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“Because of what Octavius said, and I know he’s a lying traitor, but…”
“But?”
Zaine sighed and propped his ass against the table’s edge. “You remember how Sebastien said some things about Mikalis? About how he’s not nyktelios, like the rest of us? Octavius knows something, and that’s why he’s been cut off. He continues to plead his innocence, but we have orders from Mikalis to bring him in, so who the fuck do we believe?”
Eric stood there in his casual NYPD detective clothes, with his badge glinting at his belt, and planted his hands on his hips. “You know I don’t like Octavius, I never have, but the evidence you have against him is circumstantial. Take Mikalis out of this, and you’ve got one Brotherhood member accusing another with no physical proof Octavius did anything wrong.”
“Yeah, he said that. Octavius claims it was personal, that Raiden used him to get access to Atlas and set him up.”
“And you aren’t following that lead through because…?”
“Because Mikalis ordered us to bring Octavius in dead or alive.” Zaine winced. Now that he’d had time to think it through, he wasn’t liking the conclusion.
Eric eyed the laptop, turning the facts over in his mind, probably looking at them from different angles. Zaine loved when he got all analytical like this, loved watching his brilliant mind unpick mysteries. “Octavius makes it difficult to like him, but he’s never once stepped out of line, right?”
“True. Only Kazimir is more of a suck-up.”
“Let’s say we don’t trust Mikalis?” They shared a glance, knowing that statement to be true. Zaine did trust Mikalis, to a point. He trusted him to protect the Brotherhood by any means necessary. Which might not include the truth. He’d been difficult with the details of the unusual blood quirk found in Eric and more recently, Felix Quaid. He’d only agreed to Eric working with them after Zaine had threatened to reveal the things he’d heard from the dying nyk, Sebastien. “Octavius finds himself in an impossible situation. Kicked out, but suddenly implicit in a plot to undermine the people who think he’s turned against them. What’s he going to do?”
“Find a way back in.”
“That’s you. He called you, told you he was set up. So, why didn’t you believe him?”
“Because he threatened you, and he’s a dick.”
Eric smiled and applied his body between Zaine’s knees, leaning in nice and close. “Cute, but I’m over it, plus I can hold my own now. He reached out to you for help, Zaine. You owe him this.”
“You don’t think he’s lying?”
“I don’t know, but shouldn’t we check?”
“Even if he’s teamed up with Saint?”
Eric shrugged. “I don’t know anything about Saint. Apparently, nobody does. And that’s Mikalis’s doing. He’s made it sonobodyknows Saint. But I do know there are always two sides to every story.”
Zaine encircled him, trapping him by the waist and nuzzled his neck. “Why are you so reasonable?”
“I’d be a shitty cop if I wasn’t.”
Zaine huffed a laugh, but it didn’t last. He’d ignored Octavius’s call for help. “I’m an asshole.”
Eric nudged his mouth with the tease of a kiss. “Actually, you’re one of the few in the Brotherhood who’s not so stuck in his ways and can make a difference. Octavius knows that. He might even like you, in his own fucked-up way.”
“Hm.” Zaine tasted his lips, warm and inviting, and wanted nothing more than to take Eric to one of the back rooms, where they could lose themselves together, but then the laptop caught Zaine’s eye.
The progress bar had increased to eighty-six percent.
He reluctantly withdrew from Eric’s generous intimacy and sighed. “We need to find Raiden.” And they needed to find him before that bar reached one hundred percent. Because when it did, Zaine’s instincts were telling him whatever happened would ruin a whole lot more than his mood.
CHAPTER23
Octavius
The safehouse stoodon its own plot of several acres on the shore of a stormy Lake Michigan.
All the Brotherhood safehouses had medical facilities, but normal medicine wasn’t going to save Saint.
“What do we do? What can I do?” Jayden stood at the floor-to-ceiling window overlooking the misty lake. “My blood? I’ll feed him, I don’t care how much he takes. I tried in the chopper, but I couldn’t open a vein—” He hurried to the kitchen area and opened the drawers. “If I cut my wrist, he’ll smell the blood, right? And he’ll drink. I can do that—”
