FOURTEEN

“YES?” Adam said, phone gripped between ear and shoulder as he secured the towel around his waist. Shower drops ran down his back and chest in chilling rivulets—but he welcomed the cold against his overheated skin. Behind him, the shower softly hissed in the bathroom as Talia finished cleaning up. In a perfect world, he’d be in there with her, wet skin on wet skin, taking his time with her now that the bite of his desire had mellowed slightly.

“Staff from Segue is secure,” Custo reported. “I have them all waiting for instructions in various inconspicuous locations. That is, all but Gillian, who opted to take her chances on her own.”

“Excellent. Where are they and how long can they last?” Adam walked to the modern desk situated in an alcove off the kitchen, grabbed a pad of paper, and took the lid off a pen with his teeth. As Custo ran down a list of locations, Adam jotted notes. Seemed like everyone could hold out for a couple days before they’d have to move again. By that time, he hoped this would all be over, one way or another.

The shower cut off. Adam imagined Talia stepping out of the steam, eyes big and beautiful in her thin face. Her sweet, pale curves would be rosy and fragrant, hair slicked sinuously down the slope of her spine to reach the twin dimples at the base of her back where her hips flared and her ass deliciously rounded.

His gaze shot to the scatter of their clothes in front of the big windows.

“Just a sec,” Adam said to Custo—he muted the phone, strode down the short hall, and knocked on the bathroom door. “Talia, the bedroom will have some clean things to wear. Take whatever you like. Take whatever works for you.”

He waited in silence for her to answer. “Talia?”

“Okay, thanks.” Her voice was moderate, but her tone was slightly off.

Ah, hell. Adam rested his forehead against the door. This was not the way it was supposed to go. He’d managed not to touch her for nearly a week, had only slipped that one time—okay, twice—to kiss her. And who could blame him? She was brilliant and gorgeous. Some things were just inevitable. He wanted her. He’d known that truth back in that stinking alley in Arizona, holding her overheated body. The way she fit the curve of his arm. How he could just rest his chin on the top of her head. Her soft voice whispering a warning. She made him aware of what living could be without this war on his head. Yeah, he was good and screwed.

“Adam?” Custo’s voice brought Adam’s attention back to the call.

Adam unmuted the phone. “I’m here.”

He stalked back to the desk and his laptop. He scraped a chair back and sat at the desk, forcing his concentration into the monitor.

Work. Focus. Jacob.

The thought of Jacob snaked around Adam’s neck and tightened in a noose, cutting off the flow of blood from his heart to his head. Jacob, who started this nightmare. Jacob, who killed Mom and Dad. Jacob, who very badly needed to die. After that, maybe Adam could get his own life, but not until then.

“So when I get there do we move our base of operations to the New York office?” At least Custo had his head on straight.

“No,” Adam answered. He touched the monitor screen and selected the tab that revealed his remote connections to the Segue offices around the world. The hub at the New York office had timed out, as had the one in San Francisco and Atlanta.

“Our U.S. satellite offices’ systems are down,” Adam informed him. “What happened in West Virginia most likely happened here, too. If anyone survived, they are in hiding. Any intel stored at those facilities is compromised. No point in going there now and risking our own exposure.”

How could he have forgotten, even for a moment, the people who labored on his behalf? He’d handpicked each staff member of the New York branch—the thought that they were dead or worse made him ache with frustration. Twenty-six employees, all dedicated to his cause, lost or worse. They depended on him to keep them safe. And what was he doing? Screwing their only hope of survival.

Idiotic. Especially when he was so close to the end.

All he needed was one well-placed, well-timed scream. Nothing short of witnessing the swift strike of Shadowman’s curved blade cutting down an army of wraiths would ease the grip of anger on him.

“I thought The Collective was just after Talia. You think they decided to take out all of Segue?”

“Yes.” Adam understood The Collective’s strategy. To achieve their ends, destroying Segue was the smart thing to do—limiting Adam’s resources, scattering his personnel, and confusing his strategy by changing The Collective’s MO. As matters stood, the Segue staff, Adam and Talia included, had been reduced to underground renegades in a matter of hours.

But as long as Adam had that scream, he could win the war. Victory and vengeance were as easy as one breath of air.

“Why? Why risk that kind of exposure?”

“Talia is the only thing they want. She’s the only one who can make a difference.”

“I still don’t understand. Why don’t the wraiths just kill her and be done with it?”

“Good question.” Why not just silence the voice that can call Death? There had to be a damn good reason or things would have played out differently in West Virginia. They wanted her for something.

A soft sound behind Adam had his head whipping around.

Talia padded into the room on bare feet. She wore an oversize black T-shirt, braless judging by the twin tips peaking the front, and baggy gray sweatpants she’d rolled up to her ankles. His socks covered her slender feet, which he found both adorable and intimate. She shoved her feet back into her shoes. Two months on the run had obviously taught her a thing or two about being ready at all times. Habits die hard.

