Dark Obsession

by Sydney Somers

  She’d still been in shock when Adrian had accessed the real report from that day. There had even been a photograph of her sword lying in a pool of Helen’s blood that had been omitted from the file Parker had gone over dozens of times.

  No matter what Adrian said, there should have been a way to avoid killing Helen. What if she hadn’t just been doing her job? What if she’d lost control as the network had feared from the beginning and became more like the demons they slayed than anyone had realized?

  Nausea cramped her stomach, and she inhaled sharply though her nose.

  “Are you up for this?”

  Was she? She knew her team was counting on her, but what if they were wrong to? Her eyes slid shut. No. She needed to stay focused. Needed to think of the missing kids, to protect them from ending up like the others—like her.

  “Rae?”

  She jerked her head, wishing he didn’t sound concerned. She didn’t want him to be nice to her, to worry about her. All of it was only making it that much harder. Ending things with him was her only option right now.

  Even though part of her knew he needed to know the truth, how could she look him in the eye and tell him that she’d killed his mother? That his sister’s death had been an accident and she’d taken his mother from him?

  She gripped the edge of the fence, squeezing until the metal top cut into her hand.

  “Rae? Everyone’s in place.”

  She nodded and gave the word for the others to move in. Once they scaled the fence and were halfway to the building, Rae stopped. Scanning the boarded-up windows, she touched the comm in her ear half a second before she felt the mental brush against her mind.

  She glanced sharply at Parker, but he gave no outward sign his mind had been touched.

  “Rae?” Braxton’s voice came over the line. Being a telepath, he wouldn’t have needed the Scion to make the first move to know it was there.

  “Yeah, I know,” was all she said in response.

  “Glad someone does,” Drew quipped.

  “Scion inside.” This came from Jordan, who like Rae could sense the presence of other demons.

  They fell silent, approaching the building from opposite sides.

  Parker ripped a rotting board off the window that had already been smashed through long ago. He stepped inside, waiting for her before they moved further into the building.

  Parker withdrew a sword from beneath his leather jacket before stripping out of it altogether and tossing it back by the window.

  After removing her own sword, she left her pack with his coat. Moving around during the day made it even more challenging not to get reported to the police if passersby spotted one of them carrying a sword around.

  Her eyes adjusted quickly to the dim conditions, but she stuck close to Parker until his had as well.

  Through her comm, she heard someone curse. Jordan. “Stealth demons.”

  She and Quinn had come in through the south side. Parker was already moving in their direction. Sensing movement, she grabbed him, spinning him away from the hostile that launched itself out of the shadows.

  Red-rimmed eyes glowed in the dark, capping off a cold slash of teeth.

  Fuck. Mimic demon.

  Going on the offensive before the partly telepathic demon could fish through her mind for something useful, Rae sprang forward. She saw the hostile’s sword and twisted to block the first strike.

  Something wasn’t right. If demons armed themselves, it was almost always with daggers or something found close at hand when they cornered a victim.

  “We’ve got war demons,” Drew snapped over the comm.

  In front of her, the mimic demon snarled and took a clumsy swing at Parker.

  Easily, Parker deflected the blow and countered with one of his own that sent the mimic demon stumbling backward, over a pile of wood scraps.

  Helping the demon along, Rae pivoted, swinging around to deliver a kick that nailed it mid-chest. Parker brought his blade down, but the hostile managed to jam its weapon up to protect its neck at the last second.

  Wrenching free, the demon rolled to the side, but when it regained its footing and spun to face Rae, gone was the twenty-something male. Instead, an achingly familiar face stared back at them—Helen’s.

  “Don’t hurt me. Please, don’t hurt me.”

  God, even her voice was the same as Rae remembered.

  “Don’t let her hurt me, Parker. Please.”

  Oh God. Spikes of adrenaline drilled into Rae’s chest until she couldn’t breathe.

