Chapter 35
Thirty-Five
Michaels paced back and forth in his office. Getting Eve into custody was only the beginning.
“Are we going to arrest him then?” Jesper asked.
“He’s definitely up to something devious, but the last place I want the Reaver is in the same building as her.” Michaels delved into the quintessence, feeling for Lucien, and found he was not far away.
“He’s at the British Museum. His exhibition is part of this.”
Jesper nodded. “Want me to go over there?”
“We need to take control of it. You go ahead. Get the lay of the land and I’ll meet you there. We’ll need a couple of bodies to put on the door and the paperwork to keep things official. If I can keep him out with mortal law, maybe we can stop this from getting too messy.”
“On it.” Jesper got straight to his feet, moved into a shadowy corner, and slipped into the path between darkness and light.
If the Dark Fae were rallying behind Lucien too, they couldn’t afford to let him get any kind of foothold. Michaels glanced out of the window at the brightening sky. The golden light of dawn glowed at the horizon to chase away the last vestiges of night.
Suddenly, a tremendous burst of light ignited, far exceeding the usual dawn of a new day. An explosion. Its shockwave rattled the office windows and Michaels staggered backward. He scanned the skyline, searching for smoke and delved into the quintessence for answers. There had been a disruption in the natural energy—far more significant than that of a traditional bomb blast.
Dread coursed through his veins. Something was terribly wrong. Beyond the closed office door, the hurried footsteps and shouts of his fellow police officers painted a backdrop of barely concealed panic. They were flocking to the windows, searching for the source of the blast. Every officer was thinking the same thing: a terrorist attack. But no ordinary bomb .
It couldn’t be a coincidence. The horizon caught Michael’s attention. A strange corona burned at the outer edges of the sun: purples and reds in the ethereal color palette that no human eye could see.
An electromagnetic storm.
It had to be linked.
What was Lucien playing at? Negotiations with the Dark Fae. Hiding the Girl. The collection of artefacts. Michaels’ brain whirred, examining the evidence until it suddenly hit him. A storm of electromagnetic energy would disrupt communications. It would disable electronic equipment.
On cue, the lights in his office winked out, and his computer powered down.
It could also produce a field that disrupted warding spells.
His church. He scoured the view for the spire he knew to be visible from his office window. A plume of smoke rose above it.
“Shit.” Michaels’ mouth went dry. The Crypt was under attack. Thousands of dybbuk were held behind the protection of his wards. An army of demons responsible for the scourge of humanity, reaped by himself and Lucien over millennia.
He had to get over there right now.
Jesper was going after Lucien at the Museum. Eve was in the cells. He had no choice but to entrust his mortal colleagues with her care.
He took the emergency stairs to the roof, unfurling his wings as he went.
Eve was plunged into darkness. She’d felt the air shift even inside her cell. Something major had happened.
A few heart-hammering moments passed and the emergency lighting flickered to life. She scrambled for the door and pressed her ear against it to listen for clues as to what was going on beyond.
Raised voices and a lot of quick, heavy footsteps. She could see them in her mind’s eye: keeping a lid on their adrenalin and channeling their professional selves. What had been a cool, air-conditioned office moments earlier now pulsed with a group heartbeat. Getting ready. Getting organized.
Eve’s head swam, and she realized her senses had returned. The veil Michaels had thrown over her was gone—erased by whatever the hell had just happened.
The air itself vibrated with energy. She staggered a little and tottered to the bench to sit down. The reality of the cell hit her. Thick walls and sturdy locks that wouldn’t be persuaded. Claustrophobia gripped her, and she slowed her breathing, willing herself to calm down.
Just a little of the quintessence might help. She knew she couldn’t afford to let it take her over. Now was not the time to lose control, but she needed to know what was going on.
She sucked in a deep breath and focused on her core, allowing the thinnest ribbon of energy to escape and take a tendril of her consciousness with it, out beneath the door and through the thin glass of the window. The air was full of static, the natural wavelengths and rhythms she experienced before, disrupting the world to make it hazy and out of focus. The frustration of it made her itch.
She seethed that Michaels had locked her in a cell and scratched at her arms, finding the raised welts of Lucien’s mark there.
When she’d first seen them, Eve had been pissed off that Lucien had dared to draw more runes on her uninvited and then failed to tell her about them. Now she was glad. Now she understood. Michaels didn’t play by the rules either. Lucien was matching him like for like. He was protecting her from him. Did Michaels really think that he could keep them apart forever?
She paced the short length of her cell like a caged bear. She needed to run. She needed space and air. She needed to feel the sun on her skin. The density of the walls closed in around her, suffocating, cold and dark.
Lucien will come for me.
