Mercy Strange

by Alisa Woods

  “I’m okay, Quill.” She cleared her throat. “And I’ll be better if we can figure out who the asshole is that stole my father’s magick.” As much as the pill tempted her, she wanted no small amount of vengeance for the assault on her father. He was a gift to the world with his brilliance and his med-magick Talents. How dare some monster rob a good man like him of the very thing he used to help others? “I’m going to make them pay, Quill.” She peered up at him. “Probably by some legal means like incarceration. But no guarantees.”

  A smile tugged at his lips. “I expect no less from you.”

  She gave him a short nod and looked back to the screen. “So this new version of the software—it’ll run simulations based off the gene drives we’ve identified in the pill, right?”

  “That’s right.” He tapped up something that looked like her normal genome viewer—which was still a custom job that Quill had designed for her—only this version had a whole new screen filled with analysis tools. “You can input your guesses for which sequences you think express which kinds of Talents. The software will sift through and run projections for you, then you take a look and see if it makes sense, then feed that information back in. It’s machine learning, so it’s going to adapt to each new run, each new guess, learning from you and the data at the same time.”

  “Have I mentioned lately that you’re a genius?” Mercy flicked a quick smile to him. “This is perfect. Just what I needed.”

  He seemed genuinely pleased by that, but not too much. Not awkwardly into flirtation territory again. “We can change it if it’s not doing what you need, but give it some time to spool up first. Run some base cases. Get it trained on the fundamentals. That sort of thing. I’m not the genetics expert here.”

  She was nodding, eyes back on the screen. “I’ve got a good first batch of data from the genomes of the victims. But expression is influenced by so many environmental variables—I haven’t even started uploading the data from the victim’s microbiomes and metabolite levels. Plus there are over twenty gene drives in the pill formulation, each presumably targeting a different sequence, a different Talent. That’s a lot of combinations, and I don’t even know the original formulations used during the experiments the victims were actually subjected to. These pills are some new formulation beyond all of that.”

  Quill let out a soft laugh. “I’m going to assume that all means it’s complicated and let you tell me when I need to fix something in the code.”

  She smiled. “Deal.”

  A knock at her door drew both their attention.

  Her sister, Ever, hovered at the threshold. “Got a minute?” She was two years older than Mercy’s twenty-six and pretty much solely responsible for getting their father back alive. Mercy had always looked up to Ever’s strong will and even stronger magick—she’d wanted to be Ever when she was a kid—but her sister had earned superhero-for-life status in Mercy’s eyes for bringing their dad home.

  “Of course,” Mercy said, swiveling her chair to face the door. Quill stepped back so she could see—her office was tiny. Or maybe it was all the crap she kept everywhere. “What’s up?”

  “Zane is here, and he wants to know if this is a good time to talk about the case?” Ever smiled even as Mercy’s heart sank. Special Agent Zane Walker, Magickal Crimes Division, the lead agent on the Resurrectionist case… and Ever’s hot new boyfriend. Mercy had been avoiding him the last two days, since she’d found out they were together, just because she struggled to contain her serious concerns about her sister dating someone like him… and now they were both here?

  “Um…” There was absolutely no way out of this. “Sure!” Mercy smiled. Hard.

  Ever gave her a look like she was nuts then ducked back out to get Zane.

  “Is that Agent Walker?” Quill asked. “The one who’s a…” He flicked a look to the door.

  They were probably out of earshot. “Incubus?” Mercy scowled. “Yeah, that’s him. He’s dating Ever.” She couldn’t bring herself to say the reverse—Ever is dating an incubus, on purpose—because she still had very serious reservations about how consensual that relationship was in reality.

  Quill’s eyebrows rose. “How does that even work?”

  “I don’t want to know.” But she did, not out of some perverse sexual curiosity, but because Ever deserved the best. And Zane… just wasn’t it. At first, Mercy had thought he was just some agent the FBI had fielded to help rescue her father—and protect Ever. Even then, Mercy had concerns, but she figured he was basically a weapon, and that was what weapons did, at least in the hands of the good guys. They rescued people and protected them. But they weren’t supposed to date people, and especially not people who were her sister. Ever had always had trouble with her magick, and this just seemed to invite disaster. They’d been together less than a week, but the constant smile Ever had on her face just made Mercy more suspicious. Incubi used mental magick on their victims… and she knew exactly how dangerous that was.

