“Yep.”
Goddess. He didn’t sign up with SPECTR after getting out of school because he wanted to kill NHEs. It was just an unfortunate side effect of the job, like destroying aggressive bears could be a painful duty of wildlife officers. The NHEs just acted according to their natures, but letting them go meant they’d only do it to someone else again down the line.
Bad enough to find out maybe it wasn’t really their nature, just a distorted version of it created through interactions with humans. But to think the one consolation he’d had, that they’d been humanely euthanized, wasn’t even true...
“They were trapped,” he said numbly. “In the bottles. Still are. Year after year, hungry and afraid and...”
“Hey.” Caleb’s hand tightened on his shoulder. “Maybe it’s not as bad as you’re making it out. Gray got staked or locked in coffins plenty of times. He waited it out until the corpse fell apart, no problem. Sure a human would go crazy, but these guys aren’t human.”
“They aren’t Gray, either.” He wanted to believe Caleb, but he couldn’t know one way or another.
“It’s not your fault. You didn’t know.” Caleb stepped in front of him and brushed a lock of hair back from John’s face. “You haven’t done anything wrong.”
“I guess not.” But it felt as if he had. As if he’d been complicit in torture.
“The point is,” Tiffany said, “SPECTR has warehoused NHEs for who knows how long. Years. Just storing them, although I guess Forsyth probably grabbed a few for his experiments at RD. And now he’s actually moving enough of them to qualify as shipments?”
Devon nodded. “According to what Renée said. When you told her Forsyth was building an army...”
“RD was a trial run. Phase One,” Caleb said. He let go of John’s shoulder and folded his arms over his chest, leather coat creaking. “Now we’re on to Phase Two?”
Not good, especially when combined with the kidnappings. “Shit.”
“My sentiments exactly,” Tiffany said. “Where did he send the bottled NHEs?”
Devon shook his head. “Renée didn’t know. She was trying to find out.”
“Fuck.” Tiffany rubbed at her eyes. “We need to find out, and fast. Whatever Forsyth is up to, we’ve got to put the brakes on it somehow.”
“And get back the people he’s kidnapped,” John added. How did things go so wrong? SPECTR warehousing dangerous NHEs? An assistant director building an army of the possessed? Kidnapping children? “But how? I’m pretty sure they revoked our access by now, and we can’t exactly stroll in and ask to see the records.”
There came a long moment of silence. Then Caleb cleared his throat. “We know someone whose clearance isn’t revoked. Someone who might know what Forsyth is up to, and where.”
“Who?”
“Sean.”
* * *
John waited for Caleb to laugh and say he’d meant it as a stupid joke. Just a way of breaking the tension. Because he couldn’t possibly be serious.
“Huh,” Tiffany said. “It’s an idea.”
“The hell?” John’s voice stuck behind something in his throat, something with razors, which cut through memory down to bone. “You...I can’t believe you’d even suggest it!”
Caleb shifted uncomfortably. “Sean—”
“Don’t speak his name to me!” John clenched his fists; his breath came hard, as if he’d just come back from his morning run.
“Not like I want to give the fucker another chance to stab us in the back,” Tiffany said, “but maybe we ought to hear what Caleb has to say.”
Caleb gazed at him pleadingly. “John, just listen, okay? Sean was working with Forsyth. How deep in he was, I don’t know. But he might have the information we need. If he does, we know where to find him, right?”
“Assuming he survived the firefight at RD,” Tiffany said. “And Forsyth hasn’t decided to volunteer him for demon-hosting duty.”
John’s body felt numb, distant. He’d last glimpsed Sean in the chaos of the assault on RD with demons bearing down on them. Maybe Sean didn’t make it out.
Was that what he wanted? For Sean to have died?
“He’s an exorcist—he can’t be possessed against his will.” John forced the words out, willing them to sound reasonable. Calm. “Let’s say, for the sake of argument, he’s alive and back at his apartment. He can’t be trusted. Anything he told us would just be a lie.”
Just like their whole friendship had been a lie.
Caleb flung out his arms in frustration. “Then we’ll beat it out of him! Fuck, I don’t know! Can’t we at least try?”
