With a grunt I bolted after them, knowing if we didn’t catch them it would only be a matter of time before London was overrun with breeding red-eyed human demons.
I burst through the door to the roof to see Erik standing over one of the young demons. He lunged and tried to drive his sword through the demon’s neck. He missed, nicking the demon on the shoulder instead. Shit, he had bad aim. The young demon scampered in front of me and I swung my sword hard, driving it right through the little fuckers neck. But that left us one more to deal with.
“Where?” I yelled, searching the rooftop, feeling more than a little frantic.
“Gone.” Erik slowly stood, his blade dripping yellow goop. Worse, as I watched, it was eaten away, the steel unable to hold up, even after being prepped. We needed to get him a weapon that Milly or Pamela had spelled.
I moved to the edge of the roof and peered out on the street. There was no sign of a demon. No doubt it would go into hiding.
“Please tell me they need each other to breed.”
Erik’s footsteps drew close. “No. They have eggs that are already fertilized. Handy for them.”
I turned in time to see him throw his sword to the ground. “Piece of shit.”
Reluctantly, I handed him the larger of my two swords. “It’s spelled to withstand that kind of damage. Until we get you one of your own, use mine.”
He gave me a surprised nod, took the sword and tucked it into his sheath. “Thanks.”
I had my whip, and I could always pick Erik up another weapon at Jack’s. There might even be a few weapons there already spelled. I Tracked Liam, felt him in the general direction of Jack’s place. Of course, that was where he said he’d meet us. Damn Will for his motherfuckery.
“Come on, let’s get Will and get our asses out of here.”
Erik was quiet a moment but I could see he wanted to talk. “Ophelia is a real treat when she’s angry. I almost feel bad for Blaz.” We walked side by side down the stairs.
“You think they have any idea where we’ve gone? I don’t think they should come here; the plan is to go home, not cross paths with them mid Atlantic.”
“Blaz can probably sense you, but that doesn’t mean he’ll realize how far we’ve gone. Ophelia can’t sense me as we aren’t paired in the proper sense. I’d bet we have a few days before they start looking for us.”
A few days. I planned to be home that night if I could. Planned.
Yeah, my plans always went exactly as I hoped.
Right.
Chapter 12
JACK’S MANOR WAS dark except for a single light in what I knew was the library. I also knew Liam was going to be pissed. Didn’t matter that we’d taken out a few more demons, what would matter is that Will defied him and had taken me into danger without Liam at my side. Saying the two alphas did not get along was the fucking understatement of the century.
“Will, you can’t come in,” I said, stepping out of his car.
“I’m not afraid of him,” Will said, his green eyes far too intimate in the way they traced my face.
“It’s not about fear. He’ll kill you for this stunt. You don’t get it; you don’t have a shot with me. End of story.” There we go, spitting it out and probably breaking his heart. A part of me hoped it worked; the other part knew Will was stubborn enough to ignore my blunt, mean words.
Erik ignored us both and headed in. “I’m tired and hungry. You two figure this out.”
The door slammed behind him. Shit, it would only be moments before Liam came out ready to strangle Will. I had to speed this up.
“Thanks for the ride.” I slammed the car door shut and headed for the house. Will was right behind me.
“Rylee, I love—”
I spun on him and smacked him in the chest with the palm of my hand. “NO. That is not coming out of your mouth. Ever. You are my friend. And not a very good one right now. You let me walk into a fucking nest of demons without even a simple warning! Why would you do that?”
Will’s hands fisted at his sides. “Because I knew what he was, but there was no way for me to kill him! When you said your uncle was a Slayer I knew it was a shot. Maybe the only shot to get Denning out.”
I pushed him back. “You are a supernatural. You’re telling me you didn’t talk to Deanna about this? Didn’t consult your destruction about making a full scale attack on the station?”
“And do what, Tracker?” He snarled at me, his eyes shifting to his kitty cat green. Oh yeah, now he was getting angry. About fucking time.
“Something. Anything. We can’t hide in a corner anymore. We have to face this together or no one will survive.”
