The Unnaturals (The Unnaturals Series Book 1)

by Jessica Meigs

  It was a negative thought, she knew, but it was a current fact of her life. With Brandon having abused his new position as Deputy Director to put out a hit on her, she’d have dozens of agents looking for her, trying to find her and capture or kill her. The thought made her grasp her steering wheel tightly in both hands, her knuckles blanching with the force of her grip.

  “Two can play at that game, asshole,” she breathed.

  It was then she caught sight of Brandon’s sedan pulling into the Agency’s parking lot.

  Riley’s anger flared at the sight of his silver Lexus LS cruising through the Agency’s lot to the designated Deputy Director parking spot near the door. Her shoulders were tense, her muscles trembling, as she watched the familiar blonde figure emerge from the vehicle like the self-satisfied bastard that he was. She ground her fingers into the leather-covered steering wheel and fought the urge to jump the curb and run him over with her car, thereby ending her immediate problems right then and there. But there were too many pedestrians around, and she didn’t want to risk running an innocent bystander over in her haste to kill Brandon.

  Besides, Riley was almost one hundred percent certain that Damon Hartley wouldn’t appreciate it if she used his money to pay for rental car repairs. Not because of the need for the repairs themselves but because she’d have killed Brandon with a distinct lack of finesse. And Damon seemed to be the type of man who appreciated finesse.

  A tap on the passenger window startled her, and she tore her eyes away from Brandon’s disappearing figure and to the other side of the car. Damon stood outside the car, holding two coffee cups and a small paper bag from the nearby shop and waiting patiently for her to acknowledge him. She hit the unlock button on the driver’s door, and the dark-haired older man juggled the cups enough to get the passenger door open. He slid inside, knocking Linus onto the floorboard, and passed her one of the coffees he held before pulling the door shut, settling in his seat and setting the paper bag on his lap. She took a cautious sip of the coffee and was surprised to discover the drink was prepared just the way she liked it. As she drank, she peered at her boss out of the corner of her eye, scanning him over with thinly veiled curiosity.

  Damon was tall, tall enough that he looked like he should have been uncomfortable with his frame tucked into the passenger seat, but the discomfort didn’t show on his face. Despite his height, he looked fit and strong, well dressed in a day suit and with his dark hair neatly combed. Afforded her first real close-up, casual look at him that didn’t involve him surprising her while she wore just a towel, Riley tried to guess his age, and she put it at somewhere in his mid- to late-forties, maybe even right at fifty on the outside, though the only indicators of age that he had on him were the creases at the sides of his mouth and around his almost-black eyes.

  Damon waited until she’d taken several sips of her drink before he said, “I thought I told you to get out of town for a while.”

  “You did,” Riley agreed. She took another sip of coffee, rolling it around in her mouth and savoring the taste of it before swallowing. It was bitter, but it was a perfect kind of bitterness that she enjoyed.

  “Any particular reason why you haven’t?”

  Riley shrugged and set the cup into one of the holders in the console between them. She eyed the paper bag on his lap, wondering what was in it, and said, “I’ve never been one to turn tail and run at the first hint of danger.”

  “No, you usually run towards it,” Damon said. He took a swallow of his own coffee and adjusted the wire-framed sunglasses he wore, pushing them further up his nose with one long finger.

  “That’s me. Reckless to the bitter end.” She glanced toward the Agency headquarters building. Brandon was long gone. Damn it.

  “You should be more careful,” Damon said. “The last thing we need is you to get killed before the end game is run.”

  “And what exactly is the end game, Damon?”

  A corner of his mouth twitched upward. “Brandon Hall’s death, of course.” He took a sip of coffee and added, “It’s why I want you to get out of town. It’s better for you to pick your ground and make him and his people come to you. Then you’ve got the high ground and a better chance at completing your assignment.”

  “I know how to strategize,” she muttered. He let out a soft chuckle. If it had been anyone else but her boss who had laughed at her, she’d have given him a quick and dirty introduction to her fist. Instead, she ground her teeth together and continued. “I just want to know what he’s doing and why he’s doing it. I haven’t figured that out yet, and it’s driving me insane.”

