“Don’t you want to give me hell for what happened in the alley?”
“You wouldn’t have engaged the hostile unless it couldn’t be helped.” She could admit that much now that it was over.
“It couldn’t.”
She shrugged. “Then there’s nothing left to say on the subject.”
“You didn’t seem to think so a little while ago.”
A little time to come back from the edge and a glass of wine usually gave a girl some perspective. “What? Do you want to be punished?” She turned around, too absorbed in her own thoughts to realize how close he’d gotten.
The moment his eyes brightened with that trademark wicked glimmer, she hastened to add, “I can always have you write ‘I will not slay demons’ five hundred times on the board.”
“Sure you don’t want to rap my knuckles with a ruler a few times too?”
“Doubt it would help.”
He nodded solemnly. “I am rather incorrigible.”
“Been flipping through Darcy’s word-of-the-day calendar?”
He grinned.
Caught off guard by the urge to smile back at him, she carried some empty bottles around the bar instead. Parker grabbed the last few and followed her.
Behind the counter left roughly twenty square feet to move around. Plenty of space theoretically, so she really shouldn’t have collided with Parker.
She lifted her head to glare at him, but somewhere between his chest—the smooth layers of muscle she felt under her palm—and his mouth, she felt her annoyance give way beneath the warmth bunching in her stomach.
When she met his eyes—mistake one thousand and one—she couldn’t manage to blink, let alone glare.
She heard rather than felt his hand rise to touch her back, and although he’d made an annoying habit of invading her personal space at every opportunity, tonight she didn’t want him to move. Standing this close she could forget what that demon might have done to him and the unexpected fear that had snaked around her throat.
Forget that she’d been completely blindsided by how much she’d been lying to herself about how little she still cared about him.
“So there’s something you should know.”
The low rumble of Parker’s voice washed over her, and her gaze drifted down to his mouth. She’d been here before, thinking about kissing him, aching for it, pushed over the edge by some erotic promise he’d whispered against her ear.
“I looked at an apartment,” he said finally, stepping around her and depositing the last two empty bottles on the boxes behind her.
When she caught herself staring after him, she headed for the light switches, leaving behind her near lapse in judgment. And kissing him would have been a serious lapse. “What was that about me moving quickly?”
“Figured you’d be happy to get me out of the field office.”
“Not nearly as happy as if you’d request reassignment.” And she didn’t need to tell him why that was. He’d been there, had been so close to the edge, consumed with proving his mother couldn’t have killed his sister, that his obsession had nearly destroyed everything she’d loved about him.
She’d been there when he’d learned that his mother, who’d recently been initiated by a storm demon, had become tainted by the demon’s essence and killed her own daughter before taking her own life.
For weeks Parker had lived in denial, insisting his mother couldn’t have done it. If she hadn’t been there the day it happened, hadn’t gotten Adrian’s call that something was wrong only to arrive too late to prevent both deaths, he might have convinced her it was a lie too.
Just when she’d begun to convince herself the worst had passed, he became obsessed, insisting there had to be more to it. He went so far as tracking a Scion—a master demon—he claimed was involved, and even suggesting that the network was somehow involved in a cover-up.
Years before she’d fallen for Parker she’d been just as desperate to save someone else she loved, and not even the steep price she’d paid then had stopped her from trying to hold on to Parker. She’d been so determined to save him from himself she’d nearly been sucked down with him.
Twice in her life she’d been utterly powerless, and no matter how much Parker got to her, how intensely hot he made her with nothing more than a single scorching glance, she wouldn’t ever put herself in that kind of position again.
The first step in regaining control of her life had been getting as far away from her old life as possible and heading up a field office on the opposite side of the country, and she hadn’t looked back.
Rae flicked the light switches, knowing she’d find it easier to see in the dark than he would.
A muffled thump followed by a curse, made her grin.
“You coming?” she asked and instantly wanted to kick herself.
“Not nearly enough these days. Thanks for reminding me, though.”
He’d almost caught up to her by the time she reached the door. His hand closed over hers on the handle.
“Sorry,” he murmured, not sounding the least bit apologetic. “After you.”
She stepped outside, intentionally thinking about her boss’s arrival tomorrow.
He started down the sidewalk, then paused. “What? You’re not going to walk me home? Another hostile could be just waiting to jump me.”
“Good night, Parker.” She headed in the opposite direction—at least until he disappeared around the corner.
She made sure to stay far enough back, keeping him in sight as she stuck to the shadows.
That didn’t stop him from waving when he reached the office. “Night, Rae.”
Chapter Four
“There are more occurrences reported than I’d realized.”Rae paused in her office doorway. “Your e-mail said you weren’t arriving for another few hours, Adrian.”
Her boss turned from the wall of symbols they’d been recording for the last few weeks. “Caught a flight late last night.”
He walked toward her, his limp more pronounced than she remembered. They’d been communicating only through e-mails and phone calls for so long she wasn’t sure when they’d last seen each other. Close to two years, probably.
