Strife: Hidden Book Four

by Colleen Vanderlinden

  Levitt was cooking four steaks that were large enough to fill a plate each, and there was boxed macaroni and cheese already sitting ready in another pot.

  “Did you want to eat? I can put another steak on,” Levitt asked us, and I shook my head, as did E. We exchanged a look.

  “Don’t leave the dishes the way you did last time,” E said.

  “The imps had no problem doing them,” Heph said.

  “The imps are not our maids,” I said, crossing my arms.

  “We should get paper plates next time we go to the store,” Levitt said to Heph, and Heph nodded his agreement. E rolled her eyes and headed up to the room she was staying in, across from mine. Levitt and Heph shared the other bedroom, which had once been my office, but now held two twin beds and a couple of dressers, as well as a large-screen TV that Heph found in the garbage and fixed. I really didn’t want to know what the demon and the immortal watched on it.

  Shanti had a special room in a corner of the basement, which Heph and Levitt had built. It was actually really nice: finished walls painted a soothing green (Shanti’s favorite color), laminate floors. There was a television in there too, and a clock radio. No windows. The dogs adored Shanti, and if she was around, both Kurt and Courtney could usually be found sleeping outside her bedroom door until she woke up. It was only partially because she brought them treats every time she came home.

  I left the kitchen, headed up to my room and closed the door. I flopped down onto my bed, stared up at the ceiling for a while. I loved my room: quiet, peaceful. All of my vintage McCoy planters were lined up on a plant stand and a couple were on each nightstand. I’d replaced the succulents in a few of them, but for the most part, they still sat empty. As I laid there, I let myself think about my Brennan mess. I let my heart ache, because I was starting to recognize that keeping everything bottled up took a lot of effort and energy I didn’t have. Unfortunately, letting myself feel also excited the darkness in me, made it harder to hang on to control.

  I’d hurt Brennan. And he was right about so many things, the biggest of which was that I did just run into situations without thinking. I hadn’t thought about Brennan until they’d told me he’d been taken. Didn’t give him a thought when time came to close the gate. Of course, after that, I’d thought about him a lot.

  What the hell was wrong with me? Why couldn’t I just be a normal person? Why did I have to go looking for trouble all the time?

  I thought he was being a little selfish too, though. How many times, how many ways could I possibly say “hey, this thing in me wants to kill you and it puts me in agony every time you’re around?” But no. All he saw was that I was avoiding him and not Nain. Never mind the fact that Nain and I were doing what I thought of as an exceptionally good job of being professional and mature with one another, considering. He was being well behaved, and I appreciated the fact that I didn’t have to constantly be on guard when we needed to work together on something. He was still crude and impatient. Still bossy as hell. But he took orders as well as he gave them and he’d stopped talking about anything other than work stuff with me for the most part. It made my life easier, in at least one small way. I still felt the usual from him: hunger, desire, ever-present demonic rage. But even that was comforting in its way; at least it hadn’t changed.

  My phone buzzed, and I dug it out of my pocket, hoping and not hoping that it was Brennan. It wasn’t. It was a text from Chief Jones.

  Hey Angel. Coffee tomorrow morning ok? Nain said to check w/you.

  Oh, this could be good. Hopefully the chief’s reports had turned something up.

  I texted him back that coffee was fine. We agreed to meet at Farmer’s Restaurant in Eastern Market. On a Wednesday morning, we could count on it not being crazy busy, and it was close to where all three of us lived.

  I considered sleep; changed my mind. I got up instead, opened my window and flew out into the night. There was always someone I could be helping, and I owed it to them to be out there whenever I could be.

  Chapter Two

  I drove to Eastern Market. Parking was easy, mid-week. The market was closed and we’d missed the early morning coffee and breakfast rush. I parked, then walked the short distance to the restaurant to meet with Jones and Nain. I looked fully human for once: no glowing eyes, no wings. Enchantments were damn useful sometimes. I’d forced myself to put on something other than my usual all black. Jeans and a soft gray sweater that Ada had given me, altered to accommodate my wings. Black leather boots from Shanti, who I now knew had a bit of a shoe obsession. E had approved saying that I didn’t look like a corpse. Ah, friends.

