“You never know what you might need,” he said with a smile when he noticed me giving him the once-over.
“Well, if you ladies are done choosing the right accessories for your outfits, let’s get out of here. I don’t want to keep Anya’s admirer waiting.” Each member of my team had the good sense to adopt serious expressions. This wasn’t a game, this was a job. And I don’t fuck around when it comes to work. “There’ll be two cars waiting for us out front. I want Asher and Liam with me in the first car with Anya. Louella, Julian, and Myles, you’ll follow in the second car. Who’s the best driver?”
“Loulie, for sure,” Julian smiled. “She’s Gran Turismo good.”
“Louella, you drive the unmarked, but keep a few car lengths back. If Anya’s attacker is watching us, I want him to think she’s alone. Got it?” She responded with a curt nod. I liked her more by the second. “If you see anything suspicious, I don’t want any of you charging off like overeager idiots, you got that?” The group nodded. But, damn it, how was I supposed to communicate with the second car? My phone? Not very practical if we found ourselves in a quick-reaction scenario.
“Here.” Asher handed me a small earpiece as if he’d read my mind. “We all have them.”
Gotta love technology. I slid the bud into my ear and guided the clear spiral cord behind my neck. I clipped the tiny battery pack to my collar along with the mic. The setup wasn’t bulky or awkward, and it solved my communication problems. Pretty slick, actually. Made me feel all double-oh-seven. “If you notice
anything
, you tell me. I’ll deal with it. Anyone who tries to pull heroic bullshit stunts is off the team. Understood?”
“Uh, what’s up with the extra wheel?” Myles jerked his head in Asher’s direction. “I was under the impression that this was a four-man team.”
Louella cleared her throat, and Myles added, “You know what I mean.”
“If you want to get technical,” I said, “this is
my team
. And if I want to add one or fifty more people to this group, that’s my prerogative. Got it?”
Myles held his hands up in surrender. “Got it.”
Myles’s questioning of Asher’s presence on the team made it obvious that no one was interested in angering Raif. Lucky for them it didn’t bother me all that much. “Asher is coming, end of story. Anybody else have a problem with that?”
Silence answered me, signaling the end of the discussion. “Well, then, let’s get moving.”
Spinning on a booted heel, I led the way back through the bowels of Xander’s ridiculously large house, up one flight of stairs and out to the foyer. I didn’t turn back to see if my team followed, but I heard their footsteps trailing behind. Anya waited by the front door, her violet eyes focused on her husband’s face. Dimitri stood in front of her, hands perched atop her shoulders, speaking quietly in Russian. Her expression was soft, her gaze drinking him in. He leaned down and placed a gentle kiss on her lips. The damned hollow ache throbbed in my chest as I watched their tender moment, and I forced the pain away.
Screw love
.
“Rea {seras Idy, princess?” I asked, heading straight for the door. “Let’s get this show on the road.”
I yanked open the door with unnecessary decorum and swept my arm in front of me, careful to keep my head bowed. Yeah, it was completely bitchy, but misery loves company, and I wanted the whole world to share in mine. Anya took Dimitri’s hand and brought his palm to her cheek before turning, her thick, dark braid lashing out like a whip. She stalked right past me, didn’t even give me a passing sneer. Her nose was so far up in the air she might as well be a princess. Xander treated her like one, after all.
I waited for my team to file out the door behind Anya. I turned to give Dimitri a wave in parting—he
was
a good guy, after all—but all I got was an eyeful of the king himself. He’d come down the stairs and stood at the third to last step, one hand resting on the banister, the other clenched at his side. His gaze burned right through me, his lips drawn in a tight line.
“You missed breakfast,” Xander said, his voice low.
Seriously? Brooding over
another
meal? Give me a break. “No, I didn’t. I got the plate you left.”
Xander took the last three stairs at a slow and measured pace, probably to amp up the drama factor. “How are you feeling?”
“No offense, Xander, but I’m a little busy. You know, keeping an eye on your girl. How about we save the small talk for later?” Xander opened his mouth to speak but I cut him off. “And seriously, if you mention one more meal, snack, or otherwise, I’m not coming back tonight or ever again. Understood? I’ll eat when and where I want. What
is
it with you and food?”
The king clamped his mouth shut, and his expression became hesitant, unreadable. Or was it something else. Hurt?
“Be careful today.” He walked right to the door and turned to face me, blocking my way out.
“Don’t worry, Xander, I’ll take good care of her.”
