Chapter 7
The hallway looked like something had clawed its way out of a nightmare and into my apartment.
Gouges tore through the carpet, and deep grooves were carved into my door, as if it had been desperate to get inside.
My stomach twisted at the visible damage from the shadow nightmare that attacked in the middle of the night.
Across the hall, Nikki’s door stood untouched. Her night out with her sister had either come at the perfect time or, more likely, meant I was the target. And that made Angel growly.
After calling in the attack, he’d insisted on feeding me, though the food sat like a lead ball in my gut, and exhaustion pulled at me, making me long to crawl into bed and sleep for a week.
The ward vanished with my waning energy, leaving me worried, and the place lousy with SED, which at least gave me the chance to meet some of the St. Paul teams, including one tall, familiar brunet who caught me off guard as he escorted my best friend upstairs.
“Hardy,” I greeted, offering my hand.
He took it without hesitation, his gaze flicking to my mark as I caught his. Perception-based?
“Holt.” His grip was firm, and thankfully not hesitant. “Good to see you. Heard you got moved to SED. Bet your office is shitting itself to lose you.”
I blinked. “Yeah. You too—wow.”
He smiled. “I volunteered. Pay bump was worth it. Burnout left me no choice. Either change or quit.”
That explained a lot. The last case we’d worked together had been over a year ago, the worst serial killer investigation I’d ever been a part of. At least the monster had turned out to be human, and we’d put him behind bars for life. Small fucking favors.
“You okay?” I asked Nikki.
She looked pale as a sheet but nodded and held out her phone with shaky hands. “I got a Ring notification when it started and ignored it at first, then this morning lots of notices as everyone started moving around.” She held up the phone for me to see the replay.
Darkness dripped from the ceiling like tar, catching on the sconces beside my door, then pooling on the carpet in thick, viscous ribbons that ran together.
My breath hitched as the puddle twitched and bubbled, a living Rorschach blot twisting itself inside out.
The camera followed the mass unfolding into spider-leg fingers of shadow stretching across the hallway until they swallowed all light, all space, everything but darkness, all centered around my door.
Nikki’s phone screen went dark, but the afterimage of those creeping shadows burned behind my eyelids. I forced a swallow past the knot in my throat. “Well, that’s fucking creepy.”
Hardy nodded. “I’m assuming this was an uninvited guest?” His tone was light, but his shoulders were tense. “Not often we see this sort of thing on this side of the Veil.”
Nikki pocketed her phone with a shaky exhale, her gaze on me wide. I wondered if our long friendship would come to an end now that she had to worry about creepy things following me home from work.
“Sorry,” I told her. Not certain what else to say.
She threw her arms around me. “Be safe, okay? I need a shower hotter than Satan’s asshole and an exorcism right now, but be safe. I’ll talk to you later.” She squeezed me tight for a long minute before retreating to her apartment, shooting wary glances at the gouges in my doorframe.
The moment she disappeared inside, my shoulders sagged. Angel’s hand rested on my lower back, steadying me. Though even he couldn’t quell the worry that built in my gut.
“I’m still getting used to being variant,” I said, gesturing at the wreckage of my door. “Didn’t expect anything to follow me home. Guess I should’ve put up a ‘Do Not Disturb’ sign.”
“Tested and thought I was nothing, just good intuition, but learned otherwise,” Hardy agreed.
“It’s a kick in the balls to everything we thought we knew.
” He studied the hall behind me where SED agents were arguing in hushed, tense voices.
“Never seen something follow anyone home from the other side, but I’ve only been in SED six months.
Congrats, Holt, you’re breaking new ground in workplace safety hazards. ”
“Not in the OSHA handbook, right?” I said ruefully.
He laughed.
His gaze flipped up and down the hall behind me, a stir created arguments in the hall with the stationed SED. I glanced back to find Xavier and the murder twins headed our way, unfettered by anyone. Well, I guess it was time to pay the piper.
