by Alyssa Day
Griffin almost smiled—the equivalent of a belly laugh in anyone else--but Eva gave Flynn a funny look, and he shrugged. "Nothing. Something Poseidon said. There's no such thing as mermaids, anyway."
"That's too bad," Eva said, looking wistful. "Now that we know demons and shapeshifters and vampires exist, and even Atlantis and mages, it would be nice if something as beautiful as mermaids existed too."
Griffin's eyes widened, but before he could scoff at Eva, Flynn jumped in. "Well, there are sea Fae. But they’d just as soon bite your face off as look at you. They are beautiful though. Maybe I'll introduce you to one someday. There's a princeling who owes me a favor."
Griffin's odd silver gaze snapped toward Flynn. "Sea Fae and dragon shifters. Nothing about you screams trustworthy, does it?"
"More so than mysterious mages who float in midair and bang on a woman's window in the middle of the night, don't you think?" Eva said pointedly, making Flynn very happy.
Except, no. Not that happy at all. Those girls were still prisoners. They needed to be moving . . .
Flynn suddenly had an idea. A terrible, horrible idea. But it was the first one he’d thought of that had even a fraction of a chance of helping them find the girls before they were harmed beyond any possibility of rescue. He hated himself for even thinking it, and hated himself even more because he knew he was going to tell the two of them about it.
It would put Eva in danger.
But he would be damned if he would ever let Eva come to any harm, even if she agreed to go along with this insanity of a plan. He stood up, needing to move, and started pacing as much as he could in the tiny apartment.
“I have an idea,” he finally told them. “Eva, you're going to hate it. I hate it, too. But it's all I can think of."
She looked at him, her eyes widening, and then she slowly started to back away from him. "You want to use me as bait. I told you that you can't get in unless you have something to offer them, and the something you want to offer them is me. Because of Scott."
Her eyes were wild, and he despised himself for terrifying her like this. But the girls . . .
"Because of Snake, and I swear to you I can keep you safe,” he said. “Nobody will harm one hair on your head unless I’m already dead.”
“Well, that’s reassuring,” she hurled at him.
Griffin studied them both. "What are you talking about?"
Eva shot him a withering glance. "Isn't it obvious? Flynn wants to give me to Snake and the Dark Angels. He wants to trade my life for the girls."
"That's not it at all. I said I can protect you," Flynn said hotly. “I’d give my life--"
Eva cut him off. "I don’t want your life. I’m fine with my own, thanks. And protect me against this Oriax, the high demon? I don't even know what being a high demon entails, and I still know you're either a liar or a fool.”
“Eva,” he pleaded, reaching for her hand, but she recoiled and gave him a look filled with so much accusation he actually flinched.
Griffin just watched them both, anything he thought hidden behind that eerie silver gaze.
Eva threw her hands in the air. “Fine. I figured I wouldn’t live past spring anyway. Apparently, I'm not even going to live past January."
6
Eva closed her suitcase and looked around the tiny apartment. It never took her long to pack, because she'd shed possessions like she'd shed lives while running from place to place across the country. She only rented furnished rooms. She didn't see the point of owning much in the way of clothes beyond a few pairs of jeans and a few different tops. A couple of sweaters and one jacket for the cold weather. Boots, sneakers, and sandals for shoes. What more did a girl need?
And now she had a dilemma. Should she go to the bar while Flynn and the others worked on finding where the girls were being held? Noel had already called her six times and left five voicemail messages. She hadn’t listened to any of them, because she could pretty much guess what he had to say and the decibel level at which he’d say it.
It didn't matter, anyway. When she left this place, she'd smash her burner phone and leave it in a trash can at a highway rest area or, better yet, she’d do what she’d done the last time and use duct tape to affix it to the underside of the bumper of a semi truck heading in the opposite direction. If they were tracking her by technology, she wasn't going to make it easy for them.
She'd already made it too easy for Scott to find her by way of magic. When he’d ripped a handful of hair out of her scalp, he’d laughed at her. On that last night, just before she finally got the courage to run, he taunted her with it.
"I can find you anywhere with this. Locator spells are among of the simplest magics. So don't even think about running."
But back then, he hadn’t been nearly as powerful at magic as he’d liked to think he was. Even Eva, who had none, had known that. And she'd had just enough courage left that he hadn’t yet beaten out of her to make a plan and carry it out. She'd crushed several sleeping pills into his tequila and coaxed him into getting very, very drunk. When he’d passed out, she’d packed up everything she owned and started running.
In hindsight, she supposed she was lucky that he hadn't died from the combination of alcohol and pills. Scott was slime, but he wasn't worth facing a murder charge or jail time. She wouldn’t shed a tear if he died, but she also wouldn't be the one to kill him. She kept hoping that one day he would cross the line, somewhere, somehow, and go to jail. Whatever kind of jail they could keep black magic practitioners in these days. She’d read something about special cells that P-Ops had constructed with the help of white magic practitioners and experts from the shifter, vampire, and magic communities, but she didn't know exactly how they worked.
It was true, though, that most of the supernatural communities’ citizens were good people who just wanted to live their lives. They tended to react very badly when one of their own kind went rogue, because it looked so bad for all of them and probably brought back fears of mobs with torches.
