The Korean War Memorial was haunting even in daylight. But at night, like now, Deidre always half expected the larger-than-life statues of a squad of men in full battle gear to come alive. A thin dusting of snow covered them. Small spotlights shone on their faces, creating shadows that seemed to waver in the wind. The sheet of black granite comprising the wall to one side of the memorial was sandblasted with the faces of the fallen. Figures were staggered, as if they were approaching the wall from the mists of time to peer out at the country for which they’d sacrificed everything.
She shivered.
Finn misread the gesture. “You can head back to the tunnels, Dee. I’ll meet with this guy alone.”
“No,” Deidre said. “It’s not the meeting, it’s this place. It’s always affected me like this. This memorial is more heartrending than any other place on the mall. At least for me.” She sighed. “No, you can’t meet him alone and we can’t ignore it. He said he wasn’t comfortable speaking on the phone. And he obviously thinks this is important enough for us to meet. So like it or not, we have to find out what Dante has to say.”
“Fine.” Finn nodded and let his gaze scan their surroundings again. “But one wrong move from him and we’re gone.”
“Agreed.”
Dante’s message had been short and to the point. There were things Deidre had to know. Things he couldn’t say on the phone. He’d promised that he would be here, at the memorial, every night at midnight until she came.
Yes, it was a risk to be here, as Finn had pointed out immediately after listening to the Secret Service agent’s message. Even now, there could be a whole crowd of feds hiding behind trees and bushes and monuments, just waiting for the signal to pounce.
But Deidre didn’t think so. She’d known Dante for three years and she trusted him. Then again, she’d known her mother her entire life, and look what had happened there. So there was always the chance that she was wrong about him. A scuffle of sound came to her and she stiffened, turning with Finn to face the agent approaching them. She only hoped she could still trust Dante Dimenticato.
“I didn’t think you’d come,” he said, stopping when he was just a few feet from them.
“Won’t be here long,” Finn assured him, keeping a tight grip on Deidre’s hand. “So make it count.”
She squeezed his fingers hard and spoke up. “Dante, what’s going on? What’s happening with my mother?”
He looked around, as if assuring himself no one else was near. The wind kicked up and fluttered the edges of Dante’s coat. “Nobody knows. The cabinet’s being shut out. She fired her advisors and she’s closed down diplomatic relations with at least a half dozen countries.”
Stunned, Deidre could only stare at him. Fear balled into a cold, tight knot in the pit of her stomach. Her mother, whatever else she was, had always been a good politician. She had kept her friends close and had always maintained lines of communications with her enemies. Hearing this was akin to being told that her mom had taken to flying around the interior of the White House on a broomstick. It was that unbelievable.
“What?” she asked when her brain stopped spinning. “That can’t be right.”
“I know what it sounds like.” He shrugged deeper into his black overcoat. “Your mother’s out of control, Deidre,” he said simply. “She’s on the verge of signing an order to rescind freedom of speech. Says she’s doing it for the good of the country, but I don’t know about that.”
“This can’t be happening,” Deidre murmured.
“And, she’s holding a press conference by the end of the week. She’s going to threaten to kill a witch a day, every day, until you come to her.”
“Oh my God.” Deidre’s whisper was lost beneath Finn’s low-pitched growl.
“Worst part?” Dante mused, “She’ll have the backing of most of Congress and the majority of the population. Witches will die, Deidre.”
“Did she send you here?” Finn demanded, loosening his grip on Deidre’s hand to take one menacing step toward the other man.
“No.” Dante laughed, but backed up another foot or two. Snow swirled in a sudden gust of wind and danced between the two men like fairy dust. “Don’t expect you to believe that, but no. She’s only talking to Darius these days. He’s the only one allowed into the Oval Office. Hell, she hasn’t even spoken to the VP in weeks.”
“What do you expect Deidre to do about it?” Finn asked.
“Don’t expect anything,” Dante admitted, then shifted his gaze to her. “But I thought you should know what’s coming.”
“What’s wrong with her?” Deidre murmured, not really expecting an answer. Her mother’s friend, Kellyn, was possessed by a demon. Was it possible her mother had been, too? Or were there even worse things out there to worry about?
“That’s what I want to know.” Finn moved closer, frowning the nearer he got to the other man. Dante stepped back again, as if determined to keep distance between them. “And I think you have the answers. What the hell’s going on?”
“I said what I came to say.” Dante told them. “What you do with it is your choice. If you need me,” he added with a glance at Deidre, “call.”
“Just a damn minute,” Finn said as the other man turned and moved quickly down the path until he was swallowed by darkness and the falling snow.
Shaken by this latest information, Deidre moved up beside Finn and asked, “What is it?”
“There’s something . . .” He shook his head and scowled at the retreating man.
She looked after Dante too, but saw only the darkness and the still falling snow. “What are you talking about?”
Scrubbing one hand across his jaw, he said, “For a split second, I got that sense of ‘other’ again. Then it was gone.”
She jolted and looked up at him. “You mean like what you felt about my mother?”
