I sat forward, making sure to keep my gaze locked with his. “Everyone has the right to a second chance.”
“Not everyone,” he said flatly. “Some crimes are too heinous to be forgiven.”
Ryker blew out a breath. “Rivers ... man.”
Rivers’s face pinched as if in pain. He stood abruptly and headed for the door. “I have things to check on.”
The door closed behind him, and Ryker flopped down on the bed beside me, his golden hair brushing my cheek. “I’m sorry. We all are.”
“I know.” I turned to Ryker, our faces so close I could have kissed him. “What is Rivers checking on?”
A shadow fell across Ryker’s face. “I don’t know, but he’ll probably be in the lair. He’s been down there a lot recently.”
“Doing what?”
Ryker shrugged. “Once again, no idea. Probably tinkering in his workshop.”
“He has a workshop?”
Ryker’s lips quirked. “It’s pretty amazing.”
“How did I miss that?” I’d thought he just worked in the lab part with all the monitors and stuff.
“It’s under the lab.” Ryker sucked in his bottom lip. “I think he’s having a hard time. He hasn’t been himself since he interrogated that shade.”
He hadn’t forgiven himself for his past. Was the cuff that muted his siren ability really about control? Was it really about protecting others from the wrath of his power, or was he simply punishing himself?
Ryker smoothed back my hair, and brushed a kiss across my forehead. “It’s going to be okay. We will find a way to get your power under control.”
I swallowed hard and looked straight into his eyes. “Either way, I’m not doing it again.”
“What?” He propped himself up on an elbow, his baby blues suddenly clouded with dread. “What do you mean?”
“I mean I’m not killing them anymore.”
“Serenity, you were made to do this.”
“And I choose not to.”
He opened his mouth to protest, but I forged on. “Most of those shades are merely following orders. They’re scared, or trapped, or just ignorant of the truth. I can’t do it. I won’t kill them.”
Ryker’s lips twisted as if he was in pain. “Serenity, if you don’t kill them then you’ll be the one dying.”
“I know.”
He made a sound of exasperation and then pressed his forehead to mine. “Damn you stubborn, beautiful fucking woman.”
“Nice.”
He chuckled but it was a raw sound.
“You get me, don’t you?”
The weight of his sigh settled over me like a comfort blanket. “Damn, Serenity. I wish I didn’t.” He pushed away, rolled off the bed, and headed for the door. “There’s a solution out there, and I’m going to find it. I can’t accept that you’d be sent to us only to be taken so cruelly. I won’t accept it.”
He reminded me of Drayton then, with his talk of coincidence and fate. “I love you, Ryker.”
He strode back to the bed, gathered me in his arms, and kissed me, long and deep. It was a promise, and I drank it in gratefully, because only a fool would shy away from hope. This time when he left, he didn’t look back, and the determined set of his shoulders told me he wouldn’t come back to me without a solution.
The door clicked shut, leaving me cocooned in the silence of my decision to accept whatever fate had in store. My heart ached for a moment, but then I felt lighter for it, a strange hollow feeling, part regret, part relief. Death was in my future, probably closer than anyone realized, but there was no way I was going silently. I’d fight the fight until I physically was unable to do so. Right now, Rivers was in pain. I’d been so mad at him for pushing me to kill the shade, but there was no denying the kernel of gratitude that sat in my chest. I’d be dead a lot sooner if not for him. Besides, how could I be pissed at him for doing for me what I’d have done for him in a heartbeat?
He needed to know how amazing he was. He needed to understand how much he had atoned.
Chapter 7
The lab was as silent as a tomb, but if Rivers was here, then he’d find me. I studied the nephs trapped in their tubular prisons, floating in eternal slumber. The runes fixed to the glass glowed softly, pulsing as if in time to a heartbeat. Rivers’s presence was a delicious tremor up my spine.
“What are you doing here, Serenity?” He sounded deflated and tired.
