He frowned. “The thought did cross my mind, once, maybe twice, but ... I couldn’t do that to Xavier. Not after what he did for me.”
“But we heard you at Respite. You spoke to Orin and me, told us not to hurt Xavier.”
He nodded. “Yes. We were working on my coasting ... it’s like looking through my eyes while he drives the body, but things got a little muddled. We ended up at Respite, and I saw you. I had to stop you from hurting us. I couldn’t let you kill him.”
“But you have to get rid of him,” Ryker said. “How else will you get your body back?”
Drayton looked over my head at Ryker. “I won’t.”
I released him and sat back on my heels. “You do realize there is no way of expelling Xavier without hurting you.”
“I know. And believe me, I’ve had plenty of time to think about this, and it’s not a decision I’ve come to lightly.” He smiled that fucking gorgeous smile that usually melted my heart, but right now, filled it with icy foreboding. “I’ve decided that we should share this body.”
“What the fuck?” Orin said. “Drayton, seriously, how would that even work?”
“We would take it in shifts,” Drayton said. “Xavier and I have it all worked out.”
As much as I liked Xavier, like hell could I smile and nod and say yes about this plan. “You spoke to him about this?”
“Yes.”
“How much of what’s been happening are you aware of? You said you coasted ...” Bane asked.
“We tried coasting that one time. Never again though, it’s too confusing. Now, I just step back when he has control, but Xavier filled me in on everything. Look. His people will need him once Asher has gone. He has a good soul. He’s a good guy. He did what he had to in order to protect the resistance. As soon as he found out what Asher was really up to, he made a plan to stop him. You can trust him. I promise you that.” He paused in his speech. “My time is almost up.”
“Tell him you need longer,” Orin demanded.
He smiled softly. “No. I won’t do that. We made a deal. We stick to our word, and when we start taking shifts we’ll stick to the time agreed. It’s the only way this body sharing will work.”
I gripped hold of his shirt again. “But when will you be back?”
“Soon.” He stroked my face and then leaned in and kissed me, soft and filled with promise.
I cupped the nape of his neck and pushed up against him, breathing him in. Drayton. My Drayton. And then the pressure of the kiss changed, the shape of the lips changed. My instincts spiked, and I pulled away to see Xavier staring back at me, his mouth parted in surprise.
Cassie made a choked sound that sounded suspiciously like a laugh. Bitch.
I cleared my throat and with deliberate movements removed myself from Xavier’s personal space. He blinked rapidly and then swallowed.
“He told you, didn’t he?” Xavier asked.
“Yeah.” I sighed. “Why didn’t you?”
He shrugged. “I wanted to earn your trust on my own.”
“Why didn’t you just kill Drayton when you had the chance?” Rivers asked.
Typical Rivers question.
“Because I saw into his soul. I saw her.” He glanced at me, and then away. “I felt so much love and longing and ... it was like stepping into a rainbow.”
My chest tightened. “Thank you for saving him.”
He nodded, not looking at me. There was a knock on the lounge door and Bane went to answer it. A Black Wing stood on the threshold. He bowed in reverence to Bane.
“Did you deliver the message?” Bane asked.
“Yes, Lucifer. Ambrosius will be with us shortly.”
“Bane,” Bane said.
The Black Wing frowned. “Excuse me.”
“You can call me Bane.” And then he shut the door in the Black Wing’s face.
This time Cassie laughed openly. “Good to have you back, boss,” she said.
“No,” Bane said. “I’m not in charge anymore. Harker is.”
Cassie snapped her mouth closed and then nodded. My stomach chose that moment to grumble. We’d been so excited to speak to Drayton that we’d all missed breakfast.
Orin stood and rubbed his hands together. “Hey, Bane. You wanna help me do a fry up?”
Bane flashed his fangs. “You just want to see me in my apron.”
Joy bloomed in my chest. Fucked up as it was, we were all here, finally back together again.
