by Lara Adrian
“You’re not like that,” he pointed out.
“No, but I’m tied to that world. As much as I despise it, there’s a part of me that might always be tied to that world.”
Aric recalled everything she told him the night they made love on Summit Hill. She’d divulged that her childhood had been brutal, hate-filled. But now he was certain there was a missing piece to the puzzle of Kaya’s past.
“This person you went to see at Mackie’s bar. It’s someone important to you?”
“Yes.” She slowly shook her head. “I hadn’t seen her in a long time. Not since we were sixteen.”
Sixteen. The age Kaya had been when her mother was murdered and she was forced to kill in retaliation and self-defense before fleeing for her life into the city.
“After I saw those murders at that Darkhaven, I knew Big Mack’s people were responsible. What I didn’t know was if my sister had been aware of it too. It was a question I needed her to answer before I decided to shut her out of my heart and my life for good.”
“Your sister,” Aric murmured. “Both of you sixteen when your mother was killed.”
Kaya nodded. “My identical twin. Her name is Leah. Or, rather, it was her name. Now they call her Raven.”
“You have an identical twin who’s been running with Big Mack and his cronies all these years?” Aric felt like he’d just taken a punch to the side of his head. “Ah, Christ. The security guard at the Rousseau estate. The one who turned out to have ties to Mackie. The one who claimed he knew you . . .”
She stared at him, miserable. “He thought I was her. He cornered me and then everything happened so fast.”
“This secret of yours was the reason our mission went south that day.”
“I know. I wanted to say something, Aric, but I was scared.” She reached out to him, her palm coming to rest lightly on his cheek. “Aric, I love you.”
The words lashed him now. “You lied to me.”
“No.”
“You lied by saying nothing,” he bit off harshly. “You’ve been lying to us all.”
“Aric, I wanted to tell you. I planned to tell you just as soon as I saw Leah one more time--”
“Stop.” He drew back, his eyes hot with burning amber sparks. She was saying everything he wanted to hear, but there was still one large question looming. One there would be no coming back from, depending on her answer. “Tell me what you know about the ambush that waited for us at Lars Scrully’s place.”
“I don’t know anything about that.”
“How did you leak our plans to Opus? Or did you only have to leak them to Angus Mackie and he took care of the rest?”
“I didn’t do any of that. I would never betray the Order to Opus Nostrum. Not to anyone. I would never betray you either.” She shook her head. “Aric, you have to believe me.”
“No, Kaya. I don’t. Not anymore.”
Her brow pinched as if she were in pain. Maybe she was. And maybe she was still lying, pretending to be wounded and laughing on the inside for how easily she could fool him, the male of a species she’d been schooled to view as something less than human. Monsters to be hated and destroyed.
Behind them, an angry pickup truck driver laid on his horn as the light changed. Aric impatiently waved the other vehicle around, baring his fangs at the belligerent scowl of the man as he passed them. The truck swerved and jolted before the driver stomped on the gas and fled in terror.
When Kaya glanced at him, he was glad for the savagery of his transformed face. Let her see him--really see him. Let her know what she was professing she loved.
“Where is he?” he demanded. “Angus Mackie. You need to tell me where to find him. I know you know, Kaya. If that skinhead back at the garage didn’t willingly tell you, your hand on his arm was enough to siphon the truth from his so-called mind.”
She looked worse than terrified. “Aric, you can’t come with me.”
“Come with you?” His chuckle was cold with malice. “I’m dropping you back at the command center, then I’m going after Mackie alone. When I’m finished, Big Mack and all of his followers will be nothing but bad memories and a lot of bleeding flesh and bones.”
Her face blanched. “Aric, you don’t understand. You can’t do any of that.”
“Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t.”
“Because my sister is with him. Aric, she’s pregnant.”
CHAPTER 26
Aric took the wheel, and Kaya directed him to the place Mackie’s friend at the garage had surrendered to her unwillingly through his thoughts. The abandoned house sat on a weed-choked empty lot near the city dump.