“Don’t you understand?” The thin film of calm cracked over John’s voice, exposing the raw edges underneath. “Sean killed you once already! I’m not going to give him another chance to finish the job.”
He swayed for a moment, trying not to see the image of Caleb lying on the floor, blood pooling under his head, his one visible eye staring blankly at nothing. Rivulets of scarlet tracing his pale skin, seeping across slightly parted lips. A tangle of hair and gore.
“Fuck this,” John said, and pushed past Caleb to the door. Tiffany called after him, but he didn’t care. She couldn’t ask this of him. She didn’t have the right.
He ducked into his and Caleb’s room and slammed the door. It didn’t make him feel any better. The bed protested when he sat on its edge. He buried his face in his hands, pressing his fingers against his eyelids. But the bright blooms of color just shaped themselves into Caleb’s dead body again, so he dropped his hands onto his knees.
The door opened and shut quietly. The leather of Caleb’s coat creaked as he took it off and dropped it onto a chair, but John didn’t look in his direction. Just stared at the floor and tried not to think.
“Hey.” Caleb sat by him, the bed dipping under his weight. “Are you okay?”
John swallowed. “I thought I’d lost you.” The words sounded rusty, as if he hadn’t spoken in years. “For hours. I thought you were dead, and Gray...I hoped Sean was wrong. I prayed Gray never gave me a second thought and would just go on his way, instead of trying to save me.” A drop of hot liquid hit the back of one hand, and he blinked rapidly, the tears sliding down his face.
“Shit.” Caleb wrapped his arms around John’s shoulders, pulling him close. Etheric energy whispered around them, not quite manifested, but just beneath Caleb’s skin. “I’m sorry. We’re sorry.”
John shook his head, but didn’t raise his face from where it pressed against Caleb’s shoulder. “You d-don’t have anything to apologize for.”
Energy crackled around them. “I healed Caleb as quickly as I could,” Gray said, his voice a distressed rumble. “It had been too long since we last fed, and I could do no better.”
“It’s not your fault.” John pulled away and wiped angrily at his eyes. “Not anyone’s fault but Forsyth’s and Sean’s.”
“Look, Sean’s not my favorite person,” Caleb said. He and Gray had gotten as good at switching off in conversation as they were in battle. “And I guess I knew what he put you through, but I didn’t really think about it. About how much it must have hurt you.”
John swallowed convulsively. He didn’t want to make Caleb feel bad, but he owed his lovers honesty. “It was the worst thing ever. Knowing one of the men I love was dead. Hoping the other didn’t love me in return so I couldn’t be used as bait. I can’t go through that again, Caleb. I can’t.”
“Oh, sweetheart.” Caleb embraced him again, arms tight and warm. Alive. “I hate Sean for doing that to you. I’d like to beat the shit out of him, and Gray would be happy to just rip his head off and be done with it. But this is bigger than the three of us. If there’s a chance, even a small one, Sean might be able to tell us where Forsyth is shipping the spirit bottles, don’t we have to take it?”
He’d never imagined Caleb would be the one lecturing him about responsibility, instead of the other way around. “I suppose.” He hated it, hated even the thought of la
ying eyes on Sean again. But Caleb was right. He couldn’t let his feelings cloud his judgment.
“At least this time we’re getting the drop on him.” Caleb rubbed a soothing circle on John’s back. “We know he’s a lying son of a bitch. He can’t trick us again.”
“Yeah.” John sighed. Why hadn’t he seen Sean’s true colors a long time ago? “I’ve been wrong about everything, haven’t I? SPECTR. Sean. Fuck, even Tiffany isn’t who I thought she was.”
“But you weren’t wrong about Gray.” Caleb leaned in and brushed his lips across John’s. “Or me.”
Chapter 8
John returned the kiss, not as a soft touch of lips, but hungry and desperate. Caleb tasted the saltiness of tears, and when he thought of Sean the scorching heat behind his breastbone flared.
