by Lauren Dane
Rebecca spoke again. “The witches are leading this charge with the human government. It makes sense that we are in charge of any security team to protect our people. It’s no secret we’re the most human looking of the Others and there’s no sense in not using that to our tactical advantage.” She paused to let that settle in. “We’ve got a prominent place on the Council of Others as well, and Helena, I’ll expect you to sit on their defense task force.”
Over the phone lines Helena heard the rumble of shifter agreement to that.
Okay then. She started making mental notes to hit the ground running once the meeting ended.
“Owen is in total agreement. Lark will be here working on continuing our nationwide training for Others but she will continue to liaise with Molly and Helena and the other members of the Council of Others regarding our internal and external security.” Meriel nodded. “Faine, if we could continue to rely on your help and the support of Lycia, I’d consider it a favor if you could serve as Helena’s lieutenant on this security team. She’ll need to be protected while she’s protecting everyone else.”
“Of course, Ms. Owen. I would be honored. You have Leviathan support for as long as you require it.” Faine rumbled this from his space next to Helena and the echo of it seemed to brush her skin.
“We start tomorrow afternoon in Sacramento with a two p.m. meeting. Helena, if you could get with Sato’s people as soon as possible, I’d appreciate it,” Molly added. “We’re arriving late tonight. I’m going to forward you the details.”
“We’ll have you met at the airport and escorted in. I’ll leave for Sacramento as soon as I can to ready things. I assume Gage will be part of your detail?”
Originally, Faine had been Molly’s bodyguard, but when things had gotten very serious between Molly and Gage and she’d been injured, Owen had sent Faine to Los Angeles to help Helena while Molly had been confined to her bed for a while.
From the look on Gage’s face, Helena wagered no one, not even a nearly seven-foot-tall Lycian, would be good enough to take care of Molly. He’d want to do it himself and she understood that.
“Yes.” Gage spoke, looking sort of feral. Though still smoking hot. Aside from the attempts to kill her, Molly was a lucky woman. “I’ll touch base with you in an hour or so with more information.”
Helena nodded.
The call ended and Helena turned to her father, a man who’d run the hunter corps before she and Lark had taken over when they were in their early twenties. “You have to take over for me here until I’m back.”
He sighed and Rebecca mirrored that sound.
She shrugged. “I can’t do it all if I’m going to be traveling so much. There’s too much here that should be covered. You know the job already. People respect you. You’ve worked with most everyone on the team and they need to rely on a leader. Our people need to be safe.”
Her father nodded. “I’ll step in, but not as your replacement. I’ll be your other lieutenant here. It’s the best way. You lead this crew and you do it better than anyone else could.”
She didn’t say it, but it hung between them unspoken anyway. Anyone but Lark.
She swallowed but didn’t argue. “Fine. Work with Marian and Evan. They’re in charge while I’m gone. I’m briefing everyone.” She glanced at her watch. “In twenty minutes in our common room. I need to be out of here by noon.”
Her father nodded. “On it.”
They dispersed and Faine waited for her. “I’ll drive. We can take my car to Sacramento.”
“You can fly up if you like. It’s a long drive. No use both of us having to drive. I just want to get started and it’ll take a while to arrange flights. And I like to take all my weapons.”
He just raised one brow at her, daring her to keep arguing. She wanted to, just on principle and just because she wasn’t one to turn down a dare. But she needed to get moving.
And every time they got into an argument, she only ended up more attracted to him.
“Fine. Thank you. If you drive I can work.”
“Or you can sleep.”
“No time for that.” She needed to contact the hunters in the San Francisco office to have them meet her in Sacramento. She’d leave the majority of her people in place, but she’d used the witches from the San Francisco office several times before so they knew the routine and would work perfectly.
He frowned at her and she had to swallow back her demand to know how it was he could do that and still look so good.
“See you in just a few minutes at the briefing.” She turned and left, taking a thick file folder from her assistant, who walked at her side as they headed to the hunter’s conference room.
“All the information is here. I printed out everything Molly and Lark sent. The hotel has a floor set aside for you in Sacramento. The usual. Get me your schedule and I’ll take care of all the reservations for the team as well. Your special ammo is in the lockbox. I’ll have it loaded when you’re ready.”
Just the balance of their world all in her hands.
No pressure.
Chapter 4
HELENA stood at the head of the room, pacing just slightly as she addressed her crew. Her father, David, sat off to the side, letting her hold the reins, which Faine respected. His own father tended to be like that. He was the symbolic head of Leviathan, but Pere, Faine’s oldest brother, ran things.
“I don’t know how long this is going to take. As head of this new team, I expect to be gone at least seventy percent of the time, so in my absence from this office, David will take the lead, along with Marian and Evan. Things need to continue as they’ve been. I want three shifts of patrols, and keep on those police bands. I’ll still check in via video for the daily briefings when I can, and you know you can contact me if you need to. We’ll continue our position here. We will not back down when locals demand it when our people are in danger. This is the new normal, folks. No one seems interested in protecting our witches, but it’s our job. We will do it. They want to tell us what our power is. But no one knows better than we do. We don’t need to be given our power, it’s already ours.”
