by Larissa Ione
“If you change your mind,” Shade said, “we’d like you back.”
Con swallowed. For how long had he told himself the job was temporary, that eventually, he’d move on, because that’s what he always did? But now, hell, these people felt like family, and the hospital like home.
“I’ll remember that,” he rasped.
Lore looked down at the floor, and when he glanced back up, his expression was almost… friendly. “Are you sure there’s nothing you can do? About Sin, I mean. The addiction—”
“Nothing.” Con backed up toward the Harrowgate. Good-byes had always been easy for him. A simple see-ya-around, and then he was out of there. But this was different. And he didn’t want to do it. “I gotta go. I, ah… yeah. See ya.”
The brothers looked skeptical, and Con couldn’t blame them.
Sin didn’t go back to the den. She needed to, she knew that. But she wasn’t ready yet. For some reason, the hospital called to her, and while she could come back anytime she wanted to, she knew that once she’d gone back to the den, she’d harden, would avoid the hospital, her brothers, and the place would once again be nothing but a cold building.
She wanted just a little more time to indulge in silly sentimental wanderings before she had to banish fuzzy warm feelings from her life forever.
She’d taken the Harrowgate with Con, had kissed him good-bye when the gate opened up into UG’s emergency department, and had watched him step out. Once the gate closed, she waited a minute, opened the door, and while chaos reigned, she slipped out and down a hallway.
She wandered around, until, oddly, she found herself in the nursery. It reeked of baby powder and disinfectant, but it was empty and was the last place anyone would look for her, so she sank into a rocking chair and, utterly exhausted, she closed her eyes and rocked.
“Sin?”
Startled, she sat up, blinking as she got her bearings. Where was Con? Her body burned, ached with succubus needs that he’d been so good at fulfilling… Oh, right. He was gone. Her heart sank as she remembered saying good-bye to him, knowing the whole time that it wasn’t the see-you-later kind. It had been nice of him to lie, though.
Disappointment tempered her lust a little and, still disoriented, she looked around. She was in UG’s nursery. Shade and Lore were standing in front of her, and Lore held out a Styrofoam cup of coffee. Freaky. She glanced at her watch. Twelve hours. She’d been asleep for twelve hours.
“Hey.” She gratefully took the coffee.
“A janitor found you,” Shade said. “How are you doing?”
I’m sleeping in a freaking nursery and I miss Con. “Peachy.” She scrubbed her eyes with the heel of her palm. “Any news? On the vaccine?”
Lore nodded. “E was up all night working on it, and the R-XR even allowed Wraith to bring specialists from USAMRIID into the hospital to help.”
“They’ll be mind-wiped, of course,” Shade said.
Sin sipped the coffee, hissed when it burned her tongue. “What’s going on with the warg war and the military action against them?”
Lore whistled, loud and long. “The last few hours have been fucked-up. The war is dragging a lot of different demon species into it. Some that are loyal to the borns, some who are loyal to the turneds, and some who just like to fight. Both sides have hired mercs, too.”
Shade nodded. “It’s already getting messy and spilling over into the human world. The Aegis is working overtime on damage control, but people are seeing shit they shouldn’t be seeing. Religious fanatics are screaming about the end of the world, governments are trying to deflect, but it won’t be long before someone catches something on video and it ends up on the Internet or some crap.”
“What’s going on with the R-XR?”
Shade growled. “Arik, that bastard, is holed up in my cave and won’t leave.” He clenched his fists as though imagining his brother-in-law’s neck in them. “And Runa won’t let me kill him.”
“That’s too bad,” Sin said, but Shade totally missed the sarcasm and nodded.
Lore rolled his eyes. “Shade’s cave is filling up, between Arik, Luc, Kar…”
“Good thing I have the cave set up for a warg shift,” Shade muttered. “Kar’s Feast shifts are insane.”
“Luc mentioned that Feast wargs are bigger and stronger.”
