by Jenn Stark
Finn reached out to grab her, and she yanked her hand away.
“Dr. Schaeffer! Dr. Schaeffer!”
From the center of the ballroom, a delighted Margaret Pettiman was towing every single female member of the Founders Circle board of directors toward them, matchmaking commandoes out for first blood. Dana stepped back quickly as Finn was surrounded by the halo of glittering matriarchs, his eyes remaining on her, daring her to stay, to talk to him, to tell him what he wanted to hear.
No. Dana took another step back, her brain finally catching up with her body. Something was happening here—and had been since the moment she’d first seen this man. He was playing on her senses, creating a reaction that was completely out of place, impossible to justify.
Dana spun away as the crowd converged, blindly heading for the lobby. She had to get out of here, had to breathe—to escape. She blew in and out of the coat check in less than ten seconds, but the lobby space in front of the elevator seemed crammed with people. She blinked several times, her eyes watering with the effort to see. Suddenly, everyone around her seemed surrounded with a thin film of light, their faces shimmering like double-exposed photographs and their bodies moving too slowly as she rushed by them, then wheeled into the stairwell of the fifteenth floor. Not two hours ago, the thought of running down the stairs on her still-injured leg would have turned her blood to ice.
Now she barely felt the impact of her boots hitting the smooth marble as she raced toward freedom.
What did he do to me?
Chapter Six
West Third St.
Cleveland, Ohio
1:40 a.m., Dec. 24
Finn stepped into the frigidly cold night, the rush of wind exhilarating him. He never got used to this either—the walls that mankind erected to stifle the very air that surrounded them, the lights they burned to hold back the night. Even after so many thousands of years, they battled their own world, counting it as enemy, not friend. Now, two thousand years after the birth of Christ, mortals had begun to harness electrical waves, magnetic fields—and their own highly disciplined brains. But there was so much more they could do.
So much he could teach them.
He blinked. Where’d that thought come from?
Finn breathed in the pollution-choked air to ground himself, feeling it burn as it entered his lungs, electrical pulses rushing through his system with equal parts pain and pleasure. Deliberately, he refocused, centering again on the human.
He would follow Dana Griffin.
She was his easiest point of access to Lester Morrow, since the man had never returned to the ballroom. And Finn would absolutely reach her before the rogue Fallen did.
He grinned. He’d rout whatever demons he’d sensed up in the ballroom, subdue the rogue Fallen, and hand over both the Fallen and the list by midnight to the archangel. That should be more than enough to earn his keep.
Then there was the matter of his Christmas bonus…
Forcing himself to relax, Finn sucked in more of the foul air and turned his head to catch the imprint of Dana’s passage. He still didn’t feel quite right, but he’d only been a Fallen for about ninety minutes. Maybe there was an adjustment period. Either way, his body was too tense, too tight, his emotions too close to the surface.
And as his mind focused on Dana, he felt the stirring within him again. His response to the mortal was dangerous. Forbidden. And yet…
Finn rubbed his eyes, remembering it all. The woman had practically burst with light, unlike anyone else around her, her body calling to his with a power he’d never experienced in a human. And, though he’d merely sought to give comfort, he’d been able to completely eliminate her pain with a touch.
Moments later, she’d fled from him in horror, her eyes wide with the knowledge of what he’d done, her body full and strong again, shimmering with energy. And he’d felt her departure like a physical blow—a crushing loss.
He shifted in the darkness, frowning. He simply needed to adjust, he told himself again. The mortal was not the problem; he was.
Still, she had reacted to his touch too strongly. Mortals had never been that sensitive. Even Warrick’s human, the cop, had been helped along by her blessed cross. The ornate pin Dana had been wearing at the gala was nothing more than a trinket in the hands of anyone other than a high priestess.
Unless she’d already encountered the rogue Fallen in some fashion, and he’d made Dana stronger—more open to being healed?
An unexpected surge of fury raked through him. He’d had no right.
But then neither had Finn. Yet he couldn’t forget the way Dana’d felt beneath his hand, her reaction to his touch, to his kiss on the back of her hand.
