by Dany Stone
The reaper releases a furious breath against the back of my neck, and a tingle worms its way down my spine.
“Look, you be the one to tell fucking Death why I couldn’t bring her in. Is that what you want? You really want to tangle yourself up in this, bro?”
Greyson winks at me over the reaper’s head. “Bring it on, pretty boy.”
The reaper subsides with an explosion of curses. His fingers twitch against my arm, red-hot to the touch. I can’t see him, but judging by the muscular length pressed against me, he’s as hot as he feels.
Tonight would be easier to handle without all the heat factor.
Greyson’s squadron gathers around us, and out of the corner of my eye, I finally spot Aiden, arms pinned behind him as two detectors nudge him forward. Fighting them the entire way. I shake my head slightly at him, but the urgency in his eyes doesn’t dissipate. His stance stiff with urgency. The stance of someone on the verge of an impulse attack.
Calm down. We’ll find another way out of this. I try to send the message with my eyes, but his gaze hardens against me.
Not listening at all.
His panic feeds into my heartbeat and I can’t calm the sudden rush of blood pounding through my ears.
This is exactly what you can’t let happen---
The guards shove us forward, Aiden’s elbow and the patrollers’ bodies scraping against me with every step. My shirt catches on an angel’s scabbard, tears when he fails to even slow.
Ahead of us, the night blinks through the back entrance of Lucaw Tower.
“Afraid to let me walk on my own?” Aiden kicks out against his captor, his voice slurred through his swollen lips and blood. The angel kicks a booted foot into the back of Aiden’s knee and Aiden staggers forward. Momentarily breathless.
They shove me ahead of him and closer to the door.
This is exactly what you should have expected to happen.
Should have known they would find you.
That there would be no escape.
The stakes are too high, the game too intense. I’ve simply been a naïve pawn being passed from hand to hand of the ever-changing game masters. Never had a chance in this.
But that doesn’t mean I want to accept it for what it is.
Doesn’t mean that I can’t fight destiny.
They would kill you. You and Aiden both.
And they aren’t going to do that anyway? What are the odds they ever plan on letting us go? We’ll be useful to them for one brief moment, then will be passed on for elimination. No reason for them ever to set us free.
Every time I blink I see Aiden’s face. Mouthing for me to run.
The desperation in his eyes.
He’ll back me up if I decide to fight. Two of us against twelve.
Well, two of us against twelve angels and detectors, one reaper, and who knows how many weapons.
At least in that case it would be a speedy death.
I turn my head, determination rising, a courage that chains all my earlier fears. Look back for where I last saw Aiden.
Let’s do this.
Except Aiden isn’t there.
His detector guards standing alone and blinking behind me.
What in hell---
The nearest detector turns his hands from side to side, staring into his empty palms.
That are not so empty after all.
Blood streaming from his slit wrists onto his robe.
A trail bleeding out onto the floor.
Only a dust trail of magic to show that Aiden has vanished.
Seven
LUX
An eternity of whispers.
Whispers and tears.
I try to lift my hand to wipe at the wetness slipping down my face. My hands refuse to lift, an impossible weight pressing me flat.
The wetness drips into the corners of my mouth unhindered.
With every swallow, I taste blood.
Blood slipping down my throat.
Your eyes. Open your eyes. Have to find some way out of the darkness. Some way out of the paralyzing numbness of pain.
My eyelids have been replaced with weighted stone. Cannot — will not — lift. The same way the darkness closing me in will not open. Trapped in a cocoon of pain I cannot unwrap, cannot crawl my way out of.
Not supposed to end like this.
Not supposed to end.
The world rocks beneath me, an unsteady lurch that sends me sliding into—a wall? A body? Without the power to reach out, to feel, it’s impossible to tell.
To know anything beyond the haze obstructing me from reality.
Something brushes over my arm, a quick probing touch. Calloused fingers rough against my skin.
“She’s still out.” A demon’s voice. Thick with frustration. “Are you sure the dose isn’t—”
“It was the lowest setting. Stop freaking. We’ll deliver her to HAVOC safe and sound.”
But —we were just in the tower.
With Aiden.
The detector bleeding out.
The way Aiden disappeared when the detectors turned on him—
Memories blur into a frustrating mass. Impossible to probe.
The hand pulls away from my arm, and I struggle until my heavy eyelids manage to separate. Intrusive light daggers into my eyes, slicing away my vision into a panic surge of darkness.
Darkness tinted with red.
Not my eyes, please, not my eyes! Blood trickles out of the corner of my eyes, stinging across skin. The numbness within me catches fire. Soaring into fresh pain.
Fresh panic.
“Lux.” The calloused fingers find me again. “Be still. We need you to cooperate.”
Do I have a choice? The world rocks again, but the wall pressing into my left side holds me still so that I don’t shift at all.
I try to lift a hand, trying to reach the blood streaming out of my eyes. And for the first time become aware of the straps wrapped around my arms. Around my legs.
