Blind Salvage (13 page)

Her hair was done in tiny dreadlocks beaded up with jewels and stones that clinked lightly with each step she took toward us.

“You three boys, are you done with the fighting for today? And more importantly, are you ready to move on with the more interesting activities I have planned?” Her voice was husky and sensual and it curled around the six of us. There was magic in her voice that skittled off me, but I could sense it nonetheless.

The three triplets bobbed their heads, the crotch of Tin’s pants swiftly tenting. That, along with the way they looked at her—I was guessing they weren’t related, despite their similar skin color. Her eyes drifted over us, pausing on Dox. “And you brought me a new friend. Who is he?”

Dox cleared his throat. “Hello, Sas. It’s been a long time.”

Her eyes widened and she put a hand to her throat in an elegant gesture that I never would have applied to an ogre. Then again, I’d never met a female ogre. To say she surprised the shit out of me was an understatement.

“Dox.” She breathed his name, and the triplets let out a collective groan. Dox smiled at her, but it was sad and wistful and full of a past I was pretty sure we didn’t have time to dig into.

“You two, break it up. We have a job to do, remember?
Dox.
” I breathed his name out like Sas had. His body shook and he shot a glare my way.

“Rylee, we have to wait until dark, you heard them.” He waved a hand at the triplets who were openly grinning now, their eyes darting from Dox to Sas and then to each other. An image of the five of them in bed together flashed through my mind, and I shook my head to clear it. Dox didn’t seem the type, then again … Liam spoke in a low whisper that I thought only I could hear.

“Fighting and fucking, that’s what you said, right?”

Dox at least had the grace to look chagrined. Apparently, he heard Liam too. “I can’t, Sas … .”

She sashayed to him and ran a hand over his well-muscled blue shoulder. “Dox, tell me you’re going to stay awhile. Please.” Her eyes brimmed with unshed tears. Shit, I would have had a hard time saying no to her. There was a compulsion in her words, and her voice tugged at me. That wasn’t magic; that was whatever chemistry she had going on. Liam put a hand on my lower back as if he knew.

Dox shook his head, disappointment etched into his face. “I can’t. I have to stay with my friends.”

Now
I
felt like a gods-be-damned ogre. What he said was the truth, but if the triplets were going to make us wait anyway, there was no reason to make Dox suffer. And suffer was the right word, he looked freaking miserable standing there, denying Sas.

With a laugh, Dev darted forward and scooped Sas up, taking her away from Dox, her long, bare legs dangling over his arms right under Dox’s nose. But he never looked away from her face, nor did she look away from his. Shit on a sharp stick. Why did things always have to get complicated?

“We meet back here in three hours time. You should be fine, no other ogres frequent around here, and if they do, just punch them in the balls,” Lop said, giving me a wink.

Dox stared after them, a longing in him that was plain as the three colors swirling in my eyes.

I was going to regret this. Damn it. “Go with them. You can make sure they keep to their word, and then we’ll meet you back here.” I pushed him after the brothers, and though he paused, he gave me a smile. Hell, Sas gave me a smile that made me blush with all it promised.

They welcomed him, arms slung over his shoulders, pulling him along with them. But more importantly, Sas welcomed him. She grabbed his face and kissed him long and hard and deep.

I gave a shiver, the pheromones they were throwing off suddenly making me horny. Not something I was terribly wanting in the middle of a salvage. Liam pressed himself up against my back as the ogres disappeared through one of the metal trivets that led to the gods only knew where.

Liam slid his arms around me and nipped the side of my neck, his body hard against mine. Fighting and fucking, the books weren’t kidding. Whatever the ogres had going on, it seemed to be contagious.

“Let’s go get something to eat—unless you want to follow their example?” Liam said, his voice softening even as he gripped me tighter.

I spared a glance for the bodies at our feet. Eat? No, not likely. Sex? Yeah, that’s what I wanted, the ache in my body a steady thrum.

“Yeah. Let’s get something to eat.” I stepped away from him and over a puddle of blood and dark grey matter I chose not to identify even though my own brain did a quick comparison.