From the few stories that circulated among field agents, Adrian was lucky to have the use of his leg at all after a war demon had nearly severed it over a decade ago. Even with the reflexes and speed from the stealth demon that initiated him, it wasn’t enough to make returning to the field possible.
Working behind the scenes had agreed with Adrian for as long as she could remember. Considering how hard he rode all of the senior agents, herself included, she didn’t doubt he could still hold his own with a hostile if it came down to it.
He gave her a quick hug and she found herself hanging on just a bit longer than usual.
“Strawberry cheesecake,” she said before pulling back. “It’s barely seven in the morning and I now have a craving for strawberry cheesecake ice cream.”
Even before she’d become a Destroyer, Adrian had been a huge part of her life, helping to fill in the gaps left by the death of her cancer-ridden mother and workaholic father. Ice cream had been his solution for every childhood and teenage ailment.
“Which one of your agents managed that?” He gestured to the bruise already starting to fade from her cheek.
“Jordan.” After a night of tossing and turning, she’d come in this morning needing to work off her insomnia. Between the increasing number of hostiles on her turf, Parker’s indefinite stay and her inability to ignore her increasing need for him, sleep hadn’t been on her to-do list last night.
Sparring with Jordan always succeeded in forcing her to block everything out but her opponent. Jordan had been slaying demons on her own for a few years before being brought into the network by Gage. Although not as new to the team as Darcy, Jordan still seemed convinced she had to prove her worth to the rest, making her an unpredictable adversary.
Adrian turned back to the symbols. “I don’t recognize some
of these sites. Not all the other field offices are as diligent as you in keeping the network up to date.”
Rae’s gaze swept each occurrence of the symbol she’d found on the war demon’s dagger last night. “Still no match for it in the archives?”
“Seeing as those records date back a couple thousand years and many still in languages requiring extensive translation, our progress has been slow going.”
Although she’d been part of the Shadow Destroyer network for years and spent more than her share of time in the archives, she was just as intrigued by the shared history between humans and demons as ever.
Every initiated agent was briefed on the millennia-old blood feud between two ruling brothers. The dark magic the brothers possessed had ultimately ripped apart an entire civilization, turning half the population into emotion-hungry demons, while gifting the others with the ability to absorb an attacking demon’s essence.
Like every other Destroyer, Rae had inherited the same gene that made it possible to continue fighting the hostiles that escaped the prison realm they’d been banished too millennia ago.
She’d been hoping Adrian’s visit had also meant he’d found something important. Even when her field office had been infiltrated by a mole working to provide demons with network intel, Adrian hadn’t felt the need to visit personally.
Adrian turned away from the board. “We’ll get it figured out.”
“Before or after the hostiles find a way to use it against us, assuming they haven’t already?”
“You didn’t sleep well last night.” Fatherly accusation laced his observation.
“Rough night.” Her attention unconsciously slid to the open office door across from hers. Voices from down the hall, Parker’s in particular, distracted her. Adrian followed her gaze, though she doubted he could hear her team speculating about his arrival. She’d given them a heads-up yesterday, but even she hadn’t known the details surrounding his visit.
His graying brows knitted together. He backtracked a few steps and closed the door, though she wasn’t sure if it was to get her attention or because he knew her sound-proofed office would lower the odds of anyone accidently overhearing them.
“I know having Parker here hasn’t been easy—”
“When is he leaving?”
“I thought…” He sighed.
Suspicion settled in her chest. “Don’t tell me you were trying to play matchmaker when you assigned him here?”
“Of course not. I just thought giving you two a clean slate would do the both of you good.”
“It’s been six years, Adrian. And Parker and I made our peace with the way things ended.” If reading the letter he’d written and struggling not to fall apart was considered making peace.
“Has it really been that bad to have him around?”
“Bad enough.” Bad enough she couldn’t take a breath if he was close without remembering the smell of his skin. Bad enough the pain of the past was harder to cling to the few times she’d caught him watching her like he’d give anything to undo the damage.
“I didn’t do it to punish you.”
It was her turn to sigh. “I know.”
“I have one more assignment for you two and then I’ll reassign him to another field office, okay?”
She nodded slowly, her relief over Parker’s pending reassignment overshadowed by the worried expression on Adrian’s face. Right then she knew that whatever was coming wasn’t good.
“There are children missing, Rae.”
It took a moment for the implications to sink in, then another before nausea clamped down on her stomach. “It’s Lawrence, isn’t it?”
Adrian nodded and sat opposite her, suddenly looking every bit of his fifty-seven years. “Almost every day I ask myself what I could have done differently where he was concerned. I knew he was too smart to be content running lab results for the network when I was in the field. I should have done something…” He trailed off and the sick feeling in Rae’s stomach worsened.
“We have reason to believe he’s doing it again, Rae. He’s experimenting…”
She didn’t hear what came next. The whirl of machines, the beeping of monitoring equipment, the sound of footsteps echoing in the hall…
Rae squeezed her eyes shut, suspecting where Adrian was going with all this and not liking any of it. “You want me to find him.”