  “I suspect he’s trying to find a way to take control of the Agency,” Damon said. “He spent months dealing with those who were threats to him, leaving only three level ten agents in the entire organization that have the capability to take him out and that aren’t sympathetic to him and his goals—you, Zachariah Lawrence, and Ashton Miller. I suspect he’ll start in on the level nines soon, since almost all of the tens are dead.” There were ten different levels of field agents, scaled from level ones to level tens, the latter which were the most experienced, highly skilled, well trained, and lethal of the bunch, a mere step below handler and supervisor in the organizational chain. Riley was surprised about two things: that all of the agents murdered in the past six months due to Brandon’s intrigues were level ten agents—something she hadn’t been aware of—and that Scott wasn’t designated as a level ten. “It only stands to reason that that’s his goal,” Damon added.

  “And so you…promoted him to Deputy Director so he would have a better chance at succeeding at that?” she asked.

  He shrugged. “Keep your enemies close, Ms. Walker. Always.”

  Riley retrieved her coffee cup and took a few swallows. “So that means there’s a high chance that you’re next on his list. What are you going to do?”

  “My job, as always,” he answered. “And if you don’t succeed in your assignment, then I’ll be dead.” A small grin quirked at his mouth. “No pressure or anything.”

  Riley rolled her eyes but didn’t comment. Instead, she toyed with the lid of her coffee cup and contemplated her options. Damon was right, ultimately. She did need to get out of town, find somewhere to go that wasn’t too far away but would give her enough breathing room to plan how to get her hands on Brandon and squeeze the life out of him before he did her the same courtesy.

  She stared out the windshield and sipped her coffee for a moment, hesitating as a question pressed itself against the insides of her lips, dying to be asked but afraid to escape. Finally, she heaved a slow, beleaguered sigh and asked, “If I ask you for a favor, are you going to go all Godfather on me and demand the soul of my first-born child?”

  Damon looked amused. “Riley, I don’t deal in souls,” he said. “You can ask me anything you need to ask me. As your employer, I’d expect as much.”

  Riley hesitated again, covering it by taking a swig of coffee. Then she forced the words out. “Would you let Scott Hunter know that I’m okay?”

  A look of intrigue crossed Damon’s face, and his eyebrows slowly rose. “Oh?” he queried. “Did you two get a little closer than you’ve let on while you were on assignment?”

  “I haven’t ‘let on’ anything,” Riley muttered. “And I’ll have you know it’s nothing like that. He was just a partner, and considering we worked together—”

  “Only for a few days,” Damon pointed out. She ignored him and kept talking like he hadn’t said a word.

  “—I thought he’d like to know that nobody’s managed to kill me,” she finished.

  “Yet.”

  Riley rolled her eyes. “Stop talking like my death is a given,” she snapped. “I’m not that easy to take down.”

  “Says the woman sitting out in the open waiting for Brandon to take a pot shot at her,” he said. He collected both of the coffee cups and opened the door, sliding out onto the sidewalk before leaning back into the car. “Don’t let me catch you out here
like this again,” he warned. He set the paper bag on the seat then shut the door. Riley scowled at him and fought the urge to flip him off.

  She watched as Damon crossed the street—still carrying the coffee cups—and waited until he’d disappeared into the Agency headquarters building before grabbing the paper bag and tearing it open. It was a croissant, partially wrapped in a slip of brown paper, and she grinned. She closed the bag and focused on the road, shifting the gears into drive. With one last glance toward the building, she put her foot on the gas and pulled into traffic, even as she jabbed at her GPS unit.

  She was going to Atlanta.

  ~*~

  Glass crunched under Ashton Miller’s tennis shoes as he slowly walked across the large, open area that comprised much of The Unnaturals headquarters. As he took in the sight of the near-total destruction—the shattered computers, the broken tables, the browned and blackened papers littering the floor—he had to blink back a sheen of tears from his single good eye. A surge of emotion had come over him with the ferocity of a smack to the head, and he struggled to remain composed in the face of the scene in front of him.

