Stripped Away: Shadow Destroyers Book 2

by Sydney Somers

  Braxton opened the door to the main floor of their field office, and together they slid into the hall.

  Anything?

  She shook her head, tipping her head to indicate checking Rae’s office first. More than likely Rae would have been there or at the communication console she never ventured far from when one of them was on assignment.

  A series of drawers closing separated from the usual background noise, and she cocked her head, trying to pin down the direction.

  “What?”

  She turned to the right to lead Braxton that way, only to stop as a soft moan penetrated her senses. Quinn pivoted in the opposite direction.

  “Rae?” Confident there was no trap set for them, Quinn rushed down the hall, hesitating a beat outside Rae’s office. The door was ajar, files from her desk scattered across the tile floor.

  Quinn edged around the door, following the faint sound of Rae’s shallow and unsteady breaths. The scent of blood rode on the air, a crimson trail of it snaking across the floor towards their feet.

  Rae lay on her side in the corner facing away from them. Quinn skidded to stop, dropping to her knees to examine the gash that ran along the crown of Rae’s head.

  Braxton crouched next to her. “I think the bleeding stopped.”

  Given the amount of blood that pooled on the floor around Rae’s head, matting her long red hair, the injury likely would have killed the average person. The subsiding blood flow indicated her ability to heal—like Gage and Jordan’s—had already kicked in and was working to close the wound.

  Braxton stared at the opposite wall. “Darcy’s on her way up.”

  “Good.” With Rae down and Drew and Cass… Quinn swallowed tightly.

  “We’ll find them.” The man was getting far too good at reading her.

  Quinn left Rae’s side long enough to dig through her boss’s drawers, using the bandana she found to dab at the blood on Rae’s face.

  “Rae?” It was doubtful she was close to consciousness, but that didn’t stop Quinn from trying to get a response. Whoever had done this would be tracked down and dealt with. That, like believing Drew and Cass would be okay, was the only option she was willing to consider.

  Rae’s lashes flickered, but she didn’t open her eyes. Like everything else in the past few weeks, it felt as though all she could do was wait and see. The inaction made her restless within seconds, and she brushed Rae’s hair back from her face, willing her to open her eyes.

  “Give her a few minutes.” Braxton’s fist was tight at his side, his gaze never straying from Rae’s face.

  A muted thump reached Quinn’s ears and she spun to face the door. “Someone else is here.” She took three more steps towards the door, straining to identify the sound coming from the other end of their floor. “Where’s Darcy?”

  Braxton was silent a moment, then, “Second floor stairwell.”

  She didn’t wait for his permission this time, but darted out the door, moving fast down the hall.

  “Quinn!”

  “It’s not a hostile,” she answered back.

  At this point that was about as much as she could be certain about. But someone was clearly trespassing, maybe even the same someone who had gone after Rae then foolishly stuck around thinking her dead.

  A shadow moved across the bottom of a closed door. Royce’s office.

  Adrenaline hummed through her bloodstream, kicking up as she gripped the door to the office and shoved it open. She jerked low and to the right in case the person was armed.

  Behind his desk, Royce froze in the process of shoving a stack of files into his briefcase. Blood stained his shirt.

  Quinn pursed her lips. “Going somewhere, doc?”

  * * *

  “I thought Quinn was with you?” Darcy paled seeing Rae unconscious, then steeled her expression as she crouched next to their boss.

  “She heard something and went to check it out.” As much as he’d wanted to tear after her, leaving Rae vulnerable to a second attack couldn’t be risked. Quinn knew what she was doing. Always had. Even with her nightmares he almost felt stupid for questioning her abilities. Every single one of them had close calls and worked under stressful situations and yet he’d doubted her.

