Summoner of Storms (9 page)

John’s heart picked up its pace and his mouth
went dry. “Bottled demons? You mean he’s diverting the ones
scheduled for destruction?”

Tiffany snorted. “Destruction? You must be
joking.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Shit.” Caleb rested a hand lightly on John’s
shoulder. “I’m sorry—Tiffany told me before we came to get you, but
I forgot. There was so much else going on. But the demons...SPECTR
doesn’t kill them once they’re exorcised.”

“It’s why Brimm left SPECTR,” Tiffany said.
“He learned what the Vigilant already knew. All those NHEs you’ve
yanked out over the years and stuffed in bottles for euthanasia?
They’re sitting on a shelf somewhere.”

“What?” For a moment, John feared he’d have
to sit down. His head felt light, and he was glad there wasn’t
anything in his stomach. “All of them?”

“Yep.”

Goddess. He didn’t sign up with SPECTR after
getting out of school because he wanted to kill NHEs. It was just
an unfortunate side effect of the job, like destroying aggressive
bears could be a painful duty of wildlife officers. The NHEs just
acted according to their natures, but letting them go meant they’d
only do it to someone else again down the line.

Bad enough to find out maybe it wasn’t really
their nature, just a distorted version of it created through
interactions with humans. But to think the one consolation he’d
had, that they’d been humanely euthanized, wasn’t even true...

“They were trapped,” he said numbly. “In the
bottles. Still are. Year after year, hungry and afraid and...”

“Hey.” Caleb’s hand tightened on his
shoulder. “Maybe it’s not as bad as you’re making it out. Gray got
staked or locked in coffins plenty of times. He waited it out until
the corpse fell apart, no problem. Sure a human would go crazy, but
these guys aren’t human.”

“They aren’t Gray, either.” He wanted to
believe Caleb, but he couldn’t know one way or another.

“It’s not your fault. You didn’t know.” Caleb
stepped in front of him and brushed a lock of hair back from John’s
face. “You haven’t done anything wrong.”

“I guess not.” But it felt as if he had. As
if he’d been complicit in torture.

“The point is,” Tiffany said, “SPECTR has
warehoused NHEs for who knows how long. Years. Just storing them,
although I guess Forsyth probably grabbed a few for his experiments
at RD. And now he’s actually moving enough of them to qualify as
shipments?”

Devon nodded. “According to what Renée said.
When you told her Forsyth was building an army...”

“RD was a trial run. Phase One,” Caleb said.
He let go of John’s shoulder and folded his arms over his chest,
leather coat creaking. “Now we’re on to Phase Two?”

Not good, especially when combined with the
kidnappings. “Shit.”

“My sentiments exactly,” Tiffany said. “Where
did he send the bottled NHEs?”

Devon shook his head. “Renée didn’t know. She
was trying to find out.”

“Fuck.” Tiffany rubbed at her eyes. “We need
to find out, and fast. Whatever Forsyth is up to, we’ve got to put
the brakes on it somehow.”

“And get back the people he’s kidnapped,”
John added. How did things go so wrong? SPECTR warehousing
dangerous NHEs? An assistant director building an army of the
possessed? Kidnapping children? “But how? I’m pretty sure they
revoked our access by now, and we can’t exactly stroll in and ask
to see the records.”

There came a long moment of silence. Then
Caleb cleared his throat. “We know someone whose clearance isn’t
revoked. Someone who might know what Forsyth is up to, and
where.”

“Who?”

“Sean.”

* * *

John waited for Caleb to laugh and say he’d
meant it as a stupid joke. Just a way of breaking the tension.
Because he couldn’t possibly be serious.

“Huh,” Tiffany said. “It’s an idea.”

“The hell?” John’s voice stuck behind
something in his throat, something with razors, which cut through
memory down to bone. “You...I can’t believe you’d even suggest
it!”

Caleb shifted uncomfortably. “Sean—”

“Don’t speak his name to me!” John clenched
his fists; his breath came hard, as if he’d just come back from his
morning run.

“Not like I want to give the fucker another
chance to stab us in the back,” Tiffany said, “but maybe we ought
to hear what Caleb has to say.”

Caleb gazed at him pleadingly. “John, just
listen, okay? Sean was working with Forsyth. How deep in he was, I
don’t know. But he might have the information we need. If he does,
we know where to find him, right?”

“Assuming he survived the firefight at RD,”
Tiffany said. “And Forsyth hasn’t decided to volunteer him for
demon-hosting duty.”

