Crave fa-2

by J. R. Ward

  Nigel. Cocksucking Nigel.

  Mr. Holier-than-thou-aboveboard.

  Who was more than willing to let his best asset get used and abused by the enemy just because he was too much of a little bitch to roll up his sleeves and pound Devina into the ground.

  Meanwhile Jim was gym equipment for a bunch of pervert assholes.

  Man, he just didn’t get this do-nothing. If one of his boys was captured and he could spring them? Didn’t matter what he had to do, what sacrifice there was to make, where he went: He would get the sorry sonofabitch back. And yet where was their boss man? Having dinner.

  Made a guy want to feed Nigel his dessert right up the ass.

  Adrian rubbed his face so hard he nearly sanded his nose off. The trouble was, Devina’s little workshop wasn’t accessible to him and Eddie unless they jumped through her mirror—otherwise she had to take you there herself . . . and she released you only when she was good and ready.

  And not before.

  That was why they’d gone to Nigel. There was a rumor that the archangels could go down to Hell under certain circumstances—no one knew exactly what those dandies had to do or how it worked. Bottom line, though, was that those four lightweights were their only hope—

  As if he knew his name was being taken in vain, Colin appeared from out of nowhere, the dark-haired archangel poofing it up right in front of Adrian’s face.

  “Shit!” Ad hissed while he leaped back and caught himself on a bush—which promptly broke in half under his heavy body.

  He landed like a bag of sand, but didn’t stay there. Springing up, he was all about the what-the-fuck: Those boys didn’t usually show up willy-nilly on the Earth. “What are y—”

  “I got him out.”

  Ad blinked, the English language suddenly escaping him. Wait a minute. Did he just hear—“Jim? You’re talking about Jim?”

  “Is out.”

  “But Nigel said—”

  “I’m not discussing that. I got the chosen one out of Devina’s lair and I left the poor sod off at your hotel—he needs care.”

  Eddie came over. “You got him out? But I thought Nigel—”

  “I have to go.” Colin stepped back and started to fade. “Go help him. He needs it.”

  “Thank you,” Ad breathed, both relieved and sick to his stomach: the recovery from one of Devina’s seshes was a bitch. Mostly because the memories were just too damn vivid.

  Colin shook his head as he disappeared, his voice all that lingered: “It just wasn’t right.”

  “I’m going to the hotel,” Adrian said, unfurling himself to take to the air. “Don’t let Isaac out of your—”

  Eddie grabbed his arm hard. “Let me handle Jim.”

  “No.”

  “You’re not up to this, Adrian.” Eddie’s grip held him to the ground, that big hand squeezing into bone and muscle. “And you know it.”

  “The hell I’m not.”

  Breaking free, he took three running leaps and winged up into the air, grabbing onto the night and propelling himself west. The flight back to where they were staying was bumpy and rough—but not because of the wind. It was more like Eddie probably had a point, the SOB.

  When Ad got to the Comfort Inn & Suites, he wanted to just barge into their rooms through the walls, but he decided not to chance it: Given that his inner Kit Kat wrapper was loose and flapping, he landed on the lawn and stalked in through the lobby. He had a feeling he was just too scatterbrained and nauseous to successfully push himself through wood and concrete.

  The problem was, he knew exactly what kind of shape Jim was going to be in.

  As he hit the lobby, a chirpy woman behind the desk “Good evening, sir”’d him, but he waved her off and broke into a jog. There was no waiting for the elevator; a couple was checking in with their kids and they had a cart full of luggage. But even if there had been a clean shot, he wouldn’t have been able to wait for so much as the doors to open for him.

  Up the stairs. Two at a time. Sometimes three.

  When he got to the top floor, his ticker was going a mile a minute, and not just because he’d exerted himself. He didn’t have a key to Jim’s room, so he took his own and slipped it in and out of the lock of his crib.

  He opened the way in on a burst. “Jim? Jim?”

