Nexus (7 page)

“Yeah,” Kyle agreed. “I know where he hangs out. We can go pick him up first.”

“But he’s no longer a warder, and he’s corrupted himself,” Shane reminded us. “He should reap what he’s sown.”

“Meaning what?” Leith asked.

“We cannot be expected to—”

“Oh, the hell we can’t,” Leith snapped, his eyes firing even as he turned to Joe’s parents. “I beg your pardon, folks, but—”

“No, no.” Deb smiled at him. “It sounds like you need to say
something
.”

“I do,” he told her before turning back to Shane. “That’s bullshit! Tell Marcus and me where this guy lives, and we’ll take care of it.”

Both Shane and Kyle looked at him like he’d grown another head.

“What?” he asked sharply.

“We’ll all go,” Kyle soothed my fellow warder. “Shane didn’t mean to imply that we would not take care of our own.” He turned to look at him. “Did you?”

“Shit,” Shane hissed, defeated.

I put a hand on Leith’s shoulder. “We need Ryan.”

He nodded and dug into the pocket of his jeans for his phone.

“You don’t need another warder here,” Shane told me. “There are all four of us here. We can handle a—”

“You’re down a warder because there’s no way you replaced one that fast. Am I right?”

“Yeah, you’re right.”

“Okay, so, because I want to see Tanner and the demons he’s trafficking with, Leith has to go with me. No warder ever goes anywhere alone, and I’m sure as hell not counting on one of you guys to watch my back.”

“Absolutely not,” Leith agreed from beside me.

“So since both Leith and I need to go with you, and because this house can’t be sealed, I need another warder I trust to come and guard my family and my hearth.”

No one said a word because, really, what argument could they offer me? I needed my own backup, and I needed a guard for the most important person in my life.

“Any questions?”

There were none.

T
HE
two warders were on their phones while Leith and I sat in the living room with Joe’s family and answered the million questions that were volleyed at us.

Demons were real?

Yes, very.

We killed them?

Yes, we did.

Was it a full-time job?

Definitely not.

Did we get paid?

Never.

How long were you a warder?

Until your body wouldn’t let you be one anymore.

Did a lot of warders get killed?

All the time.

At which point Deb moved from where she was next to Elliot and came and sat down beside me and held my hand.

It was very telling.

Elliot explained how the first demon had come and shown him eyes full of blood and clawed him and basically scared the crap out of him.

“I had no idea what to do. I was afraid everyone would think I was nuts.”

“In San Francisco,” I said, “my friend Malic works with the police. My friend Ryan has a local television show he hosts, and he makes a point of visiting all kinds of businesses, and those include those that are owned by Wiccans, psychics, Gypsies, and the people that others go to for help with occurrences that would seem paranormal in nature. Our sentinel checks the paper, follows anything odd or out of the ordinary, and sends us to check things out.”

“Plus,” Leith told them, “we patrol, every night, two to three of us.”

“We don’t do any of that,” Shane said, having entered the room at the tail end of the conversation, walking around the couch and taking a seat beside Joe.

“You don’t patrol?” Leith asked.

Shane shook his head.

“Well, I for one think it’s dangerous not to be visible to the pit creatures.” Leith shrugged, gesturing at Joe’s father. “Case in point.”

The doorbell rang then, and Kyle asked Elliot and Deb’s permission to go get it. When he returned, he had two other men with him. Here were the rest of William Boyd’s warders.

They seemed like nice guys, pleasant, but as I looked at them, even at Shane and Kyle, I was struck by how different they seemed from the guys I normally hung out with dispatching demons back to hell. In comparison, they were lacking.

“So we have news,” Daniel, one of the newly arrived warders, began. “I guess this demon, Breka, already found out about Tanner and grabbed him out in front of his house earlier today. I talked to his hearth, and she said that he was taken right outside of their home.”

“Too bad he didn’t make it inside.”

Leith turned to me. “So even if you’re not a warder anymore you still have all the power?”