“How would I survive getting covered in that bile that spewed out of him? It ate Erik’s sword. Damn. Well. Ate. It.” He shoved me, I stumbled back, and I had to give him props. There was some tough shit coming our way. He needed to be tough too. He needed to be angry enough to fight.
“There’s got to be a way. That’s why I’m pissed at you. You didn’t even try; you just set me up and hoped to hell I could handle it.” I turned my back on him and walked away. Shit, I was going to alienate our current allies before we ever got to a battle with Orion.
Damn, I could almost hear Jack’s voice. Good job, Rylee, good fucking job, you little idiot.
But I was doing things the only way I knew how. Straight forward, no games, kill or be killed. I slammed the door behind me and locked it for good measure. Without thinking, I stormed toward the library where Liam and Erik sat across from each other, digging into what smelled like stew.
“Hungry?” Alex held up a bowl, balanced carefully between his claws.
“Yes. No. Shit, I don’t know.” I wanted to rant and rail, to throw things around. Instead I stomped to the kitchen and swung open the freezer. There was a half tub of cookies ‘n cream ice cream from when we’d last been here. My stomach growled and I yanked it out of the freezer, grabbed a spoon and headed to the library. Good for me? No, but I wanted something that would make me feel better. The top of it was covered in ice crystals I scraped off to reveal sweet, sweet ice cream and cookie chunks below.
I slumped into Jack’s chair and dug into the ice cream. Around a mouthful I said, “Did Erik tell you what happened?”
“Yes.” Liam kept his eyes on his bowl. “Will is gone?”
I nodded. “Yes.” I pulled his clothes out of my jacket and tossed them at him. “Here. I kept them warm for you.”
He caught them and put them on the table. The silence in the room was rife with an uncomfortable tension I hadn’t felt in a long time. Not since before Liam and I were together as a mated pair. “Aren’t you going to say anything?”
Liam turned to me. “About what?”
“Will, the demons, I don’t know. Getting the wool pulled over our eyes by our pussy cat friend?”
His lips quirked. “I know you can take care of yourself, hell, you did for a lot of years without my help.”
And just like that I knew something was wrong. Sure, Liam had been doing his best to not be over protective, to let me do what I had to do, but this was a step too far.
“You don’t care that Will made a move on me?”
His shoulders tightened and his breathing changed. “I don’t like it. But I’m not going to kill one of our allies because he makes a pass at you. Blaz flirts with you, Alex climbs into bed with you whenever I’m not looking, Doran grabs your ass on a regular basis. You want me to kill them too?” His eyes flicked over me and while there was heat in his voice, nothing matched it in his eyes. No, his eyes were tired.
Resigned.
“That isn’t how it was last time we were here. Every move Will made you were ready to pull his balls up through his throat.” What the hell was going on with him? If there was a logical reason he was no longer a jealous wolf, fan-fucking-tastic. But there didn’t seem to be any logic here, just a sudden change of feelings and that was not like Liam. There was always a reason for what he did, for how he acted. Which to
ld me again that something was being kept from me. A reason he didn’t want to share.
Like the pro he was, he changed the subject. “Have you tried Tracking a necromancer here? Isn’t that the person we need to get to Pamela and Milly?”
It was a good idea and for that moment I let him move on. “We aren’t done talking about this.”
“I wouldn’t for a minute expect you to let me have any secrets,” Liam said, his voice dry as a popcorn fart. Ass.
I drew in a deep breath, then took another bite of ice cream, getting a good chunk of cookie in the process.
With very little belief that I would get anything back, I tried to find a necromancer, Tracking them as a group. I sucked in a sharp breath and a half mouthful of cookie crumbs as I got two strong threads. One to the north of us and one way to the south east, on the tip of the island. Both were about the same distance from us, a few hours away regardless of which direction we took.
“Shit, there are two living here.”
Liam gave a nod and winked at me, though his face was tired. “See, there’s always a reason for the crap that gets thrown at you.”
