House of Earth and Blood (Crescent City) (37 page)

“You tell me this tragic love story and expect me to answer it with my bullshit?” His silence was answer enough. She sighed. But—fine. She, too, needed to talk about
something
to shake off that murder scene. And to dispel the shadows that had filled his eyes when he’d spoken of Shahar.

For that alone she said, “No. Flynn and I never hooked up.” She smiled slightly. “When I visited Ruhn as a teenager, I was barely able to
function
in Flynn’s and Declan’s presence.” Hunt’s mouth curled upward. “They indulged my outrageous flirting, and for a while, I had a fanatic’s conviction that Flynn would be my husband one day.”

Hunt snickered, and Bryce elbowed him. “It’s true. I wrote
Lady Bryce Flynn
on all my school notebooks for two years straight.”

He gaped. “You did not.”

“I so did. I can prove it: I still have all my notebooks at my parents’ house because my mom refuses to throw anything away.” Her amusement faltered. She didn’t tell him about that time senior year of college when she and Danika ran into Flynn and Declan at a bar. How Danika had gone home with Flynn, because Bryce hadn’t wanted to mess up anything between him and Ruhn.

“Want to hear my worst hookup?” she asked, throwing him a forced grin.

He chuckled. “I’m half-afraid to hear it, but sure.”

“I dated a vampyr for like three weeks. My first and only hookup with anyone in Flame and Shadow.”

The vamps had worked hard to get people to forget the tiny fact that they’d all come from Hel, lesser demons themselves. That their ancestors had defected from their seven princes during the First Wars, and fed the Asteri Imperial Legions vital intel that aided in their victory. Traitors and turncoats—who still held a demon’s craving for blood.

Hunt lifted a brow. “And?”

Bryce winced. “And I couldn’t stop wondering what part of me he wanted more: blood or … you know. And then he suggested eating
while
eating, if you know what I mean?”

It took Hunt a second to sort it out. Then his dark eyes widened. “Oh fuck.
Really?
” She didn’t fail to note his glance to her legs—between them. The way his eyes seemed to darken further, something within them sharpening. “Wouldn’t that hurt?”

“I didn’t want to find out.”

Hunt shook his head, and she wondered if he was unsure whether to cringe or laugh. But the light had come back to his eyes. “No more vamps after that?”

“Definitely not. He claimed the finest pleasure was always edged in pain, but I showed him the door.”

Hunt grunted his approval. Bryce knew she probably shouldn’t, but asked carefully, “You still have a thing for Shahar?”

A muscle feathered in his jaw. He scanned the skies. “Until the day I die.”

No longing or sorrow graced the words, but she still wasn’t entirely sure what to do with the dropping sensation in her stomach.

Hunt’s eyes slid to hers at last. Bleak and lightless. “I don’t see how I can move on from loving her when she gave up
everything
for me. For the cause.” He shook his head. “Every time I hook up, I remember it.”

“Ah.” No arguing with that. Anything she said against it would sound selfish and whiny. And maybe she was dumb, for letting herself read into his leg touching hers or the way he’d looked at her at the shooting range or coaxed her through her panic or any of it.

He was staring at her. As if seeing all of that. His throat bobbed. “Quinlan, that isn’t to say that I’m not—”

His words were cut off by a cluster of people approaching from the other end of the street.

She glimpsed silvery blond hair and couldn’t breathe. Hunt swore. “Let’s get airborne—”

But Sabine had spotted them. Her narrow, pale face twisted in a snarl.

Bryce hated the shaking that overtook her hands. The trembling in her knees.

Hunt warned Sabine, “Keep moving, Fendyr.”

Sabine ignored him. Her stare was like being pelted with shards of ice. “I heard you’ve been showing your face again,” she seethed at Bryce. “Where the
fuck
is my sword, Quinlan?”

Bryce couldn’t think of anything to say, any retort or explanation. She just let Hunt lead her past Sabine, the angel a veritable wall of muscle between them.

Hunt’s hand rested on Bryce’s back as he nudged her along. “Let’s go.”

“Stupid slut,” Sabine hissed, spitting at Bryce’s feet as she passed.

Hunt stiffened, a growl slipping out, but Bryce gripped his arm in a silent plea to let it go.

His teeth gleamed as he bared them over a shoulder at Sabine, but Bryce whispered, “Please.”

He scanned her face, mouth opening to object. She made them keep walking, even as Sabine’s sneer branded itself into her back.