“I think your sentinel can strip you of the title,” I said, “but the strength is there until you die.” I looked over at Shane. “Although I’ve never heard of a warder being stripped and then not returned to the labarum council. I thought warders were placed in prison until they died if they were guilty of corruption.” I squinted at him.

He stared at me.

I waited.

“Shit.”

“Shane?” Kyle prodded.

“Okay, so, the guy the demons took, that’s a doppelganger. It’s not really Tanner.”

The other two warders turned in stunned silence to look at him.

“William said that only I could know,” Shane told the other three warders who belonged to his clutch. “We had to try and draw the demons out. We had to know who they were.”

“That’s horrible,” Joe said suddenly, his voice full of revulsion, and we all turned to look at him. “All this time you guys have been letting that woman think that her warder is still sleeping in her bed, and now that he’s taken, you’re just gonna let her believe that right there in front of her was the last time she’ll ever lay eyes on him.” A hard shiver passed through him. “That’s vile.”

And it was. The warder’s hearth thought he was dead, and he had to deal with knowing that she thought that, and she had to deal with that being her reality. I couldn’t think of a more horrible price to pay.

“You need to tell her the truth and let her see him.” Joe’s voice splintered. “That’s obscene.”

“It is,” Kyle agreed—his eyes, his face, everything about him having gone cold. “You let some…
thing
… sleep with the man’s hearth.” He took a breath. “I can’t believe William would condone such a thing.”

I wondered about them then, about their clutch. Jael kept no secrets from us, and we had none from each other.

“We’re so lucky,” I said under my breath.

“Yes, we are,” Leith agreed, his voice low.

“Do we know where this demon, this Breka, lives?”

“Yes,” Daniel said, turning from Shane with some effort, his brows still furrowed, his jaw still tight. He had, it seemed, the same reaction that Kyle had. “But his house is over a dimensional door. It’s not actually a house; it’s just an entrance to another plane.”

I frowned. “Do you guys not have experience with crossing dimensions?”

He shook his head.

“Okay, Leith and I can go alone, then. It’s not a problem.”

“But the problem is that Breka only allows people entrance to his home if they bring him a sacrifice.”

“I’m sorry?” I was aghast that they would allow something like that to happen in their territory. “What kind of warders are––”

“No, not a sacrifice like that.” Daniel shook his head. “Not one for slaughter or blood, but like a beautiful man or woman who he can sleep with if he wants.”

“Sleep with?” He had said sleep and not defile or rape, but I was still confused.

“Not hurt in any way,” Leith clarified.

“No, just screw,” Daniel clarified.

“Wait, people bring him dates?” I still wasn’t sure I understood.

“Sort of, I guess. Like when you take a hot girl with you to a club, you know you’re gonna get in because the doorman’s gonna wave you to the front of the line.”

“But you don’t normally leave the hot girl with the club owner.”

“Yeah, but I bet that goes on.”

I cleared my throat. “So the sacrifice is what––drugged or something, and this Breka, he sleeps with them?”

“No, it’s not even that sinister. The demon only glamours the willing and they always leave the next day.”

“You guys check.”

“Yeah.”

“Okay,” Leith sighed. “So you need a regular person, or someone they think is ordinary, with you or they won’t even let you in the door.”

“Yeah.”

“And they have to be hot.”

“Like smokin’ hot, yeah.”

“All right, then,” Leith said, turning to look at me. “So I can look like the regular person, and then once we’re in we can cut our way to Breka and the other demons and kill them. It’s just getting through the front door.”

I smiled at him.

“What?”

“You just basically said that you were hot.”

“Marcus, no one’s gonna believe that I’m the guy and you’re my arm candy.”

I chuckled. “Arm candy.”

“Seriously?”

“Shit,” I groaned. “You know this isn’t a two-man job.”

“No, it’s not.”

“We need help,” I told him solemnly.

“It can’t be helped, Marcus.”

“But if they’re close to killing the dark witch—”

“You know I hate that we’re calling her that,” Leith cut me off. “I know a lot of witches and none of them are like this demon’s mate. I want to call her something else.”

“Just her name, then,” I soothed. “Moira.”

“Okay.”

