Octavian burst out laughing. Magnus shook his head and gave a chuckle.
“I will never understand how we ever shared a womb.” He muttered. With a final shake of his head, he turned to scan the surrounding area, eyes narrowing. “Where is she?”
Gideon pushed away from the tree to do his own survey. “Maybe she went back to the manor.”
“No, she wouldn’t—”
No sooner had Octavian spoken, when a figure dropped from the branches above with a war cry and tackled Magnus to the forest ground. There was a flash of steel and two angelic blades were pressed into his windpipe. Octavian and Gideon both patted their pockets and found them empty. It was a tossup who was more stunned.
Riley smirked. “I win!”
“Did that count?” Gideon wondered as they clambered their way back to the manor. “I mean, she caught us when we were distracted.”
“That’s your problem,” Riley said, smirking so widely, he feared her face would rip in two. “I was told to sneak up on you three and I did.”
“I still can’t figure out how you got our blades without us noticing,” Octavian said.
Riley shrugged. “You guys were talking about exit holes.”
With a laugh, Octavian hooked an arm around her shoulders and drew her into his side. He kissed her temple and murmured something that made her chuckle.
Gideon just shook his head. “I still think she cheated.”
Imogen and his mom were in the diner when they stumbled their way in. Valkyrie was there as well, away from the two women, leaning against the register, twirling a blade between her long fingers. She was staring at the window, seemingly deep in thought. She blinked when they entered. Her gaze went to Gideon before quickly turning away.
Things had always been tense between them. Gideon was all too familiar with her cold shoulder, her annoyance, and her anger, but this was a side he didn’t know what to do with. It was none of those things. What was worse was the fact that the more he tried to keep away from her, the more he needed her. Granted, he had always needed her, had always felt that hot bloom of desire when she was too close, but this was different. Since the incident in the parlor with them both getting stabbed, it was sharper. The pang was stronger. There were times when he could have sworn he could feel her heart inside his chest, like how he could feel the hard kick when their gazes met. And while she showed no outer reaction, he knew it was her he was feeling. He just couldn’t understand how that was possible and he was too afraid to ask anyone what it meant. He knew his parents would automatically think imprint. But they hadn’t. Gideon had checked, and rechecked. There were no marks on him and yet every second they spent in the same room was unbearable torture.
“Where are you four headed?” his mother asked, distracting him from the dark haired beauty an exact fifteen feet and a full counter way; she smelled unlike anything his system had ever inhaled.
“I was being taught how to act stealthy,” Riley proclaimed as she made her way over to the table and pulled out a seat next to Imogen. She dropped into it, looking pale and exhausted. “I think I may have passed with flying colors.”
“Don’t get cocky,” Magnus muttered, but there was an almost amused note in his tone. “You still need to feed.”
“Do you have a plan?” their mother asked.
“We’re still working on it,” Magnus replied. “It’s our job to keep her kind from harming humans, not encouraging her to do it.”
Their mother sighed. “I can understand how that would be a problem. Perhaps—”
“I have a way.”
All heads turned in Valkyrie’s direction.
“But you will have to trust me.” She hesitated. “A lot.”
Magnus remained behind with Reggie, who materialized ten minutes before dinner, said absolutely nothing to anyone, and then vanished the moment supper was over. No one pressed him when he left. Gideon, Octavian, Riley, and Valkyrie piled into Gideon’s Rolls-Royce. Gideon drove with Valkyrie in the seat next to him and the other two in the back. Riley’s tension was a suffocating force wrapping around their throats. She remained rigid despite Octavian’s arms around her, or his quiet murmurs of reassurance. Gideon would have said something, if his own tormentor hadn’t been sitting two feet away from him, giving him directions.
She hadn’t told them where they were going, or what the plan was exactly. But Gideon recognized the route to the university and wondered if Valkyrie planned to unleash Riley on a sorority house.