John’s body felt numb, distant. He’d last
glimpsed Sean in the chaos of the assault on RD with demons bearing
down on them. Maybe Sean didn’t make it out.

Was that what he wanted? For Sean to have
died?

“He’s an exorcist—he can’t be possessed
against his will.” John forced the words out, willing them to sound
reasonable. Calm. “Let’s say, for the sake of argument, he’s alive
and back at his apartment. He can’t be trusted. Anything he told us
would just be a lie.”

Just like their whole friendship had been a
lie.

Caleb flung out his arms in frustration.
“Then we’ll beat it out of him! Fuck, I don’t know! Can’t we at
least try?”

“Don’t you understand?” The thin film of calm
cracked over John’s voice, exposing the raw edges underneath. “Sean
killed you once already! I’m not going to give him another chance
to finish the job.”

He swayed for a moment, trying not to see the
image of Caleb lying on the floor, blood pooling under his head,
his one visible eye staring blankly at nothing. Rivulets of scarlet
tracing his pale skin, seeping across slightly parted lips. A
tangle of hair and gore.

“Fuck this,” John said, and pushed past Caleb
to the door. Tiffany called after him, but he didn’t care. She
couldn’t ask this of him. She didn’t have the right.

He ducked into his and Caleb’s room and
slammed the door. It didn’t make him feel any better. The bed
protested when he sat on its edge. He buried his face in his hands,
pressing his fingers against his eyelids. But the bright blooms of
color just shaped themselves into Caleb’s dead body again, so he
dropped his hands onto his knees.

The door opened and shut quietly. The leather
of Caleb’s coat creaked as he took it off and dropped it onto a
chair, but John didn’t look in his direction. Just stared at the
floor and tried not to think.

“Hey.” Caleb sat by him, the bed dipping
under his weight. “Are you okay?”

John swallowed. “I thought I’d lost you.” The
words sounded rusty, as if he hadn’t spoken in years. “For hours. I
thought you were dead, and Gray...I hoped Sean was wrong. I
prayed
Gray never gave me a second thought and would just go
on his way, instead of trying to save me.” A drop of hot liquid hit
the back of one hand, and he blinked rapidly, the tears sliding
down his face.

“Shit.” Caleb wrapped his arms around John’s
shoulders, pulling him close. Etheric energy whispered around them,
not quite manifested, but just beneath Caleb’s skin. “I’m sorry.
We’re sorry.”

John shook his head, but didn’t raise his
face from where it pressed against Caleb’s shoulder. “You d-don’t
have anything to apologize for.”

Energy crackled around them. “I healed Caleb
as quickly as I could,” Gray said, his voice a distressed rumble.
“It had been too long since we last fed, and I could do no
better.”

“It’s not your fault.” John pulled away and
wiped angrily at his eyes. “Not anyone’s fault but Forsyth’s and
Sean’s.”

“Look, Sean’s not my favorite person,” Caleb
said. He and Gray had gotten as good at switching off in
conversation as they were in battle. “And I guess I knew what he
put you through, but I didn’t really think about it. About how much
it must have hurt you.”

John swallowed convulsively. He didn’t want
to make Caleb feel bad, but he owed his lovers honesty. “It was the
worst thing ever. Knowing one of the men I love was dead. Hoping
the other didn’t love me in return so I couldn’t be used as bait. I
can’t go through that again, Caleb. I can’t.”

“Oh, sweetheart.” Caleb embraced him again,
arms tight and warm. Alive. “I hate Sean for doing that to you. I’d
like to beat the shit out of him, and Gray would be happy to just
rip his head off and be done with it. But this is bigger than the
three of us. If there’s a chance, even a small one, Sean might be
able to tell us where Forsyth is shipping the spirit bottles, don’t
we have to take it?”

He’d never imagined Caleb would be the one
lecturing him about responsibility, instead of the other way
around. “I suppose.” He hated it, hated even the thought of laying
eyes on Sean again. But Caleb was right. He couldn’t let his
feelings cloud his judgment.

“At least this time we’re getting the drop on
him.” Caleb rubbed a soothing circle on John’s back. “We know he’s
a lying son of a bitch. He can’t trick us again.”

“Yeah.” John sighed. Why hadn’t he seen
Sean’s true colors a long time ago? “I’ve been wrong about
everything, haven’t I? SPECTR. Sean. Fuck, even Tiffany isn’t who I
thought she was.”