“Okay, so, if the guys are close to—”

“This is more important,” he assured me. “This is the family of your mate.” Leith was right. There was no argument.

“Can you find them?”

His smile was warm. “I can. It would be easier if it was the other way around and I was there and had to find you, but I can do it.”

I reached out and put a hand on his shoulder.

“Your energy is like a beacon, you know.” Leith patted my hand on him before he stepped away. “I can always sense where you are.”

I heard that from my fellow warders all the time.

“Come right back,” I ordered.

He nodded, then walked out of the room and out the front door. I noticed the looks from the other warders then. Surprise, astonishment, from all of them.

“What?”

“He can come back?” Shane asked.

A wormhole was how we traveled when we had to get to one another over any great distance. We opened up a channel from one warder to the other, and we jumped through what was basically a swirling vortex of wind. It took a great deal of energy and concentration, and I was guessing that none of them could do it more than once a day.

“Didn’t he wormhole here to you?”

I nodded.

“And,” Shane said slowly, waiting, “he’s gonna do it again?”

“I’m guessing,” Joe said as he stood up next to me, “that you guys don’t travel to and from other planes like the clutch in San Francisco does on a consistent basis, exercising that vortex muscle, huh?”

They didn’t say anything.

“Marcus’s sentinel told me that a warder builds power by being in a clutch of other warders that are dependent on one another. Did you know that?”

No one answered Joe.

“Warders have to spend time together every single day like they do in Marcus’s clutch. Do you guys do that? Are you guys even friends?”

He was listening for a word from any of them.

“Speak up,” Joe scolded them. “I’m blind.”

“No, we….” Shane stopped, then began again. “We don’t work like that, Joe. We all check in with our sentinel, but we all do different things and don’t talk to each other much. We’re all very strong warders. We don’t need to partner up the way they do in Marcus’s clutch.”

I was suddenly very happy that my sentinel was the kind of man he was. Jael had insisted on building a family, not just a team. He always said that together we were strongest, not individually.

“When do you want us back to go with you to the demon’s home?” Kyle asked.

“You don’t have to go at all. Just tell me where—”

“No,” he insisted. “We’ll be there. When will your warders be here?”

“Give them at least a couple of hours.”

“Okay, so it’s six now. We’ll meet here at eight,” Shane said, getting up from the couch to stand beside Kyle.

“We’ll see you then,” I agreed.

Shane moved forward to reach Joe, but I instinctively clutched him to me, and just like always, the man turned and folded in tight.

“You’re very lucky,” Shane said to me.

“I know,” I told him. “And keep your distance when you return.”

“Why?”

I cleared my throat. “Leith is the rational one.”

And Shane understood then that coveting my hearth when my friends could see him might not be all that good for his health.

J
OE
stayed downstairs with his parents and talked about warders and hearths and when he had found out and why they didn’t need to be afraid and how safe they all were now that everyone knew. I went upstairs to shower and try to wake up. When I fell asleep on my feet, I realized that maybe it was time to get out of the water.

I was yawning while walking from the bathroom to the bedroom I shared with Joe. My eyes were watering when I fell down spread-eagle on the bed, and I closed them for a minute, just for a quick rest.

The shaking woke me.

“Awww, crap,” I grumbled, rolling over on my stomach.

“You gotta change soon,” Joe told me, hand massaging the back of my neck.

“Oh God, that feels so good,” I almost purred, lifting up to move into his lap.

He was chuckling softly. “I wanna go with you.”

“What? No.” I yawned.

“Please, Marcus.”

“How ’bout
hell no
,” I reiterated. “Not gonna happen, Joseph.”

“Why not?”

“You don’t go with me to fight demons. I—”

“But if I go as that offering they were talking about, then—”

“You heard him. It’s a dimensional door. There’s no telling what he’s got in there, and you are not going to be guessing with me. No.”

“Marcus, I—”

“No,” I said loudly, lifting up, grabbing him, and pinning him under me with my weight.

“Marcus, goddammit, don’t manhandle me!”

But he loved it and we both knew it. I shifted over him to press my thigh between his legs and began suckling on his throat.