  Just as he’d doubted how she would take hearing that they’d slept together the night she’d been infected. Despite his reservations he should have told her the truth, should have trusted his initial instinct. He’d been so damn focused on sticking to his own rules he’d almost missed out on something incredible. As exasperating as he found Quinn at times, he couldn’t help but admire her ability to know when to play it safe and when to push her luck. It was one of the things he loved about her, and as soon as he got his hands on her impulsive neck, he’d remind her of that.

  “And?” Darcy prompted, pulling his attention back to their present circumstances.

  “Quinn?” He crossed to the door waiting to get a response back. He frowned, reaching out with his mind to find her. He knew she was close, but couldn’t get anything beyond that.

  Was something blocking him? He filtered through the waves of psychic energy ripe in the air from nearby people unaware they projected their thoughts to the universe. The faint streams of energy teased across his consciousness.

  Something wasn’t right.

  He darted a look at Darcy. “Do you feel that?”

  The other agent closed her eyes. “It’s almost like…” She shook her head as if puzzled by what she was picking up on. Her eyes snapped open.

  “Shadow Demon,” Braxton said, his stomach turning to stone.

  He started towards the door.

  “Brax.” Rae’s weak voice stopped him.

  He pivoted around, reaching out to stop her as she struggled to sit up. “Easy.”

  Her bleary gaze swept over the room. “Where’s Quinn?”

  He exchanged wary glances with Darcy. “I was just going to find out.”

  She reached out, stopping him as he started to rise. “Wait. There’s a mole in our office.”

  “What?”

  “Royce. He’s the mole. The one leaking information. I caught him trying to access my encrypted files.”

  “Stay with her,” he said to Darcy.

  Braxton was halfway to the door to find Quinn when his phone vibrated. Knowing it could only be Gage or Jordan calling, he fished it out and pressed it to his ear.

  “Yeah?”

  “They took them.” Gage’s voice was laced with fury. “A mimic demon and two war demons. Maybe the Scion too. Picking up a weird vibe here.”

  “Can you track them?”

  “We’re working on it. I’ll call you back when I’ve got more to go on.”

  Braxton disconnected and stuffed the phone back in his pocket. He shifted his sword back to his right hand and moved down the hall in the direction Quinn had disappeared.

  * * *

  Quinn eyed the stacks of printouts on his desk. “Someone has been a busy little beaver.”

  Royce’s eyes flickered and he wrenched open his desk drawer. His fingers closed over the handle of a gun as Quinn came over the desk. She tackled him to the floor.

  He managed to clip her jaw as she rotated to push his face into the floor.

  She licked at her lip, blood trickling from the corner. “Son of a bitch,” she growled. She tightened her grip on his forearm to the point he cried out. “I’m only going to ask you this once. Did you hurt Rae?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Royce argued, trying to buck her off his back. His effort was little more than a waste of energy. Too much time spent behind a desk over the years and not enough keeping up with his defensive skills.

  She bent down to talk close to his ear. “Do you honestly think I can’t hear the trace of fear in your voice?” She heard him swallow, his heart racing faster than a professional wrestler on steroids. “Try again.”

  “He’s going to kill you.” The cold conviction in his voice sounded nothing like the polite
man she knew.

  “Who?”

  “The same Scion that killed your parents.”

  Quinn bit down on the anger that pulsed under the surface. “And that concerns you how exactly?”

  “Do you think I slave away here day in and day out listening to you all whine about how fucked up your life is because this job fulfills me?” His laughter—bitter, but far from depraved—left Quinn with a sick feeling in her gut. “This job has only ever been about one thing.”

  “Well don’t keep me in suspense,” Quinn prompted. She could hear light footfalls down the hall. Braxton was certainly taking his time tonight.

  “Money.”

  “I wasn’t aware many Scions kept Swiss bank accounts.”

  “You think because they hunger for human emotions they couldn’t possibly be organized enough to attain anything they wanted?”

  “Well you’re proof enough they’ve got more on their minds than their next victim.” She replayed his voice in her head, breaking down the decibels, hearing something she’d missed before, or something he’d worked hard to hide.