“A fitting refuge for excrement like Big Mack,” Aric muttered as they parked the vehicle behind a rusted old water tower and prepared to execute the rough plan they’d discussed on the way. “You may not see me, but I promise I’ll be close.”
She nodded, reassured by his presence even if the conflict between them felt as wide as a cavern.
As soon as they were out of the car, Aric dissolved into shadows.
Kaya walked to the front porch of the sagging one-story eyesore and knocked on the door. A tall, scrawny man answered several moments later. Stringy hair covered his mottled skull, and beneath the scraggly brows that climbed high on his forehead at the sight of her, his bleary eyes blinked rapidly in confusion.
“What the fuck?” He blinked, then rubbed his eyes and blinked again. “You ain’t Raven.”
“No, I’m not.” Kaya smiled pleasantly, her hand resting at the small of her back where the pistol she’d brought with her from the command center was tucked into the waistband of her jeans. “Step aside. I’m here to talk to my sister.”
No sense pretending, she and Aric had decided. They were going to take Leah out of there and they were prepared to do so with guns blazing.
The aged junkie at the door gave a vigorous shake of his head. “Big Mack won’t like this. Raven ain’t takin’ visitors right now.”
“I say she is.” Aric’s deep voice and bared fangs as he emerged out of the shadows near the open door sent the man scrambling back into the house.
Mackie’s poor excuse for a guard frantically reached for the gun holstered at his hip. Mistake. Aric shot him dead in an instant.
He glanced over at Kaya, his eyes ablaze with battle rage. “Ready, partner?”
She nodded. “Let’s go get her.”
At the same moment, the house erupted in chaos following the sound of gunfire. Two men charged from the back. Kaya took out one with a bullet to the head. Aric got the other. Indistinct shouts joined the panicked sounds of half a dozen men caught unaware by the invasion.
“Leah!” Kaya shouted. She didn’t know where to look for her, only that the man at the garage knew Mackie had her sister with him at his hideout following the failed raid. She could be anywhere. Kaya only hoped her twin wouldn’t be coming at them as an enemy. “Leah, where are you?”
A blast of bullets from a semiautomatic ripped into the bowed wood paneling near Kaya’s head as she and Aric pushed farther inside the small house. They ducked out of range but only barely. Splinters rained down into Kaya’s hair.
“Leah!” Aric called now, his low bellow vibrating the floorboards beneath Kaya’s feet.
Then she heard it.
The smallest cry coming from somewhere down the far end of the hall. Female. It was Leah. And she sounded to be in pain.
Aric shot a big man who barreled out of a bedroom ahead of them. The body sprawled across the floor, blocking their clean path. The woman’s cry came again, more distinct now.
They hurried toward a closed bathroom door at the end of the narrow passage. Aric kicked it in with his boot. The thin door shattered off its hinges. And there, huddled in the filth of the avocado-tiled prison was Kaya’s twin.
“Oh, my God. Leah.”
She was handcuffed to the sink pipes like an animal, a gag tied around her mouth. Her clothing was torn and dirty. Bruises rode her left ch
eekbone. A scab covered an ugly split in her swollen lip.
Kaya’s heart lurched at the sight of her sister’s abuse. She hurried to her side along with Aric, who made quick work of the cuffs with a mental command that broke the locks open while Kaya unfastened the tight knots of the gag.
Leah’s sob as the punishing restraints fell away shredded all of the misgivings she’d ever had for her estranged sibling.
“I’m going to look for Mackie,” Aric said.
“Be careful.” It was Leah’s voice that spoke the words that were also on Kaya’s tongue. Leah glanced at both of them, remorse in her dark brown eyes. “Angus has weapons hidden everywhere.”
Aric nodded curtly, then vanished.
# # #
As furious as he had been for the fact that Kaya hadn’t trusted him enough to share the truth about her sister and her past with him, Aric’s rage had gone nuclear at the sight of her pregnant twin shackled like a dog inside Mackie’s newest hideout.
