Darkness Awakened (Primal Heat Trilogy #1) (Order of the Blade) (6 page)

“I’m not. It’s not over yet.” She tucked her hands into the front pockets of her jeans,

as if she couldn’t quite resist touching him without locking her hands down. “I need your help.”

“You want me to save your sister? The woman who supposedly killed Elijah?” He raised his brows. “How’s that going to work, then?”

“She’s being forced,” Grace said hurriedly. “She would never hurt anyone on her own. She’s not capable of it.”

“Yeah, well, neither is Elijah. How sure are you that you’re right?” Quinn’s neck was still throbbing, his body starting to shut down after being pushed so hard when it hadn’t yet recovered. He needed to rebuild his stores of energy now, take every chance he could get.

Grace’s eyes glowed with passion and commitment. “I don’t have a single shred of doubt about Ana,” she said firmly. “There’s no chance she has hurt anyone, at least not willingly.”

“Then why do they think she’s doing it?” He eased down on the bed, saw Grace’s furrowed brow, and realized he was grimacing in pain. He shut that down fast, and opened the paper to read it more carefully.

Grace cleared her throat. “People have seen her at the murders. She has the same eyes I do. They stand out.”

Oh, yeah, he’d noticed her eyes. Damn near drowned in them more than once already.

“Have they seen her kill anyone?” Below the picture of Elijah were several photos of the crime scene. Police tape, trees, the back of a ramshackle building. There was a blurred outline of a man’s body, as if the newspaper reporter hadn’t been permitted to get close enough for a quality photo.

“No,” Grace said. “That’s not how it would work with her.”

“Then what’s her deal?” He scanned the story quickly. Elijah had been killed less than three hours away from Quinn’s cabin at a bar called The Gun Rack, and he was thought to have been dead for less than an hour before he’d been found.

He’d been murdered two days after he’d harvested the weapons and left Quinn for dead. Elijah, murdered? Who the hell could take him down? He glanced at Grace, who still hadn’t answered his question. “What’s your sister? Demon?”

Her cheeks flushed. “No, she has a gentle spirit. She doesn’t have any offensive powers.”

“Then she couldn’t have killed him.” Quinn frowned as he read a quote from the local sheriff, that all evidence pointed to it being another murder by a local woman, Ana Matthews, who had supposedly been roaming around the Pacific Northwest killing other men. He recognized two of the names as other Calydons.

His instincts began to burn as he read the rest of the story. Dead Calydons turning up around the city? He hadn’t heard anything about it, and the newspaper claimed the honor of being the one to break the story. “Son of a bitch,” he muttered. How had the Order not known what had been going on? And what about the ones the press didn’t know about? Like the trainees?

Hell
.

He read quickly. Ten minutes after the first police officers had arrived, while they were standing around assessing the crime scene, the body had vanished. They’d turned around and it was simply gone. Everyone had assumed it had disappeared as Calydon bodies did at death.

Grim reality began to set in. If Elijah had been killed, that was exactly what would have happened with his body. He was so old that two hours was about as long as he would have lasted before disintegrating into the earth.

“Damn.” He threw the newspaper aside. “He’s not dead. I would know it.” If Elijah was dead, then Quinn had failed him.
Failed.
It couldn’t be over. He couldn’t have screwed up like that.

“Ana is my sister’s name. Anastasia Matthews.” Grace hadn’t moved from her spot in the middle of the room. Her hands were still in her pockets and she was watching him, her brows furrowed in concentration, but that soft look of empathy was still on her face.

He was relieved she hadn’t moved closer, and frustrated at the same time. He wanted to grab her, haul her over him, and release his frustrations about Elijah into her, to own her, body, soul, mind and—

Shit. He couldn’t even concentrate with her around. “Grace. Your sister couldn’t have killed Elijah. No one could kill him except for an Order member. He’s too good. Elijah is my problem, not yours, and I need to—”

“Ana disappeared six weeks ago,” she interrupted, “and this is the fifth death the police are blaming on her. There’s a bounty out on her, double if she’s brought in dead.” Grace moved over to the bed and wrapped her hand tightly around the post on the footboard, as if it were the only thing holding her up. “On the news report of Elijah’s death, I saw things she’d left behind, things that are only hers, so I know she was there when he died.” Her voice cracked slightly and she looked up at the ceiling, trying to keep her composure.

But it was a lie. She was terrified, vulnerable and alone, and she had to be desperate, since she’d dared come to him for help. Quinn gritted his teeth against the need to comfort her. He didn’t have time for this. He
couldn’t
have time for this.

Grace looked at him again, her silver eyes aching with pain. “I
know
she wouldn’t kill anyone. Someone is forcing her to do this, or using her powers to aid a murderer. If you find my sister, you’ll find the person responsible for your friend’s death. It wasn’t her. Someone else is involved.”

He narrowed his eyes at her certainty about her sister. “What exactly is your sister’s power?”

Grace’s cheeks turned red. “Um—”

What did she not want him to know? “Grace?”

She finally met his gaze. “She brings peace and harmony to everyone around her.”

“Peace and harmony?” he echoed. How in the hell would that be useful in taking down immortal warriors? “What is she? A freaking angel who happens to carry around a machete?”

