Warrior Avenged

by Addison Fox

  Pulling her arm back—in self-preservation or in embarrassment? —Ilsa stared him down. “Why do you persist in this? I haven’t seen you in six months, Kane. Surely you haven’t spent your days pining over a good fuck.” The words sliced her insides to ribbons, the pain of it sluicing over her with far more devastation than the most evil of souls.

  The agony of the truth filled her, the consequences of her actions all too evident.

  We’re not meant to be together. Not meant to breathe the same air. We’re enemies, even if you don’t know that or understand it yet. But once you learn what I’ve done, there’s no way for you to feel otherwise.

  Why, oh why had she made that horrible bargain with Emmett? Weren’t her duties to Hades enough? But if she hadn’t made her agreement with the sorcerer, she’d never have met Kane. Would never have spent those three glorious days in his arms, when she was just . . . herself. The woman she’d always wanted to be. Desperately.

  In his arms, she was Ilsa.

  She’d spent the time since then trying to determine how to fix it and, as always, she grew no closer to figuring out how to unwind herself from her poor decisions.

  Her battle was with Themis. But now she’d involved the goddess’s Warriors, too. Those nameless, faceless men she’d thought to use to get to Themis now had names and faces.

  Now she knew Kane.

  And unless she figured out how to unwind her agreement with Emmett, she’d already given her Scorpio a death sentence.

  Chapter Five

  She was an immortal?

  Ilsa stood there, moonlight cascading over the ugly blond wig she wore, color riding high on her cheeks. The eyes he’d originally believed to be darker than midnight flashed blue fire.

  “You’ve lied from the first.” The cell phone in his pocket buzzed, but Kane ignored it. Instead, he reached over and yanked the wig off, watching in agony as luscious waves of hair fell to her shoulders. “Even your eyes are a different color.”

  She shrugged, the small insolence doing nothing to calm his ire. “Colored contacts are an amazing thing. And so very versatile.” Her gaze fell to the dead man on the ground. “Humans are far more ingenious than any of us want to give them credit for. It’s sad so many of them choose to use their gifts for ill.”

  “Who made you judge and jury, Ilsa?”

  A small sigh escaped her, like the slow leak of a balloon. “Powers far beyond either of us. And I’m not the judge and jury. I simply carry out someone else’s decisions.”

  “You expect me to believe you’re just a pawn?” The words fell from his lips in a rush. “Acting as an agent of someone else?”

  Another one of those annoying, delicate little shrugs lifted her shoulders. “Believe what you want.”

  Kane’s earlier thoughts, from the weight room, came back to him. Why did he even care? Why had he spent the last six months damn near obsessed with this woman? This cold, unfeeling monster who cared for nothing but herself and her duties.

  Without warning, a trickle of sweat ran the length of Kane’s spine, chased almost immediately by a line of shivers.

  Not now. Oh gods, not now.

  The rush of adrenaline that had allowed him to follow Ilsa through the park had nearly worn off, his body’s instinctive ability to protect itself rapidly evaporating along with the immediate danger. In its place, his temples throbbed with the pain of a thousand battles as the poison raked over his central nervous system. The fucking Taurus was right. He was pushing himself too hard.

  And now he was about to look like a swooning fool in front of Ilsa.

  If her name even was Ilsa. To the best of his knowledge, there’d never been anyone with that name in all the Pantheon. It sure as shit didn’t take the cunning of a master spy to figure out she’d made up the name.

  “What’s wrong with you?”

  Kane’s head snapped up. “Nothing’s wrong with me.”

  “I can see it. Around your eyes. In your skin tone. Something’s wrong. Are you ill?”

  Kane barked out a short laugh and threw a pointed stare at Robert’s lifeless body. “If you’re gonna worry about someone’s skin tone, you should worry about his. That’s a nasty pallor he’s sporting here in the light of the moon.”