Xander leaned forward, so close I could feel him, though we weren’t yet touching. Electricity charged the air between us, almost tangible, crawling over my skin in a way that wasn’t entirely unpleasant. The thrill of anticipation. A nervous sizzle exploded in my stomach. “I was talking about
you
, Darian.” His eyes clouded with an emotion I couldn’t decipher. He lifted my hand from the doorknob and brought my fingers to his lips, soft and warm. His gaze drank me in the way Anya’s had Dimitri. Like he was dying of thirst and I was a pool of water. “If I’d known moving you in would ignite your jealousy so easily, I would have done it ages ago. Be safe today.”
Damn him and his royal arrogance. I should have listened to Raif. The King of Opportunistic Bullshit would have me climbing the walls in a week. He’d use every chance he got to exhibit his cocksure posturing. He held on to my hand, his grip gentle, not possessive. Just his skin on mine. My breath hitched in my chest, and tiny pinpricks of sensation migrated from my head down the length of my body. “Hurry back,” he murmured and stepped to the side of me, out of the doorway.
I didn’t answer him. Honestly, I doubted my mouth would work well enough to form coherent words. I just walked right past him, through the door to the cars. I hated the way Xander could play me like a well-tuned instrument. Playing to my need
for independence, he hadn’t tried to stop me, hadn’t insisted {’n. on watching over me. He simply stepped out of the way so I could do my job and walk straight toward danger. Xander treated me like he knew I was capable. Trusted me to take care of myself, my team, and Anya.
And the bastard knew I’d like that. I liked it a lot.
Chapter 10
O
ur driver’s name was Robert, and he was armed almost as heavily as Julian. He wasn’t too talkative, but that didn’t matter to me. My team was already small, and with Louella piloting the second car containing Myles and Julian, I couldn’t spare another body being tied up behind the wheel if shit went down. Ever pragmatic, Raif had arranged for our chauffeur and I couldn’t have been more grateful for his forward thinking. Anya sat in the backseat; I wanted her out of plain view. She wasn’t being used as bait, per se, but I knew from my own experience that when a mark becomes hard to hit, it makes the job that much more enticing. I wanted our assassin to believe Anya’s life had been turned upside down—which wasn’t too far from the truth—thereby putting her just out of reach. A low-key escort was perfect. It told our assassin, “
We
know about you, we just don’t want
anyone else
to know.” We rode in one of Xander’s tricked-out Range Rovers. Black, of course. With custom everything, right down to the stitching on the leather seats and tinted, bulletproof windows.
I took the front seat while Asher sat next to Anya, and Liam took the third row. Literally. He was so goddamned big his body almost didn’t fit in the bench seat. He didn’t look too happy about the seating arrangements either, but he’d just have to stick it out. The drive from Capitol Hill to downtown wouldn’t take
too
long.
“How long will your meeting take?”
Anya tilted her head to stare out the tinted window. “An hour. Maybe less.”
Dylan McBride’s office was conspicuously located in the heart of downtown in the Columbia Center building—a skyscraper jutting over the Seattle skyline. The tallest building on the west coast, seventy-six stories, and chock-f of high-end tenants. I guess being the human liaison for the supernatural world made you about as high-end as you could get, and apparently Mr. McBride liked his flash ’n flair.
I’d met him only once, at the PNT Summit with Xander a little over a year ago. Dylan handled business matters pertinent to many of the Pacific Northwest Territory’s heavy hitters, so he automatically earned a seat at the grown-ups table. Dylan was the “face” of many a faceless client, something that came in pretty handy when you looked as far from human as possible. Case in point: a seven-foot-tall, praying mantis–looking Lyhtan. Inhuman looks aside, the supernatural population often had issues such as the transference of property and ownership; sticky business at best when you lived for hundreds—if not thousands—of years. That’s where Mr. McBride came in.
I had no idea what Anya’s business with Dylan was, and I didn’t care. That was between her and Xander. My job was to find the asshole trying to kill her and take him out before he did permanent damage to the king’s favorite pet and her unborn child. “Julian, you see anything?” I felt a little awkward talking into thin air, but the mic worked like a charm.
“Nada. Unless you count a shit- ~’n.ut ton of traffic and enough human pedestrians to clog a subway tube. Seriously, how in the hell are we supposed to pinpoint a threat with so much congestion?”
Beat the hell out of me. Singling out a threat in downtown Seattle would be like looking for a needle in a
stack
of needles. It was the perfect place to take down a target undetected. Just the right amount of cover. Ingenious, really.