Grace shook her head. “She’s very powerful,” she said evasively.

“Very powerful,” he repeated. “That’s all you’re going to tell me?” The woman was holding out on him. He knew it without a doubt. The question was: what was she trying to hide and why? “What exactly is she?”

Grace shrugged. “Does it matter? Doesn’t it make sense to just find her?”

“I haven’t decided what makes sense.” Quinn reread the article while he thought, but the more he considered Grace’s story, the more it seemed to fit. Just as Grace believed her sister wouldn’t kill anyone on her own, he was damned sure Elijah would never go rogue, and he’d never turn traitor. But the disturbance he’d felt in his woods hadn’t been happy angel dust, so it hadn’t been Ana’s sister he’d been sensing. Having a third party involved made sense. Big sense. It was exactly what he’d wanted—an indication that he was right to give Elijah a chance.

He tapped his finger on the paper. “So, we’ve got a missing angel—” He didn’t miss Grace’s telling flinch at his word choice, telling him that her sister was no damn angel. “And we’ve got a bunch of dead Calydons who couldn’t have been killed by her.” And he had Elijah going on a murderous rampage
after
all the other deaths had already occurred.

He smacked the paper with his palm. “Hot damn, sweetheart. We’ve got a third party involved. I can feel it—” He grinned and looked up at Grace, then tensed when he realized she’d worked her way closer to him.

She was, in fact, standing directly in front of him, leaning into his space. Her hands were still in her pockets, but her gaze was fastened on his face, and he caught a whiff of her scent, calling for him, and damned if every part of his body didn’t respond faster than a dog after a bone.

Sheva.
The thought whispered through his mind again, and he shot to his feet. He set his hands on her shoulders and made her step back, but damn, she felt so good under his palms. She stared at him, desire flaring in those silver eyes of hers, and he couldn’t stop from letting his thumbs drift over her shoulders.

“Stop,” she whispered.

“Shit, yeah.” He forced himself to release her and walked across the room, needing space from her, from her temptation. “I don’t believe Elijah is dead. I would know.”

“Quinn—”

“No.” He glared at her. “I would know,” he repeated. “I’m going to find him, and if your sister is with him, I’ll get her, too. And I’ll get answers from them both.” As an Order member with obligations, as a blood brother on a mission, agreeing to get her sister was more than he should offer, but he could do no less. Not for this woman who had descended into his life and rattled him so inexplicably.

Or not so inexplicably, if she was the woman he’d been avoiding his whole life.

Gratitude flashed on her face and her eyes lit up with such appreciation he knew she was going to hug him. Having her arms wrapped around him and her body pressed up against his…hell. They’d both be damned if that got started.

He spun away from her and stalked across the room.

“Thank you,” she said quietly.

“You’re welcome.”
Thank you?
No one had thanked him for a damn thing in five hundred years. Who the hell thanked an Order of the Blade member? Crumbled in fear, yeah. Despised, certainly. Lusted after, yeah, that too. But
thanked?

He didn’t know what to make of her. He really didn’t. A part of him, a dangerous, foolhardy part of him, wanted to slide that deadbolt on his door and spend the next forty-eight hours locked down with her, finding out every damn secret she had in her mind, her soul and her body.

Yeah, because that wouldn’t be a risky thing to do, given the level of sensuality and desire between them, and that little incident of the mind-reading. She was setting off every one of his alarms, and he had a bad, bad feeling about exactly what she might be. His mate. His destiny. His doom.

Screw that shit. He was cutting her loose, before the risk became a grim reality that would destroy them both forever. But the mere thought of ditching her made him want to toss her over his shoulder like some caveman and keep her by his side.

Again, not a good sign for a warrior who’d had no trouble doing the “love ‘em and leave ‘em” thing for the last few centuries. Self-preservation always trumped lust…until he’d met her.

“I’m heading out.” He opened a hidden wall cabinet and pulled out a large pack, already stashed full of everything he would need. He slung it over his shoulder, then caught a glimpse of her with her tousled brown hair and delicate frame. Something softened in his chest, something that hadn’t been soft since he’d murdered his own uncle. “You can stay here tonight and leave in the morning,” he offered in a move completely uncharacteristic of an anti-social bastard who never shared his space. “If I find your sister, she’ll tell you what happened. If she doesn’t contact you, then...” He forced himself to shrug. “It means I’m still looking.” Or it could mean he’d had to kill her sister, but shit, he didn’t want to go down that road.

He was tired of crap like that. He really was.

“What?” Her eyes flashed with awareness, and then disbelief. “You’re going without me?”

“Hell, yes.”

She set her hands on her hips and glared at him. “You expect me to sit here and do nothing while my sister’s life is in danger? The person manipulating her could make you their next target! I’m coming.”

He headed toward the door. “There’s no chance you’re coming with me, or even coming near me again. Trust me, it has to be this way.” He grabbed the deadbolt on the front door and started to turn it—

“Stop!”

The urgency in her voice made his instincts ignite instantly, and he had his sword out and in his hand before he was even aware he’d done it. “What’s wrong?”

Grace was staring at the front door, her hand over her heart. “Something’s out there.”