Shade snorted. “No shit. She nearly tore the hooks out of the stone. It would have been better to put her in Runa’s cage at our house, but it’s not safe yet.”
“So the R-XR and The Aegis are still trying to exterminate the wargs?”
“Until E starts the vaccinations, yeah,” Shade said. “He’s hoping to start testing today.”
“Are Con, Wraith, and Eidolon still in trouble with the Carceris?”
“Eidolon and Wraith will be fine.” Shade patted his BDU chest pocket and pulled out a pack of gum. “They’d have risked a lot more to make sure you were safe.”
So yes, they were still in trouble, and she felt guiltier than ever. Thanks, Con. I appreciate having these horrible feelings.
She shouldn’t ask. She really shouldn’t. The fact that her brothers hadn’t mentioned Con’s name should be a warning sign. But then, she’d never been one to obey signs or take hints.
“What about Con?” she blurted, her heart pounding wildly, because at this point, she needed to let him go. She’d go back to her den and back to her life, and he’d go back to being a paramedic and dealing with his dhampire clan stuff.
But she really, really couldn’t bear the thought of sleeping with someone else. Or of being alone.
Shade’s expression shuttered, and her lungs struggled to take in a breath. “What about him?”
“Is he… is he here right now? Working?”
“No.” Shade revealed nothing in his voice or his eyes, but Lore had a tell when he was nervous, and the way his left pinky flexed totally gave him away.
“What’s going on?” she growled. “And don’t BS me.”
The boys glanced at each other, and after a little shuffling of their feet, Lore said, “He left for Scotland.”
“He’s not coming back,” Shade said. “He quit.”
“Oh my God.” Her heart jerked painfully against her ribs. “He wouldn’t quit. He loves it here.”
“Dunno what to tell you. His clan will perform some sort of ritual tonight that’ll bind him to them.”
“No.” Her dazed mind refused to believe he’d leave the hospital. Sure, she’d planned to stay away from here, but some small part of her had taken comfort in knowing that if she did come back, he’d be here. Even if they couldn’t be together, he’d be here. “I’ll go to him. Talk him out of it.” And jump his bones while she was at it.
“Sin,” Lore sighed, “it’s too dangerous.”
“I don’t care about my safety!”
Shade stiffened. “We do. If you haven’t figured that out by now—”
“I know.” Her voice was soft, but firm, a copy of Con’s soothing medic voice she’d somehow learned. “But I really can take care of myself.”
“But Idess can’t,” Lore said, and then he winced, closed his eyes as if he just realized what he’d said.
“What? What do you mean, Idess can’t? Dammit, bro, what the hell is going on?”
Lore and Shade exchanged glances, and she wanted to scream. Stomp her feet. Throw a little-girl temper tantrum because they were certainly treating her like she was a delicate tot. “I swear, I’m going to knock your heads together so hard you’ll be hearing tweeting finches for a year. Now tell me!”
Shade’s mouth twitched in a half-smile, and she figured he was picturing her trying to slap down two demons who were twice her size, but Lore didn’t appear so amused. Probably because he knew she could do it.
She shoved to her feet. “Well?”
Lore sighed. “Your assassins went after Idess.”
She felt all the blood drain from her face. “What happened?”
“Marcel tried to take her off t
he streets of Rome a couple of days ago. It was nothing I couldn’t handle, but Idess is human now, and she’s vulnerable.”
Sin sagged back down into the rocker. “Fuck. I’m so sorry Lore.” He took her hand, squeezed her fingers, and in that one gentle gesture, there was more love than she’d ever felt from him. Not because it hadn’t been there, but because she could finally see it.
She’d been so blind. So stupid! Sin clutched Lore’s hand like a lifeline. “I’ll fix this. I swear I’ll fix it.”
Lore narrowed his eyes at her. “What have you got planned?”
Sweat dampened her temples. “Don’t worry about it.”
“Why do I feel like there’s something you’re not telling me?”
