Zoey Avenger (Incubatti Series Book 2) (20 page)

Zoey’s mouth dropped open.

Vikki disappeared into the elevator.

“She’s … right,” Ethan added in his drowsy, ragged voice. His head rested against the wall behind him, his whiskey-hued eyes on her.

“Why wouldn’t he tell me that?”

“Afraid … lose you.”

“Declan? He’s not afraid of anything,” she said. “I think you’re both high.”

Zoey knew the power of the IAB chief to drug people into doing something they wouldn’t but Declan? He was too strong to be taken out the same way a Halfling could.

She looked over at Ethan, whose eyes were closed. He was there because of something she did while under the influence of Olivia’s tampering. Would Declan pull their funding after seeing what she did? Would he refuse to talk to her ever again?

She wasn’t in control when she committed those acts. But she’d still fucked up. She’d unwittingly taken part in his abduction operation and killed – or at least dumped – Heidi. Not at all certain how to reconcile the two concepts, she sat back and got comfortable, lining up her weapons beside her so as to make her surrender convincing.

Ethan watched her through slitted eyes.

“I know what happened to Sienna,” she said. “We’ll get you out of here, Ethan.”

“Pro…fessor?”

“Yeah. I swear to god, if I go to take out Olivia and you don’t back me, the next time I come for you, I won’t be in blackout mode,” she said. “I know you have a plan, Ethan, and I know you should’ve pulled the trigger long ago. Now Declan and the rest of them are in danger from the same threat that killed your wife and will overthrow your society, if you don’t do something about it.”

A faint smile pulled up one corner of his lips. “You don’t know … the half of it … Zoey.”

“I don’t give a shit! If you weren’t so stuck on politics instead of realizing that your world is about to come crashing down, no matter what you want to happen or when you want it to happen, then you’re a fucking idiot.”

“Declan loves …you.” Ethan’s eyes closed, and his breathing grew deep enough to tell her he was unconscious.

The wheezing words deflated her anger and caused her throat to tighten. Zoey rested her head against the wall. Of all the concerns she should have waiting for Olivia’s people to capture her, the only one worth thinking about was how Vikki and Ethan both claimed Declan had been drugged by Olivia, the same way she was.

If it’s true, why didn’t he tell me? She wanted to will the question through the connection with Declan for him to answer.

Did it matter? After what she’d done – kidnapping his father – she was lucky he hadn’t tracked her down yet to drag her back to the Incubatti Council.

The alarms silenced, allowing her to hear the faint purr of the elevator as her soon-to-be captors returned to the compound.

Zoey rose, banishing any thought of Declan from her mind. She stepped back from the weapons and raised her hands. The security detail descended first, two Halflings and two succubae armed to the teeth.

“Don’t shoot,” she called.

They whirled to face her.

Anger bubbling once more, Zoey dropped to her knees with her hands behind her head. “Why doesn’t someone get on the phone and tell Mommy her precious little girl wants to have a chat?”

Chapter Fourteen: Decided

Declan sat behind his desk, listening to the verbal recordings of reports from across the organization. The EMP strike had managed to knock the systems offline of everything within a twenty-five mile radius of DC. From intelligence outposts to underground compounds to his apartment building, every Incubatti site was sent into chaos. Engineers were scrambling to restore computers and electricity to the operations center and headquarters first. In the meantime, the compound was operating on generator power, which meant dim lighting, no computers and only emergency security measures in place.

By all rights, he should be in the command center. He’d returned to his office to grab his water bottle, only to find the mask Aiden joked about getting him in the middle of his desk. The sight of it made him pause, a reminder of the nights he’d defied his society’s rules to sneak out of the compound and watch over Zoey.

His office was quiet and dim, the opposite of the bustling command center. It fit his mood. Forbidden from pursuing the woman who had kidnapped his father and forced to hunt down his own soul-mate for the deed, he couldn’t remember a time when he was less a part of his world than he was now.

“You can change things, can’t you?” he asked the mask.

He couldn’t act openly against Olivia, but there was nothing stopping an unknown masked vigilante from opposing anyone. Struck by the absurdity of the idea, he also felt a shift within him, one that relished the challenge of evening the odds and welcomed a different approach. Mask or no, he was troubled to consider clandestine rebellion a valid alternative to being hogtied by the Council. He had the power of the Enforcer Chief without the freedom to pursue his people’s true enemies. 

The smooth material slid through his fingers, and he debated for another split second before stretching across to reach into the top drawer of his desk, where he kept two more of the armbands he’d given Vikki earlier.

A knock at his door made him replace them. In the way of his brothers, the door opened without anyone waiting for him to admit them.

“Hey,” Wes said, striding to the chair before his desk. “Any word about what’s going on?”

“My best guess is that Olivia set off the EMP, though it seems short-sighted to knock out her own systems. It didn’t come from any of our facilities for sure,” Declan replied. “We should know more when the systems are up. Grant is gonna have a heart attack about this one.”

“He’ll live,” Wes said wryly. “Any word about Dad?”

“None.”

Concern flickered across Wes’s face. “You think Olivia found out about our plan?”

“What plan?” Declan asked with more heat than he wanted. “The one we’re not executing because we want to give her a head start at fucking us over?”

“Yeah, that one.” Wes smiled. “You know what the Council says. The IAB is off limits.”

But you don’t know what Olivia’s people did to our mother. Declan clenched his jaw to keep from responding.

“We’re treading water,” Wes added. “I don’t like it, either, Declan, especially because I know the position you’re in. Zoey’s strong enough to survive this.”

