Chapter Seventy-Three
Nicole
NICOLE HAD LESS THAN HALF AN HOUR BEFORE HER HUNT, and she couldn’t do it.
Not now she knew who the target was.
Killing them would destroy her mother’s carefully-laid plans, and one of her family’s main ways of stopping the Wake.
Which meant she needed a new plan.
Fast.
Nicole was escorted back out into the corridor to a stone-faced Kyan. This time, though, they didn’t put the blindfold on her. She took him in with the pristine white hallway. He looked formidable, every inch the stoic, dangerous hunter she’d first believed him to be.
His quick, assessing glance down her body and to the arm thankfully still unscarred communicated enough:
Are you okay? Did they hurt you?
She couldn’t allow her eyes to soften even a fraction, but hoped he could read the message in the blink she gave him. I’m all right.
He still shot a look to the Empyreals either side of her.
‘I need to get the kit for a hunt,’ she said.
Kyan’s momentary stillness revealed his surprise. He masked it by nodding slightly. ‘I’ll take her.’
The Empyreals glanced at each other but let Kyan go ahead. Nicole hid her relief. Their acquiescence was working. If they were able to move relatively freely, they were more able to get out.
Nicole followed silently, scoping out the tall, clinical corridor and its dark floors as Kyan led her into a small mess hall.
The starkness was as much of a surprise as the mission she’d been given.
After all this artistic conspiracy, after secrets steeped in art and hearing of Irish Demon Gods, she’d expected …
more. More internal iconography, more luxury.
But then, would that make for more well-adjusted Empyreals who might want their own spaces? Their own things?
Three Empyreals were inside, all of whom did a double take when they realised she was there. They looked between her and Kyan as he started straight through to a doorway on the opposite side of the room.
‘Don’t you want to introduce us?’ one asked. He was tall and in his mid-twenties. His skin was a brown so light it looked golden and his short hair had a tight curl.
‘Maybe later, Leo, she’s got a mission,’ Kyan said.
‘A mission?’ piped up one of the others. This one was sitting on one of the tables, a boot up on the attached bench. His head tilted, his longer wavy hair coming to his chin, shadowing his warm brown skin, slight stubble covering his jaw.
‘How’s that work?’ Leo asked, examining Nicole more closely.
‘You an Empyreal, honey?’ asked the Empyreal behind them. ‘Akira will be pleased there’s another girl around here.’ He chuckled, but there was a note of curiosity in it.
And curiosity wasn’t always a good thing.
It led to suspicion. It led to questions.
Nicole shot him a look over her shoulder. She warred between making herself seem small and non-threatening or showing a little of that calm huntress, and chose the former. She looked up at Kyan, skirting closer to him.
Everyone needed to underestimate her.
‘This way,’ Kyan said, hand hovering behind Nicole’s back as he brushed past Leo and guided her across the room.
The murmuring started before they left the room and Nicole forced herself not to look at Kyan to get a read on how he felt about the others. The ones that had kidnapped them hadn’t had nearly that much personality. Because they were more influenced by the Wake’s leaders?
The sound behind them muted when they passed into the next corridor. Everyone here had heightened hearing, yet it wasn’t soundproofed. Evidently, they didn’t even have total privacy when they closed their doors.
This hallway was lined with rooms. There were no numbers or locks on the doors, though. Barely anything to distinguish them, until Nicole realised they were bedrooms. And one, just one, drew her with the faintest scent of Kyan. She stopped.
‘What is this?’ Nicole asked.
She stepped inside.
Kyan followed and leaned against the doorway, tracking his gaze around the small room as if confused.
‘This is where I sleep.’
Her throat went hot with a sudden, shocked rage at the slim space and narrow cot-like bed. It was more like a white prison cell.
This was what they gave him?
This was what they’d forced him to believe was all he could have? No real things, or an actual home? The Liverpool townhouse was more a place he kept for Biróg, a remnant of his time there. He didn’t live there. Instead, this cold, barren little room was his normal lodgings—
‘The bed doesn’t even look big enough for you.’
He looked at it, at her, then stepped inside and dropped his voice very low. ‘You’re upset?’
‘You don’t have any things,’ she whispered, scanning a small, plain dresser.
His eyes softened. ‘I don’t need any.’
I’ll get you anything you want. The words were near snarled in her mind and she had to force herself not to say them.
She couldn’t do things like that, not here.
But she could feel them, with every part of her that had come to feel so much for him. This was no place to live. Not with an organisation over his head and an oath carved into his arm.
‘We have places to stay in each city in the world,’ he said, voice a normal volume again, as if taking her on a tour.
The heat of his hand brushed her wrist as he slipped something into her fingers. She kept her face impassive despite her confusion at the strange, woven texture. It felt like—
She realised what it was as he turned to leave, his wrist now bare of the woven bracelet he’d worn since he could remember. Her fingers tightened around it, chest tight as she watched him shoulder out and they headed through another doorway into the next corridor.
This one was lined with shelves, the open racks revealing clothes – dark jackets, masks, trousers, and boots – and a few weapons.
Rooms were attached, one with a bank of screens inside and a few techs scanning the many CCTV cameras.
What looked to be fake IDs, car keys, and other mission-related necessities were laid out on one side.