Beauty and the Beast took on a whole new meaning once you knew shapeshifters existed.
She'd been in Phoenix when the local shifter population had delivered the dead bodies of three wolf shifters to the local police station, after the three had turned feral and attacked a family who’d been out camping.
She remembered thinking how horribly ironic it was that the three wolf shifters had turned human in death, and yet two of their four victims – the only two who’d survived – had turned shifter at the next full moon.
When she had shifters in her bars, she made sure to keep any exposed part of her body away from their hands. She knew it was stupid of her, and probably prejudiced, because only a scratch from a shifter in animal form could deliver the virus, but still. Better safe than sorry. She had enough to worry about without turning furry under the full moon.
She wasn't going to get any sleep now, so she decided to head to the shelter and help out. Mornings were usually pretty busy. Especially Saturday mornings, when families liked to visit and bring the children to try to find a pet.
Anyway, the last thing she wanted to do was sit alone and think about Scott, or what she was planning to do.
Or Flynn, either.
Definitely not Flynn. How could they have shared that intensely erotic connection so hard and so fast, only to get swept away on the tide of duty and obligation? She’d hoped . . . never mind what she’d hoped. She needed a donut. She picked up her keys and started to walk out the door but then she paused, staring at her suitcase.
“Just in case,” she whispered to the empty room.
When she left the driveway, the suitcase was in the trunk of her car.
She took a slight detour to the bakery on the way to the shelter, and picked up a couple of coffees and an entire box of donuts. Mrs. M had a terrible sweet tooth, and she liked to say she planned to indulge all she wanted from here on out.
"I've eaten healthy and exercised all my life," she’d told Eva. "And I promised
myself that once I made it to eighty, I would do whatever I wanted. So if I want to eat donuts every morning for breakfast, then that's what I'll do."
Eva smiled at the thought as she pulled into the driveway at the shelter, but then her heart sank. Mrs. M. What if she'd seen Griffin floating around outside of Eva's apartment last night? What if somebody came looking for Eva and found Mrs. M.?
Eva wouldn't put it past Monkey or any other of Scott's thugs to hurt a little old lady as a way to get information.
Her breath started to come faster and faster, until she was practically hyperventilating. Her heart began to race. This was a terrible plan. She couldn’t take a chance on dying before she ever saw Gramps again. How could Flynn and his small band of allies really save her from a high demon?
She had to leave. She had to run.
She’d tell Mrs. M today that she was moving out and never go back to the apartment. She’d also explain just enough to convince her landlady to leave tonight, a few days early, for her annual two weeks at her sister’s in California.
Then she’d go to the bar and tell slimy Noel that tonight was her last night. If she didn't work, he probably wouldn’t pay her for the week, since he usually paid her on Saturdays. She’d be better off not to tell him anything until after she had her pay in hand.
She’d also loudly say something about how she was headed to North Dakota or Montana. And then she'd get in her car and drive straight to Florida.
Except . . . except. How would she ever be able to live with herself if she ran?
She sat there in her car, staring into space, for a very long time. And then a sense of peace settled over her. Yes. She’d leave. Just as soon she helped Flynn and his team find the girls and save them
Or die trying, the nasty, scared part of her mind tried to say, but she stopped listening. Her decision was made, and that brought its own measure of calm. So she probably would never make it to Florida. She probably wasn't going to live long enough to get out of Nevada.
But, hey. At least her death would mean something. How many people could say that?
Gramps.
She had to call him and somehow say goodbye without actually saying it. She didn't know what would be better – for him to know she died or to always wonder what happened to her. Maybe she should write it out in a letter and mail it, but she didn't know how to tell the person she loved most in the world that she was headed off to her death, so she decided instead that it was better that he live with hope for whatever time he had left.
That's when the tears came. She pounded her fist on the dashboard and sobbed, crying out the pain--a mixture of anger and sorrow for what could've been if only she’d listened when Gramps and her friends had warned her away from Scott. But she didn't allow herself the luxury of self-pity for very long. She wiped her face, blew her nose, and got out of the car.
Time to say goodbye to Mrs. M and the dogs and cats.
Time to say goodbye to Daisy.
The thought brought a fresh wave of tears to her eyes, but she blinked hard and fast and forced them back. Mrs. M would make sure that Daisy found a good home. Would make sure that all of the dogs and cats found good homes. She'd find someone else to volunteer, someone else to rent the little apartment in which Eva had felt so safe, if even for such a short while.
But only Eva could save those girls, she reminded herself, deciding to take it as a mantra.
Save the girls, save the girls, save the girls.
Just then, Mrs. M stepped out on the porch of the office, her arms filled with two large bags of dog food. "Eva? What in the world are you doing standing out in the parking lot? We have so much to do! I've got at least five families coming in when we open at nine o'clock. Get your butt in gear, girl. We’ve got cages to clean and hungry dogs and cats to feed."
Eva laughed and surreptitiously wiped away her tears. "You got it. Let me just put your coffee and donuts on the counter."
"Did you say donuts?" Mrs. M's eyes lit up. "You're an angel among angels."
