by D. D. Chance
“I…so, that’s kind of the electronics concern I was getting at earlier. There’s more cameras. Like one in my room, for sure. Probably more. Apparently, the benefactors of Wellington had my landlord put cameras in my apartment either before I showed up or at least before I got all my own locks installed. The old lady I had assigned to me today on our campus tour project came right out and told me they’d set the things up, but for some reason, they weren’t working. She thought I’d warded myself somehow, but I didn’t even know the cameras existed until earlier today. I found one by mistake.”
Zach narrowed his eyes at me, their blue-purple depths sharpening. “Today,” he echoed. “You discovered a camera in your apartment the same day we all got called onto the carpet for the first campus meet and greet we’ve had with donors since Christmas…and the woman you’re assigned starts chatting you up about them? That’s not a coincidence.”
I winced as he laid it out for me. How had I not made that connection? “You’re right,” I agreed, feeling sick to my stomach. “That meant they did see me find it. The cameras do work.”
“Well, not that one,” he said, poking his thumb at the bathroom again. “But there’s no other way…” He ran a hand through his thick black hair, the movement straining the running shirt against his pecs. Zach wasn’t as built as Tyler and nowhere near as big as Grim, but he was no slouch in the muscle department. “Did you say anything to anyone else about them? Frost or any of the guys?”
“No. I was going to tell Frost about it when I brought him some of Mom’s stuff I was storing here, but—I never got around to that. You were having a near-demon experience, and that kind of distracted me.”
He made a face, his expression rueful. “Yeah. And I appreciate it. We need to talk about all that but first…” He waved around. “We should probably see what other welcome gifts your landlord left for you.”
“Ugh,” I agreed, shivering. “I can’t believe people were watching me all this time and I never knew it. I mean, what were they looking for, anyway?”
“Could be anything. They could have a perimeter set up around the campus that only gets triggered if someone special moves in, like a motion-detector camera, but set for magic.” He glanced down the hallway, his gaze turning speculative. “This is a pretty nice apartment, actually,” he said, and I blew out a breath.
“I thought so too,” I muttered. “Now the whole place freaks me out.”
“Not for long,” he said easily, as if having my apartment bugged wasn’t the creepiest thing that could possibly happen to me. As if he could simply wave a magic wand and make it go away.
“Something like that,” Zach said with a wink, though I was sure—pretty sure—I hadn’t said anything out loud. “Let’s go take them out.”
22
It took Zach about two hours to search and debug the apartment. My small toolbox was put to good use as he unscrewed vent covers, checked into cabinets, angled my small flashlight into every nook and cranny. By the time he’d gone through the entire apartment, he’d uncovered ten different cameras. Only four of them appeared to be working, which should have made me relieved, but instead left me curious.
“Go over with me again how you landed this apartment,” Zach finally requested, after we’d laid out all our ill-gotten goods on the kitchen table.
“It wasn’t anything special.” I spread my hands, trying to remember what exactly I’d done. “I did your typical Google search and found it online, through like a neighborhood site kind of thing. I don’t remember the name now. I used a laptop at the library to do the search. Mine had fried again, and I hadn’t gotten it replaced.”
“So you didn’t use Apartments.com or Zillow or anything like that?”
I shook my head. “I’d planned to double check on one of those sites to see if all the photos of this place were the same in multiple listings, but the apartment was adorable and available and exactly where I wanted it to be, so I just went ahead and contacted the owner, a guy named Mr. Bellows. He took my information, contacted me within a couple of days, and that was that. It was a really easy process, and I started packing. I rented a U-Haul with the few pieces of furniture I needed and showed up here…maybe a day early? I mean, he said I could move in any time, but I did come earlier than I’d thought I would.” I looked around the room with renewed dismay. “Do you suppose I just caught him off guard?”
My gaze shifted to the door. “Oh my God. The locks.”
Zach looked back to my reinforced front door. “What about them?”
