Chapter
8
Kent
“Don’t you ever wish we didn’t work on a team full of humans? Then we could just go in that bank, fuck up those robbers, then go home in time for dinner,” Jenna grumbled under her breath to Kent.
He couldn’t agree more with his partner. Being a supernatural Other on a police department filled with humans who knew nothing of their kind or abilities could be frustrating sometimes. Kent knew his abilities as a demon dwarfed those of the SWAT team as a whole. Put Jenna’s abilities—a half-wolf-shifter and half-demon, a rare hybrid of their kind—in with his own and they could probably take on the entire Wilmington Police Department.
Jenna’s abilities were a nice mixture of shifter speed and senses, combined with telepathic abilities from her demon half. Unfortunately, those abilities had not stopped Jenna from getting shot a couple of weeks ago during a hostage situation at the University of North Carolina, Wilmington’s campus. Their SWAT team had been called in to stop a shooter who had taken over the campus’s library, and while Jenna was trying to take the shooter out, she had been shot in return. Kent’s stomach was still churning from having watched his partner take that hit.
Furthermore, he wasn’t too happy that she was already back on duty. If he had any say about it, she would still be at home resting. But the doctor had cleared her for duty and there was nothing he could do or say about that. He would just have to make sure he watched over her closely so nothing else happened to her while on duty together. And he had plenty of firepower in his arsenal, both human weapons and Other abilities. He was willing to use them all to make sure Jenna went home safe to her mate tonight.
Not many people knew what Kent’s abilities were as a whole, and that was just how he liked it. It was better for others to think they knew what you could do, and then surprise them with the shock of their life … literally.
His telepathic abilities were strong. Not quite as strong as Jenna’s mother, who could pick up a house and drop it on somebody, but it was close. Stronger than Jenna’s and formidable enough that most of his kind didn’t fuck with him.
It was his other gift that made him unique in the demon world. A rarely developed talent among their kind. And it was a talent that he would put into use just so he could get this damn robbery situation done and over with, if given the chance. Unfortunately, the opportunity rarely presented itself.
Their SWAT team captain, Nelson, waved his hand for them to gather around him. “We have confirmation that there are no hostages inside. There are two, possibly three, suspects in the bank. The plan is simple; you’re going to break off into teams of two and cover the three doors to the building, plus the wall of windows. We want the suspects to think we’re coming in from the front as we cut the power.
“While our targets are focused on the front, the three two-man teams covering the doors will go in and take them down. Once I give you your location, get into position and wait for the go sign. We have an electrician on site who is going to cut the power, so get your night vision on and get ready to rock and roll.
“Listen up, here are your positions. Back entrance is Team One—O’Conner and Kent.”
With those words, Kent and Jenna peeled off from the team and stealthily made their way to the back of the building. Through their earpieces, they listened to the rest of the SWAT team get into position.
They stood there for a few minutes, silently waiting for the go sign, when Captain Nelson’s voice came through their earpieces.
“Electrician is having a hard time getting the power box open. It’s rusted shut. We might have to get a power saw in here. Hold your positions until lights are out.”
Those were not the words Kent had wanted to hear. He loved his job, but right now, he had other things on his mind, such as Chloe Demos and the Ninth Circle Council. The former he wanted to figure out how to get off his mind, even if it meant fucking her out of his system. The latter he somehow had to figure out how to get used to since he was now a council member for life.
He now belonged to a demon eat demon world, and he had to figure his way through the damn politics. That meant he wanted to be where he was about as much as he wanted to have his teeth pulled without Novocain. There were other things to do besides deal with idiotic bank robbers who probably didn’t know their ass from a hole in the ground.
It was time he got this shit over with.
Kent had yet to reveal all of his powers to his partner Jenna. However, it looked like the time had come. He wasn’t nervous or worried how she would react, because they had grown to trust each other. Jenna had had his back more times than he could count. This would be just one more time to add to it.
Looking over at his partner, he telepathically told her, “Watch my back. I’m turnin’ the lights off my-fucking-self.”
He couldn’t see her facial expression with the night vision goggles on their faces, but he could feel her confusion through their telepathic connection.