  The hostile took a step toward her, tears tracking down its face. Rae stopped herself from retreating, her sweaty palm slipping on the hilt of her sword. It wasn’t real. She knew it down to her bones, yet she couldn’t move, couldn’t think.

  She’d killed her. Killed Parker’s mother.

  Something rammed into her side and she staggered, her head snapping up as Parker shoved her out of the way and faced the mimic demon.

  “Sorry, but my mother wasn’t the crybaby type.” He lunged forward, twisting and slicing upward, across the demon’s chest. The hostile howled in pain, trying and failing to fight Parker off.

  “You can rejoin the party any time,” Parker gritted out. His blade collided with the hostile’s and he shoved hard, knocking the demon toward her.

  Moving entirely on instinct, she focused only on the hostile’s neck, severing its head and stepping to the side as it collapsed. Before it even hit the ground, the magic it drew on to hold the illusion evaporated.

  Rae stared at the floor even after the blue flames devoured it.

  “Sorry. I wasn’t guarding my thoughts well enough. Won’t happen again.” Parker was already turning away before she could say that it hadn’t been his thoughts the hostile had invaded to conjure up that likeness.

  “Two war demons down,” Drew called from the doorway up ahead.

  “Look.” Parker handed her the sword the hostile had carried.

  She ran her thumb across the familiar symbol engraved on the hilt. “It’s one of ours.” At least the kind all agents trained with in the beginning, before they went with more custom-made weapons.

  Holding on to the sword, they caught up with Drew. “Were the war demons armed?”

  “One of them was.” Braxton stepped from the right.

  Jordan’s voice came over the comm. “Our stealth demons pulled a Houdini, but they’re still in the building.”

  The four of them continued on, reaching the main room. The buzz that pulsed under Rae’s skin told her the stealth demons were close, but they weren’t what suddenly had the hair on the back of her neck standing up.

  The first thing she saw in the middle of the main room was a silhouette crouched over something on the ground.

  Drew and Braxton separated, moving in opposite directions to close in. The silhouette straightened. Her father.

  Jordan and Quinn moved in from the other end of the room.

  It wasn’t until Rae got closer that she realized her father had been crouched over a body. Burke’s.

  “It’s not what it looks like,” her father said calmly.

  There wasn’t time to disagree. One second she was staring at her father and then two stealth demons stood between them. But it was the Scion that emerged from the shadows, slinking behind her father, blade drawn, who snared Rae’s full attention.

  “Dad!” Her voice rang out in warning, and then she shot forward.

  From the corner of her eyes, she saw Drew’s head whip around. “Dad?”

  Distracted, he wasn’t quick enough to bring his sword up to deflect a blow from the closest stealth demon.

  No!

  Drew yelled, dropping to his knees. Quinn was the first to reach him, slashing at the stealth demon with both her daggers.

  In front of Rae, the Scion grabbed her father, the blade of her dagger poised at his throat.

  Slowing her steps, she felt both the master demon’s gaze lock on her, as well as her team’s. Fuck. This wasn’t
how she’d wanted them to find out. If she hadn’t been so wrapped up in protecting her reputation, worried their opinions of her would change, she could have told them the truth from the start. Could have prevented Drew from being taken by surprise.

  Blood gushed through the fingers he pressed over the wound on his side. It didn’t matter that he was still standing, sword at the ready. Sweat beaded on his forehead, and it only took one look at the pained expression on his face to know it was bad.

  Her fault. She’d let him down. Let all of them down.

  Both stealth demons backed off, sliding closer to her father and the Scion.

  Lips curled like a high-paid model annoyed with her photographer, Amara shook her head. “Do not come any closer or I will kill him.”

  “She’s lying.” This from her father.

  “Am I?” A thin rivulet of blood dripped from the fresh cut at her father’s throat.

  Rae held up a hand in case anyone had gotten over their shock and wanted a shot at the bitch with the dagger. “No one is moving.” Not yet anyway.