She fished the flash drive Adam had given her back at Segue out of her pants pocket and collected the discarded clothes on the floor. He caught her glancing at him from beneath the cover of her wet hair, but she shifted her gaze away again when she met his eyes, pretending to ignore his conversation with Custo. The woman wouldn’t win any Oscars.

“When you get here we will assess our available resources and locate the demon’s base of operations.” Then move in fast and strike.

Talia passed him again and found the stacked laundry/dryer unit behind a folding closet door in the hall to run a load. She returned to the room and rummaged in his backpack. After finding a book—where had that come from?—she set herself up on the sofa to read.

“How do you plan to do that with the New York office out of commission?”

“I have other sources.” Ghosts. Talia could call on the ghosts tied to New York and have them locate the demon for him. Witnesses everywhere, and they had to answer to her. Damn, it was almost too easy.

“I know all your sources,” Custo argued.

“Not these ones. Trust me. How long will it be ’til you get here?” Adam checked his watch. 2:23 A.M.

“Hour and a half, two hours, maybe.”

“I’ll be ready.” Adam ended the call and glanced at Talia.

No need to interrupt her reading just yet. She seemed engrossed, and well, he had no idea what to say to her anyway. We made a mistake warred with We have just enough time for another good go. Experience told him both approaches were very wrong.

Adam discarded both, electing instead to keep his mouth shut like a coward for the time being. He went to the bedroom, dressed, and then returned to the desk. He worked on his simulation, adding the unexpected support of SPCI to The Collective’s already worrisome resources. The projections the program generated made him sweat. In an abundance of numbers divided by geographic and industry-specific percentages, the computer was certain there was no hope.

He looked at Talia and knew different.

Still, he didn’t like putting a woman in harm’s way if he could help it. He’d have to be very certain of Talia’s safety.

She sat on the sofa facing the sprawl of the darkened city beyond the window, feet tucked under her, nose in a book. Her hair had partly dried in the time he’d been working, slowly brightening and coiling into loose curls over her shoulders. She’d scarcely lifted her nose since sitting down.

Book must be damn fascinating reading, because she hadn’t so much as glanced his way.

Better to do damage control now, before Custo arrived.

Adam stood and, twisting, cracked the strain out of his back and neck. As gritty as his eyes were, his body hummed as he took a seat opposite Talia.

“What’re you reading?” he asked in lieu of Are you okay?

Talia snapped the book shut and let it rest on her thighs. Lucky book.

“Jim gave it to me right before he asked me to call Lady Amunsdale. It’s a sort of encyclopedia of mythical figures, including an entry on banshees.”

Adam leaned forward in his chair. He caught the bright smell of shampoo and soap, still fresh on her skin. The sweet scent was probably thicker at her neck, just behind her ear, and darker still between her legs. He sat back again, scrubbing his scalp with his hands to get the flow of blood back up to where he needed it most. “What does it say?”

“Not surprisingly, the word banshee is Irish. The ban part means woman. And the shee part refers to fairy mounds, or the Otherworld.”

Talia’s tone conveyed an academic distance from the information she related, as if learning about her birthright were an intellectual exercise and not the personal discovery she’d been searching for all her life. Her act didn’t fool him. Adam knew that birthrights were a bitch—either you shouldered the burden until you passed it along to someone else, most often your children, or you were crushed beneath the weight of it. If Adam’s burden sat heavy, hers must be near intolerable about now.

She continued in her dry tone. “A banshee’s cry precedes death. Heralds death, in fact, which is in keeping with how it worked for me and Shadowman. One point of difference, however, is that banshees are associated with royal Irish families, which I am not.” She pressed her lips together, closed the cover, and tossed the book aside.

“Your mother was Irish. Perhaps her people can be traced back to royalty. Perhaps you’re a fairy princess.” Of course she was. He’d known it all along.

“Can I abdicate?” she laughed harshly, eyes finally watering. She blinked rapidly to clear them.

“Not just yet,” Adam answered. “I need you.”

Talia went so still that he reviewed his last words in his mind. I need you. What kind of a thing to say was that? It begged a follow-up question—needed her for what? Weapon or lover?

He cleared his voice, dodged the deeper question, and went for the obvious. “I think that becoming a wraith severs a person’s connection to Death. Your scream reinstitutes it.”

Talia shook her head. “I’m sure I screamed as a kid. Temper tantrums, roller-coaster rides, scary movies. Shadowman didn’t appear then.”

“I don’t think you were in the presence of a wraith, of death. I’ll bet you were surrounded by life.”

Her chin quivered. “I screamed when I got in that car wreck with Aunt Maggie. I saw Shadowman, my father, then. I have spent a long time wondering why I lived while everyone I’ve loved died.”