“He’s fine,” I said to the big man before he could reach my door. While he had his power locked down hard since it didn’t snap and spit, his narrowed glare could have frozen me to ice. I waved him inside; the door was wide open anyway. “You can check. He’s fine.”
The murder twins remained outside as Xavier headed into my apartment.
Angel leaned against the wall beside me, looking tired and grumpy, but watchful.
Neither of us had enough sleep, and Angel’s magic couldn’t soothe my anxiety when his own was on a tight wire.
He kept touching me, and I knew it was for both our sanity.
Hardy’s gaze flicked between the scary pair like he was mentally calculating survival odds. Smart man. After a beat, he turned back to me, though his shoulders remained tense. “Friends of yours?”
“My brother is a shifter,” I offered. “Comes with creepy otherworldly stalkers, I guess. At least his don’t bleed shadows and tear up my door in the middle of the night.”
Hardy nodded. “I read the report about the changeling that escaped custody,” he said, nodding at the gouges. “This thing feel like that?”
“Yes, and no?” I rubbed my temple, trying to sift through the sleep-deprived, panic-blurred mess of my memory. “Mostly I just remember spindly legs and the overwhelming urge to set my own apartment on fire like some arachnophobia nightmare.”
“Happen to you often?”
“No, never.” I sighed. “I created a fast ward, and it vanished.”
“You been practicing long?”
“Literally copied it from a book on the fly. Boss wants me to learn some shielding basics and all that,” I explained, knowing how most SED disliked practitioners. Not that I ever planned to become one.
“Shielding is necessary for most non-shifter variants,” Hardy agreed. His gaze flicked to the murder twins again, who were now leaning against opposite walls like white and red bookends. “Especially if you’re gonna piss off things that leave that behind.” He toed one of the deeper gouges.
“Yeah, well, my talent for attracting chaos is the only thing about me that’s consistent.”
Angel laughed but swallowed it when I threw him a dirty look.
Ivan’s grumbling complaints from inside the apartment drew my attention. The murder twins sauntered to the door.
“It’s Ivan’s choice, not his,” I reminded them.
“Then let’s all hope he chooses correctly,” Sylas said.
“Might be a good idea to stay elsewhere a night or two,” Hardy said.
“You think it can’t find him if he moves?” Angel asked.
“Do you know what it was? You’ve been in SED longer than I have.”
Angel shook his head. “I don’t know.” But he suspected, much as I did, that this might be related to the shadow god who’d put a target on my back. Did that mean it was on this side? And why me specifically, just because we’d randomly met by accident on the other side?
“You two met before?” I asked.
“No, but heard of him,” Hardy said, holding out his hand. “Christopher Hardy.”
Angel took it. “Angel Mao. Holt is my new partner.”
“Caught a little of that through the grapevine.” He released Angel’s hand and quirked a brow at me. “Heard it’s more than a work thing.”
Hardy had never given me trouble for being openly gay. I knew the man was bi himself, though we’d never been a thing. Not that he wasn’t attractive—we just never sparked at all. What was his angle? “We’re mates. Shifter thing.”
He nodded. “How’s that treating you?”
“He could be less of a trouble magnet, but so far being mated to me hasn’t made it any worse,” Angel added.
“Hey now,” I protested.
Angel let out a noise halfway between a cough and a laugh. As if I could somehow refute that pandemonium gravitated my way.
“I’m good,” I said. “Could do with fewer middle-of-the-night unwanted preternatural visitors, but it was nice to not be alone when it happened.”
Hardy eyed him, then me, and said, deadpan, “You’ve got a type. Grumpy. Protective. Prettier than average. Probably bites. With questionable morals. At least this one is out of the closet?” He held up his hands at my glare. “Observation skills. It’s my job.”
“Prettier than average?” Angel wondered.
“Don’t be an asshole,” I said to Hardy, and then, “You’re way prettier than average,” to Angel. “And yes, everyone knows. It’s not a secret.”
“Anyone question you about Cassidy’s disappearance?” Hardy asked. “He heard about this mate thing, maybe?”