“Keep your eyes open,” I said, checking the street at either side. “He’s out there; I can feel it.”
The rest of the drive passed in silence. I kept my eyes peeled for any sign of trouble, reaching out with invisible feelers to better sense any supernatural creatures in the vicinity. It wasn’t a Shaede gift; I assumed it had more to do with my position as a Guardian of
O Anel
. Every creature had a unique signature, like a sound wave that rippled across my skin. At the moment, I couldn’t feel a damn thing except for the Shaedes a couple of car lengths behind us and the ones sitting next to me.
“Circle the block twice,” I told our driver as we approached the Columbia Center. It might confuse a potential attack if we got lost in the shuffle of traffic. Robert gave me a sideways glance but didn’t argue as he changed lanes and sped up—at least as much as midday traffic would allow.
“Louella, I want you to drop off Myles at the back side of the building, and Julian, you take the south end. Keep circling the block after you’ve dropped them off. If we have to get Anya out of here in a hurry, I want you mobile and ready to go.”
“Gotcha,” Louella answered in my ear. “I’ll backtrack, take some alleys if it comes down to it. I won’t be tailed.”
“Good.” I turned to the driver and pointed at the building’s front entrance. “No use trying to sneak her in the back. Our guy will be waiting for that. Let’s keep this business as usual for now.”
Robert nodded as he finished lap number two, changed lanes, and pulled up to the building. I turned back in my seat, made eye contact with both Liam and Asher. “Ready?”
Liam’s eyes were glazed over with excitement, but Asher’s were serious, dark. And damned deadly. He looked straight at me. “Ready.”
“Anya?” I said without looking at her.
“You don’t need to be so dramatic, you know. Let’s just get this over with.”
I nodded to my team, knew Louella was ready to go with Julian and Myles. “All right, then, time to meet Dylan.”
I jumped out of my seat and unstrapped the dagger from my thigh, tucking it inconspicuously in my waistband at my back. I pulled my shirt over the hilt—no use drawing unnecessary attention. I left my katana in the car—gave it one last, longing look—and though it killed me to do it, opened Anya’s door for her. Asher and Liam followed my lead, leaving everything bulky behind and concealing what could be easily hidden, which still left us well armed. My senses were fine-tuned to everything around me, a sort of sonar that bounced off of every living thing within a hundred-yard radius. The entire transition of ushering Anya out of the Range Rover and into the building was a little too anticlimactic. I suppose I’d been a tad overdramatic—hence the cache of weapons we’d left in the car—but if something went down and I failed to protect her, Raif and Xander would have my ass. Not a position ot ce I wanted to be in.
The staccato of Anya’s ridiculous heels echoed on the marble lobby floor. Curious stares followed us to the wall of elevators, but none of them carried the energy of the supernatural. I tapped a booted toe as the silver doors slid shut and the elevator jettisoned us to Dylan McBride’s office. Anya looked bored. Liam stood, arms crossed, legs braced apart, the blue tattoos on his scalp reflected in the mirrored ceiling. Asher stood eerily still, the rise and fall of his chest as undetectable as it was inaudible as he breathed. Damn, that kid was scary quiet.
I allowed a sigh of relief when the elevator deposited us on Dylan’s floor. I’d been particularly worried about an attack on the ride up. It’s what I would’ve done. Sort of like shooting fish in a barrel. I was glad that Anya’s hit man and I didn’t share the same sense of imagination.
The lobby of Dylan McBride’s office was no less impressive than the rest of the building. Glass tables, modern leather chairs, rich woods, and expensive art graced the small space. His receptionist’s desk looked like it cost more than the average person’s monthly salary. She looked up from her computer screen, her eyes alight with recognition. A pleasant smile curved her lips, and she pressed a button on her headset without uttering a word to Anya. “Mr. McBride, your one o’clock is here.”
She nodded her head—as if he could actually see her—and depressed the button on her headset. “He’s expecting you, Ms. Chernikova, go right in.”
Anya didn’t even give me a passing glance, just strode right through the door into Dylan’s office. I rocked back on my heels, looked at Asher and Liam, and jerked my chin toward the waiting area. No sense hanging around the receptionist’s desk for an hour. I felt like an idiot, and the strange looks I kept getting from her weren’t doing much for my mood. I mean, give me a break, at least I wasn’t wrapped in head-to-toe leather like Anya. But I might as well have had horns growing out of my head or something. I felt like I was being sized up, and I
hate
that.
