Chapter 10 #4
"No!" Rin exclaimed, flinching when her voice echoed off the silent stone around them. "No," she said much quieter. "Now come on. Let’s hurry." She caught his eye. "And remember, leave the talking to me."
Cyrus pinched his lips together and hummed, waving her onward.
The red light of the emergency sign bathed them in a momentary glow as they passed under it. The sliding glass doors opened with a whoosh, letting out a cool gust of air conditioning that broke up the stuffy night air of the city.
The waiting room was quiet, only a lonesome man sitting in the corner.
His back was to her, so she couldn’t see his face, but his dark hair fell into his eyes as he turned the pages of a book in his hands.
He wore a long, black trench coat. Odd. It was way too hot for that.
Rin dismissed him—she doubted he’d be trouble.
The receptionist glanced up. "Can I help you?"
Rin dug her identification out of the pocket of her coat and showed it to her. "I’m here on Hunter business."
The woman’s brows knitted, and she glanced at the phone on the counter, hesitating. "I wasn’t aware of an issue. Certainly not one for a trainee to deal with."
"Classified," Rin bluffed. "We’re here on the order of Director Ilsa, of Alpha Team." God, Rin hoped this didn’t bite her in the ass.
Nervous hesitation flickered across the receptionist’s face. "Alpha Team. Oh. Of course." Alpha Team had quite a reputation for being filled with ruthless trainees. She reached for the keypad for the doors that led to the halls. The doors slid open, and she waved them in.
Rin inclined her head as she passed by. "Thank you."
As she and Cyrus entered the halls, the doors slid shut behind her. Cyrus nudged her with his elbow. "Good job."
"Shut up," Rin replied, quickly diving down a hall when two nurses dressed in flower-printed scrubs walked by, chatting as one looked down at a clipboard.
She followed the signs posted on the walls, heading for the elevator.
She knew a private stairwell would be nearby.
Her boots clicked on the pristine tiled floors, her reflection shimmering back up at her.
Dark coat, skin-tight black pants, and white hair, pulled back from her face in a low ponytail.
Behind her, Cyrus was imposing, a red strand of hair peeking out from his hood.
His hands were shoved in the pockets of dark-wash jeans.
The silver of the elevators ahead made her pause. "Look for a sign that says staff-only," she murmured to Cyrus.
He tapped her shoulder, pointing behind her to a plain white door, a sign posted that said, Keep Out. Staff Stairwell.
Rin smirked, jerking her head toward it. Just in time, too, because the elevator doors slid open, a collection of weary doctors and staff pouring out, as the door shut behind her and Cyrus.
Atlas placed the book down on the small table next to the chair in the hospital waiting room. The dark blue vinyl of the chair crinkled under him as he stood.
The receptionist glanced toward him, eyes glazing. "Can I help you, sir?"
Atlas placed his palms on the desk, tilting his head. "Open the doors," he demanded lowly.
In a daze, she reached for the keypad, and the doors opened.
He smiled and left, the hem of his black coat fluttering behind him. Vesperin should be grateful. If it weren’t for him, weaving the webs of fate just so, the receptionist never would have bent so easily to her clear bluff.
He loved his Vesperin dearly, but she was not a good liar.
The flashlight between Rin’s teeth lit the papers strewn on the floor before her.
Cyrus was by her side, flipping through stacks of documents with much more care than she was.
Rin was past the point of giving a fuck. Too much was on the line.
She walked on her knees to a file cabinet, rattling the handle when it wouldn’t budge.
"Now who’s being loud?" Cyrus whispered, holding a thick stack of papers up to the light, shifting when her erratic movements made the strip of the flashlight sway.
She rolled her eyes, her lips wrapped around the end of the flashlight, stopping her from responding. In the low light, she watched as his purple eyes dipped to her mouth.
Trying the handle one last time, she growled lowly when it gave way, revealing a stack of perfectly organized documents.
She flicked through the tabs, skimming past last names of patients, and pulling some out at random, reading completely normal patient charts.
Nothing out of the ordinary. Rin pulled the flashlight free from her lips, holding it in her lap as she sat on the floor of Lucien’s office, her legs askew, shoulders slumped.
"This is useless," she whispered. "We’re never going to find anything. Maybe the documents from the Soul Searcher were falsified…"
Cyrus laid a folder back on Lucien’s desk, turning it just so to match how he had found it. "But why? That doesn’t make any sense, Ves. You said the Soul Searcher acted odd. What if he…"
Cyrus trailed off, and Rin rolled her bottom lip between her teeth, deep in thought as she watched the dust catch in the beam of her flashlight.
