“You too.” I gave her a quick squeeze, and then focused, leaving her behind as I returned to Denmark and whatever awaited me there.
Chapter Five
Brennan and I walked down a dark, rancid-smelling alleyway in Copenhagen. It was night, and we had been on the hunt for Anselm Fisker for hours. My New Guardians had found nothing at the docks, and I had assigned them the task of searching another area of the city Fisker was known to frequent in his lifetime.
I knew the shifter was getting frustrated. Of course, he disliked not being able to find what it was I was searching for. But he also could tell that I was even more tense than usual, and it seemed to wear on him, especially when I did not open up about what was bothering me. I did not want to talk to him about Mollis and the fact that I could far too easily see her going over the edge, breaking under the insane amount of pressure on her. She had trusted me with her vulnerability, and I was not going to betray that.
No matter what she said, it came down to one thing: I needed to find these souls faster.
“I think he has moved on,” I finally said, turning to Brennan with a sigh. “We would have found him.”
He nodded. “So he’s not staying where he died,” he said.
“Which very likely means he is working with our enemies. Yes.”
“So what next?”
I scrubbed a hand over my face. “I do not know.” He just watched me, waiting. “It feels like we are running around like ducks with their heads cut off.”
“Chickens, Tink.”
“Hm?”
“The phrase is ‘running around like chickens with their heads cut off.’”
“Oh. Well I knew it was some kind of bird, anyway,” I said, distracted. “We need to be more systematic about this.” I took a breath. “From what Mollis said to me, since that last face-off against my sister, it seems as if the number of souls we’re being beaten to has not slowed. In fact, it has gotten worse. That makes no sense. With fewer Guardians to steal the souls from me and the crows, it should be slowing.” I shook my head.
“So how does that even make sense, then?” Brennan asked. Then he glanced around, taking in the damp, dark surroundings. “If we’re not looking anymore, can we get out of this alley?”
I nodded, rematerialized us to my New Guardians to tell them to stop looking, and then I rematerialized Brennan back to our hotel room. Once we were there, he rifled through his bag and began devouring most of a bag of beef jerky. The man thought about food more than anyone I knew, I thought with some amusement as I watched him.
Of course, amusement turned to something else after he finished eating and started pulling his shirt off, revealing far too much toned muscle, it seemed, for my mind to handle. I looked down at my hands. I really should encourage him to keep his clothing on. Especially since we are not at the point of doing anything interesting when he has his clothing off.
“Okay. So explain that. We’re losing souls, but the other side doesn’t have your sisters anymore, or, at least, they have fewer of them. So how are they still messing with Molly?”
He lay on the bed, stretching out behind me as I sat on the edge of the bed. Do not turn around, do not turn around, do not turn around, I told myself.
Of course, I was incapable of listening to reason, even when it came from myself, where he was concerned. So of course I turned around, and of course, there he was, bare-chested, his arms folded under the back of his head, watching me. The only thing that would have made him look more perfect was if his hair had been loose instead of pulled back as it was. He did not even know he had that effect on me, at least, I did not think he knew. He was utterly comfortable in his body. I was not there yet, and when he was like that, I felt as virginal as I had been for most of my existence.
I looked away. “I believe they are simply taking matters into their own hands. Why wait for humans to die, when they can kill them, turn them, and add to their army all in one fell swoop?”
He was silent for a long while. “So it’s not just a matter of tracking down those seventeen souls you have left anymore.”
I shook my head.
“How do you kill the undead?” he asked.
“Usually decapitation works,” I said. “Though the ones that were given the hearts of the immortals they abducted could very well come back from that in time. I am not certain, though. We never dealt with anything like this. Mollis destroyed the one we found in Japan,” I added as an afterthought.
“There were two immortals they took the hearts from,” he said quietly, and I nodded.
“I want to get the immortals more organized as well. We need an accounting of where everyone is. We need to know if anyone is missing.” I took a breath. “I think that would be the type of task that you and Artemis would excel at.”
“Trying to get rid of me again, Tink?” he asked, and I could hear the smile in his voice. Then, I felt his hand on my back, rubbing up and down my spine, gently, slowly. Even through the leather coat I was still wearing, I could feel the warmth of his hand.
“No,” I murmured. “But this is not about us. Not now.”
“Someday, it will be,” he answered, his voice low, a promise. “And when we get to that point, there won’t be any getting rid of me.”
I turned and looked at him, meeting his blue-eyed gaze, feeling immediately as if I could stay there, just as we were, forever. “Someday may be a very long time from now, Cub.”
“I’ll wait. I want to see where this goes.” He continued rubbing my back, and I nearly wanted to purr, despite the fact that unlike him, I am most certainly not a cat of any kind. “I have a sneaking suspicion it’ll be worth the wait, Eunomia,” he added after several long moments.
I swallowed, aware of how shallow my breaths had become, of the hot curl of desire forming deep inside of me. “I have the same suspicion.”
