She closed her hand around the itch in her palm. The feelings, the strength inside her, continued to grow. Continued to slide further and further out of her control. What happened after that? What happened when it consumed her completely?
A soft beeping reached her ears, and she followed the sound to her phone. One new message, the screen read. She started to stuff the phone back in her bag, then put it to her ear, deciding to listen to the message after all. She was surprised to hear so quickly from a contact at a local police precinct—stunned to learn that Kenny’s body had been found just that morning by a jogger out for a run by the river. He’d been dead for three or four days, maybe longer.
She closed the phone and sat staring into the dark. If Kenny had been dead all this time, then who had been calling her?
Drew stood motionless at the edge of the mall’s rear parking lot, his hand ready to go for his sword. His tracker had ceased functioning—again—nearly ten minutes ago. Since then he’d had to rely on his own senses to track the Shadow Demon that had ruined what was left of his night.
He needed to get back to Blair. She’d tried to distract him by talking about Molly, but he hadn’t bought it. Not fully. He knew how to sidestep a subject better than most people, and the last thing she’d wanted to talk about was what happened with them.
Which meant that was exactly what they needed to talk about.
Drew moved to the left, his steps slow and even. Why would a hostile be hanging around the mall that had been closed for hours? He turned the next corner and got his answer.
A handful of parked cars sat in the small lot at the rear of the mall, outside a door probably used for receiving deliveries. The cars meant people, which explained what drew the hostile, but not the quiet chorus of voices inside. A bit late for stocking shelves, wasn’t it?
He treaded quietly past the door, pausing when he heard the footsteps of the enemy on the other side of the dumpster between him and the next door. He felt the curious press against his mind first.
Telepath demon.
He should have known even sex that mind-blowing couldn’t keep a day from going all to hell.
Drew concentrated to keep the creature from slipping in through the cracks, determined to keep his mind shielded. Clearly not one of his strengths. He withdrew his sword. Definitely one of his strengths.
He shot around the dumpster, moving hard and fast. The element of surprise was gone, but the hostile couldn’t be sure what it was up against. Slim to none odds were better than nothing. Even telepaths that had no defensive skills to speak of presented a challenge, and frankly, he’d had enough of those for one night.
The second the demon spotted the sword in his hand, it backed up. Slowly.
Young. Shoulders hunched defensively, dark head down as though to avoid notice. Drew could have passed this one on any college campus, trying to blend in, stay under the radar.
He wasn’t fooled for a second.
Drew had caught it off guard, but it didn’t look ready to bolt. He just couldn’t make up his mind what that meant.
The door behind him banged open.
“Get back inside,” he ordered without looking. He didn’t need to worry about spectators who had no clue what they were walking into.
The demon edged to the right, pushing harder at his mind. Drew cringed at the stab of pressure, and went on the offensive. At the last second the demon used a sacrificial dagger to deflect the first blow, knocking Drew back with a mental one that ricocheted inside his head until his vision blurred.
But he didn’t stop moving. Slowing down gave the hostile more time to focus, to find a weakness. Always better to keep them on the defensive. Two slashes and a kick that nailed the demon in the side sent the hostile sprawling across the pavement.
He brought the sword down in a hard arc.
White-hot pain radiated across the back of his skull, stopping him three inches from the demon’s throat.
“A pretty one,” the demon taunted, rolling back to its feet. “I do like the pretty ones.”
Drew didn’t ask. Didn’t want to know. Whatever the demon had locked onto in his mind didn’t matter in the here and now.
A sharp snap of his wrist and the edge of his sword caught the demon’s shirt. It scrambled back.
“She’s special,” the demon continued. “Very special.”
The pressure at the back of his head intensified.
Molly. The fucking bastard was talking about Molly. Her image buzzed through his mind as though the telepath had pulled it from a slide show clip and set it in fast forward.
He lunged to the right. With the force of a sledgehammer, pain slammed into his brain, nearly taking him to his knees. He stayed on his feet, moving too fast this time for the demon to slow him down. He caught the creature across the back and shoulder, distracted only by the shuffle of feet and movement in his peripheral vision.
Three people stood unmoving, their expressions curious as though they witnessed a stimulating chess match.
Were they out of their fucking minds? They weren’t so out of reach they couldn’t see the demon’s feral, red-rimmed eyes. If that didn’t do it, surely the sword in Drew’s hand would have made them damn nervous.
“I’ll find her,” the demon taunted. “I’ll find her and cut her mind open.”
Drew couldn’t have closed off his emotions to such a threat if he wanted to. He didn’t care that he made the demon’s eyes glitter with the first wave of his fury. Didn’t care about giving it any more power over him. Didn’t care about anything but taking the fucker’s head.
He was ready this time, steeling himself against the unseen strike to his mind that slowed him down, but didn’t stop him. He caught the demon in the middle, his gaze too intent on his prey that he barely realized the threesome had moved closer.
“Get out of here,” he warned.
“Let go of him,” one of them said.
