Justus (9 page)

“Damn it, Dean! Boss said
don’t break nothing.”

He resisted a snort. The
fools didn’t know the first thing about recon.

He could make out the sound
of the glass being swept across the floor.

“It’s just a picture,” the
other man said. “Besides, ain’t this Ava’s room? Doubt she’ll
notice. Don’t think she uses the bedroom much for sleeping even
when she’s here.”

The man laughed at his own
crass joke.

“Just clean this shit up,”
the other man said and stomped into the hall. “I’ll check
upstairs.”

His hybrid instincts flared
for a second. He wanted to go downstairs and teach the men a
lesson. This time he wasn’t starving, tired and desperate. He could
take them out with ease.

He flexed his fingers in and
out of a fist for a few seconds. No. If they didn’t return to John,
everyone would know Justus was there, and they’d come in force with
guns. The house wasn’t a very defensible location.

Justus stepped swiftly over
to the window and hoped it slid up without a noise. He looked
around and slipped through the gap he had made.

Moving like the silent
assassin he was trained to be, he grabbed ahold of the ledge above
the window and pulled himself up just as the footsteps reached her
door.

From his position he could
just make out the lower half of the man as he moved around the
room. The curtains blocked the top, but it worked to his
advantage.

He bit back a growl and
watched in rage as the filthy intruder touched her things, putting
his dirty hands all over her clothes and personal items. He hated
hiding like this. Justus wasn’t used to not taking action when it
was needed.

Thoughts of Paige slipped
into his head. If he wasn’t careful, he could easily put her at
risk, and that was the last thing he wanted to do. Still, if he
ever got the chance to take out these bastards, he would do so with
pleasure. They’d pay for threatening her and for shooting him.

The man’s phone rang in the
middle of the search.

“Yeah.”

“You there?” he heard
Reverend John say on the other end. “Any sign of the
abomination?”

“Nothing. She’s good.”

Justus heaved a quiet sigh.
The less they suspected, the better.

“Good. I knew she was a good
righteous woman.” His warm tone set Justus on edge. He talked about
Paige as if he knew her at all. “After all, she worked with those
animals and left. She knew how God would judge them.”

“Yeah,” the man said, his
disinterest obvious. “We’ll be out of here soon. How much time we
got?”

The man paced the floor, and
as he got closer to the window, Justus moved back out of sight.

“Benny sent a message that
she’s finishing up now. Best wrap things up.”

“Got it,” the man said and
poked his head out the window.

Justus flattened himself
against the roof, just in case the man decided to take a closer
look. He positioned himself, ready to do what he needed if found.
He wouldn’t start the fight, but he wasn’t about to get shot
again.

The man stepped away slowly.
Justus listened as he made his way through the upstairs, checking
the bathroom as he did so. It wasn’t until Justus heard the man’s
footsteps downstairs that he moved back into the room and padded
softly to the door.

From the top of the stairs,
he could hear the two step into the kitchen.

“Looks like the boss isn’t
getting much of a housekeeper with this one,” the man who had
broken the frame said. “A whole sink of dishes.”

The other man snorted.

“I’m sure he’d be willing to
train her to do better,” the man said.

Justus could feel his eyes
start to glow and the hot rage pulse through him. If he took them
out now, he wondered how long it would take before the rest of
those men knew what happened. He could snap their necks. He
wouldn’t even have to mess up her floors.

He took deep breaths. It
didn’t matter what the Reverend wanted, he wasn’t getting
Paige.

“Come on,” the one in charge
said. “Let’s get going before she comes back.”

* * *

Paige stood in line
listening to the Christmas music blasting from the speakers
overhead. She hadn’t even thought about the holiday until that
moment. So many things had happened in the past few months, there
just hadn’t been time to think about much else. Of course, it
wasn’t like the holidays ever really meant much to her. Ava was
rarely home during them, and it’d been years since she had a
special someone.

