12. Chapter 12 #2
His gaze dipped down to the low V of her shirt before settling on her neck.
He grimaced at the mark there. You don’t have to regret it that loudly.
She thought, doing everything in her power not to touch the offending red that everyone could see.
Even if everyone here knows we slept together, I’m not going to hide behind a wall of self-doubt.
Sleeping with him had been a mistake, but she was owning that mistake.
“How nice of you to join us,” Lewis murmured, taking the seat across from her.
Raz grabbed a bottle before sitting beside Kate. Sid, who was lanky with a black goatee, scooted in behind the laptop. He shut it with a click and crossed his arms. Sweat plastered his layered, wavy black hair with twining white accents against his head, and he had a red mark below his right eye.
Spirit energy swirled and filled the space. Her skin tingled from the odd power. A room full of dragon shifters—who would have imagined.
“Kate, that is Sid. You met Caige earlier.” Lewis pointed to each as he introduced them.
“Thank you for agreeing to meet with me,” she said, trying to read the room.
Lewis and Raz seemed open to hearing her out with a nod of acceptance.
Sid stared at the ceiling like he’d rather be anywhere else—the one she’d have to convince.
Caige was an anomaly she couldn’t read—his mask of shadows reaching his unsettlingly stony expression.
“What’s your real name?” Sid asked, still gazing upward.
Fear squeezed her throat. She’d expected an interrogation, but the last time she’d trusted someone with her identity, he’d taken everything from her. If she wanted their help, she’d have to be as honest with them as she could. “Kate Ichikawa.”
“You’re Japanese?” Sid smirked at her as if she had confirmed his suspicions.
“Yes. I am originally from Japan but haven’t been there for centuries.”
Tension filled the air, but no one interrupted Sid’s questioning. “So, what did Matsuda do to you?”
Convinced me that he was a good person. Ripped my heart out and used it against me. All so he could find the truth about Naomi and me and use us for his bidding. Kate had escaped his clutches, but Naomi hadn’t been as lucky.
“He took someone from me.” She swallowed, feeling the weight of her confession on her tongue. “She’s the one who saved me from a lonely existence. Taught me to survive. And he needs to pay for what he did.”
“Glad you have a vendetta, but you can join the thousands of others,” Sid said, leaning forward. “What makes you, a thief, special enough to garner our help?”
A dominating force slid over her senses. Her ear closest to Raz felt pressurized. Sid peered at Raz, shook his head, and sat back in his seat. Did Raz use some dragon tactic to snap at Sid? Why would he defend her?
No matter. It was time to change tactics. “You’re looking for Lucifer’s Bell, right?”
Their eyes snapped to Raz. He was looking for the Bell?
Raz gazed sourly at his bottle as if some haunted memory lay within it. “What do you know about the Bell?”
She’d only seen that lost expression on his face when she asked why he worked for the FBI. Whatever his connection was to the Bell, it wasn’t a pleasant one, and Kate would have to curb her answers accordingly.
“At a black-market auction in Hamburg, the auctioneers demonstrated its power,” she said, recalling the video Raz had on his computer.
“One ring of the bell in a remote village in the Middle East led to hundreds of dead by a demon-possessed assailant. Then Midnight stole it for Matsuda.” That was the first time Naomi had killed to get what Matsuda wanted.
If she kept killing, Kate didn’t know what would hold Naomi back from choosing to become an Archfiend.
That’s why she’d pushed up her timeline.
Kate had to go after Matsuda now or lose Naomi forever.
Raz’s jaw clenched, though his eyes remained on his bottle.
There was a subdued quality to the energy in the room, and Kate remembered the picture of the dead man on Raz’s case board.
The Dragon SEALs had been at that event and had probably lost someone close to them.
Lukas. Bile rose in her throat, and she twined her fingers in her lap, forgetting for a moment that the motion would appear deceitful.
“Where were you during that auction?” Raz asked in a quiet voice, as if he didn’t want to know the answer.
She placed her hands back onto her laptop. “I was in hiding.” The Bell hadn’t even been on her radar until that moment.
“So you really just wanted us to think you were Midnight to get our attention?” Sid asked incredulously.
“And demonstrate my skills.”
He didn’t seem convinced. But she already knew she had her work cut out for her in convincing them to help her.
“Do you know what Matsuda wants the Bell for?” Raz asked.
She swallowed, remembering the carnage from that single bell toll.
“Matsuda loves the challenge of creating stronger weapons to sell. Since no one can record the Bell’s sound and have the same effect, he’s building another one on a massive scale to retrofit it into a Long Range Acoustic Device, or an LRAD.
Instead of demonic possession of one or more people, it would target hundreds. And hundreds could kill thousands.”
“You know where the Bell is, don’t you?” Lewis said.
“I know where the Bell and the LRAD replica are, and I want to steal them.” She schooled her face and heart as she’d taught herself for lie detector tests. They don’t need to know that your mission is really to take back the thing Matsuda was using to control Naomi.
She had a hunch Lucifer’s Bell was in that submarine, but as for the LRAD device—there was no guarantee that it’d be down there.