“Dude. That’s fucked up. Does it hurt?”
“What,” Hawkyn gritted out, his breath coming in shallow pants, “this gaping hole in my chest? Yeah. Stings a little.”
Clad in green scrubs, Darien, Hawkyn’s ebony-haired half-brother and Sheoul-gra’s resident healer, gestured to a chair in his office. “Did you at least save your Primori?”
It was pretty safe to assume that any injured Memitim had taken the damage during a battle to protect their Primori, and Hawk was perfectly okay with letting Darien believe that was true in this case. All of the thousands of Memitim were Hawkyn’s brothers and sisters, sired by the same male, but functionally they were no different than anyone in the general population, stabbing each other in the back, fighting, and being assholes. Hawkyn trusted few Memitim, and Darien wasn’t one of them.
“My Primori is fine,” he said, which was true.
“How about the guy who did this to you?”
“It was a female. And I don’t know.” An image of her, helpless and afraid, filled him with guilt as he peeled off his ruined shirt and sank into the hard plastic chair. He’d seen so much ugliness in his centuries of life, but for some reason, this was affecting him more than usual. But he wasn’t going to be able to do anything about it if he didn’t take care of his injuries. “So, can you fix me, or what?”
Darien’s skeptical expression was all Hawk needed as answer. “I’m best with non-magical injuries. If you’d been eviscerated with a sword, it’d be right up my alley.” He kneeled next to Hawkyn with a tiny vial of glowing green liquid. “This might work, but I need to know what kind of demon did this to you.”
“I have no idea. She vibed human.” A human who was, no doubt, suffering right now.
“A witch, then? An Aegi?”
“Dunno. Maybe.” At Darien’s huff of annoyance, Hawkyn gave one of his own. “So, can you fix me?” he repeated.
“I told you, I’m better with injuries of non-magical origin.”
“That’s not very helpful.”
“You know what’s not helpful?” Darien gestured to Hawkyn’s charred wound. “Your inability to identify the type of weapon that injured you.”
“Don’t know what to tell you. The female blasted me with some sort of silver-blue light. Next thing I knew, I was waking up in a pile of smoking flesh.”
Darien’s fingers smoothed over the edges of the wound, and Hawkyn hissed in pain. “It’s partially healed. How long were you out?”
“I don’t know. Maybe an hour.”
“Damn.” Darien frowned. “It should have healed more than this.”
Duh. “Which is why I’m here.”
“Okay.” Darien held up the vial and popped off the rubber stopper. “I’m going to try this elixir on it. It’s good for a lot of the kinds of spells human witches use.”
“I don’t think it was a spell. It seemed innate and organic.” Spells cast by humans were often preceded by a warning tingle Hawkyn could feel like tiny pinpricks on his scalp, but abilities that were species traits usually gave no detectible warning, which was damned inconvenient.
Darien’s hand paused with the dropper hovering over the pulsing gash. “Then...there might be some wee side effects.”
“What kind of side effects?” It was a safe bet that Darien wasn’t talking about dry mouth, blurred vision, or anal leakage.
“Depends on the species of the person who wielded the power. And the power itself, of course.”
That didn’t sound good. Hawkyn narrowed his eyes at the healer. “Examples?”
“Well, I once used it on a strange blister that formed on Llewellyn’s arm after a Thraycer demon battle. The elixir caused blisters to erupt all over his body. You don’t want to know what came out of them.” Darien’s brown eyes glittered with excitement. He had always gotten a kick out of bizarre medical mishaps. “Ooh, and one time I used it on Gladys when a human cast a revenge spell that turned her blind. It restored her sight but caused temporary insanity and a loss of bowel control for a week.”
So...anal leakage was a concern.
Hawkyn stared at his half-brother. “Where the fuck did you get your medical training? Hogwarts?”
“Ha. Funny. I did a year and a half stint at Underworld General.”
“Did they fire you, by chance?”
Darien looked hurt. “Fired is a strong word. Look, if you just...oops.”
“Oops?” Hawk looked down at where a drop of Darien’s magical mystery juice had fallen into his wound. A foul stench and hissing noise rose up as the liquid absorbed, disappearing into the mangled flesh. “Are you kidding me?”
“It was just a drop. Probably wasn’t enough to affect anything,” Darien said quickly. “Probably.”
Hawk shoved the guy away and staggered to his feet. “Never mind. I’ll just drop by the hospital.”
“They treat demons,” Darien reminded him. “Not angels.”
He reached for the door, wincing at the stretch of his muscles. “We’re half demon.”
“We’re half fallen angel,” Darien argued. “There’s a difference.”