My skin prickled in warning. “Guys, something—”
An explosion rocked the room and the sound of windows shattering cut off my words. And then the emergency sirens went off, shrill and urgent.
We were under attack.
Chapter 10
Everyone seemed to leap into action at the same time. The doors to the lounge were flung open and we poured out into the foyer. The main entrance was off its hinges, and humans, Protectorate, and Black Wings rushed up and down the stairs. Amidst all the chaos was a scent I recognized all too well.
“Sanguinata!” Ryker spat the word as if it was a curse, and then he sent a blast of air toward the nearest blood feeder.
The Sanguinata flew back into his comrades, taking them down with him, but more poured into the mansion, red-eyed and eager to maim. This couldn’t be happening. They couldn’t be attacking us. Why were they attacking us? Focus. Fight to get them out. No. There was a quicker way to get them out. The wards. We needed to do something about the wards. An expulsion perhaps? The guys were occupied with beating the crap out of our intruders, so it was up to me to get to the library.
Veering away from the fight, I headed around the staircase and into the network of corridors that made up the back of the building. I knew this place now, all the shortcuts and the nooks and crannies. It was all in my head—a mental map that I’d built up over the months complete with every exit, entrance, and stairwell. This was the quickest, safest route to the library. I made it in less than three minutes, bursting in through the doors only to be blasted back into the corridor by a pulse of power that left me breathless and aching.
“Shit! Serenity. Shit!” Marika pulled me up. “I’m sorry. I thought you were them.”
I shook off the pain and propelled her back into the room. “Barricade the door!”
The room was in the heart of the building. The door was practically indestructible. It would buy us time to do what needed to be done. Furniture scraped behind me as the other members of the Order set to work fortifying the entrance.
“What’s happening?” Marika asked. “We heard the explosions, but the wards are intact. The shades couldn’t have gotten in.”
“It’s not shades,” Death said from his perch by the window.
Marika shot him an irritated glance. “Then why didn’t you say so before?”
“You didn’t ask,” he replied.
She looked to me questioningly. “Not shades, then who?”
“It’s the fucking Sanguinata.”
Her eyes widened and she shook her head in disbelief. “Why? I don’t get it.”
“We can worry about the why afterward, but right now, we need to find a way to get them out. Is there anything you can do to expel them using arcane power?”
She looked away, her brow crinkled in thought. “Um ... yes. We could, but we’d need a subject to cast the spell off.”
“You need a Sanguinata?”
She winced. “Yes. To form the expulsion spell, the arcane magic needs to understand what it’s expelling.”
“But you didn’t need a shade for the wards.”
“The shades are not from Midnight, so we simply created wards to keep out the abominations.”
“Fine.” I headed for the door. “I’ll get you a Sanguinata.”
Death moved with me, fluid and eager. “I’ll come with you.”
“You want to help?”
He shrugged. “It could be ... fun.”
Fun? Man, he was such an arse. “Okay, just don’t get in my way.” I
stopped by the door, which was now obscured by a chest and a table. “Um, can we remove the barricade from the door, please?”
It took five minutes, but then we were out. The corridors outside of the library were still empty. Strange, but the Sanguinata hadn’t moved farther into the building. The commotion was audible, though, still coming from the front of the mansion, from the entranceway. So I headed back the way I’d come, Death close behind me.
I shot him a disgruntled look. “You know, you could help by going ahead and scouting out the terrain.”
“But the fun is in the element of surprise.”
“This is a joke to you, isn’t it? Death, destruction, you fucking feed off it.”
“Yes, I do.” He sounded resigned, and for a moment I was caught off guard. “So why would I help prevent it?”
Tosser. He almost had me thinking he had a heart. “You know what, just piss off back to the library. I can do this alone.”
I took the final flight of steps down to the main floor, and then pressed my back up against the wall, sidling forward until I was at the doorway leading back into the main entrance. Clashes, cries, and bellows seared my eardrums. Now, to get in and grab a feeder.
