by LeAnn Mason
Of course, today, that had been a bit of a downfall. He was still a god, so there wasn’t much he couldn’t handle, but the combination of inactivity mixed with mental distraction had derailed them, and Cole had feared they’d lose their target — or worse, another of his girls.
The god wasn’t in his office either, which was where Cole had expected him to adjourn and sequester himself off with his thoughts. He’d been angry after the shit first hit the fan. Then, Ember had talked to him, and he’d pulled his head out of his ass to be the leader he needed to be. But as the weeks wore on, he’d faded again. And today… today, he’d completely shut down after the mission. He hadn’t said more than a word or two to any of them since they left the prison, including during a very terse dinner — even though Raven had prepared his favorite.
That actually gave Cole some confidence as he stepped into the library and saw the god perched in an armchair, a massive tome open in his lap. If Seke were acting normally, Cole’s intervention would seem out of the blue and be ill-received. Since Seke was already upset, Cole hoped he wouldn’t have to do too much prodding. Mostly, he wanted to support the guy.
Hell, he knew how much of a struggle lady problems could be. If it were another hellhound, he’d suggest fighting it out of his system. But Seke was a reserved kind of god, so fucking therapy session it was.
“Hey, man.”
Seke didn’t react, running a finger over some image on the page as Cole approached.
“Seke?”
Still nada.
Cole dropped to a crouch and peered up at the god. His eyes were glazed, though he appeared to stare at the image of a woman. She wasn’t even hot or anything — and looked nothing like Aria. “You into druids now?”
Seke jerked back and blinked. “Cole.”
Cole tucked a few dreads behind his ears then let his forearms drape over his knees. “Hey,” he said again, not quite sure where to start.
“What can I do for you? Do you need something?”
“Nah. In fact, the opposite. I’m here for you.”
Seke tilted his head. “For me?”
“Yep.” Cole let out a sigh as he tipped from his crouch onto his butt, keeping his arms relaxed on bent knees. “I figure after what happened today, you might have something you want to talk about.” The hellhound decided to start, let Seke lead the conversation instead of going on the offensive.
Seke frowned, closing the book and setting it gently on the arm of the chair. “Yes, I owe you an apology for today. You did well to hold the soul until I could get to it, and I apologize that I forced you into that situation. It was dangerous. For all of us.”
Cole watched the god’s lips flatten. He was beating himself up, which was not the point of this. “We’re a team. We help each other out. That’s why I’m here now. Wanna talk about what had you so distracted?”
“Distracted?”
“Mmhm.” Cole narrowed his eyes. “And I don’t mean by the guys you were fighting. Something else has been bothering you.” He waited, but when Seke feigned ignorance, Cole shook his head. “Aria, man. You’re hung up on Aria.”
“Ah, so you do know her name isn’t Cupcake.”
Cole just raised a brow. The wisecrack wasn’t going to deter him.
“Yes,” Seke admitted. “Yes, you are right. I seem to be struggling to let her go. I… worry about her. I was her captain first, and I pushed her away. I worry how she’s doing in her new units.”
That wasn’t it. He wasn’t acting like a concerned guardian or whatever. He was acting lovesick. But Cole let him keep his excuse for now since it seemed to help the god keep talking. “You think the other captains aren’t capable of keeping her safe?”
“No. Of course not. That’s not it. I know them to be capable.” Seke folded his hands together, shifting to the edge of the chair.
“Don’t tell me you think the chick can’t take care of herself, then.” Cole snorted. “Not only was she on her own for years, but you’ve seen how she fights. Dirty.” The hellhound massaged a new scar on his bicep, courtesy of one of the banshee’s blades during a training session a month or so ago.
Seke gave a small smile. “She learned how to fight on the streets. It was difficult trying to retrain her.”
“She was difficult, period. Stubborn.”
Seke laughed outright. “That too.”
