Against the Dawn

by amanda bonilla

  “Ah, ah,” Lorik chided. “If I tell you all of my secrets at once, I won’t be half as interesting to you. Let’s keep a little mystery between us, shall we?”

  Yeah, he was totally hiding something from me. Though I had no doubt there was more to it than a few great orgasms, I had a feeling I’d have to accept his explanation. For now. “Okay, so, immortality and your skills as a great lay aside, why are you here?”

  “I miss Seattle,” he said with a shrug. “I’m tired of traveling and want to put down roots. Where better to settle than my home?”

  How about a million miles from me? I believed his explanation for being here about as much as I did for his immortality. Lorik wasn’t a native of Seattle. He’d been transplanted here by his father, Vasili, after they’d been run out of Chicago by the mob in the thirties. “Seattle’s your home, then?”

  “Of course it is. I spent some of the best years of my life here, and considering my longevity, that’s saying a lot.”

  “Okay, so you’re nostalgic. I can live with that. But why look for me? It’s not like you’re obligated to let me know you’re back in town.”

  “True,” he said, “but you have to admit, it would have been rude not to look up one of my oldest friends upon my return home.”

  I couldn’t help but roll my eyes. “Try again, Lorik.”

  “You’ve soured in your old age,” he complained.

  I was sweet enough, thank you very much. I stared him down, unwilling to engage in any more of his verbal volleys until he answered my question.

  “I think you need me now more than ever. If anything, to help you pull that considerable stick from your ass.”

  I continued to stare.

  “Fine,” he said with a sigh. “I have several business ventures in the works and I want you on my payroll. It wouldn’t do for me to have some run-of-the-mill meathead as my muscle and like I’ve said, you’ve made quite a name for yourself over the years. I want the best. You’re the best. End of story. Is that a dull and boring enough explanation for you?”

  Truth be told, it was a little too dull and boring. “And the postcards?”

  “A joke,” he remarked. “My god, Darian, I stand by my earlier assumption. You’re no fun anymore.”

  I couldn’t afford to be fun. “Sorry, Lorik. But I’m not interested.” No way could I simply jump back in the saddle after everything that had happened over the past few weeks. Or rather, several months. Jet lag had nothing on the experience of traveling from realm to realm. Besides, this wasn’t eighty years ago. Azriel was gone and though Lorik hadn’t mentioned him, I had to wonder if he already knew that Azriel was dead. Or that I was the one who’d killed him. His reappearance was a little too convenient. His familiarity with me, much too easy. There was more to Lorik’s presence here than he was letting on, and until I knew more, I needed to keep him at arm’s reach.

  “I can’t say I’m not disappointed.” Lorik leaned back in his chair and finished off his fifth whiskey. I guess he wasn’t too concerned about his liver. “But you’re crazy if you think I’m letting you go so easily, Darian. I’m not going anywhere any time soon. No need to disregard my offer just yet. Promise me you’ll consider it.”

  I didn’t need to consider anything. Rather than reply, or give him a reason to stick around, I simply inclined my head in acknowledgment. My nerves were frayed and hanging on by a single thread. I wanted to get the hell out of here but I wasn’t moving from my seat until I was assured that Lorik was long gone.

  “I’ll be in touch,” he said as he pushed his chair from the table and stood. “And for the love of god, Darian, try to dress in something a little less mournful, will you?” He gave me a wink in parting and strode out the way he came in, with a confident swagger.

  Not even home for a full day and I was already up to my neck in bullshit. Was it too late for me to run back to O Anel?

  Chapter Four

  I sat on the soft, velvety sofa in my living room staring at a vase full of white and pink peonies. I might as well have been at Xander’s house than my own apartment with the Better Homes and Gardens makeover, and though the king’s highhandedness should have gotten on my nerves, I couldn’t help but find the change of scenery comforting. Lorik’s reemergence wasn’t so much a surprise—he’d made his presence known months ago, after all—as it was unsettling. As was his obvious exclusion of Azriel in our conversation. I mean, he wasn’t even curious as to his whereabouts? Which confirmed that Lorik knew much more about the details of my life over the past several decades than he let on.

