Viv blinked, embarrassed. She’d just experienced a clairvoyant episode while still in Nikoli’s arms. Her legs felt like rubber, and she trembled as she stood upright. She wanted to say something but feared gibberish might pour out of her mouth.
“Sorry,” she finally said, throwing him a quick glance. The look in his smoky gray eyes appeared heated, like he’d been in the moment with her and had basked in their passion.
Viv turned away, still shaken. She wiped her sweaty palms against her pant legs and tried not to wobble as she went to sit by her sisters.
“Are you okay?” Gilly asked Viv. “Your cheeks are flushed.”
“Maybe she has a fever,” Evee said, her brow furrowing with worry. She put a hand on her sister’s forehead, and Viv quickly brushed it away.
“I’m not sick,” Viv said, then glared at Nikoli. “What are you doing back here?” she asked him.
“Viv,” Evee said, her voice filled with shock. “How rude. He told us what you had to do at the compound, and my heart breaks for you, sister, but the attack wasn’t his fault.”
Now Viv felt heat wash over her face. “They came here saying they wanted to help. Do you call seeing the aftermath of a slaughter of a hundred-plus Loups helping? If Benders are supposedly commissioned to help us... What the hell?”
Gilly reached over and touched Viv’s knee. “I feel for you, I truly do, but you’ve got to cut these guys some slack.”
“I don’t have to cut anyone anything,” Viv said, growing furious. How dare her sisters side with the Hylands.
“You’re right,” Nikoli said, and all three sisters looked at him stunned. “If given the chance to do it over again, we’d have gone directly into hunt mode and found our way to the compound. I’m to blame for the error. I chose courtesy first. I realize no amount of apologies will ever right the situation, but please accept mine.”
Viv didn’t quite know what to say to that. Gilly and Evee elbowed her gently on either side of her ribs as if to say, “See?”
Feeling sandwiched between traitors, Viv stood and faced Nikoli. “As I said before, what are you doing here? The damage is done and can’t be undone. It’s over, so you can leave now.”
“Unfortunately, it’s far from over,” Ronan said from where he sat.
Viv glared at him. “What do you mean?”
Nikoli stepped closer to her, and Viv felt her heart rate jump up a notch. “The attack at the compound was only the beginning,” he explained. “Now that the Cartesians know the whereabouts and have had a taste of the Originals, they won’t stop until they’ve killed them all.”
Viv felt her mouth drop open, then she quickly regrouped. “All of my Loups?”
“All of the Originals,” Nikoli said. “Your Loups, the Nosferatu and the Chenilles.”
Turning to her sisters, she said, “Surely there’s a spell we can cast to protect them.”
“Spells might save some,” Nikoli responded. “But far from all.”
Gilly and Evee got to their feet and walked over to Viv. “They’ve offered to come with us during feeding time. They feel that having all the Originals in one place is exactly what the Cartesians are waiting for.”
Viv looked back at Nikoli, her heart now thudding with fear. “All of them?”
He nodded solemnly. “They want all of them.”
Swallowing hard, Viv felt she had little choice but to accept their offer, despite how she felt about the earlier attack.
“We leave for the docks at 2:50 a.m.,” Gilly said.
“If you are all in agreement, we’ll be at the dock then to make certain we don’t miss you.”
Evee nodded and nudged Viv, who gave a hesitant nod.
“Please be prompt,” Evee said.
The three cousins, who were seated, rose and walked over to Nikoli.
“We most certainly will,” Ronan said.
After Gilly led the men to the front door and escorted them out, Viv headed for the stairs to stave off any questions from her sisters.
“Wait,” Evee called after her.
Viv stopped midstep and looked over at her.
“Grimoires before feeding tomorrow morning, remember.”
Viv nodded and hurried up the last few steps.
When she finally made it to her bedroom, she closed the door and rested her back against it for a few seconds, her heart beating like a marching band had taken residence there, her mind whirling in too many directions. Cartesians, all of the Originals, the deaths of her Loups—the clairvoyant vision of Nikoli.