  Ever might not even know she was being manipulated.

  But Mercy couldn’t say anything—not while they were still working on the case. The family corporation, Strange Technologies, was hip-deep in all of this, and lots of people’s lives were at stake—possibly the entire city. Plus Mercy’s own problems were hanging over her like a ghost of her future self, haunting her with the possibilities. Now wasn’t the time to make a fuss about Ever’s choice in men. Or if it was even a choice. But when this was all done…

  Mercy plastered a smile on her face just as Ever returned with Zane—and another man.

  Holy hotness. Mercy blinked and kind of automatically—and awkwardly—rose out of her chair. Her office was small and stuffed with stuff, and in the few seconds it took Ever, Zane, Quill, and this new guy to sort themselves out, Mercy openly gawked at him. His clothes were ordinary enough—black leather pants, black t-shirt, long black, leather trenchcoat—but everything was just a little… tight. Or perhaps extremely well-tailored. Something about the way all that light-absorbing fabric hung from his broad shoulders and narrowed to his trim waist and flowed around his clearly muscular chest just spoke manliness to her in a freaking primal way. The others were shuffling into the room, but he seemed to just glide into place, standing at the end of the bookshelf by the window and her box of stolen treasure. And his face… he had a dark shadow of whiskers just shy of rugged, and his long-fingered hand brushed back the sexy mop of dark hair that had fallen across his eyes. His eyes. Deep brown and intense and…

  Staring right at her.

  Holy magick. She startled, physically, like the shock of him looking at her was enough to rattle her soul. What the hell?

  “Hello,” she said, pointedly to the man. “And you are?”

  “Here to work with you.” He smiled, and Mercy felt it like a physical thing whispering along every inch of her skin. A flush of heat so intense it stopped her breath. Embarrassment? Attraction? This was way beyond that. This was some fucking mental magick freaking her the hell out.

  She whipped her gaze to Zane. “Who is this?” Her heart was thudding, the demand in her voice betraying her sudden alarm. She’d studied every kind of Talent, extensively, and she knew exactly what an incubus’s mental powers were—they unleashed a sort of uncontrolled sexual attraction, and the incubus fed off that energy. If Agent Walker thought she would work with another one of his kind—

  “This is Agent Payne.” The look on Zane’s face would have been comical if Mercy was in any way entertaining humor. “He’s from the FBI’s Science and Magick Lab—”

  “Why is he here?” Science and Magick? Bullshit. They didn’t do mental magick there. No one did, except maybe off-book spooks buried deep in the government. Even Zane was supposed to be one-of-a-kind, the only incubus employed by the FBI. Was he going to lie about this—

  “Mercy, what the heck—” Ever was aghast.

  Zane put up his hand to stop her. “It’s okay.”

  Agent Walker shutting up her sister just
cinched Mercy’s gut tighter. She swung her glare back to Agent Payne. “Why are you here?” she demanded.

  His hands were up, but his brown eyes had sharpened to intense. Like he was surprised that she saw through this little charade as if she couldn’t possibly feel whatever mental magick he was trying to use on her. That feeling had tripped all her alarms, and she was two seconds away from spooling up her own magick—just in defense.

  “I feel like we’ve gotten off to a bad start.” His voice was like honey, soothing and rich. “Is there some way I can fix that? If not, I’ll just… go.” But he wasn’t moving a muscle, just watching her keenly from the corner with his ridiculously expressive eyes and model-gorgeous face.

  And yet… she felt a certain calmness leak into her, tinged with a spike of embarrassment. Like she’d radically over-reacted to something, and there was no need for alarm, it had all been a great misunderstanding. But that crashed hard into what she was feeling deep in her gut. And, logically, it made little sense. She knew who she was, and what she was capable of, and that witch was a thousand miles from being the over-reacting type.

  Her rational brain was having none of this shit.

  “Tell me what kind of magick you do—and be honest, because I will know—or get out.”