We slid back through the veil over the metal trivet we’d come in by, and I crouched beside it to get a better look. Anything to distract me from what had just happened. The trivet was indeed not functioning, which was apparent by the sudden spout of water around us from all the other miniature spouts. Clever, very clever. No doubt the triplets were assigned this area to keep the humans from it, maybe even direct them back if they accidently stepped through. No, I knew that wouldn’t be what happened. If a human stepped through, either they’d be killed or sold into some sort of slavery. At least, that is what the books on ogres I’d found had called it. The description, though, had been less like slavery and more like bondage.

I shook it all off and headed toward the truck. There were a few humans wandering about now; the rain had slacked off and apparently that was enough to draw them out into the weather.

Back at the truck, we cleaned up, getting the worst of the blood and gore off—meaning it wasn’t obvious unless you looked
really
close. Liam brushed a strand of my hair back and tucked it behind my ear, his eyes lingering on my mouth as if he were hoping I’d change my mind. I shook my head ever so slowly. I wasn’t an ogre, and now that whatever pheromones had been floating around had eased off, I could think more clearly. I couldn’t go from fighting to sex in the space of a few heartbeats. “Do you smell coffee?”

His eyes widened. “You’re asking
me
if I smell coffee?”

Around the corner was indeed a small coffee shop, and within ten minutes I had a hot raspberry tea cupped in my hands. Liam had two sandwiches and a large coffee.

“You need to eat,” he said between sandwiches.

I glared at him and sipped my tea. “You don’t find this weird?”

He shrugged and took a bite out of his sandwich, answering around it. “You and weird are tight like a fat kid in spandex. I’m getting used to it.”

I burst out laughing, stunned at the unexpected joke. “Yeah, I guess you’re right. But even for me, going for tea after a fight like we just had is a bit much.”

He popped the last of the first sandwich into his mouth and leaned back. “I’m not the one to talk about normal, not anymore. Besides, there was another option.” His lips tipped upward and his golden eyes began to dilate. Heat flared between us and the lingering effects of whatever pheromones Sas had been throwing off reared up. He slid his hand under the table and up my thigh, massaging as he went.

I shook my head, took a deep breath, and pushed his hand back. Nope, not going there. At least, not today. “Ease up; after the salvage.”

The coffee shop was busy, humming with people, and I’m going to blame our stupidity on that. If you’d asked me, I would have told you that with that many humans around, another supernatural wouldn’t have shown up. Certainly not a supernatural we both hated. Not one that I had told on more than one occasion that I would be removing her head from her shoulders ASAP.

Milly slid into a chair at the table next to us, a drink in her hand. Frozen, that’s what I was, and Liam seemed about as stunned as me, his eyes widening and jaw dropping. Her brown locks flowed down over her shoulders, the bump on her belly the obvious show of her budding motherhood. Green eyes regarded me with no malice, but with a soft sorrow that ate at me; damn, she knew my weaknesses. Liam’s hands clutched the table, shaking it with the force of his fury. Not good, this was not good at all. Three seconds. That’s how long I was betting she had before he strangled her in front of all these humans.

“Liam, believe it or not, I am happy that Rylee brought you back. What I did, I did because I had no choice. But if I must, I will hold you down with a spell. Please don’t make me do that. It will scare the humans, and if you two are truly on a salvage, the last thing you need is human interference by way of a police tail. Or worse, your old boss showing up. I’ve heard that Agent Valley is hoping to keep tabs on you, perhaps trying to get you to work for him again.” Milly took a sip of her drink, and I just sat there and stared at her. Surely I’d drawn a smash to my head in the fight and this was some semi-conscious waking dream.

But no, the tremor in the table, the uncertainty in my gut, the smell of Milly’s rose perfume. Too real, this was happening whether I liked it or not. Liam held himself together, but the wolf was strong, and I could feel the rise of it along my skin like a forest fire gathering speed. We had to get out of here. I made a move to stand and Milly lifted her hand, palm out.

“Please, I know that you owe me nothing, but give me a moment to explain. Things have changed for me.”

“What are you doing here?” I managed to get out, lowering myself back into my seat. There had to be a good reason she was here, putting herself and her baby directly in harm’s way. With her, there was always a reason; the whole problem was just figuring out if the reason she gave would be the truth or another lie.

