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My boss or his boss? I couldn’t keep it straight. Had Samael wiggled Brent in here or had Brent actually gone through the channels, applied, and gotten hired? Both were insanely plausible and I hated both options.
I turned back around in my chair, facing my screen. I had an uneasy feeling that what Brent saw beneath the surface was different than what Samael knew. Samael loved me, us. Brent’s lenses weren’t clouded with the same emotions.
Just ignore him.
Which I had been planning on doing. But if Brent found out how fractured Killian truly was, ignoring him wouldn’t work. He already supposedly knew about the alters. Giving him anything else to work with wasn’t exactly what I had in mind.
AERON
Dinner consisted of leftovers after I had finally gathered the courage to stick them in the microwave, reaching around Jenny’s lungs in that Tupperware container. I watched as one of Samael’s men sifted through the data, trying to ping the location of Finn’s call, but every time the signal was found, it didn’t make sense. The location showed that Finn had been within five miles of our location, which was impossible. Unless someone within Samael’s ranks was the culprit.
It would explain how the fucker knew so much about us, but that worried me. Killian was so fragile after last night. If Finn was that close to us, there was no telling what he would do to our Kitten if it would make us act.
My eyes drifted to Slash’s left hand, the tremble more prominent than it had been an hour before and even worse than two days ago.
When I opened my mouth to address it, Slash whipped out his knife and began pacing, ripping himself from Samael’s protective hold. I groaned, feeling helpless. The light had left Slash’s eyes again as his mind ran through a billion different scenarios on how to rip someone apart.
Samael reached for Slash again, like he always did when Slash needed someone to drag him out. Slash avoided his touch, sidestepping the embrace before he stalked out the front door, leaving us behind. That lost look in his eyes meant nothing good for us.
“Mael, we need to go after him. Casey is still out there and…”
Samael drew me into the hug meant for Slash, tucking my head into his shoulder. “You’ve never called me Mael.” I knew I hadn’t. That was Slash’s name for him, but I felt I needed it. I needed Samael to fix this as he always did. “There’s no stopping him when he gets like this. It’s been too long since his last kill.”
Since everything was ok.
I buried my face in Samael’s chest, knowing that tomorrow’s headline wouldn’t be anything pretty. Casey was working on borrowed time at this point. I just hoped that Slash would use the same expertise and detail with this kill as he had with all the others. They didn’t need to find a massacre on Main Street, and Slash lost to the bloodlust.
DAEMON
We had been trying to ignore Brent for the better part of the morning, but he was annoying as fuck. As far as security detail went, I assumed he was excellent because he was Samael’s right hand. But as an employee? He was annoying as shit. The guy had asked for a pencil three times in the last hour, kept tapping against the table, and then would do a little swivel in his chair, the bolts creaking and ruining the little concentration I had left.
I was working hard on not falling apart – Killian MIA again – and Dark continually pointed out that Brent was watching us rather than blending in. I knew that, but there was nothing I could do while I clacked away at the keys, hoping that whatever words were popping up on the screen held some resemblance to the journalistic prowess I boasted.
Probably not.
Brent’s chair creaked again, and I sighed deeply, expecting to hear the rhythmic twenty seconds of metal grinding against metal. Ten seconds in, it stopped. Curious, I turned around to see Brent leaning back in his chair, facing me, legs crossed, expression hardened in deep thought.
He definitely knows something.
Stop worrying. He knows we exist but nothing else. Besides, he won’t do anything. Samael claimed us.
You say that but I’m not sure Brent and Samael are on the same page.
I didn’t expect Brent to say anything, so the words he did end up saying shocked us. “These last couple of days have been interesting.” I swallowed nervously, waiting for his next words. No doubt after our brief conversation earlier, Brent had started watching us more.
He shifted, leaning forward, elbows propped up on his knees as his eyes darkened with a distrust I hadn’t seen since Samael had killed that guy, Gary, the night I met him. “I’ve known there was more than just you when I saw you again at the estate. Well, not you, but one of you. You’re crazy – not like them – but sick. Like truly fucking psycho, aren’t you?”
I bit my lip, unable to answer that question. It was something no one had actually outrightly asked me. I tried to flash that innocent look that Killian had perfected, but the smirk on the edge of Brent’s lips told me I wasn’t fooling anyone.
Just a crumb. Give him a crumb. Nothing else.
One deep breath later, I locked eyes with Brent and nodded. “Yes, I have alters. No, I don’t kill people.”
Brent chuckled, his entire body shaking with the sound as he settled back in his chair again. I didn’t know where his confidence came from, but I didn’t like it. “But as I mentioned before, it gets you off.”
Why was he bringing it up again? I didn’t know why this was a problem or why it was relevant. Warped as it was, I wasn’t hurting my men, and they weren’t hurting me. I hardened my gaze and then tilted my head to the side, trying to portray the same glint of darkness my men had fallen in love with. “So? You get off being one step away from danger, always in charge but never with dirty hands. Important without the consequences.”
Brent grunted, and I knew I had hit a chord. He and I had never been on bad terms, but I began to dislike him and his hypervigilance in finding something off with me. I stood, grabbing a stack of papers that didn’t have to go anywhere other than the trash, but I was going to throw them away on the other side of the office just for a moment away from Brent.