“I put them in right away. It was something I didn’t want to wait on. I didn’t ask Mr. Bellows if I could either. I did it right after I moved in, so no wonder they weren’t able to come back in and finish wiring everything up…if that’s what they were doing. Like, assuming these weren’t left over from the last tenant or whatever.”
Zach nodded. “Well, it looks like the only ones still active were the one in the kitchen, the main room, and down the long hallway through the opening in the vent. Still pretty comprehensive, and then you’ve got one on the front door facing into the living room. The one in the bathroom, the two in your bedroom, and the second one in the kitchen were installed and hidden, but they got fried.”
“But I noticed the one in the bedroom. If that one wasn’t working…” I frowned, glancing back to the hallway. “I scooted right out of there, I guess. Sat on the floor, obviously freaked out. Maybe they figured out what I’d seen from that?”
He nodded. “It’s the only thing that makes sense. They knew they’d been made, and they needed you to know the truth so that you…I don’t know. Maybe they didn’t want you to start asking too many questions of the wrong people?”
I winced, the warning from the bartender at the White Crane coming back to me. “But who would I ask?” I gestured to the table, trying to quell a spurt of hysteria. “Do you have any idea what the feed goes to? Like specifically, who owns these?”
He reached out and touched one of the smaller cameras, barely larger than his fingertip. “I don’t. You have to assume Mr. Bellows is behind it, but then again, it’s at least theoretically possible that he had no idea they were there. Even the one behind the trash can was pretty well hidden. If he wasn’t the one cleaning the apartments or inspecting them thoroughly, these things could have been there for a long time. Well, not too long,” he said, checking himself. “They’re all pretty new components.”
“But they’re disabled now.”
“Yep. In part, courtesy of your impressive collection of scissors, I should say. Not too many people have scissors that are capable of cutting straight through wire, but good to know that you do. And the entire bunch of them can now enjoy their new home inside the bathroom cabinet.”
“I don’t know why anyone would be so interested in me in a damned near-empty apartment…” I winced. “Good Lord, they’ve seen me cleaning myself after an attack. They saw when Tyler brought me home. That’s so gross.”
“It’s beyond gross,” Zach agreed. “It’s bullshit and it’s wrong, and we will find out who’s doing it, I promise you.”
But I’d already turned away, crossing my arms close to my stomach, hugging myself as I paced. “This whole thing is stupid. Dangerous. I can’t believe how clueless I was coming here.”
Zach sighed behind me, and I could feel his gaze on me, warm and concerned. “You know, you should really be staying at Fowlers Hall. It’s a really big place. I promise you you’ll have your privacy.”
“A heck of a lot more than I had here, clearly,” I said ruefully, tightening my hold on my arms. Why was I suddenly so nervous?
“Hey.”
Zach had stepped up soundlessly behind me. He turned me to him, tucking his hand beneath my chin and lifting it. “I know this has to be really weird for you. Scary, even. But it’s going to be okay. If somebody is tracking you, there’s a reason why, and we’ll find it. Period. You don’t have to worry that you’re not safe. That’s why you joined the collec
tive.”
My heart gave a fluttery thump at the intensity in his eyes. “But none of this makes any sense.” I sighed. “I don’t know why anybody would go to the trouble about me.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Zach said, his mouth kicking up at the corner. “You’re pretty special, I’m not surprised at all.”
It was the most intimate thing he’d said to me, and it caught me strangely off guard.
I blinked up at him, trying to ignore the swell of heat that seemed to be rising up around us. Instead, I gave him an awkward smile. “Well, you’re kind of special yourself,” I said. “Probably the most special demon hunter I’ve ever met. Especially when you’re not strung up, and—”
I broke off, realizing too late what my idiot mouth was saying and trying desperately to figure out a way to backtrack. But Zach’s hand turned to stone beneath my chin, his gaze going diamond-hard. I froze, caught in his glare.
“What?” he asked softly, his dark blue eyes now deeply purple. The question slipped beneath my frantically scrambling thoughts, piercing any attempt at an easy lie. “What were you saying?”