Moving so he was standing next to the bank’s brick wall, he looked around them to make sure no one else was watching. Then he touched a metal cable line that ran up into the top of the building. He wasn’t sure what the line was for, but it didn’t matter. These days, if it came with a cable cord, nine times out of ten, it was plugged into something electric. That was all he needed.
Opening himself up to the source of power running through the line, Kent could feel the small bite of electricity. All he had to do now was draw it out and into himself. It was almost child’s play, but to pull enough to turn off the lights, he had to dig deeper inside and really concentrate on following the path of energy back to a major source for the building.
He could feel it sizzle and crackle his nerve endings, being attached to that much power.
“Get ready to go,” he whispered through clenched teeth to Jenna, then used his will to pull the electricity out of the bank and into himself.
For a second, his body lit up brighter than a fucking Christmas tree, so he quickly dampened the energy so it wouldn’t be visible to anyone. That amount of power made his body seize up and a hiss of pain escaped from him as the power flickered out inside the building.
Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Jenna reaching out to touch him. He snapped, “Don’t fucking touch me!”
“What the fuck, Kent?” she whispered harshly, just as their captain yelled through the communication line, “Lights are out. Go, go, go!”
With no time to explain, Kent motioned for Jenna to open the back door, then followed her in without touching anything but the rifle in his hands. Once through the door, they stepped into what seemed to be a back hallway where they heard voices arguing to the left.
Moving quickly on quiet feet, they made their way toward the noise, which brought them to the bank’s metal-clad deposit room.
The two men in there were so engrossed in their argument that they didn’t see Jenna and Kent in the doorway until Jenna shouted, “POLICE! Hands up in the air!”
The shorter man on the left jerked his weapon instinctively up in Jenna’s direction, getting ready to fire.
Kent had no time to think. Following his own instincts, he laid his hand on the wall of metal deposit boxes and let the electric current running inside of him back out again.
The electrical current zipped around the room as Kent directed it with his mind until it was within feet of the two men, and then arced out of the metal and into them. Had it been a stronger current, it would have set both men on fire. With the current as it was, though, it just shocked them both, much like a Taser, causing their bodies to seize and fall to the ground. The lights flashed on and off in the whole building; lightbulbs shattered, raining glass everywhere; and out front was a shout of surprise.
Kent and Jenna had been kept safe from the current, having stayed on the carpeted flooring of the hallway, and also because Kent had kept the current of energy directed at the two men.
Once they were down, he heard two gunshots at the front of the building, and then Captain Nelson barking for status reports.
“Suspect at front of bank is down, disarmed and alive,” Dubinski chimed in through the line first.
Kent looked over to see if Jenna would give the status update on their two suspects, but she was still standing there with her jaw hanging open.
Kent pressed the button on his earpiece and stated, “Two suspects in the back are down and unconscious.”
“What the fuck happened back there, Kent? We only heard two gunshots and that was Dubinski,” Nelson barked.
Jenna looked at Kent to see what he was going to say. He couldn’t help giving her a grin back as he shrugged his shoulders and said through the line, “They were hit by a weird electric shock. Ask your electrician what he did.”
Kent might joke that he was going to hell for lying to his superior like that, but hey, his ancestors were technically from hell. Surely that had to count for something?
Now he could fill out reports for about two hours before he would finally be free to go home and plot. He had two objectives: get the Amazon naked, and take control of the council.
Jenna’s whispered voice brought him out of his diabolical plans. “What the hell did you just do?”
He pointed with his rifle toward the two unconscious suspects. “What, to those two losers?”
“No, I’m totally talking about the other two bank robbers you electrocuted. YES, those two! What did you do?”
Kent shrugged. Now wasn’t the time or the place to get into some long explanation about what he could or could not do. Thus, he told his partner the bare minimum.
“I guess you could say I gave them the shock of their lives.”
“Tell me you did not just do a pun here.”
“All right, maybe the pun was a bad choice. Let’s go for a fact, then. If their pubes weren’t curly before, they are now.”
“Jesus, Kent, some days, I just can’t deal with you.”
When Jenna started to walk away from him, Kent couldn’t stop himself from saying one more thing.
“Well, that revelation was shocking. And here I thought we had a connection.”