An angel. Well. She'd be 'among angels' soon enough. For now, she'd feed some puppies and try not to think about anything at all.
Flynn watched Eva drive away, and then he stood, stretched, and stepped off the edge of her roof. For such a short distance, it wasn't necessary to materialize into mist, one of his preferred modes of travel. He just called to the water molecules in the air to slow and then cushion his descent. Griffin, on the other hand, simply floated down and looked perfectly calm about doing so.
More mage tricks.
"I still don't understand why you insisted we stay here instead of going back to our quarters to rest." Griffin said, scowling. "From what you've explained to me, it's not as if someone would find her here this fast anyway."
"And do you want to take that chance?" He’d told the mage they had to protect their assets, but he had the uncomfortable feeling that Griffin knew he was lying. Or at least not telling the whole truth.
She wasn't an asset. She was Eva. And he wanted to protect her for the sake of his own soul. He’d let too many he should have been protecting die on his watch. It wasn't going to happen again.
"Divide and conquer, then? Since Jake communicated that he's fine, and they're releasing him this morning, we’ll take him at his word that he's going to try and get in good with the Dark Angels who came to bail him out. In the daylight, we should be able to do a better sweep of the area and try to find where they have those girls."
Griffin nodded. "Agreed. You're going on wheels, then?" He nodded toward Flynn's bike. “I renewed the spell that keeps humans from seeing your sword, by the way.”
"Thanks. And yeah, I’ll take the bike. I can cover a lot of ground on it."
"I'll take to the air, then. Stay in touch and we will meet up the minute one of us finds them." With that, the mage shot up into the air, dissolving into sparkling mist as he flew.
Flynn liked that Griffin had said when we find them, not if we find them. Confidence was a good quality in a teammate.
Now all they had to do was find whatever rathole the Dark Angels were using for their headquarters, pretend to offer to trade Eva to Snake in exchange for a place in the gang, keep Eva safe, destroy Snake, rescue the girls, and then fight their way out.
With or without one of hell’s high demons fighting them.
Piece of cake.
Flynn shook his head and swung a leg over his bike. Him, Griffin – a fairly untrained mage, from what he could tell, Jake, if he really could get out of jail, and possibly this human named Zach, who claimed to be P-Ops. Everybody knew that the Dark Angels assigned covert operatives to infiltrate law-enforcement. Was it possible that law enforcement had agents infiltrating the gang?
And if so, just how many of them were double or even triple agents? It would have been helpful if Denal had spent less time sneering at them and more time giving them actual helpful information.
All of this analysis was making his head spin. He was definitely not cut out for a life of spying or espionage. He put a hand down to touch his sword, resting in its special sheath that was affixed to the side of the bike. Griffin’s magic made it invisible, or least extraordinarily hard to see, to anyone who wasn't from Atlantis. It wasn't a metal sword, after all. Or at least not a metal that humans knew
Flynn’s sword was made of Orichalcum, a rare and precious Atlantean metal. Malleable enough to be heated and folded repeatedly into the shape of the sword, strong enough to survive years of battle. Flynn’s grandfather had given him the sword when the old man had finally accepted that his son was a useless drunk and would never deserve to wield it, let alone own it. The sword had been in their family for generations, since before Atlantis dove beneath the sea.
It had come in handy more than once in Flynn's life, although humans weren’t much for swordfights these days. But there were times when a gun just didn't work, and more and more demons and human magic wielders had found new ways to detect metal in their proximity.
They
weren’t going to detect this.
Flynn suddenly realized that, for the first time in his life, his grandfather would be proud of him.
“I’m going to do my best, Grandfather,” he whispered, and then he fired up the bike and took off.
It was past time to find those girls.
7
At six o'clock, Eva walked into the Copper Cantina for the last time. The first person she spotted was Noel, standing behind the bar yelling at some workers who were cleaning up bits of broken chairs and tables.
Tables, too? What the heck happened in here last night?
Never mind. She didn't want to know.
This was her last night at the Copper Cantina. Her last night of putting up with Noel. Forever. And if he really pissed her off, she had a backup plan in her pocket.
He caught sight of her and threw his hands in the air. "Where the hell were you? My bar was getting trashed –"
"Your daddy's bar," she interrupted. "You just work here."
Neil’s mouth fell open in shock that she’d talked back to him. The he started sputtering, and she laughed. How had she never realized before how much he looked like a frog with his balding head, bulging eyes, and jowly cheeks? She had been afraid of this pitiful excuse for a human being?
Ha.
Not anymore. Imminent death apparently made one unafraid of any petty annoyances, like slime-ball managers.
"You're fired!" he shouted.
She marched right up to the bar and held out her hand. "Fine. I didn't want to work tonight anyway. Hand over my week’s pay, and I'm out of here."
Noel sneered at her. "If you think I'm giving you one cent, you're out of your mind, you worthless piece of trash."
Eva leaned on the bar and gave him a flat stare. "Oh, I think you will pay me. Or I'm going to pick up the phone and call your wife and tell her all about your roaming hands."
Noel turned a particularly virulent shade of purple, but he tried to bluff his way out of it. "Like she would believe a worthless loser like you."