  Cocking her head, the Scion glanced at Drew. “Guess that little secret took you by surprise, huh? Tell me—” she refocused her attention on Rae, “—if your network is such a tight little bunch, how come you didn’t tell them you were looking for your own father?”

  “Don’t play her games, Rae.” Her father pulled in vain at the bitch’s hold.

  “Games?” The sugary purr nearly gave Rae a toothache. “If I were playing games I might ask how your daughter’s hunt for the gatekeeper is going? Or maybe I should ask you?” The blonde’s gaze flicked to Jordan. “How is the search for your brother coming along?”

  “What the hell is it talking about, Rae?” Jordan didn’t take her eyes off the Scion for a second.

  “Again with the it?” The Scion actually rolled her eyes, demonstrating how much human behavior she’d mastered. “Go on, Rae,” Amara quipped. “Tell her that not only do you think her brother might tear down the walls between our realms, but that you sent another Destroyer instead of his own sister to find him.”

  “Rae?”

  “Now is not the time, Jordan.” Parker stepped up beside Rae and she drew strength from his proximity, right up until the Scion grinned at him.

  “Parker, didn’t I try to tell you that you’d been betrayed, that you couldn’t trust them?”

  “What are you really after, Amara?” Rae was done letting the blonde bitch run the show.

  Amara cocked her head, her gaze probing, and Rae held tight to her mental shields. Even anticipating the mental blow, she stumbled back from the force of it.

  “I tell you what.” Amara ran the blade up her father’s throat. “I’ll tell you where the children are that you are so desperate to find, if you tell Parker who really killed his mother.”

  “Why don’t you tell me?” Parker asked, injecting as much boredom into his tone as he could. “You’re the one who’s been dragging this out for weeks.”

  “Trust me, it will be better coming from Rae.”

  “Enough,” Hurst snapped.

  The dagger dug a little deeper into his skin. “I’ll decide when it’s been enough.” Red-rimmed eyes latched onto Rae. “Tell him.”

  Parker shook his head. “Leave her out of this.”

  “Oh, I’m sure she wishes I would.” Amara licked her lips, as if anticipating the taste of their inner turmoil. “Except Rae knows the whole, sad story, don’t you Rae? Or is that one more secret you didn’t want getting out?”

  He didn’t take his eyes off Hurst or the Scion, waiting for Rae to tell the demon to go fuck itself. And if she didn’t, he sure as hell would.

  “How do I know you’re telling the truth about the kids?”

  “Don’t tell me you believe your father and I were actually involved in that mess? Or maybe you forgot what he promised you all those years ago?” The Scion shuddered as though the emotions tied up with that were distasteful in some way, and turned to Braxton.

  His face paled and he dropped to one knee. Quinn took a menacing step toward the pair in the middle.

  “I’m okay.” Braxton slowly regained his footing. “It’s the truth.”

  “Satisfied?” The master demon drew the blade back and forth. “Tick tock, Rae.”

  When Parker felt Rae’s eyes on him, he met her gaze. Her lips parted and the sick feeling eating its way through his stomach only worsened.

  “Rae?” She couldn’t know anything about it. She would have said something.

  She shook her head.

  “Do it. Tell him.”

  “You know what happened?”

  “Yes.” Her voice was barely above a whisper.

  “Tell me.”

  Braxton took a step toward them. “Parker,” he began.

  Ignoring the telepath, he raised his voice. “Tell me, Rae.”

  “I didn’t know. At the time…” She trailed off, looking ill.

  “Tell me,” he snapped.

  “I did it. I was the one who killed your mother.”

  It wasn’t the confession so much as the regret burning in her eyes that sucked every molecule of air from his lungs.

  He shook his head, refusing to believe it. Telepath Scions were capable of forging mental links, then pulling all the strings. He’d only heard of it happening with weak-minded individuals, but it would explain why Rae was saying she was the one who killed his mother.

  “I’m sorry. I…” She closed her eyes, hatred flaring when she took a murderous step toward the Scion.

