A Heart of Shame

by Kristen Banet

  “She also doesn’t deserve to get screwed over by another Castello,” Jasper growled at him. Quinn’s eyebrows went up, and he gave Elijah another look. Elijah’s face turned sour and he stood up slowly.

  “Don’t ever go there, Jasper,” Elijah growled. “Don’t you fucking do it.”

  Quinn knew Elijah and Vincent had a long friendship, and Quinn respected Elijah’s protectiveness over his friends. It was something that made Quinn enjoy his company even more.

  “I am not my brother, you fucking perfect piece of shit,” Vincent snarled. Quinn saw Vincent’s eyes flash with something dangerous. He decided it would be best if he kept his mouth shut for the time being. Nothing he had to say would change the situation. “And I don’t appreciate the fact that you would even imply I would hurt anyone the way he did her. Years. We’ve been a team for years, and you’ve never crossed that line before. Don’t fucking do it again.”

  “You fucked her while she was drunk.” Jasper snapped. “You are her fucking CO now. We could lose her if the WMC thinks we can’t make this work.”

  “Oh, yeah,” Vincent hissed. “I’m supposed to be the person who worries about what the WMC will think, all the while you and Zander pant after her like a couple of dogs trying to hump her leg. No offense, Quinn.”

  “I’m a wolf,” Quinn reminded him. He knew Vincent knew that. Why would Quinn take offense to it? It wasn’t like Vincent was calling him a dog… right? “So are Shade and Scout.” Elijah snorted, covering his face. Jasper open his mouth to say more, but Vincent growled.

  “It happened. It won’t happen again,” Vincent continued, and Quinn shrugged. “And I’ll also fucking remind you that I was completely hammered. It doesn’t fucking make it okay, but there it is. Calm the fuck down. We have a case that we need to get ready for. We fly out fucking tomorrow.”

  Sweat was now beading Vincent’s forehead. Quinn’s nostrils flared as he realized Vincent was pushing himself incredibly hard to continue holding Zander, who was probably fighting back as best he could. Quinn stood up and walked over to Zander and looked him over.

  “I don’t think our female will appreciate your behavior,” Quinn whispered to him. “And she’ll come to me later looking for answers I can’t give her because I don’t understand. I’m taking you outside to cool down.”

  Everyone in the room was silent as Quinn wrapped a hand in Zander’s shirt and looked over to Vincent.

  “Let him go. You need your energy for the case,” Quinn told him, readying to handle Zander. It happened immediately, and Zander began to fall. Quinn held him by his shirt and dragged him out of the room. Zander cursed and spat and fought, but Quinn didn’t really care, Sawyer had put up a better fight the morning he’d thrown her in the stream, and she had still lost. He got Zander out into the hall and through the backdoor.

  Then he threw Zander nearly five feet off the porch. Zander rolled twice before he stopped, covered in dust and looking furious.

  “I come down for a cigarette, and I witness this wonderful sight.” Sawyer chuckled darkly. Zander was still cursing as he stood up and brushed dirt off himself. Quinn inhaled her vanilla scent deeply, enjoying it. It was softer than any scent he would have associated with her, but it also suited her. “What happened, guys?”

  Quinn looked her over and felt his cock jump a little. She was wearing one of those sports bras (that’s what Elijah told him they were) and a pair of low riding sweatpants that showed him all her strong abdominal muscles. He wondered if the sweatpants might have been a little too low, since he could see a piece of what amounted to string on one side above the waistband. He had the urge to find out what that string led to.

  He didn’t blame Vincent at all for taking whatever advantage he’d had.

  Quinn just wasn’t going to make his own move. He liked her. She was a friend. And past the strange fascination he had with her, he didn’t really know what to do. He wasn’t worthy of her, and he accepted that.

  The ache returned in his chest, and he held back a growl at it.

  “He tried to attack Vincent,” Quinn told her. He thought about it for a moment. He should offer his support of her decision, let her know he was okay with it. “I hope Vincent… handled your needs. He’s a decent male, and I hope he proved himself.” A coughing noise came from Sawyer and he watched her pat her own chest as if something was in her lungs. “I believe that you should… talk to Zander, however.” He pointed to Zander. He hadn’t been expecting her to be down from her room, but it worked out for him. Talking about these things was a good, human way to resolve conflict.