I checked the clock. Six at night. I didn’t want to wait another second. Milly and Pamela had been trapped with demons in the deep levels of the veil for too long as it was. Everything just seemed to be pushing us away from getting them out, and I couldn’t stand it.
“I’m going.” I jammed one more spoonful of ice cream in my mouth and stood.
Liam pushed his chair back. “How are you going to get there? No Blaz, no Eve. No cars in the garage.”
My jaw twitched. Shit, and I’d just pissed Will off and I doubted he would drive back out here. “I’ll walk. Hitchhike, or steal a car. I’ve done it all before.”
Without a backward glance I left the library, though the footsteps told me both Erik and Alex were following. Liam was not.
Erik caught up to me. “Rylee, you said there were weapons here. I’d like to load up before we’re off again.”
I nodded and at the next hallway intersection I took a left toward the armory.
Caught up in my own thoughts, I clung to the feel of the necromancer in the north. That was the one I’d go after. That one was incrementally closer, maybe two hundred miles, when the one to the southeast felt closer to three hundred. And if I was on foot and hitchhiking, closer was better. Shit, I hoped it wasn’t a young, inexperienced necromancer like Frank.
The armory was locked, the heavy wooden double doors identical to the library’s. On both sides of the door stood waist high blue vases with cracks and chips around the lips. One had a cactus in it, the other a dead tree that was mostly sticks and few barely-there leaves.
At the base of the cactus I scraped away the sandy dirt.
“Not a good place to hide a key,” Erik said.
I didn’t say anything. Jack had always said if someone wanted in badly enough, they would break his doors, and he hated fixing locks and hinges more than anything else. But I didn’t feel like explaining my dead mentor to Erik. Besides, half the time Jack wasn’t mentoring me, he was just pissing me off.
The key turned with a smooth click and the doors opened into complete darkness. No windows in the room, nothing but the lights overhead. I flicked the switch and they came on with a low buzz only crappy bulbs could do. The smell of leather, well-oiled steel and a tang of blood crept up my nose. I rubbed my face and headed to the back wall where the swords hung.
None of them were spelled, I could tell right away. I’d been hoping maybe Jack had Deanna do something to help him out.
Erik rumbled under his breath as he picked through the weapons. Alex sat in the middle of the room and stared at me, watching.
“What is it?” Did I expect anything profound or deep. Not really. But his words slithered around what was left of my hope and faith and squeezed them until they were blue in the face.
“Your heart sounds funny.”
Beside me, Erik’s breath caught in his throat. “What do you mean by ‘funny’?”
Alex tipped his head and one floppy ear stood straight up. “Different. Funny.” He shrugged then put a claw tip to his muzzle. “Don’t tell Boss.”
Fuck, there was no way I was telling Liam my heart sounded funny. Alex’s hearing and sense of smell were better than Liam’s. Maybe not by a lot, but enough that I trusted Alex.
So if he said my heart sounded funny, then I believed him. The last thing I needed was to get sick. My mind raced. Was that why I’d been so much more fatigued? My heart began to hammer in response and I listened to the pulse roaring in my ears for the sound of a tick or tremble.
“Nothing we can do about it now,” I said, but even I heard the shake in my voice. “We’ll get Milly and Pamela out and Milly can heal me from whatever this is. She can do that.”
Erik nodded and Alex gave me a big grin and two “thumbs” up. “Yuppy doody, let’s rescue the witchy witches.”
The truth was, I didn’t know if Milly could heal something that was a sickness. Injuries that had you on the brink of death, you bet. But sickness I wasn’t so sure. To keep my mind from dwelling on the possibility that something was seriously wrong with me, I Tracked the necromancers. I couldn’t Track them individually, because I didn’t know them or their names, but I could focus more on the one to the north for some reason. There was more of a pull to him for the threads I followed.
He, and I called him a he for simplicity’s sake, was pretty calm, relaxed. There was no stress in his life that I could tell.
That made me smile. Erik noticed.
“What’s got you grinning now?”