Of all the things that were going to feed or be fed in the next day or two, Viv knew without question that she would be one of them.
Chapter 10
Stepping out of the shower, Nikoli wrapped himself in one of the hotel robes, then headed for the sitting area of one of the adjoining suites they’d been able to score at the Hotel Monteleone.
He appreciated the spaciousness of the suites and the architecture of the old hotel, as much as he appreciated the city. From the moment they’d landed, he’d felt all the energies roiling through New Orleans in a huge wave. It was as if their destination hadn’t been the city but a person. You either smothered or fell in love with her.
For Nikoli, it had been love. In more ways than one.
Lucien and Gavril sat on a paisley-upholstered couch in the sitting area, and Ronan in a straight-back chair. All three men wore jeans and were bare-chested.
When they had arrived at the hotel earlier, they had gorged on a huge dinner. Afterward, Lucien and Gavril claimed the showers, and while waiting his turn, Nikoli had fallen asleep across one of the queen beds. Ronan, who shared a suite with him, had snored softly in the bed next to his.
Thanks to food, sleep and now a shower, Nikoli felt like a new man. Unfortunately, after all they’d experienced since arriving here, he considered that it might take more than feeling like a new man to accomplish this mission.
As if reading his thoughts, Lucien said, “I think we’re in over our heads, cuz.”
“Yeah, man,” Gavril said with a nod. “Like twelve feet over our heads.”
Nikoli let out a sigh, went over to the minibar and grabbed a bottle of water. He drank deeply, thinking about what his cousins had just said. He capped the bottle and set it on the counter, then turned to Ronan.
“What do you think?”
Ronan looked at Lucien and Gavril and gave a slight shrug. “I think we just need to strategize. We have three witches responsible for some pretty large sects. Some in the city, some outside of it. Besides, with all that’s happened so far, even if we did call for backup, other Benders wouldn’t reach us until we’d lost half or all of the Originals. We can’t just sit around and wait. We have to establish a plan.”
“I agree,” Nikoli said.
Lucien tapped the seat of the couch he sat on with a finger. “If we called for backup right now, even if we wind up in the heat of battle before they arrive, at least we’d know the cavalry was on the way.”
Nikoli studied him for a moment. “If you keep your head focused in that direction, we’ve already lost the mission before we’ve started. Look how long it took us to get here from New Zealand. Other Benders are in parts of the world unknown to us.”
“Maybe,” Lucien said with a frown. “But our fathers would know where to locate them.”
“If you want to call your daddy and have him bring your little nursemaid along to hold your hand, go right ahead and do that,” Nikoli said. “We’re grown men, trained Benders, and we need to handle the situation.”
“That’s harsh, bro,” Lucien said.
Nikoli scrubbed a hand over his face. “Didn’t mean for it to come out that sarcastic. Look, I’m just as concerned about this situation as the three of you. But if we keep a positive, st
raightforward mind-set, I think we have a good shot of accomplishing this mission. I know there had to have been generations of Benders before us who faced the same challenge. Maybe not with Originals, but a serious challenge nonetheless. I’ve never heard of any team of Benders calling in for backup, have you?”
His three cousins shook their heads simultaneously.
“We haven’t even fought here yet,” Nikoli continued. “I’m not ready to throw in the towel and run to Daddy saying, ‘I can’t do this, it’s too hard.’”
“Yeah, he’s right,” Gavril said. “It’s like Ronan said. We just need to have a strategy, a game plan as to how we’re going to take this on.”
“Good,” Nikoli said. “Now let’s look at this. Problem number one is that we have Originals spread throughout the city. At least the Loup Garous have been contained in one compound, which makes it easier.”
“The Chenilles,” Gavril said, “are spread out in three or four different cemeteries. There’s no way we can keep hopping from one to the other. We can’t watch them all at one time.”
