She gave me a hug. “Everything will work out, chickie. Karishma’s a smart cookie. She’ll find a solution to help Henri. You need to focus on finding this crossroads daemon and getting into Demonica. You need that book if you’re going to save your gramps.”
“Kris is still unconscious, but as soon as he wakes up, I’ll speak to him about the daemon hunting.”
“Well,” she sighed. “If you’re not going to sleep tonight, then I’ll get some reading done.”
I headed for the door. “Oh, I almost forgot. Karishma is sending the talisman. It should be here by this evening. You’ll need to wear it for forty-eight hours to charge it for me.”
She was already settled on the pillow with her book. “Let’s hope you don’t have to be in Demonica longer than that.”
* * *
Henri was in the kitchen when I entered. He was sitting at the table, and Mai was at the counter stirring cocoa into two mugs of milk.
I pulled out a chair and sat down. “Where are Lark and Jay?”
“Lark’s checking on Kris, and Jay is having a chat with Bres, filling him in on what’s happened today.”
My ears perked up. “Will Bres interrogate Lex today?”
“I don’t know. But you can go and ask him yourself in about half an hour when Jay is done with him.”
She picked up both mugs. “I’m off to bed. It’s been a long bloody night.”
She padded out of the room in her slippers.
Henri looked up at me. He was in silver mode, his features smooth and perfect. He sat back in his seat and folded his arms across his chest. The material of his T-shirt stretched to accommodate his silver biceps. “We need to talk about what happened in the forest. You did a Houdini again.”
The hair on the back of my neck prickled. The Shade, that fucking horrific place. “Did anyone else see?”
“Lark and Mai arrived just after you vanished and leaped into the fray, and then you reappeared a minute later. I don’t even think they realized you weren’t there.”
“I was in the Shade again.”
“You left the weaver there?”
“I tried to bring her back with me, but she let go of my hand just before … just before I tore back through.”
He tucked in his chin. “Can you control it?”
“I don’t know.”
He gave me a level look. “You need to tell Karishma about this, it could be a clue to your heritage. Maybe she knows of a creature that can slip in and out of the Shade.”
I’d deliberately left that information out of my account at the hearing. Telling them how much of a freak I was hadn’t felt like a good idea at the time, but Henri was right. Karishma might be able to use the information to help me figure out what kind of supernatural my father was.
“I’ll ask her about it. I just … I’m kinda hoping it was a fluke and won’t happen again.”
“Burying your head in the sand and hoping something goes away has never been your modus operandi, Kat.”
His silver eyes bore into me challengingly, and my pulse sped up. Was he referring to this thing between us? Was this his nudge for me to say something. Fuck, when had things slipped into heart fluttering territory between us?
“Henri, I—"
His expression smoothed out. “How did it happen, Kat? What did you do to get into the Shade?”
Oh. Okay, so we weren’t going to have that conversation. It took a moment to adjust gears. “Um … I don’t even know. One moment, the weaver chick was trying to choke the life out of me, and you know, just set my blood on fire with her magic, and the next, I was in the Shade.” I drummed my fingers on the table. “I have no idea how I got out. I just ran until I felt this … this energy inside me that told me something was about to happen.”
“And the weaver just let go of you?”
“I think my glowing freaked her out.”
“You were glowing.”
“Yeah, it seems to be my MO in the Shade. I glow, the monsters come, they chase me, and I run. She freaked out.” I shrugged, ignoring the lump in my throat, ignoring the fact that I’d left someone to die.
“It’s not your fault,” Henri said softly. “She tried to kill you, and you tried to save her.”
“Yeah, well, I didn’t succeed. Those things probably made a meal out of her.” My stomach twisted.
“Not your fault, Kat. She would have killed you. She wanted to kill you.”
His assertion soothed the burning guilt in my chest a little. I’d tried to save her. I had tried.
Henri leaned forward. “Besides, if you’d brought her back, I would have killed her for trying to kill you.”
There was only a cold conviction in his tone. Only a dead certainty in his eyes.
This was a side of Henri that we never discussed. The lengths he would go to in order to keep me safe, and my next words, which sounded stupid in my head, sounded even dumber said out loud. “You don’t mean that.”
His smile was wry. “Oh, I mean it. I would have killed Lex if Mai hadn’t said they needed him for interrogation. I’ll end anyone who tries to hurt you. It’s what I was created for. I was created to protect you. That is my sole purpose.”
Bitterness laced his words.
My throat was suddenly dry as sandpaper. “You’re more than that, Henri.”
“That’s just it, Kat, I’m not, and the shimmer man proved that when he shut me down with a word.”
I opened my mouth to argue with him just as Killion appeared in the doorway. Naked.
The man was crafted all right. Time to stop staring. “Seriously, Killion, clothes. Clothes will not kill you.”
The hellhound stared impassively at me for a beat and then turned to Henri. “You want to run?”
Henri pushed back his chair. “Yeah. Let’s run.”
He headed for the door.
“Henri, wait.”
He paused in the doorway.
“You’re not just a golem. A regular golem wouldn’t be going for runs with a hellhound. Not without asking permission from his Nightblood first.”
