Destroyer of Worlds (11 page)

Headlights showed on the far side of the
compound, accompanied by distant shouts. Gunfire sounded as the
guards on the walls realized the headlights didn’t belong to an
authorized vehicle. A few seconds later, there came a tremendous
explosion, as the remote-guided truck plowed into the gate, weight
and whatever ordinance the Vigilant had packed it with tearing
through metal like paper. A column of flame went up, casting an
orange glare over the nearby buildings.

Caleb dropped from the tree and approached
the edge of the minefield, counting under his breath. When enough
minutes had passed—he hoped—to have everyone’s attention on the
first explosion, he turned his gaze to the disturbed ground a few
yards away.

Show time.

* * *

John sat alone in a cell, his hands bound
behind him in zip cuffs, his head bowed in defeat. The tiny room
consisted of just a chair, a toilet, white walls, and a white
floor. Silver lined the heavy door, and he wondered who—or
what—they normally kept in here.

Sean had argued with the guards, wanting to
know why they didn’t put John in one of the better prisons. If they
had an answer, the door shut before he heard it. Maybe only
cooperative prisoners got apartments like Caleb had stayed in.

Caleb.

A sob hitched in John’s chest, but he fought
to suppress it. They had to be watching on security cameras, and
he’d be damned if he let them see him broken. But in truth, nothing
remained inside but shattered bits of glass and bone. Sean had
murdered Caleb, not in cold blood, but in the name of John’s
safety. And Gray…

John had spent the last several hours praying
he and Sean had both misread the situation, and Gray didn’t give a
damn about him. That the second Gray found himself in a new corpse,
he’d forget John even existed and go about his business as a
drakul, just as he always had before. Because if not…

If not, Gray would come here. He’d be
captured or destroyed. And John would be responsible for killing
both of the men he loved, and not just one.

He closed his eyes, tried to shut out the
ghostly screams his imagination supplied. May Sekhmet, the Flaming
One, Devourer of Evil, sever whatever ties might have bound Gray to
him. And give John the strength to endure this, to deliver justice
to Sean and Forsyth and everyone else who had perverted SPECTR into
something terrible.

The screams continued. Blinking slowly, John
realized they weren’t inside his head after all.

Bursts of gunfire accompanied the shrieks,
drawing steadily closer. It almost sounded as if the base were
under attack. But it wasn’t possible, was it? Who would be
organized enough to assault a paramilitary base?

Or…oh, hell. What if the NHEs Caleb told him
about had gotten loose somehow?

“
Halt!” shouted a muffled voice just
outside John’s cell. “I said stop right there! Oh,
shit!”

An assault weapon fired. Something slammed
into the wall. A man cried out…then silence.

A heavy weight punched the door. John jerked,
his heart racing, as the electronic lock sparked and smoked under
the assault. With a loud groan, the door began to peel back,
unimaginable strength bending the steel. An NHE…and it knew he was
in here.

John took a deep breath, struggling to
center. His hands were bound, but he could still use a few
rudimentary exorcist’s tricks against whatever seemed determined to
get to him. He wouldn’t go down without a fight, no matter how
feeble.

The door bolt gave up its battle with a
shriek of tortured metal. The door swung inward with a loud clang,
revealing Caleb on the other side.

John’s heart stuttered in his chest.

“
Caleb?” he whispered, but knew he was
mistaken even as the name left his lips. Without the silver facing
of the door in between, the enormous flood of etheric power poured
over him, as though he stood before a breaking storm, vast as the
horizon. The scent of sandalwood and desert rain mingled with
ozone, so familiar and beloved it wrung a small cry from him.
“Gray?”

Etheric energy folded inward, like some mad
origami, fitting something huge into an impossibly small space.
Long black hair fell against slender shoulders, and the oil slick
of Gray’s gaze receded, leaving behind only Caleb’s brown eyes.

“
John!” he cried and ran into the
cell.

It wasn’t possible, John thought dazedly. But
Caleb’s mouth pressed hot and frantic against his own, the hands
gripping his hair undeniably solid. A bewildered sob wrenched its
way out of John’s aching chest, and Caleb drew back.