“The Nosferatu are in one place,” Lucien said. “That’s not really a big help because it gives us yet another place to monitor. You have one North compound, three or four cemeteries, and the catacombs at St. John’s. I know my math isn’t the best in the world, but the way I figure it, that’s at least five locations, possibly six. And there are only four of us. If we split up, how will one of us handle a horde of Cartesians that can suddenly decide to drop from the sky?”
Gavril nodded. “Another problem is, since we have the Originals in separate areas, which will keep us hopping from one place to the other—or separate us so we each taking a territory or two—we won’t any time or opportunity to scout for Cartesians before they make a hit. We’ll just have to wait at our assigned territory for them to appear. We’ll all be dealing with surprise attacks.”
“Good point,” Ronan said. “What do we do about our inability to spread out and search for them? And—side note here—I don’t know if any of you noticed, but there are subspecies in the city. Vampires, werewolves—”
“Where did you spot them?” Lucien asked.
“I smelled them the minute we got off the plane,” Ronan said.
Nikoli sighed again. Just what they needed. Ronan had the gift of enhanced smell, just like he had the ability to amplify his hearing. If Ronan claimed he smelled vampires and werewolves, you could bet your life they were around.
“I think we need to stay focused on the Originals,” Nikoli said. “That’s where the Cartesians are going to hit first. They’ve already tasted first blood, so the subspecies are not going to be a priority.”
“So what do you suggest we do?” Lucien asked.
“Split up and take different territories,” Nikoli said. “Each of us should pair up with a Triad. They’ll help keep their sect in line.”
Gavril snorted. “Let me guess, it just so happens that you plan to pair off with Viv, right?”
Lucien tried to hide a smile behind a hand and failed.
“What are you talking about?” Nikoli asked.
“Aw, cuz, come on,” Lucien said. “We saw the way you looked at her. I thought you were going to trip over your tongue. You went all mushy-eyed the second you saw her. That woman has you crossed six ways from Sunday.”
“Me?” Nikoli said. “What about the three of you? Gavril, you were so far up Gilly’s behind, always asking where she was and if she was coming, that a flea couldn’t have farted between the two of you. And Lucien and Ronan, the same goes for you two and Evee.
Lucien and Ronan looked at each other, and Nikoli spotted the slightest hint of competition flash between them.
“I’ve got no problem taking Evee,” Lucien said.
“Fine,” Nikoli said. “But that either leaves one man out alone, which I highly disapprove of, or Ronan makes one of us a threesome. It’s your call, Ronan.”
A hint of a grin played around Ronan’s lips. “I’ll pair with Lucien and Evee.”
Nikoli saw Lucien’s eyes darken.
“All right,” Gavril said. “But I’m not sure about all this. Let’s face it, they may be witches and Triads, but they’re still women. You get what I’m saying? We have to fight Cartesians and watch out for our own behinds so they don’t get chewed up by an Original or a wandering subspecies. Now we’re throwing women into the mix. We’ll want to protect them. It’s going to be hard to stay focused.”
Lucien huffed. “Get real, cuz. It’s going to be hard for you to focus because they’re so beautiful, not because you only want to protect them.”
Gavril shrugged. “Well, so? What’s the difference? It’s still going to be distracting.”
The room fell silent for a moment, and Nikoli was sure each man was thinking about the Triad he was attracted to. He wondered if his cousins’ fathers had experienced the same challenge.
When Nikoli was twenty, his father had warned him against getting involved with a woman while on a mission. He had told his own story about the time he’d been in France, fighting Cartesians alongside Nikoli’s uncles, and how he’d met a woman named Maria. The most beautiful woman in France, he claimed.
She was the daughter of a man in charge of a group of vampires who’d been attacked by the Cartesians. He’d daydreamed and fantasized about being her husband, had even wondered what their children might’ve looked like. Just thinking about Maria so incessantly had put that group of Benders in danger. To this day, his father still carried the scar left by a Cartesian’s claw on his left shoulder.
