She leapt into the air, landing like a cat on the roof of the speeding truck.
Another leap and an airborne twist brought her boots down onto the hood of the vehicle, facing Ocho and Cruz’s stunned expressions on the other side of the windshield.
She smashed her fist through the glass and grabbed Cruz by the throat. “Where. The. Fuck. Is. Rafe?”
Cruz sputtered and choked, clawing at her fingers. “Fuck you, bitch!”
“Holy shit!” Ocho’s eyes nearly popped out of his skul behind the wheel. “She’s a damn Breed!”
The truck swerved, but Devony rode it out. As she held Cruz in her punishing grip, she noticed something odd about his clothes. Bright blue,
strangely il uminated paint splattered the front of his shirt and jeans. He had some on his hands too.
No, not paint.
What the fuck?
In the midst of the jostling and chaos up front, Fish crept forward from the back of the truck. “He’s in the warehouse, Brinks.” He swal owed hard, gave a halting shake of his head. “The liquid UV from the crates . . .”
Oh, shit.
Oh, no.
Devony bel owed her fury. She wanted nothing more than to unleash hel on Cruz, but concern for Rafe overruled everything else.
She vaulted off the vehicle. It careened away into the night while she al but flew back to the warehouse.
An unconscious security guard lay in a slump inside the entrance. Two more had been tranced nearby. They were al starting to rouse. Which
meant Rafe’s hold on their minds was beginning to slip away.
“Rafe!”
Devony ran farther inside, her senses overcome with the scent of spil ed blood. So much blood. Death, too. Axel’s body lay not far from another guard’s bul et-riddled corpse.
And there was Rafe.
Writhing on the floor next to a broken crate that was stil oozing shimmery, luminescent blue liquid from inside it. Rafe lay in a growing pool of the stuff. Everywhere the concentrated, ultraviolet material touched his bare skin was hideous with burns. Even his handsome face.
“Oh, my God. Rafe.”
The sound of her voice seemed to rouse him. He lifted his head but his swol en eyelids didn’t, or couldn’t, open. “Devony,” he rasped. “What the hel are you doing? Go. Cruz and the others—”
“They’re gone,” she told him, already crouched at his side. “They drove off in the truck.”
“Liquid UV.”
“I know. Fish told me.” Her boots slipped in the mercury-like puddles as she struggled to pul Rafe out of the spil . “We need to get you out of here.”
He groaned in agony as she dragged him up onto his feet, wedging her shoulder beneath his arm to support him. She didn’t know where he got
the strength to move in his horrific condition, but he staggered out of the warehouse with her into the cool night.
“We can’t take my bike. You won’t be able to ride.”
“The guards’ car.” Rafe pointed to the unmarked sedan parked in the side lot.
Devony started the engine with her mind while they hurried toward the vehicle. She careful y helped Rafe into the passenger seat, wincing at the agonizing pain he clearly suffered.
“I’m good,” he said. “Just drive, baby.”
“Okay.” She jumped in behind the wheel and hit the gas.
She drove deeper into the city, unsure where she was going. Her gaze strayed repeatedly to Rafe, her heart squeezing with deepening concern.
He was in worse condition than she first realized. His lungs wheezed. His hands were blistered, pulpy masses. UV burns scorched his forehead,
eyelids, and cheeks. Even his lips were singed. The peeling, white skin cracked and bled with the slightest movement of his mouth.
He needed help desperately.
What he needed was healing, and from the look of him, there was no time to waste.
She spotted a bridge underpass ahead. The exit ramp beneath it was partial y blocked by construction cones and barriers, the entire area
cordoned off for repairs. It looked quiet and pitch dark, the nearest place she could see where they could pul over for a while and catch their breath.
“What are you doing?” he rasped from beside her. “We’re slowing down. Why?”
“It’s al right.” God, she hated to let him hear the jagged sound of her voice. She wanted to be strong, but she could hardly contain the emotion that had been lodged in her throat from the moment she saw him back in that warehouse. “I’m pul ing over somewhere safe that you can rest.”
“No. Can’t slow down.” Agitated, he shifted abruptly. His wounded hands moved aimlessly in front of him because he couldn’t see. He groaned, a
sound of frustration and agony. “I need to stop Cruz. Those crates . . . gotta be stealing that shit for Opus.”
“You’re not going anywhere right now. You need rest. You need healing.”
Against his growled protest, she parked the sedan under the flapping plastic sheet that draped down from the top of the repaired bridge.
Swiveling toward him, she drew in a shal ow, worry-fil ed breath. His pain terrified her. It shattered her.
But if she lost him now, because of Cruz and LaSal e?
If she lost him because of Opus Nostrum . . .
No. She refused to think it.
She refused to al ow even the possibility that they could take him from her too.
“Let me help you.” She reached over to him, laying her hands gingerly on his chest.
She had barely begun to pul his healing ability into herself when she realized it wasn’t going to work. His body was depleted, ral ying al of its energy into combatting the damage from the ultraviolet exposure. He was fading in and out of consciousness already. She could siphon his
psychic ability, but it would mean draining him of the last of his strength. She wasn’t sure she could push it back into him fast enough to save him.