Sure, John had been upset the night they’d rescued him from RD. Bewildered and glad to see Caleb alive against the odds. But up until now John had held it together. And done it so well, Caleb never realized just how badly Sean’s betrayal had messed with him.
No, not Sean’s betrayal. Sure that was a big part of it, but it was Caleb’s apparent death that had really fucked him up.
Caleb remembered washing the dried blood off in a Vigilant safe house. Picking a bone fragment out of his hair, and nearly throwing up. Sure, Gray had regrown it, but pulling bits of his own skull out of his hair had been disturbing on a level he could barely articulate.
What had John seen, looking down on what he thought was Caleb’s corpse? It hadn’t been clean and pretty like in the movies, for damned sure. More like the sort of thing that resulted in years of therapy.
“I’m sorry,” Caleb whispered against John’s lips. Was there anything he could say, do, to make it better? “But it’s okay. I’m here. We’re here.”
John drew back, pupils wide, darkening his blue eyes. His hands threaded through Caleb’s long hair, gripping it, and their legs pressed together. “I can’t lose you,” he said, voice hoarse and vulnerable. “How can you ask me to risk it again?”
“Because you know we don’t have a choice.”
Silence. And he knew everything John was thinking, because he knew the man so damn well, better than he’d ever known anyone in his life with the obvious exception of Gray. Forsyth had kidnapped children for Christ’s sake, and the risk to him and Gray and everyone else meant nothing compared to that.
John closed his eyes, as if he couldn’t bear to look at Caleb. “I know,” he whispered raggedly. “I know. But I’m so scared.”
“Yeah. I get that.” Caleb leaned in, until their lips almost touched. “I’m not going to let Sean take me away from you, hear me? I won’t allow it. Gray won’t.”
John’s mouth pressed almost painfully hard on his, crushing Caleb’s lips against his teeth. Their tongues swirled, but Caleb let John take charge of the kiss, wanting to give his lover whatever it was he needed. If this would help erase some of the fear, Caleb would do it. He’d do anything for John.
“As would I.”
John peeled Caleb’s shirt off and tossed it aside, running his hands hungrily over Caleb’s skin. Caleb bore a few small scars from the time before Gray, which Gray never bothered to alter, but no evidence remained to show he’d been shot, stabbed, and mauled a dozen times over.
John slid from his chest down, pausing to impatiently unbuckle Caleb’s belt. Caleb leaned back on the bed, propping himself up on his arms to watch John pull off the remainder of his clothing. He was half-hard already, and the touch of John’s fingers on his thighs rippled pleasure through him and Gray alike, intensifying the sensation and sending his cock to full attention.
John kissed and stroked all the way down Caleb’s legs to his toes, before wandering back up the same path. Caleb parted his thighs suggestively and was rewarded with a low chuckle and John’s mouth on his balls. Caleb closed his eyes, back arching, letting the sensation flow over him as John sucked and rolled first one, then the other.
“Tell me what you need, sweetheart,” he begged. “Anything. We’ll do it for you.” And thank God he didn’t have to worry about his pronouns slipping anymore.
A long, slow lick up his cock that almost had him arching off the bed. “I want you,” John growled into Caleb’s thigh.
“I’m all yours. However you like.”
“I want to see your face while I fuck you.”
“You won’t get any argument here.” Caleb drew up his knees eagerly. Gray hummed just under his skin, a delicious whisper of additional anticipation.
John climbed off the bed to rummage through their luggage. “Damn it, I know we bought lube.”
Caleb grabbed one of the pillows from the head of the bed and stuffed it under his hips to make things easier. “We did. Check my backpack.”
A few seconds later there came the familiar pop of the cap. John’s fingers pressed against Caleb’s sphincter, and he breathed deeply, relaxing to the intrusion. God, this was so much better than what he’d experienced with any other lover. He’d had a string of one-night or near one-night stands, never daring to let things go on too long for fear the other guy would figure out he was paranormally-abled. Fun sure, but John had the benefit of knowing just what buttons to push, playing Caleb’s body like a well-known instrument.
John took up position between Caleb’s legs. A little shiver of excitement from Gray raced through them both, just before John pushed in.
