A Bevin Hero [The O'Hagan Way 5] (Siren Publishing Ménage Amour ManLove) (15 page)

“I’m fine,” I giggled so they focused on the man asking the question. I went back to my seat and continued to watch the show.

“Same as if ya used ya gift until ya were tired.” Rian shrugged. “We don’t really know. We don’t get to test or play with it often. Just a couple of times when someone was pulling something on us they shouldn’t and we wanted to make it stop. That’s how we realized we could do it. Some arse weed Brit thought it would be funny to use his fire gift to scare Ronan, and the next thing I knew I was draining his power.”

“How does doing that affect you?” Desmond asked.

“Juiced,” they said together, but Ronan continued. “Like sleep and margay blood and food and adrenaline. It’s a rush and we feel wired.”

“So you could drain demons at the castle of their gifts and weaken them,” he hedged, glancing at Maverick. “How do you feel?”

“Like I’ve been using my gift too long or been in battle, but fine. I have a feeling they went easy on me.” He shot a look at my mates who both nodded. “Can you do this to more than one person at a time?”

“We’ve never tried,” Ronan answered honestly. “We can do it alone, so each of us could do one, but beyond that, we don’t know.”

“What are you thinking?” Desmond asked Maverick.

“Doesn’t Virgil have the gift of amplifying others’ gifts? Clove has that gift as well. If we could have Rian or Ronan mimic it and add to Virgil and Clove, one of them could disable a bunch of demons and drain them. Then they’d be wired up to shoot energy blasts, or hell, whatever else they can do. I mean, this is astounding.”

“And dangerous,” Councilman James hedged.

“See, this be why we didn’t tell anyone,” Ronan bitched. “We’re telling ya now to help. We’ve never hurt anyone with the extra gifts. We’ve just dabbled in them as anyone does when they first realize they can do something cool.”

“I didn’t mean you are a danger to your own coven, Ronan,” the man said firmly, but there was kindness in his eyes. “I mean, if word got out of what you could do, people would come for you. They’d want to study you.”

“I know I’m dying to,” Riley snickered. “Hell, I have interns now. I want to map their genomes more than I want to teach them how to use my gift so they can help me after the fight. We could figure out why they have more gifts even.”

“That’s an interesting point,” Councilman Abbott agreed. “You should take several samples from them before we invade the castle.”

“In case they die, right?” I choked out as I slammed my hands on the table. “You want to make sure you get their blood and DNA so you can maybe make more like them with powerful gifts, but other than that, as long as they help you win they’re expendable, right?”

“Bevin, you know that’s not what we’re saying,” Rylan said gently. “We wouldn’t be going in if we didn’t think we could win. We’re just saying we should be prepared. Your mates are strong and we have other people going who are forces to be reckoned with. I know you think this is because their lives aren’t worth as much as the Queen’s but—”

“What?” Queen Magdalena gasped. “Of course their lives are. There are two of them. That makes them twice as valuable as me.”

“No we’re not,” Ronan chuckled. “We know that. King Rylan didn’t disagree with us last night either. We know we’d be sent in before ya because we’re more expendable. Ya lead the fae. They need ya. We’re just farmers with some extra gifts and quirks.”

“
I need you
!” I bellowed, my voice echoing around the room.

“I didn’t disagree with you because you’re right that the fae need their Queen, Ronan,” Rylan said quietly, shaking his head. “I’m sorry you felt that I meant I was agreeing with you on everything else because that simply was not the case. Your lives aren’t less valuable than hers.” He met my gaze then. “In all the years you’ve known me have you ever seen me treat one person worth more than another? Have I not always been fair that we’re just people?”

“Yes you have, your majesty, and that is why I serve you without fail or questions.” I dipped my head to Rylan. I was glad he clarified that point though because I thought he had agreed with my mates last night.

“What I’m saying is we don’t know what else we might face. We might need the Queen elsewhere to help tip the scales of the fight,” Rylan explained. “I should have made this clearer but it was late and we were all tired. You two are our ace in the hole. They will expect the Queen or how fast the margays are or how well trained the warriors are. They won’t see you coming and that gives us an advantage.