He had it covered, really. Now wasn’t the time for them to try and play hero. When the order came again, Drew realized they weren’t talking about the hostile letting go of him.
They wanted him to release the telepath.
The demon struggled, flooding his mind with twisted images of Molly until bile rose in his throat and he staggered back, taken down by a punch he should have been able to deflect.
On his back, he struggled against the images that bled and poured through his mind. The threesome seemed amused. He tuned them out, tightening his grip on his sword, then swinging out. The hostile had remained too close and lost a foot in the process.
Knocked off balance the creature dropped, and Drew was on him in a heartbeat, bringing his sword down in a clean slice that finished the job.
The sound of a gun being cocked screeched across Drew’s senses. He rolled on instinct, grunted at the bullet that grazed his upper arm. He didn’t stop moving until he had one of the parked cars between him and the armed threesome.
And what the hell was that about?
One of them, a woman, burst into tears. Somehow he doubted she was crying over him. More shots ripped into the car he crouched behind, but they didn’t mask the sound of another car’s engine revving to life.
The gunfire ceased and the smell of burning tires rode on the air as their car shot out of the parking lot. Standing, he glanced back to where he’d slain the telepath demon.
Son of a bitch. They’d taken the hostile’s head.
He sucked in a sharp breath and checked his arm. Could have been worse. A lot worse. But it would have to wait.
Ignoring the pain, he jogged back to his Jeep. He shoved his keys into the ignition and headed for his parents’ place, unable to banish the sick, twisted images of Molly from his mind. The telepath had been playing with him. She was safe with his parents. He knew it, but he had to see her, had to be sure.
No one stirred when he let himself into the house or when he quietly eased Molly’s door open.
The air trickled from his lungs.
&n
bsp; She was sound asleep.
Her arms were wrapped tight around an old teddy bear of his that his mother had found packed away in the garage. He shut the door and headed for the bathroom. His mother was used to stocking the medicine cabinet with first aid supplies for minor flesh wounds. Once he had himself cleaned up and grabbed another shirt from the drawer in his old room, he crept back to Molly’s room.
He only meant to watch her for a minute, but found himself lying down beside her. He pulled the blankets higher to cover her shoulders, cringing when her eyes drifted open.
A sleepy smile lit up her angelic face. “Hi, Daddy.”
Would he ever get used to the burst of warmth that spread through his chest at hearing that?
Her eyes closed, but she snaked a hand out, wrapping her fingers around his. “You got the monster,” she said gently.
It wasn’t a question, but a statement of fact.
“I’m okay,” she added, burrowing her face in her pillow. “You’ll never let the bad monsters hurt me.”
He couldn’t stop himself from gathering her close, his throat so damn tight he could barely breathe. “No, baby, I’ll never let the monsters hurt you.” And he meant it, even if it took walking away from being a Destroyer to make it happen.
“They shot at you?”
Drew nodded and shifted in his chair, wanting the debriefing over. “I was armed and it was clear the hostile wasn’t friendly, and they just stood there the whole time.”
“They knew what it was,” Quinn surmised.
“And one of them cried when you vanquished it?” Darcy shook her head, disgusted.
“Cried yes, but there wasn’t time to vanquish it. That’s when they pulled the gun. I took cover and they grabbed the hostile’s head and bolted.”
Rae nodded thoughtfully. “They knew without it, it couldn’t be fully vanquished.”
“So are we talking some kind of cult here?”
“Probably,” Rae answered. “They’ve always been around, though I think this is the first time in a few years anyone has crossed paths with one.”
“As if more demons in the area weren’t a nice addition on their own,” Gage quipped. “Jordan and I tracked a stealth demon to Kane’s last night.”
“Full moon?” Darcy offered, popping something into her mouth.
Drew had been aware her gaze drifted more than once in his direction. Had Braxton been here, he had no doubt the other agent would be scrutinizing him as thoroughly as Darcy.
“Either way everyone needs to be twice as vigilant. We don’t need any agents gunned down by people stupid enough to consider these hostiles god-like.”
“Not on Raelan’s watch.”
All heads turned in the direction of the door.
“Drew, I think you and Gage are the only two who haven’t been introduced to Parker yet. He’s the profiler temporarily assigned to our field office,” Rae explained.
The emphasized word being temporarily, Drew realized, pulling his attention from the guy leaning in the doorway to his boss. She cut her gaze to the table in front of her, and suddenly the tension that spiked in the room wasn’t due entirely to the presence of an unwanted newcomer.
No, this was something else.
“Raelan, huh?” Drew grinned. “Nice.”
“I’m not in the mood today, Agent Reid.”
Neither was he, but for a minute he could forget how close that telepath demon had come to driving him out of his mind. He could think about Rae unconsciously shifting her weight from foot to foot before locking her knees and giving her team her full attention.
Interesting.
He glanced at Gage who looked just as intrigued. Opposite him, Quinn openly assessed Parker, her eyes narrowing just a little bit more than everyone else’s. Given the way she had been blindsided before by a non-field agent assigned to their office, Drew couldn’t fault her for being concerned.
