Page 17 of A Touch of Crimson
The front door opened, and her gaze flew to it. Elijah walked in, carrying the groceries. He paused on the threshold, his handsome face impassive as he took in the tense scene before him. A lock of his thick brown hair slashed across his brow, framing eyes like emeralds. Although she hadn’t seen him smile even once, she didn’t get an unfriendly vibe from him. He just seemed watchful and sharply curious. Definitely smart. He was canny, she bet, and hard to catch unawares.
She felt Adrian come up beside her. The scent of his skin teased her with her next inhalation. He’s an angel. And he hunts vampires…
“I know you’re hungry,” he murmured. “Let’s get you settled, so you can come talk to me while I make dinner.”
The thought of a celestial winged being slaving over a hot stove for her was bizarre, yet there was an eerie sense of rightness in being with Adrian this way, as if the intimacy of his preparing a meal for her was recognizable.
God, she had to get a grip. She had to figure out the new rules and how to either deal with them or circumvent them. She couldn’t afford to be ignorant, and she certainly wouldn’t have anyone dictating where she would stay and when she could go.
Somewhere out there, the vampires who’d killed her mother were certainly terrorizing someone else. They’d taken such pleasure from the pain and fear they had wrought; she couldn’t see them quitting until someone put them down. She wanted to be the one to do it, and she wasn’t going to stop hunting until she knew for sure they would never destroy another child’s innocence the way they had hers.
“Okay,” she agreed. “But, as I said, you’re the one doing the talking.”
“Who is she?”
“I don’t know.” Elijah leaned his forearm against a top bunk in the lycan barracks and looked at the men and women gathered around him. “I don’t see how Adrian knows. She just showed up at the airport, and he’s been all over her ever since. I’ve never seen him glance twice at a woman, but he can’t take his eyes off her.”
“Maybe she’s just his type,” Jonas said, showing the limits of his sixteen years with his naïveté.
“Seraphim don’t have a type. They don’t have emotions like we do. They don’t lust or hunger or crave.”
At least that’s what Elijah had been taught as a pup, and what he’d observed with his own eyes. But tonight, during the ride home from the grocery store, he’d felt a raw energy radiating from Adrian that betrayed an emotional response to the threat Lindsay Gibson had faced in the dragon. And there was a sharp, intensely possessive edge to the way Adrian managed her. He acted as if she meant something to him, while she clearly had never met him before in her life.
“Still, she’s hot.” Jonas shrugged. “I’d do her.”
“Don’t even joke about that,” Elijah snapped. “He’d shred you. He was ready to take down a demon, in public, just for looking at her wrong.”
“Which would’ve ticked off Raguel,” Micah pointed out, rubbing his hand over his jaw thoughtfully. “You know how pissy the archangels get over their territory, especially with the seraphim. Not to mention the possibility of irritating the demon’s liege. Adrian would have stirred up a lot of trouble for a woman he supposedly just met.”
“Why her? She’s human.” Esther’s tone was scathing, inciting the other females to nod.
“She slew a dragon like she was swatting a fly.” Elijah met the multitude of verdant gazes aimed at him. “She moved faster than I’ve ever seen a mortal move, but you’re right, Esther. She’s human. I can’t smell anything else in her.”
“But there has to be,” Micah guessed, catching on to what was left unsaid.
“Yes,” Elijah agreed. “I overheard her tell Adrian she can sense demons and vampires, and she’s been hunting them for ten years.”
A rumble of disbelief moved through the pack.
His mouth curved wryly. “Adrian was showing her his wings when I walked into the house. There’s a story there. It would be good to know what it is.”
“What should we do?” Jonas asked, looking to Elijah for the answer, as all the lycans in the room did.
The others turned to him too often. It was a burden Elijah didn’t want, one he couldn’t afford to bear. Everyone seemed to forget that he’d been transferred to Adrian’s pack for observation. He told himself they were simply used to him being bullheaded. He just needed to break them of the habit of letting him do things his way all the time. But even that implied a power he shouldn’t be capable of wielding.
“Keep your heads down,” he answered finally. “Keep your noses clean. Jason made the suggestion that Phineas’s death might have been lycan-related. We don’t want to give them any excuse to keep thinking that way.”
Esther snorted. “Jason’s never trusted us.”
“And he’s second-in-command now,” Elijah reminded. “His opinion matters.”
He looked down the length of the long, narrow room. It was a utilitarian space, filled with rows of olive green metal bunk beds and matching footlockers. Of all the packs, Adrian’s was the least comfortable. Most of the others were in the remote areas where the Sentinels kept the vampires contained, locations where a lycan could run and hunt and pretend to be free. But Adrian’s pack was considered the most prestigious. The Sentinel captain paid and fed his lycans well, but more importantly, he hunted only the most egregious offenders, the most vicious, cunning, and dangerous vampires. And any lycan worth a shit hungered for worthy, challenging prey.
Elijah rolled his shoulders back. “My advice: listen carefully to everything said around you. Nothing is too unimportant to take note of. And, please, think twice before you do anything that attracts attention to you.”
Growling their assent, the group dispersed before they were discovered. Collusion and mutiny were serious charges none of them wanted to face.
Micah stayed behind, running a hand through the striking red hair that carried over to his wolf pelt. Before speaking, he glanced over each of his powerful shoulders to search for eavesdroppers. Then, he leaned in and whispered, “She could be our ticket to freedom.”