Straps holding me down to the floor.
Holding. You. Down.
No. This is a terrible dream, something born out of a nightmare. Aiden never would have abandoned me, our mission never could have failed so spectacularly.
Not after shaking off the World Peace for so many years.
“She’s awake.” Boots scrape back over metal. Moving away from me. “But I doubt she’s ready for any maneuvering.”
“Five more minutes then.” There are no answering movement to tell me exactly where the second speaker is.
I try to pull my eyelids open, but the seepage only worsens, lets in more stinging blood. Warm liquid drips down onto my face, pressed down against my eyes carefully with a cloth. I wait for the stinging to deepen, wait for the unbearable pain.
Only to realize that instead it’s lessening.
Water washes down my face, the cloth being carefully guided to wipe away the blood. The heavy crusts around my eyes loosen and drop away, freeing me to fully open my eyes. I blink out into a darkness spiked with webs of light.
Into a world that keeps tilting.
“Where are—”
“Damn. The monster speaks.” The cloth is drawn away from my face, and dimly I see the reaper sitting back away from me, his long silver-blonde hair brushing his shoulders with the movement, a contrast to his dark skin. He catches at the wall for balance as our world shifts.
The heavy metal walls of a transport vehicle.
All the promises I made to myself about never going through this again. All the maneuvers I’ve made to keep myself under the radar.
And I end up here.
I have no idea how I got in, how much time has passed since my arrest, don’t even know if it matters anymore.
The last thing I remember is Aiden’s face.
Seconds before he disappeared.
Nausea rising, I fight against my restraints until my skin burns from the continual chafing. The incubus leans forward, caught in the shift of light, and our gazes lock. For a minute neither
of us move. Then he crouches down in front of me, lowering his length until he’s made eye contact.
And I see the reaper emblem – a crow and a broken scythe – that protects his chest.
“I won’t hurt you,” he says quietly. “As long as you cooperate.”
My face won’t stop throbbing, as tense and aching as the pain in my heart. I lower my gaze, fingers restlessly tracing around the handcuffs that bind me. A faint blue current blinks inside the links, runs down across my skin in a wash of color.
Based on their heaviness, they’ve been spellcast with a magic suppressant.
Which means I’m fully exposed to a fucking reaper.
My real face.
My real form.
There’s no way left for me to hide.
“A lot of blood.” His voice still hasn’t risen above a whisper. “Wasn’t there.” He reaches down for the cloth he tossed down earlier.
A cloth soaked with my blood.
I press my fingers to my face, touching, feeling, exploring. My nails scrape across dried blood, the swollen contours of my jaw and cheekbones. Injuries I have no memory of.
I raise my gaze back to the guard’s face, and at this close of a range, his light violet eyes are unnerving. The trademark tattoo of a demon —- a blood-red trident—- decorates his chin, but on him it only enhances his chiseled features.
I glance away before he can feel me staring.
Find my voice with effort.
“Where are you taking me?”
Stupid, stupid, stupid. Do you really want to know?
The faintest mockery of a smile curls his divine lips.
So much for not staring.
“Do you really think there’s any other place we would send someone like you, Nightshade?” he says and the softness in his voice takes me off guard.
Almost like he’s sorry this is happening to me.
And that a demon is capable of emotion.
Lux, I want to say. Call me Lux. Not distant, cold Nightshade.
I want to look into his eyes when he says my name.
I lift my gaze, only to find him watching me, amused like he knows the reaction he’s having on me. Smiling like he’s encouraging it. Yeah. I must be going insane. A few minutes with a handsome demon — a reaper, no less— and my panties have all but melted off of me.
Do you not know the meaning of self-control?
I avert my gaze, fists clenched. Staring down at the magic binding my handcuffs against skin, anything rather than look at this demon reaper and let myself be controlled by his gaze.
No matter my current circumstances, I’m still Lux Nightshade.
Chatham’s most feared shifter.
And it will take more than a demon’s smile to bring me down.
Eight
KI
If I close my eyes long enough, maybe I can convince myself this is a dream.
A dream?
Hell, this is my worst nightmare.
I enter the processing room behind my CO Blade, hands clasped behind me, my expression soulless as it stares out at me from the other side of the door. The minotaur officer hasn’t moved from my side since he came to fetch me from my quarters, and I feel his suspicion like a bullet to the heart.
“When is the last time you saw Lux Nightshade?”
I should be free from questions like that. After all this time, I should be free.
But the taint from her presence continues to shit all over my entire life.
Fucking over what should be just a normal day in a normal career for a normal person.
Except nothing about this is normal.
“Has she attempted to contact you after she left?”
Bloodygodcurse. He didn’t have to rub it in.
“Hardly the restful weekend I had planned.” Blade glances back over his shoulder at me, his bulky Minotaur frame gruesome in the shadows. “Anything rather than spend time processing these fuckers.”