Declan rose and paced, wishing again he had a window to stare out of instead of the white walls. “We’re getting further and further from our goal,” he said. “Olivia is slowly rolling the rug out from under us. How long before we realize it’s too late to act?”

There were days when he understood Zoey’s dedication and relentless pursuit of what she thought was right – and envied her with all his heart for being able to throw every care to the wind and act. He was forced to turn the other cheek to injustice, for the sake of protecting his family and their soul-mates. His father’s plan to upheave the Incubatti society – many years in planning – had been put on hold indefinitely until they were able to figure out how to break the alliance between Olivia and Paul.

“I agree,” Wes said. “She crossed a line by taking our father. Proving it was her and not Zoey is the challenge. We have to be patient a little longer.”

“Until what? Olivia kills Dad?”

“She wouldn’t dare.”

“She would, Wes,” Declan said, hushed. “She would take him apart in pieces.”

“And disrupt the current warm fuzzies between us and them?”

“Yeah.” With the knowledge of what the Sucubatti had done to his mother, Declan began to chafe more at the inability to act to save his father. “The longer we wait, the more danger he’s in. She’s declared war, and we’re sitting on our asses.”

“The Council may be willing to act since one of its members is missing.”

“Not openly. Chandler told me as much. He wants me to stop Olivia discreetly. The Council won’t sanction any action against the Sucubatti.”

“That’s fucked up.”

Olivia had already won. There was no doubt in the minds of most Incubatti members that Zoey was the monster Olivia had set her up to be. If his soul-mate survived this, the chances either of them ever knew true peace were gone. Waiting two months for her to come to terms with what happened had never seemed like a waste of time before, and regret filled Declan. He should’ve tried to talk to Zoey, and in doing so, maybe prevented her blackouts from happening.

Despair crept into him at the thought that it was too late, that he’d never wake up every morning to her beautiful body and sweet face.

“I have faith, Declan. Something’s going to change.”

Declan turned his attention outward once more. Wes was concerned yet calm. “I think it’s too late, Wes. I think we need to do something soon. I just don’t know what.” He’d spent many hours agonizing over how to juggle his duty and his heart without ever finding a possibility with the remote chance of working. With his faith in his organization cracking, he began to think his father’s plan couldn’t wait much longer, or the Incubatti would collapse upon itself, once Olivia began her war more openly.

“Dad will know.”

Declan nodded. His phone buzzed. He checked it automatically.

Olivia has Z at Ethan’s location. It was from Liam’s phone, which he suspected Vikki had lifted before she left.

“I might have a lead,” he said to Wes.

“Great. I’ll tell Aiden and L-”

“No.” Declan lowered the phone. “If something goes wrong, I don’t want to jeopardize what you are doing here. I’ll check it out then contact you.”

“Declan, I don’t like this. We all stick together, the way Dad taught us.”

“I need to do this alone.”

Wes studied him.

“Cover for me in the command center.” Declan offered a smile. “I’ll check in hourly with my location.”

“I take it you know to avoid the Cambions Paul assigned to you.”

“Piece of cake.” He typed a response to Vikki. Where?

“Don’t miss a check in, little brother.”

Declan nodded and strode towards the door.

Adrenaline raced through his system, warming him from the inside out. The predator in him sparked to life.

What he planned to do was reckless, brash, an act of pure disobedience he’d never considered in his disciplined life. Groomed from a young age to take over the position of Enforcer Chief, he had never had a reason to second guess his world and path before Zoey, never needed to convince himself that sacrificing a few lives for the sake of the bigger picture was necessary.

When the lives were those of people he cared about, he could no longer stomach turning a blind eye. Against his better judgment and everything he had trained for, Declan left the compound through a secret exit, hell bent on finding his father and his soul-mate before either of them suffered at Olivia’s hands.

This time, he wasn’t going to be content to watch. He’d do what he had to in order to help them escape Olivia.

Chapter Fifteen: Confronted

After the general roughing up she expected, Zoey was placed in a cell beside Ethan’s, complete with a tiny toilet and metal bunk. She lay on her side, gazing through the glass walls at the unconscious incubus. Every hour, a nurse or lab technician – someone in a white coat – came in to inject him with green goo she guessed was modified sex energy. It kept him in the zombie state, immobilized. The nurses then drew vials of his blood. Guessing by how many nurses had come in, she’d been there four hours.

Unable to sleep in the lair of her enemy, she spent far too long thinking about what Vikki had said about Declan and why Ethan was taken.

The nurse came a fifth time. Seconds later, a pair of armed succubae escorts appeared at Zoey’s door. She stood obediently and slid her hands through the opening in the door so they could cuff her. Her gaze went to Ethan once more. Unconcerned about what they intended to do with her since she was going to be dead or a permanent zombie in three weeks, she stepped readily into the hall with the escorts.

 They said nothing to her as they walked her to the office labeled Administrator at the near end of the hallway. One of them opened the door to reveal a simply decorated office with a wooden desk, two chairs before it, and a filing cabinet in one corner.

Olivia perched on the desk, her blue eyes mirror images of Zoey, one of the only physical indications of their true relationship. The beautiful, willowy succubus wore her hair in an elaborate bun. She as dressed in a long black skirt and fuchsia top, and a black silk scarf around her neck.

Zoey entered, testing her senses cautiously. There was a time when being so close to a succubus made her almost ill from their power. Her connection to Declan all but banished Olivia’s influence, and the sex energy she’d amassed from killing Cambions offered a secondary buffer.

The door closed behind her, and she waited, balancing the fury that wanted to be free with the reminder of her purpose there: to find out what the fuck Olivia had done to her and the others.