His back rippled with tension, and then he ducked out the door and was gone.
When had things gotten so complicated, eh? Sod it, maybe watching someone bleed would make me feel better.
* * *
The door to Bres’s room was open when I got down to the basement, and light spilled out onto flagstones between his room and the main cellblock.
“Hello?” I peered into the rune-etched chamber.
The lantern was lit, the cot was empty, and Bres stood at the table by the far wall with his back to me. He wasn’t wearing a shirt, and his powerful back was on display, complete with the black swirls and lines that made up his cloaking runes.
“Bres?”
He turned to face me, and yep, he was still super-hot. His pale-red eyes stood out starkly against the dark outline of his lashes as he raked me over.
“Here again, raspberry girl? Or should I call you Kat? It seems you just can’t keep away.” He walked toward me.
A cocktail of terror and excitement had me backing up instinctively.
His chuckle was a gravelly abrasion of my senses. “You know I won’t hurt you. Not unless you ask me to.”
I dug in my heels as he bridged the distance between us.
He stopped less than a foot away, closed his eyes, and inhaled. “Mmmm, raspberry girl, you smell even better without a door between us. I can smell you, the real you, beneath the raspberries.” He groaned as if in pain and opened his eyes to look down at me. “I haven’t missed fucking in a long time. But right now, fucking is all I can think about.”
My stomach flipped hard, and a sharp breath exploded from my lungs. “Wow, have you always been this eloquent with words?”
His smile was a slow burn and edged with the promise of delicious violence. “I don’t see the point in playing games. Do you?” He leaned in so his breath was warm on my cheek. “If you decide you want to play, you know where to fin
d me.”
I’d avoided sex for over a year since the last Nightblood I’d fallen into bed with ended up with fractured ribs. They’d healed in a few hours, but it had put a damper on the liaison. There was a darkness inside me that liked to come out to frolic when I let down my guard. But my gut told me that my darkness would be no match for Bres’s. Not that it mattered, because, hey, so not going there.
He scanned my face as if reading my thoughts, and then he stepped around me and headed for the door. “Jay said you’d like to watch the interrogation.” He stopped and looked over his shoulder. “I told him no.”
“What?”
“Now, if you want to watch me pleasure myself or take a shower, or watch me pleasure myself in the shower, then feel free. I’ll even let you lend a helping hand. But”—the light edge to his tone fell away, and ice entered those kohl-rimmed eyes—“I run my interrogations my way, and I do them without an audience. You’ll have your information in a few hours.”
He padded barefoot across the hall, grabbed the key to the main cellblock, and opened the door. “Feel free to wait.”
The door closed behind him, shutting me out.
The thought of following him, of demanding anything from him, didn’t even cross my mind. Okay, so maybe it did, but I discarded the thought immediately because even though we’d only met a handful of times, I knew him. I knew his type like I knew myself, and I knew he wouldn’t be coerced or swayed, not on this issue.
I wandered back into his room and sat on the bed. His scent was all over this place like a sea breeze, like the crashing waves just before a storm. It tugged at something inside me, and I needed to understand what that was.
Yeah. I’d be waiting.
* * *
I was inside a cocoon of darkness laced with silver cracks—some wider than others, but the tapestry was growing, and anxiety churned in my stomach. I was back again. How could I have fallen asleep? Stupid, stupid Kat.
“Crackity crack.” The shimmer man’s voice drifted through the apertures. “Almost through, almost done. The bindings are almost broken, Kitty Kat, and do you know why? Because you want this. You want to come back to me. You want me just as much as I want you. You—”
“Fuck off. Just fuck off, okay. Jeez. How many times does a woman have to say no? Did your mother not teach you about consent?”
There was silence for a long beat, then, “I don’t remember my mother. Maybe I never had one. Does that make you want to save me, Kitty Kat? To teach me right from wrong? You can do that from this side. All you need to do is push through. Come to me, and all your questions will be answered.”
God, I wanted to hurt him so bad. “There is nothing you can tell me that I want to know.”
“Not even who your father is?”
My pulse skipped. “What?”
“Not even why your mother remains in a slumber after all these years.”
My heart was beating really fast now. “You’re lying.”
“Am I? Use your intuition. What does that tell you?”
My treacherous intuition said he was telling the truth, but like hell would I tell the bastard that. “It tells me you’re chatting bullshit.”
His laughter echoed around me, seductive and compelling. “Oh, Kitty Kat, we are going to have so much fun. Just a little while longer …”
I sat up, gasping for air, and almost smashed my head into Bres’s chest. “Shit. Fuck.”
“Nightmare?” His voice was uncharacteristically soft.
“Almost.”
“And you wanted to watch an interrogation?”
I brushed my hair off my face and looked up into his otherworldly face. “You’re done already?”
He canted his head and studied me. “I’m good at what I do.”
“And?”
I was fully awake now. Aware of the fact that I was on his bed and that he was sitting by my hip, his huge body blocking my exit, and was that the sweet aroma of blood? I looked down at his hands, his blood-coated hands. He followed my gaze.
“It’s still warm. Do you want some?” He held his fingers up to my mouth, and my fangs slid out of my throbbing gums.