  I twisted the ring on my thumb, my fingers instinctively searching out the shape of the bear etched into the silver. Never in my existence had I felt so frail, weak, and unable to take care of myself. In the past, I would have cranked the bitch meter to eleven to compensate for these feelings, but now, I just wanted to feel protected. If only for a little while.

  “I wish Tyler was here.”

  The words spilled effortlessly from my lips with all the reverence of a prayer. Chills of anticipation danced across my flesh as the atmosphere in my apartment shifted, the particles of air constricting and releasing as Tyler appeared in front of me.

  How I missed my genie.

  For the first time since I’d left O Anel, two weeks really did feel like six months. I drank him in, from each lock of his bronze-colored hair, to his mysterious hazel eyes, strong jaw, wide shoulders, and each hill and valley of muscle of that constructed him. Tyler had loved me, protected me, shielded me, and killed for me. And despite everything that had passed between us and the hurt we’d caused each other, he was here for me now when I truly needed him.

  “Hi.”

  He smiled in response to my lame-ass greeting and every particle of my being melted. Tyler was like the sun, permeating my frosty exterior and filling me with a warmth that only he could provide. After all this time, he still tied me into knots. Maybe even more so now.

  “You haven’t been home long enough for this sort of remodel,” Tyler remarked as he took a look around and plopped down in the armchair across from me. He propped his feet up on the coffee table, and I had a distinct feeling the action was an affront to my self-appointed interior decorator. “I take it someone wanted to surprise you.”

  Of course Tyler would have known the second I crossed back into the mortal realm. Our bond connected us at a soul-deep level. He once said that when I left the human realm it was like I switched off a light inside of him. Six months was a long time to live in the dark. I knew that firsthand. My life had been nothing but shadow since we’d separated.

  “How long were you gone?” Tyler asked and I was glad the subject of my remodel was no longer up for discussion. “I mean, I know how long it was for me, I’m just curious how it was for you.”

  “Two weeks,” I answered ruefully. The time disruption from O Anel to the mortal realm totally sucked.

  “Wow.” Tyler studied me as though committing my face to memory. I’d run out on him so many times over the past year. I was a class-A asshole. I wanted to tell him that I was never leaving again, but the words didn’t make it past my lips. I still didn’t know where things stood between us. And after everything that happened with Kade…well, I wasn’t even sure there was a chance for an us anymore. “Two weeks isn’t really long enough, is it, Darian?”

  I knew what he meant. Without asking outright, Tyler wanted to know how I was holding up. I’d been too ashamed to see him in person after Kade’s attack. Ty had seen me practically naked and writhing, begging for Kade’s touch and mad with desire for a man I despised. Not my finest hour. “No, but it was good,” I replied. “I can’t really explain it, but there’s something about Brakae that’s super calming. I was tempted to stay longer, but I didn’t want to be away from home for too long.”

  “I’m glad you’re back,” he said.

  The way those hazel eyes studied me, never wavering, was almost unsettling. I reminded myself that this was Ty. I was safe. He’d neve
r hurt me. But still, a wave of anxiety threatened. What was I so afraid of?

  I shifted in my seat, averted my own gaze. “Me too.”

  Ty gave me a sympathetic smile, as though he could sense exactly how I was feeling. He could crush me with a look, and I felt the weight of his expression like a heavy boulder atop my shoulders. I wanted to cry out with frustration. Would I ever reclaim the strength that Kade had stolen from me? Or was I doomed to suffer for eternity.

  “The past several months have been…” he paused, ran his fingers through the tousled locks of his hair. “Weird for me. When you wished for me, it felt good. Like I was me again. Thank you.”

  His gratitude and softly spoken words sliced through me like well-honed steel. As my Jinn, Tyler was bound to me in a way that I didn’t understand. He was obligated to protect me and grant any of my wishes that were within the scope of his power to grant. Going to O Anel temporarily severed that bond. I had a feeling that weird was a bit of an understatement for him. Did granting my wish make him feel whole again? Did my coming home heal some broken thing inside of him? And if so, how in the hell could I get some of that for myself?