Not according to a lot of folks. “Have you even met our father? Azagoth is a demon if I ever saw one. He stopped being any kind of angel a long time ago.”
Darien nodded emphatically, his long bangs flapping against his cheeks. “Especially lately.”
“No shit.” Hawkyn paused with the door half open. “What’s up with his grumpy ass?”
Shrugging, Darien popped the rubber stopper back into the elixir bottle. “I overheard Zhubaal and Hades talking the other day. They said he’s been demanding access to the Memitim Council. And several of our brothers and sisters mentioned that he’s been asking them weird questions.”
Hawkyn frowned. “Questions? Like what?”
“Personal stuff. It’s bizarre. He’s never taken an interest in us before, and now he’s wanting the history of our lives.”
That was bizarre. Azagoth had always taken a cool, detached approach to fatherhood, treating all his children more like tenants than family.
“And yesterday,” Darien continued, “he was in a rage all day. Not even Lilliana dared to cross him. You should have seen him at dinner. He devoured a steak like it was someone’s soul. He was fucking snarling.”
“Yeah? You know what else is snarling?” Hawk looked down at his destroyed abdomen. “My wound, thanks to the radioactive sludge you dripped into it.”
Darien laughed. “You think Underworld General will be any better?”
“Can’t be worse.”
Funny, but Darien had nothing to say about that, and Hawkyn wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or not.
* * * *
The staff at Underworld General Hospital weren’t the nicest people Hawkyn had ever met, but they fixed him quickly, and without using crazy mystery potions. They’d even called in the head doctor after Hawkyn’s full sister, Idess, had explained who he was. UGH might specialize in demon care, but the children of Azagoth and siblings of Idess got first class treatment.
As he started to leave the building, located beneath the busy streets of Manhattan, Idess gave him a hug. “I’ll be bringing Mace to see his grandpa tomorrow. Will you be there?”
Idess was mated to one of the Seminus brothers who ran the hospital, and they had a rambunctious, dark-haired toddler who was full of mischief and who might be just the thing to lighten Azagoth’s mood.
“If I am, I’ll make sure to see you guys.”
She gestured to the sliding ER doors to the parking lot. “Where are you off to?”
He hesitated. Idess had broken Memitim rules for one of her Primori, so he could probably trust her, but...
“I haven’t decided yet,” he lied. He hesitated again, and then, well, fuck it. “Idess?”
“Yes?”
“When you were Memitim, you had to protect some real scumbags, didn’t you? Including an assassin?”
She cocked an eyebrow. “Careful, little brother.” Her tone, issuing a playful warning, reminded him of Suzanne. But given that he, Suzanne, and Idess were full siblings—centuries apart—he wasn’t surprised. “That assassin is now my mate.”
“But he’s not an assassin anymore,” he pointed out. “He’s a partner at the hospital, and he works here, right?”
She nodded. “In the morgue.”
Since the dude’s bare-handed touch was fatal, working with dead people seemed like a good job for him.
“Okay,” he said, “but what was it like having to protect someone who killed for money?”
“What’s this about, Hawk?” Idess crossed her arms across the black scrub top she wore over a pair of jeans. She had the mom-thing down pat. “Is one of your Primori an assassin?”
“Serial killer.”
She winced. “Yes, that’s tough. I know that bad people affect change in human society in ways we can’t understand at the time, but it’s still hard to stand by and let them wreak havoc. I had to watch over a number of truly disgusting Primori in my two thousand years of service, and the ones who tortured and killed for pleasure were some of the worst.”
Agreed. But somehow Hawkyn had managed to disconnect himself from his Primoris’ lives, duty-bound to protect them no matter what. And he still would. But he couldn’t get Aurora’s eyes, wide with terror, out of his mind.
“How did you deal with it?” he asked, lowering his voice as if the hospital was full of Memitim Council members instead of vampires, demons, and werewolves. “Were you ever tempted to save the victims?”
“All the time,” she sighed. “If not for my brother reining me in, I might have.”
“Would that have been so bad?”
She blinked in surprise, and he couldn’t blame her. He was just as surprised that those words had come out of his mouth.
“Hawkyn, I’d think you of all people would understand the need to not interfere in the lives of our Primori. Don’t you want to join the Memitim Council when you Ascend? It won’t happen if you break a rule like that.”
Well aware of that fact, he swallowed dryly. “I’m just curious.”