“Yeah, but different.” He was still staring into the night as if he could see past the trees and the snow and the monuments, right into the heart of the man who had just left them. “There’s something off there. Wish to hell I knew what it was.”
There were a lot of things Deidre wished. First and foremost being that her world would right itself and begin to make sense again. But since that wasn’t going to happen anytime soon, she steeled herself for what was to come.
“It doesn’t matter,” Deidre said, and waited until he turned to meet her eyes. “You know it doesn’t.”
She had known the moment Dante had told her about Cora’s plans. As if the last few weeks had been leading her directly here, there was no other path to take. No choice at all, really.
Ever since Finn had flashed her out of the green room in the White House, Deidre had fought to find a reasonable explanation for what her mother had done and said. She’d argued with him, and resented him for relentlessly pushing her to face the cold, hard truth.
But there were no excuses for what Deidre’s mother was doing.
Whether or not Cora Sterling was her mother, she had to be stopped.
So it didn’t really matter anymore, did it? Remembering the cold, dispassionate look on her mother’s face as Cora had ordered Darius to tie Deidre up, she came to grips with her new reality. Old loyalties were set aside. She and Cora had never been close and now she was almost grateful for that emotional distance.
Because she had a feeling that the only way to stop Cora would be to kill her before she tried to do the same to them.
Of course it wasn’t easy to kill the president of the United States.
Even if she was an “other.”
“If Cora Sterling is really planning to execute women just to get my attention,” Deidre said sadly, “then you were right, she’s not my mother.”
“Dee—”
She shook her head, dismissing his sympathetic tone. God, if he offered he
r kindness or pity now, she’d crumble just when she most needed to be strong. “We can’t let her get away with that, Finn. Not if we can stop her.”
He pulled her in close and wrapped his arms around her. Deidre felt his strength and was buoyed by it. Whatever was coming next, she would be able to handle it if he was there with her.
“I know,” he said, words muffled against her hair as he kissed the top of her head. “We’re going back to the White House. But first, we need a plan.”
Chapter 39
Back in their chamber in the tunnels, Deidre turned to Finn and pulled his head down for a long, hungry kiss. After meeting with Dante, all she’d been able to think of was getting back here. With Finn. In the last three weeks, this chamber had become home. This tunnel familiar ground and the members of the WLF her surrogate family.
The place she had once considered a trap now surrounded her with welcome, with the comforting sensations of safety and love.
“Hey,” he said, lifting his head to look down at her, “we’ll figure it out, Deidre. We’ll find the Artifact. We’ll end this. And we’ll keep your mother from killing more witches.”
“I know,” she said, walking backward to the bed. “I know we will, Finn. But this is all so horrible. Before I can face all of that, I need you. I need to feel you with me.”
He snapped his fingers and they were both naked. She loved the way his magic sizzled and burned all around him like an aura only she could sense and feel. His Eternal powers grew along with hers. She already knew about the traveling by fire, the ability to sense danger and coming threats. She knew he was strong and practically invulnerable and she knew that his powers would continue to evolve now that they had Mated.
Deidre sighed and he smiled, running his fingertips along the curve of the chain tattoo that was branded into her skin.
Deidre closed her eyes and held her breath as he traced each link of that chain tattoo with his fingers, his lips, his tongue. She swayed into him, but locked her knees, so she wouldn’t topple over under the sensations he caused.
When he touched her, the world fell away. The past, the present, even the still hazy future that might spill out in front of them . . . it all disappeared and there were only the two of them in the universe.
The magical crystals embedded in the walls hummed with the energies they were picking up from the Mating magic building between Finn and Deidre. She felt the reflected power bristling along her skin even as her insides lit up. This is what she had needed so desperately. This was what her soul, her body had hungered for.
With Finn’s hands and mouth on her skin, she felt power bubbling inside and knew that anything was possible.
He toppled her onto the bed, and she fell backward eagerly, opening her eyes to him, lifting her arms to hold him. But he shook his head and whispered, “No. Not yet.”
Deidre tensed as he slid along the length of her, letting his mouth blaze a trail down her stomach, across her abdomen to the thatch of blond curls at the juncture of her thighs. “Open for me, Dee,” he whispered and she was helpless to resist—even if she had wanted to.
He shifted position, kneeling between her thighs, then scooped his hands under her butt and lifted her off the bed. His strong fingers gripped her behind as he lowered his mouth to cover her.
She gasped and arched her hips into him as he took her, his tongue and teeth tormenting her until the spiral of need within her tightened beyond bearing. Deidre reached for him, and held his head to her, reveling in the wildness of his touch, in the magic bursting in the air around them.
When her climax came, she shouted his name and at the same time, she felt the burn of her Mating tattoo sizzle. While her body rocked through the waves of pleasure only he could give her, Finn laid her down on the mattress and pushed himself deep within her.
She held him, moving with him, keeping pace, pushing him harder, faster, deeper until neither of them could have said where one of them ended and the other began. And finally, when his body erupted into hers, the aching burn of the Mating tattoo seared them both and the last door in Deidre’s mind opened.
