Chapter 37
Nicholas
“Don’t you have a notepad in your phone? Who uses stationery anymore?” Hamza grumbled while snapping his seatbelt on. “And it doesn’t count when you add it after the fact.”
Nicholas made a show of checking off the item he’d just added to his list.
“You’re just mad because I knocked you out.”
That earned him a dry look.
“I stumbled—a half a step. Hardly a knockout.”
Nicholas shadowboxed from the passenger seat, replaying the jab-cross combo that had caught Hamza off guard.
“Get out,” Hamza deadpanned. “Walk home and take your mutts with you. They’re stinking up my truck.”
Nicholas laughed when Maxim affectionately nudged Hamza’s shoulder from the backseat. Hamza wasn’t fooling anyone. He started the engine, but didn’t pull away from the curb.
“What’s going on, Hamza? You’re more miserable than usual, and I shouldn’t have gotten the drop on you in there.”
“The drop? What the hell have you been watching, kid?”
Nicholas hated it when he called him that, but he let it slide since Hamza was in a sour mood.
“Turns out I like action and adventure.”
“Action and adventure? What are you, twelve?” Hamza shook his head. “You gotta set your sights a little higher.”
He thought Nicholas’s list was amateurish.
“I’ve got skydiving on here.”
“And when the hell is that going down?”
“Saving the best for last.” That won him a reluctant grin.
Hamza dragged a hand down his stubbled jaw, then gripped the steering wheel hard enough to make it creak.
“You’re scaring me. Is it—”
“No, it’s not him.”
Nicholas waited for him to elaborate, secretly hoping he’d get more details on Gabriel.
He and Hamza never spoke about him, but it killed Nicholas not to ask every time they were together.
He shouldn’t want to know. He should’ve been focusing on himself—and he was…
while simultaneously thinking about Gabriel.
The need to know what he was up to, how he was feeling, and how he was spending his time had turned into a suffocating thing. Maybe he’d ask Marcus. Unlike Hamza, Marcus had enough manners to at least pretend Nicholas wasn’t pitiful for fishing.
“So what is it?”
“There’s a lot going on out there, kid.”
“I know,” he whispered. He’d been keeping up with the news.
“The city’s on fire. My department is spread thin, and the bureau’s now got its nose in on it.”
“Maybe now you’ll have a better shot at putting an end to things,” he said carefully, not wanting to imply that Hamza and his team lacked the ability to end the street war themselves. “You know, because the FBI has more resources.”
“Maybe,” he said distractedly. “But I’m starting to wonder if we’ve all been focusing on the wrong thing.”
“What do you mean?”
Hamza opened his mouth to answer, but then seemed to remember that Nicholas was a civilian.
“Nothing. It’s getting late, and I’m on night shift. Let’s get you guys home.”
He threw the truck in drive, and the long, quiet ride left Nicholas with too much time to think.
Had he been wrong to demand that Gabriel not hurt Kyrin?
Nicholas couldn’t deny that the city would be safer if he were dead.
Maybe then the dead bodies would stop piling up, and so would the number of the missing.
No, he couldn’t think like that. They weren’t responsible for the crimes Kyrin committed, or the Armenians, or anyone else, for that matter. He had to believe that. It was what made him different from murderous monsters like Kyrin. Like… Gabriel.
It was a good thing that the FBI was involved. Especially if Irongard was as corrupt as Gabriel claimed. Maybe now they’d be able to stop this, bring Kyrin and his associates to proper justice.
“Nicholas, we’re here.”
Nicholas startled, too lost in thought to notice they were sitting in front of his building.
“Are you okay?”
“Yeah, just thinking.” He released his seatbelt.
“Hey.” Hamza stopped him before he opened the door. “Don’t let my stress worry you. You’re fine.”
He huffed. “Too late.”
Hamza’s lips thinned.
“I’m fine. I can handle it.”
Hamza pressed into his seat as Nicholas took in his profile.
He wasn’t sure how he maneuvered through the world uninterrupted when he stood out as much as he did.
Nicholas supposed all anyone could do was accept that he was human when left with no other alternative.
More and more, he understood how imperative it was that they never be discovered.
“There is something I wanted to ask you. It’s unrelated,” he added when Hamza gave him a warning look. Hamza rarely divulged information pertaining to his job, especially the confidential stuff. It was obvious he already felt guilty about what little he’d let slip.
“You chose not to glamour yourself. Why?”
“Because it hurts like a bitch, and because I’m not trying to run away from myself.”
Nicholas thought about that last part. “You think that’s why Gabriel uses glamour?”
He hadn’t intended to mention him, but how could he not when Hamza’s statement felt so pointed?
“I’m positive that’s part of the reason. There’s also the line of work he’s in.”
“Was in,” Nicholas corrected, because he didn’t want to believe that Gabriel would still be doing the one thing that would cost him Nicholas forever. He replayed that last thought, palms sweaty. When had he decided that Gabriel hadn’t already lost him forever?
Hamza opened his mouth as if to argue, but nodded, moving on.
“It can also be the smart thing to do if you’re going to stick around the same place for a while, but it isn’t necessary. You can age yourself in increments. Same idea, less pain involved.”
