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All right, he’d wanted Zaine’s help, and now he had it. But he also wanted to make it out alive. “Follow me.” He led him through the long grass, keeping low, and snuck between the smaller outer warehouses, toward the large, looming building nearer the waterfront. “What did you mean, my man?” Octavius whispered, glancing behind him to catch Zaine’s knowing smirk.
“Don’t try and tell me you’re not a thing. The apartments have real thin walls.”
Octavius hurried to the nearest wall and shadows deep enough to hide them. “‘Thin walls’?” And then it occurred to him how the others had heard him, Jayden, and Saint engaged in intimacies, when he’d had his cock down Jayden’s throat, and Saint had his fingers in places that brought a flush of heat to Octavius’s face. “You heard that?” he whispered.
“You didn’t know?” Zaine snickered. “It was pretty awkward, especially as we were all sucking on blood bags while you were getting your rocks off next door.”
If they hadn’t been in the middle of nyk territory, Octavius would have dug a hole and buried himself in it, then he caught Zaine’s grin in the low light and the shame fizzled away.
“No shade, man,” Zaine said. “If I’d been alone with Eric, we’d have been going at it too. Besides, you’ve been less of a dick since getting some. I knew you just needed a good fucking. Congratulations.”
“I hate you.” He was also pretty sure Zaine’s attempt at humor was to distract him from the fact Saint was in trouble.
Zaine’s grin bloomed. “Good, we wouldn’t want to make it weird by actually liking each other.”
A car rumbled up to the outer gates, waiting with its engine running, and as the gates clattered open, the car ventured into the warehouse yards. Octavius and Zaine were well-hidden behind stacks of crates, but from their location, the driver as visible.
“Raiden,” Zaine growled, hunkering down in the grass. If they could see him, he’d be able to see them too, if he knew where to look.
The car vanished behind one of the outer buildings, then rumbled into sight again. Its high beams swept over a bank of old oil drums, and then the vehicle came to a halt. Raiden cut the engine and climbed out, then leaned back against the car’s hood, waiting for something.
“We can take him,” Zaine said. “You and me, right now.”
“Let’s wait, see what happens.”
Raiden removed his glasses and examined them in the ambient light, then folded his fingers around them and crushed the glasses to bits of broken metal and glass. He sprinkled the remains on the ground, discarding his lies.
A figure emerged from the gloom, appearing from the thickest shadows near the river.
“Goddamnit, that’s Mikalis,” Octavius hissed. If he was here, then Saint really was in danger.
“Fuck, is hemeetingwith Raiden?”
They weren’t fighting. The wind whipped their conversation out across the river, far from earshot, but they seemed to be amicably meeting.
“The fuck? Why isn’t Mikalis bitch-slapping his skinny ass?”
Because they were working together. That was why and how Raiden had been able to undermine the Brotherhood all this time without being discovered. Because Mikalis already knew who and what he was.
Octavius didn’t want to believe the worst, but the evidence was stacking up.
“He’s not working with the Nyxians…” Zaine said, his thoughts catching up with Octavius’s. “No way, that’s not Mikalis.”
“It does explain why he’s not helping us, and how he didn’t spot Raiden was one of them. He knew—”
“No way, man. He’s a slippery sonofabitch, but he wouldn’t betray us like that. This has to be part of a plan, some kind of ruse he’s acting out.”
“So why not tell us?”
“I don’t know… But he’s not one ofthem.”
He admired Zaine’s optimism, but he hadn’t had to try to fight Mikalis for survival. “Regardless, we need to find Saint before Mikalis does.” Assuming he hadn’t already found Saint and killed him. No, Octavius would have felt it. He and Saint were close, as close as two souls could get. He’d know if he was gone.
Octavius nodded toward the main warehouse. “Let’s go, while they’re preoccupied.”
They tracked along the outside wall of the neighboring building, then dashed across a narrow side path, and hurried under an old set of exterior fire escape stairs to the nearest grimy window.
“Shit,” Zaine muttered, peering inside.
