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“And, seriously, Vann, are you even sure it’s her? I know you hate the whole fate, soulmate bullshit more than I ever did, and for good reason, but maybe—”
“Why the fuck would I marry her, when I hardly even know her?” A growl rumbled under his breath. “But I know it’s her. You know it, too.”
Quinn leaned back and took a deep sip. “Like you all knew Ryan was Six the moment you saw him. There’s something different about her, and I can’t tell if it’s because I know she’s destined for you, or if she’s different because of what got to her.”
He swallowed hard. “But what got to her? What did they do to her? And why won’t she tell me?”
“No luck with your recon today?”
“I filmed a big-ass wyvern. After the pair I had a run-in with, I’m willing to bet there is a whole flock, or whatever one calls a group of wyverns. We can look over the footage and the pictures I took tomorrow, the maps, while Eryn’s at work. Fuck. Maybe I can solve this before even telling her what I am and how I threw her in harm’s way. Then… then we can try normal dating and let it happen naturally.”
“The rest of the team will be arriving throughout the night. Blayk’s coming too. Lana, Archer, and Bodie met up in Seattle and decided to drive down, so they should be here in a few hours.”
“You even convinced Blayk to come?”
“As he put it, he could use a break from hunting his old friends. Apparently, he finds clean-up hunting to be boring. He’ll be a few days behind, but he’ll be here as soon as he can.”
“You’re afraid we’ll lose and want as much help as we can get.”
“There are too many unknowns.” Quinn looked over her glass and schemed. “We’ll review everything tonight while Eryn’s sleeping. Let’s not draw this out.”
“You want to go poking around and see if we can piss it off enough to show its face?”
“So you’re sure it’s a something behind this, not a bunch of somethings?”
He leaned back and set his feet on the edge of the firepit. Images flickered in his mind, conversations, coalescing with the odd sensation of knowledge that flooded into his thoughts.
His grandmother had described her visions as that: a knowing.
Maybe hers were “knowing.” His were usually minimally founded hunches that turned out to be right.
He fiddled his thumb over the cool glass. “Someone trained the wyverns to kill for them.”
Used to his flickering ideas that weren’t his own, Quinn asked simply, “Who?”
“A demon.”
“A banshee?”
Thoughts stuttered in his mind, log jammed and contorted. He was too close to this. “No, but… I don’t fucking know.”
He tried to grasp the fleeting vision, but it was gone. Visions had smothered his grandmother and caused long periods of disconnection from the present. He couldn’t help but pity her. Most of the time, he was grateful his were subtle and infrequent.
Now, with Eryn’s life on the line, it would be worth it.
Quinn smiled and nodded with a confidence that often preceded a big, bold move. “We’re pretty good at saving the world. We can protect one human.”
Vann looked back into the house.
At the table, Eryn was smiling over a hot meal after an awful day.
Her movements were more fluid than even a few weeks ago. She was fast. Always cold, but now genuinely hypothermic.
The way she sensed something different about the team.
Lexi asking him if he could kill Eryn, if it came to it.
“She’s not human.”