“But you liked her brand of difficult,” Cole ventured, daring to softly say. “She was a challenge.” That didn’t do it for him. The hellhound got enough fight from his teammates, from his work. He liked soft, compliant. He didn’t want to force love. He wanted to revel in it. But he could understand the appeal to the god who’d been worshipped and praised and revered his whole extensive existence.
Seke didn’t reply, but he didn’t object or walk away, so Cole pressed on.
“She won’t come back.” He knew that for sure. Even if the director decided this was the best fit for her, there was no way Aria would agree to it. She’d kick and scream — definitely scream — if anyone tried to force her back. They hadn’t been all that welcoming. And after what happened, the guilt would be too much.
Cole had finally accepted that the banshee wasn’t to blame for Jessica’s death. That didn’t mean he had to like her. Like he’d said, he got enough push-back from Raven and Ember. Aria was too much for him — she refused to follow orders, she was naive. Unless she changed a lot, she was a hazard.
“I know she won’t come back,” Seke whispered.
“So, maybe you go to her.”
“What?” Seke snapped his head up, wide eyes taking in the hellhound before him and the seemingly insane suggestion.
Cole shrugged. “You’re worried about her, right? So, go visit her, wherever she is, reassure yourself that she’s okay… that she’s moved on. And maybe then you can get the closure you need to move on too.”
Seke’s mouth dropped open, but he seemed to be considering the idea.
Pushing to a stand, he dropped a thick hand on Seke’s shoulder. “Think about it. Nothing long — we got missions to do. We’ll be here waiting for you. But go. Visit her. See that she’s fine. And then, we get back to work.”
Without looking back, Cole took his leave of the library, a place he didn’t venture often, hoping Ember and Raven had left him a beer or two.
He knew firsthand that unrequited love took a tight hold of your heart… until a new party joined the situation. Having spent just a few months with Aria, Cole knew that she wouldn’t run into Seke’s arms, grateful for his arrival, asking to be rescued and brought home. She’d have a new captain, a new team. Hell, maybe even a new guy. She was a handful, but she was pretty hot… in a grungy kinda way.
It wouldn’t be pretty, but Seke would see he wasn’t wanted, wasn’t needed, and they could all forget the haunting screams of that damn overloud banshee.
11
“Ugh. Even after a week, several of the days spent on rundown buses reeking of body odor, booze, and that distinct and overpowering scent that was ‘old person’, my skin still crawled when I thought about how low I’d stooped. I shook out the shivers of revulsion, and my boots hit the cracked pavement as I stepped down from the rusted metal step of the latest rolling tin can that some called a bus.
The memory of something I’d been reading about druids when Seke had come to dismiss me had surged to the fore of my mind the first night I’d spent in the bus station, thankfully. I’d stared at the destination board for a while, then wandered away, uncertain about where to go first once the ticket stand opened in the morning. The anxiousness had dredged anything helpful from my knowledge and pinged on something I hadn’t even realized had been a clue: an illustration of a druid with a caption that said she was depicted near a hot spring. One place came to mind in the country.
However, the direction was pretty far from where I’d been, which wasn’t helpful.
“Move,” a college guy griped in annoyance as he pushed past me.
Thrown ba
ck into reality by the rough shove, I realized I hadn’t moved away from the bus doors and had obviously been impeding the guy’s exit.
The cold air bit at my cheeks, tossing my long silver hair into knots that would pull painfully at my scalp when I attempted to finger-comb the strands back into sleekness. I cringed just thinking about the task. It was much brisker here in the north than it had been along the southeastern coast with the HDWU.
The north wasn’t my favorite place. We’d moved to some cold places in my youth, which served to hide us well — everyone wearing the same bundled layers of black and gray. But I was much more suited to warmth at heart.
The shiver might have also been due to the prominent smell of urine that wafted from a grimy trashcan near one of the many benches where patrons could wait for their respective escape vehicle.
Because, let’s face it, one only used the bus if it was the only feasible option.
Remember, when making your getaway, do so with the smallest of footprints. Leave little trace. None if possible. Pay in cash, use an alias, and don’t stand out.
