Beast of Fire -- a Demon Hunting Sexy Romance (30 page)

***

Cullen stood a few feet from where Tara sat on the couch in his hotel suite, her fingers digging into the cloth, her face pale.
 

"Thank you for letting me stay here,” she said, shadowy guilt in the depths of her wide-eyed stare. He’d barely spoken two words to her since the confrontation, didn’t trust himself to comfort her, to be truthful. He had felt a connection to her that had been exploited. She’d intended to betray him, regardless of her final actions. Too many counted on him for safety for him to foolishly allow himself the exposure she represented.
 

When he didn’t speak, she added nervously, “If I’m alone, I know Adrian will come to me.”

Adrian would come to her. And if he allowed her to live, she would never have a life free of him. He’d find a way back to her, find a way to haunt her.
 

“I spoke with Jag about your brother,” he finally said, his voice steely, free of any good gesture she might read into the words. “He’s trying to find out where he is. I won’t lie to you. He wasn’t optimistic.”
 

“Yeah,” she said. “I got the brown-paper-bag version from Prince Risen.”

Cullen quirked a brow. “Brown paper bag?”

“He was pissed at me for not coming to him immediately. I think that puts it mildly. No pretty words and nice packaging. He told me how it was. He said the only reason my brother might still be alive was that Adrian liked to punish those who failed him. Adrian would want me to watch my brother die.”

 
His gut twisted a bit with that announcement. He couldn’t smell Tara’s emotions as he could others, so he should feel nothing. But he did feel something and that something was dangerous. Tara was dangerous. And no matter what she stirred in him —he would not forget that important detail.
 

Adrian wanted him dead. And Adrian held something over Tara’s head, something he could use against her. Cullen would never allow Tara to have anything she could use against him.

Chapter Twenty-Two

Three days later, Lucan woke to the sound of someone yelling – a man he thought. Yes. Yelling . . . Was it him? Was he having a nightmare, being tortured by the Guardians? It wouldn’t be the first time in the past year he’d awakened to his own yelling, to some form of torture by the Guardians.
 

He sat up, jerked fully awake. Kresley sat up as well, her gentle touch calming him, her hand resting on his arm.
 

“What’s wrong? What’s happening?”

Reflexively, he reached for her, needing the feel of her next to him, to know she was safe, that she wasn’t about to be ripped out of his arms, out of his life. He was quickly reminded of Jag’s paranoid rules about them being near each other right now because … she was beneath the covers, him above them.
 

Regardless of that cold jolt of reality, he let out a sigh of relief as he realized that, no, the yelling was not him, nor was it from anyone in danger. It was the television. He scrubbed his face and groaned as he brought the cartoon, ‘The Flintstones into focus, with Des sitting on the end of the bed holding the remote control.
 

 
“Remind me again why you’ve been sleeping on our floor for days, despite the fact that I haven't seen hide nor hair of the Guardians?" Lucan demanded, sounding as foul as he could, though he really was far from it. The past few days, despite the doom and gloom of a ticking clock, he’d had his fellow Knights with him, he’d had the support of knowing if there was a way out of this, they’d find it together.
   

“Jag said to keep the two of you company, make sure there will be no lovey dovey action, so I’m keeping you company,” Des commented. “I just follow orders. And who the heck says ‘hide nor hair.’ ”

Kresley laughed. “Apparently, three-hundred-year-old doctors.”

Des laughed. “He is an old buzzard, isn’t he?”
 

The pet dinosaur on the cartoon charged the hero Fred and knocked him over, licking his face. Des stopped laughing.
 

“Remind me to talk Jessica out of that dog I promised her,” he said referring to his mate. He twisted at the waist, one hand on the bed as he gave them both a casual once-over, as if he were making sure he wasn’t about to break up some heated mating attempt. “I’ve always liked the Flintstones. They get shit done without all these gadgets everyone has these days. The way we used to.”
 

Kresley copied Des’s
 
snort of moments before, only hers was tiny and cute, and Lucan found himself smiling. Everything she did was so damn youthful and sweet, yet she’d proven her bravery time and time again. How many times had she saved his backside now?
 

“You’re a gadget freak,” she accused Des. “You have every new cell phone the minute it hits the stores.”

Des grinned. “Cell phones don’t count. I have to keep in touch with Jessica, and we hit some pretty remote locations when we're hunting.”

She pursed her lips in teasing mockery. “Of course. That’s your story and it sounds good. Stick to it.”
 

“I see she learned how to handle your attitude while I was gone,” Lucan commented, propping himself up against the headboard.
 

“That’s the basics of surviving the ranch,” she agreed, absently running her hand down her hair and pausing midway down the length. “Wait.” She frowned at the clock. “We’ve only been asleep three hours. Why are we awake?”

Lucan quirked a brow at the clock and eyed the back of Des’s head suspiciously. It was noon but they’d been up most of the night, finally all agreeing to grab some shut eye. They’d identified Nick’s operational center, established a plan of attack for sundown, and everyone needed to be fresh for the battle ahead. That’s when he noticed Des was fully dressed when he’d been shirtless before.
 

Instincts set him on alert and he sobered quickly, “What’s up Des?”
 

“Vision,” he said, turning back to the television, and Lucan got the avoidance vibe from him. Des added a mumbled complaint, “Hate those things. Really f’s up my sleep.”

That’s when Lucan realized Des was fully dressed, ready for action. Since mating, Des had developed the ability to "see" things, though never on his terms. The things he saw rushed at him in random pictures, when he was awake or asleep.
 

Of course, Lucan was dressed as well, but only because Des had insisted on it. It was another barrier between Kresley and him and mating. And since Marisol was convinced that mating would give the Guardians more control over Kresley, no one wanted that to happen. Because Kresley would likely be turned against Cullen, and because she was so new to the Guardians' control, it would be unlikely that she could fend off their mental commands.
 