I turned to face him. “I thought you might like some company.”
“No, you didn’t.”
He stared at me with his familiar deadpan expression. Except I’d become adept at reading even the slightest nuance in that perfect face, and the almost-tilt to his mouth and miniscule narrowing of his eyes warned me to cut the bullshit.
I threw up my hands. “Fine. I didn’t think you’d like company, I thought you needed it.”
“I don’t.” He turned away. “Go back upstairs, Serenity. I’m sure there are lots of final preparations before you continue to help the shade.”
He was pushing me away. Slowly closing the door, but persistence was my middle name, and the no-bullshit rule worked both ways. “Stop it. Just stop.”
He paused but didn’t turn to face me.
“This isn’t about Xavier or the shades, and you know it.”
His shoulders tensed. “Don’t go there, Serenity.”
Oh, but I was so going to. I walked up to him, grabbed his shoulder, and turned him to face me. “You need to stop dwelling on the past, on everything that the Mind Reaper did. It wasn’t your fault, and you need to forgive yourself.”
He let out a raw bark of laughter. “You have it all twisted. The Mind Reaper is me. It’s the part of me that revels in inflicting pain. The part that enjoys hurting others. That part is me too.”
“No. I don’t believe that. I don’t believe that you would enjoy hurting anyone.”
He leaned in, his face impassive. “Yeah? Well then you don’t know me at all.”
I placed a hand on his chest. “I do know you, Rivers. I know that you lock away your emotions and that you hide behind an ice facade. I know that you’re afraid every day that this dark entity you created to do a job you couldn’t stomach will break free. You told your darkness that it enjoyed inflicting pain, because it was the only way that you could do the job that was required of you, because if you didn’t tell yourself that you liked it, then you would have gone insane.”
His heartbeat sped up beneath my palm.
I pushed further. “I know that you care about me, and I know that the cuff on your wrist is your way of punishing yourself.”
He flinched. “You need to go.”
Like hell. “You need to let go.”
His eyes narrowed. “Why stop doing what works?”
I took a step closer to him, into the heat of him. “But is it working? Really?” I tilted my head to look up at him. “Wouldn’t you just like to let go right now?” I dropped my gaze to his lips. “Let go and not pull back for fear of losing yourself?”
His throat bobbed. “It’s not that easy. Letting go means letting the darkness out.”
This was why his interludes with me had been so brief and desperate, so searing hot, but always cut short by his desire to keep the darkness in check. “You say he’s a part of you?”
“Yes. He is me.”
I reached up to cup his face. “Do you love me, Rivers?”
A sharp breath exploded from his lips. “You know it.”
“Then maybe he can love me too.”
His eyes flared in horror. “He tried to kill you. Your throat ...”
A shiver of apprehension skated over my scalp. “And you stopped him.”
Rivers blinked down at me. He’d been there for me, but always on the sidelines. He’d held me close, but always held himself back. Twice he’d lost control and shown me how much he wanted me. That passion had blown my mind. But the Rivers who’d set my blood on fire was trapped, and only he could free himself.
Something shifted in his eyes, a kind of acceptance, but pushing the point now would make him pull back. Pressing a kiss to his jaw, I stepped away. “I love you, Rivers—all of you—and when you’re ready, I’ll be waiting.”
I walked away, forcing myself not to glance over my shoulder. I’d said my piece and he’d heard me. It was up to him to find his way home now.
***
Xavier greeted me at the top of the steps that led down to the hidden passageway. Panic was followed closely by irritation. What the heck was he doing here?
I pushed him out of the stairwell and into the corridor beyond. “Are you lost again?”
He glanced over my shoulder. “Cellar?”
“Yeah. And it’s off limits.”
The curiosity that flitted across his face had my stomach clenching. “Seriously, Xavier, if you want everyone to trust you, then you need to stop poking around.”
