Storm Warning

by Sydney Somers

  She crawled into his lap and tucked her face between his neck and shoulder. “The monster sees her.”

  “You’re safe. No monster will ever get you.”

  She nodded solemnly, as though she never believed otherwise. “You’ll kill them first.”

  The conviction in her voice surprised him, worried him a little too. “I’ll keep you safe. Always.”

  “And her too, Daddy? It’s so loud. She can’t hear me.”

  He lay down on the bed, drawing the covers over Molly. “I’ll bet if you go to sleep everything will be okay.”

  “She needs you,” Molly murmured, curling into him. “You’ll save her too.” She opened her heavy eyes one last time. “Can you sleep here again tonight, Daddy?”

  “Okay.”

  “All night?”

  “All night,” he vowed, relieved when his daughter’s breathing fell into a soft, steady rhythm.

  He hadn’t been tired, but laying in the dark with her trusting fingers wrapped tight around his, he found it too easy to close his eyes. Too easy to question what the hell he was doing.

  She was his little girl. His. He’d missed out on so much of her life already and here he was missing out on more, every damn day. His birth parents had given him up and he’d spent years wondering why, wondering who they were, what made them do it, choose to part with him.

  Was that what he wanted for Molly, to have her grow up wondering why he hadn’t wanted her with him?

  Since the beginning she had gravitated to him without hesitation. They’d been strangers that first day he’d come by Leanna’s mother’s after hearing the truth, but Molly had looked up at him and smiled like she’d been waiting for him to come for a long time. He’d almost been emotionally crippled on a damn sidewalk by all the trust and hope that glimmered in her eyes.

  His eyes.

  She hadn’t cried over leaving her grandmother’s, hadn’t balked when he told her she’d be staying with his parents for a while. Not once had she asked why or become angry, but instead of being relieved, her quiet acceptance was slowly drilling holes in his heart.

  He had to figure this out. For her sake. For his. Figure out if he could be both her father and a Destroyer, and without either of them hating him for it in the end.

  “Drew?”

  Coffee in hand, he turned at the sound of Rae calling his name. “Yeah?”

  “Can we talk a minute?”

  He followed her into her office, frowning at the chaos that was Rae’s desk. Stacks of printouts. Folders—hundreds of them it looked like.

  “Everything okay?” he asked.

  “What?” She frowned, puzzled by a note she held. “Yeah. Just some reorganizing.”

  “Of what, the entire archives?”

  She shrugged. “Just trying to get on top of things for the arrival of the profiler. I’m sure he’ll have questions.”

  He swept his gaze across her desk. “About assignments going back five to ten years?”

  “Never hurts to be thorough.”

  He gave her a sideways glance, curious about the jittery edge to her voice. Under his scrutiny, a familiar expression of cool-calm-collected settled over her face.

  “How did it go yesterday?”

  Rae dropped into her chair, skimming whatever information was up on her monitor. “I’m surprised you didn’t stick around.”

  “Something came up.”

  Her fingers tapped madly on the keyboard. He watched, waiting. She stopped typing but made no move to comment on what happened with Blair. He’d called Braxton’s this morning only to be told she was still asleep. He couldn’t tell if his friend was telling the truth or saying whatever he thought was best for his sister.

  “Did you recruit Blair?”

  His boss leaned back in her chair, adjusting the ear piece all Destroyers were supposed to wear to keep them in contact with each other and the field office while on assignment. Jordan was the only one who’d been dispatched in the last twelve hours, making her the agent Rae was likely keeping track of.

  She crossed her arms. “I put the offer on the table, but she has a lot to consider still.”

  “How did Brax take it?”

  “It didn’t surprise him.”

  Probably because it would have surprised them if Rae hadn’t brought it up. Since so few Destroyers were initiated by storm demons, the network would be particularly interested in Blair.

  “I need a favor,” she said finally.

  Drew gripped his cup a little tighter, the only outward sign her comment affected him. Rae never asked for anything. She issued orders, handed down directives, advised, manipulated when the occasion called for it. If she were going out of her way to ask him anything, he probably wasn’t going to like it.

  “I need you to keep an eye on Blair.”

  He took a sip of his coffee, wondering if Rae would be so quick to assign him such a task if she knew what he and Blair had been doing before they’d come in yesterday. His stomach churned, but he didn’t deny the responsibility right away. “Does Braxton know you’re asking me?”

  “Braxton has enough on his mind.” She came around the front of her desk. “I know you and Blair are involved, or have been, but your judgment isn’t as clouded as Braxton’s.”

  Okay, now she was starting to freak him out.

  “The first couple of weeks after being initiated by a storm demon are the most critical. The sooner we know if she can’t handle what’s happening to her, the better.”

  A lead weight pressed down on his chest. He kept his voice even. “And then what?”

  Rae turned away from him. “Right now she’s doing okay. There’s no reason to believe she was tainted by the dakorum.”

  Tainted. The network’s polite way of saying contaminated. “So this is just you playing it safe?”

  “Just…keep an eye on her. She’s nowhere close to controlling her ability and still prone to disrupting electromagnetic fields it seems. The kind of energy she’s capable of generating can take its toll if she’s not careful.”

