A man on a bike whizzed past, and Uri grabbed my hand to pull me out of the way. He didn’t let go. Shit, we were walking down the street holding hands, and my face was on fire like a fucking teenager.
I wanted him to keep holding my hand. I slid a glance his way, and he looked down at me.
“I wanted to do this the last time we went for a walk,” he said.
I recalled how the back of his hand had brushed against mine several times.
“I didn’t want to cross a line,” he continued. “Celestials aren’t permitted to have relationships. But now…Now I’m free to do as I wish.”
“Will you stay with me, Uri?”
He gave my hand a gentle squeeze. “There’s no place I’d rather be.”
Eldrick welcomed us into the penthouse suite. If he was surprised at seeing Uri with me, he covered it well, and when he discovered what Uriel was, he was all questions.
Lunch was a surprisingly cheerful affair, and it was only when we were taking coffee in the lounge that I noticed the worry lines and dark shadows under Eldrick’s eyes.
“Is everything all right?”
Uri took his coffee cup and wandered over to the windows, looking out at the city, discreetly giving us room to chat.
“Just pack business.” Eldrick’s smile was tight.
“The traitor hunt?”
He nodded slowly. “It’s not going well. I hate to say it, but if Hunter were here, this would go much faster. The more I dig, the more corruption I find. Honestly, I’m not sure who I can trust any longer.”
“I’m going to get Hunter back for you. We have a lead.”
He sat up straighter. “You do?”
“Grayson is on the case. We will get him back. Soon.”
I wanted to tell him about the sleepwalking, about the voice in my head, but he already had so much on his plate. I didn’t want to burden him with it all.
“Grayson wanted to know about the safe house you said you’d organize for the vamps?” I winced. “I’m sorry. I know it’s probably the last thing you’ve been worried about.”
“Ulrich is dealing with it. I’m seeing him later today. I’ll call you after.”
“Thank you.”
“There’s a ball in a few weeks,” Eldrick said. “I usually decline, but this year I wondered if you’d like to come with me.”
“A ball, as in poufy dresses and tuxes?”
He wrinkled his nose. “Not your thing?”
If it meant quality time with him, then, “I’m in.”
We settled into chatting about other stuff. Uri joined us, and soon our laughter echoed around the room as Eldrick recounted tales of his youthful exuberance as a Loup in training to be an alpha. For an hour, I was just a daughter getting to know her father. For an hour, life was almost normal.
Chapter Twenty-Five
I stood in my bedroom at the pack house while Grayson and Cora studied every inch of my body.
My naked body.
Yep, I was standing here, starkers, not a fucking stitch on as they examined me like scientists checking out a specimen under a microscope.
Yeah…Not strange in the least.
Cora stepped back, hands on hips. “I don’t see anything unusual. You checked her inner thighs?”
Had he checked my inner thighs. Pffft. More times than I could fucking count. Not that I was complaining…Shit, don’t think about Grayson gripping your thighs and parting your legs. Don’t think about it.
“Nothing,” Grayson said.
I lowered my arms, my heart sinking. Yeah, I was being all mentally flippant about this, but it was a big deal. I needed them to find something. If they hadn’t, then…
“It’s a mark on my soul then.”
“Wait,” Cora said. “Your head. She hurried over and parted my hair. Her fingers began to crawl across my scalp as she checked it. “Grayson, check her pubes.”
I covered my lady bits. “Whoa!”
Cora tutted. “It’s not like he hasn’t been up close and personal with your vajajay before, and it’s not a huge bush anymore, so he won’t get lost in it.”
Grayson made a strange snorting sound.
Wait, was he laughing? And then his fingers were on me, gently exploring. I stilled, ignoring the tingles that his touch evoked and focusing on the enormity of this situation. This had to be done. I had to know.
“Nothing,” Grayson said. He stood, and there was no mistaking the dark edge of desire in his eyes. My stomach flipped, but he walked away, turning his back to give himself a moment to calm down.
Cora made a sound of exasperation. “No. Fuck, no.”
