Chapter Five
Zavier loved his partners like the brothers they’d been raised as. They’d each been taken from their homes in Scotland, France, and Spain a few days after birth. From that point on, they’d done everything together: learning to fly, training at the Stronghold, sharing a room.
But he hated sitting through meetings with them.
Rhys lectured endlessly. Gideon cracked jokes, which just made the endless meetings longer. The day the meme came out about a meeting that could’ve been two emails? He’d put it on T-shirts for them.
And since they were talking Nephilim work, even while in the conference room at Metafora, there wasn’t anyone else invited to the meeting that could help him move things the fuck along.
He walked to the mini fridge in the corner and grabbed a soda.
“Thanks for offering me one, Z,” Rhys said with a liberal side of sarcasm.
“Why would I? Your legs and wings are intact.”
Gideon shrugged out of his suit coat and draped it carefully over the chair next to him. He collected designer suits the way Zavier collected knives. “Ah, it must be literally any decade since 1970. Zavier’s got a cactus up his ass.”
He was entitled, wasn’t he? Even if he’d been free for more than thirty years? It stuck with a guy when Fate served him up on a platter to a demon lord to suffer unspeakable tortures. That ought to give him a pass on being chipper for at least half a century. “I’m not a fucking waiter,” he snarled.
Gideon lifted one golden eyebrow. “I wasn’t planning on tipping.”
“Hey!” Rhys slapped his palm on the glass conference table. “Bicker on your own time. Like when our employees can’t stare at us in this fishbowl and wonder why we’re fighting and how it’ll affect the bottom line.”
“We just hired that new director of marketing. That oughta give them something to gossip about besides us for a change. For at least a week, anyway.” Zavier cracked his soda. Lifted it high in a mocking toast to Rhys.
“I need it to hold them longer than that.” Rhys stood. Shoved a hand through his dark hair—which was out of character for somebody worrying about their employees watching them. “We should take a sabbatical.”
Zavier closed his eyes and let his head fall back. Unbelievable. “You want to put me in time-out for not offering you a soda?”
“Tempting, trust me. But I’m serious. We should clock out of Metafora.”
That popped one eye open. “All three of us at once? That’d look weird. We’re partners. We run this whole show.”
“No, we used to run it.” Rhys waved a hand toward the forty people seated in the open-floor plan office just outside. “Strategically, we’ve hired a whole slew of managers and directors of operations around the globe who can make sure the lights stay on if we step away.”
“For a while. In theory. It’d expose any cracks and issues,” Gideon mused, stroking his chin. “Is that why you want to do it?”
“No, but that’s not a bad idea. Look, we’re exhausted from all the extra fighting. Things have ramped up so much that we never get a night off. Sometimes we have two or three missions in a day.”
Gideon nodded. “That’s an understatement. Z, when you bugged out to London with Liss? We had to turn down a coven in China that needed our help.”
He should probably feel guilty. Or at least make an effort to look like he was. Zavier tapped his phone on the table. “Should’ve called me.”
“We thought about it.” Rhys grimaced. “Then we remembered that you needed a break.”
“Due to the whole issue of us slacking off to have sex with our gorgeous girlfriends over the past few months. Which we know we need to pay you back for.”
“Me, sure. Absolutely. But don’t make some poor Chinese witches suffer on my account.”
“They’re fine. We told them to set up mirrors in a circle outside their houses. To go on a week-long visit to the nearest temple, consider it a retreat, and if the mirrors hadn’t scared away the Jiangshi when they returned, we’d take care of them for half price.”
Not a bad plan. The hopping corpses were no fun to fight. The witches’ safety was maintained. “Okay, you handled that one.”
“Barely.” Rhys dropped back into his seat. Propped an elbow on the table. “We can’t keep up this pace. Fighting all night, every night, and still dragging our asses into work every day. If we screw up here, we’re lucky. Nobody dies. We’re just out a few hundred thousand dollars. But if we screw up on a mission…”
“Yeah, we get your point. Tired fighters are sloppy fighters.” Zavier’d had the same thought himself. The same concern. He hadn’t come up with a solution, though.
“Either we stop this coup really fucking soon—or the world ends. No one’s helping us. We can’t ask for help without potentially revealing what we know to the wrong side. There’s not much time left with the way things are escalating. We have to pour all our time and energy into that. Increasing our profit margin won’t mean shit if there’s nowhere left to spend it.”