Heads nodded throughout the room and Faine noted the pride on David Jaansen’s face. This was a man who’d raised his children from birth—if the stories he’d heard were true—to be hunters. Considering the performance of both Jaansen sisters, he’d done an exemplary job.
These hunters believed in her. Followed her orders without hesitation. That was rare. And important. He wondered if she even saw it.
“I need to get on the road now so I can get into Sacramento. John, you’re with me. Caspar and Bridget will be coming over from San Francisco to staff the Road Show team. I’ll be rotating staff through, so if you’re interested, let Sasha know. She’s keeping a list. The rotations will be in two-week increments.” Helena paused. “Any questions?”
A few hands went up.
“You’re guarding the human? Why not have his own take care of him?”
Helena tapped the back of her hand with her pen for a moment. “He’s risking everything to back us. We’re guarding the whole group, including the other legislators who are Others. It’s the right thing to do. He does have staff to guard him. But we’re better than they are.”
Her smile was cocky, but she told the truth. Despite the danger, it had been the Other guards who’d kept everyone alive, even in the midst of bombings.
A few more procedural questions and she was stalking to the car, her arms full of files.
Faine carried a big lockbox of ammunition that had been specially created to deal with the mages. The Others knew some of the mages still allied themselves with the human hate groups, and they worked on regular humans too. She used guns, knives and magick on her job.
A lot of Others hesitated in using human weapons on their law enforcement teams, though that was changing. In large part due to Helena and Lark.
Faine remembered the look on her face when she’d slapped a magazine of the special ammo in pl
ace. She told him she wasn’t about to waste a tool if she could use it to protect her people. He liked her ruthless streak.
A lot.
“I need to stop at my house to grab some clothes,” she said as she got in the car.
He drove the fifteen minutes to her apartment, noting that the warding was still in place and holding. The building was owned by a Clan family and was guarded, not quite as openly as the enclave he lived in, but it was a magickal fortress so he approved.
“I shouldn’t be too long.” The wards recognized her, flaring to life as they admitted her and Faine, re-knitting in their wake. “Sorry about the mess.”
He laughed at that; unless she described a glass on the counter as a mess, he had no idea what she meant. The place was ruthlessly neat and orderly otherwise. “I’ve seen how your sister is. This is positively orderly.”
She shrugged. “She’s a slob. Sort of an anomaly as most witches are orderly. But Simon is a neat freak so I’m sure she works to keep it in check. Mostly.” There was affectionate amusement in her tone but he knew things between the two hadn’t always been so easy.
He wanted her to share that story with him. Of how she and her sister had ended up falling away from each other for the last few years. He knew the details from Lark’s perspective, but he wondered how the story went from Helena’s point of view.
“Make yourself at home. I’ll be out in a few.”
She grabbed a suitcase from the hall closet and disappeared into her bedroom. He contented himself with wandering the living room, looking at her books and the pictures on her shelves.
The woman won a lot of stuff. There were blue ribbons tucked here and there. Not really on display, but in and amongst her things. Statues and plaques. Pictures of her on graduation day, with her arm around Lark, her parents standing with them.
She’d been a swimmer. A runner too. Certainly a prolific reader if her shelves were any indicator. Books were everywhere, and of all types and genres. All in ruthless order by subject and even in like spine colors.
But there was nothing on her walls. They were all the same basic white as most apartments. No pictures hung. No open books sat on the arms of the chair or couch. She lived there, but the space didn’t feel like a home.
Helena came out shortly with a suitcase, a weapons case and another smaller bag; given the scent, probably her toiletries.
“Your weapons case is larger than the suitcase holding your clothes.”
She laughed and the sound of it tightened things low in his belly.
“A girl needs priorities. Also, I have clothes in Sacramento. I’ve got a room there, at the Gennessee building I mean. Weapons? Well, those I keep with me because I have favorites. I can buy four of the same shirt in two colors, but my guns? Well, they’re a lot more expensive and I’m partial to how they fit my hand.”
He sucked in a breath and the moment between them stretched. “There’s a lot to be said for a woman who appreciates a weapon the way you do.”
“Yeah?”
He nodded but refrained from saying anything else. They needed to stop at his place and to get on the road. And he sensed the immensity of anticipation between them. Something was going to happen but it wasn’t the time, no matter how much he wanted it to be.
He cleared his throat. “Have everything you need?”
She swallowed hard and he tasted her thundering pulse in the air between them. “Yeah. If I forget something I can always pick up a replacement.”
He led the way out after she let him grab one of her bags.
• • •
SHE wasn’t surprised that Faine drove ridiculously fast. Or that he had the reflexes to handle the road at eighty without batting an eye.
At his place he exchanged her company car for his. A sleek and sexy BMW. The engine purred even as it roared down the freeway.