  “I think I should, too.” Sawyer sighed, looking from Quinn to Zander. Quinn saw the sadness in her eyes. He didn’t know why it was there. He wanted to comfort her, but he wasn’t sure what he was supposed to comfort her about. He couldn’t fight Zander. She didn’t need protection from anything.

  He didn’t know what to do.

  “Nah, I’m good,” Zander growled. “I don’t need or want to talk about it. You want to screw Vincent? Fine. Screw Vincent. When he hurts you, because he will, I’ll be here, and I’ll try not say ‘I told you so’.”

  “The only person who’s hurt me in the last twenty-four hours,” Sawyer growled, “is me. Though I’m about ten seconds away from adding you to the list for that fucking comment.”

  Quinn looked between them and decided he should just remain quiet.

  “Sawyer,” Zander stuttered, looking surprised.

  “I was planning on apologizing, but no,” Sawyer huffed. “I won’t stand here and get chastised for what I can and cannot do with my own body. Not by you, not by anyone.” Sawyer pushed her cigarette into the ashtray and went inside. Quinn turned to Zander with a glare.

  “You know, she’s not the type of female who appreciates this behavior. You know that. Even I know that.”

  “Stop calling her a female, Quinn,” Zander groaned.

  “Woman. She’s not the type of woman who likes it,” Quinn corrected himself with a snort. He needed to stop making that mistake before she realized that he was doing it. “I’ll stop accidentally calling her a female when you stop purposefully hurting her.” Quinn saw a flash of emotion he didn’t understand in Zander’s eyes. It looked a lot like a feeling Quinn had.

  Looking sick to his stomach, Zander sat down on the dirt. Quinn walked down into the grass and sat next to him.

  Together they stared at the woods. Two very different males and friends. Quinn counted them all as friends, packmates in this world. Packmates needed the support of their community in moments of weakness. He would be here for Zander, now.

  “You hold a lot of powerful emotions.” Quinn sighed. “But you let them dictate your actions when you should be planning. A good hunter waits for his prey to be vulnerable or in a position where they cannot escape. This normally works for you with weaker women, and they enjoy being chased, those women you go meet with Elijah. But… she isn’t prey. Sawyer doesn’t enjoy being chased. She’s another predator. An alpha in her own right. She has the choice. You must earn her choice. You must be a male worthy of her.”

  They sat in silence, staring at the woods longer. Quinn wondered what Zander would say. He didn’t know if he’d said anything that would make sense to the very human Zander.

  “Thanks, Quinn,” Zander huffed, still angry. “I’ll think about that.” Without anything else to say, Zander stood up and left Quinn sitting in the dirt.

  Quinn was beginning to realize that Sawyer might have been right about how bad it was for her to indulge in a male when she needed to. This was a disaster.

  He thought about his advice to Zander. Quinn was already applying it to his own life. He was working hard to maybe, one day, be worthy of her. For her to look at him like she did them. When she’d stood in his garden, holding those books, he’d seen a courage he should have expected from her. She smelled of fear, but she showed none of it. She just held out those books like she knew everything.

  And she wanted to help
him.

  So, he wanted to learn. For her to find him worthy and not just the odd wild Magi who lived in the woods and hated going into town. He was fine with his male friends thinking that about him, but not her.

  And he wanted to learn for himself so he could stop feeling this odd, heavy, awful burn in his chest.

  When he got back to his garden hours later, he packed the books for their trip to Texas.

  13

  Sawyer

  They all got comfortable on the jet, ready to get on their way to Texas. Things had been tense since the explosive encounters of the day before. Zander and Jasper were mad at her and Vincent, Elijah was frustrated by all of them, and Quinn was standoffish.

  Sawyer just wanted to focus on the objective at hand. Vincent was getting ready to give them a full briefing on the information the IMPO already had about the case. She ignored the looks from Zander, the hurt in his eyes, and just hunkered down in her own section of the small jet.

