Chapter Seventy
Nicole
NICOLE LEFT DR KANER’S OFFICE ON UNSTEADY LEGS.
‘I’ll be there in a minute,’ Kyan reported on the phone, shouts and honks sounding from his end as he no doubt shoved past anyone in his way.
She could tell from the sound of his voice that he was more than stressed, he was furious.
But she couldn’t comprehend what had happened.
Alexander hadn’t tried to kill her, that much she knew, otherwise he would have thrown her across the room and broken her neck. No, he’d tried to make her pass out.
Her fingers reached up for her throat.
Her Empyreal power hadn’t saved her. A slightly wild human historian with an ancient knife had. She almost laughed at the absurdity, at the relief. She owed that damn woman anything she wanted.
But the panic merged with guilt. So many people who had helped them or been involved in this had died.
Westmoore.
Verin.
What if Dr Kaner was next?
What if Alexander got to her family?
What if he wrapped that hand around their throats until blackness danced in their vision and she wasn’t there to stop him—
They were supposed to still have time. Why had the Wake sent him ahead of Kyan’s deadline?
Suddenly there was no air. She was breathing and there was no air – where was the air? She heard a strange wheezing sound and felt an awful pressure in her chest, getting worse and worse.
Panic danced around her skull.
‘Nicole,’ came Kyan’s voice and she reached for him blindly though he wasn’t there yet. ‘Nicole, I need you to try and take a breath.’
‘I can’t—’ she gasped.
She knew she was built to kill, that technically that was the main reason for her existence, but the thought of more death made her want to sob and not stop. Threatened to unzip that panic she’d stuffed back in her chest.
She forced herself to think, to scan the swimming street.
Then a hand gripped her arm and three large SUVs pulled up in front of her.
Alexander.
Before she could even rip away, something slammed into Alexander so hard, he staggered back several steps.
Kyan.
The snarl he let out wasn’t human. ‘Hands off. Do you want to tell me what the fuck is going on here? How you’re alive?’
Another Empyreal emerged from the central car. He was slimmer than the other two, with a buzz cut somewhere between blond and brown and a smirk on his mouth. ‘Kyan. What a surprise. Don’t bother with the big one here, he doesn’t speak.’
Alexander did little but stare him down, and Nicole’s pulse beat rapidly, taking up all her attention, all her brain power.
They’ve found me—
She raced through every midnight scenario she’d ever rehearsed. But the SUVs were reinforced and they were surrounded. That, they could have fought. But the Wake had a weapon she’d never prepared for. The Huntbringer. He stared at them, all pure strength and a lack of humanity.
‘What’s going on?’ Kyan demanded.
The unfamiliar Empyreal continued. ‘We came to collect this one.’ He nodded a chin at Nicole. ‘The Wake felt like you were taking long enough.’
‘I found her, I bring her in.’
She looked around, desperate for an answer, for someone to notice this. But the humans around them continued on their way, no doubt thanks to the gear that all the Empyreals were wearing. They walked on as if nothing life-changing was happening on the side of this university’s cobbled street.
She almost wanted to scream at them to look, and yet art had been showing them truths for centuries, and they hadn’t even blinked.
If they were going to get out of this, they needed a plan.
But seeing Kyan and Alexander together painted the Dante piece in to her mind in all its wicked, bloody glory. The threat of it. The awful thought that it represented Alexander killing Kyan.
He had already killed her mother: her epic, immortal, brilliant mother. What was to stop him doing the same thing to her?
Kyan had fought Logan to stop her getting taken and won. But this wasn’t one Empyreal. This was a mutated one stronger than they had ever seen and three others in the car.
If Kyan defended her like this, they’d know their relationship was more than it appeared, they’d know she and Kyan were lying. Would they be able to sense, or scent, the mate bond between them if Empyreals weren’t supposed to know that could happen?
‘I’ll come,’ Nicole found herself saying. ‘It’s fine. Kyan’s explained that new Empyreals get recruited. I understand.’
Let them think she didn’t know her mother’s secrets and was just a new Empyreal.
That she’d turned mere months ago to excuse the lack of a newly transformed scent.
Let it seem like she didn’t know anything more.
She was going to have to lie through her teeth, because the information they discovered wasn’t something she knew how to bargain with.
It was world-shaking truths.
It was gods and monsters and a conspiracy spanning thousands of years, but she had no way to threaten them with that.
She hated that it had happened this way, when she felt so bruised and unprepared. She had to pray the Wake didn’t realise she had anyone else. That they’d known about her thanks to her mother.
At least her family weren’t here. As long as they were safe back in Edinburgh awaiting the results of this meeting, she could find a way out of this.
If Kyan could get out of the Wake again and get the last few things they needed, then they could be free.
If they couldn’t, she’d be forced to do the unthinkable.
Kyan’s body flexed between them. His eyes, the hazel that had become so familiar with its flecks of forest green and Empyrean gold, landed on hers, asking her without a word, Are you sure about this?
If he fought them now, she didn’t know how they’d get out of it.
Perhaps while they were in the Wake, he could find some way to stop Alexander without the Gáe Bolg, reverse his transformation, or get enough of his blood that they could separate the goddessblood from it.
‘Phones,’ the other Empyreal said, interrupting her spiral.
It’ll keep the others safe, she thought. Kyan would be safe.
The decision was made for her when the phone was snatched from her grip.
Her mother’s words echoed in her head: ‘If one of the Wake’s Empyreals discovers that you’re also an Empyreal … what do you do?’
Run.
But there was nowhere to run now.
So Nicole allowed herself to be ushered into the Wake’s SUV with six stoic, deadly Empyreals, and be driven straight to them.