Deliver Me from Chaos
Page 21
Knew her? No, but the woman would certainly have recognized Katrina for what she was. Just as Katrina recognized her. Those almost too large eyes, the overly sculpted features, and yes, the body, too. If that woman wasn’t part succubus, then all that training Katrina had gone through to identify the different sorts of demons in Ganelon’s army was all for nothing.
Though they were barely twelve inches from one another, Valin and Gabby didn’t touch. But the look they exchanged? Holy crap, Katrina felt like a voyeur now: the heat, the want, the absolute connection in that two second gaze said it all, but then Gabby gave Valin a slight nod and passed by him to take up position beside Jacob and his war map.
“Our guests were just filling us in on the series of events that led them to our doorstep,” Jacob told her.
“Good.” Gabby turned her attention on Katrina and Mike. “So, I can assume we’re ready to move on to the part where we help you find your way into hell?” Gabby asked without preamble.
Katrina froze, her heart thudding so loudly that she was sure the others must hear it in the pin-drop-silent room. Okay, then, Gabby could give courses in ways to crash a party.
Gabby went on, acting like she didn’t even register everyone’s shock in the room, well, everyone except Valin who still stood leaning lazily up against the door. If Katrina thought about it, it was the first visual reaction that they’d given. In fact, Kat wasn’t registering much of anything from anyone. Something about the thought made her highly uneasy.
“I assume you know about the main entrance in central park.” This was obviously directed to Katrina, the woman’s green gaze steady on hers.
Katrina nodded, shifting from one foot to the other. “And the back entrance through the subway at Norwood.”
Gabby nodded, pulling on her lip with her teeth. “That might be an okay escape route if you’re careful, but it’s too frequently used to really be handy to sneak in through.”
Mike blew out a breath. “Tell me about it.”
Gabby arched an eyebrow.
“That was part of the fill in story,” Valin spoke up. “I’m guessing that’s where you saw the soul rider that twisted your panties in a wad?”
Mike’s jaw clenched, the muscle rolling, but he nodded.
Valin filled in the rest to his mate. “Some merker must have been nearby. Seen them leave, then followed them for a little bumper car game. Then Mikey here went all beasty on them.”
Gabby’s brow rose further.
“He’s a berserker,” Valin explained.
“Ah, good. He’ll need the beast where he’s going.” Gabby tapped the map, her delicate finger pointing to Woodlawn cemetery. “This is going to be your best bet for sneaking in. There is a mausoleum there that works as a portal that will dump you in a little used portion of Lucifer’s realm. It is a bit of a hike to Ganelon’s little corner of hell, but the halls are rarely used and it has no guards, making it your best chance of getting in undetected.”
Jacob hadn’t so much as flinched this whole time, his gaze steady on Mike and Katrina as Gabby spoke, but now, it seemed, he deemed it time to speak up. “And why would they want to get in undetected? Or, more important, why would they want to get in at all?”
Katrina’s heart rate spiked another level, her palm slick against Mike’s tight grip. Here it was, the moment of truth. She could hedge and evade, or puff her reasoning with endless explanations, or she could just lay all her hands on the table. She’d always preferred the Band-Aid method. “My daughter. Ganelon took her.”
Jacob stared at her, not questioning, no reaction other than a spike of emotional power that made Katrina cringe, but all he did was wave his hand, indicating that Gabby should go on. Katrina didn’t even hear most of what Gabby said next. Something about shifts and coverage and how many free soldiers were available for a little diversionary mission.
Katrina looked up at him, realized he was as much trying to offer her support as trying to distract her from her turbulent thoughts. She also realized that even though his words could have been taken for sarcastic they were not. Mike truly believed that this Jacob had accepted the reasoning without question and was on board. Which confused the hell out of both of them. They should be drilling her for more information. Asking her why Ganelon would want to take Katrina’s daughter in the first place. Only they weren’t. And though she could tell that Mike was troubled by their easy acceptance, she couldn’t tell what a single other person in this room was feeling. Which was wrong. So very wrong.