And failure wasn’t an option she was wil ing to risk.
She severed the connection, drawing her hands away.
“You need blood, Rafe.”
She glanced out the windows, seeing nothing but deserted roadway and construction around them. Not a single human anywhere to be found, and no time to race around searching for a blood Host for him. Not that she wanted to see him feed from someone else. Not even under these
circumstances.
Especial y not then.
Human blood was an inferior solution, anyway. His body would need something far more powerful to boost its recovery.
Her blood.
There was hardly anything purer.
There was nothing in this world that would heal him faster.
But if she gave it to him, she could never take it back. The bond would remain long after he healed. It would be unbreakable. If she fed him even one sip, he would be fused to her forever through that bond—a gift he might view as a curse.
She didn’t take that understanding lightly.
He might come to hate her for it, but at least he would be alive.
Devony brought her wrist to her mouth and bit into the veins that pulsed there. Blood dripped onto Rafe’s scorched skin and into his beard as she lowered her hand to his parted, blistered lips.
He moaned at the first drop that slid onto his tongue. His big body twitched as the steady patter continued to flow. He licked at it, then his mouth fastened over the punctures and he drew deep from her. As he swal owed, a low rumble built in his chest.
Abruptly, his eyes peeled open. Fire blazed in the tormented pools of aquamarine.
“Devony.” Her name was a threatening snarl.
“Drink,” she whispered.
And he did.
CHAPTER 18
He was burning up.
Lightning in his veins. In his muscles and bones.
In every depleted, thirsting cel in his body.
And he couldn’t get enough.
The ful -body, overwhel
ming agony that had dropped him on the floor of the warehouse and nearly scorched the life out of him now gave way to
something infinitely more humbling.
Devony Winters.
Her essence rushed into him with every hungry gulp he took from her veins. Bold, intense, sweet . . . intoxicating. Unforgettable.
Life-altering.
She had been al of those things to him even before this moment, but now she lived inside him through his link to her. He felt her strength and power feeding his ravaged body, restoring the damage that surely would have kil ed him if she hadn’t defied his instructions and come looking for him tonight.
His extraordinary partner.
He owed her his life.
God, he owed Devony so much more than that.
And he stil owed her the truth.
He lifted his eyelids and found her watching him with tender relief as he fed from her. “It’s working, Rafe. Keep drinking. Your skin is healing. The burns . . . they’re starting to fade.”
He groaned against her wrist, feeling like the worst kind of bastard as al of her emotions flooded into him at once. Her fear over the gravity of his injuries fading now, replaced by a bright, rising joy over seeing him on the mend.
The astonishing depth of her care for him.
It was too much. He had taken too much from her, not just at her wrist tonight, but from the moment he first met her.
Now this. The connection he would have to her for as long as either of them lived.
Fuck.
Angrily, he forced himself to release her, sweeping his tongue over the twin punctures and sealing them closed.
He sat up, taking a quick inventory of himself. Beneath the healing light of Devony’s blood, he stil hurt like hel . His skin stil felt as if it were being stripped off him with a hot knife, but he was breathing. He was alive.
Thanks to Devony, he was alive.
Remorse clawed at him. Not because he didn’t want her gift, but because of the regret she would bear once she realized he didn’t deserve it.
Scowling, he glanced at her. “You shouldn’t have done that.”
Her expression faltered a bit. Some of the bright intensity of her emotions dimmed in the face of his stony response.
He couldn’t help it. Guilt sank its talons into him as she stared at him in the silence of the vehicle.
The best way he knew how to ensure her gift wasn’t wasted on him was to do everything in his power to see her family avenged and Opus
Nostrum destroyed. He wasn’t going to rest until it was done.
“Slide over,” he said, already opening the passenger door. “I’l drive now.”
He hoofed it around to the other side and climbed in. They were a few miles out from the center of Boston. Rafe sped back toward the drop
location.
He was al but certain the few minutes’ detour while he came back online had probably given Cruz ample time to transfer the crates to LaSal e or whoever was actual y at the other end of the supply-and-demand chain. So, he couldn’t have been more pleased to see the delivery truck stil
parked at Atlantic Wharf.
Except . . . something wasn’t right.
“Rafe,” Devony murmured from beside him.
“Yeah. I know.” There was no activity near the truck. When he saw the massive hole punched through the windshield, he arched a brow at Devony.
She gave him a flat look. “I should’ve kil ed Cruz while I had his throat in my fist.”
Rafe parked the sedan in front of the other vehicle. “I’l be right back,” he said. “Stay here.”
“Like hel I wil .”
She jumped out with him and together they approached the truck. They both smel ed blood long before they saw the bodies of Cruz, Fish, and
Ocho. Al three had been shot execution-style.
The corpses were cold. Whoever had done the kil ings had been gone for some time.
And al of the crates of liquid UV were missing.
“Oh, my God,” Devony murmured. “Do you think LaSal e double-crossed them?”
Rafe shook his head. “I don’t know. Fish said the crates belonged to an arms dealer. Apparently, LaSal e’s contact needed someone to play
middleman.”