  He tipped his head to her, acknowledging this was an entirely reasonable thing to ask, even though it wasn’t. It was incredibly rude. She’d never been so rude to someone in her entire life. But this guy was a Maximum Panic danger—she could feel it—and it was shoving her so close to using her one Talent, the secret one, the one no one knew about. Which would be an unmitigated disaster. But whatever this guy was, like hell was she letting him fuck with her head. She would shut that shit down. And that—her response—was freaking her out more than anything. She was ready to unleash on this guy, and he’d hardly said ten words.

  “I’m Level One certified in various healing arts.” Agent Payne clasped his hands in front of him, the universal sign of I’m not conjuring any magick here, I come in peace. He was the picture of calm as he listed off his skills. “My Talent is primarily micro-fusion with an emphasis in tissue cauterization. I went as far as surgical rounds in medical school, bachelor’s in Biological Magick, but I left that when the FBI came calling, looking for an agent with my specialization. I’ve been working in Science and Magick now for three years. Would you like to see my certifications on file with the Official Registrar of Talents?”

  As he talked, the weird sense of calmness left her, and the prickly-heat sensation of his intense sexiness returned… but his straight-forward answer was re-engaging her brain and tamping down the alarm bells ringing in her head.

  “And you’re here because…?” She held his stare, letting her body acclimate to the heat that his open gaze gave her. Attraction. Maybe that’s all it was…

  A tiny smile appeared on his face, just for a microsecond, then it was gone. “I’m here because I’m no expert in gen-magick… but you are. And I need your help if I’m going to go undercover at Strange Technologies to catch our bad guy.”

  “Undercover?” Mercy frowned and looked to her sister.

  Ever still had a look of horror on her face, like she just couldn’t believe what an asshole her sister was being. But she nodded. Vigorously.

  Okay, maybe this guy was legit. Maybe Mercy had, in fact, over-reacted to the supernova hotness this guy—Agent Payne—oozed from every pore. Maybe he wasn’t an incubus, he just had hyperactive pheromones or something. And it was clear that the random-crying hair-trigger she’d acquired when her father went missing was still lingering. A quick scan of the rest of the room showed Ever was still freaking. Zane had a look of disbelief like all his plans were in danger of going poof. Only Quill was scowling with anything like her own panic-level of concern about Agent Payne walking through the door.

  Mercy scooped up her skirts and stepped over her piles of papers—she really needed to tidy up—and crossed the tiny office until she stood right in front of Agent Payne. His eyes had gone ever-so-slightly wider, and a smile kept tugging at his lips. Up close, his preternatural sexiness was even more overwhelming. The boy was just fucking hot. And the sad fact of Mercy’s life was that she hadn’t been affected by that sort of thing in quite a while.

  She put out her hand to shake. “Mercy Strange. Sorry, I’m a jerk sometimes.”

  Agent Payne’s smile was like a blast furnace of sexy. His hand slipped into hers, and the heat traveled up her arm and all the way down to her toes. “Swift Payne. And the pleasure is all mine.”

  Holy fuck, she was going to work with this guy? And not melt? And act like a normal human being? Sweet fucking magick. She shook his hand but pulled away the second it was polite to do so.

  “Swift Payne?” She cocked her head. “Your parents have some kind of grievance against you?”

  There was a flicker of something—pain—and she instantly regretted her attempt at breaking the awkwardness. Clearly, she couldn’t do anything right around this guy.

  “They just had a sense of humor.” But the smile was forced now, and it dimmed the sexual energy that seemed to radiate from the guy.

  Which, frankly, was extremely helpful. “All right,” she sighed. “I’m just going to blanket apologize for the entire last two minutes of my life. Good?”

  The smile was back. “We’re good.”

  She turned to Zane, which was a sudden relief, just not having to look at the Hotness Machine in the corner of her office. “Okay, Agent Walker. How can I help the FBI bring my father’s attackers to justice?” And as she listened to all they had planned, she kept waiting for that sense of heat, of overwhelming sexiness, to settle down. Fade away. Possibly vaporize.

  It never did.

  Chapter Two

  To Swift, a person’s mood was like a taut piano wire vibrating the air.

