“In a minute.”
Lace disappeared to join the others, though she threw a curious glance over her shoulder.
Darien ran a hand through his hair and turned to face Loren, the rings on his fingers reflecting the lights. “You might want to go upstairs and get some rest.” That familiar coolness entered in his gaze. “We could be down here for a while.” She heard all the words he didn’t say: they would be down here until the ex-Darkslayer started talking—and they would use whatever means necessary tomakehim talk.
Loren drifted toward the stairs. “Thanks.” She gestured to her bandages. “For all of it.”
He waved her gratitude away, as if what he’d done for her wasn’t the biggest deal ever. It might not have been the biggest deal for him, but it was for her. “Don’t mention it.”
Loren was halfway up the stairs when she turned around to see him disappear down the corridor where the others had dragged the twin. Attached to his fist were Death’s Head knuckles, an illegal weapon with four lethal spikes that were designed to rip apart a person’s face with every blow.
Loren didn’t turn around again after that. And she spent the rest of the night in her suite, music blasting through her earbuds at the highest volume for hours.
—
It didn’t take nearly as long as Darien thought it would for Xander to start talking, though he had less information than what he and the other Devils had been hoping for.
What they ended up gleaning from the…conversation…only left them with more questions, but what Xander had revealed led Darien to make a new decision.
After having a shower so hot it burned his skin, he found Maximus and Travis seated at the island in the kitchen. Their hair was damp, too; the need to scrub themselves after a kill until every last trace of blood was gone was something the other Devils suffered from as well.
They looked up at the sound of his entry, pausing the conversation they were having.
“Already three beers deep?” Darien smirked. Travis slid a cold bottle his way, and he snatched it off the counter. “Looks like I’ve got some catching up to do.”
“You think he was telling the truth?” Travis said.
“About Chrysantha?” Darien shrugged, popping the cap off his beer. “Guess we’ll have to ask Dennis, won’t we?”
The male Demon Twin had revealed some information about Chrysantha Sands during their little chat. Apparently, Chrysantha—known as Tundra in the Silverwood District—had gotten in deep with the wrong people just before she disappeared. She was doing jobs on the side for none other than Dennis Boyd, the owner of the dive bar called Puerta de la Muerta, where she worked. The twin didn’t reveal who was willing to pay four million to find Loren, no matter how much pain the Devils inflicted upon him. They’d got what little they could from him, checking his aura for any signs that he was lying as they worked on him, and then had put him out of his misery.
If what the twin had revealed about Chrysantha was true, Darien would need to confirm it before going to Logan, for he wasn’t sure what the wolf would do if he found out Chrysantha was selling illegal goods. Specifically, Blood Potions.
The Blood Potions Syndicate of Angelthene was a clandestine operation the law enforcement had been looking to put an end to for years, and the person at the head of the operation was Casen Martel, a warlock otherwise known as the Butcher. He had been in the syndicate for so long that he had little competition, but every so often someone got it in their head to try and overthrow him and steal his clients. And it sounded like Dennis Boyd was the newest idiot to attempt such a thing.
Darien took another swig of his beer, blinking the Sight into place as he looked up at the ceiling—through the top floors of Hell’s Gate and into Loren’s suite. There wasn’t a hint of her aura visible, not a single white or rainbow flicker, which meant she was sleeping with the talisman on.
Good. Even though he trusted the protection spells he regularly upgraded at the Umbra Forum, and even though he had complete faith in Mortifer’s concealment work, it never hurt to have a little extra protection.
His worry for her was a tangible thing that sometimes shook him out of a dead sleep at night, sometimes had him using the Sight to check on her in her suite. It felt like an invasion of privacy at times, but he felt like he had to do it.
When he’d embraced her after tending to her wounds in the basement, he hadn’t expected to not want to let go of her. He liked having her that close to him, liked being able to not only hear her heartbeat but tofeelit. And when his family had come down the stairs, forcing him to break away from her, he’d found himself feeling irritated at the interruption. He hadn’t been ready to let go of her; in fact, he could have stood there like that for hours, her aura flush with his.
Was this what crushing on someone felt like?
Call him crazy, but there was a part of him that felt like their fates were entwined now, and they were both in far too deep to ever turn back.
—
When Monday night arrived, Loren couldn’t sleep.
She was getting used to sharing a roof with seven deadly killers, so tossing and turning was about as much as she could accomplish in her dorm room at the academy. Dallas had fallen asleep hours ago, her steady breathing from the bed beside hers the only sound.
Where it sat on the nightstand, Loren’s phone gave a loud buzz. She leaned over to grab it and turned down the brightness.
DARIEN CASSEL appeared across the screen. Loren found her hands trembling, butterflies twitching their wings deep in her stomach, as she used her fingerprint to unlock the phone and read his message.
How are you feeling?