“You can sense the Artifact?” Finn looked up and down the darkened street while Deidre focused her magic.
“Yeah,” she said. “I do. I just can’t . . . place it. But I know that Artifact’s here. In DC.” She looked around at the night, as if expecting to see a sign that read Here I am, Come get me.
“It’s more than we had yesterday,” Finn told her in response to the irritation in her voice. After making love the night before, something inside Dee had clicked “on.” Her soul fully awakening, the ancient pull of the Black Silver . . . who knew what it was, exactly? But she had suddenly felt the Artifact’s presence.
They hadn’t nailed it down yet, but they were closer than ever now and they would get it done. He wouldn’t lose her. Not to death, not to oblivion and sure as shit, not to her mother.
This was a risk, Finn thought. But one they had to take. Like Deidre, he couldn’t allow innocent women to be killed if they could stop it. Since her awareness of the Artifact had opened up the night before, he and Deidre had done nothing but discuss this plan. Though neither of them liked it, it was their only option.
If they stalled while they located the Artifact, women would die. Neither of them could live with that.
With Joe still off visiting his father, Marco was in charge of the group creating a much-needed diversion. Finn and Deidre waited in the shadows until the first of four planned explosions rocked the night. Then, smiling grimly, Finn flashed Deidre to a long-unused tunnel beneath the White House.
Forgotten for more than a hundred years, most of the narrow passages were blocked from falling rock and dirt, forcing Finn to flash them past blockade after blockade. The dank tunnels had been lost to history and it was only because Finn had spent so much time in and around the city, exploring, that they knew of them at all.
Hard to believe that the current residents knew nothing of this piece of the past. But then, most people looked to the future, not to what had come before. And these half-collapsed tunnels wouldn’t have seemed like a security threat to them even if they had known.
Finn flashed her into an unused storage room in the basement of the White House itself, then pulled Deidre close.
In the distance, they heard another explosion rattle the city and Deidre looked up at him, a twist of a smile on her face. “That’s two. The State Department building may never be the same.”
“Yeah, but it should draw most of the feds and cops over there,” he whispered, “keep them out of our way.”
She looked up at the ceiling as if she could see through the plaster and wood straight through to the room where her mother waited. “What’ll we do when we see her?”
“First,” he promised, “find out what the hell she is.”
Deidre winced and he was sorry for it, but damned if he’d risk her life for Cora Sterling. Whoever or whatever the president was, it was Finn’s job to neutralize her before she could do more damage. “Where will she be this time of night?”
“Her living room. She has a glass of wine while she watches the late news.”
He nodded, remembering the sketch Dee had made for him of the president’s private quarters. He knew exactly where they were going. He was just in no hurry to put his woman in the line of fire.
“You ready?”
“Yeah.” She didn’t look ready, but she threaded her arms around his waist and held on as he flashed them to the residence.
“Now!” Cora’s voice shouted the order the moment Finn and Deidre appeared in the living room.
An icy cold drape of white gold fell across Finn, capturing him in the power-draining mesh of a specifically designed net. Deidre was ripped from his hold. A soft, sibilant sound whipped through the room and Deidre cried out. Finn’s gaz
e snapped to a man in a corner holding a small crossbow, already notching another arrow into the slot. Beside him, Deidre staggered with another cry—that’s when Finn saw the white gold arrow jutting from her left shoulder.
He howled in fury and fought like a madman to be free of the white gold netting that had effectively neutralized him. He couldn’t get out. Couldn’t call on his magic to flash out and couldn’t reach Deidre. It was a nightmare. The president’s aide stepped in close and threw a hard punch to Finn’s midsection, adding insult to injury.
Still struggling against his bonds, Finn glared through the minuscule links of the white gold netting. Cora, Kellyn, Darius, Dante and two other men were in the room. A new burst of fury nearly blinded him. Should have killed Dante when he had the chance. And he saw Deidre, crumpled on the floor, face pale, eyes wide with pain and shock.
“No guns to manipulate this time, sweetie,” Cora said, stepping in close and looking down at her daughter. “The white gold in that arrow should keep you . . . cooperative.”
“Mom—”
Cora ignored her and strolled over to stand beside Finn. “Did you really think it would be so easy?” Shaking her head she added, “I sensed your presence the moment you were on the grounds. You cannot defeat me.”
“Get this fucking net off me and we’ll see about that,” Finn challenged.
She reached down, cupped his chin in her hand, grinding the white gold chain against his skin, driving that icy cold deep inside him. Her eyes flashed with banked power and the otherworldly presence he had felt before washed over him in a thick, dangerous wave. Finn had been a warrior for centuries, but he had never lusted for a kill as he did at this moment.
“You killed Henry Fender,” she murmured, features taut. “There will be payment for that.”
“Get these chains off me, you can try it yourself.”
She smiled. “Another time, perhaps.” Cora straightened up, flicking her fingers at Finn in a dismissive gesture. “Take him away. Make sure he suffers. Then lock him up until I decide what to do with him.”
Visions of Chains Page 28