He blew out a breath, and I knew he was at least as affected as I was. There was always this between us now, since Japan, this overwhelming need to touch, to feel. Every moment felt weighted with emotion. It was exhausting, exhilarating. It was something I had never felt before. I had some suspicions about what it meant on my end, but it was too soon to even consider expressing what it was I suspected I was feeling.
“So you want me and Artemis to start finding the immortals.”
I nodded. “Can you get the time off work?”
He ran his hand along my side, over my hip, and rested it there. “I can. I don’t think I’ll need to, though. Artemis and I can work when it’s night in Detroit. I want to keep an eye on things at work, see if I can get any reads on where things might be happening.”
I nodded. “What about Sean?”
“Heph and Meaghan have offered to help with him if I need it, now that I can’t take him to the loft. I’m pretty sure Meaghan is a saint,” he added, and I laughed. “He likes it with them. He says Heph is fun and Gaia is scary but cool. I wonder how Gaia would feel about that description.”
“She would likely be quite happy with it. It is accurate,” I said, and he squeezed my hip gently. “We should get back to Detroit so you can work out the details of this with Artemis.”
“In a while, Tink. We have this nice quiet room, and I need to sleep.”
I shook my head, irritated with my own lack of consideration. He hadn’t slept in over thirty hours, with us having left in early morning in Detroit. Even I was exhausted, but I was accustomed to working without sleep.
“Of course,” I said.
“It’s the middle of the night there anyway,” he added.
I moved to get up so he could sleep, and he squeezed my hip again. “Stay with me,” he murmured.
I turned to look at him, and he was watching me, his gaze even intense in his sleepiness.
I should get up, I told myself. I should say no, and go over to my own twin bed across the room. That would be the sensible, mature thing to do.
Instead, I shrugged my coat off, kicked off my boots, and crawled under th
e blankets that he’d flipped aside for me. I allowed him to gather me into his arms, and fell asleep with my face resting in the crook of his neck, my arms around him, curled into him as if he was the shelter I have been seeking my entire existence.
And I was coming to believe he was exactly that. And it was completely terrifying.
When I woke, the bed was empty. It took me a moment to shake loose the grogginess of sleep, but when I did, I heard the shower in the bathroom and let out a small groan. There was something I did not need to think about: Brennan, naked, mere feet away from me.
I got up and used the microwave to heat water, steep one of the bags of tea in our room. It was nothing like the delicious herbal teas Ada made, which I had grown accustomed to drinking at the loft. But there are some times when any tea will do, and this was one of them. I sipped some tea, and quickly changed while Brennan showered. When he came out, the scent of soap flowed into the room along with him. His hair was wet, but he’d slicked it back into what they refer to as a “man bun.” It is a look that I did not often appreciate, but when Brennan wore it, it worked.
At least he was fully clothed now.
I gave him a small smile, then turned back to my phone. I was sitting at the small table in the corner of our room, tea and phone in hand. I could hear him shuffling around behind me, brewing one of those single-serving coffees I so often saw in hotel rooms now. The smell of coffee soon wafted through the room. The only text message waiting was a quick text from Hephaestus reminding me to be careful. I smiled to myself. I really did need to start spending more time with him, along with a certain other male in my life.
The “other male” in question took that moment to press his warm lips to the side of my neck, just below my ear. I jumped, surprised by the sudden sensation, and overwhelmed by the immediate sense of need I felt. His lips lingered, and I could feel his warm breath on my skin.
“Morning, Tink,” he murmured just before pulling away.
I was of more than half a mind to pull him back to me.
I turned to him, and he was dressed in the dark suit he wore to work. Of course. We would be returning to Detroit around noon. He would go to work, and then go home to his son.
The sight of him in that suit never failed to make me feel a bit breathless.
“Good morning,” I said, irritated by the breathy tone of my voice. He sat, coffee cup in hand, across the table from me.
“Thanks for that last night. I needed the sleep, and I knew that if I went back to Detroit, Sean would wake up and then he’d want to talk and then we’d both be cranky today.”
I smiled. “Well, we can’t have that.”
“Did you sleep all right?” he asked, gulping his coffee.
“I slept better than I have in a very long time,” I told him. He stilled, eyes on mine.
“Me too,” he finally said. “Thanks for saying that,” he added.
I nodded. I knew he needed to hear things like that. His ego was perfectly healthy, obviously, but where relationships were concerned, he was not all that secure with himself yet. Everything that had happened with Mollis had caused him to doubt himself. I wanted him to know how he made me feel, despite the fact that it went against everything I knew to be sensible. This, whatever this was between the two of us, had never been part of my life. All I could hope was that I was handling it well, and to me, that meant being honest with him.
He gulped back the last of his coffee, then stood up and put his shoes on. I tucked my phone into my pocket and pulled my coat on, then grabbed my small duffel bag off of the bed.
“Ready?” I asked him. He had his bag in his hand.
“Almost,” he said.
“Almost?”
He stepped toward me, leaned down, resting a warm hand at the side of my neck and tilting my chin up with his thumb. He lowered his face to mine. “Almost,” he murmured again. And then his lips met mine, warm, insistent, possessive, and I heard myself sigh contentedly into his mouth as I kissed him back. Everything, the feel of his lips against mine, his tongue dipping between my lips, that warm hand on my neck… all of it had me feeling, for just a moment, as if I was flying.