It was too easy to see Kaya in the pretty, battered face that stared up at them so helplessly and broken. Too easy to think of Kaya being subjected to the punishing hands and lecherous cravings of men like Angus Mackie and his ilk.
For that, every man in this place would die.
Aric moved through the house as a stealth assassin, keeping to the shadows except to fill each of Mackie’s men with lead. And now he had only to find the king of the rats.
Aric swept through the place, leaving no corner unturned.
And then he spotted the bastard.
Unshaven, dressed in only a pair of saggy yellowed cotton briefs, his hairy belly drooped in front of him and jiggling as he ran, the purportedly fearsome Big Mack made a hurried dash for the basement door. It banged behind him, followed by the hasty thudding of Mackie’s bare feet on old wooden steps.
Aric snarled and leapt across the distance. He was just about to throw the door open with his mind when a shotgun blast exploded the panel in front of him. He dodged the spray and of wood and shrapnel in time to avoid the worst of it, then he dove through the opening and body slammed Mackie to the bottom of the stairs.
The fat coward screamed as Aric seized hold of him by the throat. His fangs felt as immense as daggers in his mouth, his eyes lighting up Mackie’s face like an amber spotlight. “Not so brave now, are you?”
“What the fuck!” His eyes went wide, full of shock and terror. “Daywalker?”
“That’s right,” Aric snarled. “Your worst nightmare.”
Not far from where he had Mackie pinned, crates that looked disturbingly similar to the ones the Order had recovered from the van at Scrully’s estate were lined up on the concrete floor of the basement. Easily a dozen of them.
He growled a curse and tightened his chokehold on the gang leader. “Now, before I eviscerate you, you’re going to tell me where you got this UV. I’m guessing from that black bug you’ve got tattooed on your right tit that your buddy Fineas Riordan hooked you up before the Order wasted him.”
“I’m not telling you shit.” Mackie gritted his teeth, struggling against Aric’s unyielding hold. “You’ll have to kill me. If I squeal, Opus will make sure I’m dead.”
Behind him on the stairs, Aric heard Kaya’s soft footsteps. “The house is clear.”
Aric nodded tightly, dragging Mackie up off the floor by his throat. “You and Leah all right?” he asked, looking at her because he needed to see for himself.
Kaya had come to the bottom step. Leah stood behind her halfway down, looking like a ghost version of her vibrant sister. “We’re okay.”
“Good. As soon as this sack of pus tells me what I want to know, we can be out of here.”
“Fuck. You.” Mackie sputtered.
Kaya walked up next to Aric. “There’s another way to get the information we need.”
She touched the human’s flailing arm and asked him the same questions Aric had. But now Mackie’s mind was open, his thoughts spilling loose at just a suggestion from Kaya. “Riordan supplied the ultraviolet weapons and rounds. Mackie has had contact from Opus, but never in person. He doesn’t know any of the members.”
“In other words, he’s useless,” Aric said, hardly disappointed to have the license to end the bastard. But there was still one very important question that he suspected Mackie could answer. “Where is Opus getting all of their intel on Order movements?”
Kaya sucked in a breath. “They have someone on the inside. Mackie knows it.”
“Who?” Aric demanded, squeezing his throat nearly to the point of crushing it.
The human attempted a chuckle. “I love seeing you bloodsuckers chase your tails. Almost as much as I like seeing you smoked in a pile of ash under my boots.”
Aric roared his fury. “Tell us, goddamn you.”
“There is a mole,” Kaya confirmed, her voice wooden. “They’ve got someone embedded. Someone who’s feeding them high-value intel on a regular basis now. Data files too.”
“What the fuck?” Aric scowled, beyond enraged. “Who is it? Say the name or say goodbye to your larynx.”
“Some Irish bitch,” Mackie finally relented. “Iona something.”