  Anxiety pitched a little higher. Depression lower. Lust, anger, that delicate feeling of excited anticipation just before a kiss… each had a hum that whispered against his ears. He didn’t directly feel the emotions of others, but their vibrations splashed against him, making him acutely aware of things others missed. A micro smile. A flush of embarrassment. The dilated eyes of the drunk, crazed, or simply aroused. A person’s body language plus their emotions whispering through the air made a humming symphony of expression to which he was uniquely tuned. He could even sense the vibrations when he wasn’t actively using his Talent.

  And Mercy Strange was buzzing like mad.

  Outwardly, she had been calmly tutoring him all afternoon in biology. But the inward symphony of her sang of sexual attraction, fear, tension, and something like… excitement? Possibly anger.

  Swift was the one undercover, but this scion of the Strange family was hiding a lot.

  “Only a third of the genome actually codes for proteins, of course,” Mercy was saying, gesturing idly at the software on her screen that displayed some of the genetic data she worked with. She gave him an apologetic look. “Sorry, I keep lecturing you on stuff you already know.” Her tension buzzed a little stronger like she was truly embarrassed by this. As if insulting his intelligence was the worst thing she could do.

  He let his expression fall open. “No, it’s great! Gives my brain a chance to catch up on the rest.” The truth: he was almost completely lost. He’d only had a day to prepare for this assignment, and he was doing good to remember his cover, much less conjure a background in med-magick out of nothing. He hadn’t been to college, much less gotten a degree in Biological Magick, like he’d calmly proclaimed before. But he had to put on a convincing show—for Mercy and for the assignment he’d be tackling tomorrow.

  Her shoulders dropped. “How are you going to retain all this when you go undercover?”

  For that, he had a sincere answer. “It won’t be easy. I’ll probably have to consult with you more after I’m in.” Which gave him more pleasure than it should, but Mercy intrigued him, and after all, she was half his mission. “After you walk me in t
he first time, I’ll check back with you for help when I need it.”

  “Wait, what?” She swiveled her chair to face him. He’d pulled up a seat next to her for the tutorial, which put them in close proximity. He could feel the spikes of attraction every time she snuck a peek at him, and that worked for his general plan of getting her to open up, eventually, about what, if any, complicity she might have in the bioweapons he would be tracking down. “What do you mean, I’m walking you in?” she asked. “To where?”

  He lifted his eyebrows. “Raine Magitek? You know, where they’re possibly making the dangerous genetic drugs?” Mercy’s sister, Ever, was the first to identify the source of the illegal drug cache—Raine Magitek, a newly-acquired subsidiary of the Strange Technologies Corporation. The FBI confirmed it, but that connection raised suspicions about the Strange family’s involvement. By all accounts, Mercy, Ever, and their father Asher were cooperating fully, but this stuff was dangerous—Swift might not actually be certified in any kind of healing arts, but he’d learned enough in the last twenty-four hours to realize the horror these bioweapons represented. If someone in the corporation was manufacturing them, the FBI wanted to know just how far up the chain of command the involvement went. Who had secrets? Who had motive? Swift’s assignment wasn’t just to find the drugs and the scientists who created them but to make sure they caught everyone involved.

  Which might include the feisty witch looking at him with a heavy dose of concern.

  “I thought I was just giving you a crash course in genetics.” She frowned, and it crinkled up the curious face-painting makeup she wore. Mercy was a beautiful woman hidden under a whole lot of black lace and paint. Why? That intrigued him almost as much as the multitude of emotions constantly churning below her somewhat hostile surface.

  “Well, I need gen-magick prep, too. But you’re one of the top researchers in the corporation, and you’re a Strange. Your introduction is what’s going to really sell my cover, even if I bumble my way through the tech part.” He smiled, and the effect it had on her—eyes dilated, breath a little short—was gratifying. Which was also very weird. He knew the effect his appearance, not to mention his Talent, could have on women—he actively used that advantage in his job all the time—and it followed a typical pattern: surprise, attraction, fumbling by the sexually inexperienced, instant propositions from the more sexually assured. But anger and belligerence? That was new. Men sometimes had that reaction—ones who were actually attracted to him but in denial about it. But women? Almost never. Yet Mercy Strange had been nothing but a hot poker of rage from the moment she’d set eyes on him.