Gideon jerked his head toward the door and their employees. “How do we explain it, though?”
“We’ll say we’re going to check our other locations. Undercover.”
“Oh my God.” Zavier let out a hoot. This made sitting through the whole meeting worthwhile. “You finally buckled. You let Maisy hound you into watching Undercover Boss , didn’t you?”
“It doesn’t matter the origin of an idea, as long as it’s a good one,” he said stiffly.
“She’s got you wrapped around her pinkie toe.”
To Zavier’s surprise, Rhys didn’t snarl at the mocking. Instead, he smiled. Loosened his patterned navy tie. “I have zero regret. Making my woman happy makes me happy.”
Wow. That could either be a very good or a very bad thing. “I’m going to continue to be the asshole you both think I am, apparently. Here’s a hard question: is Maisy a liability for you?”
“Hell, aren’t we past that? You brought it up when we first started dating.”
“Yeah. And I’d like to hear your answer today. Gideon, too.” Their lives were on the line. So he’d continue to push and be…wary of their relationships. “If all you want to do is play it safe to get home to her during a battle, that’s dangerous. Your edge is gone.”
“My edge is plenty sharp.” But his tone wasn’t. Rhys was oddly calm. Seemingly not insulted by Zavier’s accusation. “Maisy knows the risks of what I do. She also gets why we have to do it. That saving the world isn’t just a duty, but a responsibility I’ll never back down from.”
“Ditto for Evangeline.” Gideon got up to grab a sparkling water. And passed one to Rhys with a scimitar-sharp glare at Z. “Being in love doesn’t make us weak. It makes us more determined to win.”
Good answer. The only one, in fact, that would’ve passed muster.
Zavier dipped his head. “Sorry. I had to check.”
“I get it.” Rhys narrowed his blue eyes. “But I won’t answer that question from you a third time. Got it?”
Fair enough. “Yeah.”
“As I was saying, we tell Metafora that we’re doing undercover checks. That should buy us a few weeks, even a month.”
It wasn’t a completely shitty idea. Zavier was tired of existing on coffee, Red Bull, and Celsius just to get through each day. “We’ll need to take a couple of days first to wrap things up. Leave instructions. We can’t ghost our own company.”
“Agreed. You’ll find that your calendars have already been cleared for the rest of the week. Barring any emergency missions, that should give us enough time to leave responsibly.”
Gideon braced a hand against the wall of windows. Looked out over Lake Erie. “I say we go back to the Order’s Stronghold.”
“Right. Because our last trip there ended so great.” Zavier didn’t bother to hide his sarcasm. His tone was as dry as the chicken Rhys had scorched on the grill on Labor Day.
Why? Because he’d been distracted by kissing Maisy. Which brought it right back around to Zavier’s gut check of whether or not his friends’ heads were fully in the game—or constantly being overruled by their dicks.
“It did end well. An in-person trip made all the difference. We got the information we sought.”
Yeah, but… “We discovered we were chasing down one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse!” The memory didn’t give him the warm fuzzies. Not that he’d ever had them. But that’s how Liss described her memories. And the trio worked damn hard to keep up on ever-evolving slang across the decades.
Gideon shrugged. “Always better to know your enemy. Makes for a more pointed strategy.”
Rhys joined him at the window. “ Why do you want to go back?”
“Other Nephilim know that something’s off. That one I fought in France a few months ago? He accused me of conspiring with the forces of Hell ‘like the others.’” Gideon spread his hands wide. “That means there are Nephilim who’ve already chosen sides. Are already in alliance with the demons and rogue angels. All we have to do is root ’em out.”
“Easier said than done,” Zavier muttered. He was a fighter. Trying to pick up nuances in conversations, looking for clues in a river of gossip—that wasn’t his wheelhouse.
“You think I’d bring this to you without a plan? I’ve been mulling it for a few days. Just needed to figure out how to convince you guys to do it.”
Rhys grinned. “I’m open to bribes. That new BMW looks sweet. With a sunroof, please.”
“How about my bribe is not telling Maisy about the time you slept with the Queen of Spain?”
Gid was playing hardball.
Rhys’s nostrils flared. “She wasn’t the queen yet. And Maisy wouldn’t be jealous. She knows I’m all hers.”
“Probably. But do you want to risk it?” One eyebrow cocked in a dare, Gideon held Rhys’s increasingly squinty stare until he huffed out a sigh and turned away.