  This place had been his home. His home. He’d lived in his small back room apartment attached to his office ever since the attack that had disfigured him two years before, and he’d come to love the place. He’d expended a lot of energy trying to make sure everything had been kept neat and orderly. And now it was all gone.

  He didn’t even want to look at the apartment and the office at the back of the building. He didn’t want to see the more personal level of all that he’d lost.

  A young man with dark hair and dark eyes approached him, an N95 mask in his hand, a matching mask over the lower half of his face, and a nervous appearance around his eyes. Every step he took kicked up grime and ash from the floor in small puffs. “Sir, you forgot your mask,” the man said, extending it toward him. Ashton glanced at it but didn’t take it. He gripped his cane tighter, grinding his fingers into the handle. “The cleaners said we’re not supposed to be in here without masks on account of the ash—”

  “I’m fine, Agent Meehan,” Ashton interrupted, more snappishly than he’d meant to. At least it had the desired effect: Meehan clamped his mouth shut, judging by the silence coming from the mask. “Where is Zachariah?”

  “Last time I saw him, Agent Lawrence was outside on the sidewalk, sir,” Meehan reported. “I offered him a mask, but he said he wasn’t coming inside.”

  “Just as well,” Ashton muttered. “Not like there’s much to see.” He turned away from the ill-lit building and headed back to the front entrance.

  Zachariah stood on the sidewalk, his hands tucked into the pockets of his blue jeans, his torso wrapped in a thin Iron Maiden t-shirt that he’d probably owned for years, and his dark hair pulled back into a loose ponytail. His head was tilted back, and his eyes were closed as he basked in the morning sunlight. As Ashton stepped into the heat, his blue eye began to sting and water, and he started patting his pockets, searching for his sunglasses. Zachariah held out a pair toward him, and he slipped them on with a grateful half-smile.

  “You left them in the car,” Zachariah explained. “I figured you might want them.”

  “Thanks.” He watched him for a moment, studying the way the sunlight practically made his skin glow. The man’s most recent brush with death—not his first, unfortunately—had changed him, at least physiologically. His skin was almost porcelain pale, too pale, though some color had begun to return to his features. His eyes were more sensitive to sunlight too, judging by the way he’d reacted when he’d walked out of the Agency’s medical ward that morning, a fact that Ashton was reminded of when the younger man put on his own pair of sunglasses. And the fangs—they hadn’t gone away, Zachariah had revealed once they left the Agency’s headquarters. Though they served as a distinct reminder of what had happened to Zachariah, Ashton tried to not mind them too much. As strange as they were, he understood them and how they’d gotten there.

  Zachariah had been a vampire, and he was the only known person who’d ever escaped the curse of vampirism, thanks to the elder vampire who’d turned him, Elise, sacrificing her own life so he could avoid the wrath of the weapon Riley Walker had unleashed on them. Of course, that sacrifice had come with a price, as Ashton expected everything to: the vampire woman had extracted a promise from Zachariah that he’d do everything in his power to find her vampire sister, Chloe, a creature who appeared no older than twelve or thirteen and who Brandon Hall had kidnapped months before to control Elise into doing his bidding. And, knowing Zachariah the way he did—literally in every way possible—he knew the younger man would feel like he was honor-bound to keep that promise.

  If Ashton hadn’t seen Chloe with his own eye, he’d likely have objected to Zachariah’s self-imposed mission. He’d seen first-hand the deplorable conditions she was being kept in: half-starved, injured, and chained to a wall like a dog. Vampire or not, it was no way to treat another living being.

  “Ash?” Zachariah’s voice broke into his thoughts. “Earth to Ash. Come in, Ash.”

  He shook his head and scowled at him. “What, Zach?”

  “I asked you a question, and you looked like you were off on another planet,” Zachariah said. “Something on your mind?”

  “Just you,” he almost said, but he clamped his mouth shut against the words. Instead, he shook his head and asked, “What was your question?”