They parked a block from the park and hiked the rest of the way. It wasn’t a place Gideon had frequented very often, but he knew the familiar path students took from their dorms to the university and frowned. It was dark and deserted now.
“What are we doing here?” he wondered.
Valkyrie motioned them behind a clump of shrubbery. The shadows from the trees and the bushes concealed them.
“Do you see that path?” she asked Riley instead, motioning to the streak of white curving through the dark and out of sight.
Riley nodded.
“Walk down it,” Valkyrie said. “Slowly. Make lots of shuffling noises.”
Riley shot a glance from Octavian to Gideon, her confusion knitting her brows together. “I don’t—”
“Do you want to feed?” Valkyrie snapped.
“Yes, but I don’t understand what we’re doing here.”
For a moment, Valkyrie looked like she regretted her decision. But she gave a reluctant sigh and squared her shoulders.
“For the last four weeks, six girls have been taken from this spot,” she said at last with hatred that crackled like livewires. “They were raped, beaten nearly to death, and then dumped by the lake.” She gestured with a nod of her chin towards the west side of the campus. “I’ve been patrolling this path nearly every night, waiting for those assholes to show up...”
“But there’s nothing you can do,” Octavian said quietly. “We’re forbidden to harm humans, as much as they may deserve it.”
“I know!” she growled. “That’s why she’s here.” She jerked her head towards Riley. “She’s not forbidden.”
“Actually, she is,” Gideon said gingerly. “It’s our job to make sure she doesn’t kill.”
Valkyrie bared her teeth, her face a mask of rage unlike anything Gideon had ever seen, and he’d seen all her angry faces. “You haven’t seen what they’ve done. They will continue preying on innocent girls until they’re stopped. They deserve to die.”
“That isn’t our call,” Octavian said a little too sharply. “I won’t risk Riley like that.”
“Where would you rather take her? To a nursing home? A playground maybe? No matter where she goes, or who she feeds on, until she’s in control of her hunger, people will die. Why not them?”
Octavian’s eyes narrowed. “It was only six months ago you were going to turn her in for being human. Do you honestly think I trust you not to betray her?”
Valkyrie physically jerked back as though smacked. She sucked in a sharp breath and stiffened her shoulders.
“This was clearly a mistake on my part,” she decided evenly. “I will deal with the matter—”
A scuffle alerted them to the change a split second before they realized Riley was missing. They turned to find her on the path, a small, seemingly helpless figure, dragging her feet and humming quietly to herself. Gideon recognized the tune as Over the Rainbow. He thought it was funny her picking that particular melody. Octavian didn’t think so.
“Riley!” he hissed, careful to keep his voice down.
Either she didn’t hear him or, as Gideon suspected, she ignored him, but Riley kept moving slowly towards the university. They followed, keeping to the bushes and the shadows. Not a single soul came their way. News of the attacks must have spread through the university. Students would have been warned not to use the park at night. But maybe the people responsible were smart enough to realize their hunting ground was no longer safe. Perhaps they were even smart enough to find
a new location. It certainly seemed that way when Riley reached the bridge separating the school from the park and still no sign of anyone else.
“Where are they?” Valkyrie muttered seemingly to herself.
“Maybe they’ve moved on,” Gideon guessed. “It would be stupid to stay here with all the attention this place is getting.”
Valkyrie shook her head. “They’re here. I can smell them.”
Gideon couldn’t smell anything, except pine, still waters from the lake, and something rotting in a nearby bush. Maybe a cat, or bird. Definitely not large enough to be human.
“Why is this so important?” Octavian asked. “Human brutality isn’t uncommon. We have all seen worse. What makes these assholes different, especially for a Harvester? It’s no secret you would break the law for no one.”
Valkyrie said nothing, but the muscles on her jaw were clenched so tight, Gideon feared she’d break her teeth.
Gideon looked to where Riley was standing beneath a pale splash of light from one of the six working lamps running along the path. Her face was set, her body a little too rigid, like she was braced for an attack.