“Nothing,” I tried, but I couldn’t keep the tears from burning in my eyes, a single drop breaking free to track down my cheek. Images flashed through my mind so quickly that I couldn’t catch my breath—so much fire and pain, Zach stretched, bloodied and broken…
Unable to help myself, I lifted my hand to his, and he caught it, his fingers slipping beneath the mind-blocking bracelet.
“Do you want me to take this off?” he asked, the words still soft, but so self-assured, they almost felt mocking. Like he knew what I was thinking, even if he couldn’t read my mind. “Is that what you need to be honest with me?”
“What—no.” I shook my head hard, trying to unseat the dizziness that swept through me. I already felt this much, and I was still protected from him. Protected from myself? The heat was replaced by rolling shivers, and I fought the unreasonable desire to swoon in the arms of this gothic angel looming over me, his skin smelling of cinnamon and smoke, his hands firm and steady as they gripped my trembling body.
“What did you see in my room, Nina, that I knew once, then forgot?” Zach whispered again. “What did you do?”
I opened my mouth to lie—I truly did, but as I met his gaze, the groan that burst from me sounded like it had been dredged up from the depths of hell itself.
“They’d caught you,” I whispered, the words nearly a sob. “They’d caught you and were burning you, over and over again. Your skin was charred and bloody—your face…”
I was shaking harder now, one wrist in Zach’s grip, while he pressed the other to his chest. Beneath the thin cotton of his shirt, I could feel his heart beating in steady, rhythmic thumps, completely unlike mine, which was trying to jackrabbit its way out of my rib cage.
“They’d strung me up. How?” he asked.
“T-two poles.” And though I was staring at Zach’s face now, his preternaturally perfect features pristine and whole, that wasn’t what I saw anymore. I saw the sunken eyes, the ravaged cheeks, the mouth lolling open with its blackened tongue slipping to the side. The face of a desperate warrior fighting—fighting—
“What did you do?” Zach asked, and his hand pressed flat against mine, against his quickening heartbeat that thudded harder and faster now as he took my panic as his own.
“I d-didn’t know what to do,” I stuttered, my words tumbling too quickly now. “You were so hurt, so burned. I didn’t know how to help you except what I’d done before, in the chapel, when that demon jumped you, and I—I just—”
“Show me.” The words were wrapping around me and threading through my mind, and I couldn’t think anymore, could hardly breathe. I stepped up on my tiptoes and pressed my lips to Zach’s—his mouth nothing like the gaping maw it’d been before, with matted blood and ash and—
“Nina.” Zach gasped in what sounded like genuine horror, releasing my hands and hauling me up high into an embrace tight against him, my legs going naturally around his waist as he turned me around and pressed my back against the wall. He plundered my mouth as I lifted my hands to tangle my fingers in his long, lush black hair, my legs resting on his hips as his legs spread wider, bracing me. He broke away from my mouth and burned a trail of kisses along my chin, my neck, up to my ear.
“What were you thinking?” he growled in my ear. He pulled his right hand out from behind my back and slid it up the front of my shirt, dragging the fabric high. The other hand splayed beneath my ass, tilting me into him. He was hard and ready, and I groaned as he pressed me close to him, rocking his hips rhythmically. When his right hand closed around my breast, heat blasted through me, and I sagged against him as his growl lengthened into a ragged, fierce moan. “You could have died.”
“But I didn’t,” I assured him quickly, following him as he lifted his head away from me, getting only a glimpse of his eyes as I leaned up to find his lips with mine again. I kissed him, and he shuddered hard, shoving me back against the wall and grinding into me. “I didn’t die,” I said, peppering my words against his mouth as I covered his lips with kisses, desperate for him not to let me go. “I was meant to help you. I wanted to help you. I wanted to k-kiss you, to be with you, to make you whole.”