Finn grimaced. He needed to get moving.
He glanced up and down the short access street, his breath steaming out in a curling white cloud. Though humans had upgraded their methods of transportation over the centuries, he was much faster on his own. He allowed his senses to point the way.
Dana had departed the ballroom nearly ten minutes ago, but she’d left her mark on the very air as she’d moved through it. She’d stopped here, at the entrance to the Ritz Hotel, then had left the hotel at a fast, steady pace. He could still pick up her light, exotic scent as he stepped out onto the sidewalk. It had been buried in the chaos of powders and perfumes in the ballroom far above, but here, in this moment, he could almost taste it, whispers of jasmine and vanilla blending together in a sweet, intoxicating swirl. Her scent was richer than those of the other women he had been surrounded by, and far more memorable.
Everything about her, in fact, had been burned into his brain. Her strength, her passion. The unadorned beauty of her full mouth and flashing eyes. Reliving every sensation he’d felt in the last two hours, Finn nearly groaned at the memory of the mortal’s fingers against his lips. Dana Griffin felt more real to him than anything he’d touched in more than six thousand years. So vibrant, so angry, so excited, so…alive. She was fully, gloriously mortal.
And she’d been horrifically damaged.
All too recently, a bullet had caught her leg at an excruciating angle, exploding her tibia into a dozen fragments. Mortal surgery remained barbaric, so after the bullet had been removed, the real violation had begun. A steel plate and screws now held together her bone as her muscles knit together furiously to bear the weight not only of her body, but of the work she forced herself to endure. She’d added new muscle as well recently, the flushed pink layer hanging boldly over the old. A cry of determination against her own weakness.
Finn’s own ungainly heart seemed to enlarge in his chest cavity. From what his senses told him, Dana had received that injury within the past few months. No human in the world could heal that quickly, that cleanly, without outside help.
Focus on the prize, buddy. Dana isn’t the goal, the list is. Finn’s orders from the archangel had been clear. If he didn’t complete his mission and stand before the portals of heaven at midnight, he’d lose his freedom for good. As would the rest of the Syx. He needed to bring his A-game. He owed that to his team. To himself too.
Finn followed the curve of the street, pausing in the shadows as he saw Dana’s willowy form silhouetted against brighter lights in the distance. His need surged again, hot and insistent, but something else cut across his reaction as he moved down Prospect Avenue—the unshakable awareness that he wasn’t alone on the streets of Cleveland.
“Here, demon, demon, demon,” he murmured.
He hadn’t been mistaken in the ballroom when he had felt their presence. There were demons here—maybe even the bad seed Fallen as well—all of them coming to take him down. Finn’s jaw hardened. Bring it. If there was one thing he was good at, it was tossing demon asses back across the veil.
Finn deliberately slowed to let the demons catch up with him. He projected his senses forward, draining his energy as he scanned the city streets within a solid half-mile radius. The shadows ebbed and flowed on the far side of Dana, but there were many stre
ets through this city, many paths for the horde to find Finn.
“C’mere sweethearts.” Resisting an urge to goad the pack with a sharp whistle, Finn moved onto the balls of his feet. Dana ranged farther away from him, and he focused more heavily on the horde. Their thoughts, their fears. These weren’t straight-up demons, he decided, but possessed humans. Totally had to be the rogue Fallen at work. Finn hadn’t fought a Possessed since the Dark Ages, but he imagined the process hadn’t changed all that much. True, demons could be torn out of humans and thrust back into their own plane while preserving the lives of their human hosts. But such “exorcisms,” as mortals termed them, took too much time. Incapacitating their human hosts was quicker.
Finn made no effort to hide his presence, and he could tell by the shift in energy the moment both the demons and their possessed humans finally realized he was there. On the faintest whisper of wind, he could feel the creatures stirring, somewhere deep within the concrete canyons. Then the coiling, jibbering force of their excitement heightened, keening on the wind, and they gathered together as one quivering being before bursting apart again, slipping into the darkness. He waited, his body charged and ready for the fight.