“That necromancer has no idea what’s coming for him. I feel a little bit bad.” I reached for a beautiful crossbow hanging on the wall, one that I’d shot a few times during practice.
“Really? You feel bad for someone who can raise the dead?”
“Not because of that, because I picked him to be our mark. He has no idea what’s coming for him.”
From the doorway, a swirl of air swept in with Liam. “I think I’ve got an idea.”
Now, when I said stuff like that, everyone cringed.
When Liam said it, no one cringed. But we should have.
Chapter 13
I CLUNG TO ERIK as he drove the rickety old motorcycle across the English countryside in the dead of night as the rain poured. Yeah, it was a fucking tea party. The old engine sputtered once with me on the back, so I was grateful for that small mercy.
Teeth gritted, I kept my head down and eyes closed. The jarring of the bike bouncing off the ruts in the ground felt like I’d driven my spine deep into the back of my head. Not pleasant.
Beside us, Liam and Alex loped along, having no difficulty keeping up. As if to emphasize how easy it was for them, twice they started a wrestling match mid stride, tumbling over one another, through puddles and mud. To be fair though, I saw the way Alex would cock his head a split second before he’d pounce on Liam. Liam tolerated him, like he would a young wolf in the pack.
“North?” Erik hollered over the wind and rain. I tapped his back once for “yes,” a system we’d worked out starting this miserable ass journey. Twice meant “no” and he would question the direction until I tapped once.
From what I felt of the threads of the necromancer, we were about halfway there. I Tracked Pamela and Milly, felt Milly’s concern and fear. Pamela was not yet awake and that was starting to freak me out.
There had been another child I’d sought out, a young boy who’d remained “asleep” the entire time I’d Tracked him.
Only he hadn’t been asleep, he’d been dead and a spell used to make me think he was still alive. I shivered and found myself clinging tighter to my uncle.
He patted my clenched hands where they tightened around his middle. “You’ll find them.”
Funny thing was, that was the first “uncle” type thing he’d done or said and I was strangely comforted.
Four hours into our ride, Erik pulled over at
the end of a long driveway. “We’re almost out of fuel, and we’ve hours to go yet.” He flicked the engine off and I stepped away from the bike, stretching my legs. Comfort was not what this particular machine was made for; torture was more like it.
Erik glanced down the driveway. The sign in front of us read Fielding’s Dairy. “They will have fuel. Wait here.”
I didn’t argue with him. Fuck, I was cold, it was dark out, the rain seemed to be coming down harder, and while I wouldn’t have minded going with him, I could let him do this on his own with very little fear that he couldn’t manage.
Alex grabbed my pant leg and shook it. “Alex sooooo hungry.” He pointed to his mouth as if I wouldn’t understand otherwise.
“You have to wait.” I rubbed behind one of his soaking wet, muddy ears. “I’m hungry too, but I’m not whining.”
He let out a grunt and then threw himself backwards, landing in a puddle that sprayed up muddy water all around him. Laughing, I could do nothing but shake my head at him.
Liam stepped beside me, his back standing just above my waist. Hell, he was big enough he could probably pack me across the countryside if we had too, not that I’d ask him.
“Do you think we’ll find them?” I whispered as we watched Alex take off in circles, chasing his tail, freezing in place, and then taking off again.
Liam cocked his head at me, but his liquid eyes said it all. There was fear in him too. Maybe this time we weren’t going to be able to save the day. We would lose Milly and Pamela to Orion.
I closed my eyes, fighting the hot scalding tears that would weaken me. Now was not the time. “Not yet, we haven’t lost them yet.”
There was a distant sound of barking and then a holler. Liam and Alex took off down the driveway. Of course, a farm would have dogs, but the boys could take care of that.
A mad scramble ensued as Erik ran into sight, lugging a beaten up old gas can. I spun open the bike’s gas cap and he poured as the sound of the dogs drew closer, then stopped altogether.
A high-pitched screaming bark erupted and Erik slopped the fuel. “Pay attention,” I said. “The boys won’t really hurt the dogs.”
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