by Julie Kenner
Mal and Liam were like brothers and had been for millennia. Hell, since before they’d left home to come here, chasing the bad guys across time and space like goddamn cowboys. And now here they both were, co-leaders of the Phoenix Brotherhood, a group of immortal warriors headquartered in New York, but scattered across the globe. Still chasing the bad guys. Still trying to put right what had gotten fucked up so many centuries ago.
He almost laughed. Put like that, it sounded like the plot of a goddamn James Cameron movie.
Liam pulled out his phone and placed it on the table. “Just heard from Raine.”
Interested, Mal leaned back in the leather arm chair. Mal and Raine had been friends since their training days, but that friendship rose to a new level when they’d both lost their mates as a result of the shit storm that had gone down when they’d crashed in this dimension. Livia, thrust back into the rift between dimensions. Christina, an unwilling host for a horrific and unstable weapon.
Both men had been desperately lonely, their pain acting almost like a bond. But recently Raine had learned that Livia’s essence hadn’t been catapulted out of this world after all. Instead, it had been absorbed into a human, and after all these years, Raine had once again found his mate’s essence in the body and soul of Callie Sinclair.
And though Mal was happy for his friend—truly happy—he couldn’t deny that he was jealous as fuck. Because he was never getting Christina back. Not like that. Maybe he’d given her a reprieve—letting her live her life and go to her rehearsals and take her jogs in Central Park and go out for sushi with the friend she’d moved in with, because oh yes, he’d been watching her—but that was just time, and time was running out. She was a walking bomb about to go supernova, and she didn’t even know it. And sooner—not later—he was going to have to man up and pull the damn trigger.
Unless…
“Mal?” Liam’s voice was steady, but Mal could hear the concern. And the question.
“Thinking. Sorry.” He rubbed his chin, the stubble scratching his palm and reminding him that he hadn’t shaved in days. Not since seeing Christina had thrown his life completely off-kilter. He sucked in air and ordered himself to get his shit together. “Is Raine on his way here?”
Liam nodded. “They’re coming in before they go celebrate. Callie’s now a New York County Assistant District Attorney.”
“That’s excellent.” Before coming to New York to be with her ailing father, Callie had been a lawyer in Texas. Once she and Raine found each other, though, she’d taken steps to secure a similar position in Manhattan so that she could continue the job she enjoyed while being with the man she loved.
Mal glanced down at the table to hide the spike of jealousy, and considered the position of the rook in relation to the bishop. “It can only help Phoenix Security to have someone in the DA’s office.”
“Agreed,” Liam said, and then said nothing else.
Mal closed his eyes, silently cursing. He loved Liam like a goddamn brother, but right then he just wanted to be alone. He opened his eyes and put his elbow on the table, then rested his chin on his fist. He studied the board and hoped that Liam would get the hint.
Liam didn’t move.
When the weight of the silence became too much, Mal looked up at him. “Something else?”
“I don’t know. Is there?”
Mal said nothing, just waited.
“Dammit, Mal, you need to talk to me. You’ve been brooding for two days. Either wandering the streets off god knows where or sitting over this damn chessboard, half the time without an opponent.”
“There’s always an opponent,” Mal said.
“Jessica’s worried,” Liam said, referring to his own mate.
At that, Mal bit back a smile. “Jessica?”
“Fine. I’m worried, too. Tell me I don’t have reason to be.”
Mal sighed, then combed his fingers through his hair. “I’ve been thinking about games,” he admitted, knowing that Liam would understand that he was thinking about Christina. Because when was Mal not thinking about Christina? “About strategies.”
“Mal. Don’t do this to yourself.”
“To myself?” A sudden fury burst through him, and he lashed out, sending chess pieces flying. “Do you think I want this pain? Dammit, Liam, not a day goes by that I don’t think of her. That I don’t crave the moment when I will see her again … even as I dread it.”
Liam drew in a breath. “I wish I didn’t have to tell you this. But she’s back. She’s in New York.”