But no one came for him in the still of the night. No one attacked in the shadows, far away from human eyes.
And in that moment, Finn knew.
They weren’t coming for him.
They were coming for Dana.
Chapter Seven
Prospect Ave.
Cleveland, Ohio
2:03 a.m., Dec. 24
Dana settled into her usual long, loping stride, forcing herself not to turn around for what seemed like the fifteenth time. She was not being followed, she told herself. Merely suffering from melodrama, her mind racing faster than her legs could carry her.
She’d tried calling Lester again, but he hadn’t picked up. Probably just as well. If he’d arranged on the side to meet with this Finn, Lester had violated every freaking protocol they had. Dana felt hot anger crawl up her cheeks again, searing against the frigid cold outside. The old man had always acted as if he was some kind of retro Hollywood kingpin, rather than the CEO of a simple Cleveland-based engineering company. Especially since the recent attack, her uncle wasn’t even supposed to go to lunch without leaving Dana’s team a detailed schedule, let alone set up private midnight meetings with unsecured business contacts. She could only hope, wherever he’d snuck off to, that Lester had brought his own security guys with him, even if they were mostly night watchmen. What had he been thinking?
And who—or what—was this man he’d arranged to meet in the middle of the night? Assuming Finn’s story was even true.
Finn.
He’d dropped fifteen thousand dollars on her charity bail to get to Lester more quickly. He’d set off every instinctual alarm Dana possessed.
And he’d healed her with a touch.
Her leg wasn’t simply better. It was perfect. After she’d left the ballroom, she’d even hopped up and down on it in the stairwell for good measure. No pain. Not even a twinge.
His touch. He’d called it an energy transfer. She called it… What? A miracle? Sure, if you believed in such things. At this point, she didn’t know what she believed anymore.
So what exactly did Mr. Touch want with Lester?
She texted her uncle again, telling him to contact Max, that a very strange man she’d met wanted to meet him. That would get the old man’s interest, she knew, and then maybe she’d get answers.
That sent, Dana hurried down Prospect toward home, punching her hands deep into her jacket pockets. The street was brightly lit past Ontario, with both Flannery’s Pub and the Ultralounge going strong. Of the two, Flannery’s was more her scene, just as it had once been her father’s. She’d stop in for a minute, she thought, reconnect with her own people on Christmas Eve. There were no smartly dressed waiters bearing champagne flutes there, no glitter-wrapped guests wearing a year’s honest salary around their necks.
Instead, there were all-you-could-eat peanuts, fifteen different Irish beers on tap, and WWE Smackdown parties every Friday night, where the regulars could happily dissect the legends of Hacksaw Duggan and Gorgeous George, then deliberate for hours between Ric Flair or Rick Rude. Everything a girl could want. Even at this hour on Christmas Eve, the tavern’s homey warmth reached out to her as she neared, tattered holiday lights winking from the wrought iron fence, a familiar knot of smokers huddled in the door front. Christmas. It was her father’s favorite holiday, and the poinsettias in the window of the pub she knew had been placed there by its owner in homage to her dad. They still remembered him, after all these years.
The older men raised their voices in greeting as Dana ducked into the pub, suddenly feeling better than she had all night. Bob was working the bar, and he came right over as soon as he recognized her.
“Coffee?” he asked, already reaching for the pot.
“Only if you spike it with something good,” she said, taking a seat.
“Sure thing.” Bob grinned.
It was good to be back among people who knew her, Dana thought, and she felt more of the anxiety of the last two hours melt away. She gave the older men at the counter beside her a nod, absurdly happy when they nodded back, their faces ruddy beneath worn fedoras and faded snap-brim caps. For as long as Dana could remember, these same men had shared their stories and grins over gleaming bartops and half-empty mugs. Nearly two decades ago, her father had often joined them after hanging up his badge for the night. They were louder then, she recalled, their eyes more vibrant, their laughter booming. Now, they just shuffled to the pub each night with their little-old-man steps, every year a little slower, but never failing to show.