“It looks like you nephs are the ones that need a lesson in trust. I don’t know what more I can do to convince you that my intentions are sincere. I gave you what you wanted, didn’t I?”
Was he referring to the shade I’d killed? I looked away. “Just stop lurking, okay.”
“I wasn’t lurking. I was searching for you, actually. Are you coming to the beach house with us?”
It hadn’t been my intention. Rivers and Orin were supposed to be accompanying him. “You don’t need me there, and to be honest, I don’t know why you’d want me there after what I did.”
He took a deep breath and then let it go. “I was angry, but not with you. I was angry with the circumstances. The twist of fate that meant that the bastards who deserved to die got expelled, while the one shade who should have lived was incinerated by your power.”
“The guys thought you might back out on our deal ...”
Why was I telling him this? Probably because he was talking to me with Drayton’s lips and face, and damn, I needed to remember he was not Drayton. It was easy to forget what he was—an ancient creation predating the winged—because his speech was casual like ours. He must have been one of the shades who’d made it through the cracks in the veil, or one that had escaped the creator’s purge. How long had he hidden on this plane waiting for his people to be free, only to find out that their leader’s motivation had shifted. That he had aided a monster’s release.
His jaw clenched. “I am a shade of my word. The resistance is real, and I think I’ve done enough to prove that to you. I stood by and let you take what you needed to survive. That should be proof enough of my intentions.”
Shame heated my cheeks. “Yes. Yes, you did, but it won’t happen again. I won’t kill like that again.”
His brown eyes—Drayton’s eyes—bore into me. “You can’t help what you are, Serenity. Survival is a primal instinct that is impossible to ignore.”
Arguing was pointless. Telling him about my resolution was pointless. Better to just get on with things. “What time is the meeting at the beach house?”
“In two hours.”
“I’ll meet you in the main hall in one.”
He nodded and then headed back down the corridor toward the main house. I glanced back at the steps leading to the hidden passageway. A coincidence that we’d found him here twice? My gut squirmed. Maybe Rivers would want to come to the beach house with us too? I headed back into the tunnels to fetch him.
***
We parked on the road and made our way over the dunes, down into the cove where we’d first met the kelpie Juno and her Ocean Rider harras. This was simply a pick-up, nothing major, so I’d asked Ryker and Orin to hang back. Ryker had been in the library with Marika anyway, eager to try and help find a solution to my power problem. Rivers and I could deal with this mini mission, and it would be a good way to help Rivers deal with his trust issues when it came to Xavier. We kept away from the lapping waves and slipped through the sloping mountains of sand until we came to a rickety-looking shack. The moonlight played across the landscape, highlighting it in silver and reflecting off the calm sea, but the building we were headed toward was nestled in darkness—small, flat, and unimpressive.
“This is the beach house?” Rivers asked.
“It’s innocuous, hidden away, so it serves our purpose well,” Xavier replied. “We’ve met here several times. Our numbers have grown, but not all of us come here at the same time. It would arouse suspicion, so we meet on a rotation basis. But Asher killed many of my men after the attack on Arachne. I don’t even know how many are left.” He faltered. “I don’t even know how I managed to survive.”
“But you got away,” Rivers pointed out.
He nodded. “Yes, I did.”
We were almost at the door now, but my instincts had me pulling back. “Wait. Something’s not right.”
The guys came to a halt beside me. “It’s quiet.”
“Too quiet,” Rivers said.
Xavier cocked his head. “I sense them. They are here. Inside the beach house.” He continued toward the building. “We need to get them and get out of here.”
The door opened as he approached, and darkness poured out.
Rivers grabbed my hand to stop me moving forward, but he needn’t have worried, my feet were already rooted to the spot.
“It’s okay,” Xavier called over his shoulder. “This is Hunter. He hasn’t found a host yet.”
So, this was what a shade looked like outside of a host and outside of the aether. Like smoke and shadow, sinuous and viscous. I switched to aether-sight to see Hunter in his shade form, all black limbs, bald head, and inky teeth. He was easily seven feet tall, if not taller.
