“Bog lopers? Hobs?” she asked.
“Magical creatures, not dangerous to humans.”
A grizzled old man in a torn watch cap and multi-layered, patched clothing held out a cup. “Spare change, mister?”
Aiden dropped the first set of neatly creased ones into the cup.
“God bless you, sir,” the toothless fellow muttered. “Yer lady too.”
“And you,” Aiden replied, and they walked on.
“The activity increased and moved nearer the city.” Aiden forced himself to continue the story. “Three trainee adepts volunteered to do the assessment. I wouldn’t have let them go alone—that’s a basic rule, especially in training—but there were three of them. They were eager to get some experience.” He ran a hand through his hair. Stepped away from her a bit to give himself space. “People were beginning to notice. Small town reporters don’t have a lot to report, and if farmers report livestock losses, well…” He shook his head.
“It was supposed to just be an initial assessment. I knew it was just that, and yet I knew too this behavior wasn’t normal for a boggle or a hob. But…”
Shit. What could he say? He had no practice telling anybody about his worst screw-up ever, his worst nightmare. He’d only told the Council’s Adept Enforcer who’d come for his report. Aiden had been in the hospital, barely conscious. That retelling really didn’t count, cushioned as it was by painkillers.
“I had a commitment,” he finally said. “A date. So I let them do it.” At the time, it hadn’t seemed like a big deal. “I figured they’d check it out, come back and give me the scoop and I’d take care of it. Easy.” Shame and guilt fought over which one got to eat another piece of his soul.
He’d been relieved because it meant he didn’t have to put off yet another dinner with Marcia.
“They didn’t come back,” she said softly.
“No. They didn’t.” The reality of that seared him all over again. He met her gaze, braced for the accusation, the condemnation, but instead recognized understanding. Empathy.
“What was it?”
“It’s called a Nightflyer. A powerful entity beyond anything that had been seen in that part of the southeast. I felt them die. When I got there, it had fed on their magic, and on them.”
“Good Lord.”
“Once it fed on adepts, Enforcer trainees, it changed.” His anguish was as fresh as if it happened yesterday. “The magic it had consumed made it virtually unstoppable.”
“You’re here. You must have stopped it.”
“I did.” That acknowledgement was all he could manage.
“How?”
He tried for a smile but failed. “It was tearing me up, physically and magically. Nothing I tried fazed it. So I ran underneath it, right at it. When it grabbed me to finish me, I blasted everything I had straight down its throat.”
She stopped dead. Her mouth dropped open in a horrified “o” of shock.
“Holy effin’ crap.”
“It only hurts when I laugh,” he said, trying anything to break the unbearable tension of her gaze locked now with his.
Her smile was slow to bloom, but it came. “I’ll bet.”
Aiden shook his head, looking at the sidewalk as he spoke. He needed to get it out. Get it said. He owed his trainees. And now he owed Cait.
He forced the words out of the miserable pit of memory. “My gut said it would be okay, even though the evidence pointed to something bigger. If I’d let myself see it objectively—but I wanted a little personal time. I let that influence me. If I’d focused on the evidence, I’d have been there. Those people would still be alive.” He met her gaze, now. Faced her. “So yesterday when I couldn’t reach you, and I learned about O’Reilly…”
“The evidence pointed to me.”
Aiden nodded as a blanket of black misery wrapped around him. It was suffocating.
“I checked and rechecked every possibility I could come up with for where you might be. Nobody saw you leave. There were flights out that morning. Law enforcement swore you weren’t downtown.”
“Fucking idiot, Chavez,” Cait muttered.
“The timing worked. My gut said you were innocent, but that’s what I wanted to hear, Cait. I was attracted to you, on a personal level. I should’ve trusted my gut, found another way, but the murders were so damn brutal, and you had high-power cloaking. Adept level. I couldn’t read you.”
Her next words surprised the hell out of him.
“You followed the logic,” she said. “I get it.”