  Ilsa’s gaze dropped to the body. If Kane’s tired eyes were to be believed, those shoulders she’d shrugged so carelessly only moments before seemed to droop. Was it possible she actually felt guilty?

  He discarded the thought as soon as it came. She’d chased Robert halfway across the park, determination layered in each and every stride of those endless legs. The man might have had it coming, but Ilsa had hunted him down.

  Predator stalking prey.

  Immortal with power versus mortal with none.

  It was murder.

  And what would you call your vast library of hits, Scorp? A wee bit of target practice?

  Kane knew he was a lot of things, but hypocrite wasn’t one of them. Stubborn, lethal and full of attitude he’d own up to. But someone who couldn’t acknowledge who and what he was? No way.

  Using every ounce of willpower he possessed, Kane fought to push back the effects of the poison. With a deep breath, he focused on the woman in front of him and ignored the trail of cold sweat that covered his back in ice. “So tell me one thing. Why did St. Giles put us together? And how’d you manage to get in his good graces? He doesn’t suffer fools and he’d have checked you out six ways to Sunday before bringing you on.”

  Ilsa’s gaze returned to him. Although it passed quickly, even she wasn’t fast enough to hide the stark fear in her eyes before shuttering those liquid blue orbs. “I have friends in high places.”

  Before Kane could respond, she continued on. “Look. This little catch-up has been lovely and all, but there’s still a second scientist on the loose.”

  The cell phone in his pocket buzzed again, and Kane reached for the SIS-issued device in his pocket. The encrypted text was straightforward and to the point.

  SAFE HOUSE. DEAL WITH ALEX. HE’S BECOME A LIABILITY.

  “Let’s go. We need to get to the second scientist. He’s still sitting in an MI6 safe house, and if we don’t get to him soon, there’s the very great risk he’ll flee. And when he does, he’s going to take all that uranium he’s preparing to sell right along with him.”

  Again, her eyes filled with a wariness she wasn’t quick enough to hide. “We’re not going there together.”

  “Yeah, we are. I’ve got my orders from St. Giles.”

  Her short laugh was harsh in the predawn air. “And you’re telling me about them?”

  “I don’t exactly have a choice. This needs to be dealt with and I’m not letting you out of my sight.”

  A small smile tinged the corner of those luscious lips. “Doesn’t that violate protocol?”

  Not only did it violate about fifteen different protocols, but it was an enormous risk. She’d played him from the first. Giving her access to a top secret safe house was the dumbest move he could possibly make.

  Of course, letting her go would be worse, so he wasn’t veering from this plan. “This is what we call an executive decision. And I figure it’s a good one, unless you’ve got another vial of drugs on you that you’re planning to stick me with?”

  His hands shifted to her waist in a mock effort to search for a syringe. What had started as a joke, morphed immediately into full-blown lust the moment his fingertips hit the smooth leather plastered over her ass.

  Kane’s body hardened immediately as his hands roamed over her soft, feminine curves. Memories of their three days together blasted through his system, so intense it felt as if he could reach out and touch the scenes that ran through his mind like an erotic film.

  The curve of her breast as it molded to his palm, her distended nipple growing hard at his touch. The taste of her on his tongue as her body melted in the glory of her orgasm. The ecstasy as she rose over him, the hot, slick warmth of her encasing his shaft with the powerful waves of her
body’s response.

  “What are you doing?” Breathless outrage colored her small shriek before she batted at his hands. “Get your hands off me.”

  Kane shook off the memories as he removed his hands, but even his famous ironclad control couldn’t stop the shaking of his fingers. “Can’t blame a guy for protecting himself.”

  “You were copping a feel.”

  At her outrage, he couldn’t keep the cocky grin at bay. “Bonus points for me.”

  “Charming.”

  “Opportunistic,” he shot back. When she didn’t rise to the bait with another comment, he shook his head, trying to dislodge the remainder of his carnal haze. “We’re wasting time. Let’s go.”