  “What all did you bring?” Elijah asked, walking over to her section. “I want us all well-armed going to this area, but I didn’t want to breathe down your neck about it.”

  “Twelve-inch daggers, three. Two to sit at my hips, one on my thigh, none concealed. I brought my sidearm in a shoulder holster to keep Vincent happy. Throwing knives just in case, and those will be on my belt, around the back.” Sawyer whispered, looking down at her bag. “We’re arming up after we land?”

  “Before. I want us walking off the plane ready for a fight,” Elijah sighed.

  “You really don’t like this area,” Sawyer pointed out.

  “It’s not a good place for Magi,” Elijah told her, taking a seat. She just watched him. “The more remote areas of the world hold some strange beliefs about what we Magi are. In the eyes of some, we aren’t human.”

  “Yeah, I know all of this.” Sawyer huffed, “but this has you seeming a little freaked.”

  “Where we live, people are uncomfortable with us. We chose an area where there’s no real Anti-Magi presence, but they still avoid us. Keeps them from trying to get close, and keeps us from trying to do the same. It’s a security thing. We need to keep our home from being vulnerable to the multitude of enemies we make doing what we do.”

  “Couldn’t let someone like Axel find a way to where you sleep,” Sawyer murmured to herself with a nod. She spoke louder for the rest. “What’s wrong with rural Texas?”

  “Christians, believe it or not. Ones that may believe we’re demons that need to be exterminated, or that we sold our souls for our magic, hence why we get our abilities in our teenage years,” Elijah groaned. “This isn’t the first time we’ve done a case in an area like this. It’s gotten rough before. Also, don’t trust the local law enforcement. They are often community leaders in these types of areas, and privately drive the rhetoric.”

  Sawyer wasn’t hearing any new information, but she was learning that Elijah and the team thought this was a serious problem. That made her pause and listen.

  The jet finally got into the air, and once the seatbelt indicators were off, Vincent stood up.

  “Alright, everyone,” Vincent called out. Kaar made an awful squawking noise, and Sawyer wondered if Vincent had asked the raven to do it. She rarely saw the bird, so she didn’t know its personality as well as Shade’s and Scout’s. “Eyes on me.”

  Sawyer unbuckled herself, and Elijah followed suit. They moved closer to Vincent and waited to hear what was going on. Jasper and Zander looked focused, as well, while Quinn shifted out of his wolf form, but stayed toward the back, as far from them as he could get. Shade and Scout stayed near him, completely uninterested in the world around them. She frowned back at him, and Elijah leaned close to her.

  “He doesn’t like planes. We try to get portals, but we never seem to be lucky enough. I think they purposefully don’t leave a Magi in Atlanta who can do them just to fuck with us.” Elijah whispered in her ear. She nodded and turned back to Vincent.

  “Portals are better,” Sawyer mumbled. “Even if they are cold as fuck.”

  “Focus, you two.” Vincent sighed. He dropped two small files on the table in front of him. “These are our victims. We only know about them because the local press caught wind of the first, and the IMPO was able to get eyes on the situation. However, the locals have made it hard for the agent to get any real information, or even good eyes on what they have. They don’t know he’s with the IMPO. His cover is that he is a simple Magi passing through and saw the newspapers. He’ll be leaving when we arrive, so he’s not roped into any dangerous situations.”

  “Good for him,” Elijah commented.

  “On to the actual bodies.” Vincent sighed. “Both have been ruled heart attacks, but they are Magi, which is our in. Because the area is a hot-bed for Anti-Magi activity, they wanted Special Agents and not just detectives or officers from Dallas or any of the other surrounding cities.”

  “And there’s only like five of them per city,” Sawyer interjected. “They wouldn’t have the manpower anyway. They can barely handle their own cities where Anti-Magi problems aren’t really a part of the situation. Urban centers are normally too dangerous for the different hate groups to work.”

  “Did you read that in the handbook? Because that’s not in the handbook I remember.” Vincent asked, frowning at her. Sawyer shook her head.