“I am trying to keep you safe. That has been my goal all along. Though you would be hard-pressed to see that, I suppose.” A tear slipped from her eye and trailed down her cheek, and I fought the twist of pity in my guts, seeing her cry. The pity was followed quickly by a spurt of anger I didn’t bother to repress.

“Enough of the fake waterworks.”

She nodded and wiped her tears away, her voice soft. “I have made a mess of things.”

“You can fucking well say that again.” I leaned back in my chair, to get a better look at her, but also to give me room to move. If she made one flinch toward Liam, I was going to tackle her. “Do you feel bad at all about killing Giselle, about almost killing Eve and Alex? About taking Liam captive and essentially trying to kill him by letting his wolf take over?”

“For all those things and more, yes, I grieve every waking moment. But I can change none of it; my soul was sold long ago, Rylee. Long before we ever met. There has been very little in my life that was because I decided it. Ethan was one of my few choices, and I loved him fiercely for that.” She lifted her eyes to mine, shimmering with intensity, as one hand dropped to cup her belly, Ethan’s child. I could see her desire to make me believe her one more time. But that wasn’t the worst of it.

I wanted to. I wanted so badly to have her back in my life, to believe that all she had done wasn’t really her. Yet I knew that for what it was—a childish wish for a time long gone.

“Why would I believe you now? After everything you’ve done?”

“Because in my own way, as much as I could, I have been trying to thwart him and he has found out. It is why I asked you to protect my child. I am only good to him as long I carry my baby, for he seeks to kill my child, to use my baby’s blood to help him free himself.” Her hand slid around her belly again, cupping it protectively.

Liam slid his chair backward, his breathing evening out, and a surge of pride whipped through me. Gods, he
was
a man to be proud of. The fact that he’d held himself together, when she sat within inches of him, was beyond what anyone else could have handled. “Who are you talking about?”

If I’d thought I’d understood Milly and her treachery, if I’d thought I could pinpoint where she’d gone bad, where Giselle and I had fallen down, I couldn’t have been more wrong. Of all the things I expected her to say, it was not his name. The world spun out from under me as the name she spoke rocked it.

Not Faris, as I’d thought she’d spit out. Not even Berget, as I was thinking perhaps it could be.

“Orion.”

Y
ou do not
remember meeting him, do you?” She turned in her seat, and crossed her legs.

“I’ve never met Orion; I’d think I’d damn well remember that.” I glared at her, how stupid did she think I was?

“The day you fell down the stairs … .”

“What of it?” I vaguely recalled what she spoke of. I’d fallen down the stairs not too long after Giselle had taken me on as a ward, and when I’d come to, I’d been in the hospital, Giselle at my bedside with a new wayward soul in tow—Milly.

“You never fell down the stairs. Orion had me erase the memory of how you met me—and of meeting him, of meeting a semblance of him anyway. He can’t take form here yet, he is still trapped, thank the gods. But yours and Giselle’s memories—both—he had me take.” The tears flowed freely down her face. “He will kill me no matter what I do now, so I feel no obligation to keep his secrets anymore. And you need to know what you’re up against. I can help you, if you’ll let me. The plans he has woven are thick; he has help in more places than even I realized. But I swear I will do all I can to help you stop him.”

I shared a look with Liam, tried to discern his thoughts. But his eyes were unreadable, hooded and yet, still burning with intensity.

“So because you aligned yourself to a demon, and now find yourself on the outs with him, we are supposed to feel sorry for you?” Liam’s question was ground out between his teeth.

“No, I never aligned with him. My father sold me to him when I was but a young girl, not long before I met Rylee and Giselle.”

I was having a hard time swallowing this new side of her, as much as a part of me wanted to believe she had never turned on us—or at least that there had been more reason than her own selfish whims—there had been too many lies. Too much death. At any point, she could have told me, and I would have fought to the death to free her. But she hadn’t.

I stood, indecision rippling through me, forcing the words out. “We have to go.”