Mal’s body turned to ice. Each time Christina was born into this world—humans would call it reincarnation—her physical form was different. As her mate, only Mal could sense her essence from afar. But the members of the brotherhood—all of them, including Jessica and the other immortal women—could sometimes catch a glimpse of the weapon hidden deep inside her if they were looking straight at her. Some, like Asher, could even feel the disturbance in the fabric of the universe when the power of the weapon rose up inside her.
Mal clenched and unclenched his fists as he gathered himself. Thank god Asher had been out of the country last Thursday night. He’d been too far away to feel the ripples in the universe.
But the question remained—what did Liam know? And how?
“Did you hear me?” Liam asked. “She’s back.”
“Are you sure?”
In front of him, Liam’s face was harsh. “Dante saw her. He said it was just a flicker, so he could be wrong, but—”
“He’s not,” Mal said flatly, as the cold settled into his bones. He turned his attention to the now empty chessboard.
“Do you think it doesn’t destroy me, too? She was your mate, but she was my friend, my crew. But there’s no other way,” Liam said, accurately following Mal’s thoughts. “There is no other strategy, no trick we haven’t thought of.”
He stood, and Mal could see the pain on his friend’s face, as potent as his own. “You have to kill her again, Mal. Because if you don’t, she’ll end up destroying us all.”
“Do you think I don’t know that? Jesus, Liam, I think about it every goddamn day.”
Liam tilted his head, his eyes narrowing as he studied his friend. Mal silently cursed. Liam was not an idiot. And one of the reasons he was a damn good leader was because he saw what his crew—and what his partner—tried to hide.
“You’ve seen her,” Liam said, as he rose out of the chair, as if the news had pushed him to his feet. “You’ve seen her, and you let it ride. Goddammit, Mal.” He pressed the fingertips of both hands to his temples. “If you don’t do it, I will. The stakes are too damn high.”
Without even thinking about it, Mal was out of his chair, his fist slamming hard into his friend’s jaw. As a man, Liam was huge, wide and muscular compared to Mal’s lean, athletic frame. And Liam had at least forty pounds on him.
Didn’t matter. Mal caught him unaware and sent him stumbling backward, then fisted his hand in the collar of Liam’s shirt and yanked him back. “Do not even think of going there.”
Liam said nothing, but Mal could feel the tension in his friend as Liam held back, forcing himself to stay still. Mal wished he wouldn’t. He wanted Liam to let go. Goddammit, right then he wanted nothing more than to beat the shit out of somebody. Anybody.
“Mal!”
He looked up to see Callie across the room, her green eyes seeming even wider with her blond hair pulled back into an elegant knot, and Raine moving fast toward them.
“Back it off, buddy,” Raine said. His tight expression, sleeves of tats, and close-shaved head would have made him seem dangerous if Mal didn’t know him so well. Then again, Raine was dangerous. Just not to the brotherhood.
“No,” Liam said, his eyes never leaving Mal’s face. “You need to do it, then do it. Take a swing at me. Beat me to a bloody pulp. Do whatever you have to, but get it out of your goddamn system. Because you know I’m right, Mal.”
Time seemed to stop as Mal stood there, his hand
still locked on Liam’s shirt. Beside him, Raine stood poised to intervene, clearly torn, not sure if he should be pulling Mal back or following Liam’s lead and just letting this little drama play out.
And across the room, Callie watched all three of them, her lovely face awash in horror and confusion.
“Goddammit.” Anguish flooded him, and Mal dropped his hand, releasing Liam.
Once more, he sank back into the chair, then covered his face with his hands and told himself that the only thing he needed to do in that moment was remember to breathe.
“She’s back,” Raine said. It wasn’t a question, and Mal didn’t answer.
“Who?” Callie’s voice was soft and near.
“Christina.”
“Oh, Mal.” Sorrow filled her voice. “I’m so sorry.”
He looked up. Raine had taken the chair beside Mal, and he held out his hand for Callie, who settled in his lap.