  “Will you stay in the city for a while?” I assumed he’d left Seattle when I did. His relationship with Xander was tenuous since he’d cold-cocked the Shaede King at a diplomatic function a while back. I didn’t know if Xander’s temper had cooled or if he wanted Tyler in a PNT jail somewhere, rotting. If Tyler was going to stick around, I’d have to butter Xander up a bit. If only to ensure Ty’s safety.

  “Now that you’re home, yes.”

  Butterflies took flight in my stomach and I forced myself not to read too much into his statement. He was bound to me, after all. My guess was he had little choice in the matter. “I’m glad. Because, I think I might be in a bit of trouble.”

  That hawkish gaze narrowed and my breath hitched in my chest. “You’ve only been back for a few hours, Darian. What sort of trouble could you possibly get into?”

  A redundant question. Ty already knew what sorts of trouble I managed to find myself in. “Lorik tracked me down tonight.” I snorted. As if my years of patterned behavior would make me tough to find. “He’s been waiting for me to show back up.”

  “Lorik?” Ty leaned forward in his seat.

  It saddened me that over the course of a year, so much distance had separated me from Ty. There was a time when he’d been my only confidant. But with our separation, I’d turned to Raif for support. It was Raif who knew Lorik’s history. Raif who’d seen the postcards firsthand. Raif who’d listened without judgment while I confided my fears over his reappearance. And Raif who knew that Lorik was in the city, waiting for me.

  Did I dare bring Ty into this? Potentially put him at risk?

  Yes. Because the secrets I kept from him destroyed our relationship once and I refused to let secrets come between us again, no matter the risk. It was better to let him decide for himself what role he wanted to play in my complicated life. I couldn’t make those decisions for him, no matter how badly I wanted to protect him.

  I gave Ty the CliffNotes version of the story, about how Azriel had worked for Lorik’s father, Vasili, and how Lorik’s playboy trouble-making landed him in hot water with his daddy’s enemies. I told him that Azriel sent him away for his own protection. I brought him up to speed about the postcards he’d sent over the years and that they’d shown back up in my mailbox almost a year ago. I skimmed to the present—well, present for me, six months ago for Ty—ending with the postcard with the Space Needle on the front and Lorik finding me at The Pit tonight. He leaned back in his chair, thoughtful, as I let out a gust of breath.

  “And that’s pretty much it. He says he wants to hire me. Pick up where we left off. I don’t trust his story about his immortality being a gift from a sorceress, but really, I can’t imagine how else he managed to pull it off. I don’t think he’s simply back to start his business back up again, either. But I don’t have any choice but to wait for the hammer to drop. Either way, I’m a little twitchy over the entire situation.”

  Ty stood and I thought for sure he was going to high-tail it the hell out of my apartment. But instead, he crossed to the couch and sat down at the opposite end, leaving a good two feet of space between us. I wanted to lean in toward him, rest my head on his shoulder and let him fold me into his arms. And even though I craved that comfort, that physical contact with him, I wondered if I’d be able to stand it. If the memories of being held in Kade’s embrace would send me reeling into a state of panic. I couldn’t chance it. Not with Ty. It would hurt too damned much.

  “I have a confession to make.”

  Oh man. His expression said it all. My night was about to go from worse to cataclysmic. I braced myself for every shitty scenario in the book, among them, that he’d fallen in love with someone else. Maybe he’d gone back to Adira. Could I opt out of hearing his confession? Ignorance was bliss, after all.

  “I sort of already knew about Lorik. More to the point, I knew someone was in the city looking for you.”

  On a scale of one to kaboom! Ty’s confession barely made a dust cloud. I expected a disaster since our relationship had worked that way in the past: A constant state of dysfunction in which we gave each other a stretch of rope waiting to see if we’d hang ourselves with it. This was nothing and I was damned happy for the lack of drama. I didn’t know about Ty, but I was going to try my hardest to move forward without the noose. “How did you know?”

  “I’m your bound protector, Darian. It’s my business to know. Don’t worry about Lorik. I won’t let anyone hurt you. Ever again.”