“Fine. We can go back to Nephilim Central. We need a plausible reason, though. We hadn’t been back in years before going this summer. To reappear so quickly will raise suspicions if we don’t spin it right.”
“We did the double date thing last time. That worked.”
“Which is why no one will fall for it again.”
Zavier didn’t have to rub more than four brain cells together to get to the solution. “A challenge. A tournament.” The one thing all Nephilim had in common was fighting. They were trained for it from birth. Their reason for getting up every morning. And often, a hell of a lot of fun.
Gideon tapped his fingers on the glass. “You think they’d go for it?”
Didn’t everyone dream of toppling the top dog? “We’ve got one hell of a rep. They all know that Caraxis hires us to clean up the messes when the Order members can’t get the job done. That proves he thinks we’re the best of the best.”
“We are.” Gideon smirked.
“Agreed. Doesn’t mean everyone else believes it. Nephilim have egos, too.”
Rhys punched his shoulder without any actual force. “Don’t need the reminder. We live with you.”
Please. Gideon was the one who constantly bragged. Zavier let his actions speak. Maybe there was a whiteboard in the training room at Metafora with score marks to show each man’s total demon kills for the week. Maybe it’d been Z’s idea. Maybe he was in the lead three weeks out of four…
“When we run into other Nephilim , even if we’re all battling the same demons, they push us. They try to find little ways to prove they’re better.”
Gideon sniffed. “Never works.”
“And it never will. But aren’t you tired of putting up with their shit talk?”
“It wouldn’t be hard to convince them we’ve had it. That we’re done with the bickering and the petty games and unnecessary ‘accidental’ punches. That this tournament is to stop it. To make clear, for once and for all, that we’re the best fighters.” As usual Rhys had taken Zavier’s raw idea and finessed it. Which was what made the three of them such a strong team.
Gideon clasped his hands and pointed at Rhys. “We’ll need to bring the women along. For safety.”
Seriously? Sounded like he just didn’t want to be separated from his girlfriend for a day. Again, Zavier refused to let Gideon’s melted heart interfere with a mission. This wasn’t a date. Not even a date as cover, this time. “Eva’s a Dark Nephilim . She can take care of herself,” he pushed back.
“Eva’s learning how to take care of herself,” Gideon corrected. “None of us know the extent of her powers. She’s not a fighter. Sure, she can nullify evil. But that requires getting close. Until she’s trained more and gets better control of her wings, she can’t be counted on as the sole defender.”
Rhys nodded. “Same with Maisy. She’s read all the instructions her uncle left about being a Keeper. Picked up some cool new defensive tricks. Problem is that she hasn’t used them on any demons yet. I’d rather have her get more practice with us around as backup.”
Zavier remembered the lecture he’d given Liss. About how the world knew the three women were now under their protection. How it made them a target. He’d been so focused on the hearts in Rhys’s and Gideon’s eyes that he’d lost sight of the actual danger.
“Okay. We bring the women. But they won’t agree to come just to stay safe. They’re too independent.” He respected them for that.
“I forgot the most obvious reason. Not for protection at all. We need them.” Rhys double-snapped his fingers. “They can poke around and investigate. Talk to everyone—especially the non-fighters. They’ll probably get different intel than us.”
“Liss will love that. Being included.” Zavier wished he’d thought of it. The woman chatted with everyone. And somehow managed to glean much more than surface information in just a few minutes with a total stranger.
Gideon dropped into the farthest chair and rolled down to him. “That’s fucking sensitive of you. Did you accidentally listen to a self-improvement podcast?”
“Jackass.”
Gideon mimed holding up a monocle. “Is there something we should know?”
“No.”
“Anything that went down on the trip you two took to London?”
“Yeah. We went. We picked up a ton of research. Ate steak and ale pie. Came home. Exactly how I told you it went down when we came back.”
“You sure nothing happened?”
“No. Drop it.” Zavier pushed out of his chair. “We now have a shit ton to accomplish before we go deal with that demidemon in Croatia tonight. Don’t forget to sharpen your sword. These things like to bling out in leather armor.”
He slammed open the conference room door.
Because Rhys and Gideon were his best friends. And if he stayed? He’d be tempted to tell them the rest of the story.
That something had happened. That he’d lost all control and given in to desire—the same thing he lectured them against. That an archangel could’ve appeared outside the pod and he wouldn’t have noticed with his face buried in Liss’s breasts.