“Expendables,” Devony guessed.
Rafe nodded. “Yeah, but this seems more professional than payback from a local gun runner. I’ve seen this kind of carnage before. A few months
ago in Montreal, after an Opus death squad took out a pharmaceutical tycoon and his entire estate.”
“There’s LaSal e’s yacht,” she said, pointing toward the marina. Light glowed from the windows of the massive white vessel docked at the end of a long pier. “He’s stil here.”
Rafe didn’t like the look of it. Or the smel . If the area around the truck reeked of death, LaSal e’s yacht carried the stench of a slaughterhouse.
“Opus’s assassins have been here too,” he muttered.
He didn’t like the idea of Devony approaching the yacht alongside him, but she’d already demonstrated that she wasn’t the type of partner to take a backseat when faced with danger.
And thank God for that earlier tonight.
His skin stil felt like hel , but it didn’t slow him down as they crept up on LaSal e’s vessel and cautiously boarded it.
The place was silent except for the chatter of a sports telecast blaring from somewhere in the main cabin. Armed bodyguards had been shot at
point-blank range in the head. Crew members had suffered similar fates, some with their throats slashed. Rafe moved quickly through the cabin,
his ear trained to the faint rasp of fading breaths and the slowing tick of a dying heart.
“It’s LaSal e,” Devony said.
The man lay in the main salon of the yacht with several other of his crew. Blood painted everything, including the large-screen TV on the other side of the luxurious living space.
Rafe hunkered down next to Judah LaSal e. “Tel me who you’re working for.”
Al he got was a wet wheeze in reply. The human was too far gone to talk. He had seconds left, maybe less.
“What’s wrong, LaSal e? Opus decide you outlived your usefulness?” Rafe demanded. He grabbed hold of LaSal e, giving him a jolt of healing—
just enough to extract a little sound from his drowning lungs. “Goddamn it, tel me who your contact is.”
“I don’t . . . don’t know.” Blood bubbled in the corners of the dying man’s mouth. “I don’t have . . . don’t have a contact. I just . . . just do what they ask me. Then money shows up in my . . . in my bank account.”
“Do you think he’s tel ing the truth?”
Rafe glanced up at Devony. “There’s one way to find out.”
Placing his palm over the human’s clammy brow, he tranced him and asked the question again. LaSal e told him the same thing. He never had
direct contact with anyone—at least, until tonight.
“Who was it that did this?” Rafe asked.
LaSal e weakly shook his head. “I swear . . . don’t know. They said I . . . said I fucked up. They said . . . said you and the girl . . . said you both had to go.”
Rafe swung a look at Devony. “We need to get out of here.”
She wasn’t paying attention to him anymore. Her gaze was riveted to the blood-splattered TV screen. Rafe felt her shock in his own bloodstream, as cold as ice water.
The game had been pre-empted by a local news bul etin—a report of a massive explosion in a residential area of Back Bay. In the background
behind the reporter, an inferno roared, ash and smoke bil owing into the night sky as firefighters struggled to contain it.
Rafe let go of LaSal e. The man’s last breath rattled out of him as his body slumped to the floor again.
Rafe moved next to Devony. “Holy shit.”
She slowly turned her head toward him now. “That’s my block, Rafe. That building . . . that’s my house.”
C
HAPTER 19
Devony sat beside him in silence in the warehouse guards’ stolen sedan as he drove.
Rafe glanced at her shel -shocked face, il uminated by the dim light of the dashboard. “Are you al right?”
She nodded once, but it was merely a reflex response. She didn’t look at him. She’d hardly said two words since they left al the carnage behind at the marina.
She was a strong, courageous woman, but not even a seasoned Order warrior would be expected to witness that kind of slaughter and come out
of it unaffected. And now, according to LaSal e, Opus’s death squad had orders to come for the two of them.
Rafe wasn’t overly concerned that he was in their crosshairs. Just being associated with Lucan Thorne and the Order had put an Opus Nostrum
target on his back. He lived with that truth every day. For Devony, the threat was new.
And tonight it had become starkly, dangerously, real.
“They firebombed my home, Rafe.”
“Yeah.” He winced inwardly at her wooden tone and reached over to her, placing his hand over her cool fingers. “But you’re okay. You’re safe.
That’s al that matters.”
She mutely shook her head. “But everything else . . . Al my work, my father’s research and notes. We’ve lost al of it now. We’re going to have to start al over, Rafe.”
He clamped his jaw closed, struggling to hold the secret that he had passed nearly every piece of intel she had over to the Order. Gideon had
probably data mined every photo and note a dozen times each by now.
The Order hadn’t lost anything tonight, but he couldn’t divulge that to Devony without clearing it with his commanders.
Rafe’s answering curse came out brittle. “I’m sorry you’ve gotten mixed up in any of this. I’m just damn glad you weren’t anywhere near your
Darkhaven when those Opus kil ers got there.”
Now, it wouldn’t be safe for her anywhere else in the city, either.
With the exception of one location.
There was only one place he knew of where he could rest confidently knowing neither Opus nor anyone loyal to them could touch her.
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