She looked down at the items
in her cart. Her heart pounded at the thought of cooking for Justus
again. It wasn’t a present exactly, but the way he ate, it was like
he’d never seen a good meal in his life. And likely he hadn’t.

Paige didn’t really think
things were bad at Luna Lodge, but being a prisoner would put a bad
taste in anyone’s mouth. There was no way his time with the
Horatius Group was better.

She hadn’t heard the men talk
about their time in captivity, but from what she gathered, she
wasn’t really sure she wanted to know all the details. Just the
looks on their faces when they mentioned their former masters was
enough. It was amazing to her what a person could go through and
still come out sane.

“Cooking a big meal?”

She turned around, surprised
to find the old librarian from her high school standing behind her
with a few items in her basket.

Paige smiled warmly at the
older woman.

“Hello, Ms. Martin.”

She’d always liked the older
woman and was sad to hear when the school let her go. Ms. Martin
had never married, and the school seemed to be her whole world.

“Just making a nice roast for
one,” Paige said. She grinned and leaned in a little. “I kinda like
the idea of cooking a meal and being able to eat it.”

The older woman smiled at
her. “I always knew I liked you.”

The speakers squeaked loudly.
Harsh static pulsed through the air. She frowned as a woman walking
along stopped mid-step. Paige looked around. People had frozen all
around her. Not all, but there were a good number of them standing
as if they were waiting, listening for something.

She looked at the pretty
frozen teen who was checking out the woman ahead of her. The
middle-aged woman sighed loudly and pulled out her phone as if this
was just another day at the store.

“Haven’t seen you out
recently,” Ms. Martin whispered. “Wondered if it got to you as
well.”

Paige looked back to the
older woman and frowned.

“What got to me? What’s going
on?”

She clucked her tongue. “I
saw it on a special. It’s the heroin. All these people get hooked
and it fries their brain.”

A loud snort came from just
behind.

“This ain’t heroin.”

She leaned out a little to
see Mr. Cobb standing behind them. The old man had never been a
favorite of hers. He kept to himself and mostly spent his days
being mean and angry. Both of which he was good at.

“Enlighten us, Lee,” Ms.
Martin snapped. “What is it then?”

“It’s the waves,” he said and
pointed to the speakers overhead. “Somehow they are causing
this.”

“Who?” Paige asked,
half-believing he might be right.

Mr. Cobb scoffed again. “The
government. Not the first time they did this. They experiment with
their contrails with the mind control chemicals they got from the
Nazi scientists. Or that big mind-control thing they were running
in Alaska, claiming to study the weather.”

Paige resisted the urge not
to roll her eyes. It wasn’t the first government conspiracy she’d
heard, and the idea that the government would even care about their
little town seemed about at far-fetched as it got.

The music came back on, and
she watched as the teen continued checking as if nothing had
happened.

It might not be the
government, but something was happening. She furrowed her brow. The
little, sleepy town might not be of interest, but they had
something very unusual in the world: a nearby group of hybrids.

Rachel’s warning flashed back
in her mind. Maybe Mr. Cobb was on to something. For now, there was
nothing she could do about it, and obviously, the hybrids of Luna
Lodge had some clue that it was going on if Rachel thought to warn
her.

The woman ahead of her paid
and pushed out of the line.

The girl looked over to
her.

“You ready to checkout?” she
asked. Her perky pony tail bounced as she spoke.

Paige nodded and absently
stacked the rest of her things on the belt.

Behind her she could hear the
bickering between the two older people but tuned it out as she
watched the cashier.

She seemed totally
normal.

Paige ran her card and took
her receipt. Before rushing out the door, she looked back and waved
to Ms. Martin and Mr. Cobb.

“Let me know if you hear
anything,” she said and gave a smile, hoping the two of them could
read between the lines. Between Reverend John and the weird
spectacle she’d just witnessed, her town had gone from quiet place
to frightening weirdness.

They both nodded slowly.