  Jesus. She really believed it, didn’t she? The sensation of being body-slammed ripped up from the balls of his feet, clutching at his heart and wrenching hard.

  Rae angled her body in his direction, even as she spoke to the fucking hostile that just twisted his world inside out. “Where are they being held?”

  “Right under your feet.”

  Both stealth demons darted forward. The closest one shot past Rae, nearly knocking Parker aside in the process. Rae grabbed his arm to steady him, and he jerked backward, out of her reach.

  She let her hand fall back, cursing under her breath. He followed her gaze.

  Hurst and the Scion were gone.

  “Parker!”

  This time he avoided the stealth demon, catching the hostile across the back with his sword. The hostile tripped, and Quinn was there to severe its head. Brax and Jordan vanquished the other one in record time.

  For a long moment none of them said a damn word. Parker didn’t take his eyes off Rae. “Tell me what happened.”

  Rae lowered her sword, glancing past him to Quinn. “Can you hear them?”

  “I can.” Drew hissed out a breath, struggling to stand. Quinn saved him from toppling to the floor.

  “Can you tell from whatever image she sent you how to find them?” Rae directed the question at Braxton.

  The telepath shook his head.

  “We need to get Drew out of here first, and the rest of us will spread out and find an access point for the basement.”

  “No.” Drew made it to his feet. “I’m not leaving until we find them.”

  Seeing how much Drew was bleeding, Parker knew he’d have to save his questions for Rae until they found the kids.

  It took them ten minutes to find the stairwell to a cellar, one that had been filled with equipment and supplies—and seven terrified children. There weren’t any captive demons, so chances were Vanessa had freed them to buy herself time to get out of there.

  They still weren’t sure what had happened to Burke, and Parker couldn’t make himself give a flying fuck when all he could think about was Rae confessing to killing his mother.

  By the time Drew and the kids had been taken to the clinic, Parker couldn’t hold off any longer. When he spotted Rae speaking with one of the network doctors, he made a move.

  “She’ll be right back.” He snatched her wrist, pulling her into the first empty room he came across.

  She didn’t try to put him off an
d everything from her bowed head to her heavy shoulders screamed defeated.

  Telling himself he didn’t care, he shut the door behind him. “Was it fun for you?”

  Her head snapped up “What?”

  “Was it fun for you, watching me drive myself into the ground six years ago over this?”

  “You can’t think that I’ve known all this time.”

  How the fuck was he supposed to know what to think? “Was it self-defense or were you just following orders?” She’d been keeping secrets from him, and for all he knew she could have been an A-class Destroyer herself, dispatched to put his mother down before she became a problem.

  “I—”

  “Was Kerri already dead by then or did you kill her too?”

  “No! Look, I don’t know what happened.”

  Red streaks slashed across his vision. “What the hell does that mean?”

  She let out a breath. “It means I can’t remember. The report says I was protecting Adrian but my memory of that day…it’s not right.”

  “How fucking convenient!”

  “I didn’t know anything about this until today. I wanted to say something, I just…” she turned away.

  He jerked her back around. “You knew on the roof?”

  She nodded. “I had been talking to Adrian and I knew he was holding something back so I pushed and pushed and…and I didn’t believe it. I couldn’t have done that to Helen—”

  “Do not say her name.”

  “Then Adrian accessed the original reports and it was all right there.”

  “I saw those reports.” He’d spent weeks reviewing them, looking for something in them that made some kind of sense to him.

  She shook her head. “Not this one.”

  “So Amara was right? The network covered it all up.”

  “Yes.”

  “And you helped them. You…” The pressure expanding inside the walls of his chest threatened to split him wide open. He tightened his grip on Rae. “Was she scared? Angry? Homicidal?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Why? Why can’t you remember?”

  She wrenched her arms free. “Something my father did. Something I let him do. I don’t know. I’m just…”

  “Sorry?” he snapped, parroting her words from the stairwell. “Is that what you were going to say? But you don’t even know if you are because you can’t remember how any of it went down.”