Yeah, I’m in no mood for small talk with a bull after the interrogation he put me through.
Ever wonder if that’s why they call it bullshit, deuce?
I lower myself to the desk and flick on the computer screen. Camera screens unfold on the LifeScreens all around me, starting a slow spiral around the penitentiary grounds.
A few guards chatting outside the hellhound kennels.
A werewolf left for capital punishment in an outdoor cage.
Outside the sally port, a transport van is slowing for entrance.
A hundred things to be done before they bring the prisoners in.
And the mood I’m in? They can fuck themselves. Hell, while they’re at it, might as well process themselves and let me go back to my quarters and nurse my stupid broken heart.
Leave me alone so I can pretend tonight’s interrogation never happened.
That I never was connected with Lux at all.
Not easy to forget when Blade keeps watching me.
“How much did she tell you about her illegal activities?”
“Count yourself lucky, McAllister,” Blade says quietly behind me. “We’ve processed guards for less than this.”
I know what he’s talking about.
Hell, I know.
But somehow I manage to keep my face expressionless.
Focused as I send the camera on another perimeter scan.
Tell him.
Just confess everything and get it off of you.
Why protect her any longer?
She’s gone.
Forever.
It’s not like our paths will cross again – she made that clear enough on our last night.
I could tell Blade what I know.
Have a chance at keeping my job.
And whatever happens to Lux would only be justice.
I stare into the computer screen and Blade’s face watches me out of the background’s reflection. Nostrils flaring around his bronze nose ring as he waits for me to respond.
But anything I might have said has long since been locked up in my throat.
It hurts too much to even speak her name.
“We ask you these things for a reason. To protect you.” Blade pulls out the seat beside me. Metal creaks as he lowers his gigantic frame, but I’m not about to turn and look at him. “This is not just about legal repercussions. It’s about how you will never heal if you keep opening up that wound.”
Look, I don’t need you to be my fucking Buddha. “If I had something to tell you, I would.”
The video footage blurs in my vision.
As an inmate is escorted from the van.
Amber hair streaked with gold.
That ultra-straight way she carries herself, movements supple as the wind.
There’s only one person who looks like that.
In her true form.
The way she lets very, very few people see her.
It’s a mimic. Someone else who’s stolen her skin. The world’s a big place and there are hell-knows-how-many shifters out there. It doesn’t mean she—
The inmate’s face turns in my direction.
Tilted up toward the cameras.
Her face.
Her fucking gorgeous face.
Lux. My mind yells against the obvious, chanting her name over the pounding of his blood in my ears. It has to be Lux.
Not another shifter.
Uncertainty kicks me in the gut as the girl looked away, wrenching at her handcuffs like they pain her.
Lux?
I’m losing my mind. Have to be.
Because there’s no way in god’s green earth that the inmate being brought in for processing is Lux fucking Nightshade.
Not with everything they have against her.
She’ll be dead before you even get to her.
I push back my chair and rise without feeling my feet, still staring at the screen, at that perfect, wicked face. Answer Blade’s question without any awareness of what I’m saying.
I can only see her face.
And her bloody, bloody future if they incarcerate her here.
You have to stop this.
Have to stop everything.
I bolt for the search room.
Nine
LUX
It’s cold in the body of the beast.
I keep my eyes averted as I strip under the watchful eyes of the prison guards. Robotic movements that will expose no emotion.
Shirt. Removed.
Pants. Removed.
I’m left shivering in my skimpy bra and panties, the red lace and frills somehow mortifying in the gray, suppressed atmosphere of the processing room.
Panties I was ridiculous enough to wear on a heist.
A mission I hoped would end with Aiden in my bed.
Ending up alone in prison is hardly the sexy night I hoped for.
“Inmate will remove all clothing.” The female guard behind the glass enclosure watches me with the laziness of an overfed lion in no hurry to claim its prey. Her tone leaves no room for argument, but I hesitate anyway.
All too aware that the rougish reaper who brought me in is watching from the other side of the glass.
“Do I need to come out there and make you cooperate, inmate?”
Shit, shit, shit. I unhook my bra and let it drop to the floor.
A second later, my panties follow.
I stand shivering in the between damp concrete walls. One hand strays to cover my pussy, but the guard at the desk snaps at me to keep my hands at my sides.
She buzzes me through the first set of doors. “Clothes are to be placed on the table to your left. Then exit to the door straight ahead.”
The reaper is still watching me when I step through the doors. Scanning my entire body while I walk. His gaze isn’t appreciative, like I would have expected. Instead he seems – angry?
He hates your kind.
Will do anything to destroy you.
He can join the party.
I set down my clothes and possessions on the table, every movement possessed by the red haze pulsing through my brain. Hesitate before placing my last possession — a tiny reality stone— with the rest. Anger and panic and a hundred different emotions running through me unfiltered.
Building.