He went back to sifting through documents, not really knowing what he was looking for, Rin knew. This felt like a fool’s errand, but something kept her going. Lucien couldn’t be bad, could he?
Rin let her eyelids drift closed as she thought.
She had known Lucien her whole life. Where would he hide something that he didn’t want to be found?
He was meticulous and organized. And almost too smart.
He wouldn’t leave something out for anyone to stumble upon, but he also loved to keep things near him.
She thought of his apartment, how his favorite mug wasn’t set on the counter, where just anyone could see it, but was kept on the far back of the top shelf—close, but not too close.
Right before Rin opened her eyes, she felt a shiver of awareness cascade down her spine.
She swallowed, somehow knowing what she would find before she looked.
Opening her eyes, in the soft beam of the light held in a limp hand, illuminating the space under the desk, she saw the shape of fingers, reaching for the light at the end where the beam grew larger.
Her lips parted, and she looked to Cyrus, finding his red hair falling into his eyes as he bent over a notebook, thumbing through it with his sensuous lips downturned at the corners.
Rin reached for the shadow-like fingers, the flashlight warming her hand. The shape of the fingers stilled, hovering there in the light, and she cocked her head, mouthing, "Is that you, my shadow?"
The shadowed fingers drifted up—the shape of a man’s hands.
A long, shadowy finger pointed, and she followed it, finding the shadow directing her to Lucien’s desk.
"I’ve already looked there," she whispered.
The finger moved, as if urging her. "Do you want me to look again?" She found herself kneeling forward, the flashlight still held in her hands so the shadow would not leave her. She crawled on her hands and knees to Lucien’s desk, a sense of undeniable peace filling her as her knee brushed the fingertips—or maybe the fingertips reached for her, first. She didn’t know.
Rin’s finger skimmed up the underside of the desk. She had already looked in every drawer, so maybe there was something hidden. As she knocked lightly against the sides, a hollow thud made her pause. She knocked again, hearing a faint jostling sound.
"Cy, I think I’ve got something." His nickname slipped off her lips in the heat of the moment. He came to her side, his shoulder pressing into hers as he bent. His breath warmed her cheek. It was intimate. At the top of Lucien’s desk, there was a drawer, and underneath was a hollowed-out space.
Rin tapped a finger on it. "I think there’s a hidden compartment here or something.
" Her fingers skimmed along it until she felt a groove.
"Here." Cyrus nudged her aside gently with his shoulder. "Let me."
"What are you—" She broke off when blue tendrils of water twirled at his fingertips. The trickling noise of the water sounded far too loud in the hushed room.
Cyrus winked at her as he twisted his hand, and the water flowed in a lazy stream from his fingertips until it swept underneath a crack in the desk. There was a faint popping noise, like a lock being broken, and a hidden drawer slid out.
Rin stared at the incubus. "How did you do that?"
Cyrus called his water back to him, but not before a tiny droplet curled over her cheek, leaving only the impression of wetness on her skin. He fluttered his fingers. "I’m good with my hands. Trick of the trade. Any time you want a more personal demonstration, you know where to find me, doll."
"I—stay focused," she warned, hands shaking slightly as her fingers crept inside the drawer. Inside, she found a stack of papers, but nothing else.
Rin pulled the top sheet from the stack. Cyrus took the flashlight from her so her hands could be free. She couldn’t stop trembling.
"I’m scared," she whispered, hands shaking too hard to hold the paper steady. "What if… he’s bad?"
The incubus wrapped his arm around her, not giving her any time to speak a rebuttal. She breathed him in—berries and something that might’ve been like home. "Then he’s bad," said Cyrus, "and you’ll never have to see him again if you don’t want to."
"You make it sound so easy."
He hummed, the sound rippling through her. "It is. If he’s ever hurt you, I won’t let him near you." What went unspoken was what would happen if Lucien hadn’t hurt her.
Rin wanted to ask how this incubus could be so uncaring that her heart was clearly wrapped up in another, but she held her tongue and stared down at the papers.
Subject 371, Subject 372, Subject 373… She traced over the words, a pit in her gut. A column at the side read even more numbers that she didn’t quite understand. Blood pressure readings, heart rate fluctuations, and was that…