Not the least bit intimidated, Parker crossed his arms. The guy looked just as comfortable propped up against the door frame as he would stretched out on a couch. And not once did his gaze leave Rae.
“Initiated by?” Gage prompted.
“Lust demon,” Darcy answered automatically. “And you’re a profiler?”
Drew understood the other agent’s confusion. People initiated by lust demons rarely presented any abilities whatsoever, and not to any degree that was of much benefit to the network.
“Two telepaths,” Parker mused, the comment directed at Rae.
“You’d know that already if you’d read their files,” she pointed out, without looking at him.
Drew and Gage exchanged looks. Definitely interesting.
A moment later Rae stared pointedly at Darcy, and the other agent ducked her head.
How hard had she pressed to sneak a peek at Rae’s thoughts, Drew wondered.
“I think that covers everything,” Rae said a moment later, striding out the other door and avoiding Parker altogether.
Drew shook his head and stood. He glanced at Darcy. “Ready to go?”
She stared at Rae’s retreating back, then nodded. “Give me five minutes?”
“Works for me.”
Parker had already disappeared by the time Drew trailed out of the briefing room. He was halfway down the hall when the scent that drove him wild tangled around his senses. He breathed in, let it out.
At the end of the hall, Blair stood motionless, then pivoted on her heel and stalked in the opposite direction.
Shit.
Chapter Twelve
There.She’d seen for herself that he was still in one piece. That was all she’d come here for. All she could handle right now. Talking to him was out of the question, especially when she felt anything but conversational.
Anything but normal.
“Hold up, Blair.”
“I’m late,” she lied, backtracking toward the elevator. Rae had told her he was fine, but after spending half the night wondering what had happened to him when he hadn’t returned or called, she’d needed to see him with her own eyes.
She stabbed the call button for the elevator, then decided against it. The elevator probably wouldn’t be her safest bet when she was this volatile. She didn’t want to chance frying the damn console and wind up stuck in there.
Or worse—stuck in there with Drew.
As relieved as she was that he’d come away from his encounter last night unscathed, she couldn’t silence the voice in her head, the one that feared he’d figured out she wasn’t so unlike the demons he vanquished.
“Wait.”
Knowing he could catch up no matter how quickly she tried to move, she gave up trying to stay ahead of him.
“Sorry about last night,” he began when she turned around. “Things got kind of crazy.”
An understatement in every sense of the word, and she couldn’t stop herself from asking, “Before or after you left?”
He glanced down the hall without answering, his expression unreadable, and her heart sank. Maybe she hadn’t been too far off the mark after all.
“I’m glad you’re okay.” She needed to get out of there. Needed space, room to move, to breathe. He looked too good standing there, his hair mussed, his jaw shadowed, his brown eyes moving over every inch of her like he was puzzling something out.
Something not good.
Part of her wanted to wrap her arms around him and hang on as tight as she could, but she knew it wouldn’t do her a damn bit of good.
He grabbed her wrist, and she clamped her lips together to hold back a sigh. Warmth spilled out from where his strong fingers held onto her.
“You’re not sticking around?”
She shook her head, tugging her hand back. “I’ve got some things to take care of.”
Things like finding out who was impersonating Kenny and what they hoped to gain from contacting her. She would have to pass the information on to the police eventually, but the journalist in her, the only part of herself she still understood, needed to get
to the bottom of it.
Drew shoved his hands in his pockets, his brows drawing together. “Are you going to be all right at the safe house tonight?”
Alone. He never said it aloud, but they both knew that’s what he meant.
“I’m a big girl. I think I can handle it.”
He frowned, opened his mouth to say something.
“Drew? You ready?” Darcy stood a few feet behind Drew, near the elevator.
“Coming,” he answered without taking his eyes off Blair. “I’ll call you later.”
Funny, he said it in the exact same tone as when he’d told her that he’d be back last night.
She waited until the pair disappeared in the elevator, and sagged back against the wall. Her knees shook, but she stayed on her feet until she could no longer feel the whisper of Drew’s guilt and regret.
Would it be his pity she felt next?
Refusing to think about that or about what he wanted to talk about later—aside from not wanting to see her—she found herself drawn deeper into the field office, instead of away from it.
She stopped inside the door of the training room. Jordan moved in a slow arc on the middle of the mat, a pair of Sai fisted in her hands, her movements precise and graceful. Deadly.
“How’s the training coming?”
She should have known the Destroyer would have been aware of her the second she came down the hall, maybe sooner. Like Gage, Jordan possessed the ability to sense Shadow Demons, along with those whose DNA had been mutated by one.
“How did you know this life was for you?”
Jordan lowered her arm, gestured for Blair to come further into the room. “It was different for me. I needed to do it, to kill them. If I hadn’t had that, I would have been…lost.”
Blair knew a little about being lost. She didn’t know her own body anymore. How much more lost could a person be? “Did the others understand that?”
“Others?”
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