  The glow from his bathroom illuminated the rumpled bed that he and Eddie had worked that girl out on the night before, as well as the clothes that were scattered around.

  The connector to Jim’s was half open, the room beyond dark.

  “Jim . . . ?”

  He knew the angel was in there. He could smell the candle smoke and the fresh blood and . . . the other things.

  The rush to get to the guy evaporated as the reality of what he was about to walk in on clawed its way into his chest and suffocated him. But he was not turning back. He was an asshole of the first order, always had been. He was not, however, a pussy to turn away from the hard stuff.

  Adrian walked to the doorway between the two rooms and leaned in. “Jim.”

  The light in the bathroom behind him cut a path into all the pitch-black, the illumination stopping at the foot of the angel’s bed . . . as if it were too polite to show his condition.

  After Adrian rounded the jamb, it took a moment for his eyes to adjust—

  On a hiss, he vowed, “I’m going to kill that bitch. . . .”

  Jim was lying on his side, curled into himself as if to conserve body heat, and he was trembling in fits and starts. A blanket had been pulled over his big, battered body—no doubt by the archangel—and Dog was right by his face, pretzeled into a ball, going nowhere.

  As Adrian came over, he got a little wag, but the animal didn’t lift his head, staying nose-to-nose with Jim.

  The angel appeared to be breathing, his chest rising and falling, a soft wheeze breaching his busted mouth. His hair was matted and there was blood on his face, the features of which no longer looked like his own, thanks to a Michelin Man-like swelling.

  Adrian sat down slowly. “Jim?”

  No response, so he tried the name game a couple more times. Eventually, Jim’s lid cracked.

  “Hey,” Adrian whispered.

  He got a croak and then the eye shut and the body under the blanket shivered in a great seizure.

  If this was anything like what Adrian went through—and given the way the guy looked, it was a one-for-one if he’d ever seen it—what Jim really wanted was a bath followed by a shower. But it was too early for that shit. Healing time first—there were just too many broken-andbruiseds to move him—which was the burden of an angel’s dual nature: being both real and unreal meant that at least half of you could get fucked-up but good, and shit didn’t spring back right away.

  Adrian stood and went over to the heating unit that was under the windows. Turning the dial to “sauna,” he ditched his leather jacket and shut the connector to the other room, locking them in together. Then he got on the bed, stretched out on top of the thin blanket, and put his chest to the angel’s back to warm him.

  As he lay there and heard the heater come on with a whir, he felt the earthquakes in Jim’s torso and limbs. Part of it was the healing process, which in some ways was more painful than the injuries. And part of it was the deep freeze of shock.

  And part of it was the memories, no doubt.

  He wanted to put an arm around the guy, but that was just going to be too uncomfortable for Jim: When he’d been in this condition, he’d lain naked without even a sheet on his clawed skin.

  After a while, the billowing warmth that fanned out from the heater reached them, arcing over and raining down. Jim obviously felt the flow because he drew in a long breath and exhaled on a ragged sigh.

  Lying next to the other angel, Adrian should have expected that this was where Jim would end up, and he had, to a degree. He’d known Devina had wanted the guy . . . back on their first assignment, back on that first night in the club in Caldwell. And he’d served Jim up to her.

&
nbsp; With everything but the “to and from” tag.

  Hard not to feel responsible for this.

  Realllllllllly tough.

  “I’ve got you, Jim,” he said hoarsely. “I’m right here for you, man.”

  CHAPTER 34

  Down in the wine cellar, Grier went through the dossiers one by one while she waited . . . and waited . . . and waited some more. . . .

  Finally.

  “Why didn’t you tell me,” she said, without looking behind herself.

  Daniel took a long time in answering, but he didn’t disappear: Whenever he was around, she could feel the slightest of drafts, and as long as that was brushing the back of her neck, she knew he was still with her.

  I thought you would hate him. And then you and he would have no one left.

  “So you knew what happened.”