It shocked him so much he stumbled. “I was wrong. I didn’t follow my gut on this one either.” He offered as a mea culpa. “I was beyond stupid, and I know better.” He stopped, faced her. “My gut said you were on the level. The facts didn’t, but my gut did.”
“I get that too. And I get why you didn’t go with it. What happened? After. In Atlanta?”
“After the Nightflyer?”
She nodded. “Finish the story.”
Amazed that she hadn’t run screaming, and wanted to know the ending, he just stared for a moment. Finally, he shrugged off the surprise and told her. “I was bleeding, in and out of consciousness. It was hard to crawl, but I did. Found my phone. I called my girlfriend. The date I’d kept instead of going with my trainees. She got there, ran into the field. When she saw me, and the remains of the Nightflyer, she freaked. She didn’t even wait to see if I was alive. She ran. Peeled out of there like the hounds of hell were nipping at her heels.”
“Stupid idiot.”
“I don’t blame her.”
“You should,” Cait said shortly. “What the hell was she thinking?”
Her defense warmed him. “Anyway. The fourth adept trainee was north of Atlanta, nearly 80 miles from where I was. I called her when I felt the others die, told her I was going. She felt the power blast I’d used to take out the Nightflyer.
“She left her newborn child. She risked him, her family, everything, because she didn’t know what she’d find, what might be waiting for her. If I hadn’t killed it, she’d have had to take on the Nightflyer herself.” He stopped, took a breath. “It took her a while, but she found me. She patched me up a little. Took care of the Nightflyer’s remains.”
“Please tell me she took you to the nearest hospital, for Christ’s sake.”
Her vehemence warmed him all over again. “No. She couldn’t risk it. She took me to a fire station, and propped me up against the wall. She pulled the safe haven alarm they have.” He grimaced at the memory of the bells that had seemed to ring in his head for days afterward. “They have it for domestic abuse survivors. Some of the stations have it. This one did.”
“She left you there?” Outrage rang in Cait’s voice, and something flickered deep inside Aiden. Something he desperately wanted but shouldn’t encourage.
“Yes,” he said. “Exactly as she should have. She was the only adept left in the metro area, and Atlanta’s an active center for magical activity. If she’d taken me in, there would have been questions. She wouldn’t have been there to defend the city. She preserved the anonymity of the Council, kept the faith and still got me to help.” He took a deep breath. “She saved my life, and did her duty, which was more than I was able to do.”
Cait thought about the Kith’s files on Aiden. Was the Nightflyer attack what had been written up as a carjacking? She shouldn’t care. But she did, and curiosity was eating her alive. About this man. About what he did. What he was. Who he was.
“I can see the wheels turning, but I have no idea what the next output will be,” Aiden said, watching her closely. Cait took a moment to reboot her brain. She’d been so lost in thought for a moment that she hadn’t noticed he was watching her closely. She slanted a look up at his face.
“She was honorable. And brave. So were you,” she said, watching him closely. “I’m a soldier, Aiden. I was a good marine.”
“I’m sure you were,” he said, turning as if to resume their walk.
�
��Command and training are hard. You have to trust your trainees at some point, knowing that trust may be fatal.”
He nodded. “And it was.”
“That doesn’t make you a bad leader, or a bad trainer. It makes you human. It makes them human.” She took his arm, and turned him so that they were face to face. “We’re human. We make mistakes. Sometimes people die. Sometimes even when we do everything perfectly, people still die.”
“What are you saying?” he rasped.
“I’m saying it’s time to forgive yourself for being human.”
They stood for the longest time, just looking at one another. Her gaze was fierce, intense. Emotions cracked like breaking ice within him, but he couldn’t articulate it. He didn’t know what to do with it.
Finally, he just nodded. “Maybe.”
And that would have to be enough for now, she decided. The heart forgave when the heart forgave.
Hers had forgiven Aiden. Maybe, eventually, Aiden would forgive himself.