“Because you’re paranoid.” She paused, her brain working overtime to process everything she’d just been told. “Marcel worked with Lycus a lot. Do you think he was involved in Idess’s attack?”
“I didn’t see him. But if he was involved…”
“Yeah, I know. I’m out of here.”
He wanted to argue; Sin knew it. But he was still working off the guilt he felt for leaving her so long ago, something she’d been content to let slide for all these years. Shame burned her cheeks, and she swore that after this, she would do whatever it took to finally release him from the obligation he felt for her. She’d been so wrong to let him continue to try to make it up to her, when he’d made up a thousand times over.
Now it was her turn to make it up to him.
Sin was greeted at the den by scowls, growls, and curses. Not the vulgar kind; the actual, may-your-bile-sacs-explode-and-poison-you-to-death kind.
“I love you guys, too,” she’d called out as she stalked down the dark hallways to the throne room. Once inside, she collapsed against the door, her breathing fast and heavy, her hands shaking like a rookie on her first kill mission.
What the hell? She’d been rock solid for a hundred years, and she’d expected to get back to the den and immediately shift back into the assassin mode that had kept her sane—and alive—for so long.
Not so much.
Angry at her own weakness, she called for Sunil and waited, pacing next to the hearth, taking care to avoid the trapdoor in front of the hideous throne Deth had commissioned to be made out of the skeletons of humans and several species of demons.
She couldn’t stop thinking about Con, wondering what she was going to say to him when she saw him. She probably wouldn’t say anything at first. Her primary goal at this point was to get him inside her. Her brain was rapidly turning to a hormone mush, and any arguments she tried to form for getting him to go back to UG were interrupted by images of him naked.
Sunil finally appeared, and he approached warily, moving like a cat caught out in the open. If he had a tail, it would be twitching madly.
“Hey, boss.” As always, his voice was a deep rumble, his words precise.
She cut to the chase, not wanting to be here for one second longer than necessary. “My assassins wanted me dead.”
“Yes,” he said sadly. “People are angry. We need work, and we need it badly.”
“I know,” she said, sinking into the chair. “I’ve been a terrible master.”
His ears twitched the way they did when he was uncomfortable. “Not terrible. Just too nice.”
She gave a startled laugh. “That’s something no one has ever said about me.”
“Glad I could be the first.” He cocked his head and studied her. “So why am I here?”
“First, I need to know who has been trying to kill me.”
“Everyone,” Sunil said simply.
Sin shifted, winced at the poke of some creature’s finger bone in her butt. “Including you?”
“Yes.” His brown cheeks darkened with a blush of crimson, and his nervousness was now fully explained. She had the right to torture or put down every assassin who had tried to kill her. “You know I like you, Sin, but I have a family to feed.”
“I know. I wouldn’t have respected you if you hadn’t tried.” Oh, the assassin code was interesting, wasn’t it?
“So,” Sunil prompted. “Am I here to be tortured? The Peelers have been anticipating your return.”
She shuddered. Those unholy, eyeless demons lived for torture. They were also bound to the den, so Sin hadn’t found a way to get rid of them. “I want you to take over as assassin master.”
His golden eyes flared, the pupils elongating and then rounding out again. “You can’t be serious.”
“Very.”
“But… why?”
“My reasons are my own.”
“There are only two ways to escape the life,” Sunil pointed out.
“I’m aware of that, and I don’t plan on dying.”
Sunil started to reach inside the tattered wool trench coat he’d worn since World War II, but dropped his hands at his side. “I can’t use a weapon against you.”
“I know.” Idess had been the exception to the slave-can’t-harm-master-in-the-den rule. She’d been human when Deth bonded her, and humans weren’t meant to carry the assassin-bond. “But you can shift, and as long as I allow it, it should be fine.”
He hesitated, which was one of the very reasons she’d chosen him for this. Accepting the job meant he’d be stuck, the same way she had been. He’d have to move his family to the den in order to be with them, and he’d have to assign them bodyguards any time they left. But it was better than belonging to someone cruel, who would use your family against you, like Deth had.
