Taken (Ava Delaney #4) (2 page)

“Not the face,”
I insisted in a mocking voice, kicking out at the thing so it would
back off. Another one flew at me from the right, slamming us both
into Peter’s back. He shoved right back, and my attacker and I
rolled on the floor until I jumped back to my feet and took out the
dagger. The weapon glowed in the strangely dull lighting, a cooler
blue than usual, and they all took a step back, the one on the
floor crawling backward rapidly. Their wariness intrigued me.
Everyone seemed to know more about my weapon of choice than I
did.

“All we want
are a couple of answers, okay?” I held up my dagger to make the
most of the threat. “That’s all. We were told to come here, and
we’ll leave as soon as we’ve gotten the information we need.”

The group
separated as one swayed in between them. “We have no answers for
your kind,” it said. I thought it was a male, but couldn’t tell for
certain. The creatures were pretty androgynous in appearance out of
their human forms.

“Then why are
we here?” Peter yelled from behind me, making me jump.

Glancing at the
heavens, I took a deep breath. “Someone knows something. What if
some of your own people are in the slave markets, trapped without a
chance?”

“We can’t mate
with humans. None of our offspring could end up there.”

“So you’ve
heard of it?”

“Everyone hears
whispers. None of us can help you get there. And none of us
particularly care what is done there. It affects us not.”

I laughed.
“Just give it time, mate. Haven’t you heard? There’s a war coming,
and everyone’s going to be dragged into it. Whether we like it or
not.”

The voice of
the group ignored my words, but the others tensed collectively when
I mentioned a war.

“Leave now, and
we won’t try to stop you.” But his tone held more pleading than
demand.

I shrugged. “I
think I could take a few of you down with me.”

“We’re a
peaceful species, protected by the—”

“Yeah, and I
have the say so of an angel, so we kind of outrank your bullshit. I
mean,
I
would go. No bother. I couldn’t care less about this
crap right now. But him?” I jerked a thumb over my shoulder at
Peter. “He can’t walk away. He has a problem. Even if I manage to
drag his arse out of here, he’ll be back when you’re asleep to set
the whole building on fire. Like I said, he has a problem. So give
him something good, and maybe he won’t act like a prick later.”

The thing
stared at me. I had been expecting something a little more
humanoid, but the more I looked at it, the more alien it appeared.
Finally, it nodded, and inside my stomach, the ball of panic
deflated a little.

“One question,”
it said. “Because there are scarier things out there than a human
and his half-breed pet.”

“I’m nobody’s
pet.” It never failed to annoy me when people said that.

“Really? You
aren’t doing his job for him? You aren’t working for the vampire
queen? You aren’t working for the Council and the traitor angel?
From where I’m looking, you’re a pawn in a game that’s far larger
than you imagine. A dumb attack dog with an unworthy master.”

“Fill me in,
then. If you know so much.” Damn it, the creature had me excited. I
kept getting closer to revealing the secrets, but never quite
finding myself there. It was infuriating.

“One question,”
it repeated, and a ripple moved under its skin.

“All right,” I
said hastily. “Peter, one question. Make it a good one.”

“Where did they
take my son?”

Maybe not the
best question, but there was no talking to him sometimes. Another
night wasted.

The creature
looked from me to Peter and spoke one word in a calm voice.
“Hell.”

With a harsh
yell, Peter let go of the creature he still had pinned to the wall
and swung around. I ducked in time to feel the faint breeze from a
dagger flying over my head. The knife hit the creature in the
neck.

Always with the
dramatics.

The thing
didn’t drop. It pulled the knife out of its neck and threw the
dagger straight into the wall. Its wound knit together rapidly with
only an insignificant loss of dark blue blood. “Get out of
here.”

Clicking noises
echoed behind it as its people prepared for battle.

“Come on,” I
said to Peter. “They’re nobodies. They know nothing worth
knowing.”

We backed out
of there.

A scornful
voice called after us, “I didn’t lie, and I wasn’t mistaken. If
they took that child, then they took him to hell.”