“On the house.” Bob set her drink in front of her. “We’ll charge it to your old man, same as the flowers. Merry Christmas, doll.”
“Thanks.” She inhaled the decadent aroma of Baileys and coffee and ran her finger over the top of her mug, glancing up at the bank of TVs rehashing the day’s bowl games. All those wannabe superheroes buried in padding, she thought. What was the point? Now, a gold lamé headband, designer leopard-print tights, and a giant steel cage? That was entertainment. A guilty pleasure her father had brought home from Flannery’s that the two had once and always shared.
Dana worked to chase away the bittersweet memory as Bob paused in front of her. “Someone was asking about you today,” he said, collecting half-emptied snack bowls from the bar.
Hope and new apprehension slivered through her. But how can he know…? “Was his name Finn?” she asked, keeping her voice light. “Well-dressed, big—European? Maybe a doctor?”
Bob shook his head. “He didn’t leave a name, but he didn’t strike me as European, no. And certainly not a doctor type. More of a thug, you ask me.” He shot her a worried look. “I told him I’d never heard of you before.”
Dana raised her mug to him. “Then here’s to friends you can’t remember.”
He nodded, his worried expression easing in the face of her dad’s favorite line. “And nights you can’t forget.”
Dana barked a short laugh. “Thanks for looking out for me.” She warmed her hands on her mug, as the old man closest to her caught her attention.
Willie, she thought as he leaned toward her a bit too quickly, jostling his drink. One of her father’s favorite bar mates, once upon a time.
Now Willie’s rheumy eyes were wide with concern as he turned to her. “You in trouble, kid?” he asked, his tone roughened by decades of whiskey and cigarettes. He swayed a bit more than usual, and Dana’s heart tightened.
“No, Willie,” she said, watching the foamy head of his Guinness spill over the side of his glass. “Just business.” She smiled easily, inviting confidences. “Why, have you seen this guy who asked Bob about me?”
The old man harrumphed. “I don’t see much of anything anymore.”
Dana bit her lip. “You see plenty,” she said, her heart twisting. “You always have.” They’re a
ll so much older now. While her father had been caught in time, never changing in the precious focus of her memory, each of his friends faded a little more each year. “You having a good Christmas this year?”
Willie scowled, pointing a thin, knotty finger at her. “He’s watching you,” he said sternly. “He is, and you should never forget it. He told me he’d watch over you forever. He loved you that much, Dana. As much as his own flesh and blood.”
Dana looked at the old man worriedly. C’mon, Willie, snap out of it. Despite her wildest childhood assertions that she’d been adopted, stolen at birth, switched by fairies, maybe even genetically engineered…Dana was a Griffin. With Lester’s help, she’d unearthed her birth certificate back when her dad had died. She hadn’t known what she’d been expecting, exactly, but it didn’t matter. As oddly matched as they sometimes seemed to her, Walter, Lester, and Claire were her family.
“Well, I was sure proud to be his daughter,” she said. She patted Willie’s arm in reassurance, shocked at how frail the old man suddenly seemed beneath his heavy wool sweater.
Willie shook her off him, his eyes suddenly mirror bright. “He’s watching you,” he said again, hunching over his Guinness. “And he always will. A proud, proud papa.”
Dana exchanged a look with Bob, who gave her a “whaddya gonna do?” smile. Sighing, she returned to her Baileys and coffee, her hands shaking only slightly as she wrapped them around the mug.
I miss you so much, Dad.
The joy she’d reclaimed had faded again from the night, so Dana quickly finished her drink and wished them all a Merry Christmas, patting Willie on the back again. All she got was a grunt in response. She’d have to check in on him more frequently, she thought. Willie was an old friend of her father’s, and that made him family.
Margaret’s words came back to her. With a strong family, you can save the world.
Dana scowled. She didn’t need her family to save the world. She simply wanted it to be safe. Thoughts of her uncle assaulted her again, and frustration sprang up anew. If Lester would simply follow the security rules she’d laid out for him…