Settling back into the embrace of the seat, she pulled out her pad, a pen and her phone. She needed to call Agent Anderson because he’d left her a message while she was in her meeting back at Gennessee.
“Agent Anderson, it’s Helena Jaansen retuning your call.”
“Hello there. I just wanted to check in with you after last night’s events. I wanted you to hear this from me, but Gentry Fenton is out on bail.”
“What?” She wanted to turn the car around and go hunt him down so she could snap his neck. And then she wanted to find this FBI agent to do the same.
“This was over our objections. We argued that he be held without bail. But his attorneys were able to show a lack of an arrest record, no history of violence, he’s got a business in Signal Hill and roots in the community. They argued that he wasn’t a flight risk.”
“This is bullshit. Utter and total bullshit. One of my people died last night. Children were targeted! Or don’t they count because they’re shifters? No one gives a shit because only human children deserve to be able to play without being bombed by terrorists?”
“I understand. I’m pissed off too, Helena. I promise you this was not what we wanted. My people will keep an eye on him and the others to be sure they don’t leave the jurisdiction. Hell, maybe they’ll lead us to something useful.”
“The other ones were released too?”
He blew out a breath and she knew the magick threatened to boil over from her belly.
“The ones that weren’t in the hospital. I’m sorry.”
“What judge would allow that?”
He paused so long she understood it. That was the problem. The judge was a pro PURITY person and had acted accordingly.
“We were able to get an order for all of them to stay at least five hundred feet away from any known Other community centers or other organizations. Believe me when I say if they step one foot in that five hundred feet we will pull them in.”
“Where a judge will just let them go.” When she hung up, she needed to get one of her team post photographs of the men arrested the night before out on the website and to all the community centers they knew of.
“I’m sure you’re aware that we will consider it self-defense if any of these men get anywhere near our property.” And who knew if there’d be enough left of the perpetrators to call the cops over when it was all said and done?
“Helena, I know this is atrocious. Please understand this task force is on your side. We want to stop all these hate crimes. We’re doing the best we can, and we can do more if you help us.”
“And what does that mean?”
“I’m not saying you don’t have the right to defend yourselves. But a less confrontational manner . . .”
“You’ll need to give Rebecca Gennessee a call on that one. Good luck to you with that. I can tell you it is the policy—a policy we made very clear to Humans First two weeks ago—that we would no longer be turning the other cheek. If you firebomb our children, we will be confronting the hell out of any garbage washing up on our shores trying to do it again.”
She hung up, so pissed that she knew if she kept talking to him she’d say something worse.
“I used to be so much more diplomatic,” she snarled. “Lark, she was the hothead. I was the calm one. Look at me now, hanging up on FBI agents.”
“I heard. The conversation I mean. I think you showed amazing restraint, as it happens.”
“I like having you around. You’re a bad influence. And I mean that in the best way.” She grinned at him, some of her anger ebbing. “I need to make calls about all this stuff.”
“Go on. I’m not going anywhere.”
Helena handled calls for two hours more, including one to Rebecca Gennessee, who let forth a curse-laden invective the likes of which Helena rarely heard. She actually felt sorry for Agent Anderson, who she did believe meant well.
She instructed her staff to deal with the alerts to all community centers, covens, clans, et cetera, with the pictures of the PURITY people who’d been released. They’d have their own team watching the men, and if they got anywhere near anything that could harm an Other,
they’d know what a mistake they’d made.
Eventually Faine pulled off the freeway and into a place for some food. It was a little diner she’d stopped at often enough on her way to San Francisco. Nothing fancy, but a lot of food for reasonable prices and their iced tea was good. But their milkshakes were heaven.
It was also run by shifters, which made her feel safer.
She dug into her cheeseburger and watched him drain a milkshake and order another as he demolished a French dip and shifted to his next plate.
“I envy your metabolism.”
He smiled her way. “You seem to do okay.”
“I have a physical job. But if I ate like you, I’d be unable to move.”
“There are benefits to being Lycian.”
Being in a diner run by shifters, being surrounded by Others of all types, meant it was easier to speak about their world without fear. It was nice.
So nice she wanted to keep the topic away from current events. And know more about him, too.
“Tell me about it. What’s Lycia like?”
His surprised smile made her glad she’d asked. “It’s beautiful. Forests and lakes mainly.”
“Industrial? Or? I’m sorry. I know my ignorance is shameful. I guess you’re my brother-in-law and I don’t know much of anything about where you come from.”
“We’ve never taken much effort to educate Others here on what we’re like.” He lifted a shoulder. “Not industrial. We do have machines and production, but it’s nowhere near the scale you have here. Life is slower.”
“Easier I suppose when you live so long.”
He nodded. “Yes. There’s no rush-rush-rush attitude there. Life is savored. There’s much time spent with family and Pack. Our young are kept home for far longer than yours. We tend to live in familial groups. Leviathan land is very large, spread out over hundreds of miles. We live in clusters, usually with our immediate family. I’ll take you. When we get some breathing room that is.”
She smiled. “To Lycia? Really?”
“You’d like that?”