Ties That Bind: A Muse Urban Fantasy (The Veil Series Book 5) (14 page)

S
abine Sturgill
, Adam’s boss, stood roughly thirty feet away, flanked on either side by enforcers with a demon-killing glean in their determined glares. Her light gray pantsuit complemented her dark skin. I’d only met her once before, when I’d entered the underground facility in search of Akil and Project Typhon’s half bloods. She’d seemed reasonable enough. But seeing her there, I wondered how much of her geniality had been an Institute guise. If she was anything like Adam, we were going to have a hard time convincing her not to shoot us up with PC34 and toss us in cells.

I stood within arm’s reach of Stefan. Akil stood off to Stefan’s left. We all held our hands up at shoulder height, as though our lack of weapons meant we were harmless.

“You have Adam Harper,” Sabine said. “Is he alive?” Her voice carried into the dark trees hugging the roadside.

“Yes.” I replied before Akil or Stefan could land us in a world of trouble. “We’re protecting him. Will you hear us out?”

A delicate breeze filtered through the spruces. The helicopter hovered high enough to remind us it was close by. It would have thermal imaging cameras. Stefan might have a chance of tricking its sensors, but I sure wouldn’t. Akil could vanish at any second, but he seemed to be playing along.

Sabine took a long, evaluative look at Stefan, Akil, and me. She took her time and made her assessment without so much as a smile or frown on her professionally unexpressive face. “The three of you are protecting Adam Harper? I would have thought he’d need protecting from you, not by you. What do the Prince of Greed, the Prince of Wrath, and the Mother of Destruction want with our Head of Operations?”

Oh, only to break Dawn out of your underground lair.
I licked my lips, testing out various sentences in my head—none of then good.

Akil slid his gaze to me. He could kill them all. So could I. Stefan might hesitate, given his past, but there was also a chance he’d impale them all without so much as breaking a sweat. The Institute could be armed with anti-elemental rounds. They would have learned their effectiveness on the battlefield. The outcome of this fight would depend on who pulled the trigger first. Stefan could freeze their weapons before they could fire. The Institute was outgunned. They’d know it too.

“Ask Adam to step out of the car, please,” Sabine said.

“Er… There’s a bit of a problem.” I cleared my throat. “You see, his ex, Stefan’s mom, got to him before we did, and…well… He’s had better days.”

Sabine reminded me of a school principal, all smiles until she had to lay down some laws, and then we’d find ourselves at her mercy. “Ask him to step out of the car, please, Muse.”

Stefan tensed beside me, which in turn had my pulse racing. “Well, I would, but… Look, we can stop the demons—all the demons, okay. Why else would the three of us be here? Together? There’s a way to restore the veil. We need Adam’s help. Your help.”

She wasn’t stupid. She knew the three of us wouldn’t be in the same time zone unless we had a damn good reason to be. But there was also the fact Adam wasn’t moving in the back of our car.

“This isn’t working,” Stefan whispered out of the corner of his mouth.

“Sure it is. Just smile, and look non-threatening,” I whispered back.

He shifted. “I can’t do any less threatening.”

I swallowed hard. What would Ryder do? He’d tell me there wasn’t a chance in hell the Institute would let us walk free. While we dallied, they’d probably called in back up. Before long, there would be snipers in the woods. This was on me. Whatever I decided, the two Princes of Hell would listen. Two enemies, united at my command.
No pressure.

One of the trigger-happy enforcers twitched. At least, I assumed that’s what happened. I heard a click and knew it was already too late. They would all die.
Why?
I thought, as a squall of ice blasted us from above.

Stefan raised a vast ice shield in one dramatic thrust of his element. It burst open like an umbrella caught in the wind and arched around us both. Bullets pinched into the barrier. Ice chips exploded. I flinched, expecting the ice to shatter. But it held.

Behind us, Akil summoned a wall of heat, invisible, but for how it warped the scene behind it. Bullets plunged into it on one side and vaporized. By the pinch of his pale lips and glare of absolute concentration, I could see it was no easy thing to control. Likewise, Stefan crouched behind his shield, hand out, funneling his element through himself into the shield. He quivered under the strain.

“Now would be a good time to make a call, Muse. Anytime now… Their bullets aren’t getting any slower.”

I cursed. “Don’t fight back, not yet.”

Stefan gritted his teeth and hunkered down. Fractals shimmied beneath his skin, but he hadn’t yet turned full demon. They both had much more to give.