  An answering grin met him, cheeky in the extreme. “And how do you propose to get us there, Casanova? It didn’t escape my notice you needed me to port across the field.”

  “I followed you here from New York, didn’t I?”

  Ilsa cocked her head, that beautiful visage filled with both questions and answers. “Fine. Maybe you got yourself here, but I’m still not buying the idea that everything’s okay with you. Something’s hurting you and I don’t think you have the strength for another port.”

  “I wasn’t letting you go back there. That’s why I grabbed on to you.” Lame, but hopefully effective, despite the knowledge she was far more perceptive than he gave her credit for.

  Ilsa held out a hand and waved it between them. “Well, then, by all means, let’s go. To the safe house.”

  “Hang on, princess.” Kane grabbed her waving hand with a solid grip, grit his teeth and imagined his body into another part of London.

  He only hoped like hell he could get them to their destination.

  Thunder screamed through the air and lightning rent the skies of Mount Olympus as Enyo, goddess of war, stalked out the front door of her parents’ mansion. Zeus and Hera had been going at it for a while and Enyo took some small satisfaction from the fact she’d not only caused the fight, but that it lasted even with her departure.

  At least she could still create chaos somewhere without fear of lessening her power.

  That fucking whore Themis and her Warriors. The last battle had been bad and now she’d ended up one Warrior stronger at the end of it. How her father had allowed Themis to turn that simpering fool of a girl, Ava Harrison, into a Warrior was beyond her.

  What had possessed Zeus to buy into Themis’s logic for turning the mouse, anyway?

  Annoyance scraped down her spine like nails on a chalkboard. It was knowledge she wasn’t privy to, no matter how many times she’d railed at her father over the last six months. Finally, after long months of alternating between pleading with him and nursing her postbattle depression, she’d had enough of his frustrating silence.

  She knew how to fight her own battles and she’d normally avoid her mother’s interference like the plague of a thousand swarms of locusts, but at her father’s stubborn refusal to give in, she’d finally pulled out the big guns. Just let him try to keep Hera in the dark about a decision.

  Especially one that involved his ex-wife, Themis.

  A small smile played at Enyo’s lips as another round of thunder filled the air in harsh, resounding waves. She pulled her mother in sparingly, but when she did, she normally saw results. The shrewish screams Hera had thrown at Zeus for the last three days would go a long way toward keeping him from being so lenient with Themis in the future.

  Enyo was sure of it.

  Of course, what was she supposed to do now? Even she’d gotten tired of her own company, her endlessly morose thoughts hardly fitting for a woman of action.

  Truth be told, she had underestimated the Warriors in this last battle. Had been so blinded by her lust for the Summoning Stones—and the lies she’d been fed about her ability to truly possess them—that she had missed some very clear signals before it was too late.

  The comforts of her own home greeted her as she stepped through the door. The dark decor, enhanced with various torture devices scattered throughout the living room, never failed to soothe. The insistent buzzing of her cell phone pulled her toward the dining room table, where the device lay near a perpetually full bowl of ambrosia.

  She glanced at the caller ID. Numbers that indicated London greeted her on the display.

  “Yes?”

  When nothing but the sound of labored breathing echoed through the phone, her suspicions grew. No one but her Destroyers had this number. And if it was one of her Destroyers on the other end, he’d already be making his point.

  “I’m waiting, darling.”

  “Um . . . I was told you could help me.”

  “And who told you that?” A small spiral of irritation unfurled in her stomach, twined tightly with interest at the sheer audacity of the caller.

  Did he have any idea just who he was talking to?

  “We . . . well, my partner actually got your information. Wouldn’t tell me how, just told me I should use it if I needed help.”

  “And why should I help you, sugarplum?”

  “Do you know Edward St. Giles of MI6?”

  Well, now, this was interesting. St. Giles directed the most secretive activities of MI6. She’d followed his division’s activities with a great degree of interest, seeing as how his SIS agents were the most cold-blooded—and psychopathically soulless—branch of the entire organization. She’d even found a few of her Destroyers there and lured them away. Those cruel, enterprising souls who recognized the limitations of their mortality and who aspired to something more.