She stepped back, her face set in a mulish expression. “This is bullshit. Elijah has it wrong.”
But the sheen to her eyes told me she didn’t believe that. I set my shoulders. “It’s fine. We can fix this. We’ll figure it out. If there’s no cure on earth, then there might be one in the Underealm.”
She latched on to that thought, nodding eagerly. “Yes. Right, in the meantime, we take it in shifts to watch you sleep.”
“I have rope,” Grayson said. “We can tie you to the bed.”
Cora rolled her eyes. “Yes, and I bet you’d love that, wouldn’t you.”
Despite the direness of the situation, I couldn’t help but snicker.
Grayson gave me a flat look.
I composed myself. “Let’s have a nice dinner. The whole pack. Okay?”
“You think that will help?” Grayson asked. “After we struck out on finding a cure for this curse or any damn flyers about this blood drive?”
My chest felt hollow. Hope of locating Hunter was looking thin. Every flyer had been taken down. There was no way to trace him. Bobby was looking into the logo, trying to find a reference online. A company, an organization…Something. But there was nothing we could do right now. Right now, we needed normal.
I smiled up at him, injecting cheer into the action. “Yes, I think it will help. We don’t give up, and we don’t let shit get us down. We enjoy every moment we have together as a family.” I stepped closer to him. “Trust me, I know how shit things are right now. I know there are too many things that can go wrong. Az and Mal are in the Underealm waiting to head into one of the most dangerous parts of that world. Hunter is missing, and I can’t sleep without freaking us all out. So yeah, I get it, but we have no control over those things. We do, however, have control over how we deal with them.”
“Lasagna and wine.” Cora clapped her hands together. “Garlic bread—cheesy preferably—and a crisp side salad for effect, because I won’t eat that leafy shit.”
God, I loved her.
“I’ll grab Dean and get supplies,” Grayson said.
Dean… My gaze flicked to Cora.
She rolled her eyes. “For God’s sake, woman, put some clothes on.”
“Nothing happened,” she said. “I mean, I wanted it to. It was getting hot and heavy, and then fucking Jasper turned up.”
“Oh, shit.”
“Yeah.” She fell back onto the bed and then wrinkled her nose. “Fuck, you two need to change your sheets.” She jumped up and dusted herself off. “Do I have sex juice on me?”
“Cor!” I laughed and hauled her up. “Focus. Dean. What happened?”
“Jasper cock-blocked and basically told Dean that he’d need to get in line to fuck me.”
“That bastard!”
“Urgh, you should have seen Dean’s expression. He looked…disgusted.” She covered her face. “He thinks I’m disgusting.”
Anger flared in my chest. “Fuck that. If he thinks that, then he’s not worthy of you. You saved my life, Cor. You saved Mal and Az. You sacrificed yourself for us over and over.” I didn’t even bother to blink back my tears. “I owe you everything. We all do, and if Dean’s going to let skanky Jasper get in the way of having a relationship with you, then it’s his fucking loss.”
We fell into a hug, rocking from side to side.
“Thank you, babe,” she
said. “But I would do it all again in a heartbeat. I love you. As for relationships, I don’t think I’ll be having a normal one anytime soon with that malevolent asshole linked to me.”
“Then we get rid of him. We find a way. Tell Elijah about Jasper. Maybe he can do something.”
She tensed.
“Cor? What is it?”
“Nothing.”
“Tell me.”
“Elijah has his own agenda, and I’m not playing into it. I’ll figure something out once we have this curse off you and we have Lilith back.”
“No. No, we don’t wait. We figure it out now. We start searching now.” I pulled back to look at her properly. “You don’t get to come second.”
“Fuck, Fee, I know that, but my love life isn’t an urgent matter, your situation is. I can live with Jasper for a little longer. We need to focus our energies on the other stuff.”
I opened my mouth to argue when the door burst open and Bobby fell in. His face was bloody, and he was holding his left arm to his chest.