I jogged back to the car, sandwiched between fire and ice, and yanked open Adam’s door. He tumbled into my arms, mumbling nonsense. His eyes rolled, but at least they were open. “Adam, you need to snap out of it.” I manhandled him, trying to lever his weight under my arms, and wedged his body upright, so I could at least look him in the eyes. Gripping his face, I leaned in close. “I don’t much like you. You’ve done some pretty nasty things—things bordering on evil—and you blamed it on science. But you know what? I reckon there’s a part of you—probably hidden so damn deep you may not even know it, but it’s there—and it knows you haven’t exactly been the best kind of guy. You’re a father. You loved your daughter, Nica. You have it in you somewhere to be good. You loved Yukki.” He flinched. His eyes glistened. He could hear me. “You told me as much.” The sounds of cracking ice and bullets ricocheted into the night. “You wanted me to be your hero. That was never going to happen, but you know what? You can be. It might never make up for the shit you’ve dealt me and Stefan, but it’d be a start.” Ahead, ethereal heat hissed and throbbed. Akil glared through his shield at the line of enforcers.

Adam’s hand came down on my shoulder. He rolled his eyes to me and fixed his glassy glare on my face. “Muse, Yukki…will kill me.”

“I know,” I said softly. “But before she does, you can save Boston from the netherworld. That’s all you’ve ever wanted to do, right?”

His eyelids dropped and flickered. He forced them open. His head bowed, but he fought to stay conscious. His fingers dug into my shoulder, and his face hardened. He glared, breathing hard and fast. It almost looked like hatred etched into the hard lines of his face, but it wasn’t. It was a trait all the Harpers shared: stubborn defiance.

“We need your help. Tell Sabine to cease firing. Ask them to help us. Please. Do the right thing now, Adam.”

He dragged a broken gasp through his teeth and nodded. “Help me stand,” he wheezed. I wedged myself under his arm and heaved him onto his feet. Stefan flicked me a concerned glare. I couldn’t blame him for not trusting his father.

“Ready?” Stefan growled, bowing under the strain of his melting shield.

I nodded and faced ahead. The shield fractured. Cracks like webs splintered through the ice. The barrier thinned, and shattered. I flinched away from the ice, and the expected gunfire, but the retorts fell silent. Enforcers stared and cursed their now-frozen guns. Adam’s labored breathing sawed against the background of sudden quiet. He lifted his head, the effort enough to start a barrage of tremors.

C’mon, Adam. Prove to me there is a good man somewhere inside all of that Institute BS.

“Stand down…” He croaked, and then louder, “Stand down.”

The enforcers looked to Sabine. She nodded, and her troops lowered their weapons. A glance behind told me Akil’s line had ceased their attack. He met my gaze over the roof of the car and inclined his head. A hopeful smile lightened my lips. This was huge. This was astonishing. The Institute wasn’t going to shoot to kill. Was it possible? Were they really capable of helping us?

I helped Adam hobble forward, acutely aware of the stares from two princes burning into my back. Sabine approached, her face ashen as she took in Adam’s beaten state.

“He needs medical attention immediately.”

“No.” This from Adam, which surprised Sabine as much as me. “I… Until we arrive at the base, I stay with Muse.”

“I could order you.”

“You could.” Adam sounded like he really didn’t give a damn, and in his shoes, neither would I. Yukki wouldn’t stop until she’d found him. His chances of survival were greater with me.

“Where are you headed?” Sabine asked.

“The base,” I replied.

Sabine’s scowl could have cut glass. I shifted Adam’s weight. “Look, we can sit down and discuss everything once we’re there, but this guy ain’t getting any lighter. Will you let us go?”

“Yes. But Muse, I will need a full explanation of this as soon as you step foot on Institute grounds.”

“Agreed.” I managed to get Adam back to the car. Akil took over from there and helped fold the big guy back into the passenger seat with surprising care. Stefan hung back, eyeing the enforcers, waiting for the next one to accidentally-on-purpose start firing. Watching the enforcers climb back into their vehicles also meant he could avoid eye contact with his father.

As I was about to climb behind the wheel, Akil settled his hand gently over mine. “I’m going to take a more direct route. I don’t trust these people not to trap you on arrival.”

It made sense, but it also meant he was out of my sight for the first time since his resurrection. That thought squirmed like something slippery and unwanted inside my mind. Whatever existed between us, it felt fractured, broken, and after his words in my apartment, I wasn’t entirely sure if I could or should fix it. Perhaps it was only to be expected. So much had changed. I was a fool to believe we wouldn’t have.