  Zachariah looked like he was trying to fight off a grin at his spacey-ness. At least he knew better than to let it slip free; it would have probably earned him a smack on the back of the head from Ashton. He bobbed his head toward The Unnaturals building and repeated his earlier question. “How bad is it?”

  Ashton scowled again. “Bad enough that I’m effectively homeless,” he admitted. “At least until building repairs are made.”

  Zachariah did grin then, and though he had one of those grins that lit up his entire face and made him appear even more gorgeous than he already was, Ashton still felt that predicted, irrational urge to smack him. “Well, I guess you’ll definitely have to stay with me then!”

  Ashton fought back a groan at his words. As much as he enjoyed Zachariah and his company, the man’s disorganized mess of an apartment always got his hackles up and screwed around with his OCD tendencies. He’d spent the night there only a handful of times, and he hadn’t gotten a wink of sleep thanks to his incessant compulsion to clean. “I…I’m not sure that’s a good idea,” he said, slowly and cautiously, not wanting to hurt his feelings.

  “Oh, come on, Ash,” Zachariah wheedled. “I cleaned this time, I promise.”

  “No, you didn’t.”

  Zachariah paused, considering, then said, “No, you’re right, I didn’t. But I will!” When Ashton hesitated, trying to figure out a way to tell Zachariah that shoving random objects into random cabinets and closets—whether they belonged there or not—didn’t qualify as cleaning, he stepped closer to him and murmured in his ear, in the type of tone that usually promised all manner of interesting activities, “I’ll even cook for you. You like my manicotti, don’t you?” His lips brushed against his jaw and his hand pressed against Ashton’s chest, sliding slowly down his stomach to hook into the waistband of his jeans, eliciting a shiver from Ashton. He dug his fingers into the grip on his cane, trying to maintain some modicum of self-control.

  “Aw hell, Zach, how am I supposed to turn down your manicotti?” Ashton asked, trying to ignore the way Zachariah’s fingertips traced circles against his bare stomach. “You fucking manipulator.”

  “The very best,” Zachariah said, his voice suddenly chipper. He let go of his pants and dangled a set of keys in his face. “Let’s go. I’m driving.”

  “Of course you are,” Ashton said. The statement hadn’t been necessary; he hadn’t been allowed to drive since he’d lost an eye. He started toward where they’d left the car parked, limping with every other step and relying heavily on his cane for extra support. He ha
ted using his cane. It always made him feel like he was vulnerable and helpless, though he was neither of those things. Zachariah walked alongside him, keeping pace with him but not offering to help him; he knew better than that. When they reached Zachariah’s car, a shiny black Camaro that was the only non-motorcycle vehicle he owned, he climbed into the passenger seat with difficulty, trying to ignore the aches, pains, and soreness he’d earned at Brandon’s hands when he’d been taken hostage the night before the mess at headquarters had gone down.

  Zachariah swung into the driver’s seat with every ounce of fluidity and grace that Ashton lacked, another thing that made him want to smack him, if only out of sheer jealousy. As he reached to pull the passenger door shut behind him, a stab of pain shot through his shoulder, and he grimaced and grasped it gently with his left hand, massaging as he pulled the door shut.

  “You okay?” Zachariah asked, apparently having seen his facial expression.

  “Yeah, it’s just my shoulder,” Ashton said. “Brandon did a number on me, and being tied to a chair for a while didn’t help. I’m just sore is all.”

  Zachariah nodded in understanding. “I think I have something that can help with that,” he said, starting the car’s engine and putting it into gear. “So do you have any plans for your downtime?” he asked as he eased the sports car out into the street.

  The Agency had a standing policy of no back-to-back assignments. Any time an agent took a job, no matter how experienced he or she was, no matter how difficult the assignment or whether it was successfully completed or not, they were required to take a mandatory minimum two weeks of leave. That time doubled if the agent had been injured. The two of them were facing at least a month of downtime, which meant that Zachariah was probably going to spend his time getting himself into trouble.

  Ashton sighed and shifted in his seat, shoving his cane over to make more room for his legs in the small front seat. “I suppose that any plans I have will be discarded in favor of trying to keep you out of trouble.”