“Bobby, what the hell!” I ran toward him, grabbing him before he could topple and holding him to me. “Bobby!”
His eyes flared bright as his wolf roused, healing him. “Vamps. There are super vamps downstairs.”
Cora jumped us into chaos. The lounge was a mass of bodies beating the shit out of each other. My Loup up against men in black combat gear. A flash of fang here and there told me these were the vamps, but they fought as an organized unit. They wielded batons that emitted charges that had my Loup convulsing and falling to their knees.
There was no sign of Grayson or Dean. They must still be out.
I caught sight of Bastian and Uri fighting back to back against three super vamps.
Right now, it was six up against eight.
It was time to even out the odds.
Cora and I leaped into the fray. I had no weapons, but my Loup rose up to give me claws and tear-the-fuck-out-of-you teeth. I allowed her to take over, to rip and shred and slash, falling easily into beast mode and allowing my territorial rage to consume me.
How dare they come into my pack house, onto my fucking territory, and attack my Loup.
How fucking dare they.
“Fee, the vamps!” Cora grabbed my arm, and we jumped to outside the garage where more super vamps were dragging the refugee vamps out of our garage.
I charged and tackled the nearest one at the waist, lifting him off his feet and then slamming him into the side of their getaway van. There was a snap, and the vampire howled and collapsed to the ground, his body limp. His spine…I’d broken his spine but not his spirit. He hissed at me, and I caught a good look at his face.
Mother fucker. I knew that face. It was more filled out now, less on the pasty side, but even though I’d only met him once at the Dominus quarters when he’d come to deliver intel on the Dread hangout, his face was etched into my memory.
“Fee, watch out!”
I turned my head in time to catch the sight of a black baton headed for my shoulder and hear the fizz of electricity a moment before my body lit up with pain, twisting and contorting.
I lost control of myself and hit the ground in a convulsion.
Cora’s scream was eclipsed by a roar of rage, and then I was being lifted off the ground. Dean’s cedar scent filled my head as he dragged me backward. My senses were coming back online. The pain receded as my body dispelled the effects.
A huge golden wolf attacked the super vamps spilling into the yard in a frenzy. Blood sprayed, howls ripped the air, and throats were torn open.
Grayson was in his own version of berserker mode, and fuck was he glorious, but he needed to stop. We needed intel. We needed one alive, and I knew just which one.
I grabbed Dean’s shirt by the collar and pulled myself to my feet as Grayson came to a standstill, his powerful golden body spattered with blood. Vamp parts were strewn around him. My pack growled and snarled in triumph as Grayson turned on the vampire crumpled by the van. His haunches bunched as he prepared to attack.
“NO!” I blur-ran, coming to stand in front of the super vamp.
Grayson’s jaws snapped closed inches from my face, his eyes wide with shock at what he’d almost done. He fell back, and I dropped down beside the vamp and grasped his jaw, forcing him to look at me.
“We’ve been looking for you, Kristoff.”
The vamps we’d been protecting were back in the garage, snug and safe. The dead bodies of the super vamps had been piled into our van, ready for disposal, and Kristoff was chained to the post in the pack house with the rest of us gathered around him. His spine had healed, so the chains were a necessary precaution.
“This is your hybrid witch-vamp contact?” Dean asked. “Are you sure? He isn’t what you described.”
Thin with a Béla Lugosi vibe? No, he wasn’t any longer.
He was bulky and muscular beneath his combat uniform, which strained against his biceps and thighs. They’d changed him. Whoever they were.
“He looks different. I mean, his body…It’s bulkier than it was before, but it’s him.”
Kristoff stared straight ahead, ignoring us.
Grayson stepped into his line of sight. “Who are you working for?” he asked.
Kristoff’s expression remained impassive.
“We should make him talk.” Bastian cracked his knuckles. “I’ll do it.”
Kristoff didn’t even flinch.
I joined Grayson in Kristoff’s line of sight. “I don’t think that’ll make a difference.” I snapped my fingers in front of his face, and he didn’t even blink. “I don’t think he’s home.”