Nothing more happened because he came to his senses. Because he’d remembered that he was a dark cloud of boiling rage. That he would make her miserable if they grew closer. The darkness in him would be released and ruin her.
Nothing more would happen with Liss.
No matter how much he wanted it…
…
“Are you sure you don’t want to come with me tonight?” Maisy asked as she finished loading the dishwasher in their kitchen.
Liss almost did a spit take of her peppermint tea. “To your boyfriend’s house? Where you’re going to have sexy times? Yeah, I’m sure you can count me out for that.”
“There’s a chance he won’t be back for a few hours. Apparently there’s no average time on how long it takes to kill a demidemon.”
“What is that, exactly?”
“Icky.” Her tone was flat, clearly attempting to squash any further discussion. “You don’t want to know.”
“Maisy. I’d rather know than find out the hard way. By googling and getting waaaaay too many graphic photos.” Of course there weren’t pics of actual demons online. But it was a dig at Maisy for the one time they’d googled—for her art’s sake, of course—penis tattoos. Neither of them would ever forget the horrors they’d unearthed that night on the internet.
She plucked her paint brushes from the drying rack and tested each one against her palm. “It’s a demon/human hybrid. From a demon…you know…”
Liss had been very, very wrong. She did not want to know any more. “Ugh. Here I thought being killed was the worst thing a demon could do to me. That’s just…gross.”
“You made me tell you!”
“You’re right. Thanks. But I’m still not going with you to breathlessly wait for your late-night date to arrive.” Maisy’s red hair hung in seductive loose waves. Her green and brown eyes were shadowed a deep, mossy color. She’d even abandoned her daily leggings for a corduroy brown miniskirt, tights, and a deep-vee orange sweater. Everything about her screamed booty call .
Liss, on the other hand, was rocking fuzzy slippers with panda heads. A pj set covered in pine trees, because it was never too early to celebrate Christmas, and a fluffy white robe. Everything about her screamed this body is closed to all parties, interested or not .
Maisy tugged at the sash of her robe. “I feel like I’m abandoning you.”
Ditto. Those two already dragged her along as the third wheel often enough, though. Liss didn’t want to be the cause of any friction between them. It had only been six months. They were still in the honeymoon stage.
“You are.” She took the last brush and swiped it over the tip of Maisy’s nose. “I’m okay with it, though. I like you and Rhys together.”
“I’m going to make Rhys an apple cake while I wait. Because he’s been working way too hard and needs a pick-me-up. You love baking with me,” her friend wheedled.
Oh, the guilt was at the high-water mark in Maisy tonight.
“I do. But I don’t need the reminder of your about-to-be sexy times rubbed in my face. Go. Save me a piece. Just don’t bake the cake in lingerie. Too many exposed things that could lead to an accidental burn when you open the oven door.”
“What are you going to do all by yourself?”
Her first, instinctual answer? Take a bath while thinking about that London kiss with Zavier and relieve some of her ongoing frustration.
Her actual answer? Since Liss was trying desperately to be a useful member of the team and not just dead weight? “Something we should’ve done ages ago. I’m going to start going through your uncle’s study.”
Maisy’s Uncle Harold—the original owner of the house and the former Keeper—had spent his lifetime traveling the world, gathering magical…stuff. Trinkets. Maybe junk, maybe archeological gold. Or just maybe something with the power to slay Hell creatures.
“Really? Oh, Liss, thank you. It’s been on my to-do list for ages and I never get around to it.”
“Evangeline’s aunt discovered the Scythe of Cronus in there. A literal god-killer. We’ve been overlooking that there’s probably other, equally awesome and valuable pieces amidst the knickknacks.”
“That’s why I put it off.” Maisy rubbed her thumb and forefinger over her evil eye bracelet. It was imbued with the power of all the previous Keepers in her family line. It’d looked like an unremarkable piece of jewelry before her uncle’s ghost explained its power. “I would’ve dismissed this as a cheap souvenir from a trip to Greece. Figuring out what’s important seemed daunting.”
“I can’t guarantee I’ll make much headway. But he did tell you that he cross-referenced everything in his journals. Harold’s handwriting sucks, but I’m happy to dig in and try to at least identify a few items from the few pages we’ve decoded. Hopefully by the time Rhys is kissing the backs of your knees, I’ll have found another relic of the Titanomachy that gives me all sorts of magical powers.”