I took a deep breath and made to swing into the room but Death beat me to it, pushing me back as he did.
What the fuck?
He appeared a moment later, a body slung over his shoulder—an unconscious Sanguinata. “Well?” He strode past me. “Let’s get this done.”
Seriously? Damn.
***
Marika and her Order began casting their arcane spell just as the Sanguinata came to. Death raised a hand to knock him out again, but I grabbed hold of his wrist to stop him. A frisson of electricity, almost painful, shot up my arm.
“Fuck!” I let go and shook my hand to try and get rid of the tingles.
He stared at me for a long beat, his expression unreadable, and then shrugged and stepped back.
I crouched by the Sanguinata, who looked as if he was about to have a coronary. Yeah, the feeders weren’t fighters. Probably hadn’t been for a long time. They’d been cosseted by Dorian for too long. Adam and his crew were a different breed to this guy. He was wearing a silk shirt, for God’s sake, like who the heck goes into a fist fight wearing a silk shirt? I glanced down at his shoes. Loafers. Yep, so not prepared for this.
“Please, don’t hurt me,” he pleaded. “I was just following orders. I didn’t want to but Dorian made me, he made us do this. I just want to go home.”
“Dorian told you to attack us?”
He nodded eagerly.
“Why?”
He pressed his lips together as if holding back a tide of words.
I flicked my wrist and a dagger appeared in my hand.
The Sanguinata’s eyes popped wide open. “No, wait. He made a deal with the shade commander. We retrieve what he wants, and once this is all over, he’ll give us all the humans we want, to do with as we please.”
“Retrieve? What do you mean? What does Asher want?”
He shook his head. “I’m not sure. There were two teams, one for distraction and one for extraction.” He looked away, shiftily.
He was holding out on me, not wanting to completely betray his master. Well, we’d see about that. I pressed the blade to his throat, making sure to draw blood.
“The sublevel,” he gasped in a rush. “A person, a being. Someone from the sublevel. Someone called Adamah.”
“Dorian’s right-hand man, Adam?”
“No. Not Adam, Adamah. Dorian said his name was Adamah.” He began to sob.
Adamah ... fucking hell, Adamah! The guy Lucifer had told us about. God’s right-hand man, the one God had created from his grace and the one the Black Wings suspected the White Wings had stolen God’s grace from. But he’d disappeared ... Or had he? The lair had several nephs suspended in eternal slumber, and then there was the room with the dude with the dreadlocks. The one Rivers and Bane had said must never wake. Had they known? No. They would have said something when Lucifer told us about him.
Shit? What was I doing? I needed to get down there. I needed to stop the Sanguinata from getting their hands on Adamah. Because if Asher wanted him, then we had to make sure he didn’t get him.
Leaving Marika and the Order to their chanting, and ignoring the Sanguinata’s cries to be set free, I headed back out into the mansion. There was no time to get backup. I needed to get into the lair, and fast. The door to the secret tunnels was open. Fuck.
“Let me go first.” Death’s breath tickled my ear.
Why the sudden chivalry? But I didn’t protest. We moved fast, silent, and stealthy, but we may as well have stomped. The panel on the lair door was busted, wires hanging all over the place, and the door was open. Every tube containing every neph had been smashed. Our prisoners were gone.
A blast of power washed over me, hot and not too unpleasant. My palms pricked and then it was over.
“Marika expelled the Sanguinata,” Death explained.
I stared at the back room, at the door slightly ajar. There was no need to peer through the window to know the room beyond would be empty. We were too late. But I stepped into the room anyway and stared at the busted tank and dead runes.
Adamah was gone. The being with the same power as me was now in Asher’s hands. And it didn’t take a genius to work out what he’d be using him for. Adamah could kill the shades, yes, but he could also kill the winged, and, man, we were so fucked.
Chapter 11
The foyer was in a mess when I got there. Bane, the guys, and several wounded nephs and humans stood staring at the door in shock, but there were no dead, thank goodness.