“You told her?” he asked Raine, then sighed as his friend nodded. “Do you remember Christina?” he asked the Callie.
Callie shook her head. “It’s not like that. I know there’s part of Livia inside me, but it’s not memories so much as feelings.” She looked between the men. “Isn’t it that way for her, too?”
“Christina never remembers a thing,” Liam said.
“No.” Mal met Liam’s eyes. “This time, she remembered.”
“What?” He could hear the shock in Liam’s voice.
“Jesus, Mal,” Raine said.
“Wait.” Callie looked between the three men. “I’m a little behind the curve here. She remembers you? How do you know?”
Mal hesitated, but he knew he had to come clean. He looked from Raine to Liam. “I went to her. When I felt her presence, I went to her, just like I always have. And dammit, I had every intention of—” He closed his eyes. “She said my name.” He drew in a breath. “I touched her, Li. I held her. I—”
He cut himself off, remembering. God, he’d taken her in a fucking alley. After so long, and that was how he’d touched her, how he’d claimed her? She deserved so much more, but he hadn’t been able to hold back.
For that matter, she hadn’t been able to either, and the memory brought a hint of a smile to his lips. At least she’d been as crazed as he had. And seeing that—finally having proof that she was still herself even inside this new body, that she was still his—had both ripped him to shreds and given him hope.
Right now, it was that hope to which he clung so desperately.
He looked at his friends. “She was mine.” He spoke firmly, knowing that they all understood exactly what he meant by that. “And everything came back to her. She remembered me. Remembered us. She knew what was happening and why. And then—”
From the corner of his eye, he saw Callie take Raine’s hand and squeeze as tears glistened in her eyes.
“What?” Liam demanded. His voice was businesslike. Practical. But Mal could see the way Liam’s fingers were digging into the arm of the chair.
“She almost lost it.”
“Oh, Christ,” Liam said. “Oh, fuck.”
“No.” Mal stood, because he needed to get this out. He’d been thinking—god, how much he’d been thinking over the past two days. “No, I pulled it back. I absorbed it—not the weapon. But her own energy. I backed it down, and the darkness fell away, too.”
“You backed it down?”
Mal nodded at Callie. “It’s what I’m especially good at. Absorbing energy, then turning it around for my own purpose.”
“The way Raine is with electronics.”
Mal nodded. “Takes me hours to talk to a computer, but he can do it in a nano-second.”
“So when you took her energy, it left her exhausted, so the weapon thing couldn’t, um, detonate?”
“Something like that.” He didn’t mention that the effort it had taken was brutal, and that he almost hadn’t managed in time. What he did say was, “That’s when she forgot. Who I was. What had happened to her. To us.” He dragged his fingers through his hair. “That was my opportunity. I had the chance to do it right then. To buy us another few decades, maybe a century. But I didn’t take it. I took her memory of what happened in that alley, and I left her there.”
“You left her,” Liam repeated.
“Don’t worry. I kept surveillance on her. No one’s getting to her without going through us.” Mal knew well that the fuerie wanted the weapon back. And that meant that it wanted Christina. And once it knew that she was alive again in the world, it would do anything to reacquire her. To keep her. And, when the time was right, to use the weapon inside her.
Of course, one of the brotherhood, Dante, had the ability to reach out and search for the unique disturbance in the air caused by the fuerie’s energy spectrum. He couldn’t pinpoint them around the globe, but if any of the fuerie were near, he could pick up on their vibration. That skill, however, required Dante to purposefully reach out and was limited geographically. In other words, a handy trick, but with limited usefulness.
To be safe, Mal needed eyes on Christina at all times. And thank goodness she was living in a building with excellent security.
“Fuck, man,” Liam said. “Do you know the goddamn risk—of course you know the risk. What the hell were you thinking?”
Mal ignored the question. “I’ve taken most shifts, and when it’s not me, I’ve kept one of the red teams on her,” he said, referring to the elite ex-military operatives that Phoenix Security, the brotherhood’s front company, kept on the payroll. “But yes, I walked away, and I left her alive. And I’ve come here, and I’ve thought, and I’ve planned.”