I turned my head away. “I don’t drink tainted blood.” My voice was thick and distorted. Fucking slide back in, fangs.
“What about fomorian blood?” He leaned in, his eyes narrow slits. “No? Because you already have our blood in your veins, don’t you?”
My breath caught. “Is that why?”
“Is that why what?”
I swallowed past the sudden tightness in my throat. “Is that why we have this weird attraction?”
He threw back his head and laughed. “You think just because you have fomorian genes it makes me want to fuck you? Hell, if that were the case, fomorians would be doing nothing but fucking each other, and there’d have been no time for war.”
Damn, when he put it like that, it did sound ridiculous.
And then his hand was around my throat, his thumb caressing the column of my neck. “No, Kat, this is just plain old sexual attraction. I believe they call it pheromonal attraction. Physical attraction, the desire to rut, fornicate, fuck.”
A low moan slipped from my lips because all those words sounded so fucking good right now, but there was a fist around my heart, a fist that belonged to someone else.
“Stop it.”
His lips curled in a knowing smile. “Who is he?”
“Who?”
“Or is it a she? Who has your heart, Kat? Your heart but not your body. Not yet.” He licked his lips.
Heat crawled up my neck as Henri’s face filled my mind.
He smiled. “I thought as much.” He released me, stood, and stretched. “Nothing like a good torture session to release some tension.”
He walked over to the sink in the corner and began to wash his hands.
“Is Lex still alive?”
He snorted. “Of course. In pain but alive.” He dried his hands and turned to me. “Stubborn fool, though. Lost three fingers and an ear before he talked.”
I bit back my revulsion. And I’d wanted to see this? What was wrong with me? “What did he say?”
“The Custodians have been around for over a century. A group of humans tainted by supernatural blood who believe they’re the defenders of humanity. They’ve been hunting supernaturals for generations, but it seems things have shifted to capturing them now. Lex wasn’t able to tell me why. I don’t believe he knows—he’s just following orders, but the Rise – their version of a council—has started placing orders for certain types of supernaturals to be brought in.”
“Brought in where?”
“The drop-off locations vary every time. The notices go up as bounties on a secure Dark Net website. Custodians hunt, deliver, and get paid by wire transfer.”
“So, there was a bounty out for the Prime pack?”
“Seems like it. But the good news is, no one else knows the Prime pack’s location.”
“But the bounty is still open. Shit. There could be more. We need access to this website.”
“You’ll need to inform your council. I’m sure they can look into it.”
I nodded and pulled myself up off the comfy bed. “Thank you.”
“Jay mentioned there was an anomaly in the tainted’s blood?”
“Yes.”
“I can’t be sure, but from what he revealed, I believe they may be injecting daemon blood into their systems.”
“What? Why would they do that?”
He snorted. “It wouldn’t be the first time. Many supes used daemon blood during the war to increase their strength, speed, and agility. It was a common practice and an addictive one. He’ll be going through withdrawal soon, and it won’t be pretty.”
“I’ll let Lark know.”
Bres nodded. “Will you go back up and sleep now?”
Like hell. “No. I can’t.”
“Ah, the shimmer man.”
“Jay filled you in?”
“Bits an
d pieces.” He wandered over to a chest by the table. “Do you play chess?”
“Used to play all the time at the Academy.”
He extracted a box from the chest. “Care to play?”
It was either this, facing Henri again, or wandering the house alone. “Sure. Get ready to lose.”
Chapter Eleven
Kris was sitting up, braced by several fluffy pillows. His hair framed his pale face in delicate tangles, and his silver eyes were made brighter by the dark smudges that cradled them.
I padded into the room and stopped at the bottom of his bed. “Hey, sleeping beauty, how you feeling?”
“Like I got run over by a rhino and then shat on by an elephant. Twice.”
I bit back a smile. “But you made it.”
“Thanks to you and Candy.”
“Thanks to Lark and Killion.”
“Thanks to any fucking power that be that helped. I just wish I didn’t feel so weak.” He held up his wrists. “Cuffs make it harder to heal.”
“Lark said it would be another week before you were feeling like yourself. He also told me that Jay spoke to you …”
Kris’s eyes flashed. “Bastard lied to me for two years. But I can understand him being wary. An actual fomorian here, in the mansion.”
“I know.”
“And you found him on your first week here.” He shook his head. “I am so off my game.”
“I think it may have something to do with my mutated fomorian gene, you know. I think I may have—on some level—sensed him.”
“Makes sense.” Kris lay back on his pillows. “I’ll be back on my feet in a week, and then we’ll go to Demonica. But you need to locate the crossroads daemon and strike a deal with him before then. Otherwise we may run out of time.” He pressed his fingers to his eyelids. “Urgh, I hate that I’m going to have to do this.” He opened his eyes and stared levelly at me. “I was hoping to find the crossroads daemon myself, you know, stun you with my sleuthing prowess, maybe take a little jaunt inside those knickers of yours.” His mouth turned down. “But that doesn’t look like it’s going to happen. Not unless you want to …” He indicated his lap.
Give Up the Ghost: The Nightwatch Series Book 2 Page 9