Chapter 13 #2
Not a minute later, a curvy brunette in a snakeskin minidress hurries across the same exposed balcony and down the stairs after him.
She’s barefoot, heels in hand, hair mussed.
A beauty, with a pert nose, doe eyes, and clear skin.
Just-sexed-for-the-fifteenth-time flushed cheeks and swollen lips.
My invasive hunter vision also clocks a few small bruises—hickeys?
—on her neck and trailing down her cleavage.
“Bye,” she purrs, waving her delicate fingers at Deacon as he comes to take a seat in the lounge before us. She gives Elliot, Sophia, and me a slight nod in greeting, as if she knows whatever business the White Stag is up to is nothing she wants to be involved in.
“Later, sweetheart,” Deacon replies, low and husky, but his eyes don’t leave my face. He takes up so much space, bare feet planted firmly on the ground, arms spread, head cocked to the side.
Don’t flush, I tell myself. I don’t know where the instinct stems from. I’m not a child—I know people have sex. God knows Deacon has sex.
“Goonie squad,” Deacon says to us by way of greeting. “Minus Glasses and Ward’s blonde.”
Ward’s blonde? Penny is no such thing.
“Why does everyone think Peter wears glasses?” Sophia asks me.
“I fear you’re getting a little too comfortable with me, Vivienne.
You may have a syrabraxa swimming inside you, but your hunter friends…
” He eyes Sophia and Elliot as if debating which meat to purchase from the butcher.
“You can’t honestly think it’s wise to show up here with them, asking me for favors? ”
My skin prickles with the lure of a fight, but I force myself to tamp down the instinct. I can’t have another episode before we get Deacon’s help. “Reid sent me a gift—a way to tell me he’s alive, but in hiding. All we need is a vial of your blood to find him. Then we’ll be on our way.”
Deacon crosses his arms in thought, legs spreading wide in the dark-cushioned lounge chair. “And in return?”
“In return I’m not going to beat you until you can taste your own stomach lining.”
“Colorful.” His full lips pull into a smirk. “But unconvincing. Afraid I can’t help you.”
“Why not?” Sophia asks. “He’s your brother.”
“A brother who is alive and well enough to leave gifts for girlfriends, and clearly has no interest in being rescued.”
Anger rises in my chest. “You…”
“Coward,” Sophia hisses for me.
Baz tenses at the bar, and Elliot’s muscles flex in response.
Though my blood sings at the appeal of driving sharp objects into both of these men, I cannot let this conversation devolve into bloodshed.
Reid is the only priority. “Maybe you’re right.
Maybe he’s fine. But I can’t sleep at night until I know for sure. Can you?”
Deacon’s unfeeling gaze fixes back on me. “You having dreams yet?”
The question catches me off guard. At first I wonder if he knows somehow about my nightmares. The horrible recurring memories of the night my father died. But he said yet. “What are you talking about?”
Baz and Deacon exchange a look. “Like I said”—he stands with a stretch of his neck—“can’t help you.”
His sweats are too thin for whatever he’s got going on underneath them, and I avert my eyes to the concrete and glass ceiling of his acropolis-style club.
I was stupid to think Deacon’s own brother’s whereabouts would be enough for him to help us, but there has to be something I can offer him.
I catalog the little I know about the guy.
He loves his club, seems to at least give a shit about his lackeys.
Likes women, money, his motorcycle…He fears something the High Thane has on him, but I couldn’t begin to guess what.
He cared enough about his brother to go running when he thought he was at the docks. To track him down at the Manor. And when he saw the pool of Reid’s blood that night—my body tenses against the memory—there’d been fury in his glacier-blue eyes. Fury, and a deep, guttural sorrow.
“Maybe you think he can handle himself,” I try, mustering a new kind of courage.
“But if Finn tracks him down before we do, he won’t just torture him again.
He’ll kill him. I know it, and you know it.
Let us use your blood to do this spell and ensure that if that moment does come, Reid at least has the three of us there to fight the Brood alongside him.
He was all alone last time…” I swallow the cleaving in my chest and add, “It’s what he would do for you. ”
Deacon mulls over my words. Takes a breath and releases it. “Fine,” he says in the end. “But you’re wrong—he’d never do the same for me.”
I don’t know if Deacon’s right. Reid hates his brother, and for good reason. Deacon killed the woman he once loved. But Reid is good. And I have to believe he wouldn’t let his own flesh and blood suffer.
Deacon takes a step toward the back of the club. “My bike keys are in the—”
“What? You can’t—” Deep breaths. Dealing with Deacon Graveheart is like trying to talk sense into a toddler. “The warlock that can do the spell is at Harker.”
“So?”
Okay, a toddler possessed by Satan. “So you can’t go to Harker. You’re a demon. It’s warded and impossible to…”
I trail off at the sound of cruel laughter. Both Deacon and Baz are chuckling.
“What’s so funny?” Sophia snarls.