Her arms came around in a hug, her fingertips playing lightly on the ridges of his stomach. He’d only put on his jeans, couldn’t find his T-shirt in the dark and hadn’t wanted to wake her.
“I couldn’t stay asleep.”
He turned to hold her and was disappointed to find that she’d dressed completely, all the way down to shoes. Some kind of stylish sweat suit in gray, borrowed from Layla. He knew nothing about women’s clothes, but she seemed ready to kick angel ass and show all magekind how to conduct House business.
Just in case she was thinking of taking unnecessary risks, he reminded her, “The wraiths will handle him, or at the very least distract him while you or I do the rest.” His life as a stray had taught him to wait until the right moment, no matter how hungry, tired, or in pain he might be. It was how he’d kept himself and Fletcher alive.
Her eyes went hard. “You mean kill him.”
“Yep, that’s what I meant.” But it wasn’t as easy as she thought it was. The actual strike was quick, like the pull of a trigger. What was unexpected was the phantom pain that echoed from victim to killer. Mason could still feel the punch of bullet holes in his own torso, though he himself had never been shot.
He kissed her head and reached for a plaid button-down hanging on a peg by the kitchen door. He shrugged it on. Had grease on the sleeve from the boat’s motor.
A shriek of rage and hunger split the air, a primordial bird sound—one of the wraiths.
Cari’s eyes went big. The monsters had been quiet in the hours since their cages had been situated and the night matured to deepest black.
“Water’s still calm,” Mason said. But he took the Glock from the counter and put it in the back of his pants. Shoes would be good, too. “You need to rest while you can.” He stuffed his feet into his running shoes, no socks. Who knew how long it might take for Xavier to come here? He might not come ever.
Cari looked at Mason as if he was insane. “You try to rest.” The black of her eyes had turned inky. Her Shadow was stirring—she was reaching for power.
“Too soon, Cari.”
Another wraith shrieked and banged against its bars.
Cari drew out the Martin knife. “Maybe they sense something. Like, I don’t know, dinner?”
“They could just want me.” His soul was still exposed. They could be sensing him.
She shook her head. “It’s happening.”
“Cari.” The water wards—a mist of Shadow and atmosphere—hadn’t been disturbed.
“He’s here.” She said it definitively.
Cari was rock-solid. She always had been. If Cari Dolan said an angel was here, then damn it . . .
Okay.
Mason concealed his soul with Shadow, hiding himself from the wraiths’ hunger. He reached and hit the remote release on their cages. Xavier would be able to take one or two on his own, but five?
“Yes.” Cari nodded. The motion had an under-tremor that she tried to flatline with a clenched jaw.
He turned off the kitchen lights and motioned Cari away from the window. The quiet closed in as they stood in the dark together, he maneuvering to put her back to a wall. Her breath brushed his neck.
Of course, if this was a false alarm, wrestling inhumanly strong creatures gone insane with hunger back into their cages was going to be a lot of fun. But he trusted her instincts. This was not a panicky woman.
A shadow moved outside the window. Had a human profile—a hunter.
Coming.
Cari clutched the Martin knife in front of her. Every muscle in her body was strained.
“Blink,” Mason murmured. “And breathe.” He used his rushing blood to loosen his limbs, making them ready and fast.
At last: a vibration on the fine hairs of his nerves told him the water wards had been disturbed.
Another shriek, this time from the direction of the water near the back of the house. In the water?
He looked to Cari and gave a single nod to indicate that the angel was indeed here. He knew it now, too. Maybe the angel had been swimming around, looking for the best place to come to shore. The wraiths had sensed him, had cried out in hunger.
A scream this time, human, adult, but so high with fear that Mason couldn’t tell if it was a man or a woman.
“Got him,” Cari said, nodding as if all was as it should be.
Yet another shriek, all converging on the same place.
“That’s what it sounds like to me.” Mason straightened. It did something cold to his stomach to know a living, breathing person was being consumed not far from their location. He didn’t like death—it was an unmaking.
“I have to see it. I have to see him die.” Cari’s eyes had gone demon black to challenge the bright of the angel. Again, Mason had the eerie certainty that of all the terrible beings gathered here, Cari was by far the most dangerous.
“Can we go out?” she asked.
His stray instincts said no, but this was a different kind of job, one that required her doing part of this herself, not just making sure it got done. The Dolan had to strike a blow.
“Stay behind me.” He wanted this over.
They exited his House through the back door. The cries, human and wraith, had come from over there, by the rocks. He crossed the lawn, wishing for his shotgun, which slowed wraiths better than the single shots from a handgun. He hated the soul suckers—dirty, stinking bags of flesh. Their distended jaws.
“I hope they chew on his guts,” Cari said.
Mason shhhhhed the fae, because that’s who was talking now. Cari would want an efficient death. She wasn’t one for excess, even in revenge.
Through the trees, following the smell of decay, used-tobe-humans gathered around a fallen body. Their jaws were slung low, unlocked to consume. They were vultures at their prey, the angel gutted, ravaged, his lower face and jaw hanging loose. The infamous wraith kiss done a little too exuberantly.
Disgusting. “He’s gone.”
Mason felt Cari push him out of the way. He reached after her, but then remembered, she had no soul, and so had nothing to fear from the wraiths unless she purposely antagonized them. He figured she needed to see the death of the angel who’d killed her father and so many more.
Mason followed behind, the smell and sight ahead pissing him off. He didn’t like the ugliness, not here in his safe place. But the wraiths had been useful after all, in the most abhorrent way ever.
Knife in hand, Cari leaned over the wraiths, who didn’t even seem to notice her. Her silhouette was very much like a witch bent over some dark magick, these monsters her minions. She flipped the knife in her hand—a gesture too practiced for the Cari he knew—and stabbed downward where the heart of the angel would be.
Made Mason think that maybe he and Cari were the bad guys.
Or maybe there were no good guys anymore. Maybe that’s why the Dark Age was here.
A slight shift in his senses and he turned—
—but not in time to escape the narrow burn of a knife slicing across his neck.
Xavier.
Mason’s hand came up to his throat as he dropped to the ground. Warmth spurted through his fingers, the tips of which were already sizzling with magic. A press at the wound compelled Shadow to staunch the flow at his jugular. He willed his heart not to pump quite so hard and then worked his Shadow to knit the flesh back together.
This wasn’t the first time someone had tried to slit his throat. Not the first that he’d used Shadow to heal his body. The trick was to accomplish the feat before losing too much blood.
There were many ways he could die, but this wasn’t one of them. The few times before, the attacker had left him for dead, just as Xavier did now. A quick, quiet attack so he could move on to his other quarry.
But damn Mason was cold. The ground moved in a slow careen. And the iron smell of his blood nauseated him. He couldn’t stand yet, but he managed to turn his head in the grass to watch Xavier silently approach the site of the carnage.