Chapter Nineteen
They walked in silence for a block.
“The Ty-Op, by the canal, you can sense it, like you would sense ghosts, or spirits, or…whatever. Creatures.”
“Yeah. It’s not right, if you know what I mean. It’s not a normal, natural occurrence in that place.”
“Neither are snakeheads.” She said it to test him, mentioning the invasive species.
He laughed. “No, but they’re still water dwellers and still living, breathing, earthly creatures.”
“And the Ty-Op isn’t?”
“Doesn’t feel like it. Nor does it feel like a ghost, or any other earthly creature I know of. Neither does it feel like a fairy, a hob, a river spirit, or any of the Fae I’ve encountered.”
“Fae? Okay,” Cait said, shaking her head in disbelief. “That’s up there on the weird-shit-that’s-real-scale.” She stopped him, mid-block. “Ghosts. People who’ve died but are still hanging around. Fairies?”
“Welcome to my world.” Aiden grinned as he said it.
“Yeah,” Cait said ruefully, as they resumed their walk. “And I thought I knew it so well.”
“I could say the same to you.”
Aiden stopped to drop another set of folded bills in a super-sized drink cup before ruffling the ears of a keen-eyed, happy mutt who sat with the homeless man in a doorway. Cait and Aiden moved on.
He paused as they turned the corner, and made sure no one was immediately listening. “You said the Ty-Op is a pet?”
“Do you always do that?”
“Do what?”
“Give money to homeless guys.”
“When I’m down here. Does it bother you?”
“No, just wondering.”
“You never know where angels may lurk,” he said. “Besides, a lot of them are veterans. My dad served. My brother’s in the service now. Navy.”
“You didn’t go the military route?”
“No, I had other…obligations.” She noticed that Aiden watched her face as he answered. Waiting for her to judge him, she realized. The sudden insight came that he’d been waiting for that all evening.
And he was giving her a half answer, but still, it was not what she’d expected.
“So back to the original question,” he said. “What is it?”
“Oh, the Ty-Op. It’s an amphibious creature that’s usually held in the water tanks of interstellar ships. It’s ugly as hell, but yes, it’s a pet.”
“An alien pet,” he repeated, as if saying it made it real. “And you’re supposed to catch it and send it home.”
“Yes.”
“Huh.” Aiden started them walking again. “That would explain why it felt wrong, while not setting off the bad juju alarm bells.”
“So those are real too?” she joked.
“Absolutely. They play flat notes in disharmony.”
“For all I know, they do.”
He laughed. “It’s funny how similar our jobs are. Most people don’t and shouldn’t know anything like magic exists,” Aiden said. “Frightened people do stupid things.” He must have seen her frown because he said, “And frightened magical creatures don’t have much compunction about how much damage they do. I’m guessing you deal with things like that.”
Meena Pal flashed again, as did the Perbadts, so recently on her mind. “Yeah, I have more than my share of that.”
“Did one of those things, or the Ty-Op you’re hunting, do the deed in the building?” he asked, finally returning to the discussion of murder. “Or is it on my turf?”
She stopped him this time. “Something on your turf can hold a man and a woman against the wall and impale them twenty-seven times with big iron rods and still keep anyone from hearing the screams?”
“Cait, how did you know there were twenty-seven iron rods?”
Aiden watched Cait carefully. He could see that she was deciding how much to tell him. It was fascinating, watching the gears turn.
“My team hacked the data from the Medical Examiner.”
“Innnnnnnnteresting,” he drawled. “Do you do that often?”
“Never, before now.”
“So?”
“I don’t know.” She grimaced. “The report didn’t tell me anything that helped. And it pisses me off. My worst nightmare is that it’s one of mine rather than yours. For the record it’s not the Ty-Op.”
“Why worst nightmare? You might not say that if you actually met some of mine.”
“If it’s mine, it’s unauthorized. I’m here for the Ty-Op and I have to get it out. I’m not here to track a killer. At least not yet.”