“I don’t think anyone’s coming.” Riley had returned, moving without ever making a sound and appearing next to Gideon.
“They’ll be here,” Valkyrie insisted.
“Val...” Gideon started to reach for her, but stopped himself quickly and dropped his hand. “They’re not—”
The low clang of something metallic being kicked across gravel met their ears a moment before the laughter. It was loud and drawing closer. Riley was gone in a heartbeat and back on the path just as three men staggered their way into the clearing.
They had to have been in their thirties, much too old for university. All were rough around the edges, hard and unshaven. Two of them wore flannels over dirty t-shirts. One was bald and the other had tattoos on his face, neck, and arms.
They definitely aren’t students, Gideon thought.
All three froze when they spotted Riley. Instincts that came with becoming a nocturnal hunter, she had deliberately kept out of the light, giving them just enough of her to get them moving into action. Even her posture was docile, shy and maybe a little afraid. Gideon wasn’t sure she even realized she had slipped into her true nature so seamlessly.
“Well, well, well.” Tattoos glanced back at his friends. “What do we have here?”
“Are you lost, little girl?” Baldy asked.
“Maybe she needs some help,” Flannels decided.
Riley never so much as blinked. To them, she would have appeared terrified, but Gideon, who hunted monsters for a living and knew when to sense true danger, could almost feel the ripple of power radiating off her.
“This isn’t going to be pretty,” he muttered under his breath, body tense.
It was in his nature, built into him after eons of training and fighting to protect humans from creatures they should never know about. Standing idly by and possibly encouraging an attack went against all his basic instincts. But killing Riley was not an option either. Part of him wished he had stayed behind.
“Riley better not get put into harm’s way because of this,” Octavian warned Valkyrie. “I don’t care who you are, I will kill you.”
Gideon snarled. “Back off!” he warned his brother.
Octavian turned to him fully, his gray eyes stormy with rage. He opened his mouth to reply when there was a sickening crunch followed by a gurgling scream. All three of them whirled to the path and the mayhem taking place two feet out of the halo of light.
Riley had Tattoos in her clutches. He was on his knees, front glistening with his own blood as she tore his throat out with her fangs. The other two were frozen on the spot, watching with horror as their friend became a puddle of crimson across the gravel. He made a sickening thump when she released him. She was breathing hard and her entire front shone a ghastly sight in the lamplight. Blood dribbled from her chin. She moaned, the sound deep and lusty, like a woman in the midst of mindless pleasure as she slid a red tongue over her lips.
“That was so good,” she purred.
Her voice seemed to finally penetrate the other two. They opened their mouths to scream, but Riley was on them. She backhanded Baldy, sending him sailing five feet before landing in a dazed heap on the ground. The other she grabbed by the throat and jerked to her.
“Like hurting innocent girls, do you?” she hissed.
Flannel shook his head wildly. “No! No! I swear!”
Riley tightened her grip, gouging her fingernails into his esophagus. “You’re lying to me. I can smell them on you. I can smell what you did to them.”
What little color the man had left drained from his face. “It—it wasn’t my idea. I didn’t mean—”
Riley didn’t even bite him. With a natural flick most people used to swat a fly, she snapped his neck. The crunch of it made Gideon flinch.
Baldy, having now watched two of his friends die horribly before his eyes, was staring at Riley with a look of absolute horror. He had soiled himself. The stench of his terror impregnated the air. He was sobbing and begging for his life.
“Did you show those girls mercy?” Riley asked, crouching down next to him. “Did you stop when they begged you?”
The man sobbed harder, his words intelligible.
“I loathe men like you,” Riley continued in that soft, haunting murmur of hers. “Not so brave without your friends, are you?” She flashed her blood stained fangs in a laugh. “You’re not very brave at all, actually. You’re a coward and I’m going to kill you.”
And she did. She grabbed him even as he thrashed and sank her teeth into his throat.