I rushed over. “It’s okay. Marika expelled them.”
“That was fucking weird,” Ava said.
“Why the heck were they attacking?” Cassie asked.
“What happened here?” Ambrosius’s voice was close to my ear.
I flinched. “Good to hear you, Ambrosius.” I filled them in on what had happened. “So, Adamah, the guy you had in the lair, is gone.”
“There will be much death now,” Death said. “I’m pretty certain Adamah was created to kill the winged. His name means ‘earth,’ you know?”
I glanced at him sharply. “You know him? Why didn’t you say something when the Sanguinata we captured spilled the beans?”
He shrugged. “That was hardly the time for a trip down memory lane.”
“How about now?” Rivers said, too coolly. “Is now the time for a trip down memory lane?”
Death smiled mirthlessly. “Adamah was held in slumber by God. He was allowed to dream of life, of a promised mate, but never to live it. I believe he was always meant as a weapon against the winged should they get out of line. But then God went away and Adamah was left in slumber. When the war broke out between the winged, when Lucifer fell, then the White Wings siphoned Adamah’s grace to create the weapon they needed to defeat their Black Wing brethren.” Death’s expression was somber. “Asher will feed him lies. He will convince him that the winged are the reason the creator is gone. He will convince him to enact his purpose.”
“How do you know all of this?” Cassie asked.
Death sighed. “It doesn’t matter how I know. What matters is that your war is lost.”
Like hell it was. “No.” I locked gazes with him. “We still have a plan. We can stop Asher. If we bring him down, we have a shot at getting to Adamah and telling him the truth, at convincing him that the winged do not deserve to die.”
“Don’t they?” Death said. “Look around you? Look what they’ve done? They’ve created this in-between place. They’ve played with humanity as if they were pawns in a game.”
“That’s the White Wings, not the Black Wings. And I can’t believe I’m about to say this, but even the White Wings have their good points. They may have it twisted, but they still want to protect humanity. Maybe now they’ll listen?” I looked to Bane.
He nodded slowly. “I’ll
take Abbadon and we’ll speak to them.”
“And while you do that, we need to find a way to get Ambrosius into Asher,” Rivers said.
“Excuse me?” Ambrosius’s voice trembled.
Damn Rivers and his single-minded focus on the goal. We hadn’t had a chance to fill Ambrosius in on Drayton’s plan to finish off Asher yet. We hadn’t even asked Ambrosius if he was on board with it. “I’ll explain in a bit, Ambrosius.”
“How did Asher know about the lair?” Rivers asked the room. “How did he even know to tell the Sanguinata it was there? How did he know we had Adamah when we didn’t even know ourselves?”
It was Xavier who answered. “Asher would have known because at one time he was the creator’s right hand. If Adamah was created prior to our expulsion from this plane, then Asher would have known about his existence.”
I looked to Death, who merely shrugged. “It’s highly possible.”
“Yes, but how could Asher have known where Adamah was?” Rivers pressed.
“The White Wings gave Adamah to us a century ago.” Bane began to pace. “They told us he was powerful and dangerous. I didn’t recognize him then because my memories were gone. But the White Wings have always known where Adamah was. They set him in our midst because they were afraid to keep him. Because Rivers had the rune power to hold him in stasis, power they didn’t possess. They were probably afraid that with the creator gone, Adamah would eventually wake up.”
My power came from Adamah. I was the weapon the White Wings had created. And if our power was the same, then he would have regenerated just like me, but unlike me, he was created to house the power. My mind whirred with the new information and all its implications.
“Bane, are you suggesting Asher found out about our lair from the White Wings?” Rivers asked. “That makes no sense. Why would the White Wings hand over a weapon that could kill them?”
“It wasn’t them,” Ambrosius said. “It was Xavier.”
There was silence as all eyes went to Xavier.
He flinched under the scrutiny and then slowly held up his hand. “I didn’t do anything. It wasn’t me.” He looked to me. “You know I didn’t. You know I wouldn’t.”
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