Darius mumbled something as he shook his head. Thorn’s look of regret was better than any words he could’ve spoken.
“You’ve been on your own ever since?” Darius asked.
“Yes,” Lexi said. “In a way. In others, I had Crystal, Jessica, and Christina.”
Thorn’s thumb gently smoothed over her hand. “Now I know why you were so determined to find Christina’s killer.”
“I want to be able to tell them he’s dead.”
“You will,” Thorn vowed.
CHAPTER
SIXTEEN
Lexi rose the next morning feeling more like herself than before. She showered and changed, only to find it was Darius once again with her.
“I thought I heard Thorn when I was in the shower,” she said.
Darius nodded, flipping through the TV. “You did. He’ll be back later.”
The hours passed slowly as she and Darius watched movies. She kept waiting for Thorn to return, but he didn’t.
“I’m going to go out for food,” Darius said that evening. “Anything you want?”
“Whatever you’d like,” she answered.
“Be back shortly,” he said and left the flat.
Lexi jumped up and went to the window to look outside. Darius exited the building and turned right. He had gone only a block before she saw him cross the street and step in front of a man.
A moment later, Darius shoved him into the alley. Lexi held her breath as she tried to find an angle that would let her see into the alley, but nothing worked.
When she next saw Darius, he had blood on his shirt. He looked both ways down the street. Just as he was about to duck back into the alley, two men ran toward him.
Lexi gasped when she saw the black and silver hair of one. “Dark,” she whispered.
She watched as Darius took out a knife and began to fight them. Lexi stumbled back a step from the window when she saw a bubble about the size of a grapefruit appear in one of the Dark’s hands. He then threw it at Darius.
Darius ducked, and the bubble glanced off him. Still, it seemed to impair him as Darius shook his head as if to clear it. The Dark advanced on him then.
Lexi screamed his name, pounding on the window. She started to turn to leave the flat when Thorn appeared on the rooftop across the street.
He jumped from the six-story building to land as light as a cat behind the two Dark. They spun around to fight him. That’s when she spotted that he also used a knife. He was so quick in his movements that she couldn’t keep up with him. The Dark continued to throw their bubbles, and it seemed that every one that hit Thorn only angered him more.
The fight was over in quick order with the Dark laying dead between Darius and Thorn. Lexi wished she knew what they were talking about standing there so casually. Anyone could come upon them and see the bodies.
She couldn’t believe all of this happened so close to the flat. As soon as she saw Thorn start to turn around, she jumped to the side of the window, plastering herself against the wall.
Lexi counted to sixty before she peeked around the corner and saw that Thorn was already gone. Darius had two dead bodies draped over his shoulder.
She didn’t think twice. She ran to the door, grabbing her coat as she did. Her jacket was on by the time she reached the door to the building. Lexi looked through the glass for any sign of Thorn or Darius—or Dark.
With the coast clear, she hurried out of the building and across the street. She ran to the alley, stopping as she reached it and slowly looking around the corner. Lexi caught a glimpse of Darius as he turned left.
Lexi was silent as she jogged after him, occasionally looking up to make sure Thorn wasn’t watching her from above. She had to know who they were to jump from buildings and heal like Thorn did. Not to mention being hit with those bubbles by the Dark. Those bubbles were weapons, and she imagined they were magic.
Your kind. Darius’s words replayed in her head as she followed him down one street to the next, staying far enough back that he wouldn’t see her.
No human she knew could jump off buildings and land on their feet without breaking bones. And taking the bubbles of magic? She couldn’t imagine that was easy.
Lexi lost Darius’s trail when she came to a warehouse. She was about to retrace her steps to the last turn to see if he had gone another way when she climbed some grates to look into the warehouse.
She saw the numerous dead bodies of the Dark before she saw Thorn and Darius. Though she knew they hunted the Dark, it was different seeing the outcome of their work.
Then again, the Dark weren’t of this world. They were aliens, beings who fed off humans. What did she care if they were killed and their bodies gathered in such a manner? She couldn’t feel anything for them, because the Dark didn’t feel anything for humans.
She pressed her face closer to the window when she saw Darius begin to undress. What could he possibly be doing?
As soon as he folded his shirt, he took a deep breath and changed. Into a dragon.
Lexi gasped in surprise and jerked back at seeing the purple dragon, toppling off the crates to land hard on the concrete. She scrunched her face as pain radiated through her.
“What a pretty thing,” said a male voice with an Irish accent.
“Leading us straight to the Kings, too,” said another.
Lexi opened her eyes and found three Dark standing before her. She tried to roll over and get away, but they roughly took hold of her.
She could feel the seduction they were pouring into her, but she refused to give in to it. Lexi wasn’t going to end up like Christina. She knew what these beings were and what they wanted. She was strong. She could—no, she would—fight.
They dragged her to the door of the warehouse and barged in. Darius was once more in human form, though he was naked. She saw a dragon tat on his back before he whirled around, his lips lifted in a sneer when he spotted the Dark.
“Look what we found,” said the Dark with a thick Irish accent who walked behind her. “She led us right to you. I had no idea she would deliver such a fine prize, but I’ll not look a gift horse in the mouth.”
Lexi looked at Thorn, but his gaze was on the three Fae. Anger rolled off him in thick waves. His eyes promised death. And pain.
“You’ve made a dreadful mistake,” Thorn said in a dangerously low voice.
Chills rose up on Lexi’s skin. She had seen Thorn smiling, had known his gentle side. This Thorn … well this Thorn was lethal.
The Dark returned to stand behind her. Thorn’s nostrils flared in fury, his face set in hard lines. Lexi tried to swallow. She was getting a firsthand experience of battle and danger, and she didn’t like it. In fact, she was frightened to such an extreme that she was shaking.
“Does the woman mean something to you?” the Dark asked Thorn as he touched her face.
Lexi jerked away and turned her head to glare at him. “Touch me again, asshole, and I’ll cut your balls off. We’ll see if you can fuck a human to death then.”
The moment the Dark’s smile turned to a sneer Lexi knew she might have overstepped things a little. More than a little by his furious glare.
“You dare to talk to me in such a way?” the Dark asked her.
All the anger over Christina’s needless death that had kept Lexi going for days returned with a vengeance. It choked her it was so strong. Her vision turned red, and all rational thought vanished as she focused on killing a Dark—any Dark.
“You dare to come to my world and slaughter us as if we mean nothing?” she returned with a scathing look. Lexi looked him up and down and laughed. “I’ll fight every one of you. I’ll make it my goal to slice off every Dark Fae dick. I’ll make sure that you can’t harm another human again.”
She was surprised Thorn and Darius hadn’t told her to be quiet. In fact, she was astonished they stood silently, but she couldn’t take the time to think of it. She was confronting a Dark, and even though he wasn’t the one who had killed Christina, he was still an ass.