“If you don’t want it, I’ll send for Tavin. He’s the only other person I’d approve of.” The blond Sem was new to the den, but his contract was huge—he was an all-purpose, anything-goes slave until he went through s’genesis and was freed from the contract. But he was very young, so he had a good seventy years to go until he went through the final maturation process.
“Agreed. He’d be a good master.” Sunil grinned. “But I think I’d be a better one.”
“Then let’s do it.”
Sunil bowed his head. “It has been an honor to serve you.”
“The mushy stuff is embarrassing. Let’s get it over with.”
Closing his eyes, Sunil stepped back. A sudden stillness came over the dank air in the chamber, and then a massive vibration shook the big male. A moment later, he was gone, and there was a six-hundred-pound tiger in front of her. He bumped his head up against her hand, bucking her palm until she scratched behind his ears.
“You shithead,” she murmured.
She could have sworn he smiled as he rubbed his cheek against her and then took her hand in his mouth as tenderly as he might carry a fragile egg. He used his sharp teeth to tug the ring as far up her finger as it would go, to the very tip.
Then he bit down.
The crunch of bone echoed through the chamber, or maybe it just echoed in Sin’s skull. She clenched her teeth to keep from screaming. Fiery agony shot up her arm, and when Sunil let go, she fell back, clutching her bloody hand… which was now minus the first joint of her left ring finger.
“Put pressure on it,” Sunil said, his voice raspy from his shift back to his human form.
“I am,” she gasped. Fuck, it hurt.
He held up her severed digit. “Do you want it back?”
Sin sagged against the stone wall to keep from falling over. “Keep it… for snack time or something,” she gritted out.
Sunil grinned. “Couldn’t your brother reattach it?”
“Probably, but I don’t have time for that. It’s just a finger. No biggie.”
“Thank you,” he purred. “And, Sin, if you or Lore ever need any of my services, for you… half price.”
Despite her pain, she laughed. “You are a true mercenary. Take care, Sunil.” She paused at the door. “Also, fair warning: If I find out that someone from this den was in on the attack on Lore’s mate, I’ll kill them, so be prepared to look for a replacement.”
Sin hurried down the den’s halls, her thoughts racin
g. She had to get to Con, but first, she had a warg to grill. The walls were a blur, the people she passed not worth saying good-bye to. She’d liked some of her colleagues while she’d worked with them, but the dynamic had changed when she’d taken over, and for the most part, they’d treated her as the enemy.
When she passed by one of the two sleeping quarters, she slowed, sensing that the one person she wanted to see was inside. She shoved her aching hand in her pocket and stepped into the room.
“Lycus.”
He spun away from his open chest of weapons, his movement so smooth she wouldn’t have known she’d startled him if she didn’t know him so well. “You’re back. I didn’t know.”
“Clearly.”
His toothy smile nearly made her shudder. “I’m glad you’re safe.”
She cocked her head and studied him, his handsome, hard face, his dark, soulless eyes. “Why don’t I believe you?”
“I don’t know.” He rolled one powerful shoulder in a nonchalant shrug. “I’ve made it clear that I want you. If you’re dead, I can’t have you.”
“You can’t have control of the den, you mean.” He shrugged again, but she didn’t expect him to deny it. They both knew the deal. “I’m curious, Lycus… where’s Marcel?”
Something flashed in Lycus’s eyes, but it was gone before she could read it, and in an instant, his expression was neutral again. “Don’t you know?”
“I know he was responsible for an attack on Lore’s mate.”
“Then I assume Marcel is dead?” He narrowed his eyes. “You suspect me of knowing about the attack.”
“You’re a rocket scientist, aren’t you?” She started moving, a slow circle around him that he tracked with his gaze. “What would you say if I’ve decided to hand over control of the den?”
This time, his grin was genuine. He moved to her, slid his hand around the back of her neck, and for a moment, she thought he was going to kiss her. “I’d say you won’t regret it, baby.”