“
Is this real?” John asked, because he
had to be dreaming. Had to be.

“
Yeah, sweetheart.” Tears streamed down
Caleb’s face, and he swallowed convulsively. “It’s real. I’m
okay.”

“
But…how?”

“
Later.” There came the sound of
distant gunfire, and Caleb glanced back over his shoulder. “We
don’t have time, okay? The Vigilant—those people with the moth
symbol—are helping us. So is Kaniyar. They’re distracting everybody
else, while I get you out.”

“
But—I saw—Sean shot you—”

Caleb winced. “Yeah. But I’m pretty hard to
kill these days.” He looked away, long hair falling to hide his
face. “There’s no time. We have to get you out of here, and Gray’s
better at this fighting thing than me. I’m going to let him have
the reins for now, okay?”

“
I…okay.”

Etheric energy unfolded again, like a
blooming flower, or a building thunderhead. Eyes black as the void
between stars looked back at John, lit by occasional flickers of
lighting deep within. Gray rose from his crouch in a single,
economical movement. “I will free you,” he said, in a voice like a
roll of thunder.

“
Oh,” was all John could think to
say

Gray stepped behind the chair, and a moment
later strong fingers touched John’s wrists. “I will bite through
the restraints. Do not be afraid.”

“
I’m not.” He swallowed thickly.
“What…what time is it?”

A pause. Then: “It is too late,” Gray said.
“Caleb had to choose.”

Shit. No. Caleb didn’t want this, never
wanted anything to do with NHEs or SPECTR or any of it. “Caleb
wouldn’t have chosen this.”

“
But he did,” Gray growled, and yanked
John’s wrists to his mouth. For a heart-stopping instant, John
thought he would feel teeth sink into his flesh. Instead, the
restraints tightened sharply as Gray bit them, the scrape of teeth
light against John’s skin.

The zip cuffs fell away, and John lurched to
his feet, rubbing his sore wrists. Although he could hear distant
shouting and the wail of alarms, none seemed close by, so he risked
stepping out into the hall. A dead guard lay outside, his body a
broken heap in the middle of the corridor. Bullet holes stitched
the wall, and an automatic rifle lay a few feet away, its muzzle
bent.

Hoping the guard had a side arm, John
crouched by the body. “I don’t understand,” he said to Gray,
because it took his mind off the still-warm blood against his
fingers as he searched. “Caleb didn’t want this. He fucking hated
every minute of it.”

The guard wore a Glock in a hip holster. John
pulled it out and checked the magazine. Fully loaded. He rose to
his feet, and found Gray looming over him, practically in his
face.

Gray’s long hair whipped around his
head like a nest of black snakes. Lightning danced in his obsidian
eyes, and the storm front of his power
pushed
against John’s skin. All the little hairs
on John’s arms rose. “Because we would not see you
dead.”

And oh no, no, he couldn’t take
responsibility for this. He turned and started walking quickly
away, in what he hoped was the right direction.

“
You misunderstood,” he told Gray.
Caleb hadn’t actually made a decision, hadn’t
chosen
this just to save John. He couldn’t have.
“You just ran out of time. Caleb wouldn’t pick this—”

“
Silence!” Gray’s hand locked on John’s
arm, yanking him back. John’s heart lurched, and Gray snarled at
him, a flash of fang and menace. “Do not diminish his
choice!”

John’s throat constricted. It was true, damn
it, this was his fault. Caleb had missed the deadline because John
hadn’t realized Sean was a damned traitor. “I didn’t mean—”

“
Stay behind me,” Gray ordered,
releasing him as if he couldn’t stand to even touch John. “In case
we meet other mortals with guns. You are far too vulnerable to
bullets.”

Oh. John nodded. “Okay. Yes.” He couldn’t
dwell on the sheer misery building up in his gut, not until they
were somewhere safe.

Gray took the lead, moving cautiously
down the hall, cat silent. “The other mortals would have exorcised
me if Caleb had asked,” he said after a moment. “But he could not
abandon you here. He
chose
this, to save you and perhaps me as well. Even though he knew
you would hate him for it.”