“Please,” Bryce whispered again.

His chest heaved, as if it took every bit of effort to reel in his rage, but he faced forward. Sabine’s low, smug laugh rippled toward them.

Hunt’s body locked up, and Bryce squeezed his arm tighter, misery coiling around her gut.

Maybe he scented it, maybe he read it on her face, but Hunt’s steps evened out. His hand again warmed her lower back, a steady presence as they walked, finally crossing the street.

They were halfway across Main when Hunt scooped her into his arms, not saying a word as he launched into the brisk skies.

She leaned her head against his chest. Let the wind drown out the roaring in her mind.

They landed on the roof of her building five minutes later, and she would have gone right down to the apartment had he not gripped her arm to stop her.

Hunt again scanned her face. Her eyes.

Us
, he’d said earlier. A unit. A team. A two-person pack.

Hunt’s wings shifted slightly in the wind off the Istros. “We’re going to find whoever is behind all this, Bryce. I promise.”

And for some reason, she believed him.

She was brushing her teeth when her phone rang.

Declan Emmet.

She spat out her toothpaste before answering. “Hi.”

“You still have my number saved? I’m touched, B.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah. What’s up?”

“I found something interesting in the footage. The taxpaying residents of this city should revolt at how their money’s being blown on second-rate analysts instead of people like me.”

Bryce padded into the hall, then into the great room—then to
Hunt’s door. She knocked on it once, and said to Declan, “Are you going to tell me or just gloat about it?”

Hunt opened the door.

Burning. Fucking. Solas.

He wasn’t wearing a shirt, and from the look of it, had been in the middle of brushing his teeth, too. But she didn’t give a shit about his dental hygiene when he looked like
that
.

Muscles upon muscles upon muscles, all covered by golden-brown skin that glowed in the firstlights. It was outrageous. She’d seen him shirtless before, but she hadn’t noticed—not like this.

She’d seen more than her fair share of cut, beautiful male bodies, but Hunt Athalar’s blew them all away.

He was pining for a lost love, she reminded herself. Had made that
very
clear earlier tonight. Through an effort of will, she lifted her eyes and found a shit-eating smirk on his face.

But his smug-ass smile faded when she put Declan on speaker. Dec said, “I don’t know if I should tell you to sit down or not.”

Hunt stepped into the great room, frowning. “Just tell me,” Bryce said.

“Okay, so I’ll admit someone could easily have made a mistake. Thanks to the blackout, the footage is just darkness with some sounds. Ordinary city sounds of people reacting to the blackout. So I pulled apart each audio thread from the street outside the temple. Amped up the ones in the background that the government computers might not have had the tech to hear. You know what I heard? People giggling, goading each other to
touch it
.”

“Please tell me this isn’t going to end grossly,” Bryce said. Hunt snorted.

“It was people at the Rose Gate. I could hear people at the Rose Gate in FiRo daring each other to touch the disk on the dial pad in the blackout, to see if it still worked. It did, by the way. But I could also hear them
ooh
ing about the night-blooming flowers on the Gate itself.”

Hunt leaned in, his scent wrapping around her, dizzying her, as he said into the phone, “The Rose Gate is halfway across the city from Luna’s Temple.”

Declan chuckled. “Hey, Athalar. Enjoying playing houseguest with Bryce?”

“Just tell us,” Bryce said, grinding her teeth. Taking a big, careful step away from Hunt.

“Someone swapped the footage of the temple during the time of the Horn’s theft. It was clever fucking work—they patched it right in so that there isn’t so much as a flicker in the time stamp. They picked audio footage that was a near-match for what it would have sounded like at the temple, with the angle of the buildings and everything. Really smart shit. But not smart enough. The 33rd should have come to me. I’d have found an error like that.”

Bryce’s heart pounded. “Can you find who did this?”

“I already did.” Any smugness faded from Declan’s voice. “I looked at who was responsible for heading up the investigation of the video footage that night. They’d be the only one with the clearance to make a swap like that.”

Bryce tapped her foot on the ground, and Athalar brushed his wing against her shoulder in quiet reassurance. “Who
is
it, Dec?”

Declan sighed. “Look, I’m not saying it’s this person one hundred percent … but the official who headed up that part of the investigation was Sabine Fendyr.”

PART III

THE CANYON

38

“
I
t makes sense,” Hunt said carefully, watching Bryce where she sat on the rolled arm of her sofa, chewing on her lower lip. She’d barely thanked Declan before hanging up.