His father had also warned him to never tell his mother the story or she’d hound him about it until his last breath.
Nikoli and his cousins were born within two blocks of each other, just outside of Chicago, but they hadn’t stayed there long. In fact, they didn’t stay anywhere for very long. When his father decided it was time to move due to an extended mission, his three brothers and their wives and children moved right along with them. The cousins were homeschooled and watched over closely by their mothers, who worried incessantly about their husbands.
When Nikoli decided at the age of ten that he wanted to be a Bender like his dad, his three cousins jumped on the same train, as well. Now, when Nikoli thought back on it, he wondered how they hadn’t given their mothers a heart attack at an early age. The four cousins refused to remain underfoot. They were always sneaking out, exploring new territory, using sticks as if they were scabiors and pretending to kill every Cartesian that ever existed. They were invincible, courageous. They were the Hylands. Just because his father was a Bender, it hadn’t meant that Nikoli would automatically inherit the title. A man wasn’t born a Bender. It was something he chose to do.
And just because Nikoli chose to be a Bender, it didn’t necessarily mean that the dream was going to come to pass. He and his cousins had to go through extensive training, not only from their fathers, but from other Benders. If at any time a Bender thought a trainee was unsuited for mission work, he was ousted immediately, no questions asked, no explanations given.
Luckily, Nikoli and his three cousins had passed their training period with flying colors.
The job wasn’t always as glamorous as others assumed. It was dangerous, exhausting and trying work. Although Nikoli had never confessed to his cousins, it had been more than once that he questioned his decision about becoming a Bender. When a man spent his life fighting one Cartesian after another, all the while watching others go about daily life with wives and children, love and companionship, it caused him to struggle with focus.
He had to keep the bigger picture in mind. A Bender’s job wasn’t just to remove Cartesians. His job was literally to save the world from the monstrosities. Without the Benders, the world, the very universe as they knew it, would be destroyed.
Ronan got to his feet and stretched, breaki
ng Nikoli’s reverie.
“You still with us, cousin?” Ronan asked Nikoli. “Caught you daydreaming for a while.”
Nikoli grinned. “Busted. I was thinking about when we were kids.”
Lucien slapped a hand to his forehead and laughed. “Well, that’s sure a side-step from what we were talking about. Don’t know what brought that up, but we had some good times back then.”
“Yeah,” Gavril said, grinning. “I don’t know how we survived to reach our thirties. We were hellions.”
Ronan laughed, something he rarely did. “Hellions is an understatement,” he said. “How we didn’t kill somebody or ourselves is beyond me.”
Gavril gave a hearty laugh. “Remember the time we built that missile? That big plastic tube with the bottom panel loaded with fireworks?”
Lucien gave Gavril a light punch on the shoulder. “Hell, yeah, I remember. We put Miss Lunenburg’s cat, Pansy, in the tube because we needed an astronaut. How we didn’t kill that cat when the fireworks went off, I’ll never know. My mom grounded me for a month over that little experiment.”
Nikoli grinned. “Mine did, too.”
Gavril and Ronan chimed in at the same time, “Me, too!”
They all laughed over the memory, and Nikoli let the laughter die away on its own before he signaled a time out. “But back to our previous discussion, where were we?”
“The Triads,” Ronan said.
Nikoli snapped a finger. “Right. The witches will help keep their sects fed, subdued and corralled in their assigned territories. We simply do surveillance of each den and watch for the Cartesians.”
Ronan cleared his throat. “Cousins, no one’s mentioned this, so I’m going to. We’ve admitted that all of us are attracted to one Triad or another. They are intelligent, beautiful, powerful women. Who wouldn’t be attracted to them? But they will be of danger to us, costing us focus. You know all the energy and concentration it takes to properly operate our scabiors, to make certain we’re on target. We really need to be honest with one other. If we don’t separate ourselves from the Triads emotionally and mentally, we’re in serious trouble.”
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