Chapter 28
Nicco only stumbles back, cowering from all three of us. “They warned me you might come. Warned me I was not to speak to you. You need to go now, for your own safety.”
They. They who?
I cut my gaze to Deacon. He’s assessing me, jaw clenched in thought, eyes frosty. He knows I was right to push. To admit who we are to Nicco. “You find her for me first, yes?”
I nod, solemn. I’ll do the best I can.
“If not, the moment you’re free of your curse, I’ll kill you myself.”
“I know that,” I snarl.
“No, not just you,” he says, inching closer, as if he doesn’t believe his threats work on me anymore. “All your goonies. Even the blonde.”
Ward’s head snaps to Deacon, but he remains silent.
“I’ll find Odette first,” I bite out.
Deacon only glares. Gone is the man who I felt any kinship with the other night in the lagoon.
I could kick myself for thinking there was something more than a self-serving felon beneath those icy-blue eyes.
He told me as much this morning. He said to stop looking for morality within him. And he was right.
The twisted part is that I really would have helped him.
Even if this djinn has some relic that could remove the spell in my back, I would have waited a week.
Two. Tried to dream up this woman he longs for.
The Deacon from the Fickle Thicket—the one who wanted so desperately to save her—he was almost…
noble. But this version of Deacon who towers over me now…
He’s nothing more than a bully. And I’m not about to fork over my hard-earned lunch money.
He just doesn’t have to know that yet. “I’ll find her,” I repeat.
It’s enough for Deacon. He leaves me to prowl over to Nicco. A chill gutters through the room. “I thought after all these years you’d know better than to hide something from me.”
“I’m trying to protect you,” Nicco says through chattering teeth. “I can’t explain any further, but trust me when I say—”
“What’s the item?” I demand. “A charm? An amulet?”
“You have to leave—”
“Ward,” Deacon drawls, bored, “help Nicco find his tongue, will you?”
Ward shifts in a heartbeat—flesh becoming golden fur as lush as fields of wheat in the summertime. Fingers morphing into claws of sharpened bone. He takes two intent steps toward the whimpering, sputtering Nicco.
But two steps is all he gets before Nicco too transforms.
I stagger back, limbs bloodless. No, no, no—
Gone is the terrible comb-over, the sport coat, the pudgy cheeks.
Nicco sprouts nearly five feet taller, cresting the roof of the office.
His skin glows an extraterrestrial green, his eyes blinking white and pupilless.
With a vicious clash, the mighty beasts go flying into a wall of photos heralding the perfect burger.
“Shit,” I gasp, reaching for my blades.
But Deacon is faster. He throws himself between Nicco and his friend without even taking on his demon form. The iron-rich smell of werewolf blood fills the room as he and Ward are both tossed to the desk, clattering clean over it and taking the computer with them.
Nicco, eyes aglow, spindly limbs like incandescent branches of a possessed tree, whirls on me. I almost lunge for him before making the split-second decision to tackle the rising Ward and Deacon instead.
“Stay down,” I grunt as all three of us land in a heap on the floor. “He’s not violent. He’s doing as commanded.”
“Looks pretty fucking violent to me,” Ward growls through fanged teeth. Something wet spreads on my hands, and when I peer down I find a shard of broken wood from the desk impaled in his leg.
“I’m sorry,” Nicco mutters from the other side of the broken desk. “I’m so sorry. Please forgive me. I tried to warn you—”
Nicco, combed-over once more, cowers before us.
His cheeks are wet with exertion, a shell of the glowing monster that just tossed two of the strongest deviants I know around like stuffed animals.
And worse than Jekyll and Hyde, Nicco knows exactly who he is.
What he is capable of. What he cannot control.
A deviant unlike any I’ve seen before. I wonder why my skin doesn’t light up in his presence.
Deacon helps a human-again Ward stand. When he finds his footing, he yanks the piece of wood from his thigh and the wound gushes blood. Ward sways, grasping a filing cabinet for support.
“Motherfucker,” Deacon growls, voice a deadly promise.
My blood heats. “Don’t hurt him—”
“It was an accident,” Nicco pleads, getting down onto his knees.
“Just—” I put a hand up to Deacon. “Give me one sec.” While Ward slides his pants back on, I use my dagger to cut a strip of my T-shirt free and tie it tightly above his wound.
“Thanks, Snow White,” Ward breathes, smiling even now.
“The tourniquet will only stanch the bleeding.”
“I’ll survive.”
But werewolves don’t heal like demons do. One of many reasons why demons sit atop the deviant food chain. Ward needs stitches. Or Baz’s blood. Deacon watches us with eyes like a hawk.
“Now, Nicco.” I crouch before him on the floor. “If you want to live, you need to start talking. Your master wished that you would…what? Stop anyone who tried to physically take this item from you?”
He nods, despondent. All gangster bravado from earlier gone. I almost regret the punch.
“Is it here? In your possession?”
“No, not for years.”
“Who is your master?”
Nicco shakes his head.
“Your master’s wishes prohibit you from saying.”
Nicco nods slowly. I feel like I’m playing life-or-death Password.
“Tell us everything you can.” I lower my voice and add, “And I will try to convince the White Stag to spare your life.”
Nicco sniffs until he’s composed. Then his red-ringed eyes find mine. “Years ago, my master wished for me to deliver to them something. Something I cannot speak of.”
“We’ve got ways of working around that,” Deacon says. When I turn, his eyes shine with brutality.
“He physically can’t speak of it. Because of the wish.” I turn back to Nicco. “Right?”
The djinn nods and I push him further. “Keep going.”