“Mine,” Zach gritted out, or I thought he gritted, but he was moving again, turning me around so that his back was against the wall and I was able to pull away and look at him—his chiseled jawline, now flushed and tight, his lushly carved lips, his winged eyebrows, and his purple-hued eyes, shot through now with licks of white-hot flame.
“I want you,” he rumbled. “I want to rip your clothes off right now and pound you right through the floor. I want every single inch of you.”
The air died in my throat, and my mouth went totally dry. I started to shake again as Zach continued. “But you—you’re with Tyler, and—”
I blinked, jerking back in surprise. The anguish in his voice was so real, so visceral, that it shook me out of my fugue with the horrifying realization of the truth. He didn’t know about the sacred flower of sexual power-tripping or whatever the hell it was. He didn’t know.
Oh my God. Was he even truly attracted to me? Or was this some screwed-up collective ritual, forcing us together?
“Zach,” I tried again, feeling the blood rush to my cheeks and holding on to my embarrassment as the only thing that could save me now. Zach’s hand splayed beneath my ass again and hauled me close, and I lost myself in a renewed spiral of need, then fought my way clear. Zach didn’t know. He didn’t know this was maybe possibly not real attraction, but some sort of artificial weirdness between us. That it wasn’t real.
I wanted it to be real. I wanted it to be everything. More than that, though, I wanted it to be honest. “You—there’s something you have to know,” I finally managed.
“What,” Zach growled, but as he refocused on me, his elegant brows crashed together. “What?”
“This—this isn’t easy to explain. Maybe you should put me down.”
“No.”
I bobbed up my head, meeting his gaze, which had gone cold, almost haughty. The look of a man who wasn’t going to let go, ever, I thought, then chased that idea out of my brain before it could get too comfortable.
“No,” Zach repeated. “You either tell me what’s going on, or let me take off that bracelet.” His lips kicked up in a harsh smile. “Better be careful about that second choice, though.”
My heart leapt with twin surges of fear and excitement, and it seemed way less scary to tell him the truth and not find myself laid bare before this man, this hunter, this warrior who’d looked roaring demons in the face and raged right back at them, trading blood for blood, blow for blow.
So…I started babbling.
23
“The way you feel about me—the way I think you feel about me, anyway…” I began, my words tumbling out way too fast, Zach rolled his hips beneath mine, reminding me exactly of how he felt, and I flushed again.
“It’s possibly like, a magic thing. Something that happened when I joined the collective.”
He stiffened, and not in a good way, sending all the butterflies dancing in my stomach into free fall. “What are you talking about?”
“I can’t really explain it, because no one knows what’s going on, exactly, but something strange happened between me and all the guys. Like we sort of, uh, got attracted to each other and that was on purpose, according to Frost.”
Zach grimaced in surprise, his brows shooting up. “Frost knows about this? How come he didn’t tell us? Or warn us, even? How is it I’m just finding out now?”
I winced. “I think he was hoping it was something in the old stories that wasn’t actually true. He seemed pretty unhappy when I explained to him what was happening. Actually, it wasn’t even me, it was—”
“Oh my God, no,” Zach cut me off, his horror only deepening. “Do not tell me that Liam was the one who figured this out. Have you and he…?”
“No,” I said, my cheeks thoroughly on fire now. “Absolutely not. I feel kind of weird around all the guys, but the only one other than Tyler I seem to be hyperfocused on is you. And, like, you don’t have to do anything about that, like we can just stop this—”
“Well, hold up there.” Zach hadn’t let me go yet. He settled his legs more widely, bracing me as he peered close. “So you’re saying you’re attracted to me.”
He shifted his hips again, and I grimaced, trying to keep my cool and failing. Miserably. “I…am,” I confessed.
“And you think it’s because of you joining the collective.”
“No.” The rejection of that idea was quick and absolute, making a corner of Zach’s lips curve up again.
“What if I don’t believe you?”
I held up my wrist with the bracelet on it and gave it a little shake. “Wanna see for yourself?”