“I don’t want you to go in there alone. I want you to fight alongside your people and this coven. But your purpose would be to drain Osvaldo so we can use the weapons that have been formed to help us and kill him. To put an end to this if we can. Then you
live
to go back to my best friend and we all see another day.”

“I like that plan much better,” Ronan chuckled, shrugging. “We’re in. Ya think we can help and we will.”

“They’re not trained as warriors or to fight!” Brighid O’Hagan yelled as she jumped to her feet. “Ya can’t send untrained men into the midst of hell to go after the
head
demon and expect them to come back. It be a suicide mission and ya know it!”

“Not if we do it right,” Maverick said as he glanced at his mate, Asterio. “If we have them surrounded with fae warriors who can control fire, that would kill any demons in their path. Victor can control fire too. We go in using gifts, protecting them, until they can drain Osvaldo, then we switch to guns. We get out who we can, kill the demons, grab the witches who were bespelling the blood, and get some damn answers. Done and done.”

“We’d need the element of surprise for that to even work,” Desmond hedged. “That means going in right in the middle of it all. Cyrus would know the castle.” Several others nodded. “Okay, we need several things to make this work. We need a list of gifts so we can team up who would be best together. Virgil and Clove are with Ronan and Rian. We should also have them learn as many as we can before we go in.”

“Agreed,” Councilman Abbott said as he glanced from my mates to me. “We will do everything in our power to bring them back.
No one
is expendable in this coven. I won’t promise you because we both know that’s a promise I can’t keep. But I’m going in as well and I will fight at their side. So I’m not just sending them into hell and sitting back waiting for the outcome.”

“Councilmen don’t fight, Abbott,” Barnabas hedged.

“Your grandmother does,” the man drawled. “I’ve seen Desmond jump into the fray. Caven and Rylan do. My father might have started or been a part of this shit. I’m seeing this through. Besides, I have one of the same gifts the twins do.” He smiled widely as his fangs came out.

“What’s that?” Bas asked with a smirk.

“He can mimic whatever gift he learns,” Rian chuckled. “He can help us drain demons. We’ll show ya how to do it, Councilman.”

“Already know how when you did it to Maverick.”

“Then we have a starting point for a plan,” Desmond said loudly. “Let’s get to work. We meet in the war room in three hours.”

And just like that we were going to war with my mates as their secret weapon. Shit.

Rian

“Jon’s dead, Bev,” I said quietly as he helped organize all the bullets and ammunition several hours after the High Council meeting. They’d met again with layouts of the castle, all the lists of people, and everything we needed. We had our plan and we were going to battle in a short while.

“He is?” our mate whispered, sadness filling his eyes. “I shouldn’t be surprised. I mean, I knew it was coming. I just didn’t want it to.”

“Why not? He was a traitor.”

“He wasn’t always though,” Bevin mumbled. “Rylan showed me his file. He was a good warrior for centuries. I can’t help but wonder what made him change sides. I know it’s silly but it’s like it would help me to know why.”

“It’s not silly at all,” Ronan assured him. “But we won’t ever know. Brian told us that there had been issues with Jon picking on Damian for his positioning preference in bed. Calling him Dana or some shite to make it like he was the woman. I guess he didn’t like the other paranormal types joining the coven too. Some people are full of hate. For all we know he was faking being a good warrior all those years. Either way. It’s over and he’s not a threat to ya.”

“Right, okay, good.” Bevin nodded and went to walk away. I couldn’t let him yet and I saw Ronan feel the same. We hugged him tightly. “I got him killed.”

“No, he got himself killed for being a bastard who betrayed his own. Those demons were raping and killing people, using humans as cattle in Paris, Bev,” I reminded him. “Jon chose to align with people like that, sell out his own. Ya didn’t do anything but save lives of people
we know
by finding out who the traitor was. Ya did a good thing.”

“Right. Yeah, I did,” he agreed, taking several deep breaths. “I’m okay. I got this.”