  This sniveling bore on the other end hardly sounded like a cold-blooded agent.

  And it still didn’t explain where he’d gotten her number.

  The quaver stayed in his voice, but the slight thread of impatience overlaid the fear. “Um. Hello?”

  “I’m aware of St. Giles, yes.”

  “Um, well, he’s been something of a patron to my partner and me.”

  “And now I think you’re teasing me. MI6 isn’t a patron of anyone.”

  “They are when you’re sitting on a cache of uranium.”

  Interest flooded Enyo’s veins, filling her up and making her feel as buoyant as Mercury.

  Enyo added a distinct purr to her voice, a technique that had yet to fail her. “What are you planning on doing with all this uranium, lover?”

  “W-we—” She heard a strangled “oh shit” before he continued. “We’re going to sell it.”

  “I’ll send someone right over to help.”

  “But I haven’t told you where I am yet. I don’t even know where I am. They blindfolded me when they put me in this safe house.”

  “Don’t worry, lover. I know how to find you.”

  Enyo ended the call and rushed toward her home office. Although she’d been gifted with many supernatural talents upon her birth on Mount Olympus, Themis’s beloved humans had added their fair share of toys to her life.

  Satellite technology was one of the best. With a flick of her long nail, the location of the caller filled her mind’s eye. She’d have the little weasel’s location in no time.

  Images of what she could do with the uranium filled her, even as she questioned how to play St. Giles. From all she knew, he might run the most devious branch of MI6, but he was loyal to queen and country.

  What did he have up his sleeve?

  And how to get what she wanted from him?

  Excitement skipped through her breast on the lightest wings as her mind raced with possibilities. Oh, what she could do with that uranium and a senior MI6 agent in her pocket.

  Thank the gods. It was time to get back in the game.

  Ilsa knew the moment her knees hit the ground in a tangled heap of bodies that she shouldn’t have baited him. She shouldn’t have challenged him when she knew—knew—Kane wasn’t one hundred percent.

  “Shit.” Kane groaned from underneath her where one of his long legs tangled with hers. “Are you okay?”

  “Yes, I’m fine.”

&
nbsp; She could only blame herself for this mess. If he hadn’t scrambled her brains so hard with the ass grab, maybe she would have had a clearer head. Instead, heat had flooded her, taking away any capability for rational thought. Her body throbbed in awareness, dark coils of passion unfurling down low at the apex of her thighs. She could still feel the imprint of his hand on her skin and the warmth of his body as he pressed in close.

  How did Kane manage to do this to her?

  Since she was young—even before the agreement with Rhea to care for Zeus—Ilsa had worried there was something wrong with her. She was a nymph by birth, raised with all her sisters who, from all appearances, seemed to have no problem with intimacy, desire or, to be quite candid, fucking their brains out with whomever—or whatever—made themselves available.

  Not her.

  Instead, she’d sat on the sidelines and wondered when she’d feel that way about someone. She had yearned for so much . . . more.

  The desperate need that would grip her until she believed she’d simply die without her beloved. The awareness that his mere presence in her life made her better somehow. The knowledge that she loved and was loved in return.

  Madly.

  But it had never happened. Season after season, as her sisters flirted with anything and everything in the Pantheon, she’d been alone. Until meeting Kane, she might as well have been raised by an army of Cyclopes for all the sexual abandon and wanton need she’d experienced over her lifetime.

  She had long stopped believing herself capable of feeling anything sexual at all. It was the single biggest thing that scared her about her bargain with Hades. Was her readiness to do his bidding and deliver souls to the Underworld a bitchy substitute for the lack of sex in her life? Did the violence she regularly spent on others replace her need to feel desired?

  Or worst of all, had she simply been used so hard—by Rhea, then Zeus and, even though she went willingly, by Hades—that she was used up?