‘I’ll see if I can find you something,’ Kyan said, and she relaxed at the thought of this taking a bit longer. Maybe they wouldn’t have anything in her size and she could form more of a plan now she knew her target was—
‘No need,’ a tech interrupted, swivelling in their chair. ‘Her clothes are there.’
Dread slid through Nicole’s stomach as she looked at the neat pile.
If they had her measurements, they’d had eyes on her for longer than either Kyan or she had suspected.
‘Is there a bathroom to change?’ Nicole asked, fighting a rush of dread.
‘Oh.’ The tech looked suddenly uncertain. ‘Yeah, but there’s just one for the barracks.’
Nicole took her new clothes and black boots and followed Kyan back to a large shower room. Thankfully there was no one else inside, so she dragged him in and hurried to turn on all the taps and showers, the sound of the rushing water drowning out their conversation.
Kyan was beside her momentarily, lips at her ear to speak as quietly as he could. ‘If you get the chance, just run, they might send me back out for you—’
‘I can’t, they’re sending Alexander with me. And what if they don’t send you or you come looking? You think they’ll let you off?’
‘It doesn’t matter what happens to me.’
‘Yes it does.’ The Wake had taken everything from him. They’d stripped him down so he could only embrace one side of himself: the hunter.
The hound.
She wasn’t going to let him sacrifice himself too. Even if she wanted to be safe. Even if she knew he could.
She wanted him alive. She wanted him free.
And if he did something while she was gone to get himself in trouble, she had no idea how she’d be able to get him out of here.
‘It does,’ Nicole said again. ‘It matters to me. Your worth isn’t tied to how well you protect others, Kyan. Everyone deserves to live a life of their choosing, to be safe. You’re a good person; you’re worthy of lov—’
Love.
Her love.
Her heart was racing, and she knew he could feel it, hear it.
But it looked like his heart was breaking in his eyes. ‘Mo ghrá—’
‘Where’s the girl?’ barked someone from the next room.
‘I’ll find out what they know,’ Kyan said, eyes clearing with a new kind of fierceness. ‘I have a meeting with one of the heads of the Wake. If I find out who it is, I’ll know exactly who we’re working with.’
I’ll get you out of here, his gaze promised.
He touched her hand briefly then dipped back out. The strength of her emotions as she watched him go near tore her insides to shreds.
The moment she was alone, nerves rushed in like a riptide.
Nicole wound his bracelet around her wrist and changed into her new things, unnerved to find the tactical gear fit like a glove, her palms tingling with cold sweat.
She hesitated over her own clothes; what to do with them.
There was a large bin to the side of the room, as if encouraging her to dispose of a part of herself – the one connection she had to her family and a symbol of actually being able to leave this place once she’d completed the mission.
Nicole kept hold of the clothes as she turned off the water, then caught her reflection in the line of mirrors above the sinks and braided her hair slowly, wishing Kyan could have done it.
Dark hair, dark eyes, dark clothes. And a new flicker of determination that crooned to the huntress within. She couldn’t use her Empyrean power with this mission, but she could use its attributes: its calm, its senses. She just needed to embody them more. No smothering.
She’d need every tool she possessed to figure out how to get around this.
When she came back out, Kyan was boot-to-boot with one of the Empyreals that had dragged them into the Wake.
‘She’s untrained,’ he was saying. ‘She can’t kill without her powers. I should take the mission—’
‘She’ll do what they’ve told her to do.’
‘You’d risk her being spotted and possibly exposing us?’
‘That’s why she’ll be using a knife,’ they said with an unamused smile. ‘That way, if she gets caught, it looks just like a violent human attack and not a supernatural one.’
One of the techs handed her a knife.
Light danced down its violent silver blade, the handle thick and black.
Her fingers tightened around it as her eyes flickered up at the commanding Empyreal.
‘Where’s my jacket?’
Kyan grabbed it off the tech, who promptly busied themselves back at their console.
The other Empyreal smirked and swaggered into the tech room, discussing something with some of the staff.
Nicole sheathed the knife into the thigh pocket of her new, form-fitting trousers and took the jacket. Her body bumped Kyan’s for a moment. And in his eyes – everything.
Everything and more.
Her throat grew tight.
‘You know how to kill something with a knife?’ he asked.
‘No,’ she lied.
‘Aim for the jugular; the carotid. Right here.’ He pointed to his neck, below the ear. ‘If they’re too tall, try the inside of the thigh. Either will do.’
She swallowed.
She was doing this for him as well as her. For her mother; her family.
Because he deserved to have someone to protect him the way he protected everyone else.
She wished she could kiss him goodbye, but it was impossible. Dangerous.
Forbidden.
She found herself suddenly panicked at the thought of not saying something more.
‘I’ll be fine,’ she mouthed.
Of course you will, his eyes seemed to say. I’ve seen you in action.
Her lips quirked up, even as her stomach shimmered with unease.
And then he winked at her.
It was such a surprise her lips curved up.
‘She’s ready,’ Kyan announced to the others before asking, ‘Who’s your mark?’
Nicole took a deep breath, put her hand on her knife, and summoned all the attributes of the huntress within. ‘The descendant of úaithne.’