  Corruption, she realized. It happened to a number of Destroyers, their genes absorbing too much of the demon’s essence. She couldn’t imagine how the network had missed that during his initial training, but the more she concentrated, the more obvious it became.

  “Bringing attention to themselves only brings you down on their ass where they run the risk of being permanently vanquished,” Royce added.

  “Guess you don’t want to play for our team anymore.”

  “I never played for your team. Do you think I really give a fuck if they kill anyone? It’s survival of the fittest and every man for himself.”

  “How poetic. What about Cass’s neighbor, Woody? What did he get out of this?”

  “He was nothing but a pervert and a pawn.”

  “Where is he hiding?” Quinn hadn’t forgotten the other man’s part in all this.

  “Woody was dead the second he’d served his purpose.” Royce bucked his hips again. “Get off me.”

  “Make me,” she snapped, really looking for a reason to hurt him.

  Pain exploded inside her mind. A sharp elbow to her side pitched Quinn into the desk as she pressed her hands to her temples. The searing blackness that flashed like pinpricks of lightning behind her eyes was enough to double her over.

  She heard Royce scramble to his feet, her eyesight blurring from the vicious ache that gripped her head in a vise.

  “Still haven’t learned have you?”

  Blinking to clear her vision, Quinn found Royce standing near the door. He began to ease it shut.

  Nausea curdled her stomach, the pain in her head so intense her arms shook as she fought through the mental assault to get up.

  “It’ll all be over soon.”

  The words didn’t come from Royce. The Scion? Even with the hammering pain in her head she knew it wasn’t in the room with them, yet she could feel the master demon’s presence like a hideous shadow falling across her mind.

  The door burst open and she gripped the edge of the desk, dragging herself to her feet as bile rose in the back of her throat.

  Braxton filled the doorway, his expression murderous. The second his gaze landed on her, his brows drew together in concentration.

  “It’s okay.” His voice drifted through her mind and the pain in her head started to ease.

  Royce took advantage of Braxton’s distraction and attacked. Braxton swiveled on his heel, using Royce’s own momentum to propel him out the door. The good doctor smashed into the hallway wall and collapsed on the floor.

  The last of the pain in her head disintegrated on impact, but not before she clearly heard the Scion. “See you soon.”

  Royce did little more than lift his head off the floor as she joined Braxton in hovering over the network’s most recent mole. Braxton didn’t object when she took his sword from him and held the tip under Royce’s neck. She pressed just hard enough to draw blood and make it perfectly clear to the doc she wasn’t fucking around.

  “Where’s my sister?”

  A cruel slash of teeth, then, “What’s in it for me?”

  Quinn leaned to the side and stared down the hall as Rae—leaning occasionally into the wall for support—made her way towards them. “You can tell me or I can save you for her.”

  A glimpse of panic flashed across Royce’s face. “She won’t kill me. Neither of you can. The network has protocol in place for this.”

  “Protocol?” Quinn exchanged glances with Braxton.

  “I think protocol went out the window when you tried to kill Rae,” Braxton said. “Answer Quinn. Where are Cass and Drew?”

  “Probably dead by now.”

  A flick of her wrist and rivulets of blood ran down Royce’s neck. “Where. Are. They.”

  He grinned as though he enjoyed the situation, but the look quickly faded as Braxton knelt down next to him.

  “You think you’re the only one good with head games?”

  Royce’s smile slipped a little. “By the time you find the information you’re looking for in my head, they’ll be dead.”

  “Or you will be,” Quinn reminded him.

  “I’m not afraid to die.” A second later he flinched, his gaze darting nervously to Braxton.

  “Wanna bet?”

  * * *

  “I have to say that I prefer being on the offensive this time rather than the next one on the sacrifice menu.” Jordan surveyed the private estate at the edge of town, cringing as she turned and met Quinn’s gaze. “Sorry.”

  “It’s okay.”