  Daniel came around the table, one hand planted on his hip, the other buried in his blond hair so that the curls went halo on him. I was high when it all went down . . . so I just thought it was so funny, Dad bursting in with three guys in black. I figured it was his version of an intervention—all comic-book hard-core. But as they put the needle in my arm, he started to scream and that’s when I realized . . . it wasn’t funny.

  Daniel’s eyes met hers. I’d never seen him that way before. To me, he was always so aloof and unemotional. It was . . . the reaction I had been looking for all my life, the visceral love I’d been after. See, I was like Mom, not you and him. I wanted more than that chilly disapproval and I got it, only it was too late. . . . He shrugged. In retrospect, I was too needy, and he didn’t know what to do with a son who wasn’t cut from military cloth. Oil and water. I should have handled it differently, but I didn’t.

  “And neither did he.”

  It’s not anyone’s fault. It just . . . was.

  Grier leaned back in her chair, thinking of the way their family had aligned, she and their father on one side, Daniel and their mother on the other.

  It wasn’t his fault, her brother said with a kind of stern tone she’d never heard from him before. The way I ended . . . he screamed, Grier . . . and then as I was dying, I heard him say, over and over again, Danny boy . . . my Danny boy—

  As Daniel’s voice broke, she was compelled to get up and go to him. Before she knew what she was doing, she put her arms around . . .

  Herself.

  Please don’t hate him, he said from the far corner, having shifted quick as a blink.

  “Please don’t run,” she countered.

  I’m sorry. . . . I have to go . . .

  He disappeared before her as if he couldn’t hold his emotions in any longer, his despair lingering in the cold spot he left behind.

  She stood for a time, staring at the vacant space he’d just occupied. She and her father had been two of a kind, and in their intellectual accord, they’d locked the others out, hadn’t they. Her mother and brother had taken to their addictions while she and her father had been in lockstep with the law and their careers and their external passions.

  She’d known it on some level . . . and maybe that had been part of her drive to save Daniel. Her brother’s addiction and her efforts to pull him out of it had been the link they hadn’t found outside of childhood: She had always blamed herself—and for a brief moment tonight, she had blamed her father.

  Now . . . she was angry at that man with the eye patch. Viciously angry. If Daniel had lived, maybe they’d have figured it all out. Forgiven each other, all three of them, for the past. Moved along to . . . something that their family had had only on the surface. After all, privilege and money and breeding could cover up a multitude of problems—and didn’t ensure that the closeness on a Christmas card was actually more than a pose once a year for a photographer.

  Shaking her head, she went back to her seat and stared at the dossiers.

  Isaac was going to even the score for her family, she thought. By being the one who brought down that maniacal bastard who had killed her brother and all but ruined her father.

  Flipping through the photographs, she recognized each of the men now, because she’d gone through the pages over and over again while waiting for Daniel to show. There were a hundred or so pictures, but only a total of some forty men, with multiple shots illustrating them through the years. Out of the lot of them, there were five that she recognized—or at least thought she’d seen before. Hard to know . . . on some level, they looked so similar.

  Isaac’s picture was in there and she returned to it. The photo was a candid, caught on the fly. He was looking directly into the camera, but she had the impression he didn’t know he was being photographed.

  Hard. God, he looked so hard. As if he were prepared to kill.

  The birth date under his name validated the age she knew him to be, and there were a couple of notes about foreign countries he’d been to. And then there was one line that she kept coming back to: Must be provided moral imperative. She had seen the phrase under only two other men’s profiles.

  “How are you holding up?”

  Grier jumped at the sound of Isaac’s voice, the chair under her butt screeching across the floor. Grabbing her chest, she said, “Jesus . . . how do you do that?”

  Because, all things considered, she would have preferred not to get caught staring at his picture.

  “Sorry, I just thought you might like a coffee.” He came over, put a mug down, and then retreated back to the doorway. “I should have knocked.”

  As he paused between the jambs, he was now just in the hooded sweatshirt he’d used as a pillow, his shoulders oh, so wide beneath its gray expanse. And considering what the last forty-eight hours had been like, he looked amazingly strong and focused.