As I paced the lobby, I wished for the millionth time that I’d told Xander to shove this job up his royal ass. I thought I might just
die
from the excitement of it all. Following Anya . . . driving her around . . . waiting as she went to this appointment or that.
Though Anya wasn’t concerned about her entourage, at least she didn’t keep us waiting. Her meeting took just under an hour. In the same manner she’d gone into the meeting, she exited, paying just as much attention to me.
Asher and Liam fell in step behind me: Liam’s footfalls were precise, exact, and Asher’s—well, I wouldn’t have known he was there at all if I hadn’t
felt
his presence, and even that seemed barely there. The ride down the elevator was much too slow for my taste, and the quiet that settled in the metal box sucked most of the breathable oxygen right out of the atmosphere. We were all tense for whatever reason, mine being that I felt this whole day thus far had been a monumental waste of my time. Although, what would I be doing if I wasn’t shadowing Anya? Sleeping? Guzzling a fifth of bourbon? Drowning in my sorrow?
I gave a heads-up to Robert—the earpiece was a godsend—and he was waiting for us at the front entrance when we emerged from the building. I let Liam move out in front, sandwiching Anya between us. Her heels clicked in rhythm with the sway of the long, dark braid cascading from the top of her he toa monumentad. I wondered how in the hell she could be so comfortable and self-assured dressed like she was. But I guess if you looked as striking as she did in the leather ensemble, self-consciousness was the least of your problems.
Eyes focused on the Range Rover, I sent out a blanket of invisible feelers. Nothing out of the ordinary tripped my senses. Anya’s step faltered, and she looked nervously behind her, reaching back to lay her fingers on her left shoulder blade. She shrugged as if trying to shake something away and paused—looked right, and then left—and quickened her pace toward the car.
“Anya.”
I heard her name on the wind, like a whisper.
“Anya.”
A little louder this time.
“Anya!”
Roared like a battle cry, her name echoed off the walls of the surrounding buildings.
Liam stopped dead in his tracks, and Anya crouched behind him like a rabbit hiding from a predator in tall grass. I saw nothing. Felt nothing. Focused all of my concentration on my surroundings and still:
nothing
.
“Get in the car, Anya,” I commanded. “Get in the fucking car,
now
.”
Had no one else heard the voice? We all sure as hell had, but the humans passing by seemed totally unfazed.
“Gun!” Asher shouted from behind me. “To your left!”
Liam spun on the balls of his feet, quick and agile despite his size, and seized Anya around the waist. He tucked her against his body and ran toward the car. Robert’s door flew open, and he ran to open a door for Liam, flinging it wide before jumping back behind the wheel.
“Don’t wait for us,” I shouted. “Just get her the hell—”
Before I could finish my sentence, the shots rang out. People screamed and scattered, brakes screeched, and the sound of metal crunching and glass shattering added to the cacophony. I drew my dagger from behind my back and hit the ground, turning as I fell so I could identify the shooter.
Shooters.
Fuck
.
Four of them—and each one human. What the hell was going on? “Don’t fire back,” I warned my team. “Just get Anya out of here.”
I rolled to my left and took a chance, merging with the light. No one noticed; the humans on the street were all too busy looking for cover. I watched as Liam threw Anya in the backseat of the Range Rover, climbing in after her. Asher was gone, but I didn’t have time to worry about him—he was a big boy, he could take care of himself.
“Darian, where do you want me?” Louella asked in my earpiece with the calmness of a trained soldier.
I paused to take stock of the situation. One shooter was situated thirty yards away, his torso hanging out of an older model sedan. Another stood across the busy street, standing at the edge of the sidewalk as if ready to run straight through the buzzing traffic for a shot at Anya. The third shooter waited farther down the street, blocking our way out, and the fourth . . . well, the fourth shooter had burst through the doors of the Columbia Center, racing towar, rtherrd the Range Rover in a full-out sprint.
“Robert”—my breath came heavily, keeping pace with my pounding heart—“watch out for the gun at the crosswalk. I don’t want any innocents taking a bullet because of us, but get through the intersection—fast. Louella, take Julian and Myles and comb the area—half a mile radius. Our guy’s here somewhere, the humans are just a distraction.”
I had no doubt about that. I’d seen humans under the influence of magic before. Lyhtans could compel humans, and under the right circumstances, so could the Fae. I’d experienced compulsion firsthand. And these people had no idea what they were doing or why.
My business had always been killing. Innocent lives were saved inadvertently because I took out the bad guy. But I’d never had to play the hero and act with the sole purpose of protecting someone.