Chapter Ten
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A THRILL SHOT THROUGH Nazab at Monica’s words.
“Are you saying you’re supposed to be my female?
” he asked, seeking clarification. Fate had used humans to relay messages to the knights in the past. He hoped this wasn’t just a misunderstanding.
The idea of having someone to cherish, even if it was just for the duration of their war, filled him with intense longing.
Blushing yet again, Monica shrugged. “I’m not sure what the relationships are like between your brothers and the women they’ve been told to find,” she hedged.
“What are your impressions, female?” the knight asked.
“I think they’re all couples,” she admitted. “The Mad Prophet has been giving some pretty strong hints along those lines.”
Nazab shifted his gaze away from the enticing cambion to stare at the wall.
“In all of the eons of my eternal life, I’ve never been allowed to love a female,” he said softly, but he knew she could hear him.
“None of us knights have given our hearts to another, or sired children. Dangling this in front of us could be the cruelest thing Fate could possibly do.”
“Don’t you want a wife and kids?” Monica asked, now sounding a bit hurt, as if she thought he was rejecting her.
“I want this more than words can express, female,” Nazab said, shifting his eyes back to her face.
“But you don’t want me because of my leg, right?” she figured, withdrawing behind a protective shell. “I get it,” she added. “How could a heroic Knight of Order possibly want a defective cambion like me?”
He winced at her bitter tone. “It doesn’t bother me that you’re missing part of your leg,” he denied. “But the fact that you’re a cambion could prove to be problematic.”
“Why?” she asked in confusion.
Nazab sighed, knowing he needed to tell her what he and his brothers had done to her kind in the past. “Do you not wonder why the knights have never procreated?” he asked.
“I figured you didn’t want to get saddled with a family,” Monica said. “Especially when you’ll just have to leave them behind when you either win or lose your wars.” She was still withdrawn and refused to meet his eyes.
“An unwillingness to abandon our families is part of it,” he conceded. “But the real truth is we don’t know what our offspring will turn out to be like.”
“I don’t get it,” she said with a frown. “What do you mean?”
He braced himself for the possible fallout once he’d divulged the full truth. “Every single cambion our enemies have ever spawned have been evil,” he said. “Except for you.”
Her eyebrows rose in surprise before lowering. “How could all of them have turned evil?” she asked.
“They were born with black souls,” Nazab said. “Some turned feral and attacked their own sire. Lachial was forced to wipe them out each time.”
Monica put her hand on her chest, as if trying to delve herself. “I wasn’t born with a black soul,” she said. “Why am I so different from the others?”
“I’m hoping Amaros will know the answer to that question,” he said. “But taking you to my brothers could put you in danger.”
“Why?” she demanded, meeting his eyes again.
“Because one of our duties is to destroy the progeny of our enemies,” Nazab confessed.
Monica blanched and crossed her arms over her chest protectively. “Why didn’t you kill me when you figured out what I was?” she asked.
“Like you said, your soul is gray,” the knight said. “We don’t kill people who aren’t a danger to us, or to humans. It would be murder to end your life and my instincts won’t allow me to harm you.”
“What if your instincts change?” she argued. “How do I know you won’t turn against me and chop my head off when I least expect it?”
“I will never harm you, female,” Nazab vowed, but she remained skeptical.
He rubbed a hand over his beard. He knew he was botching this, but he didn’t know how to extricate himself from the hole he’d just dug.
“I have a question for you, Monica,” he said and she raised one eyebrow.
“Why did I feel your pain when Wallace and his friend grazed you with their bullets?”
Monica’s eyebrows lowered in confusion. “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” she said uneasily.
“We share a link,” he said, touching the back of his head. She did the same, acknowledging that she could sense his presence somehow. It seemed more intimate than just detecting other beings on his radar. “I believe my ability to feel your pain has something to do with our strange bond,” he said.
“Does it work both ways?” Monica asked.
She resumed hugging herself defensively and he wished he hadn’t frightened her so badly. “There’s only one way to find out,” Nazab figured. He rose to his feet and crossed to the kitchen. Taking a short, yet sharp knife out of a drawer, he kept his back to her as he sliced his left thumb open.
“Damn it, that hurts!” Monica hissed. He turned to see she was holding her left hand up, squeezing the base of her thumb to try to minimize the phantom pain he’d caused her.
“I’d say that answers our question,” the warrior said ruefully. He wiped the knife on a paper towel, then tossed it into the trash can he found in a cupboard beneath the sink. He put the knife back in the drawer.
“Did you have to cut yourself so deeply?” Monica complained. “Half of my thumb has gone numb.”
“My flesh and nerves will heal soon,” he said as he returned to his seat. The cut was already healing and would fade quickly enough.
“I bet the Mad Prophet has already seen us in a vision,” Monica predicted. “We need to find a ham radio. The one back at my old base is probably still there. I doubt the militants have found our stash yet.”
Nazab shook his head. “It’s too dangerous to return to the city,” he argued. “Thamuz will be on the lookout for you. He’ll be able to sense you if we get too close to him. You don’t want your sire to take control of you with his parental bond.”
She shuddered and crossed her arms again. “I don’t get why all of the Soldiers of Chaos arrived together, but the knights have been straggling in so slowly,” she said.
“It’s a mystery I’d like to solve,” he agreed. “Perhaps we can find a ham radio somewhere else. Do you have any ideas about where we could search for one?”
“I don’t even know where we are right now,” the cambion said wryly. “But we should look in Army surplus stores, pawn shops and maybe even sporting goods stores. I’m not sure what other types of stores sell them.”
“We need to figure out our current location,” Nazab concluded.
“I guess we can search the house for letters that have the address on them and try to find some maps,” Monica suggested. “You look down here and I’ll search upstairs.”
He had the feeling she needed some distance from him, so he nodded in agreement.
Monica pushed the recliner chair back into an upright position, then leaned forward to adjust her prosthesis.
She stood up gracefully, then limped to the stairs.
The sight of her ascending the stairs in her tiny shorts was enough to make him hard again.
Heaving a silent sigh at his traitorous body, the warrior got up and began searching the living room. None of the books on the bookshelf contained maps and he didn’t find any letters. The kitchen drawers were a bust as well, so he moved on to the rooms down the hall.