Loren gave a faint nod, still avoiding looking at Darien.
Darien reached across the centre console and took her hand into his. “I’m mad at myself, Lola. Not you. And seeing your talisman gone only makes me angry that I haven’t been watching closely enough. I should’ve taken more care.”
It felt like she was choking, and she was still too rattled by what just happened to find her voice. So, she stared out the window, holding Darien’s hand tightly in both of hers, concentrating on the feeling of his thumb tracing patterns across her palm.
Loren kept focusing on his touch, willing it to ground her the same way her essential oils did during her panic attacks, as she watched the bright letters of Lucent Enterprises pass over the car.
Along with its logo: three overlapping circles with a star at their centre.
38
Arthur J. Kind was a weapons technician for Lucent Enterprises.
He was also seventy years old and as human as Loren.
But neither his age nor his mortality did anything to mar the deftness of his fingers as he extracted the bullet from Darien’s shoulder. The slayer didn’t flinch where he lay on the table in one of the hundreds of laboratories in the building as Arthur dug out the fragments.
Lucent Enterprises was not only a defense company that manufactured weapons and military technologies; it also dealt with experimental science and cross-species genetics. The weapons they manufactured were for the use of the country’s Aerial Fleet. Taega and the Red Baron benefited greatly from the company’s military research; Johnathon Kyle, founder and CEO of Lucent Enterprises, was the mastermind behind the magically enhanced mechanical wings that gave Fleet soldiers the ability to fly. The wings Dallas would eventually receive as a trainee at the Headquarters.
Loren winced at the sight of the blood bubbling up to the surface of Darien’s skin as Arthur poked around inside the wound. Despite the blood, she found it difficult to look away—for two reasons.
One of those reasons was that Darien wasn’t wearing a shirt again; the sight of his bare upper body had her blushing tomato-red. He had more tattoos than the numerals on his knuckles and the mark of the Devils below his ear; along with the full sleeves on both of his arms, he had a back-piece of detailed black flames that swept across his broad shoulders and down to his hips, the fire encasing a hauntingly beautiful masterpiece of the monstrous, three-headed watchdog of hell.
The other reason she couldn’t look away was because of his scars. It made her angry to consider how much pain he’d endured because of those marks—bullet and knife wounds, with a handful of ridges that swept up and out on his back, as if he’d had angel’s feathers etched or burned into his skin. Although he could clearly handle a fair deal of pain, the whole thing deeply upset her.
She looked away as Arthur dug out the remaining fragment and set about dressing the wound.
“They’re from a belt,” Darien said of the strange ridges on his back. When she looked at him, his face betrayed no emotion. “My father had a bad temper.”
Loren swallowed the bile that rose in her throat, her stomach churning like a stormy sea.
His father was a monster.
When Arthur was finished dressing the wound, Darien sat up, slid his shirt back on, and rebuttoned it.
“Do try not to reopen the wound,” Arthur said as he stripped the gloves off his pale, wrinkled hands and set about cleaning up the workspace, “like you did the last one.”
Darien offered to help Arthur clean up, but the man refused with a cheeky remark that made Loren smile. She sensed the relationship they shared was like what a father might share with his son. Aproperfather, unlike the one Darien had spoken of tonight.
Arthur paused his cleaning and took something out of the pocket of his lab coat. “Open your hand,” he said to Darien as he approached where the slayer sat. Darien did as Arthur had asked, and the weapons technician dropped an obsidian ring into Darien’s palm. “Clearly, you need this more than I do. Put it on and turn it counter-clockwise.”
Darien did as Arthur had said. The magic in the ring caused it to fit his finger perfectly, and it vibrated as he turned it counterclockwise. There was a faint click and a hiss, and gleaming black armor spread over his body, fitting him like a glove from his neck to his toes, complete with an invisible barrier Loren assumed protected a person’s head. Loren could barely see the barrier, but when it spread to cover Darien’s head, there was a faint golden glow that alerted her to its existence.
Darien looked impressed. “Where did you get this?” He examined the armor, flexing his hands before him.
Arthur held his arms out at his sides, gesturing to the room around him. “The Fleet Weaponry, of course. It’s only just been created, and there aren’t many of them yet, so make sure to keep it close. It might help you with all those bullets you keep walking into.”
Darien snorted. He removed the ring, the armour vanishing back inside it, and slid it into the pocket of his pants. “Thank you,” he said. “Any luck on Loren’s post-mortem DNA test?”
“Still waiting for the results.” The smell of bleach swirled through the air. “Though I looked into those names you gave me: Erasmus Sophronia and Elix Danik.”
Loren sat up straighter.
“And?” Darien prompted.
“No records of them exist except death certificates,” Arthur replied. “I photocopied them, so you can have a look. The dates of their deaths are too far back for either of them to be Loren’s father, but maybe a distant ancestor. They both passed away nearly a thousand years ago.” Which meant neither of them were the person whose bone powder had been taken to track Loren down, for it would’ve made the trail too diluted to find her. It had to have been a parent who’d given Loren this supposed magical ability Calanthe Croft and the warlock from last night had mentioned, for it were any person other than a parent, her gift would’ve been washed away in old blood. Arthur continued, “I also believe I might’ve figured out your little riddle.” The riddle in the Dominus Volumen.
Loren shared a look with Darien.