“Wait, take this.” Milly held out a small, brown canvas bag. I took it, carefully, and peered in. A shimmering red and black stone the size of a golf ball lay in the bottom of the bag. Spikes erupted out of every piece of it, like a porcupine on steroids, some straight, some twisted like corkscrews. The main stems were black, the tips red, as if dipped in blood.

“What do I want with this?”

Her lips trembled. “It’s a demon stone; Orion uses it to compel me. Destroy it, if you can.”

Her eyes never left my face, and I gave her a slow nod. That much I could do for her and not feel as if she were manipulating me.

I backed away from her for two steps before turning to leave. Liam went first, every line of his body taut with pent up anger. The humans moved out of his way, sliding away from him, their eyes following him as one would a stalking beast. Smart humans.

“They will use the foal as a sacrifice to raise Orion. That is their plan. You can stop them. The full moon is the catalyst. Tonight, you have until tonight.”

Milly’s words stilled my feet as nothing else could.

She went on. “You have time yet, but not much. I tell you this because as long as he is trapped within the deep veils, he can only harm me. But if he is brought through physically to the point of crossing fully into our world, he will be able to harm my child. To spill my baby’s blood and seal his own life here.”

“You can’t believe her, Rylee.” Liam grabbed my arm and dragged me out of the coffee shop, the whispers and stares of the humans following us. I let him drag me. I wasn’t sure I could have left of my own volition, not with her words ringing in my ears. The thing was, I still
wanted
to believe her. Her green eyes met mine, pled with me as Liam shoved the swinging door open and pulled me through after him. What she was saying aligned with what Doran had already told me. Only now she gave me the details. Orion was the demon, not some nameless demon like the Hoarfrost, but Orion.

The demon included in the prophecies that had me fighting him to the death over the potential end of the world.

Even more than before, we had to move our asses. If Milly was right, Calliope had very little time. If she was right, a demon that I was destined to meet on a battleground somewhere at a future date was about to be pulled through the veils and into our world. Just peachy.

We all but ran back to the courtyard. We were early, but there was nowhere else to wait for Dox and the triplets. Nowhere else to go. Damn it all to hell and back! I paced beside the truck, my mind racing.

Hours, it would be hours before Dox and the triplets were back, depending on their sexy romp with Sas, no doubt, and whether or not they were having a good time.

Liam grabbed my arms and stared into my eyes. The man knew me too well, read my mind before I’d really even formed the thoughts myself. “We can’t go without them, Rylee. It would be suicide; we barely managed the ogres that came after the triplets and us. And that was with help.”

I stared up into his gold eyes. “If Milly is right, then we’re dooming the world to a demon prophesied to take it over. There isn’t enough time. We can’t wait for them to finish their sex antics.” I didn’t jerk out of his arms, didn’t shove him away. I laid my fingers on his forearms. “You know I’m right, or you wouldn’t be trying to convince me otherwise.”

He let go of me. “You don’t know that. We don’t know if she was telling the truth or not.”

I bowed my head, feeling the weight of everything I’d learned in London, of the prophecies and the secrets. Maybe this was what they had been pointing to, that I had to stop Orion from using the foal to come through the veils. Shit balls. I Tracked Calliope, just as a spike of fear sliced through her and into me. Intense and teeth rattling, I clenched my hands tight, digging my fingernails into his forearms. Whether or not Milly was right, and my gut said she was for once telling the truth, it was time to finish this salvage.

“I’m going. Are you coming with me?” I lifted my head to see Liam shake his head, his eyes full of worry. A flicker of what he could do danced through his eyes. We both knew he could pin me down, hold me to prevent me from moving, and I wouldn’t try and kill him. He could stop me if he really wanted to.

“This is a bad idea.”

“You got a better one?” I pulled the truck keys out of my pocket and headed toward Dox’s baby.

“We wait for Dox and the triplets. That’s a better idea.” He still got into the truck, slid into the backseat with only the muttering to show he wasn’t behind this idea a hundred percent.

Calliope’s fear spiked again, and I backed the truck out of the parking lot, following the threads of the foal’s life. Leaving without Dox and the triplets wasn’t really a choice. Calliope was in trouble, and a demon summoning was no small thing to ignore when you knew when the deadline was. Mere hours were all we had.