“Why do you think Marcus does it?”
“For the same reasons Gabriel does, or because he follows his lead. Marcus would take a machete to the neck for him.”
“That’s how best friends work. I’d do the same for Mateo.”
Hamza shook his head. “It’s more than that if you ask me.”
“I’m asking.”
He glanced over at Nicholas, a smile playing around his lips. “I thought you had one question for me?”
Nicholas shrugged. “Now I have more.”
The dogs grew restless in the back, earning a glare from Hamza.
“Following orders is part of who Marcus is. He was raised to serve. It’s part of his lineage. As much as I complain about him, I’m sure he has a mind of his own. It might be buried up Gabriel’s ass—right along with his head, but I’m sure he has one.”
Marcus was stoic, self-possessed, shrewd, and cunning.
It was in the way he held himself, in what he didn’t say, and the little he did.
He definitely had a mind of his own. Nicholas wouldn’t have been surprised to find out that he was the one who held Gabriel together behind closed doors.
He was too even-keeled not to be doing just that.
“Are you jealous of their friendship?”
Hamza grunted. “No. Now, enough about them. Why are you asking me about glamour?”
Nicholas sighed. “Just wondering how long I can maintain my life before it needs to change.”
How long before he’d have to give up Sandy, Mike, baby Sutton—and possibly Sean and Alyssa. He’d only just met them, but they were definitely interested in friendship, and for once, so was he.
Mateo already knew about him. That was the sigh of relief he hadn’t known he needed.
But Gabriel knew.
Belatedly, he thought about Father Murphy. They’d texted and talked over the phone, but he hadn’t gone to see him yet, too afraid the priest would see what others overlooked. He glanced down at his hands, the skin too perfect to be real, its flawlessness going beyond a new skincare routine.
“Do you choose your glamour? Or do you just flip some mental switch and hope you don’t end up a rhino?”
Hamza laughed, shoving Zeke away when he sniffed at his cheek.
“You can choose, but you need a reference point. Gabriel took the identity of a Sudanese king.”
“A king?”
“Yeah. They’d done business once before. He doesn’t have to worry about anyone recognizing him. Although there may or may not be a sculpture of him in a museum somewhere.”
Wow.
“How did you guys even know you were capable of changing your appearance?”
“That’s a question for Rayyaan. He was the first. Are you even sure you can glamour yourself?”
Nicholas wasn’t sure. Drinking from Zayn had altered Gabriel’s body chemistry, which allowed him—and anyone who fed from him—special abilities like sun-walking and glamouring.
Nicholas drank from Gabriel on several occasions, but after two centuries, did Gabriel’s blood still offer those unique gifts?
Zayn’s blood was used for the reincarnation spell, and while Nicholas’s witch powers were slightly different from his, he now knew—thanks in part to the Penny situation—that he possessed some form of Zayn’s saahir attributes.
And while he couldn’t speak telepathically with animals, he could sometimes feel their emotions.
Sort of how the familial bond between vampires worked.
“I’m not sure. Maybe.”
Hamza’s phone pinged multiple times in rapid succession.
“Alright, kid. I really do have to go.”
“When are you going to stop calling me kid?”
“As soon as it stops being fun.”
Fun? Nicholas scowled at him. “And when will that be?”
“When it stops having power over you.”
Nicholas didn’t hold him up any longer, hopping out and opening the back door for the dogs.
He’d reached the top step, the dogs trailing behind on their leashes, when a soft whistle floated through the air.
He spun in time to catch the large, metal projectile coming at him with the velocity of a bullet.
He caught it just before it struck his face.
His grip dented the metal, his ice coating it.
“What the…”
It was the lid to the trash bin on the curb. His eyes flicked up in time to see Hamza smile before peeling off. He was always testing him, as if preparing him for something. His reflexes, his speed, his ability to remain calm.
“When it stops having power over you.”
Checking to make sure he was alone on the desolate street, Nicholas smoothed out the lid, metal groaning. He set it on top of the trash bin, stiffening as a thought came to him.
How had Hamza tossed it at him when he hadn’t gotten out of the truck?
Once upstairs, he opened the living room window, letting his swallowtails inside. Leaving them and the dogs to their nightly game of cat and mouse, he gorged himself on blood before retiring to his darkened bedroom.
Nicholas was never alone. His craving for Gabriel always rode shotgun, the need worsening when there was nothing keeping him from giving in to it. He stripped, tearing his T-shirt in his haste to be naked.
Creeping over to the nightstand, he lit the last cigarette, inhaling deeply as he rubbed the fabric of Gabriel’s jacket between his fingers. It rested neatly on the side of the bed he’d designated for it, and if he didn’t sleep with it wrapped around him, he slept wrapped around it.
Nicholas turned to the stool in front of the mirror, affixing his brown dildo to it before settling down with a hiss.
He took another drag, exhaling a smoke-filled moan as he circled his hips, cocooned in a cloud of tobacco. Rolling a nipple with the pad of one clawed finger, he made the same promise to himself that he both made and broke nightly.
“This is the last time,” he whispered. “This is it.”
Obsession.
Obsession.
Obsession.