  I walked into the restaurant, and it was like deja vu. I’d done this same dance the day after I’d met Nain, come to this same restaurant to meet him. I could clearly remember, like it was yesterday, standing in that exact spot, scanning the restaurant to see if he’d already arrived. And, just as before, he caught my eye, stood when he saw me.

  I gestured toward the waitress that was coming to seat me that I was meeting someone, and she smiled, nodded. I reached the table and looked up at my ex-husband.

  It should be illegal for your ex to look that good. He was wearing jeans and a dark blue button-down, sleeves rolled up, giving a nice glimpse of his muscled forearms.

  Remember what an asshole he is. Remember what an asshole he is. Don’t look at his eyes. Whatever you do, for the love of Hades, don’t look at his hands. Reminders on auto-loop, trying to make myself focus on what I needed to.

  Freaking nostalgia, messing with my head.

  “Molls,” he said in greeting.

  “Hey,” I said, shrugging my coat off.

  “Jones said he’s bringing his daughter,” Nain said, and I nodded. I sat on one side of the booth, scooted toward the wall, and Nain followed, sitting beside me, leaving the other side of the table open for the chief and his daughter. The booth felt tiny all of a sudden, and I took a deep breath. The waitress came over and I ordered a coffee. She brought it, refilled Nain’s already-empty cup.

  “Memories, huh?” he asked after a while.

  “Yeah,” I said.

  “You’re not gonna blast my ass across the overpass when we leave like you did last time, are you?” he asked.

  I smiled a little. “Just don’t piss me off, and you won’t have to worry about it.”

  We sat in awkward silence for a few minutes, and I stared at my menu without seeing it.

  “Any improvement with what’s going on with you?” he asked after a while, mercifully changing the subject. As much as I hated this one, it was better than taking a little side-trip down memory lane.

  “No. I’m still blacking out. So far, I’m not doing any damage when it happens, but it scares the hell out of me.”

  “You seemed to be in control yesterday,” he said.

  “Barely. It was raging. By the time I got home I was completely exhausted. I could absolutely kill you for making me do that.”

  “I know. Think about it, though. How are you going to learn to control it if you stay away from your biggest trigger?”

  I didn’t answer. I wondered how much he knew about what had happened the day before. “We broke up,” I said, not even really knowing why I was telling him that.

  “I know. He told me.”

  “So I think hanging out with him is kind of out of the question right now. It’s probably for the best.”

  “Either way, you can’t keep hiding from the shit that scares you. And it can be him, or me, or whatever else is out there that makes you want to run away. But you’re giving up control by letting your fear win.”

  “You sound like my father,” I muttered. “And what happens if I lose control and kill him or someone else in the process of trying to control myself? Do you see what I’m saying?”

  “Yeah. I see what you’re saying and I call bullshit. You’re a strong woman, Molly. When, in your entire life, have you ever tucked your tail between your legs and ran? If you’re so worried, don’t be alon
e with him.”

  “In your totally objective opinion,” I muttered. “Let’s just drop it.”

  He didn’t answer. Then: “where the fuck is Jones already?”

  Finally, the chief and his daughter arrived. They both sat, and Jones began the introductions. “Angel, this is my daughter, Jamie,” he said, and I reached across and shook her hand. She smiled at me. Very pretty, tall, thin. Her hair was cut close to her head, dyed bright pink. Diamond stud in her nose, bright against her warm milk chocolate skin. She wore jeans, a black t-shirt that claimed “rock is dead.” Scruffy old Chucks on her feet. Strong as hell, too, like her father.

  I smiled back at her. “Nice to meet you,” I said. They got settled, and we all ordered. “So aside from wanting to spend more time with my lovely daughter,” Jones said, getting down to business, “the reason Jamie is here is because even though I tried to get her to take the straight and narrow path her old man took, joining the force, she likes to do things the way you-all do them.”

