Chapter 36 #2
“Magna-blasts,” Robin corrected.
“Sure. Magna-blasts, magna-booms, and magna-we-might-be-in-deep-shit-if-half-the-SI-is-armed-with-these-things.”
“We’ll probably see more of those artifacts,” Darius said, “whether they originate from the SI or—”
The healer forcibly turned Darius’s head back to a neutral position. “Please hold still. I know you can’t feel it, but I am in fact sewing your flesh together. Maybe you should stop talking.”
Darius obeyed, and Robin returned her gaze to the dark window. Next to me, Lienna’s eyebrows were creased in an inscrutable expression.
A paradoxical brew of emotions percolated through my brain as my thoughts returned to Robin’s earlier question.
Would any of us get to resume our normal lives?
Lienna and I had been living every day of the past four months on the edge of the next moment—the next fight, the next plan, the next country, the next safe place to sleep.
It didn’t give us much room to think about the future.
About returning home or what that would look like.
I hadn’t thought I’d set foot on rain-soaked Vancouver soil before the Consilium was dead and gone, if ever.
Boarding a nonstop charter to YVR while Kade was still kicking and the SI was still doing Griva’s bidding hadn’t seemed remotely possible until Darius tossed me those van keys.
“Maybe things will go back to normal,” I murmured.
Lienna directed her frown at me. “What?”
“After we expose the Consilium,” I explained. “Blythe can get the charges against you dropped and your career back. I bet Darius can pull some strings too. It could all go back to normal for you.”
“And you?”
I exhaled sharply. “I murdered a guy in front of a gazillion MPD witnesses, so I think I’m doomed to a fugitive existence.”
Lienna’s jaw stiffened. “Well then, so am I.”
I shook my head. “That’s not—”
She grabbed my hand, cutting off my protest. “I can’t ‘go back to normal’ if you’re not a part of it because my normal is with you. Besides, I don’t think I want that old ‘normal.’”
I slipped my fingers between hers. “What do you mean?”
She straightened her shoulders, bracing herself for something. “I don’t think I want to be an MPD agent anymore.”
My mouth fell open. I hastily snapped it shut and tried to keep my tone light. “Has the romantic allure of the criminal lifestyle finally ensnared you?”
She rolled her eyes. “Not exactly. But it did give me a new perspective on things. On myself.”
I stayed quiet, watching her search for the right words.
“I was raised to be a rule-follower,” she said after a moment.
“The hazards of having a dad in the MPD, I guess. I never had to decide what was right or wrong for myself—the rules did that for me. The laws, the manuals, the orders from my superiors. It’s easy to see the world in black and white when everything is literally written in black and white in an MPD handbook. ”
I wanted to tell her she was being too hard on herself, but I had a strong sense that she needed me to give her the space to talk through her feelings.
“When I was given orders that broke the rules, when Captain Blythe told me to do something I knew violated protocol or wasn’t founded in evidence, gray areas started invading my black and white worldview.
” Her lips pressed into a flat line. “So I chose to follow orders because that was easier. But then Soze showed up, and I couldn’t do that anymore. ”
I nodded. “Your first taste of rebellion.”
“Yeah, and I was a mess,” she agreed, a small smile tugging at her mouth.
“Nothing made sense anymore. My rulebook had been destroyed. But for you, it seemed easy. You didn’t need anyone else to tell you what was right or wrong.
It made me so angry sometimes, and I thought it was because you broke all the rules, but it was actually because you were doing what I’d always wanted to do—you followed your own moral compass, no matter what anyone else said.
I think that’s part of the reason I fell in love with you. ”
And here I was thinking it was my baby blues and quick wit.
“The last thing I want is someone else dictating what’s right and wrong for me,” she concluded.
I quirked an eyebrow at her. “Including Blythe?”
She quirked an eyebrow right back at me. “Including you.”
Well, hot damn. I didn’t think I could love her any more, but my heart grew three sizes when she said that. I pulled her snugly against my side and tucked my face against her cheek.
“Whatever you do,” I said in her ear, strands of her hair teasing my nose, “I’ll be right there with you.”
“I know.”
The trill of an incoming call blared through the jet’s interior. And because Darius will forever be more badass than any man I’ve met, yes, he interrupted the suturing of his own gunshot wounds to get his healer to pass him his phone.
“Yes?” he answered as the healer resumed tying off her needlework. He listened for a few minutes, asked a few questions I couldn’t make out over the pervasive drone of engines, then ended the call. “Am I sewn up?”
“Yes.” The healer peeled off her gloves. “But you need to be careful with those stitches until you get the wounds fully healed.”
“My guild healer is on standby for my arrival.”
Nodding, she carried her tray of surgical tools toward the back of the plane, and Darius slowly pushed himself up.
His bare abdomen was a mess of blood, sterilizing potion, and bruising.
The two bullet wounds, neatly stitched, didn’t look that bad if you didn’t think about all the important organs tucked away beneath the skin in one’s midriff.
“Griva and a contingent of his agents just boarded a plane bound for Vancouver,” he stated.
My stomach dropped as if we’d hit a pocket of turbulence. I wasn’t surprised, but I’d hoped Griva would be slower off the line. “And was there any mention of a certain bald, homicidal super-mythic boarding that same plane?”
“No.”
“If Kade isn’t on that plane, it’s because he’s already on a different flight,” I told Darius.
“He won’t be waiting around in London. He wants to kill me and everyone I care about, either slowly or explosively or possibly both, and then he’ll get on with his world-domination plan, which probably overlaps with Griva’s. ”
“I agree, we should assume he’s on the way.
” Darius tapped his phone on his knee. “Griva will do everything in his power to recover the documents before I can distribute them, but his priority will be to kill me and, assuming Kade hasn’t already done so, kill you and everyone in Vancouver with any connection to us. ”
Oh, wonderful. Sounded like a party.
“How soon can you get them into the hands of other GMs?” Lienna asked.
“That depends on how many SI agents are waiting for us when we land.” Darius looked between the three of us.
“Bringing down the Consilium isn’t as simple as publicizing the documents.
We need to vet every page, get them to the right people, and ensure that those people take action.
It’ll take months, not hours, which Griva knows. ”
“So he knows he has time to fix this,” I said. “He’s going to leverage every weapon he has to do it.”
“Yes. Even if he fails to recover the documents, killing us and all our allies will have the same result.”
My dread heightened. “So why are we going back to Vancouver?”
“Because that’s where our allies are.” Even with his obvious fatigue, Darius’s smile exuded cool satisfaction. “If he intends to kill us all, we owe it to him to make it as difficult as possible, don’t we?”