It wasn’t until it was over and the screams had ceased echoing off the water and through the trees that reality finally perched like an ugly, black bird on their shoulders. Riley remained crouched over Baldy’s drained and broken body, her hands braced on her knees. Her labored breathing strained across the clearing. Her stooped spine rose and fell rapidly and Gideon vaguely wondered if that was just a lingering human reaction, if she even knew she was doing it.
“Riley.” Octavian freed himself of the branches and ran to her.
Riley’s head came up slowly. Her crimson eyes seemed to glow, or maybe it was just the light. They followed Octavian until he was kneeling in front of her. He peeled damp strands of hair away from where they clung to the mess across her face. He cradled her cheeks in his palms and peered into her eyes.
“How do you feel?”
“Amazing.” A sound escaped her that was between a sob and a laugh. “I just had to kill three people—”
“Bad people,” Octavian interjected. “They weren’t innocent and would have kept on hurting women if they continued.”
“But the law—”
“Sometimes the law needs help,” he told her firmly.
“It was the right thing, wasn’t it?” she whispered so quietly, it was merely a faint movement of her lips.
Octavian stroked her cheek with loving sweeps of his thumb. “Yes.”
Tension unfurled from around Riley’s shoulders and she melted into her husband when he pulled her into his arms.
Gideon lowered his gaze. “I have shovels and plastic in the car.”
Valkyrie inhaled deeply. “I’ll help.”
It wasn’t until the bodies had been buried miles away from the university and the area cleaned of any evidence that a massacre had ever occurred there that it struck Gideon as odd that Riley had been so lucid. Usually, she had no control over the hunger and it ran rampant with her. But she had been in perfect control of her actions like she had done it a million times. Maybe it was her basic instincts, but he had been so sure she would turn savage and go on a killing spree the moment she left the manor. Yet a part of him couldn’t help being worried.
At Final Judgment, his brother and Riley climbed out of the car. Gideon watched them shuffle to the doors and slip inside, leaving him alone with Valkyrie, who was making no conscious
move to exit the vehicle.
“This stays between us,” Gideon muttered to the woman next to him. He turned his head to fix her with his even stare. “No one will ever know—”
“That your sweet little sister in law was rational during each kill, which means she could have stopped, but she didn’t. She chose not to. She chose to kill them.”
Gideon curled his fingers into fists. “Don’t you dare turn this around on Riley. You did this. You told her to kill them.”
Her gaze was penetrating. “You can defend her all you want, Maxwell. But the fact remains the same, she is a stone cold killer.” She turned forward to face the manor and its warm glow. “And don’t worry.” The corner of her mouth turned up. “I won’t tell a soul.”
Chapter Seventeen
Magnus had been right about one thing, Reggie wasn’t stealthy. Between the four of them, his youngest brother was an elephant in a china shop when it came to sneaking out of the house. It both amused and baffled Gideon how he managed to do it without the entire manor knowing about it.
He trudged down the stairs and flew out the backdoor, slamming it shut behind him. Gideon, at a slower pace, followed. It was baffling how Reggie couldn’t hear the clip of Gideon’s boots a mere ten feet behind him, but his brother seemed lost in whatever thought was rattling around in his head.
“You know, these moonlit walks really need to stop.”
Reggie never so much as flinched. Maybe he was more aware than Gideon gave him credit for.
“What can I say, I’m a romantic.”
Gideon snorted. “Well, then maybe you should think about brushing up on your ballet steps. You’re getting a little heavy footed. I could feel the tremors all the way up in my bedroom.”
“If I wanted to sneak out, you would never know.”
Gideon couldn’t help it. He arched a brow. “So you’re deliberately defying Father? Do I detect rebellion from my innocent, little brother?” He quickened his strides to fall into step with the other man. “It may be, oh, a few thousand years too late, but you have my attention.”
“I’m not looking for your attention, or Fathers.” The curtness in Reggie’s tone perked Gideon’s curiosity even further.
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