Chapter 8 #2
“We have no wards here,” I remind him. “We’re completely exposed to any shifter who wants to walk in through the door, never mind professional thieves and the like.
The second condo gives us a place to temporarily regroup and stage a full, safe retreat from.
It’s closer to the main street, so there’s a better chance of us being outside the ring of our attackers once we reach it. ”
He just shakes his head. “This was supposed to be a diplomatic fact-finding visit to our own people,” he reminds me, “and now I find out you’ve been treating it like a mission in enemy territory from the start.”
I steel myself against the urge to get up and hug him.
“It’s not a mission in enemy territory—that’s what I’ll be doing tomorrow.
But we’re here without any protections for you, knowing that nearby there are people actively working against us.
It would have been dumb not to take any precautions at all. ”
Sighing, he asks, “What do I do when I make it to the other condo? Get in the car and go? Where?”
I shake my head. “Nope. That’s a last resort.
The first thing you do is call local enforcement.
They don’t have any special ops people, but at that stage it won’t matter.
Tell them who you are and that a group of people have broken in.
Then call Sam, and he’ll have the same call made from the lucifer’s office, which will guarantee they move fast.”
“So I’m supposed to sit there until enforcement shows up? Won’t the hellhounds track me by scent?”
“By the time they realize you went out the window and figure you went over the roofs, enforcement should be on the way. Remember, they’re not good climbers.
They’ll circle the condo complex first, looking for where you came down, and when they don’t find it, they’ll look for a ladder.
By the time they actually get up to the rooftops to start following your scent, enforcement will be here.
” I pause. “If, and only if, they somehow find you before enforcement arrives, get in the car and go. Run them down if you have to. Stay on the phone with Sam the whole time, and he’ll guide you to somewhere safe. ”
Aidan pinches the bridge of his nose. “There are a few things about this plan I don’t like.”
I sit up, prepared to negotiate. I’m a reasonable hellhound, after all. I can work out a way to talk him into doing what I want even though he hates it.
“What parts?”
“All of it, starting with me spending most of the day locked in the bathroom.”
“I can see why you might not enjoy that, but what alternative would you suggest?”
“I could stay downstairs. Or, compromise, I stay in here. Where I can sit in a chair. I’d still be able to get into the bathroom fast”—he grimaces—“if I have to.”
“But you’d lose valuable seconds, especially if they come in through this window.
” I gesture to the window beside his chair.
“They’ll be using their noses to find you, and since you’ll have been living here a few days, your scent will be pretty well dispersed throughout the house.
They’ll need a few moments to orient themselves to where it’s freshest, and those moments on top of the ones you’ll have from hearing them enter will give you a solid head start.
You lose that if they see you through this window or hear you closing and locking the bathroom door. ”
He scoffs. “You’re talking about literal seconds.”
I nod. “Sometimes that’s all that matters. What else you got?”
He growls, his cat clearly pissed off, and I grin in delight. I want to pet the snarly kitty. I bet I can make him purr.
“Help me out here, Alistair! There has to be another option.”
I raise my eyebrow again, and the annoyance slides right off his face. I make a mental note to look into that later. Maybe he has an eyebrow fetish? It’s weird, but I can work with it.
I wiggle both brows, just to test the waters, but his expression shifts from fond to baffled.
Distraction time.
“An option other than calling down a special ops team to hang out with you?”
He growls again. “Yes. Other than that.”
“I can put you on a plane back to CSG headquarters before I leave in the morning.”
He’s shaking his head before I even finish the sentence. “No. I need to be here. There’s going to be fallout from all this, and I need to be here for my people.”
That’s so fucking sexy. But…
“You probably won’t be,” I say bluntly. “Depending on what happens tomorrow, we’ll likely be heading back soon.
It could be weeks—even months—before there’s any movement.
It all comes down to what we find out and whether Tish is ready to act or still needs time.
I don’t know if anyone told you, but when he took Noah, they were there to steal a seal from Percy.
We assume that’s the lucifer’s official seal of office, since it’s the only one Percy has—unless you count his family’s signet ring, but his father still has that, and Tish would know it.
The seal has since been moved, is under guard, and has been warded to a ridiculous level.
We don’t know why the elves want it, but based on what Noah overheard, we believe their agreement with Tish hinges on it. ”
“So there’s a chance they won’t move until they get the seal?”
I nod. “We hope. The reality is, Tish will probably convince them to act without it, maybe using it as incentive—tell them there’s no way to lay hands on the seal as long as Percy is in control—”
“Wait, wait—the only way Percy won’t be in control is if the magic chooses a new lucifer. The elves and Tish have no influence over that.” He’s leaning forward, eyes narrowed, almost daring me to contradict him.
I’ve never walked away from a dare.
“They could kill him. The magic will protect him, but it’s not infallible—or rather, we don’t know what its limits are.
” I hesitate a moment. “Percy hasn’t been told, but we’ve increased his security pretty dramatically.
I’m sure he’s guessed,” I admit, “but right now we’re all publicly pretending we’re not worried some elf will open a portal beside the lucifer’s bed while he’s sleeping and slit his throat.
” It’s a little blunter than I intended to be with him, but I think it’s time he realizes exactly how serious this is for him personally.
“We’ve also quietly increased security for all species leaders. ”
He looks away, pale. Well, paler than usual. “I never noticed,” he says quietly.
“Special ops are good at being discreet. We don’t want anyone to notice—and of course, now that you’re with me for almost every second of the day, we were able to reassign your operatives.
You’re the only species leader who’s aware of the elves and the threat they bear, and we only told you because there are hellhounds directly involved and we needed your help.
I’m not trying to be an asshole by locking you in the bathroom.