She turned and made her way
out to her car. The truck from earlier was parked off a ways. It
seemed they didn’t plan on kidnapping her today. Well, that was
good at least.

Paige loaded the car and
hopped in. She needed to get back to Justus.

Chapter Twelve

On the drive home, Paige
thought over everything that had happened: John, Justus and the
strange music. Maybe this had been what Rachel and Lena had been
trying to warn her about. It was hard to say without talking to
them, and with the way things were going, she didn’t really trust
that someone wasn’t recording her phone conversations. Whatever the
truth was, things were even weirder than the already bizarre
reality of her shacking up with a hybrid.

She’d have to talk to Justus
about the lodge. It was really the only option that made sense. He
only felt an attraction to her because of her Vestal status, and
she had saved him. His time with her proved he wasn’t working for
the Horatius Group, so there was no reason for the Luna Lodge
hybrids to imprison him again. She was sure if Titus apologized and
guaranteed his protection, Justus would feel safe at the lodge.

Slowly she eased into her
drive and pulled in slightly. Behind her in the mirror, she watched
as the truck slowed.

Paige gasped as two men
hopped into the back of the truck and sped off down the road.

Her heart pounded as she
stepped on the gas. It never occurred to her they might send men to
snoop. It made perfect sense in retrospect.

She slammed on the brakes as
she arrived in the front of the house and jumped out, not caring
how or where the car was parked.

The front lock had been
popped, and her face flamed with anger over the nerve of those men.
They’d violated her privacy and her property. The thought of
calling the sheriff disappeared as quickly as it had arisen. He was
on their side, after all.

“Justus,” she shouted.

Before she could even take
three steps in, his arms were around her pulling her body tightly
against his own.

“Paige,” he whispered. His
mouth came hot and hard against her lips, crushing them in a brutal
kiss.

“I worried that they…”

“I’m safe,” he said and swept
the hair around her face back. “I will always protect you.”

She shook her head.

“That’s just because I’m a
Vestal,” she said.

He held her head between his
hands, and she looked up to his blazing amber eyes, the light both
eerie and beautiful at the same time.

“You are mine,” he said, his
voice rough and raw with emotion. “Vestal is nothing. You are the
other half of me, the one that sees to the very soul of who I am.
We are more than titles. You know that. You can feel it, just like
I can.”

His lips met hers in a soft
kiss, lingering in ways that made her ache for more.

“My soul is linked with
yours,” he whispered. “And without you, I am just the animal they
say I am. The things I’ve seen. The things I’ve done. I deserve
nothing and still I can’t walk away.”

She shook her head, unable to
stand those words. Paige turned and kissed the palm holding her
cheek.

“You are more than you can
ever know,” she whispered. “My love is in your hands.”

She closed her eyes as her
words slipped out. The truth seemed so hard to say, but once the
words were out, she could feel the weight being lifted off her
heart.

“My love,” he growled and
found her mouth again. Her knees weakened and she surrendered to
the moment.

His hand made quick work of
her clothing, stripping her down until she stood before him naked.
His hands went to her breasts.

Before she’d been so shy,
worried that her own body might not meet the perfection that was
his. But under his stare, she found it hard not to revel in his
desire.

Paige pulled away from his
nimble fingers that had been pleasing her nipples.

She stared at him as she slid
his shirt over his head, letting her knuckles brush against the
hard muscles there. She leaned and glided her mouth across his
chest.

Justus groaned as his eyes
fixed on her own. She moved lower and lower. Her chin bumped his
length through his pants.

She smiled when his hands
wove through her hair, guiding her to where he wanted her to
be.

Paige slipped her fingers
inside the band and slowly pulled down. His long, hard cock jutted
out towards her face.

She leaned forward and gave
the head a little lick.

“Fuck,” he groaned and closed
his eyes.

She could feel his fingers
tighten in her hair.

Paige wrapped a hand around
the base of the shaft and gave a few long strokes. She could hear
the rumble that came from him as she did so.