I don’t know. I can feel them. But I can’t feel them.
How could she explain? All Katrina knew was that something had gone haywire with her succubus senses. She should have known what they were feeling, but this lot could have been poker champions for all that she could read them. As the conversation had progressed, the power hitting her had amped up, indicating a rise in the emotional levels of the room, but not a one had changed their facial expression or even so much as shifted to give away the rising tension in the room, and her succubus abilities were failing to tell her who the most likely source of conflict would come from.
Gabby was looking at Katrina funny, her mouth pinched in a thoughtful pucker. “Annie, can you tone it down a bit?”
The scarred woman nodded, closing her eyes as she took a deep breath then let it out.
And just like that Katrina could sense the others again. The lick of Jacob’s anger, the singe of Aaron’s agitation, the constant whisper of Gabby’s curiosity, and Valin. Whoa. He may have appeared the calmest of the lot, his arms crossed casually as he leaned against the doorframe, but he was anything but. He was ready for action: wary, angry, and protective all wrapped into one ball of coiled up warrior. And then there was the woman, Annie, standing behind Jacob. From her Katrina still got absolutely nothing.
“What are you?” The words slipped out of her mouth before she could think as to whether it was a good idea or not to ask.
Annie looked quickly at Gabby who shrugged.
“I’m a null. I basically mute any sort of gift,” Annie answered.
“But I could still…” she clamped her mouth shut. Stupid, stupid, stupid. She was giving away too much again.
“You could still feel the push of the power behind the rising tension in the room, couldn’t you?” Gabby finished for her, giving her a rueful smile when Katrina sucked in a breath. “It’s okay, I feel it, too. But Annie wasn’t truly pulling either. If she was, this entire room would feel like a void.”
Mike’s beast growled, its displeasure licking her across their bond. She tried to push a thought out to it, What is it?
So the null could even put Mike’s beast to sleep. That was both interesting and frightening. What if these soldiers decided they were expendable? Without Mike’s beast, they were pretty much helpless here. Yeah, he was a cop, and knew how to handle himself in violent situations, but the fact was numbers weren’t on their side.
Only it sure seemed like Gabby was on theirs. Just now the woman had all but verbally confirmed that she and Katrina shared a similar heritage. Did the others know what Gabby was?
She didn’t dare ask, not that she would have gotten a chance to, because it seemed Gabby had more questions for her.
“What I want is for you to answer your mate’s question. What do you mean you can’t feel us?”
Mike tensed beside her, the growl rising in his throat, obviously displeased with the eavesdropping.
Gabby cocked her hip, planting her hand on it. “What, big boy? You think you’re the only one who can sense projected thoughts?” Mike opened his mouth to speak—probably to tell her it was not polite to listen—but Gabby waved him off before he could say anything. “If you want
them private you better shield them better than that.”
“I don’t even know what you mean by shielding,” he all but growled the admittance.
She sighed, shaking her head as she mumbled something about having to have a long talk with pretty boy about untrained new recruits out in the field. “We’ll have to deal with that later. Just don’t count on it as a silent means of conversation until you have some training. I’m pretty sensitive, but anyone with an ability of telepathy could overhear you right now.” She leveled her gaze back on Katrina. “First, though, I need to know the range of your abilities.”
Mike’s hand tensed down on hers in warning.
Gabby rolled her eyes, directing her gaze at Katrina. “Listen, I’m the last one to count your succubus heritage against you, but the more I know about your abilities, the better we can plan. You’re not a full succubus either, right?”
Katrina shook her head, her breath held with disbelief at how casually Gabby was discussing this in front of the others. More amazing was how down with it they all seemed to be. Gabby’s heritage wasn’t a surprise to any of them, and though there was some definite interest towards Katrina, they weren’t any hostile emotions… yet.
“Half. My father.”
“And given how quickly that arm healed,” she nodded down at Katrina’s arm that was no longer even wrapped, “I’m guessing you inherited enough to pull power from strong emotions.”
