Come on. A human with bite marks turned up at the hospital.”

  He managed to work just fine, interrogating the pretty girl who’d come in for a blood transfusion. The girl blushed and evaded their eyes all the way through the interrogation.

  “Willing participant, not a victim,” Ralph said, talking close to his wrist logger, recording their findings.

  He rolled his eyes. “I don’t get it. Why do they let those suckers bleed them?”

  Gray chuckled, remembering the last time he’d fucked a vamp. Ralph would be a lucky man if he ever found out.

  On their way back, Gray’s gaze darted left when he walked into the tall glass building shielding the Agency.

  He’d worked here for close to three years and he’d never gone anywhere near the left side until last week. He’d never seen the humongous, reinforced, dark basement where Tria Winters and her two friends hung out. He couldn’t say “worked” because they’d really seemed to be chilling out.

  He wondered what they were actually doing. Andrew had said they were a research team, and he’d noticed an abundance of dusty old books on one of their walls, but he’d had plenty of occasions where he’d needed intel on demonic artifacts, and no one had ever mentioned them before. Besides, their floor had looked like a training room, slash research lab, slash library, slash game den - with a bar, and a humongous flat screen.

  “Hey, handsome,” the gorgeous, cappuccino-skinned receptionist said, probably because he was standing in the middle of the entrance hall like a lost puppy.

  Sheila was twirling her curly, naturally red hair around her finger, and biting her plump lip; that was what most women did in front of him.

  Gray forced a smile. He’d never had to force it before. He bent to her and whispered confidentially, “Hey, Shay. Wanna do me a favor?”

  Her green eyes bulged in her pretty face at his proximity. Good.

  He gestured towards the elevator door he’d taken the previous Friday. It only had one button, leading right down to their floor.

  “You know everything about this place. There’s a weird team on that floor. Never heard of them before. What can you tell me?”

  Shay blanched and pursed her lips. Her eyes darted left, and her expression almost looked guilty.

  Gray sighed, before turning to find three now-familiar sups. He wasn’t shocked: he’d felt Tria before he saw her, standing just behind him.

  Typical.

  Her two colleagues stood on either side of her; Gray should have paid attention to either of them. The first was a drop-dead gorgeous blonde with impossibly long eyelashes and a sensual red mouth. The second was a guy, taller and bulkier than him. That was rare enough, but Gray also felt like he could be stronger than him, which was unheard of in this world.

  So, he should have been gawking at the insanely hot blonde or feeling threatened by the guy who looked like he ate children for breakfast. Instead, he couldn’t stop looking at her again, trying to figure her out.

  “You know what they say.” He liked her voice; it was huskier than most. “Curiosity killed the cat.”

  “Never been much of a cat person.”

  He only saw part of her cheekbones, but the way they moved, he would have sworn she smiled, looking down towards his puppy.

  Remus was a hellhound. There were a bunch of different kinds, but in his case, it meant that he looked like a four-month-old Great Dane puppy ninety percent of the time. When he felt threatened – or when Gray asked him to – he turned into something else altogether, though. Remus had almost died when he was fifteen weeks old; infusing him with demon energy had brought him back, and given him powers.

  “I can see that,” she said, bending forward and lifting her hand to allow the pup to smell it. Gray opened his mouth to caution her against it, but Remus was on his best behavior. After one brief sniff, he licked it and moved to make her pat his head.

  Which was weird, and unusual. The pup was wary of strangers.

  “And, as for your question, Shay will tell you that our team specializes in intelligence. When your bosses have no idea what’s happening, they get us to help.”

  “And when everything is going alright, they let you play Resident Evil,” he guessed.

  Jase smiled, but Daphne was looking at him in a way that made him uncomfortable, like a snake about to strike.

  “I’ve never seen you before, though.”

  “We aren’t hard to find,” Daphne said, her sweet voice somehow managing to make it sound like a threat. “Ask about us again, and we’ll be there.” She walked away, sending him one last glance before clicking her high heels towards the elevator. Jason and Tria followed suit, neither of them sparing him a glance.

 
What the fuck. His muscles were tenser than that time he’d found himself alone in a hostile, rogue werewolf den without a damn weapon. One thing was certain; whatever these guys actually were, their specialty wasn’t information. No hostility came from Jase or Tria, but he’d felt it underneath, regardless. Something told him to hold himself straight, in a defensive posture.

  He turned to find Sheila looking dreamily towards Jase’s back.

  So much for being the most attractive guy around here.

  “Wow. That was…intense.”

  Shay giggled, and leaned forward, dropping her voice.

  “They’ve been part of the Agency longer than me – longer than most people. I think they’re family, brothers and sisters, or something. They certainly bicker like siblings. Daphne is a bit of a bitch, but Tria normally steps in and plays nice. Jason,” she said, almost caressing the name, “he’s a loner. Doesn’t date, doesn’t speak much; doesn’t even look at me, and I’m hot,” she added with a shrug, stating a fact. “But he’s good people. They all are, really.”

  Recalling Daphne’s gaze, he wasn’t quite certain about that, and Sheila seemed to have caught his doubt, because she insisted. “They are, I swear.” She looked left and right, checking that no one was paying attention to them, before excitedly whispering, “You know when the lower levels building was on fire four years ago, back when the headquarters was in Back Bay?”

  Gray had heard about it, although he hadn’t been part of the Agency back then. Some demon they’d locked up had caused trouble – one of the reasons why they didn’t keep prisoners on site now. They had highly warded facilities in remote areas.

  “I was working in the basement at the time. The security system locked us up in there to contain the fire – I would have burned to a crisp, with about a dozen other people – staff and prisoners, too. But Jase came, smashing the door with his bare hands. Daphne and Tria – they were there, too. I can’t even describe what they did, but the smoke disappeared and the fire was blocked, like they created a wall. Jason got us out and the girls went down for the prisoners.”