Dad’s lesson was the main reason I still used the bus transit system and probably why a Seke lesson hadn’t bounded forward in my mind as they had lately. All you needed was cash, and not even much of that, to gain entry onto the diesel-spewing behemoths. Add a hoodie to hide my obvious hair and headphones to keep people from attempting to talk with me, and I could virtually disappear. I didn’t need to travel that way anymore now that I was unlikely to find myself at a loss at a murder scene again, but old habits were hard to break. And though I definitely had more money than I’d ever had on hand before, because apparently the HD was a paying gig, I’d need to make it last.
After all, I didn’t have a job anymore. Not to mention the fact that I didn’t expect the druid to do the binding for free. I mean, no one did anything for free anymore, though I wasn’t sure what the cost would be… if it would even be monetary. Who knew what supernatural druids found value in? Eyes of newt? My firstborn? Seke had been skeptical that druids could even make a power bind. But there was only one way to find out.
I hiked the small duffel higher on my shoulder as I soldiered through the sparsely occupied station. A tingle in my bladder reminded me that I should probably take a moment to relieve myself before heading away from the bathrooms.
A sardonic chuckle escaped as I remembered my last foray into a public bathroom while I tried to escape the HDPU, who’d been completely new and insane to me at the time. That seemed like so long ago, and I half-expected to hear Jessica’s sultry twang admonish my feeble attempts to flee. But she wouldn’t. She couldn’t.
Jessica was dead. And it was my fault.
I should have been able to see it, to save her. But I hadn’t, and they couldn’t forgive me. I didn’t really blame them. The guilt I piled on myself ate at me too.
No baggage. I wiped a stray tear from my eye.
“No use cryin’ over spilt milk, sugar.” I admonished myself in a weak attempt to mimic the seductive southern drawl.
An older lady with a roller bag gave me a placating smile as we passed in the corridor to the toilets. I returned it with one of my own, all my piercings glinting in the harsh lighting, making sure to give her a proper fright about the ghostly hoodlum in the privy.
The next step in my hoodlum persona would be to get some large, colorful tattoos that were on full display. Those puppies always got reactions, especially when scrawled across a woman’s “puppies”.
“Ha,” the chuff slipped from my mouth as I turned the little circle lock on the peeling stall door in a false sense of security. I needed rest in a real bed; my jokes were getting lame, and my sleep-deprived brain was finding humor where there was none.
I half expected the door to swing open due to crappy latching, and I couldn’t peel my eyes from the lock. Not that I could do anything about it with my pants around my ankles and the loopy fog encircling my brain.
My eyes fuzzed, the silver and blue blurring to a hazy amalgamation, but then, it was gone, disintegrated. Only a scrap of the original barrier still attached to the top hinge remained. But beyond wasn’t the bathroom. And I wasn’t sitting on the porcelain throne.
The door before me now was painted a pale blue with a small frosted glass window above a floral wreath. It was ajar, the wood by the handle splintered. I pushed it open with trepidation and moved into a darkened hallway. I passed a table on which sat a pile of unread mail, a purse, and a keychain. I whipped my eyes away from the name on the envelopes: Liarona Murphy. My heart picked up its pace as did my feet, treading quickly through the disaster of a home.
It looked like an F5 tornado had touched down in the living room of this once pristine home. A tall floor lamp was knocked over, its lightbulbs shattered, glass littering the piece’s corpse like a halo. The couch was sideways, charred black in the center of the formerly forest-green upholstery, its pillows spewing white stuffing like a slain animal spills its entrails.
And there, on the floor, at the end of the granite-topped bar, vacant blue eyes stared up at me.
The older woman’s body was twisted in a very unnatural way, especially her leg and neck. She looked pale, and no blood was obviously pooled, making it seem as if she’d been drained…
The cloying, clawing feeling I was beginning to know too well kicked up as my lungs expanded in preparation for the wail.