  “The effective way, you mean?” Nain asked, and Jamie laughed.

  “The vigilante way,” Jones said.

  “Effective. Right,” Nain said, and the chief shook his head.

  “Anyway. She’s been working with the coalition of shifters that formed when the Angel was in charge of things,” Jones said.

  “That was really more Brennan’s doing than mine,” I said.

  “Brennan organized it. I know I joined up because I wanted to help you, though,” Jamie said, looking at me. “You’re a damn legend. I can’t even believe I’m sitting here with you.”

  “She’s looked up to you since she was fifteen,” Jones said, shaking his head, almost apologetically.

  “Obviously,” she said. Then Jamie leaned on the table, eyes on me. “You probably don’t remember this, but you saved this girl and her boyfriend from a pack of weres a few years back. They were parked on Belle Isle during the full moon, which was freaking stupid.”

  I thought back. Nodded, slowly. “I remember that. Once they were safe all the girl did was beg me not to tell her mother.”

  Jones and Nain laughed, and so did Jamie. “Right! That was my cousin, Amari. You never did tell her mama, either. But she told me about it and swore it was the Angel, and her boyfriend did, too. And I already wanted to be you, but that sealed it.”

  I met her eyes. “You don’t want to be me,” I said softly. “Trust me.”

  Nain pressed his knee against mine under the table, a brief touch that comforted me more than I would have expected it to.

  “Maybe not. But I know I want to do the right thing. I know I want to fight for those who can’t. I know I want to be of use,” Jamie said, still holding my gaze. Strong. I felt for her. She believed wholeheartedly in it. Dedication, stubbornness. I nodded.

  “Those are good reasons,” I said, and she smiled.

  We ate for a few minutes, chatting about general stuff, a stop Jones had made the night before. Voices low, in our little corner of the restaurant, so the Normals wouldn’t hear.

  Once we finished eating, we all had a refill on our coffee. “I pulled those reports you wanted,” the chief said to me, and I nodded. He handed a folder of papers over to me, and I flipped it open, Nain leaning over to see as well.

  “I think we may have a couple of solid leads. The area around Seven and Kelly is a damned war zone lately,” he said.

  I nodded. “My father was working in that neighborhood last night, for the same reason.” Anxiety from he chief, the same as it was every time I mentioned one of the immortals. That was not a revelation that had sat well with our friendly local police chief. “And it would almost make sense. I took out her old team in that area.”

  “Do you really think she’d stay then?” Nain asked, and I shrugged.

  “Besides that, we’ve had an increase in weirdness downtown, which is bad for many reasons.”

  “What kind of weirdness?” I asked him.

  He looked thoughtful. “Nothing we can even put an official report in about, really. People getting scared all of a sudden. Cases of mass panic. We had to go down to one of those big offices yesterday because everyone in it was just totally freaking out, terrified, and none of them knew why. It’s the damnedest thing I’ve ever seen.”

  “That would be Terror, I guess,” I said. “Are you seeing that anywhere else?”

  He shook his head. “Not yet, anyway.”

  “How long has that been going on?” I asked.

  “That’s just the last two weeks. Quiet before that,” the Chief said. “The mess in the Seven and Kelly area has been going on a lot longer. Over a year and a half, at least.”

  I looked over the report. It listed the address, the crime, the number of victims. Lots of assault, way too many murders in that neighborhood. The thing was, that was often considered the deadliest zip code in the state already, so in some ways the violence could just be an escalation of what was already happening. The downtown craziness was totally new, and unheard of. Downtown was generally one of the safest places in the city to be.

  “Where do you want to start, Molls?” Nain asked, looking over the report with me.

  “Seven and Kelly is a bigger mess,” I said, and he nodded in agreement. “Even if she’s not there, this shit has to stop and my team isn’t enough.”

  I sensed anxiety from the chief, and I looked up at him. “What’s wrong?” I asked him.

  “Those are just the official reports. It gets worse, Angel.”