Caleb moaned, reveling in the sensation of John penetrating him. John shifted, his hands sliding to grip Caleb’s hips. “Look at me,” he whispered.
Caleb locked his gaze with John’s, a soft grunt escaping his lips with every thrust. John’s eyes glowed like neon in his amped-up vision, so fucking gorgeous he’d never be able to capture their shade in paint no matter how hard he tried.
“I won’t lose you,” John gasped. “Not to Sean. Not to anyone.”
Caleb wrapped his hand around his aching dick and tugged in time to John’s strokes. “We aren’t going anywhere,” he managed to say, his brain scrambling to remain coherent as the head of John’s cock found his prostate. “Yes! Damn, I love this. I love you.”
John’s thrusts became more urgent, his lips parted with need. “Love you, babe. Love you, love you both, please—”
Whatever he pleaded for became lost in an inarticulate cry, hips snapping forward sharply as he came deep inside Caleb. Caleb rode the edge for a few seconds more, wringing every possible moment of ecstasy out of it, before coming hard all over his hand and stomach.
John braced himself above Caleb, head bowed as he panted from exertion. As their breathing slowed, Caleb wordlessly held out his arms. John slid into his embrace, bodies twining together atop the ugly motel comforter.
Caleb pressed his lips into John’s forehead. “Feel any better?”
“Sex with you always makes me feel better.” John nuzzled him. “Every time I think this situation is too crazy to handle, you and Gray pull me back from the edge.”
“One of the many fine services we provide.”
John’s chuckle tickled against the skin of his neck. “Yeah. I’m not happy about it, but I trust you two. Just...don’t take any unnecessary chances, okay?”
Caleb suspected their definitions of unnecessary wouldn’t exactly mesh. But this probably wasn’t the time to bring it up. “Okay,” he agreed, tightening his grip on John. And hoping they wouldn’t have to put it to the test.
* * *
“I don’t like this,” John says.
They stand in a small courtyard, open to the street only via a narrow slot barely the width of a car. Brick walls close in on three sides, and smooth concrete on the other. Vines creep up the walls, and moss makes a brilliant splash of green against the red bricks.
Gray tips back his head, inhaling deeply. Before Caleb, he only perceived the scent of demons. He never realized each city, each place, had its own unique aroma. Charleston smells of the ocean, mingled with old, damp brick, green trees, and the occasional whiff of horse du
ng. Different from the other places they have traveled the last several days. He wonders what the other cities he hunted in smelled like.
“But I suppose the fact you’re already manifesting means we’re going through with it anyway.” John folds his arms across his chest, blue eyes narrowed in Gray’s direction.
“God, quit bitching, Starkweather.” Tiffany scans the surroundings, her eyes wary. Her sire had left before dawn, no doubt following whatever orders she gave him. She did not speak of it, and neither John nor Caleb asked, although Caleb at least was curious. “It makes sense to have someone waiting in Sean’s apartment, and unless you can scale a brick wall, it’s got to be the drakul. Now, when Sean shows up, do you want to keep a bead on the front door or the side one here?”
“Side,” he mutters. Unhappy.
Gray does not particularly wish to see the treacherous mortal Sean again. But John’s distress is more complicated, in a way he does not entirely understand.
“Remember when you thought John meant to put you in a bottle and let you be killed?”
Of course.
“You didn’t stop loving him, though, did you? John’s been friends with Sean for a long time. He can’t just turn off those feelings.”
I see. And he did, at least a bit. But John is also upset because Sean attempted to kill you. Sean did not succeed. Why does John insist on dwelling upon it?
“Because that’s how people work.”
It makes no sense, why mortals torment themselves over things that might have been, but are not. Will he ever understand them?
“We don’t even understand ourselves. Now let’s get a move on before Sean comes back. Assuming he’s coming back, anyway.”
“Caleb says we must go,” Gray tells John.
John’s lips tighten, but he nods. “Okay. Once you get up there, stop manifesting. Sean will sense you long before he reaches the apartment, otherwise.”
Gray nods. “I understand.” He starts for the building Sean lives in, but John grabs his hand.
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