I was thrown from the vision and back into the small stall as my scream erupted from deep in my soul. Or it felt like that even though that was a physical impossibility. There was no way my lungs and vocal cords were the origin of the blood-curdling screams I spewed.
I couldn’t hear the herd of terrified people bust into the restroom to come to my rescue, barely made out the pounding on my stall door or the panicked questions of people wanting to know what was wrong; how they could help. All while I sat on the dingy bus station toilet and screamed bloody murder. Literally. Just, not mine.
The commotion roused me back to awareness, and I quickly cleaned myself up and yanked my pants back into place, my voice never letting up. Yet, at least now, if they actually got through the aforementioned flimsy lock, I wouldn’t be caught with my pants down. Literally. That would be hard to recover from emotionally. It might be enough to permanently damage my self-esteem.
I flushed, which seemed to get the attention of the do-gooders. My screams faded then, but I was sure I hadn’t fooled them into thinking it was just the sound of the flush. I didn’t really care. I had bigger problems because I was pretty damn sure that the dead woman in my vision was the very woman I’d come all this way to see. That obscure but ominous knowledge fired adrenaline into my veins, and all thoughts of sleep vanished.
It would make sense that I’d have visions of someone I’m actively looking to find… right?
If I was right, I didn’t have much time: I’d found a druid, but her days on this earth were nearing an end. I didn’t make the mistake of wishing my abilities were more honed, such that I could pinpoint the time of her death, because the whole purpose of this trip was to get rid of these stinking powers. The worry that I’d miss my chance turned my stomach again.
That was happening way too much lately. I’d hoped such bouts of nausea would be a thing of the past once I’d defected from the Harbingers. I’d already reverted to my human way of life in many ways, the first being the nomadic bus-capade. Another being how I handled the homeless asshole who’d tried to mug me at the third station I’d caught a nap at.
I’d wished a solid kick to the groin had been my parting gift to Stone and his pea-sized dog bits. I could picture him rolling around on the floor, howling his pain as I turned and left the dock and the Harbingers far behind. That’s how quitting the Harbingers should’ve gone.
Seke had been teaching me to avoid such tactics with supernaturals. He’d wanted me to instead use small concealable weapons, which I now always carried on my person — tucked into the top of my boot, concealed in my belt, or slid
in a concealed panel of my sports bra. There was a hiding spot in every outfit if not many. If I ever happened to be in a dress — gods forbid — I could strap one to my thigh.
But I couldn’t just stab a random human — especially if I didn’t want any harbingers to show up to reap him. Hence, the old ‘nads’ trick made its reappearance in my repertoire.
Don’t get caught — by anyone. That lesson would always be numero uno in my book.
Twisting the lock, I hiked my bag over a shoulder and pulled the door. Owlish looks greeted me from the centers of several faces as the good Samaritans all gaped, waiting for the crazy girl’s explanation… “There was a spider. A big one. Huge,” I explained, pierced eyebrows tugging skyward, eyes round.
“Are you okay?” a man asked, the only one in the gaggle of women clumped in the middle of the rundown ladies’ room. I pushed past to the sinks.
“Oh, yeah. Thank you.” I forced a light laugh. “Sorry about that. I just hate spiders.” I shivered dramatically. “I guess I was louder than I thought. I’m sorry.” The ramble blithely spewed forth. Batting my eyelashes for good measure and smiling like a bimbo, I sold my story like an award-winning actress.
Disoriented, the horde turned to head back toward the door, shaking their heads and murmuring their discontent about my overreaction.
“Too much metal in her face; must be getting lead poisoning,” I heard a woman say as the door closed behind the group. I couldn’t tell which had said it, but it didn’t matter. Their opinions didn’t matter. They didn’t matter.
The druid mattered.
I pulled out my phone and stared at it, warring with myself about making a call I swore I wouldn’t. I wanted reassurance, to know I was doing the right thing. Okay, so maybe I wanted to hear his silky, accented voice…