  I took a deep breath. The thing inside me was quiet for the moment, which was a relief. But I had the creepy feeling that it wasn’t because it was calm, as much as because it was listening.

  Holy crap was I getting paranoid or what?

  “Okay. Let’s have it, then.”

  The chief met my eyes, then Nain’s. “Wondering if maybe you already noticed this. Have you seen more violence between supers lately?”

  “Yeah,” we answered, in unison. Something we’d talked about briefly in between saving people and trying to figure out where Strife was.

  “Yeah,” the chief echoed. “Us too. The shifter team that Jamie is on noticed the same thing.”

  “It seems organized,” Jamie said, and I glanced over at her. I’d had the same thought, but had dismissed it as my usual paranoia.

  “It’s not just me then,” I said. “They’re working in teams, it almost seems like.”

  “Right,” she said, nodding. “We’re used to seeing groups of banished shifters, or weres, or warlocks or whatever.”

  “Yeah. Always sticking to their own kind,” I said. “But now I keep hearing about groups of mixed supers causing trouble. Weres and shifters working together.”

  “Unheard of, right? Other than your team, I mean,” she said, and Nain and I nodded. Supernaturals are not very trusting in general. They tend to stick with their own kind, and avoid Normals as much as possible. Not because Normals are a physical danger to them, exactly, but more because we’re all doing our best to keep our presence a secret. If the Normals knew for a fact that we walked among them, it would be panic and chaos. Of course, there were rumors. People who swore up and down that they’d seen a man change into a wolf, or a red demon in the streets. People who swore they saw a woman with glowing eyes at the scene of a massacre or two. But nothing could ever be proven and we did our best to make damn sure it stayed that way. During the war between the immortals, when chaos had spilled over into my realm, there were some supers who decided to stop hiding what they were. It kind of became Jones’ and Nain’s main duty to find them and get them under control however they could.

  If they were organizing in groups, that was bad. And the new groups we were seeing weren’t helping old ladies cross the street or cleaning up litter. They were fighting other supers.

  I flipped to the final packet of papers in the chief’s report. Incidents, over the past week, of supernaturals being attacked in their homes or out on the streets.

  “If they’re really
organizing, this is going to be a fucking mess,” Nain said, voice low. He was still scanning the report. We’d been on several calls ourselves, with the same general attributes.

  “Why, though?” I asked.

  Jones shrugged. “Maybe they saw a taste of what they can do during the chaos we had here.”

  “Could Strife be doing this?” Nain asked me.

  “Maybe. I mean, we know for a fact she can affect us, because of what she did to Sean.” Brennan’s infant son, who she’d had one of her witches put a spell on so he’d cause problems between members of our team. “It’s possible.”

  “If she’s using supers, then we have a whole new shitstorm to deal with,” Nain said.

  “Yeah.”

  Jones took a deep breath, shook his head a little. Worry, anger, irritation radiated from him. “So what are you going to do about this?” he said, looking directly at me. I felt Nain tense beside me, anger coming off of him in waves. He did not like it when other men had an attitude with me. That was his job, mostly.

  Relax, I thought at him.

  He didn’t answer, but I did feel his anger draw down just a little, though he continued to glare at Jones.

  “If they’re organizing then we need to be more organized, too. We’ve got a good start. Most of the supers who aren’t out there causing trouble know to check with Nain or I before they do something. They come to us first, which is the way I wanted it.”

  Jones nodded.

  “Proof that you’re a hell of a lot smarter than me,” Nain muttered beside me.

  I shook my head. “And the shifter coalition also reports to me or Brennan, which has been a huge help. I think we need to work even more closely together. If we had, we would have figured this out right away, instead of just really coming to the realization now. We need to be more unified in this, especially if Strife is involved.”

  “So what’s our next move?” Jones asked.

  “Time for me to go meet with our new vampire queen.”

  Nain and Jones both stared at me. “We’ve tried that,” Nain said.

  “She’s really private,” Jones said, agreeing.