Xavier bounded forward, and for a moment he was swallowed by the shadow. He reappeared a second later, released from what must have been an embrace.
“It’s good to see you,” Xavier said to the shade. “Yes, they’re going to give us sanctuary. You need to come with us now. All of you.” A long pause. “Don’t worry, Asher will pay for what he’s done, my friend. We’ll make sure of it.”
The shadow slipped back into the building, and Xavier turned to us, his face lit up with relief. “Hunter brought them all, all that are left anyway, and they’ll accept sanctuary.”
Well, that had been easy enough.
“How many are we talking?” Rivers asked.
“Thirty-nine, but only twenty have hosts,” Xavier replied.
Thank goodness we’d opted to bring the largest vehicle we had. “We’ll go back to the bus and start her up.” I turned to head back the way we’d come.
Watch out, my daimon warned.
And then something slammed into me from the right, knocking me off my feet and turning the world upside down.
Rivers’s bellow echoed in my head as the ground rushed up to meet me.
Chapter 8
Sand coated my cheek, but I was already rolling, my body acting on instinct to evade the threat. The body landed in the spot I’d just been—a shade in a neph’s body, hairy and naked. Fuck. A Lupin. Which meant this shade was higher up in the hierarchy. He must have been one of Gregory’s missing Lupin. But was he with the resistance?
Yells and exclamations filled the air as a fight broke out around me, but my attention was focused on my immediate threat. The Lupin rose up. His hairy face showcased lethal teeth. Was he smiling or grimacing? It was hard to tell, and it didn’t matter, because he was attacking, and my objective was to evade.
Dammit, I didn’t want to kill him, but he was making it extremely difficult not to. Evading was a bitch, but the objective was to get away. My daggers were out and it was time to slash and cut my way to freedom. His eyes went to the blade, and then he flicked his wrists and unleashed his Lupin talons.
Show-off.
He charged me, and I stood my ground, ducking right at the last moment. It was a maneuver that had worked on many occasions, but this
time the fucker swerved with me, snagging me with those lethal claws and bringing me to the ground with a lance of pain. His weight crushed me into the sand, his rancid breath blasted in my face, and those talons came in for a final swipe, but they never made it because my hand was on his chest and my power was eating away at him.
It was instinct, and my eyes widened in surprise at how fast my primal brain had taken over. He was strong, but not the same level as Xavier. The power could kill him. I needed to pull away, to stop, but my palm seemed glued to his chest. No. Not again. Please, not again. And then my hand was pulled away from the Lupin’s flesh and pinned to the ground. Another neph appeared above me, his face upside down.
The Lupin I’d almost ended leaned in and laughed in my face. “Not this time.” His voice was a thick garble, and panic stole my breath because they had me. They fucking had me. I stared into the Lupin’s beastly face. This was it. This was my death.
Steeling myself for the pain, I locked eyes with the shade behind the Lupin’s eyes. “Do it. Make it quick.”
Doubt flickered across his face, and then he was ripped off me, and my wrists were free. Strong hands hauled me to my feet, and Drayton’s familiar scent filled my head.
“You’re okay,” Xavier said. “I got you.”
“We have to go!” A shade ran toward us. “More grunts are on the way. We need to leave now.”
Shade fought shade on the sand, blade to blade, claw to claw. Asher would come. This was just a stalling tactic.
“Head to the bus. Now.” I shoved Xavier away. “Round them up and go.”
“I’m not leaving you.”
“Dammit, Xavier. Do you want to save your people or not?”
He looked torn for a moment and then nodded. “You can’t fight them. They won’t stop.”
“I know, but I have an idea. Just go.”
Rivers was bearing down on us, the murder in his eyes directed at Xavier.
I slammed my hand into his chest to hold him back. “What the fuck are you doing?”
“He set us up,” Rivers said. “I told you.”
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