It’s the only compromise I’m willing to make that leaves you unprotected. ”
He sighs. “So my options are to fly back to headquarters, have a special ops team come down to guard me, or lock myself in the bathroom and hope I don’t need to climb out the window?”
“Yes.”
“A locked door won’t save me from an elf opening a portal.”
“I know. This is my compromise, remember? I still don’t like it.”
He growls again, but says, “Fine. While you’re gone tomorrow, I’ll stay in the bathroom with the door locked.”
I’m glad I’m lying down, because relief makes me feel weak all over. I really did not want to go with option four, which entailed me knocking him out and tying him up so he wouldn’t cause any trouble for the special ops team I called in against his will.
Although I’m not taking tying him up completely off the table—it would just be in very different circumstances.
“Great.” I smile widely. “Why don’t we test it out?”
“Test it— You mean climb out the window?” He laughs. “Sure. Why not? Do I have to go all the way across to the backup condo?”
There’s an edge of snark to his amiable tone, and I decide it might be best not to push my luck. “Nope! Just out the window, up onto the roof, and back again.” Those are the actions he’d need to take—aside from creeping across the roof, but that’s nothing for a cat.
Sighing and shaking his head, he gets up and goes into the bathroom. I roll off the bed and follow just in time to see him shift.
Pretty kitty.
I’ve never been all that admiring of cats—there’s nothing wrong with them, but they’re not hellhounds, after all.
Aidan, though, is worthy of admiration. He’s standard size for a felid, sleekly muscled, his fur the same toffee color as his hair.
I’m itching to get my fingers into it. He tips his head to one side and stares at me, then slowly turns it and looks up at the window.
Right—I need to open the window. I’d better make sure it’s open before I go tomorrow, so there’s no chance he’ll forget.
I step past the pretty kitty and slide the window open.
The next second, Aidan leaps, his hind legs landing on the vanity while he props his forelegs on the windowsill and sticks his head out.
I can’t see exactly what he’s doing, but from the way his body is moving, I’d guess he’s twisting around to check out the wall and roof from all angles.
There are no eaves on this side of the condo—I checked.
The benefits of modern architecture. It’s a smooth, sharp angle from the outer wall to the flat part of the roof directly above.
He pulls his head back in, adjusts his stance, then pushes off from the vanity—which creaks rather alarmingly.
I make a mental note to check it later as most of his body disappears through the window, twisting as it does so.
There’s a pause, during which he stays half in the room, then his hind feet find purchase on the windowsill, and a moment later, he’s gone.
Fuck. Maybe I should have gone downstairs before we tried this so I could have caught him if he fell? Cats land on their feet, right?
I’m sure they do. Although… I don’t know that I’ve ever actually seen a cat fall.
There’s no cries or thuds, though, just the sound of his breathing and a scrabbling sound—probably his claws slicing into the siding.
Cats have wicked claws. It’s maybe the only thing they have that I’m a little jealous of.
Don’t get me wrong, hellhounds are superior in every way, but we don’t have the kind of claws that would enable us to climb the side of a building.
I want to hear him better, so I shift into my hellhound form, listening carefully to the sounds Aidan’s making while I wistfully imagine being able to scale any structure that crosses my path—not that structures can cross paths.
He seems to be doing okay. There was a shift in his breathing when—presumably—he pulled himself up onto the roof, and at a guess, I’d say he’s about to—
His head pops through the window, and I jerk back and whine even though I was kind of expecting it.
A second later, one of his wide front paws lands on the windowsill.
I back up to the doorway to give him space, then, seeing how focused he is, decide to give him privacy to maneuver through the window. I look away.
There’s really nothing else to do if I’m not going to watch him, though. I look around the bathroom, then over my shoulder into the bedroom. Nope. Boring.
Meh. Might as well come up with my own entertainment.
“ What are you doing?”
I lift my head to find Aidan’s shifted back and is standing in front of me with a look of… shock? Amusement? Something between the two?
I shift to my biped form and shrug. “Just keeping busy.”
His jaw drops. “You… keep busy by licking your balls?”
Oh, here we go with this again. “Yeah, I do. It feels nice. Hygiene is important. And they’re right there, a convenient fun package with no need to cart around a bag or anything.”
He blinks slowly and straightens his clothes.
One of the things Hollywood consistently gets wrong about shifting is the whole clothes-ripping thing.
They change with us. I’m not sure where they go, exactly, but they’re still there when we shift back.
“I… You hellhounds will be my undoing.” He pushes past me to walk into the bedroom, and I follow.
“Why? Why does everyone make a big deal about the ball licking? It’s not like balls are never licked, ever. Why is it okay for someone else to lick my balls, but not for me?”
He stops beside the bed and holds up his hand. “I swear to feck, Alistair, if you’re about to tell me that you lick your balls to make yourself come, I… I just don’t want to hear it.”
“Of course not!” I deny indignantly. It’s mostly true, too—I’ve only done it once or twice since I was a sex-driven adolescent, and those times were because I’d been celibate for weeks . What’s the difference between jerking it and licking myself to get off?
I don’t bother to ask Aidan that. I don’t think he’ll consider it relevant.
“Is it the fact that you were in the same room that’s the problem?”
He opens his mouth, closes it again, then throws up his hands and says, “I don’t even know where to start with what the problem is.” He sounds frustrated and bewildered, and a little voice inside me whispers that it’s time to make my move.
“Would it make you feel better if I licked your balls instead?”
He sucks in a breath, and for a moment, I worry that I read the mood wrong, but then a smile creeps over his face.
“Why not? You’re surely an expert ball licker by now.” He sits on the edge of the bed and meets my gaze. “Impress me.”