She didn’t appear to buy it. “Once,” she said, lowering her voice the way he had, “when I had a breakdown over the death of a teen girl at the hands of one of my Primori, a king who got off on raping and murdering his own subjects, a Council member broke with protocol by telling me that the king wasn’t Primori because he was a great ruler who would make a difference in the world. In fact, his name has been, deservedly, lost to history. He was Primori because he was destined to kill the girl. If he hadn’t, she would have given birth to someone who would have changed the course of history and made Caligula seem tame and sweet.” She inhaled a ragged breath. “It’s still hard to think about, but you have to trust that the system works, and remember that ninety percent of the people you protect are good. We just tend to obsess over the bad ones.”
He did trust the system. But when he’d flashed into that parking lot and saw that his Primori was about to abduct a woman, Hawkyn had instinctively tried to prevent it. Now he was left with one burning question: Was Ms. Mercer fated to die at Drayger’s hands...or had Hawkyn’s presence prevented the escape she’d been meant to make?
Hell, maybe Drayger’s fate had been to die from the blast that Hawkyn had taken instead. If so, Hawk’s interference had changed history. And, if so, he was in a lot of trouble. He could kiss membership in the Memitim Council goodbye... And that was assuming he was even allowed to Ascend and become a true angel in the first place.
“Thanks, Idess,” he mumbled.
“You’re welcome. I’ll see you later.” She narrowed her eyes, going all big sister on him. “And don’t do anything stupid.”
“Wouldn’t dream of it.”
Except that was a lie. He had to find Aurora before Drayger killed her, and he could only pray that he’d taken her to one of the places Hawk knew about. The guy seemed to have an unusual number of dungeons, and according to Drayger’s previous Memitim guardian, he moved his victims around, rarely keeping them in one place for more than a couple of days. If he held true to his pattern, Aurora would be kept alive for two weeks in three different locations.
Hawk just had to hope Drayger didn’t deviate from his usual routine as he’d done a couple of times in the past.
Cursing softly, Hawkyn stepped out into the underground parking lot, which wasn’t protected by Underworld General’s ward preventing entry and exit via any means but the ER doors and the Harrowgate. Once outside, he squared his shoulders and released his wings, shadowy appendages that made him unique amongst his wingless siblings and which allowed him to cloak himself in a bubble of invisibility.
His brothers and sisters could also make themselves invisible, but they didn’t look as cool doing it.
Wings fully extended and invisibility cloak engaged, he brushed his fingers over Drayger’s mark on his wrist and was instantly transported to his Primori’s location, an office building in downtown Portland.
Drayger was at Interim, a computer software company where he worked as a database developer. It was both good news and bad that he was here. It meant he wasn’t harming anyone, but it also meant that Aurora would be harder to find.
The human looked so non-threatening sitting at his desk in khakis and a green company polo, his I <3 Computers mug filled with steaming coffee, knickknacks and a photo of his mom nearby. All an attempt to appear normal. Psychopaths were often surprisingly adept at fitting in. Drayger was a chameleon, and he was good at it.
But Hawkyn had seen the real Drayger. He’d seen what was under the face Drayger wore in public and when he was playing with his victims. The true man beneath the mask still appeared human, but the humanity was gone. His eyes were cold and dead, his posture erect with the kind of deranged confidence that only those who didn’t fear pain or death possessed. A dark energy surrounded him, the seductive kind that drew other evil beings.
And he could turn it on and off in a heartbeat.
Hawkyn despised the bastard, was sickened that someone like him rated angelic protection. But Hawk would be first in line to kill the fucker once the protection was no longer needed. Angels were forbidden to kill humans no matter how evil they were, but every once in a while permission to do so was granted, and Hawkyn intended to secure authorization to rid the planet of one Jason Drayger no matter the cost.
Satisfied that Drayger was occupied, Hawk flashed to the first of several hideouts, an old cellar at an abandoned country farmhouse. It was empty of everything but a filthy mattress, bloodstains, and nasty tools he used for his gruesome hobby.
Same results in Drayger’s residence, the shed on the property Drayger cared for while his brother, Ben, was overseas doing contract work for an oil company, and the cave hidden deep in the Mt. Hood National Forest.
The weird thing about the cave was the lack of obvious torture tools and a mattress. Only a hammer, a rusty hand saw, a hatchet, and a few ropes lay in neat coils on the cave floor, nothing that would be suspicious for anyone stumbling upon the place.
Well, shit. Those spots were the only ones Hawkyn knew about.
Where was she? What had Drayger done to her already? And what was Hawkyn going to do once he found her?
Maybe there was a way to find out if his Primori’s fate was still on track...which would mean that Hawkyn hadn’t screwed up. But it would also mean that Aurora Mercer was exactly where she was supposed to be.
And while that would be good news for Hawkyn’s future, it would be very, very bad for hers.