He bent to retrieve a fallen chess piece, then sat in the armchair again, the white queen in his hand. “I can’t do it anymore, Liam. And I won’t let anyone else do it, either.”
“Won’t let?” Liam’s brow rose.
“There are other options.” He put the queen on the table. “There are other ways to win this game.”
“Dammit, Mal. We just had this conversation. You know—”
“Hold up, Li,” Raine said. “Could you destroy Jessica? Take a blade to her over and over and over again? Can you even imagine what it’s like to lose her? I can,” he said, tightening his arms around Callie. “And Mal’s had it a thousand times worse. So if he says there’s another way, then we need to at least hear him out.”
He turned to Mal. “We all know she’s dangerous, so I’m not saying that we’re going to jump all over whatever you suggest. But I am saying we should let you make your case.”
As Raine spoke, some of the tightness in Mal’s chest loosened. The brotherhood wasn’t a democracy—what Liam and Mal agreed was law, and where they disagreed, Asher cast the deciding vote. Ash, however, was in transit back from London and not any help at the moment.
But Liam respected Raine. And if nothing else, Mal appreciated his friend having his back.
A moment passed, then another. Then Liam nodded. “All right,” he said, turning from Raine to Mal. “What’s your plan?”
“Wait,” Callie said. “I’m sorry, but I have a few thousand years of catching up to do. What happened to her. Why is she dangerous? And why does killing her buy you decades or centuries?”
Mal met Raine’s eyes. “I thought you told her.”
“Only that you lost Christina. Only what you’ve had to do every time she comes back.”
“I know what Raine told me. You were all part of an elite team that left your world—your dimension—on a mission to stop the fuerie.”
Raine nodded. “You know how I explained that in our dimension, energy is sentient? You don’t need a body?”
“I remember,” Callie said. “I still don’t fully understand how that works, but I remember. And you said that the fuerie was like a malevolent energy.”
“That’s putting it mildly,” Liam said.
“But you were chasing it,” Callie continued. “And you didn’t mean to come here—to this dimension or this planet—but there was
a crash, and your group and the fuerie ended up here.”
“Those are the high points, yes,” Mal said.
Callie nodded slowly, as if gathering her thoughts. “And there was an Egyptian prince who had visions. He knew you were coming, and he sent a delegation to meet your group. He probably believed you were gods, who knows. But for whatever reason, they all willingly merged with you.”
“With the members of the brotherhood, yes. Not with the fuerie. We merged at a genetic level. It’s what made us human. And our original state—pure energy—is what gives us immortality even as flesh.”
“But that didn’t happen to Livia or Christina? There was a battle, and they never ended up doing the merging thing?”
“Livia, yes,” Mal said. “And, sadly, a few others of our number. But not Christina. She did merge with a human female. I could touch her. Hold her.” Pain raked over him with the memory. “And then they took her.”
“Why?”
Mal tried to answer, but could only shake his head.
“They would have taken anyone,” Liam said gently. “Christina and Jessica had gone out to tend to some wounded humans. They were ambushed. Jessica managed to escape, but they took Christina.”
“We raided their camp that night,” Raine said. “But they had already used her.”
“Used her?”
“Not sexually. As a repository for the weapon. It was the weapon we were hunting even more than the fuerie itself.”
“What is it?” she asked.
“Nothing that’s yet been discovered in this world. Dark matter. Scalar energy. The scientists studying those are on the right path.”
“And they made it part of her?”
“Bound it with her essence,” Mal said, drawing a deep breath. “Her energy. Her soul.” He stood, not able to sit while he told this part. “We got her back after the raid, but it was too late. Energy has to be contained in this world—the fuerie had already possessed unwilling humans, and they needed a vessel for the weapon, and they used Christina. Their intent was to keep her restrained, alive but unconscious. And then to destroy her when they accessed the weapon.”
