Chapter 14
“That’s a big pile of body parts.”
Blade looked over at his cousin and DART spec ops teammate, Mace, and snorted. “I don’t know why you insist on piling up all the demons we kill. They disintegrate.”
“Dude. This is a holy place. It’s rude to leave greasy stains all over.”
Scotty rolled her eyes at Mace. “You’re so weird.”
Totally agreed. Mace had some odd quirks. “He’s just like his dad,” Blade said in a low voice so only Scotty could hear.
She laughed. “Which one?”
“You know which one.” Lore, the male who’d raised Mace, was a pretty level, down-to-earth dad. But Mace’s biological father, Wraith, was an adventurous, impulsive son of a bitch who had always been everyone’s favorite uncle. Blade glanced over at Scotty’s sister, Aleka. “You done?”
Aleka blew out a frustrated breath as she looked between the map in her hand and the rough, earthen chamber walls. “Hardly. There has to be a vessel here somewhere. Harvester’s blood didn’t just disappear.”
Scotty eyed the structure over their heads: the floor of the mosque above them. Most didn’t know there were several passageways and chambers below, where Aleka was convinced the blood of the angel Harvester had flowed after the blood rain event a few weeks ago.
“Thank you for helping out, by the way,” Aleka continued. “When I asked Kynan to borrow Scotty, I didn’t expect him to send all of you.”
“We’re a package deal,” Scotty said. “You need security? You get us all.”
It was true. Blade, Mace, and Scotty had been inseparable since childhood, and they worked so well together that, when they joined the Demon Activity Response Team, Kynan had built an entire special forces department around them. Mace and Blade’s aunt Tayla managed the twelve-person department, and while most of the others worked interchangeably as teams, Scotty, Blade, and Mace rarely went anywhere without one another.
“I didn’t need security,” Aleka said crisply. “I can take care of myself.” She glanced at all the dead demons. “Usually.”
Yeah, as the daughter of the Horseman known as War, Aleka was a capable fighter. She was not as capable as her younger sister, but then, unlike Scotty, Aleka had dedicated her life to research, not combat.
“So,” Mace said, crossing his arms over his broad chest, his weapons harness whispering against his black T-shirt, “what happened between you and Sabre?”
Blade winced. Mace truly was incapable of tact.
“Nothing.” Aleka ran her finger over a seam in the stone wall. “Subject closed.”
“But you guys left Limos’s party together,” Mace said, referring to the get-together the day Harvester’s blood rained down on just two places on Earth: here at the Temple Mount, and at the party. “And then we got home, and Sabre was drowning his sorrows and grumpy as hell.”
She rounded on Mace, her long, red hair a few shades lighter than Scotty’s, stirring the dusty air. Anger made her green eyes glow, and for a moment, Blade thought Mace was about to feel the burn of Aleka’s summoned fire sword. Blade had experienced it only once, years ago, while sparring under Ares’ tutelage. His ribs still ached sometimes. Charred bone took a long time to heal, and not even his uncle Eidolon could facilitate the process beyond a certain point.
“He was drowning his sorrows?” Aleka’s lips turned up into a dark smile. “Good. Now, drop it and follow me,” she said, heading down a narrow passage marked by layers of dust and cracked mosaics.
Blade fell in behind the others, taking up the rear, his eyes peeled for signs of danger. “Hey, if we—”
He missed a step as a wave of…something…washed over him. The feeling was subtle but powerful, strange yet familiar. A sensation he hadn’t experienced in years.
My brother .
A spear of awareness shot into his very soul, and suddenly, Stryke was with him again, the way Rade and Crux were. The way Chaos used to be.
“Stryke,” he whispered hoarsely, his emotions so out of whack he couldn’t focus on walking, breathing, or even standing. He sagged against a pillar and did his damnedest to stay upright.
“Blade?” Mace’s steadying hand came down on his biceps. “What’s wrong? What happened?”
“I don’t know. I can…I can feel Stryke.”
“What?” Scotty was there too, concern putting a frown on her glossy lips. She rarely wore lipstick, preferring the shiny clear stuff. “He reestablished the connection?”
“I doubt it was intentional.” He frowned as the tingle of awareness became taut. Unsettling.
“ Help .”
Help? This had to be a trick. Some demon messing with him. Stryke wouldn’t ask anyone for assistance, let alone Blade.
Mace’s grip tightened. “Hey, man. Tell us what’s going on.”
“ I’m in trouble .”
Whatever it was, it was probably deserved. If it was even him. Blade sent a mental “ fuck you ” back.
A blast of irritation came through the connection. Okay, yeah, it was probably Stryke.
“ The world is in danger. Tell Kynan. Need assistance .”
“ Okay, I’ll bite ,” Blade returned. “ What’s going on ?”
“ A rip in the fabric between the hell and human realms resulted in a malevolent Shoulic ejection. We’re surrounded by a fog of evil and can’t get out .”
“ Where are you? ”
“ Oil platform. Tell Kynan he can get the details from Kalis. Talk to Dakarai about the diffuser prototype and the runic amplifier. Hurry. We don’t have much time. ”
The connection dropped, and a unique anguish, an emptiness he hadn’t experienced since the day Chaos died, made him sway. Scotty and Mace caught him as he went down and lowered him gently to the ancient tile flooring.
“Blade.” Scotty went down on her knees next to him. “Talk to me.”
“It’s like he died,” he rasped. “Maybe he did. Fuck. Just…fuck.”
There was so much rage inside him, so much pain, and maybe a lot of hate. But he didn’t wish Stryke dead. No, that bastard needed to live so he could spend his long life regretting what he’d done to their family when he cut them out of his life.
“What can we do?” Mace asked.
“We need to find him,” Blade said. “He said the world is in danger. Some sort of Sheoulic breach.”
“You’re sure it was him?”
“Yeah.”
“You think he’s telling the truth?”
“Why would he lie about something like this?”
Mace shrugged. “Why does he do half the shit he does?”
Good question.
“Did he say where he is?” Scotty asked.
Blade tapped his comms device and sent a NeuroLink request to Kynan. “Some kind of oil platform.”
He rubbed his chest as if that would fill the fresh hole put there by Stryke’s reappearance and disappearance. It felt as if someone had taken a hole punch to his soul.
Again.
And he was getting really fucking sick of it.