Fuck, why did it have to be
this
that Milly told the truth about?

“Maybe she believes it, Rylee. Maybe this is a plan that Orion has put into place and he’s using her and she doesn’t know it.” Liam’s voice rolled over me, his words settling in my gut. He might be right, but Calliope needed us and that superseded anything else.

“You handled that very well, seeing her.” I peered in the rearview mirror at him, traced the lines of his body with my eyes.

He snorted. “I couldn’t kill her in the middle of a coffee shop, surrounded by humans. Even I know that much. Even my wolf knows that much.”

That was where he was wrong, but I wasn’t going to correct him. He could have killed her, and while it would have put us on the run, the humans would have chalked it up to a psycho going on a spree. Hell, I could have run her through and if I’d timed it right, no one would have seen her body slumping until after we were gone. We could have called Agent Valley and had him clean up our mess.

So why hadn’t I? Why hadn’t either of us taken that chance? I told myself it was because of the baby; I couldn’t hurt an unborn child. But in my heart, I knew that wasn’t the only reason.

Liam scooted forward and put his chin on the back of my seat.

“What’s the plan, Tracker? And yes, I’m going to keep after you about this. You do have to have one this time. We can’t go in blindly, this is dangerous enough as it is.”

I took the next right hand turn, felt Calliope’s threads settle a little, the fear easing off before thrumming back through me at high speed. “Same as always, which is a type of plan.”

“Crash the party and hope we get out alive?”

I eyed him up in the rearview mirror as he curled back into his seat and tucked both hands behind his head, his eyes thoughtful.

“There is no way to know how bad it’s going to be. Even Dox didn’t know, so there is really no way to plan this.”

After that, he dropped it. Though I could see the worry etched in his face. I was just glad my back was to him and he couldn’t see the worry in mine.

Damn her. How the hell was he supposed to keep her safe if she continued to walk into situations where her life was perpetually on the line? Leaving the ogres behind had been a bad idea, but if there was even a small chance that Milly had been telling the truth, then they had to act. He knew that, though it soured his gut with acid.

His training as an FBI agent kicked in, and he let that take over for now. They had to follow the lead that they’d been give, see it though. It would either vindicate Milly or be the final nail in her coffin. Not that she needed any more nails, but he could see that Rylee still wanted to believe that her ex-best friend was under duress. That it wasn’t really Milly’s fault that she’d caused so much damage.

Lounging in the back seat, the wolf in him struggled to rise to the surface, still raging with the proximity of Milly. He closed his eyes, thought about Rylee, about holding her tight, smelling the soft, unique scent that was hers alone. Wild and passionate, surprisingly vulnerable, even at times uncertain, which he was quite sure she didn’t show many people. The images and memories soothed the beast in him, eased the out-of-control fury that had been building.

This was closer to the truth of why he let Rylee win this fight so easily. If it hadn’t been for Milly, he would have pinned Rylee down, kept her there to wait for Dox and the others. But with Milly so close, he needed to be as far away as possible.

For all the wolf he had become, he knew it wasn’t time yet to finish the witch off.

There is a reason for everything, even for her.

He ground his teeth against the words his own mind gave him. Like an echo of someone else’s voice, the words sounded suspiciously like the Guardians they’d met in the past. He shivered. The last thing he needed was another part of himself to be sliced into a third portion, even though he knew it was there. Lurking. Easier to ignore that part than the wolf who paced inside him like a caged beast.

The truck rumbled along a deeply rutted back road, bouncing through mud puddles and dirtying up Dox’s ‘baby’.

Rylee’s eyes were tight around the edges and he could smell the anxiety rolling off her, the worry for the foal they sought. Fear from the encounter with Milly. Something else too, though, a hint of a new scent, one that reminded him of … damn he couldn’t pinpoint it. He wanted to soothe her, but knew from past experience that she wouldn’t appreciate it or accept it right now. Not even from him. Better to focus on the salvage.

“How close are we?”

She tipped her head to the side, a long swath of her auburn hair brushing across her shoulder. The truck slowed as the back end slid around a corner, thick with mud.

“About as close as we’re going to get with the truck.”