Shit. It had been on his list of things to ask. But he’d forgotten, wallowing in his own misery. He grabbed her arm, and turned her to face him. “Cait, are you a target?”
“Me? No, not likely.” The relief that rushed through him was way over the top. He couldn’t let his protective side take over when it came to Cait. She couldn’t mean that much to him. She looked down at his hand but he didn’t move it.
Mostly, because it seemed he liked touching her.
“I have your back,” he said. Her mouth dropped open.
Dammit. He hadn’t meant to say it, but it was true.
Bloody effing hell.
Now it was a pledge. If a magical adept, much less an Adept Enforcer, said something like that, it took on the aspect of a bond or a spell. Once it was out of his mouth, however, he realized he couldn’t do anything else. It felt right.
“Do you?” she asked softly. “You have any idea what that means?”
“I know what it means to me,” he said. But he let her go, and ran a hand through his hair. Dammit. He’d just committed himself. To her. “It means I’m there. The more you can tell me, the better prepared I’ll be.” Now he smiled, grimly. “You already have a hint of what prepared means for me, I think.”
She faced him squarely. “If it’s one of yours, I’ve got your back too.”
He shook his head. He didn’t want that from her. He didn’t want her to say it.
But at the same time it eased something in his gut. Something in him loosened and let go.
He drew her in, closing the distance between them to nothing. He brushed his palm along her temple and let it rest against her cheek.
“That would get you in a lot of trouble, I’m thinking.”
“Oh my God, yes.” Her breath was warm on his hand, and she smelled of woman, peach cobbler and the crisp wind. “I’m already in a lot of trouble. But I meant it just the same.”
“Cait,” he said, lowering his mouth to within a whisper of hers, giving her the choice. “Stop me now if you don’t want this.”
Her answer was to arch up onto her toes, pressing her lips to his. His mind blanked and his whole body erupted into an inferno that surrounded him. He wrapped her tightly in his arms and devoured her, finally tasting what he’d wanted since he first saw her standing in her doorway, barefooted and holding two pizza boxes, neatly putting him in his place—at a suita
ble distance—by declaring herself Doctor Cait Brennan.
Part of his mind flickered with visions of Cait, but with blonde hair and green eyes. With his hands on her, he knew without a doubt that she was human, no shifter, no alien.
She was human. And God, he wanted her.
Despite the cold wind, the heat sizzled between them, powerful and yearning.
The honk of a truck horn and a loud wolf whistle had her shoving him away, glaring at the truck.
“Assholes,” she grumbled, looking flushed and sexy as hell. She was breathing hard. He reached for her again. He wanted to keep holding her, to explore every inch of that curvy, compact body. Instead, he reined in his urges, snugged her against him and continued them on their way.
“I don’t want to want you, Aiden,” she said. She was still breathing hard, but her voice was clear and quiet. “You’re a major complication in an already FUBAR situation.”
“Neither of us is in a position to take chances, I know,” he replied, continuing to walk, still keeping her under his arm. “I’m guessing you’re not supposed to reveal anything to anyone. Neither am I. Two spies for essentially foreign governments, fencing over what to do.”
“Good analogy,” she finally said.
“Are we going to do it anyway?”
“Do what?”
His laugh vibrated against her. “Now Cait,” he said, turning her so he could brush her lips, lightly this time, but the fire flamed again, just with that light touch. “You know what I mean.”
He wanted to throw caution to the winds. He wanted to find out what this power between them could do.
“I know what you mean,” she admitted, kissing him back. “And no.”
“Hell.” He leaned his forehead on hers and breathed in her scent. “It’s the right answer, I know, but it’s not the one I want.”
“I know.” Her voice was soft, but strong. Aiden pulled back and looked at her. She held his gaze, steady as a rock. She might want him, but she had grit. She’d stand fast against her own needs. He wrapped his arm around her again.
“If it’s any consolation, we aren’t being followed,” he finally said.
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