  “Common knowledge for any Magi who works outside the law,” Sawyer told him plainly. There was no reason to hide it. “First order of business in any new city for me? Find out who those IMPO guys are and learn their patterns. If one of them moves, learn whoever replaces him or her. Makes working in the city much easier if I know where they live, what they like to do, and all of that. The information is also available for purchase on the Dark Web, but I never used that venue personally.”

  “Holy shit,” Jasper whispered, and Sawyer saw him shake his head out of the corner of her eye.

  “The only people we really can’t find information on… are people like you guys. You show up, cause mayhem, catch someone, bust a ring, and disappear. The guys at the top are actually the easiest to keep tabs on because they are very public figures.” Sawyer finished, rocking back and forth a bit. Maybe she should have kept her mouth shut. The creeping feeling of shame at her knowledge of the dirtier workings of the Magi world filled her. She looked down, away from all of them towards her feet.

  “We’ll need to remember that for later,” Vincent mumbled. “Back to the case. Yes, Sawyer, you’re right. They don’t have the manpower or the expertise in dealing with much outside their own cities. Since we aren’t attached to managing a specific area, we can get sent straight into the thick of it.”

  She just nodded mutely, deciding that she really shouldn’t keep talking. What did it say about her that she knew someone’s life could be bought on the Dark Web? She’d never done it. She’d never bought or sold, preferring to do her leg work and see if she learned anything interesting. But she knew, and they would judge her for that. Hell, she judged herself for it. As a criminal, that was just the way her world worked. Now on the other side, she had a bitter taste in her mouth over it.

  “From there, we know nothing.” Vincent sighed. “Two Magi bodies within a few weeks, both heart attacks, and the IMPO’s rep was denied any access to the case.”

  “So, we’re going in blind,” Jasper said. “Do we have names on anyone who is or has worked on what happened to the bodies?”

  Vincent slid a third file to Jasper.

  “That’s the line-up of the local law enforcement,” Vincent told him. “It also includes anyone who handled the bodies. Oh, here’s one more thing for everyone; they haven’t done autopsies on the bodies yet.”

  “Why not?” Elijah asked, sounding pissed off. “They just…”

  “Something’s being covered up,” Zander growled. “That’s obvious.”

  “Or they just don’t care enough about the victims,” Elijah snarled. “I’m not sure what’s worse. Cover up or just plain fucking h
eartless.”

  “Settle in and enjoy the flight,” Vincent sighed. “Also, we don’t have leave to get into any fights with any non-Magi, unless we can prove they are direct threats or a part of the case.”

  Sawyer nodded and just went back to her seat. She would spend the entire trip with a small cotton towel and her blades. She brought a small whetstone to make sure they were sharp. She knew Elijah had done fresh enchantments on them, but she liked the time with her weapons if she knew they might find use.

  It had been a long time since she went through this ritual. And to her, it was ritual. She sharpened them, tested the tips and edges, then cleaned them.

  If they were used, she would clean them again. Another step in the ritual.

  She considered the years since she’d last stopped doing this. Before Henry was gone. Her last hit for Axel. She closed her eyes for just a moment as that memory came back. She let it ride. She remembered telling Henry not to touch her things. He asked why she was going away. She told him that his papa needed her to keep them safe. Henry had accepted that as the truth. The real truth was that she only did it to keep him safe. All of it had been for Midnight and Henry. Every second of it.

  She reopened her eyes and continued working on the dagger. She didn’t look up as one of the guys drew close. She had grown used to their magic now, and she didn’t need to see who it was. The fact that it was barely noticeable told her everything she needed to know.

  “Yes, Vincent?” she asked, continuing without missing a beat in her ritual. She tested the edge and was happy with it. She put the whetstone down and grabbed the cotton towel and wiped the dagger down carefully. When she was younger, she’d cut herself more times than she had cared to.

  “I wanted to see how you were feeling,” he mumbled, sitting across from her. She flicked him a glance. He looked uncomfortable, but not pained. Uncomfortable, but not haunted. It was a good change, she decided. Uncomfortable was natural. Haunted… well, she had the market cornered on haunted. She didn’t need to see it in everyone around her as well.