Aric reeled back. He caught Kaya’s confused gaze too. “If you’re talking about Reginald Crowe’s mistress, Iona Lynch, she’s dead. I saw her savaged body with my own eyes last week.”
“Yeah?” Mackie taunted despite the strangling hold on him. “Then she must be sending messages from hell because she’s the one who got a warning passed on to me that the Order was after my ass a few nights ago.”
“What?” Kaya swiveled a questioning look at her sister. “I thought you warned him after I came to see you.”
Leah shook her head. “This son of a bitch has been holding me against my will for six months, threatening to kill me and my baby if I try to leave. I would never tell him anything.”
Aric’s blood ran ice cold. When he glanced at Kaya, her face showed the same astonished dread that was currently coiled around him.
“Oh, my God,” Kaya murmured. “Rafe.”
CHAPTER 27
At the insistence of their mates the Order’s meeting in the war room had broken up half an hour ago, sending the Breed elders up to the mansion to join the women. Mira’s comrades had invited Rafe to the weapons room for some sparring and the usual bullshitting and ball-busting that was a staple of warrior life in any of the Order’s command centers, but he had declined the offer.
He had other diversions in mind.
Namely, Siobhan.
He’d been surprised to discover she wasn’t in her guest room in the main residence. Curious to find she hadn’t even stopped by to see Renata or fawn over the baby, which she’d seemed to be so excited for whenever he spoke about the pending arrival of the Order’s newest family member.
As Rafe strode back down to the command center, the only place she could possibly have gone, he felt a niggling pang that he was tempted to call suspicion. He might have, if his faith in Siobhan wasn’t so complete. Had she gotten lost down in the maze of corridors that threaded through the labyrinthine nerve center of the warriors’ domain? She knew the area was restricted to Order members, but she was an inquisitive woman and maybe she had simply woken from her long nap and gone looking to find him.
The idea comforted him, sweeping away the colder sense he had that he was missing something. That he was blind to something right in front of his face.
That his obsession with Siobhan was making him weak in ways he didn’t quite comprehend.
“Ridiculous,” he muttered as he trekked through yet another twisting passageway and found no sign of her.
He pivoted to go back, then he noticed that the elevator that connected the mansion’s living quarters and command center was stuck on the lower level of the compound. There was nothing in the subterranean bowels of this place but basement storage.
The elevator never sat down there for this long.
Rafe pressed the call button, but nothing happened
.
On a frown, he glanced to the stairwell. He took the steps in stealth silence, uncertain why he felt the need to approach whatever waited for him down there with the caution of a soldier. He froze in place as his gaze lit on the propped open elevator door and the crates of ultraviolet munitions that packed the car.
Siobhan was inside. She had something in her hand, wiring it to the crates.
Rafe’s warrior instincts scraped him with confusion. Suspicion. A dread so deep it staggered him.
He saw the scene for what it was: Siobhan with a detonation device in hand, a remote lying next to her.
Fury flared in him, burning past the weaker feelings of disbelief and apprehension.
“Siobhan. What the fuck are you doing?”
She wheeled around, her hand flying to her breast. “Rafe.”
Surprise filled her pretty face, along with an emotion he was tempted to call displeasure. But then she smiled and tilted her head, those hazel eyes of hers reaching out to him--into him--and making him wonder if he was wrong to feel the doubt the clawed at him.
“You startled me,” she said, her voice sweet and shy, utterly innocent.
He wanted to rail at her, but the words dried up on his tongue. “I’ve been looking for you. I just searched the whole damned place trying to find you.”
“Did I worry you?” she asked gently. “I’m sorry if I did.”
He stood there, bewildered and enraged, yet his anger seemed elusive when she was holding him in her adoring gaze. Her tender smile did something to him. Burned all of his negative feelings and suspicions away, as if he were seeing her through a distorted lens, one that could not maintain focus on logic, but only the beautiful woman he adored.
He tried to shake loose of the odd sensation, but it clung tenaciously. “What’s going on here, Siobhan? What are you doing down here by yourself?”