“He’s in lockdown,” Cora said. “Some kind of shutdown.”
“She’s right,” Uriel said. “Those vamps were trained professionals, sent here with an objective, and that mission was compromised. This…Whatever it is that’s happened to him, must be some kind of failsafe. A way to prevent anyone getting intel.”
“Why not just put in a kill switch?” Dean pondered.
“Maybe there is one,” Grayson said. “Maybe it’s on a timer.”
“No.” Uriel crouched by Kristoff, his eyes narrow with speculation. “A kill switch would have been activated by now.”
“Maybe they’ll send more super vamps after him,” Dean said. “They didn’t get the cargo they came for. They could attack again.”
“They might,” Grayson said. “But would they risk losing more soldiers?”
“But they know we’re onto them now,” Dean said. “I doubt they’ll just let that go.”
He was right. “We need to fortify the house and call in the civilian pack to act as guards.”
“To guard refugee vamps?” Bastian snorted. “You think they’ll go for that?”
I pinned him with a glare. “They’ll do what their fucking alpha asks of them.”
As much as I wanted to run my pack as a democracy, there would be times when an alpha had to pull rank, and now was one of those times.
“I’ll send out the bat signal,” Bastian said.
Uri was still studying Kristoff. “If they don’t come for him, then he might reactivate at some point and try to run. Or maybe this is it for him. He’s been abandoned and will remain locked in his own head.”
But we needed the information in his head. We needed someone who could crack the code and get inside.
Shit. “We need Conah. He can read memories of the dead and the living.”
Cora nodded. “I’ll jump into the Underealm and find him.”
“No. It’s too dangerous with Mammon so close to Imperium. It’s safer to send a phoenix. It’ll find him, and if he can get away, he’ll come. In the meantime, contact Vi and see if there’s any witchy shit she can do. I’ll fly back to quarters and send the phoenix.”
“Fee?” Uriel said tentatively. “Do you know how to send a phoenix?”
Crap. “You better come with me.”
Grayson pulled me into a hug and kissed my forehead. “Stay the nig
ht.” He locked gazes with me. “If…if you want to.” He looked to my left to where Uri stood waiting.
“Grayson…”
“I love you,” he said. “All of you.” He released me. “Take care of her,” he said to Uriel. “The rest of you, let’s clean this fucking place up.”
With a final look at our trashed home, I headed out the busted front doors.
I had a phoenix to send.
Chapter Twenty-Six
It was strange entering the Dominus quarters, knowing it would be empty of the guys. But Iza was there to greet us.
“Fee, you’re back.” She looked so happy to see me that I didn’t have the heart to tell her I wasn’t staying. “I put fresh sheets on your bed,” she said. “Will Masters Azazel, Malachi, and Conah be back soon too?”
“I don’t know, Iza. I think things will be…quiet around here for a while. In fact, I think you and the others should take some time off.”
Her eyes went wide. “You want us to leave?”
“Just for a few days. Go see friends and family. I’ll send a message to the tavern when things are…normalish.”
“So, the rumors are true…” She wrung her hands. “Lilith has been taken.”
Oh shit. Now was the time to lie to her, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. “Iza, can I trust you?”
She looked offended that I’d asked. “Have I ever given you cause to doubt me?”
I bit back a smile. “No, which is why I’m going to tell you the truth.”
She held her breath.
“Lilith was taken.”
She let out a sharp cry and staggered slightly. Uriel caught her, and she shook him off indignantly and flung herself at me.
I hugged her to my thigh. “It’ll be okay. Azazel, Mal, and Conah will find her, and everything will be fine, but you cannot tell anyone, do you understand? We can’t add fuel to the rumors, or it will incite fear and panic.”
She tipped her head up, eyes brimming with tears. “Our poor queen. Taken by the usurper.”
Oh, God. I hadn’t realized how dramatic imps could be. “I promise you we will fix this. But you need to keep this to yourself. You’re in the circle of trust now. You mustn’t break it.”
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