Katrina looked down at her arm, rubbing it absently as her stomach did another one of its flips. Not only had she pulled enough to heal her arm, but then she’d gone ahead and pulled from Mike again this morning. The thought that her pulling the energy, even energy from good emotions, was what had caused the accelerated healing bothered her. She’d been able to get past the idea of “feeding” in the past because she’d reasoned that she wasn’t hurting anyone in the doing, but maybe not, not if she had taken enough to cause a broken arm to mend in less than twenty-four hours.
Gabby gave her another long-suffering sigh. “Oh, get over it. Feeding off emotions doesn’t hurt anyone. It’s basically just wasted energy if not used.”
Katrina chocked on a laugh. Not hurt anyone? Tell that to the young girl who’d spent ten years in hell being hurt.
Gabby’s eyes softened with sympathy, and for a second Katrina swore she felt a stab of the woman’s own pain. But then it was gone again and Gabby was giving her a hard look. “A succubus’s weapon is in the seduction, the ability to convince their victim that something is true when it is not. Feeding off the power of those false emotions, using those emotions to twist their victim into a destructive web so tight their prey can’t hope to escape? That’s what hurts. That’s how they destroy their victims’ souls. It’s the incubus or succubus who uses their abilities in that manner that is truly evil. Is that what you do, Katrina?”
She shook her head, but then bit her lip, her gaze rising to Mike’s. Isn’t that exactly what she’d tried to do when she’d first attempted to seduce him into helping her?
“No. You never made me feel anything that wasn’t already there.” He stroked her hair back. “My beast fell in love with you the moment it saw you. And I was there the moment you yawned at the blood covered stranger in your shower.”
And okay, that caused a peak in interest within the room, though everyone was still staring at them as stoically as before except Valin. He wiggled his eyebrows and said, “Your man not all that hubba, hubba?”
She glared at him, heat rising in her cheeks. As if. That fake yawn might be the best bit of acting she’d ever done. “He handcuffed me to—”
“I wouldn’t have had to do that if you hadn’t tried to shoot me.”
“You kidnapped me!”
Mike tapped his lips, shook his head. “No, that was after the shower. I only followed you home like a lost puppy. I handcuffed you when you tried to shoot me.”
“Puppy? Hardly. More like a frothing at the mouth lunatic.”
Gabby cut them off. “And as much as I’d love to hear that whole story, I think it’s going to have to wait. Right now I still need to know what your abilities are, because Annie wasn’t pulling that hard, maybe enough to make your Mike’s beast sleepy, but not enough it should have affected a half-succubus, yet you were obviously uneasy.”
“I’m not sure exactly how to explain it,” Katrina admitted, floundering as she tried to gather her thoughts. “It’s just, normally with the push of power, comes the actually emotion. Only this time, it was just the power and I couldn’t figure out who was feeling what, you know?”
“Empathic,” the woman, Annie, all but hissed. And, okay, even Katrina didn’t need any help reading her opinion of that.
Valin looked at Gabby for confirmation. She nodded. “Sounds like it.”
Mike asked. “What does that mean?”
“God, at this rate I’m going to be surrounded by stupid empaths,” Annie said, still obviously ranting.
“What do you care? You just shut them down,” Aaron sniped back. And okay, the resemblance went beyond similar coloring and scars, but to obvious bickering too. Related, no doubt, maybe siblings?
Jacob cut his hand downward, Annie and Aaron both clamped their mouths shut. “It might not mean much, depending on how strong her gift is…” he trailed off, looking to Katrina for an answer.
Katrina lifted and dropped her shoulders helplessly. “I don’t know. I have no comparison to what is normal. I didn’t know I wasn’t normal.”
“Strong enough for Annie’s typical low-riding Modus Operandi to affect her, though I’m betting not so overwhelming that she has trouble functioning in public,” Gabby guessed. “Do you get thoughts with the emotions? Are they specific to a nearby person or jumbled from all over?”