The reason seemed obvious, but Adam voiced it. “You had something important to do with your life. It wasn’t your time.”

“So what now? You take me to Times Square and I let it rip?” She laughed bitterly.

Reading the naked pain in her eyes, Adam filled with regret—not for the sex, not anymore—but for everything else. Everything that she’d endured, and yet she remained bright, intelligent, and strong. The woman was remarkable. She’d handled her burdens far better than he had handled his.

There was no way to spin what had happened between them. He owed her the truth.

She must have seen the shift in his eyes because she reached for her book again, opening it to a random page and tensing her forehead in deep concentration. “There are actually some very interesting folktales recorded here…”

“Talia.” When she didn’t lift her head, Adam grabbed the book and dropped it on the floor. Her hands, now empty and open, trembled. He filled them with his own and gripped.

“Talia, listen to me. In another world, another time, we could have been something to each other. But it’s impossible now—I know you understand that. I should’ve never allowed it to go as far as it has. I’m so sorry…”

Her head snapped up, eyes flashing. “I’m not. I’m the child of Death, and this war is probably going to kill us both. I’m not sorry for one minute of it that I choose to live. I know what I am now, and I’ve got a general idea of what I am supposed to do. I could’ve, should’ve, been living all along.”

He stroked his thumbs across her palms—she was silky soft, warm. It would be so easy to run his hands up her smooth arm, to gather her onto his lap and follow the softness of her skin to warmer places on her body. To use sex to forget everything. If Custo weren’t going to be here any minute, he just might have.

He forced himself to cease stroking her. “We’ve got a tough road ahead of us, and I don’t want to confuse the situation.”

She pulled her hands free. “Don’t patronize me. I’m not confused. It’s not so very difficult what I have to do.”

Talia stood and walked to the windows overlooking the sharp lights of the city.

“I didn’t mean it that way.” He followed her, gaze meeting hers in the night-darkened glass. And just like that they were back to where they started an hour before. His body remembered and stirred against his will.

“It’s fine. I’m fine. I’ll do what needs to be done. I’ve been searching my whole life for a reason I’m so different. Now I have it. Ending the wraith war is the reason I was born.” In the reflection, her face was composed. Too composed. Stony.

Adam dropped his gaze to the floor. If he continued to look at her, he was going to do something that messed with their heads even more.

But she was right. She had something to do. Jacob was still out there. He and his maker had to die.

Adam raised his head. “Custo’s going to be here soon. I’ve got to get some things together, inventory the supplies we have here.”

Talia watched Adam retreat into a back room, presumably to check supplies, but more likely to get away from her. The distance between them was both a relief and a disappointment. If the conversation had gone another way, and it could have if she’d let it, there would be no distance between them right now at all. None whatsoever. Her core contracted at his absence, fisting with an ache in her abdomen that echoed in her heart.

This could have all been different.

Another world, another time, he’d said. That was just the problem. Even if they managed to live through the next twenty-four hours, they were literally from different worlds. The hard truth was that death and life were incongruous. Those who attempted to meld the two either ended up wraiths—everlasting life, or ghosts—everlasting death. She was the daughter of Death. Adam was bursting with life. Incongruous. Incompatible.

Maybe Aunt Maggie had fed her one too many fairy stories as a kid. Tales of magic and kisses and wishes. Of happily-ever-afters and obstacles surmounted by love. Aunt Maggie had been a die-hard romantic, but maybe the emphasis had been because she knew something about how Talia was conceived. What must her mother have told Aunt Maggs about her father? Talia had asked, many times, but had never received a straight answer. In the light of her newfound knowledge, Aunt Maggie’s fairy tales did not seem so misplaced.

The book Jim had given her had suggested something else, something that she couldn’t yet voice to Adam. The faery were a breed apart—they were old, diminished spirits of the earth, shut out from heaven, and consigned for eternity to the Otherworld except for occasional trespasses into mortality. Her instincts told her that there would be no world but this one that Adam and she could share, and no time but now in which to share it.

At least she could give him her scream and with it, she hoped, peace.

The washer buzzed the end of its cycle and Talia tore her eyes away from the city to throw the clothes into the dryer.

She turned toward the corridor, spied the book on the sofa, and thought to tuck it away in case Adam decided to investigate further. The last thing she needed now was—

A crash behind her had her bringing her arms up to protect her head.

After her initial cringe, she whirled back toward the window to find a hole the size of an apple radiating white cracks up the glass. Beyond the hole, the fresh black of New York City night. An odd metallic burning smell hit her senses. Before she could identify the source, another impact sent something whizzing by her side to lodge in the sofa. Shards scattered the floor.

Her heart beat wildly, breath coming in shuddering draws as she turned to run down to the hallway. Smoke rose in her path, smelling sharply chemical and rankly…wrong. Wrong to a degree that superseded the normal world. She knew it with every freakish cell in her body.

