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At least he knew Saint and Jayden were safe, and that the bunch of Brotherhood assholes might actually listen to him now. He just had to hack back into Atlas and stop it from turning the world inside out. “How did you find me?”
“We visited every safehouse within range of the chopper you stole.”
That was a lot of houses. They’d be spread thin, as Raiden had planned. “Then it was luck.”
“A process of elimination.”
They were going to need more than luck to stop Raiden. During their brief fight, Octavius had seen what he was capable of, and he wasn’t just any nyktelios. He was old, like Saint was old, like Mikalis was old.
“Where’s Mikalis?”
“He’s sitting this out.”
“What?” Octavius laughed. Storm had to be joking. “He can’t sit out the apocalypse.”
Storm glanced over his shoulder. “An apocalypse?”
Octavius sighed. The Brotherhood had been kept in the dark for so long, they’d become irrelevant. Mikalis had them blindly marching to his kill-all-nyks tune, like the pied piper leading his rats, and Raiden had taken advantage of that obsession.
“You ready to listen now?” Octavius began to tell Storm everything.
* * *
The Brotherhood’sapparent new headquarters was… an independent artisan coffee shop in Manhattan—temporarily closed, according to the sign on the door. Blinds had been pulled down over the windows, preventing the outside world from peeking in, which was a good thing, as the current clientele did not look like the coffee shop sort.
Zaine and his partner, the plain-clothed detective Eric, stood together in the far corner, while Kazimir had the ex-reporter Felix tucked close against his side in one of the many couches scattered around what had once been the main coffee shop but was now a lounge/meeting/rec room. Even the edgy Aiko was here, speaking rapidly in Japanese into his phone, while he flicked a knife in his free hand.
The moment Octavius entered behind Storm, they all fell silent, so there was just the traffic hum and occasional honking horn from outside.
No Mikalis. He really was sitting this one out.
Zaine was the first to break. He headed over, weaving through the couches and café tables, then offered his hand. “We good?”
Months on the run, death threats, abuse, attempts on his life?We gooddidn’t cover it.
He’d fought alongside these people for centuries, saved them, and they’d saved him. But they didn’t actually know him, and he didn’t know them. He’d guarded himself because it was safer, and he was beginning to understand that they all hid the hurt. That didn’t excuse the bastards, or him—hehadbeen an epic asshole.
Octavius gripped Zaine’s hand. “Sorry I threw Eric against a wall.”
“Yeah, man, you’re lucky I didn’t know about that until recently.”
Octavius tightened his hold on the handshake. “You think you can take me, Z?”
“Right now, yeah.” Zaine laughed, then let go. “You look like shit and smell like a pond. What happened, you get run through a washer?”
“I had a conversation in a lake with Raiden.”
“Oh?” Zaine’s eyebrows lifted, and everyone else in the room suddenly became very interested.
Storm cleared his throat. “I’ll get you all up to speed, but what I need right now is for Octavius to have some alone time with Raiden’s laptop, and we had all better pray to the gods he can hack inside, or we’re all about to have a very exciting but short rest of our lives.” He guided Octavius out of the back of the café, into a store room, and through a door into a whole other building, this one far larger than the shop front belied.
The laptop in question sat central on an oval table, with several more laptops open around it. Octavius sat down and angled Raiden’s laptop toward him. Atlas was clearly counting down to Armageddon. Who knew Raiden had a flare for the dramatic.
“You need anything?” Storm asked.
“Blood. And not to be disturbed.”
“We can do that.”