“That was their first wish. Their second, that I never allow another buyer to find said item. That I guard its location with my life. With the full extent of my powers. They never asked a third wish of me, to keep me as theirs for all time.”
To keep Nicco protecting the location of the relic, whatever it is. “How long ago was this?”
“Centuries.”
Man, everyone is so much older than they look. “And you can’t tell me what it’s called?”
Nicco shakes his head emphatically.
“What about the kind of item? Is it a necklace, a chalice, an amulet, a ring—”
The sweaty djinn’s eyes go wide. But he cuts his gaze away from me.
A ring.
The band lights the attic.
A band could be a ring.
The mermaid had seen my scar and risked the Citadel’s wrath to tell me what might free me of my syrabraxa. Maybe so I could free her.
His voice is pleading as he says, “I’m sorry I can’t help you anymore. Please, spare me. I didn’t mean to hurt your werewolf.”
“But you did,” Deacon says. “And the hefty price on that rare item is your greasy little head.”
I stand quickly and find my chin leveled with Deacon’s chest. “You can’t hurt him.
He’s a victim. Whoever his master is—probably the High Thane for all we know—made him like this.
And he helped us today.” I turn back to Nicco, eyes pleading.
“You can never tell a soul we were here. That we were together. Do you hear me? If we find out you said anything to anyone, this man will roast you on a spit.”
“I swear,” Nicco says, tears brimming. “I’ve made a living keeping people’s secrets. You have my word.”
“Doesn’t matter.” Deacon’s eyes stay trained on Nicco. “You don’t harm my people. Intentionally or otherwise. Rules are rules.”
There’s that stupid code I’d wondered about. Why couldn’t it be honor among thieves?
“Cernunnos,” Ward sighs with a wince. “I’m fine.” I get the feeling this isn’t the first time they’ve had an argument like this. I’d almost call it sweet if Deacon wasn’t threatening someone’s life.
I rack my brain for the right approach here. I can’t physically stop him from hurting Nicco. But I also cannot have this be the third straight time Deacon and I leave a dead body in our wake. Exhausted and coming up empty for ideas, I opt for honesty. “What can I say to change your mind?”
He cuts a glance sidelong to Ward, who shrugs as if to say he really is fine. Then he makes a weighing face and glares back down at me.
Wrong move. For sure, I’ve made the wrong move. I know it as soon as Deacon’s pale eyes pool with heat. A new mouse for him to circle from the skies. He folds his tattooed arms across his chest. “Admit I was right, and I’ll let him live.”
“Right about what?” But when he unleashes that criminal half grin, I know what he means.
I think you want me.
I’ve undermined him in front of Nicco. This is his revenge. “Are you ten years old? That’s the most—”
Deacon’s fingers shift into scaled claws the color of white ash, and he prowls past me toward a cowering Nicco, who scuttles back, trying to become one with the filing cabinet, unable to defend himself unless someone he’s indebted to wishes for it. Deacon raises his glinting claw—
“Fine!” I shout. “Fine.”
He doesn’t turn. “Say it.”
My god. This is worse than immature. This is a form of torture. I inhale and release the breath. “You’re attractive.” Silence rents the room. “There. Happy? You egomaniac nutcase.”
Deacon turns to face me, mouth twisting as he weighs my offering. His eyes give nothing away.
I fight the urge to squirm. “I find you attractive.”
Deacon presses a sleek claw to his lips in thought. He looks at Ward as if to say, Do we buy this? But I don’t dare turn to see if Ward finds my humiliation amusing. A beat later Deacon says, “I just don’t think that’s going to be good enough,” and moves for Nicco.
“What do you want me to say?! That I fantasize about you?”
That stops him in his tracks.
And I’m so angry, so annoyed at Reid’s absence and my own conflicted feelings and Deacon’s ridiculous, inappropriate abuse of power and constant callousness and perversions, that I decide he deserves to be just as mortified as I feel right now.
“I’ve thought about you.” I brace myself.
“I’ve thought about you when I should have been thinking about your brother. ”
Ward sucks in a breath. Nicco looks between Deacon and me like shit just got interesting.
Deacon, for his part, appears a little stunned. But he recovers quickly. “Now, was that so hard—”
“I’ve touched myself, Deacon. Pictured your hands.
Your tongue.” Perhaps I’ve gone too far, because Deacon’s face shifts to something unimpressed.
Like he knows he’s being mocked. But for better or for worse, I know him well enough to find a way to reel him back in.
I take a single step toward him, my heart racing for no good reason.
None of this is true, and yet…“After that night at the Manor, when we watched that couple…After you told James what it’s like between us…
” I lower my voice. “I find myself repeating your name late at night. Deacon,” I moan quietly.
“Yes, Deacon. Bend me over. Harder, please.”
When Deacon closes his eyes, I know I’ve won.
Triumph pulls my body tight.
“Fuck,” Deacon growls. When his eyes split open, unmistakable need swells within them. Red and bright and heavy. His claws shift back to flesh, all plans of violence forgotten, and he reaches one hand for me, his breath stalled in his lungs—
But I just take a step backward, allowing my expression to turn stony.
Everything in his face shudders with dark realization. “Vivienne.”
My lips twitch. “Deacon.”
What I’d give for a photo of this moment. I’d title it: Gotcha.
“A deal’s a deal,” I say, turning to offer Ward my elbow. “We’ll give you a minute to wind down.”
“You’re almost as sick as he is,” Ward mutters, slinging an arm around my neck. I help him limp around the shattered frames and bits of broken desk. We’re nearly at the door when Deacon calls out, “Was any of that true?”
“Not a word,” I shout back.
The last sound I hear is Deacon’s fist hitting flesh as he knocks out a chuckling Nicco.