She shook her head. “Only thoughts with Mike. And no, I only sense what they’re feeling when I touch on their power.”
Jacob nodded. “Empathy is actually a strong genetic code. Empaths, sensates, and telepaths, are the most common throwbacks we see. So much so that we don’t recruit unless they have other abilities, physical or otherwise.”
“Throwbacks?” Katrina asked, sensing that the definition to that word might have the ability to change her world.
It was Valin who answered. “What Jacob and Gabby are alluding to is that, besides the sexy succubus sashay soiree powers you got going on, you also have some Paladin in those lovely genes of yours.” He spread his hands, indicating the school around them, his mouth pulling into a sardonic smile. “Welcome to the breakfast club, darling.”
Chapter Twenty
The night was dark, the moon hidden behind heavy clouds making the already thick shadows of Woodlawn Cemetery thicker. Better yet, the earlier rains seemed to have driven any possible late night visitors away. Sneaking through the park hadn’t even required much sneaking. The Mausoleum had been easy enough to find with Gabby’s directions. It was one of the more modest ones, and one of the older ones, the landscaping around it more natural and thus, obscuring, than some of the others. Best of all? The lock, per Gabby’s promise, was ancient, and had proved easy enough to pick.
“I changed my mind. This may be the quickest way to hell,” Katrina said as the lock popped open in Mike’s hand.
Mike smiled at his mate’s joke, drawing the chain through the cast iron handles. It was good that she was making the attempt at levity. Not only was this a highly stressful situation and they could both use a bit of humor, but it showed his Katrina was starting to come around from her world-stand-up-and-smack-you revelation back in Jacob’s war room.
She’d spent the last couple hours in a fog, her mind spinning on how it could be, and what it meant, that she had some Paladin blood in her. And though there was a measure of awe, there was definitely some uneasiness there, too, especially after Gabby had said that she could probably increase her abilities with training.
Mike got that unease. He was proof enough that having your Paladin genetics wake up didn’t make life a walk in the park.
His beast, with its amazing adjustment skills, was all but purring with contentment.
Knew it. Perfect for us, it said now.
Yeah, yeah. Smart ass.
He pushed the beast aside, pulling on his cop instincts as he listened for any sound that might indicate there was someone waiting inside. Just because Gabby said no guards, didn’t mean that there weren’t. He couldn’t trust his beast in this. His neck had been itching since he’d gotten near this Mausoleum, though Gabby had said it would simply due to the magic of the portal.
Beside him, Katrina must have gotten impatient with the wait and tried to step forward. He reached out his arm, holding her back. Remembering Gabby’s warning not to speak mind to mind, he tried to communicate through body language alone what he wanted. She must have gotten it because she nodded, easing behind him again.
He raised the gun Jacob had loaned him, flicked on his flashlight, keeping the beam covered until he pushed open the door. Quickly and efficiently he swept the interior of the Mausoleum that his flashlight could reach, then, with another pointed look at Katrina, and a side shuffle in, swept the hidden area behind the door.
“It’s clear,” he told her, holstering his gun.
She stepped in, pressing the door behind them closed. Good idea. They didn’t exactly want to announce that someone had broken in here. The plan was to sneak in the back entrance while Jacob and his soldiers created a bunch of aboveground diversions. The first part of that plan was already in motion. By now Jacob’s teams would be making noise all over the city, trying to draw as many of Ganelon’s on-hand minions out of his little staging area in hell.
That’s where he and Katrina were going. It seemed this portal led to just one of the many pockets of hell. This one—below, but not actually below, New York City—just happened to be home to Ganelon’s elite army of baddies. Guess there were other smaller armies in their own little hell pockets that had their own entries, which resided in other cities and countries throughout the world. According to Gabby, Ganelon only spot-checked those, leaving the running to some of his preferred merker offspring. Mike was secretly hoping that maybe Ganelon was off on one of those spot-checks at this very moment, though he knew it was a long shot, the chances less than winning the lottery or being attacked by a shark.