With a hand on
Peter’s arm, I pushed through the crowd to the front of the
building, pulled him outside, and ran, dragging him behind me.

“Hold on,” he
said, shaking me off. “I need to hear it.”

“You don’t. You
don’t need to listen to some idiot creature showing off about
things he doesn’t understand.”

“What if he’s
right? What if Emmett went to hell? What if he suffered?”

The pain
replaced the madness in his eyes. What ifs. The things that hurt us
most. I shoved him against the wall and pressed myself against him.
“Shut up. Shut the hell up. You’re not this stupid, so stop acting
like it. What’s with you?”

He wrapped his
arms around me, laying his chin on my shoulder, and I was so
surprised that I let him. We were so bad together, so bad for each
other, but the comfort was so worth it. If only it were always that
way.

“Ever feel like
time is just slipping out of your hands?” he asked. “We aren’t
getting anywhere with this, and you have other stuff you need to
do. I feel as though I’ll never find out what happened to my family
that night, and I’m starting to think I don’t want to know.”

Sometimes I
thought the same thing. The night his girlfriend and her parents
were killed had changed him forever. He probably wouldn’t have
survived the grief without his drive for revenge. He needed to find
out where his son had been taken and what happened to him, but if
he did, what would keep him alive?

I nuzzled his
neck, taking in that cinnamon scent. He stiffened a little, and I
let go. Ever since I had drunk his blood, he had issues with me
getting too close to any major arteries. I put up with it because I
didn’t wholly trust myself either.

“Don’t,” he
said, pulling me back and pressing his lips to mine. His kisses
were always fierce, and that one was no exception. He took
everything, gave everything, and left me breathless in more ways
than one.

I wished it
could last.

I thought about
Peter as I showered the following morning. In some ways, we had
gotten closer, but I couldn’t call it a relationship. We were two
lonely people drawing comfort from one another, except for the
times he dragged me everywhere under pretence of helping me do my
job. Really, he was using me to get what he wanted. And I let him.
Every time. I even played along with his out-of-control-human
routine.

The night
before was a prime example. He had come to me with yet another
lead, someone who might have news about the slave markets or even
the rebels. Thinking about it later, I realized he hadn’t actually
confirmed which. But when we got there, he used up our one question
to ask something pointless. He had made sure he was seen with me, a
well-known face of the Council’s
darker
interests, and that
usually meant answers came quicker.

I definitely
wanted to discover what had happened to his son, but there were
better ways of phrasing a question, better methods for drawing the
truth out of something that wasn’t quite human. And I still had my
own jobs to do. They had to come first. I was the one who would
have to face the consequences of failure.

When we first
met, Peter had assumed I was a vampire out to get him, but he had
slowly been persuaded that I wanted to do good. At least, I hoped
he had been persuaded. Sometimes, I couldn’t be sure.

I dried off,
dressed, headed to the kitchen, and ate. Afterward, I decided I was
still hungry. I made a plan to have a second breakfast with Carl,
the human I had essentially made my brother. I was still under
orders to keep an eye on Eddie Brogan, Keeper of Knowledge,
Guardian of Sleeping Gods, blah, blah, blah, but seeing his shop
assistant was a good way around that.

I left with the
sun blazing against the red-bricked front wall of my home. My house
was like something out of a fairytale on sunny days, and I loved
living in the cul-de-sac, surrounded by both humans and
supernaturals, but never having to hide my true face. I really
needed to thank Peter for finding me the place; I was truly happy
there.

I wasn’t
exactly inviting my neighbours for dinner, but we all nodded and
smiled politely whenever the opportunity arose. An air of
relaxation and contentment surrounded the community. We were safe
from the outside world and safe from each other. The only one I had
ever really spoken to was the daughter of my next door neighbour.
Her mother kept her head down, barely raising her eyes to nod at me
in greeting, but she was never unpleasant.

I grinned as I
passed the garden and spotted Dita’s hair glisten in the sunlight.
“Morning, Dita. Enjoying your holidays?”