 
“What’s coming and when Des?” Lucan said, aware that Kresley was pressed up against the headboard beside him, her fingers curled in the blanket. She was tense. They all were. Time was running out, and sooner or later they had to talk about what that meant.
   

Des didn’t turn around. His broad shoulders lifted and fell in a shrug. “Still working on that,” he said. “After a year, I still need processing time to figure them out.” He turned off the television and walked to the window. “All I know,” he said casting them a sideways look before opening the curtains, “is something is coming. And I’d rather have my eyes open when it gets here.”
 

***

Only a few days remained until Kresley’s fate with the Guardians would be sealed – those words played in her head over and over. Inside the living room, the men, aside from Jag who was working on a way to get Tara’s brother returned safely, all worked on the final touches for their attack on Nick and his rebel forces.
 

Kresley sat at a patio table with Marisol and Tara by her side, working on another, equally important issue – scouring ancient textbooks for answers to removing the Guardians' marks. Kresley shivered as an autumn breeze swept across the horizon, the black velour sweats and jacket not quite enough to keep the chill at bay. Certainly not enough to shield her from her growing chill about what was to come.
 

She’d been brave until this morning, brave until Des’s chilly promise of "something coming," because she knew he was right. Something was coming. Her deadline. Her destiny. She’d been so ready to embrace her fire only hours before, to embrace the bond she felt growing with Lucan. But life had a hard way of punching her in the teeth, and it seemed it might be ready to do so again.
 

Jag orbed to the patio, returning from a meeting with Salvador.

“Can I speak with you, Tara?” It wasn’t good news. Kresley could see it in his face.
   

So could Tara who paled before Kresley’s eyes. Kresley reached out and squeezed her hand, and Tara nodded with appreciation as she scooted from the table. Jag took her arm and they disappeared, orbed to a private location.
 

“Poor Tara,” Kresley said softly.
 

Marisol was slow to respond, her gaze focused on her Book of Knowledge, a book only she could read. To all others, it had blank pages. Marisol blinked and looked at Kresley, her expression strained, the lines of her face tense.
 

“Tara,” Marisol repeated. “Yes. She is faced with great hardship.”
 

She spoke as if she knew for certain. Kresley wasn’t sure what Marisol knew or didn’t know. She didn’t completely understand her gifts beyond that she healed by touch and she was the only one of her kind. It was rare to see Marisol shaken, and Kresley found herself rattled by why that might be. What had she read in her book?
 

“Marisol?” she asked. “Is something wrong?”

“I’m fine,” she said, and Kresley didn’t miss what had not been said.. Marisol hadn't said that nothing was wrong.
 

Kresley hated to press her when she seemed upset, but she didn’t have a choice. She needed to have a tough conversation with someone other than Lucan. “I’m almost out of time, Marisol.”

Marisol dismissed the words quickly. “Things have a way of working out,” Marisol assured her. “You came back to the Knights. Trust us.”

“It’s not about trust,” she said. “I do trust you. But I’ve had a lot of life experiences to tell me everything doesn’t always go as we hope they'd go. I don’t want to hurt anyone.”

“You’ve saved lives, and you can save many more,” Marisol said. “Surely you see that?”

“If you would have asked me that this morning, I would have said I do,” she admitted. “But now, . . .now, I’ve set aside hopes and wishes, and I am dealing with the responsibility of protecting those I might hurt, instead of help, in the future. I cannot risk becoming a captive to the Guardians. I might not control them as Lucan has. My fire is simply too dangerous. It could hurt people. It could hurt the Knights.”

Lucan appeared in the doorway, clean-shaven, his hair neatly tied back at the neck. His faded jeans and a light blue T-shirt hugged long, lean muscles. Seeing him impacted her in a powerful way, made her blood heat, her heart squeeze. His timing was horrible, but she had a responsibility to continue this conversation, to make sure she did what was right.

“Hi,” he said, a smile on his lips that quickly changed with his assessment of her expression. His gaze shifted to Marisol, and he frowned. He walked to Kresley’s side and kneeled beside her, looking up at her with worried eyes. “What is it, baby?”

Her heart squeezed again. She’d never been anyone’s baby, and as silly as it might sound to some, she loved that little endearment.
 

Her hand slid to his cheek. "Marisol and I are talking about what to do if I run out of time. If the marks become permanent, and the Guardians can fully control me.”

Lucan rotated slightly on his toes and looked at Marisol. “What exactly are we talking about here?” Accusation and fear inflected his voice.
 

Kresley used her hand to pull his gaze back to hers. “You would rather die than become the kind of monster that killed your family, I know you would. And I would rather die than become a weapon for Adrian.”
 

He grabbed her hand, kissed it. “You’re not going to. You’re not.” Lucan looked at Marisol, pleaded with her, “Tell her. Tell her she is not going to. That we are going to find an answer.”

“Lucan,” Kresley said, and it was her turn to plead. “I finally can say my fire is a gift. It’s not evil.
 
Don’t let it become that. Don’t let it hurt people. Please. If you care about me, you will agree to this. I’ll . . . I’ll deal with it myself, but I just … what if something happens and I can’t?”

“We stay and fight together,” he said. “No giving up. Not ever again.”
 

“I’m not giving up,” she promised. “I’m trying to do what is right.”
 

His hands slid down her hair, eyes fraught with emotion. “We lie together. We die together. No Demon owns us.”

Oh God. She loved him. Loved him so much for making her feel, even with death looming, that she was not alone anymore. “Lucan—"

“Together,” he demanded. “Say it.”