Okay, what? “Why? How could I possibly hate
Caleb? Goddess, I thought he was dead!”

Gray paused at a cross-corridor, listening
intently. Apparently satisfied, he continued on his way. “You
wished Caleb to live,” he said. He didn’t look back over his
shoulder, or even acknowledge John, but there was an edge of—what?
Anger? Bitterness? Disappointment?—to his deep voice. “But you
wished me to die.”

John came to a sudden halt, feeling as if all
the air had vanished from his lungs and left him gasping. “What?
No! That’s not true.”

“
Liar!” Gray halted as well. His hair
swirled agitatedly around his shoulders. The air crackled with
etheric energy, the aroma of ozone flooding the hall, overwhelming
even the smells of blood and burning. “You wished me stripped from
Caleb and forced into a bottle and killed. You wanted me destroyed,
like any demon.”

Oh. Oh, hell.

He’d thought he’d done the right thing. Told
himself even if the worst happened and Kaniyar realized he’d let
Gray go on purpose, Caleb would be cleared. Questioning under
empath would show he didn’t know anything about John’s plan. And
he’d feared Caleb would hate him for throwing their relationship
away just to let Gray go.

He’d never considered how Gray might feel
about it all, believing John intended to murder him. Even if he
thought it impossible to be exorcised, he would have known John
wanted to get rid of him.

John wasn’t sure he’d ever hated himself this
much, not even when he was a teen and thought his paranormal
abilities had damned him to hell. “I’m sorry,” he said in a cracked
voice. “I intended to exorcise you, yes. But I swear, I’d planned
on dropping the bottle. I wanted it to look like an accident when
it broke and you escaped.”

Gray turned on his heel and strode away, coat
snapping behind him. “Over and over again, your kind have told
Caleb ‘NHEs lie.’ It is your dogma, the shield you hide behind, the
excuse you make. But it is you mortals who are the liars.”

Gray’s long strides forced John into a jog
just to keep up. “I’m not lying, damn it! You have to believe
me.”

“
No, I do not. Your duty was to kill
me. Why would you risk everything to release me?”

John grabbed Gray’s arm, but he would have
had as much success at stopping a car with his bare hands. “Just
slow down and listen to me for half a second!”

“
There is nothing you can
say—”

“
I love you!”

Gray stopped, so suddenly John almost
collided with him.

John tightened his grip on coat sleeve,
desperate to make Gray understand. “I love you,” he repeated, and
his voice cracked on the words.

Silence. Gray didn’t move, save for the
slither of his hair, the strands moving in an unfelt wind.

Goddess. John had fucked this up. He forced
himself to release the leather between his fingers and step back,
even though the gesture felt like he was letting go of more than
that. Of hope, maybe, some stupid hope he’d had in the back of his
mind that Gray might love him too, and Caleb wouldn’t hate both of
them for it. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I shouldn’t have…we need to get
out of here. We’ll—we’ll talk later, if—”

Claw-tipped hands grabbed him by the
shoulders, spun him around, and shoved him against the wall. John
had just enough time to wonder if he’d made a horrible mistake, if
he’d enraged Gray and was about to pay with his life.

Gray kissed him.

* * *

John’s first, half-coherent thought was Gray
didn’t kiss anything like Caleb. He plundered John’s mouth
aggressively with his tongue, all the while pinning John to the
wall so he couldn’t move. Drawing away slightly, Gray scraped those
fangs across John’s lower lip, dragging a whimper out of him,
before diving back in. Etheric energy sang along John’s sensitive
nerves, like a whisper of electricity over his skin.

John kissed back, heart pounding, his cock
painfully stiff in his jeans. He felt like he’d been waiting for
this his whole life, ever since his fifteen-year-old self realized
he could sense and manipulate etheric energy.

Goddess, he wanted to come right there in his
pants. Which, given their situation, was utterly insane.

Gray released him abruptly, and was on the
other side of the corridor before John could even register the
movement. There came a scream, and one of the RD guards smashed
into the concrete wall hard enough to break open his helmet.

“
Perhaps we should…continue this
later?” Gray said. He sounded as dazed as John felt. Which was a
hell of an ego rush.