She attempted to breathe through clenched teeth. The stench made her mouth taste sour. Her eyes teared profusely. She swiped at them with her palms and wrists.

A third crash brought her to her knees, huddling in the middle of a rising cloud. Her body screamed for air. She chanced a breath and choked on the fire that seared her nose and charred her lungs.

She covered her mouth and nose with the hem of her T-shirt and tried a breath. Her throat burned.

“Talia!” Adam’s voice was a thick roar.

“Here!” The word was a rasp. Stars floated in the periphery of her vision. More air! her body cried. Reflex took over and she drew in a shallow gasp. Pain.

An arm came around her, dragged her up. Adam. She knew the hard lines of his body, the curve of his arm, the warmth his body exuded. Together they moved through space, though in which direction, she had no idea until Adam kicked open a door and blinded her with light.

A storage room. Boxes open. Guns. His supposed inventory work.

She tried a little air in a series of thin pants to move oxygen into her blood and to clear her vision. Her throat and lungs felt raw.

Adam slammed the door shut and powered through the room to the other end. He tapped a keypad. The concealed door slid open to reveal a tight room, smaller than a closet, just big enough for two.

“Can you stand?” Adam’s voice was low, gruff, angry, a perfect match to the feelings she sensed in him.

She nodded, though she really didn’t know the answer. Her breathing became long, broken wheezes that left her light-headed. She put a hand to her chest, but it neither helped her move air nor stopped the pain.

He took her hand and pulled her in, hitting the second of two unmarked buttons. The urgency that poured through his touch spurred hers. Get away. Get away fast.

Talia’s stomach hit her throat at the sudden drop. An elevator. A bullet to the bottom.

“Are you okay?” Adam gripped her chin and turned her head to face to his. His expression was controlled, but his emotions a mix of concern and horror. What she felt from him kept her on her feet; she wouldn’t add to his worry if she could help it. With his free hand he lifted each of her lids in turn to look at her eyeballs, and then moved a raised finger in an arc before her eyes to track the response of her eyes.

“Yes.” Her answer exhaled in a harsh burr, several octaves below her normal tone. And it hurt.

“Damn it.” Adam’s face was flushed, though white around the mouth with tension. “You look like hell. Had to be some kind of chemical weapon in aerosol form. Poison gas, maybe.”

And mixed with something worse. Otherworldly worse. But Talia didn’t voice it.

“…okay.” She meant to say I’m okay, but the first word was lost on uncooperative vocal cords. It was a lie, and Adam had to know it was a lie. What she meant was that she would keep going until she fell over. He’d find her medical attention. Immediate medical attention, preferably.

The elevator came to an abrupt stop and challenged the lock she had on her weak knees. Adam pushed her behind him, protecting her body with his, then drawing his gun, touched a button. The door slid open.

The darkness beyond was mellowed by soft light, its source unknown. It took a couple of her weak breaths for a wet, fetid stench to hit her. She pressed her face into Adam’s shoulder. They could be in only one place. The sewer. A mangy rat darted past the elevator door.

“We’ve got to move. Got to find somewhere safe.” Adam sounded like he was talking to himself. He stepped out into a tunnel, looking each way as if weighing his options, debating between the two stretches of stinking tunnel.

It was strange to see Adam at a loss. Adam, who had a contingency for everything. Adam and his redundant securities. Not that she blamed him—no one could think of every unforeseen need. He’d done so much already by taking the whole of the wraith war onto his shoulders.

“Ah, hell,” he said, dragging her to the left. “The loft should have been safe. Should have been secure. It’s not affiliated with Segue, but they found us anyway. How’d they find us?”

Talia knew he wasn’t really asking her. Her job was to keep breathing, and she poured her concentration into that effort. It was the only way to help him.

“If they find us again, Talia, you run and hide. Got that? You run and hide. You do your dark thing and get to safety. I’ll try to hold them off as long as possible.”

He took some of her weight by circling his left arm under her shoulders. The dank length of darkness was slick with wet—the kind of dampness that never dried. It clung to the walls and soaked the debris at their feet made of disintegrating newspaper and unrecognizable trash. Only the bright white plastic of a fast-food cup seemed impervious to the sludge.

He stopped at a rusted metal ladder bolted to the concrete wall, manhole disk above, and peered at it intently.

“What about—” Talia began in a croak. She meant What about Custo? who was to meet them at the loft. Had he turned traitor like Spencer and led to the attack or was he walking unsuspecting into the hands of their attackers?

Adam turned quickly to her. “Shhh. Don’t talk. You need to rest your voice. You need to heal. You won’t be safe until you heal. No one will be safe until you heal.”

In a rush of horror Talia understood. Her scream, their great defense against the wraiths, had been silenced.