  I averted my gaze. I couldn’t meet his eyes knowing that he felt partially responsible for what Kade had done to me. It had been my own damned fault, though. Running head-first into a dangerous situation, too full of myself to realize I was in way over my head.

  “I want to go back to work.” The words left my mouth before I could really think them over. Did I want to go back to work? “As soon as possible.”

  “Darian—”

  “No, Ty.” I couldn’t let him talk me out of this. “If you don’t put me to work, Lorik will press me even harder and Xander will look for some silly errands to distract me. If I don’t work, I’ll be stuck here, avoiding everyone, everything, thinking about things that I shouldn’t be revisiting. I’ll go crazy. I need this, Ty. Please, give me something. Anything. I’ll take grunt work at this point.”

  “I’ll think about it,” Ty answered slowly. “I’m not making any promises, because in my opinion, it’s too soon for you to be back in the field.”

  “It’s been six months,” I argued.

  He fixed me with a stare. “Not for you.”

  “Would it help if I told you it felt like six months?”

  Ty’s lips thinned. “No.”

  Ty and I worked well together because we shared a mutual disgust for slimy rat bastards who needed to meet their ends. I didn’t want to go back to freelance work because I’d have no choice but to vet my marks before I took any jobs. Working for the morally bankrupt had its pitfalls. One of those being that they weren’t as discriminating as I was when it came to who deserved to die. Tyler would never take an innocent life. His business was cleaning up the trash, not spreading it around.

  “Just think about it, okay?” I didn’t need to go back to work this second. But sooner would be a hell of a lot better than later.

  “I will,” he assured me. “But Darian, you don’t have to run at full tilt all the time. It’s okay to take a little time.”

  I only had one gear. Like a shark, if I stopped swimming, I was afraid that I’d shut down and die. “I can handle it, Ty.”

  “I know you can,” he said, standing. “I just want you to know that you don’t have to. Not alone, anyway.”

  His reassuring words put me at ease, made me feel a little less panicked. I was a classic internalizer. I bottled up my feelings and let them ferment to the point that I could no longer contain the pr
essure. By that point, I’d usually fucked everything up past the point of repair. But as I tried to heal, to learn to live my life with as much normalcy as my supernatural existence would allow, maybe I could learn to lean on those around me a little bit more. It wasn’t weak to ask for help.

  It wasn’t.

  Tyler looked as though he wasn’t sure if he should stick around or not. The indecision was written all over his face and the way he rubbed at the back of his neck. I knew how he felt. It would take more than a work conversation to settle things between us and there’d be a few more awkward conversations before we buckled and exposed our wounds. Until then, I’d settle for a short visit or three. I’d take any amount of Tyler I was lucky enough to get.

  He turned toward the elevator but I wasn’t quite ready for our visit to be over, so I blurted, “Are you in trouble with the Synod?”

  Tyler paused, back turned to me. “How do you know about the Synod?”

  Did it matter? How did he know about Lorik? “They’re your ruling body, right?” Adira mentioned the Synod during our last conversation before we’d gone our separate ways. Like Ty, Adira was a Jinn and subject to the laws that governed their bonds. Her bond with Kade—a Cambion who could steal her power—had broken their rules and she’d been called to face them for the violation. “Adira was in trouble for binding herself to Kade. Did they punish you for helping her?”

  “Adira shouldn’t have said anything to you about that,” Ty remarked, turning to face me. His expression was grim, his eyes, guarded. “You shouldn’t worry about the Synod, Darian. I don’t. They’re just a bunch of overinflated blowhard politicians.”

  He was deflecting, but I wasn’t going to press him. I was simply opening a door for further discussion. “Okay. But I want you to know that if you need anything…”

  “I know,” he said with a sad smile. “But seriously, I’m okay.”

  “All right.” He turned again, obviously ready to get the hell out of there. I wasn’t quite done with him yet, though. “What’s Nys’asdar?” The Synod took a back seat to my curiosity over my ring. Adira had given it the strange name and it freaked her out to see it on my thumb. She’d warned me that Ty had done a very foolish thing to give it to me. Something that would land him in some serious hot water with the mysterious Jinn council.