“Okay, good. I’m glad the High Council here was smart enough to just execute him. There’s no way they could have trusted anything he said and probably would have led people into a bunch of traps that could have got them killed.”

“Aye, nice to know their heads aren’t up their arses,” Ronan chuckled. He leaned down and kissed Bev. “We’ll be back, yeah? Just hang with Ma and help her any way ya can.”

“Umm, I’m coming,” Bevin hedged. “I’m part of the battle.”

“Oh,” I breathed, dread filling me. Ronan’s face filled with anger. “Ro, don’t.”

“In what capacity are ya going to be participating?” he asked calmly, nodding that he heard me warning. We didn’t blow often, we really didn’t, but there were topics we would always go off the deep end on. Our mate putting himself in danger being one of them.

“As we did last time, the margays will be shooting outlying demons and grabbing humans to get to safety,” he hedged. “Only this time we’re waiting until we get the signal Osvaldo is down and we can go in. If we can’t use guns, I don’t go unless they’re all dead and I help with the humans.”

“Okay, so not on the front line,” I said cautiously. “How good are ya with a gun? I know margays are mechanically inclined, but that be different than being able to use a gun and shoot a demon.”

“Bevin took out more demons than even I did last fight,” Rylan snickered as he walked by us. “He’s the best shot around. It pisses off half the warriors that he’s so good, but with our hyper vision he never misses. You don’t have to worry about him.”

“Are ya going in as pairs?” Ronan asked Bev and Rylan. “How are the margays approaching this for their part?”

“We’re too fast to stay in pairs. We go in as a line, and if we need to break up, we go from there and count heads when we’re back on this side and do it again,” Rylan explained.

“So Bevin could be hurt in the middle of the shite and no one would know it?” I growled, not liking that either.

“You would,” Bevin said quietly. “You said you could feel my emotions, right? So you would know if I was hurt.”

“That won’t help us
find
ya if ya be hurt,” I argued.

“No, but I might be able to,” Barnabas’s other mate, Digger Slane, offered. “There’s a reason I always have been assigned protection details while I’ve been a warrior. My gift is locating people. All I have to do is picture them and I can find them. I’ll show you how, and if you feel Bevin hurting, then you can find him.”

“Thank ya. We’d appreciate that,” Ronan sighed as I nodded.

“That’s okay. I wanted to ask your mate for a favor for Bas’s birthday present,” he said almost shyly. “He’s seen your work and loves it. I don’t know much about it besides it’s pretty, but I thought maybe I could ask for something to be commissioned if that’s the right term?”

“For helping to ease my mates’ minds and being so kind, I will make sure we talk next week about it,” Bev chuckled as he stood on his toes and kissed the warrior’s cheek. “I have a project for the Queen first, and I’m newly mated, but I will get it in time for Bas’s birthday.”

“Thank you. It’s next week actually,” Digger said with a wince. “But with everything going on, he said we’re postponing it until the end of June so I’ve got until then.”

“We’ll figure it out.” Bev rolled his eyes and I couldn’t agree more. Talk about last-minute planning. We went with Digger and he showed us how his gift worked. After that it was lots more preparations, making sure everyone ate and was ready, and the next thing we knew it was time.

“Ya come back to us,” Ma whispered as she kissed us both. “I will kick both ya arses if ya get hurt or die on us.”

“We promise to be good, Ma,” I chuckled. “We’ll be fine.” I blinked in shock as me das walked over armed. “Ya not coming.”

“Aye. We have the gift of fire. We’re just going with to help until we’re worn out, then we come right back through the portal,” me da Michan said. “If we can help grab a human on the way and bring them to safety we will.”

“Fuck,” Ronan hissed and I couldn’t agree more. “There’s more than enough warriors to fight. Ya don’t need to go.”

“If they could use their guns and swords, we’d agree,” our other da said with a nod. “But we’re going in with gifts and we can shoot fire. We’re needed. Remus Marius is covering us with his special sword and so is Dillon. We’ve got this.”