Hunt said, “The demon has been staying out of view of the cameras in the city. Sabine would know where those cameras are, especially if she had the authority to oversee the video footage of criminal cases.”

Sabine’s behavior earlier tonight … He’d wanted to kill her.

He’d seen Bryce laugh in the face of the Viper Queen, go toe-to-toe with Philip Briggs, and taunt three of the most lethal Fae warriors in this city—and yet she’d trembled before Sabine.

He hadn’t been able to stand it, her fear and misery and guilt.

When Bryce didn’t reply, he said again, “It makes sense that Sabine could be behind this.” He sat beside her on the sectional. He’d put on a shirt a moment ago, even though he’d enjoyed the look of pure admiration on Bryce’s face as she got an eyeful of him.

“Sabine wouldn’t have killed her own daughter.”

“You really believe that?”

Bryce wrapped her arms around her knees. “No.” In a pair of sleeping shorts and an oversize, worn T-shirt, she looked young. Small. Tired.

Hunt said, “Everyone knows that the Prime was considering skipping over Sabine to tap Danika to be his heir. That seems like a good fucking motive to me.” He considered again, an old memory snagging his attention. He pulled out his phone and said, “Hold on.”

Isaiah answered on the third ring. “Yeah?”

“How easily can you access your notes from the observation room the night Danika died?” He didn’t let Isaiah reply before he said, “Specifically, did you write down what Sabine said to us?”

Isaiah’s pause was fraught. “Tell me you don’t think Sabine killed her.”

“Can you get me the notes?” Hunt pushed. Isaiah swore, but a moment later he said, “All right, I’ve got it.” Hunt moved closer to Quinlan so she could hear the commander’s voice as he said, “You want me to recite this whole thing?”

“Just what she said about Danika. Did you catch it?”

He knew Isaiah had. The male took extensive notes on everything.

“Sabine said,
Danika couldn’t stay out of trouble
.” Bryce stiffened, and Hunt laid his free hand on her knee, squeezing once. “
She could never keep her mouth
shut
and know when to be quiet around her enemies. And look what became of her. That stupid little bitch in there is still breathing, and Danika is
not
. Danika should have known better.
Hunt, you then asked her what Danika should have known better about, and Sabine said,
All of it. Starting with that slut of a roommate
.”

Bryce flinched, and Hunt rubbed his thumb over her knee. “Thanks, Isaiah.”

Isaiah cleared his throat. “Be careful.” The call ended.

Bryce’s wide eyes glimmered. “What Sabine said could be construed a lot of ways,” she admitted. “But—”

“It sounds like Sabine wanted Danika to keep quiet about something. Maybe Danika threatened to talk about the Horn’s theft, and Sabine killed her for it. ”

Bryce’s throat bobbed as she nodded. “Why wait two years, though?”

“I suppose that’s what we’ll find out from her.”

“What would Sabine want with a broken artifact? And even if she knew how to repair it, what would she do with it?”

“I don’t know. And I don’t know if someone else has it and she wants it, but—”

“If Danika saw Sabine steal it, it’d make sense that Danika never said anything. Same with the guard and the acolyte. They were probably too scared to come forward.”

“It would explain why Sabine swapped the footage. And why it freaked her out when we showed up at the temple, causing her to kill anyone who might have seen anything that night. The bomb at the club was probably a way to either intimidate us or kill us while making it look like humans were behind it.”

“But … I don’t think she has it,” Bryce mused, toying with her toes. They were painted a deep ruby. Ridiculous, he told himself. Not the alternative. The one that had him imagining tasting each and every one of those toes before slowly working his way up those sleek, bare legs of hers. Bare legs that were mere inches from him, golden skin gleaming in the firstlights. He forced himself to withdraw his hand from her knee, even as his fingers begged to move, to stroke along her thigh. Higher.

Bryce went on, oblivious to his filthy train of thoughts, “I don’t see why Sabine would have the Horn and still summon the kristallos.”

Hunt cleared his throat. It’d been a long fucking day. A weird one, if this was where his thoughts had drifted. Honestly, they’d been drifting in this direction since the gun range. Since he’d seen her hold that gun like a gods-damned pro.