  Braxton shook his head, frustrated. “The Scion is blocking me. I can’t get a vibe for either Cass or Drew.”

  “It knows we’re out here.”

  He slid his hand over Quinn’s. “Knows we’re coming for it,” Braxton corrected. He glanced at his tracker again.

  “You sure that thing is fully operational?” Gage asked.

  Braxton studied the fluctuations on the hand-held device. “I’m showing eight hostiles and the Scion.”

  “Feels about right,” Jordan agreed.

  “I need to get closer.”

  He held fast to Quinn. “No being reckless,” he pleaded, forcing himself to let go before he hauled her completely into his arms. There had been no time to talk since their encounter at the construction site—hell no time to talk since their brief conversation in the locker room earlier that day. There were a hundred things he wanted to say to her and no time to get into anything now.

  A ghost of a smile caught her lips. “I didn’t hold on this long to be taken down now.”

  “Jordan and I can cover the eastern side of the premises. You two the west?” Gage adjusted his transmitter, and they all followed suit to leave the channel between the four of them open for as long as it took to find Cass and Drew.

  “Go time.” Quinn disappeared into the shadows to the right, careful not to get too far ahead that Braxton had trouble keeping up.

  The closer they drew to the estate the harder it became to mentally keep tabs on Gage and Jordan, the Scion’s telepathic abilities encroaching on Braxton’s.

  As they reached a monstrous five car garage, Quinn came to a stop. “I smell blood.”

  “I doubt the owners handed over the keys willingly.”

  “Zero activity on this side.” Gage’s voice rasped through the transmitter.

  “Waiting to jump out of the closet?” Quinn mused grimly. “Anything on Cass or Drew?”

  The harder Braxton tried to get a vibe for either of them, the more his efforts were rebuffed. “No. You?”

  “Not yet.” She tensed, her knuckles whitening on the daggers she carried. Her sword was still strapped to her back, but he doubted it would stay there for long. Not with eight hostiles—

  She held up two fingers and jerked her head to the left a few seconds before the snapping waves of discordant energy streaked through his mind.

  Mimic demons. Wonderful. Co
uld be worse, could be—

  “We’ve got war demons over here,” Gage snapped over the line.

  Despite the reason they were there, the thrill of the fight burned brightly in Quinn’s eyes before she whipped around the corner, her dagger slashing through the air. One mimic demon hit the ground instantly, her dagger catching it across the back of the leg as it tried to flee.

  The second reeled away, then launched forward towards Braxton. Its steps faltered as it quickly realized it couldn’t pull any images from Braxton’s mind to use to throw him off balance. So it took the predictable path.

  Its features contorted and morphed effortlessly into a likeness of Quinn.

  The hostile ruined its own effect the moment it smiled. The devious grin curling the creature’s lips disrupted whatever power the likeness might have carried.

  Braxton snapped his sword down in a hard arc, the tip of his blade whistling precariously close to the demon’s throat. Snarling, the hostile darted to avoid the next blow, still not fast enough to escape the shallow slice along its forearm.

  Panic filled the eyes of Quinn’s double. Mimic demons tended to be the cockiest of the bunch, and when it scrambled back a step, Braxton’s eyes narrowed in suspicion.

  It turned and bolted towards Quinn who struggled to vanquish the other mimic demon sprawled at her feet.

  “Real original,” she quipped, spotting Braxton’s hostile. She hacked with one dagger then the other to decapitate her prey.

  There wasn’t any time to whisper the chant that would permanently cleanse their realm of that Shadow Demon. Quinn’s double moved low to strike out at Quinn’s knees.

  With Quinn’s speed—something the demon couldn’t duplicate—she avoided the worst of the brunt force and only cringed on impact. She snagged the mimic demon by the same long black hair she sported, and hauled it close.

  “Two people with my face is already plenty,” she growled, shoving the hostile forward as Braxton’s sword made the killing blow. Blue flames erupted over both bodies.