He swept his lips across mine a few more times, gently sucked my lower lip, then released it.
“Now, I’m ready,” he said, his voice just a little hoarse.
“For what?” I asked.
He laughed, low, and it was perhaps the most alluring sound I have ever heard. “Don’t tempt me, Tink.”
I smiled up at him. His hand still rested on my neck, and his thumb traced my jawline. “We both already know you are more than tempted, Cub.”
He grinned, bent and kissed me one more time, then moved his hand from my neck to lace his fingers with mine. “Let’s get this mess straightened out so I can spend a hell of a lot more time being tempted then, hm?” I nodded, focused, and within seconds, we were back in Detroit, outside of his house. He turned to his car, opened the door, and tossed his bag in. Then he turned back to me. “Be careful,” he said, as he always did.
“You too,” I said. “Keep me updated.”
“I will,” he promised. “I’m going to look for patterns, anything at all today that can help with the undead thing you talked about. It would be murders, right? Or missing people?”
I nodded.
“Okay. Jamie and I will do some data gathering today then, assuming nothing stupid happens.” “Stupid” was usually code for a supernatural causing trouble, which Brennan and his department were responsible for officially taking care of. Most often, they did that in cooperation with either Nain’s team or one of the shifter packs. More rarely, they did so working with Rayna’s family, but, as always, the vampires were not trusted by most beings, supernatural or not, so they tended to withdraw from larger society.
“I will talk to you later,” I said. He nodded, swept one more quick kiss across my lips, and then I watched him get into the car. Once he’d pulled out of the driveway and waved to me, I focused one more time, preparing to rematerialize. I’d moved my team to Detroit when I’d checked on them the night before, and they were supposed to be waiting in my apartment for me.
I just had to figure out where we would be going next.
Chapter Six
“London,” Brennan’s voice said over the phone. “There have been thirty-eight reported missing persons, and thirteen murders in the last two weeks.”
I held my hand up, indicating to my team to take a break. I had been showing them the most effective ways to use a Netherblade, in case they ever ended up using mine against a difficult soul. There was not really much space in my apartment of this type of thing, but it was better than nothing. Despite my doubts about showing them, I had to admit that the better they knew how to handle themselves, the less I would have to worry about them.
“Yes, that is quite the red flag,” I said to Brennan.
“There have been a few scattered missing person reports elsewhere in Britain, but it seems focused in London. Specifically the East End.”
I was about to say something, and clamped my mouth shut, then opened it again.
“Whitechapel?” I asked, taking a guess.
“Yeah. How’d you know?”
I groaned. “I should have thought of this.”
I could hear a keyboard clicking, and could just picture him in his office, typing away, phone perched between his chin and his shoulder.
“Jack the Ripper?” he asked. Ah. So he was Googling.
“Yes.”
“She was one of the ones who fought you when you tried to take her soul to the Nether,” he said, remembering the night I’d shown him some of my better scars, including one from Jack the Ripper herself.
“She did. And she is on Mollis’s list, and I should have gone to London sooner,” I chided myself. “I only put it off because I was going by the countries and regions that had the most lost souls. She is the only one from there.”
“You couldn’t have known, Eunomia,” he said. “And
it might not even be her.”
“Maybe,” I said, though I did not feel it.
“So I guess you and the New Guardians are going to London next?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“Artemis and I will be leaving in a bit for our first round of searching for immortals. Asclepius is coming too.”
“That is good,” I said with some relief. The more people with him, the better.
“She says that last she knew, they still mostly liked hanging out in the Mediterranean.”
“Of course. So many temples built to them there,” I said wryly, and he laughed.
“That’s pretty much what Artemis said, too,” he told me. “As soon as we’re back, I’ll let you know who we found.”
“Thank you.”
“Did you want a list of the London missing and murdered?” he asked.
“If you could send it, that would be helpful.”
“I’ll email it to you.” He paused. “Be careful, Tink. I don’t want to see any more scars on you.”
I smiled, turning to hide it from Quinn and the others. “You have not even seen all of them yet.”
“Yet,” he said, and I let out a short laugh. “I’m serious though. Be careful, okay? I hate this.”
“It will be fine. I will be careful, and I want you to be as well.”
“Promise,” he said.
“All right. I will talk to you soon, then,” I said.
He told me to be careful yet again, and then finally hung up. And how ridiculous was it that I missed his voice the moment we were disconnected? I took a breath, and turned to my New Guardians.
“London,” I said, and Quinn nodded.
“I heard you. Whitechapel.” I nodded. “Well, this should be fun.”
“I do not…oh. You are being sarcastic,” I said.
He grinned. “I am. It’s likely to be an absolute shitstorm.”
I did not argue with him. Instead, I took his hand, and Claire’s and together, we rematerialized to a quiet graveyard in London. It seemed appropriate somehow, to begin our mission in London among the dead.
Betrayer (Hidden Book 7) Page 6