“But you weren’t wrong about Gray.” Caleb
leaned in and brushed his lips across John’s. “Or me.”

John returned the kiss, not as a soft touch
of lips, but hungry and desperate. Caleb tasted the saltiness of
tears, and when he thought of Sean the scorching heat behind his
breastbone flared.

Sure, John had been upset the night they’d
rescued him from RD. Bewildered and glad to see Caleb alive against
the odds. But up until now John had held it together. And done it
so well, Caleb never realized just how badly Sean’s betrayal had
messed with him.

No, not Sean’s betrayal. Sure that was a big
part of it, but it was Caleb’s apparent death that had really
fucked him up.

Caleb remembered washing the dried blood off
in a Vigilant safe house. Picking a bone fragment out of his hair,
and nearly throwing up. Sure, Gray had regrown it, but pulling bits
of his own skull out of his hair had been disturbing on a level he
could barely articulate.

What had John seen, looking down on what he
thought was Caleb’s corpse? It hadn’t been clean and pretty like in
the movies, for damned sure. More like the sort of thing that
resulted in years of therapy.

“I’m sorry,” Caleb whispered against John’s
lips. Was there anything he could say, do, to make it better? “But
it’s okay. I’m here. We’re here.”

John drew back, pupils wide, darkening his
blue eyes. His hands threaded through Caleb’s long hair, gripping
it, and their legs pressed together. “I can’t lose you,” he said,
voice hoarse and vulnerable. “How can you ask me to risk it
again?”

“Because you know we don’t have a
choice.”

Silence. And he knew everything John was
thinking, because he knew the man so damn well, better than he’d
ever known anyone in his life with the obvious exception of Gray.
Forsyth had kidnapped
children
for Christ’s sake, and the
risk to him and Gray and everyone else meant nothing compared to
that.

John closed his eyes, as if he couldn’t bear
to look at Caleb. “I know,” he whispered raggedly. “I know. But I’m
so scared.”

“Yeah. I get that.” Caleb leaned in, until
their lips almost touched. “I’m not going to let Sean take me away
from you, hear me? I won’t allow it.
Gray
won’t.”

John’s mouth pressed almost painfully hard on
his, crushing Caleb’s lips against his teeth. Their tongues
swirled, but Caleb let John take charge of the kiss, wanting to
give his lover whatever it was he needed. If this would help erase
some of the fear, Caleb would do it. He’d do anything for John.

“
As would I.”

John peeled Caleb’s shirt off and tossed it
aside, running his hands hungrily over Caleb’s skin. Caleb bore a
few small scars from the time before Gray, which Gray never
bothered to alter, but no evidence remained to show he’d been shot,
stabbed, and mauled a dozen times over.

John slid from his chest down, pausing to
impatiently unbuckle Caleb’s belt. Caleb leaned back on the bed,
propping himself up on his arms to watch John pull off the
remainder of his clothing. He was half-hard already, and the touch
of John’s fingers on his thighs rippled pleasure through him and
Gray alike, intensifying the sensation and sending his cock to full
attention.

John kissed and stroked all the way down
Caleb’s legs to his toes, before wandering back up the same path.
Caleb parted his thighs suggestively and was rewarded with a low
chuckle and John’s mouth on his balls. Caleb closed his eyes, back
arching, letting the sensation flow over him as John sucked and
rolled first one, then the other.

“Tell me what you need, sweetheart,” he
begged. “Anything. We’ll do it for you.” And thank God he didn’t
have to worry about his pronouns slipping anymore.

A long, slow lick up his cock that almost had
him arching off the bed. “I want you,” John growled into Caleb’s
thigh.

“I’m all yours. However you like.”

“I want to see your face while I fuck
you.”

“You won’t get any argument here.” Caleb drew
up his knees eagerly. Gray hummed just under his skin, a delicious
whisper of additional anticipation.

John climbed off the bed to rummage through
their luggage. “Damn it, I know we bought lube.”

Caleb grabbed one of the pillows from the
head of the bed and stuffed it under his hips to make things
easier. “We did. Check my backpack.”

A few seconds later there came the familiar
pop of the cap. John’s fingers pressed against Caleb’s sphincter,
and he breathed deeply, relaxing to the intrusion. God, this was so
much better than what he’d experienced with any other lover. He’d
had a string of one-night or near one-night stands, never daring to
let things go on too long for fear the other guy would figure out
he was paranormally-abled. Fun sure, but John had the benefit of
knowing just what buttons to push, playing Caleb’s body like a
well-known instrument.