  Drew stood, paused at the door. “Do you think she has what it takes to be a Destroyer?”

  Rae’s expression bordered on grim. “I really don’t know.”

  “They still haven’t caught the guy?”

  Blair turned from her computer for the dozenth time in the last fifteen minutes. She loved Whitney to death, but her friend was driving her crazy with all the hovering.

  Whitney perched a hip on the edge of Blair’s desk, her face drawn in a half snit over not being told about what happened from the start. “I can’t believe you even came to work today. Getting attacked and almost dying warrants at least a full week off.”

  Getting the time off wouldn’t have been a problem. It was the idea of sitting around with so much information spinning through her head that had prompted her to come in to work for a couple hours. She needed a little bit of her regular life to remind her that the rest of the world was just as she’d left it. She was the only one who’d changed.

  Staring at the guest room’s four walls at Braxton’s had driven that fact home and sent her fleeing for her car keys inside two hours. She’d stupidly thought she might be able to distract herself with work, at least for a little while.

  “What is with the itchy hand?” Whitney stared pointedly at where Blair absently dragged her palm back and forth across her knee.

  She picked up a pencil to give her hand something to do. Nothing had happened since the incident in the elevator, but the phantom sensation lingered, making it impossible to forget what she was capable of—if only she knew exactly what that was.

  Rae had invited her back to the field office to talk more and promised additional access to their archives. An invitation she’d exploited yesterday until she’d fallen asleep at Braxton’s desk. Sleep had evaded her, her dreams fraught with images of demons with red-rimmed eyes, sacrifices and the bloodthirsty battles that had begun the ancient war between demons and Destroyers.

&
nbsp; Whitney nodded to the screen. “So is this a sign you’re moving beyond Jonas Holson?” She frowned at the screen, tipped her head. “Is that a dead body?”

  For the last hour and a half she’d been working her way through every information archive and database she could access for information on any unsolved murders with similarities to her own attack. More specifically, searching for bystander reports of perpetrators with unusual eyes. As patient as Rae and Braxton had been when it came to answering her one-thousand-and-one questions, neither touched on the subject of how many people were killed by Shadow Demons.

  People who knew nothing of the supernatural creatures that walked among them. She couldn’t decide if her brother and Rae were purposely vague because it was impossible to know for sure or because the answer might freak her out. The further she dug, the more unsolved cases surfaced. Following up on a few with some local police contacts resulted in no new information. She shouldn’t have been surprised, not after hearing about how demons operated or how efficient the Shadow Destroyer network was at keeping the truth hidden.

  To protect the masses, they had told her.

  The jury was still out on that as far as she was concerned. As much as part of her wanted to dive headlong into exposing the threat so many people remained ignorant of, she wasn’t so naïve as to believe it was a matter of photographing one and slapping it on the front page. That kind of thing sold gossip mags by the millions, but the reputation she’d spent the last few years cultivating would be shot to hell if she crossed that line.

  And Whitney had been worried what the Holson story would do to her career.

  Blair turned off the monitor and grabbed her coffee mug. “I need a break.”

  Concern filled Whitney’s eyes. “You sure you’re up for being here?”

  “I’m okay.”

  “If some asshole attacked me like that I would have been seriously freaked out. If you want to talk more…”

  “I know where to find you,” she finished. Not that talking accomplished anything but leaving her with a massive headache and the sensation that she was no longer at home in her own skin.

  “How about meeting for a drink or two after work?”

  “Sounds good.” Getting a drink would have been exactly the thing she’d have done a week or two ago. Sticking to some sort of routine was just what she needed right now.

  Whitney gave her a quick hug, and headed back to her desk.

  “There you are.”

  Blair turned and found her path blocked by her temporary boss. “What can I do for you, Greer?”

  Short, sleazy and built like a stiff breeze could knock him over, Greer was the embodiment of all things underhanded and manipulative. “Just wanted to see how you were doing.”

  She managed to contain her snort. Barely. Greer had been cutthroat since her first day at the paper and would have danced a jig if being attacked had forced her to take a leave of absence. The extent of their interactions typically involved him looking over her shoulder or, more recently, barking about which stories he wanted her focusing on. She wasn’t even going to think about how shitty her workday would become if he landed the permanent assistant metro editor position.

  Blair held out her hands. “Still all in one piece.”

  When he didn’t reply, she took that as an end to their conversation and headed in the opposite direction.

  Greer stayed right on her heels. “Neville and I were talking…”

  She rolled her eyes.

  “…and we agreed it’s time to let your story about Holson go.”

  She spun around. “You and Neville, huh?”

  He crossed his arms, his cheeks puffed up like a rabid squirrel hoarding acorns. “That’s what I said.”

  “When?”

  His brows tangled together in a look of forced innocence.

  She tapped the pencil she carried against her empty mug. She could almost swear the ceramic warmed against her skin. “When did Neville say he wanted me to let it go?”

  “Does it matter? Go sniff out something new and fresh.”

