Page 14 of Nazab

Monica blanched and crossed her arms over her chest protectively. “Why didn’t you kill me when you figured out what I was?” she asked.

“Like you said, your soul is gray,” the knight said. “We don’t kill people who aren’t a danger to us, or to humans. It would be murder to end your life and my instincts won’t allow me to harm you.”

“What if your instincts change?” she argued. “How do I know you won’t turn against me and chop my head off when I least expect it?”

“I will never harm you, female,” Nazab vowed, but she remained skeptical. He rubbed a hand over his beard. He knew he was botching this, but he didn’t know how to extricate himself from the hole he’d just dug. “I have a question for you, Monica,” he said and she raised one eyebrow. “Why did I feel your pain when Wallace and his friend grazed you with their bullets?”

Monica’s eyebrows lowered in confusion. “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” she said uneasily.

“We share a link,” he said, touching the back of his head. She did the same, acknowledging that she could sense his presence somehow. It seemed more intimate than just detecting other beings on his radar. “I believe my ability to feel your pain has something to do with our strange bond,” he said.

“Does it work both ways?” Monica asked.

She resumed hugging herself defensively and he wished he hadn’t frightened her so badly. “There’s only one way to find out,” Nazab figured. He rose to his feet and crossed to the kitchen. Taking a short, yet sharp knife out of a drawer, he kept his back to her as he sliced his left thumb open.

“Damn it, that hurts!” Monica hissed. He turned to see she was holding her left hand up, squeezing the base of her thumb to try to minimize the phantom pain he’d caused her.

“I’d say that answers our question,” the warrior said ruefully. He wiped the knife on a paper towel, then tossed it into the trash can he found in a cupboard beneath the sink. He put the knife back in the drawer.

“Did you have to cut yourself so deeply?” Monica complained. “Half of my thumb has gone numb.”

“My flesh and nerves will heal soon,” he said as he returned to his seat. The cut was already healing and would fade quickly enough.

“I bet the Mad Prophet has already seen us in a vision,” Monica predicted. “We need to find a ham radio. The one back at my old base is probably still there. I doubt the militants have found our stash yet.”

Nazab shook his head. “It’s too dangerous to return to the city,” he argued. “Thamuz will be on the lookout for you. He’ll be able to sense you if we get too close to him. You don’t want your sire to take control of you with his parental bond.”

She shuddered and crossed her arms again. “I don’t get why all of the Soldiers of Chaos arrived together, but the knights have been straggling in so slowly,” she said.

“It’s a mystery I’d like to solve,” he agreed. “Perhaps we can find a ham radio somewhere else. Do you have any ideas about where we could search for one?”

“I don’t even know where we are right now,” the cambion said wryly. “But we should look in Army surplus stores, pawn shops and maybe even sporting goods stores. I’m not sure what other types of stores sell them.”

“We need to figure out our current location,” Nazab concluded.

“I guess we can search the house for letters that have the address on them and try to find some maps,” Monica suggested. “You look down here and I’ll search upstairs.”

He had the feeling she needed some distance from him, so he nodded in agreement. Monica pushed the recliner chair back into an upright position, then leaned forward to adjust her prosthesis. She stood up gracefully, then limped to the stairs. The sight of her ascending the stairs in her tiny shorts was enough to make him hard again.

Heaving a silent sigh at his traitorous body, the warrior got up and began searching the living room. None of the books on the bookshelf contained maps and he didn’t find any letters. The kitchen drawers were a bust as well, so he moved on to the rooms down the hall.

Chapter Eleven

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“THIS IS SO TWISTED,” Monica murmured beneath her breath as she reached the second floor again. She wished she hadn’t told Nazab about her theory now. She’d stupidly stepped over the edge and was in freefall. Instead of falling into the unknown together, she felt as if she was isolated and alone. “What did you expect, stupid?” she growled at herself, speaking too quietly for the knight to hear her. “As if a hot guy like him could possibly fall for someone like me.”

Her bottom lip trembled, but she refused to shed any tears. Clearly, the Mad Prophet was wrong about the Knights of Order protecting their females from harm. Or maybe she just wasn’t the right woman for Nazab. If this was the case, then why could they feel each other’s pain?

“Maybe Fate made a mistake,” Monica said sulkily, shoving a bedroom door open a bit too hard. It banged against the wall and a book fell off the bookcase just to her left. It landed on her head before falling to the floor.

“Monica?” Nazab called out, no doubt feeling the bump that had just formed on her skull.

“I’m fine,” she said. “A book just fell on me.” He let out a low chuckle and everything inside her clenched. How could he turn her on so much when they weren’t even in the same room?

She bent to pick up the book to see it was an ancient road atlas. “This could actually come in handy now that GPS is screwed,” she said. The bedroom had been used by a teenager, judging by the desk and homework scattered across it. She’d slept in the bedroom next door. It had belonged to a teenage girl.

Seeing a backpack lying beneath the desk, Monica bent down and dragged it out, waving away the dust that wafted into the air. She opened the bag and found a letter from the school inside. “Bingo,” she said in triumph, then put the backpack down.