“There are already at least seven kids missing. Maybe more.” He paused. “I thought about sending someone else.”
“No. We both know it needs to be me. He’ll just go deeper underground otherwise.”
“The original experiments were classified, but I’m giving you permission to fill your team in on what they need to know to locate him. It’s your decision, of course, whether to disclose everything, but I’m inclined to order you not to if you’re concerned they’ll question your judgment.”
They both knew other agents and higher-ups had questioned far more than her judgment when she’d first joined the network.
“Do you?”
Adrian’s expression softened. “I’ve known you since you were a little girl, fascinated by your father’s sword. I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t think you could handle it.”
“Realism replaced fascination as soon as I found out the bogeyman was real.”
“Are you talking about Shadow Demons or Lawrence?”
Unwilling to dredge up any more of the past than necessary, she countered with, “How long have you known about the experiments?”
“I had my suspicions when the first child disappeared, and then another, but wanted to be certain before I came to you. I want you and Parker to head up the search to find Lawrence and those kids.”
She didn’t need to ask why he’d chosen Parker. Adrian knew his profiling skills could be beneficial in finding Lawrence. At least now she knew why he’d extended Parker’s assignment.
“I know that your history might make it more challenging to work closely on this, but if it’s going to cause any problems, I need to know now.”
“It won’t.” If she couldn’t leave her personal feelings out of it to deal with Parker, how could she be trusted to find Lawrence?
Parker leaned back in his chair, ignoring the report he’d typed up earlier on last night’s telepath demon. He’d planned on delivering a hardcopy of it to Rae first thing this morning, but had found himself dragging his heels.
He should have kissed her. In the bar after closing, he should have started at her bottom lip, drawing it between his and sucking softly. And when she made that breathless sound that he always felt more than heard, he should have opened his mouth over hers.
She wouldn’t have told him to stop, wouldn’t have stopped him when the kiss became less about indulging a brief taste and more about satisfying the need that burned so close to the surface.
He might have even gotten her up on the edge of the bar where he could have worked her pants off and started the whole process over again, much, much lower.
“Parker!”
Yanked from his thoughts, he straightened in his chair.
“Dial it down, buddy.” Darcy tapped her temple. “At least go with the PG version if you feel compelled to think so hard.”
Jesus. “Sorry.”
Sorry he couldn’t keep his mind off Rae, and even sorrier he’d had to stop a promising fantasy right there. Because fantasies were all he was getting lately, reminding him all over again that he shouldn’t have backed off last night.
“Don’t worry about it.” Darcy went back to sketching in her notebook.
No one else had joined them in the briefing room yet, leaving them both to their own devices. At least Darcy’s was productive.
He cocked his head, studied the drawing she was working on. “You draw that a lot.”
She picked up the pad, self-consciously tucking a strand of brown hair behind her ear. “Something about it just…” She shrugged. “I guess it’s kind of creepy that one of their symbols sticks with me.”
<
br /> “Um, yeah,” Drew agreed, slipping into the chair next to her and leaning back to plant his feet on the table.
Darcy punched him.
Rubbing his shoulder in exaggerated pain, he nodded to Parker. “It didn’t work last night, did it?”
Darcy frowned, then, “Oh, the tracker.”
“Hey,” Drew growled.
She shrugged. “It’s not my fault you guys don’t guard your thoughts very well when you’re getting some, or thinking about it, anyway.”
Drew paled, his feet dropping back to the floor. “Braxton hasn’t ever mentioned that happens.”
Parker laughed. “You’re sleeping with his sister. My guess is he stays out of your head whenever possible.”
Times like this, Parker was grateful he’d been initiated by a lust demon. He wouldn’t want to have to worry about other people’s thoughts crowding his mind—his own were enough to deal with—or learning to filter through his senses so the sound of the toilet flushing at the other end of the hall didn’t drive him crazy.
“Speak of the devil.” Drew leaned back in his chair, a little less relaxed than moments ago as Braxton joined them. “Your tracker almost got Parker’s ass handed to him last night.”
The team’s second in command frowned. “That’s not good.”
Drew’s mouth fell open. “That’s it? I’ve been complaining about mine for, I dunno, ever, and you always give me grief for roughing them up. And last time I checked, demon slaying was a contact sport.”
Frowning, Braxton stared off into space. “Yeah, well, Parker isn’t making contact the way you do, so there’s got to be another explanation.”
“They suck?” Drew provided.
Parker shook his head. “It’s not just us. The other field offices are having the same trouble we are. It’s like they just don’t work well anymore.”
Darcy shaded in part of the symbol on her paper.
“How long have we been seeing it regularly?” Parker asked.
Braxton shrugged. “Drew and Quinn came across it for the first time a couple months ago. At least we thought it was the first time. When we went back through our files looking for it in pictures of past sacrifice scenes we’ve photographed, a few more instances popped up.”
Dark Obsession Page 4