  Annoyance bubbled in her veins as it had since Greer had landed his temporary promotion. Given the last few days, it didn’t take much about the subject of the Holson story to rub her the wrong way.

  “The story is there.” She felt it in her gut even if her only source had disappeared and her major efforts to keep digging had been shoved to the back burner.

  Greer shrugged. “If you want to threaten your job security—”

  “Excuse me?” A charge of energy clawed under her skin.

  In the distance a boom of thunder drew Greer’s attention to the bank of windows to his left. “Wasn’t it supposed to be warm and sunny all day?”

  “Did you just imply that you think you can fire me?”

  Triumph glittered in the man’s small eyes. “I’m one step away from making that editor’s desk mine permanently. I was merely suggesting that you think long and hard about making enemies with me.”

  She took a menacing step forward, refusing to be intimidated by a wannabe. Now demons—demons armed with daggers—they were intimidating. In the back of her mind, she registered the hard drops of rain slashing against the windows. From the corner of her eye a crack of lightning arced to the ground.

  “Maybe it’s you who shouldn’t make enemies with me.”

  A boom of thunder so loud it made the window panes rattle made Greer jump. His face flushed and she could feel the anger roll off him in turbulent waves.

  Her heart pounded faster, and the pulse under her skin thumped madly.

  “Watch your back,” Greer snapped and stalked away.

  She didn’t move until she heard someone mutter, “Weird.”

  Blair followed their gaze to the storm outside. A feeling of horror swept through her and she closed her eyes, dragged in a deep breath, only daring to look back at the window when the worst of the tension prickling her skin faded.

  Outside the dark clouds began breaking up and the rain tapered off.

  Operating on auto-pilot, she returned to her desk and dropped into her chair. She had listened to them yesterday. Had known it was a storm demon that had attacked her—changed her. She listened to the dynamics of how it worked, the dangers, but nothing really prepared a person for that.

  She’d been so distracted by learning of Braxton’s ability to read people’s thoughts it was possible she missed some important detail about her own situation. Like how to keep the sky from clouding over.

  Blair stared out the window. Before she was tempted to test herself, she turned back to her computer. This was the life she knew, what she needed to stay focused on. She might carry the same gene as Braxton and Drew, but she wasn’t like them, wasn’t cut out to lead the life they did.

  Right?

  When she’d agreed to grab a drink, Blair hadn’t expected for the evening to run so long. Neither had she expected Whitney to talk her into trying a new bar downtown. The crowd grew thicker by the minute as people got off work and joined their friends to usher in another Friday night.

  Whitney had dragged her up to the second floor where a dance floor was slowly filling with the first wave of people looking to unwind and have a good time. Blair preferred drinking and chatting downstairs where the music was a little lighter and she could still hear herself think. Promising herself just another half an hour, tops, she indulged her friend by ordering a second drink. She’d already decided to spend another night at Braxton’s before braving her own apartment. Her brother had invited her to stay as long as she needed, but she worried the longer she stayed away from her place, the harder it would be to go back.

  Seated across from her, Whitney took another sip of her drink. “God, I needed this.”

  Blair didn’t bother to admit that tonight drinks weren’t doing it for her.

  “He’s kind of cute.” Whitney pointed out a guy dancing hopelessly next to a trio of women. Judging by the way the women ignored his attempts to join their small ci
rcle, they weren’t interested in his company. The poor sap didn’t seem to take the hint though.

  “I’ll pass,” Blair said loud enough to be heard over the music. “But you can have him.”

  Whitney laughed and shook her head. “Things getting serious between you and the guy who works with your brother?”

  She shrugged, choosing to take a drink over answering the question. Maybe when she wasn’t dwelling on their feverish encounter the other day, followed not only by crying all over him, but nearly electrocuting him in the elevator, after which she’d emerged from her meeting with Braxton and Rae to find him long gone.

  The man pulled more disappearing acts than Houdini. One minute he seemed so into her, she couldn’t breathe without taking him in, blown away again and again by the fierce possession in his kiss, the soothing rumble of his voice. And in the next he pulled away, avoiding her, keeping her in the dark, and not just about the world she was fast becoming a part of—whether she wanted to or not.

  Everything about the man stimulated her, overwhelmed her—confused her. Right now, the last thing she needed was another story to unravel, more pieces of a puzzle she didn’t know where to begin to solve.

  “I’m about ready to call it a night too,” Whitney said, clearly paying attention to Blair’s lack of enthusiasm. “Can I borrow your cell phone for a minute? I forgot mine at work again.”

  “Sure.” Blair fished it out of her purse. “The battery is running low though.”

  She couldn’t imagine how Whitney could check her work messages with the music so loud. Her friend plugged one ear, her expression bordering on annoyed.

  “Something wrong?”

  “Just a message from Greer about moving a deadline up.”

  Having spent many a night at the office to deal with changing deadlines, Blair sympathized. Especially where Greer was concerned.

  Whitney finished her drink. “You ready to go?”

  Blair took one last sip of hers and followed Whitney into the thickening crowd. They were halfway down the stairs when Whitney cringed. “I didn’t hand your phone back, did I?”

  Blair realized she hadn’t, and Whitney started up the steps.