  Her eyes went to the coffee. So thoughtful. So very thoughtful. “Thank you . . . and sorry. I guess I’m just not used to . . .” A man like him.

  “I’ll announce my presence from now on.”

  She picked up the mug and took a sip. Perfect—with just the right amount of sugar she liked in it. He’d watched her, she thought. Saw how much she’d added at some point, even though she hadn’t been aware of it. And he’d remembered.

  “You lookin’ at me?” When she glanced up, he nodded down at the dossiers. “My picture?”

  “Ah . . . yes.” Grier tapped the phrase. “What exactly does this mean?”

  He walked over and leaned in. As he stared at the details under his face, the tension in him was palpable, his big body tight all over. “They had to give me a reason.”

  “Before you’d kill someone.”

  He nodded and began to walk around, going over to the wine bottles. He took one out, looked at the label, returned it . . . moved on to another one.

  “What kinds of reasons did they give you?” she asked, well aware that his answers about this meant way too much to her.

  He paused with a Bordeaux cradled in his hands. “The kind that made it seem right.”

  “Like what.”

  His eyes flipped toward her and she had a moment of pause. They were so grim and hollow.

  “Tell me,” she whispered.

  He put the bottle back. Went a couple of feet farther down the wooden racks. “I only did men. No women. There were some who could do the females, but not me. And I’m not going to give you specific examples, but the political-affiliation nonsense just wasn’t enough for me. You kill a bunch of people or rape some women or blow some shi—er, stuff . . . up? Very different story. And I needed to see some proof with my own eyes—video, photograph . . . bodies that were marked.”

  “Did you ever refuse an assignment?”

  “Yes.”

  “So you wouldn’t have killed my brother.”

  “Never,” he said without hesitation. “And they wouldn’t have even asked me. The way Matthias saw it, I was a weapon that worked under prescribed circumstances, and he took me out of his holster at appropriate times. And you know . . . I realized I had to leave XOps when it dawned on me that I was no different from the p
eople I was killing. They’d all felt as if whatever atrocities they were committing were justifiable. Well, so did I and that made us mirror images of each other really. Sure, an objective viewpoint would have agreed with me over them, but that wasn’t enough.”

  Grier let out a long exhale. He was what she’d always believed in, she thought.

  “How so?” he said.

  With a flush, she guessed she’d spoken aloud. “I always told Daniel . . .” She paused, wondering if she had the stuffing left in her to go there. “I told him that it was never too late. That the things he’d done in the past didn’t have to define his future. I think toward the end, he’d given up on himself. He’d stolen from my father and me and his friends. He’d been arrested burglarizing a house and also on felony theft of an auto and then while trying to hold up a liquor store. That’s how I got involved with doing pro bono. I was in and out of various jails for the five years before his death. I felt like I wasn’t helping him—but maybe I could someone else, you know? And I did . . . I did help people.”

  “Grier—”

  She waved him off as her voice hitched. She was finished with crying. There was going to be no more of that and no more dwelling on what couldn’t be changed. “Do you want to go through this now?”

  As she indicated the dossiers, he shrugged and went to the door, settling into a lean against the jamb. “I really just came to check on you.”

  In the still air, his low-lidded eyes warmed her from the inside out. Such a contradiction he was . . . between his trained-killer job and his Boy Scout heart.

  She glanced down at his picture. “You look like you’re tracking something here.”

  “I was about to get on a plane, actually. I had the feeling someone was watching, but I couldn’t tell from which direction. I was waiting at an airbase to go overseas.” He cleared his throat like he was sweeping the memory from his mind. “Your father’s passed out upstairs. He spent about two hours on the phone, as far as I can tell.”

  “It’s been that long?” She glanced at her watch, and as she shifted her wrist around, she became aware of all the kinks in her body. Stretching her arms over her head, her spine popped. “How are things going?”