“I’ve already reported everything I know about him.” Including seeing him under the shadow thing that got handsy in the warehouse raid.
“Notes say he might be one of the cultists.”
“Maybe,” I agreed. “We’ve been unable to find him to confirm. You think he might have sent this after me?”
“It’s a thought. Seen some shady shit about these cultists.”
“I don’t think Cassidy cared that much about me. We were never a thing. Not like that.”
“Good,” Hardy agreed. “That man was shit to begin with.”
“Amen,” Angel muttered.
“I’m not disputing that,” I said. I knew Cassidy had hit on Hardy more than once, as it had become the point of an argument between Brandon and me at one of our last get-togethers.
It was one of my more brutal live-and-learn moments, watching a guy I thought I was into all over a friend after a few drinks.
That Hardy sent him packing made me like him more.
“What little we had was over more than a year ago.”
Angel rubbed my back, and I leaned into his touch, grateful he didn’t snarl at any discussion about my previous bad choices in men.
Xavier stepped out of my apartment looking agitated. “Your ward is shit.”
I flinched. “Uh, hey, it’s new to me. I did the best I could. Running on fumes now.”
He stalked the few feet to loom over me, but Angel stepped between us, unafraid. “He’s training. Give him a break.”
“And how will that keep Ivan safe?” Xavier demanded.
“I’ve got them,” Angel said, gaze down as if unwilling to meet Xavier’s stormy eyes.
“Your priority is Jude. Mine is Ivan.”
“Mine is Ivan,” I corrected him. “He’s my brother.”
Ivan popped out of the apartment clutching Peanut Butter like a furry security blanket, fixing me with pleading eyes, ignoring the big supernatural dick who apparently had every shifter in the city cowed. “I want to stay with you.”
“It’s not safe here,” Xavier said. With your brother went unsaid, but I heard it.
“You can both come to my place,” Angel said. “It’ll be tight, but safe.”
“Your place is a studio,” I reminded him, and it put us closer to Xavier, who was certain to use that to his advantage.
“We can make it work.”
“It would be under my protection,” Xavier agreed.
As much as I wanted Ivan safe, I knew Angel’s tiny place was going to be a nightmare. No privacy, a handsy boyfriend, and a nosey teen sounded like a bad comedy act. “Uh...” Not to mention a cockblock.
Angel glanced my way. “You don’t think I can protect you?”
That wasn’t it at all. Angel clenched his fists at his side, obviously as annoyed at being steamrolled as I was, and I tried to protest, but Xavier interrupted, “I have a furnished two-bedroom that you can borrow for a few days.” Xavier shook his head.
“Nothing is getting in without me knowing.” His gaze shifted to Ivan.
“Pack your stuff. Keanan and Sylas will help.”
“Ah...” Out of the frying pan and into the fire.
“Peanut Butter and Nox, too, right?” Ivan glanced at him, then at me. “I can’t find Nox. I think he might be hiding under your bed.”
Or on my back, though I couldn’t feel his familiar tingle. I’d have to sit down with Ivan and lay out the truth about the weird little fae hitchhiker before he got seriously attached.
“I can protect them,” Angel snapped at Xavier.
Xavier sighed. “Angel.”
“Jude is my mate.”
“I’m not disputing that. But your choices are to take Jude to your place, and I’ll find a smaller efficiency for Ivan to stay while you’re in TFW next week, or take the two-bedroom and keep the brothers together.”
“I vote for the two-bedroom,” I added, wanting to keep an eye on Ivan. “Will he be able to stay there with the cats while I’m working? You’ll make sure he’s safe and stuff?”
“Of course,” Xavier agreed.
Angel’s jaw clenched hard enough that I heard his teeth grind. “Fine.” He turned on his heel and stalked into the apartment. My gut flipped over with anxiety that he was pissed at me.
“Sorry,” I apologized to Hardy as I darted after my boyfriend. Our relationship was like two hours old, and I was already fucking it up.