Suddenly, she knew it. A feeling that was growing stronger with every heartbeat like a beacon. Lucien was coming. Now that the veil had been lifted, he would know where she was. She could sense it.
Eve held her forearm up to the light and traced the outline of his glyph on her skin. Her initial indignation at its presence now replaced with a cool calm. It was reassuring—not beautiful and glittering like the others but a ward of protection, surely? In the night before’s ritual, she had claimed him with her own mark. This rune was the promise of him claiming her, too.
It was warm to the touch.
Very close now.
A smile crept to Eve’s lips at the sound of the lock turning and when the door swung open, he was standing there, a wry smile on his face, his hands tucked casually into the pockets of his suit trousers. The police officer beside him wore the blank expression of someone uncertain about their purpose there.
Lucien stretched out one hand to Eve, his face triumphant. “Ready to go?” he said.
Eve beamed and rushed to embrace him. He had come like she’d known he would. “Abso-fucking-lutely,” she said. “Get me out of here.”
Lucien laughed richly and bent to kiss her full on the lips. Eve’s senses exploded. Waves of energy rolled through her body. The electrical barrier that stood between them fizzed and cracked, lifting goosebumps in shockwaves that ran over her chest to pluck her nipples into hard nubs and brushed over her stomach into her crotch. Her hair stood out at the root all over her body. She wanted Lucien like she’d wanted no other man. To feel his hands on her skin would make everything alright. He had to be destined for her. He had to be her Elham.
She projected the idea of them making love into his mind, of him tearing off her clothes right there in the doorway, and Lucien laughed some more. Then he was pushing back into her thoughts, replaying their dance in the Hellfire Club, walking up the thin fabric of her dress and pushing his hand beneath the lace of her underwear to caress her. Eve moaned at the remembered feeling and Lucien laughed again.
“Soon,” he said, “My darling. Soon, all barriers between us will be gone forever.” He released his embrace and slipped out of her mind. Eve shuddered and blinked away the spin in her head. She needed him to touch her. He took her hand and pulled her forward out of the cell.
“The paperwork is complete,” Lucien said to the befuddled officer, and Eve felt his words take shape in the hazy edges of her consciousness. He was dropping the thoughts directly into the officer’s mind.
“All done,” the officer said with a smile.
“We are free to go,” Lucien stated, and the officer raised one hand to bid him farewell. He opened the outer door and the pair of them strode out into the corridor.
A nervous giggle escaped Eve’s mouth. The thrill of escape made her giddy. Michaels had been so smug about locking her up, but Lucien had breezed in and whisked her away with laughable ease. She squeezed his hand and Lucien took the lead, pulling her forward, out of the main door and on to the street.
“Where’s Michaels?” Eve asked. Having gone to so much trouble to make sure she’d been hidden away; it was weird that he hadn’t been there to stop her leaving. “And how did you do that?”
Lucien cricked his neck and surveyed the scene. “Mortals are laughably easy to control. And Michaels is busy.” He rolled his shoulders backward and flexed his neck again. The shadow of something huge and black flickered behind him.
“What is that, Lucien?”
“The Devil is aways behind me, Eve. With your help, I’m going to shake him off. Michaels too.”
“What do you mean? Where is he?”
“I’ve given him a little job to do. So nice for it to be the other way around for a change.” Lucien’s voice was rich with confidence, the words rolling off his tongue. “You and I have other priorities.” He ran his finger along her jaw and Eve’s back arched reflexively.
“Yes.” The yearning for him almost made it impossible to think about anything else. Jolts of desire fueled her body. The world seemed strange. The street outside the police station was oddly still. Eve looked around them.
“The city’s power is out,” Lucien explained, “The result of my gift to Michaels. It’s not just you and I that will be set free today.”
The people milling around on the street were like lost children, determinedly tapping at the phones that would not work. The interiors of shops were dim, despite the daylight hour and people stood about, confused. How reliant everyone was on power.
Power. Eve’s skin tingled.
A soft breeze swept through the streets, carrying with it a faint scent of roses and damp earth. The boundaries between the mundane and the supernatural blurred. She hadn’t dared to let the quintessence truly free, but the way she was experiencing everything had changed. All her sensations were magnified now beyond imaging. She noticed the greater array of colors and the subtle differences in air temperature as the breeze ebbed and flowed.
The pendent hung around her neck throbbed against her chest, slowly pulsating with her heartbeat. Magnifying. Amplifying.
“We’re going to end this, Eve,” Lucien said. “The stars are literally aligned. Today is the day to break their binding.”
“You actually think that you know how?”
Lucien smiled and the golden prisms in his eyes drew Eve ever further in. “Come,” he said.