“You don’t need powers. You’re pretty darn magical with that can-do attitude.”
Liss loved her bestie. But that was the kind of thing a mom said to her five-foot-two son after he got picked last for the basketball team.
“Which is a compliment I would’ve gratefully lapped up from you… before we met all these people with honest-to-God powers. I’d like to snap and make things materialize. So that when I want a top-off for this tea, I don’t have to leave the study.”
“A girl can dream. I sure can’t do that. Or fly.” Maisy grabbed her car keys from the hook by the back door. “I have to drive to Rhys’s house like any other Buffalo resident. Super normal. Super boring.”
“And then you’re going to have super not boring orgasms. Get out of here with your whining. And don’t forget to save me a big piece of cake!”
It was fine.
She didn’t need to be out at a bar, looking for a hookup. Liss didn’t really miss that at all. Meaningless hookups had rapidly lost their appeal once her eyes had been opened to the paranormal world. Knowing that you could be killed by a demon any random day made everything matter more.
She wanted a love like Maisy and Rhys had. Which probably wasn’t to be discovered on local microbrew night at the sports bar downtown. Liss would rather have nothing than settle for a sham of a relationship.
That’s what her parents had. And she refused to be like them in even the slightest way—apart from the notably spectacular boobs inherited from her mom’s DNA.
Besides, the only man who made her tingle had an emotional wall around him about thirty feet thick. Zavier might as well be wearing a sash proclaiming him “untouchable,” and mummy-wrapped in hazard tape on top of it.
It was fine.
Liss grabbed her peppermint tea and shuffled into the study. The walls were lined with bookcases and glass-fronted exhibit cases. It was a little like stepping into a museum room. From whatever era coincided with the ancient Greeks. Vases, jewelry, a square of mosaic-ed tile. The shelf below it held a single item—a vial of blood.
If it was enough of a doozy to rate its own shelf? It probably shouldn’t be where she started. Plus, blood, ew.
She shifted to the bookcase. Lying in front of the third shelf was what looked like a tooth—if a tooth was a foot long and serrated on both sides. Careful not to touch it, Liss sat at the desk and flipped through the lined journal.
Harold had been meticulous in his notes. All she had to do was find the shelf, and he described each item on it.
Dragon tooth? Definitely not regular mammal. Dragons are the only ones with jagged edges on their teeth. Will need to concur with a Chinese Wu and a Norse Volva to confirm.
There…were no dragons. Wouldn’t one of the guys mentioned if they ought to be looking to the sky to watch out for fire-breathing animals? Harold had to be wrong.
Except…this was Harold’s life’s work. And her friend Evangeline, despite the earth being around for centuries, was the very first Dark Nephilim . Maybe there was a (hopefully) small herd of dragons out there?
Disconcerting.
Plus, Liss had no idea how to contact those probably magical people for confirmation. This was beyond her googling abilities.
It wasn’t a great start. She decided to reverse the process. Look through the index for something cool and then find it on the shelf.
Easy to skip right past the poisons. Jewelry was more her speed.
Pasiphae’s ring: shungite base with center of moonstone. Relocator. Very powerful. Must keep enclosed in fabric woven with copper and gold when not in use. Third drawer under bands.
Very powerful. Bingo!
Moonstone was the pretty iridescent gem that looked like a cloud and a water droplet had a baby. Liss had picked up a pair of moonstone earrings at the last Renaissance Festival. No clue about the shungite, but she ought to be able to find the ring.
None of the cases had drawers, though. There was a single file cabinet—which only held tax records, household manuals, and car repair receipts going back to the fifties.
That only left the desk. If it was so powerful, why wasn’t it in the exhibit case with everything else?
The third drawer wasn’t very big. It had a standard multi-compartment divider that had to be a Staples special. Post-its, paper clips, an old-school pencil sharpener…and a pile of rubber bands.
Bands.
She pushed them aside to find a navy pouch of the same silky fabric she used to clean her sunglasses. It was shot through with burnt orange threads. Liss opened the flap to tip the contents into her palm.
See? She didn’t need a paranormal being to help her. She’d just found a nifty relocator. Whatever that was. The shungite must be the matte black body of the ring. That’d be a good word to remember for crossword puzzles.
Liss slipped it on. She couldn’t wait to tell Zavier—
The room went completely dark. The floor disappeared.
Her stomach lurched horribly. As she opened her mouth to gasp, she realized she couldn’t take a breath.
At all.