He forced himself to focus. Consider the conversation at hand and not contemplate whether Quinlan’s legs would feel as soft beneath his mouth as they looked. “Don’t forget that Sabine hates Micah’s guts. Beyond silencing the victims, the killings now could also be to undermine him. You saw how tied up he is about getting this solved before the Summit. Murders like these, caused by an unknown demon, when Sandriel is here? It’ll make a mockery of him. Maximus Tertian was high profile enough to create a political
headache for Micah—Tertian’s death might have just been to fuck with Micah’s standing. For fuck’s sake, she and Sandriel might even be in on it together, hoping to weaken him in the Asteri’s eyes, so they appoint Sandriel to Valbara instead. She could easily make Sabine the Prime of all Valbaran shifters—not just wolves.”

Bryce’s face blanched. No such title existed, but it was within a Governor’s right to create it. “Sabine isn’t that type. She’s power hungry, but not on that scale. She thinks petty—
is
petty. You heard her bitching about Danika’s missing sword.” Bryce idly braided her long hair. “We shouldn’t waste our breath guessing her motives. It could be anything.”

“You’re right. We’ve got a damn good reason for thinking she killed Danika, but nothing solid enough to explain these new murders.” He watched her long, delicate fingers twine through her hair. Made himself look at the darkened television screen instead. “Catching her with the demon would prove her involvement.”

“You think Viktoria can find that footage we requested?”

“I hope so,” he said. Hunt mulled it over. Sabine—fuck, if it was her …

Bryce rose from the couch. “I’m going for a run.”

“It’s one in the morning.”

“I need to run for a bit, or I won’t be able to fall asleep.”

Hunt shot to his feet. “We just came from the scene of a murder, and Sabine was out for your blood, Bryce—”

She aimed for her bedroom and didn’t look back.

She emerged two minutes later in her exercise clothes and found him standing by the door in workout gear of his own. She frowned. “I want to run alone.”

Hunt opened the door and stepped into the hall. “Too fucking bad.”

There was her breathing, and the pounding of her feet on the slick streets, and the blaring music in her ears. She’d turned it up so loud it was mostly just noise. Deafening noise with a beat. She never played it this loud during her morning runs, but with Hunt keeping
a steady pace beside her, she could blast her music and not worry about some predator taking advantage of it.

So she ran. Down the broad avenues, the alleys, and side streets. Hunt moved with her, every motion graceful and rippling with power. She could have sworn lightning trailed in their wake.

Sabine. Had she killed Danika?

Bryce couldn’t wrap her mind around it. Each breath was like shards of glass.

They needed to catch her in the act. Find evidence against her.

Her leg began to ache, an acidic burn along her upper thighbone. She ignored it.

Bryce cut toward Asphodel Meadows, the route so familiar that she was surprised her footprints hadn’t been worn into the cobblestones. She rounded a corner sharply, biting down on the groan of pain as her leg objected. Hunt’s gaze snapped to her, but she didn’t look at him.

Sabine. Sabine. Sabine.

Her leg burned, but she kept going. Through the Meadows. Through FiRo.

Kept running. Kept breathing. She didn’t dare stop.

Bryce knew Hunt was making a concerted effort to keep his mouth shut when they finally returned to her apartment an hour later. She had to grip the doorway to keep upright.

His eyes narrowed, but he said nothing. He didn’t mention that her limp had been so bad she’d barely been able to run the last ten blocks. Bryce knew the limp and pain would be worse by morning. Each step drew a cry to her throat that she swallowed down and down and down.

“All right?” he asked tightly, lifting his shirt to wipe the sweat from his face. She had a too-brief glimpse of those ridiculous stomach muscles, gleaming with sweat. He’d stayed by her side the entire time—hadn’t complained or spoken. Had just kept pace.

Bryce made a point not to lean on the wall as she walked toward her bedroom.

“I’m fine,” she said breathlessly. “Just needed to run it out.”

He reached for her leg, a muscle ticking in his jaw. “That happen often?”

“No,” she lied.

Hunt just gave her a look.

She couldn’t stop her next limping step. “Sometimes,” she amended, wincing. “I’ll ice it. It’ll be fine by morning.” If she’d been full-blooded Fae, it would have healed in an hour or two. Then again, if she were full-blooded Fae, the injury wouldn’t have lingered like this.

His voice was hoarse as he asked, “You ever get it checked out?”

“Yep,” she lied again, and rubbed at her sweaty neck. Before he could call her on it, she said, “Thanks for coming.”

“Yeah.” Not quite an answer, but Hunt mercifully said nothing else as she limped down the hallway and shut the door to her room.