She beamed up
at me, her dark blue eyes shining and her hands still in the dirt.
She was quite possibly the cutest kid I had ever seen in my entire
life, and although I knew there was something supernatural about
her and her mother, I wasn’t sure what. Not that I cared. And that
was the beauty of Mrs. Yaga’s housing. Nobody cared.

“I’m planting.
Can I do your garden? It’s kind of messy.”

I bit my lip to
keep from laughing. “You know what? You’re so right. Maybe I’ll
hire you to fix it up for me.”

She tossed her
head, but her dark blond hair fell back into her eyes. “Do I get a
break?”

I shrugged.
“I’ll have to think about that one. I mean, time is money.”

She chortled
and turned back to her work. “I’m very expensive.”

“I bet you are.
Can I get your majesty something in the shop, if your Mam says it’s
okay?”

“Lip
gloss?”

“Nice try. I
heard your mother telling you no already this morning.”

She grinned up
at me. “I’ll have to make sure she’s a little quieter next
time.”

“Maybe I’ll
bring you back a comic.”

She brightened.
“And I’ll get started on your garden.”

“Nah. Enjoy the
sun. I’d rather see you working in the rain, getting nice and
muddy.”

She stuck out
her tongue and waved as I left, and I couldn’t help feeling good,
even though the only neighbour I had ever had an actual
conversation with happened to be a nine-year-old girl.

I was probably
happier than I had ever been. The vampires had all but disappeared
for a couple of months, Carl was getting on okay, and I was no
longer having energy stolen from me by a bitchy succubus. All in
all, life was more than okay. I had friends, nobody had tried to
kill me for months, and I felt safe for the first time in my
life.

Still, some
things troubled me: the deal with the twins that I still hadn’t
managed to sort out, the deals I had made with Gabe, and pretty
much everything to do with either Eddie or my grandmother. Then,
there was Peter.

I was losing
him to himself. I had always known there was something twisted and
broken inside of him, but I thought it would heal eventually. After
spending time with him, I could see that I had severely
underestimated the extent of his pain and madness. And he
was
mad. Without even discussing it, both Carl and I tried
to keep him human, but he was so far gone, so deep in the other
world we lived in, that he might never go back to the way he used
to be.

I wasn’t
altogether sure that knowing the truth about what had happened to
his son would help him, but I feared that if he gave up, he would
have nothing left. I didn’t want to see him wither and waste away.
I didn’t want the world to chew him up and spit him out as it
almost had Carl.

I wanted them
both to survive. I
needed
them to survive. After my trip to
England, where Lucia had shown me things about myself, what I was
capable of, I realised I needed them even more than they needed me.
I needed them to keep me human, too.

My cottage was
a lot further away from Eddie’s shop than my old flat, but I
enjoyed the walk. Peter and Carl kept encouraging me to get a car,
but I wasn’t particularly interested in being in charge of a large
weapon, and that was what it would become—something to run down
rogue demons and vampires. I preferred to leave that sort of thing
to Peter.

I stopped into
a nearby deli for some breakfast rolls, and then breezed into
Eddie’s shop, trying to keep my face neutral as all of his dark
magic pressed against me at once. Eddie and I weren’t on the best
of terms anymore. He had been suspicious of me ever since I made a
secretive deal with the angel Gabe to save Carl after both a
succubus and I had messed up his mind, body, and soul.

But the deal
had been Eddie’s idea, and whatever he had been trying to do with
that had obviously backfired. He was clearly pissed about
something, and whenever I stepped inside the bookshop, I felt his
magic warding me off. Sometimes, the ghostly presence greeted me,
but she—Maeve as Eddie once called her—seemed to come to me less
and less. I actually missed her.

Carl pressed
his finger to his lips when he saw me, so I sidled up to the
counter and listened. I heard a woman’s laugh and raised an
eyebrow, but he shook his head, a line on his forehead
creasing.

When I first
met Carl, he had been handsome and vibrant. Now, a mere six months
later, his blond hair was streaked with white and silver, and his
once-bright blue eyes were tired and dull. He was still attractive,
but he had aged a decade in that short period of time, mostly
because of me. He was still getting used to his limitations,
although he had taken to his new eavesdropping role like a duck to
water.