The way he looked at me now, reserved, composed, but there was something… Something about him, something had been missing since his return that I couldn’t pin down. A smile feathered across his lips. “I’d suggest that you need not concern yourself with my wellbeing, but I rather suspect that is not the reason for the worry I see in your eyes.”

“It’s nothing. I’ll see you at the Institute.”

Akil searched my face, and for a few moments, neither of us moved or spoke. His dark eyes held the same infinite intelligence, his lips, the same sensuous curve. Perhaps, this feeling of change wasn’t from him. Perhaps it was all about me. Since the battlefield, I was a changed creature. Wholly demon, wholly human. I’d made peace with myself. And now, after his return, I was free. Entirely free. The control he’d had over me since petitioning my father for my guardianship had vanished. I looked at him anew on that road to Middlesex Fells. And I wondered, were we supposed to be enemies? Had we always been?

He bowed his head, hesitated as though snagging on something unsaid, and turned away. Within a few steps, he vanished. I climbed into the car and met Stefan’s expectant expression with a sigh. Adam sat upright in the back, eyelids drooping, but awake. We followed the line of enforcer cars toward their base without a single word spoken between us.

T
he Institute’s
gates hung open and unguarded. The grounds, once clipped and manicured, now hosted bunches of weeds and sprouting grasses.

“They’re winding the Boston operation down,” Adam said quietly from the back of the car. “There’s only a handful of crew here. Dawn was to be the last Project moved.”

We rolled inside the perimeter and parked beside one of the single-story buildings capping the vast underground warren of tunnels and labs.

Enforcer cars pulled alongside, unloading their cargo of armed bad-asses. There was no sign of Akil in the pale dawn light, but I couldn’t see much beyond the parked cars and humble buildings.

Gripping the back of Stefan’s seat, I twisted and fixed my glare on Adam. “I’m sure I don’t need to remind you that Stefan and I are the only things standing between you and Yukki right now.” Adam’s weary eyes flicked to his son but quickly skipped away. They hadn’t spoken since Stefan had saved him from Yukki. Considering that Stefan hadn’t been shy with Akil, his silence was deliberate. “We need to get to Dawn. I’m assuming she’s locked down somewhere in the facility, locked away so damn tight that when Akil stayed here, he couldn’t sense her. Is that the case?”

“Yes. She’s elementally protected in the high-security sub-levels. I have the access codes.”

“That’s what I thought. Are you up to this?”

Adam glanced at his son again, but Stefan faced ahead, muscles jumping in his jaw as he clamped his teeth together. Whatever Adam thought he could say wouldn’t suddenly fix his relationship with his son. Perhaps that thought crossed his mind because he made no attempt to engage Stefan. “I could do with a drink, maybe some fresh clothes.”

“Sure, once we have Dawn, you can have whatever the hell you want, but until then, you’re not leaving my side.”

Adam rubbed his red-rimmed eyes, fingers trembling. “How can I trust you, Muse? Dawn is our best hope at fighting back the demons. If the Institute hands her over, we have nothing left to fight them with.”

“How can you trust me? One, you’re still alive, despite the entire demon population of two worlds wanting you dead. And two, if you search that one-track mind of yours, you’ll realize I’ve only ever wanted to help. Forget trust for a second, and let’s look at the facts. On this side of the veil, Dawn is a little girl with one hell of a talent for killing demons, but beyond the veil, she can be so much more. She’s chaos, Adam. Pure chaos. Only chaos and control together can reel in the netherworld. The king is there. He needs a queen if he’s going to stop the demons and restore the veil. He can do this. Dawn’s destiny is much bigger than yours or mine. She belongs in the netherworld.”

Adam stared out of the car windows at the waiting enforcers. “I believed in the Institute. But it failed to protect the people, I failed.”

I smiled. “Not yet.”

Adam was a man facing his final hours. When death breathes down your neck and the path ahead is dark, you finally realize who you are. For some, it’s too late to change. For others, they don’t need to. Adam wasn’t one of those. He had a chance to right his wrongs, and the ashen color of his skin and washed-out look in his eyes told me he knew it.

“Stefan, I—” Adam began.

Stefan snatched the gun from the dash and climbed from the car, slamming the door behind him.

“I failed him,” Adam sighed.

Yeah, that was putting it mildly. “Ready?” I climbed from the car, propped up Adam, and joined Stefan, near the inconspicuous entrance to the underground base. Enforcers flanked us, weapons lowered, but safeties off. Whatever I’ve said about enforcers, they sure knew how to wield the military-grade stare. Stefan had tucked his gun away against the small of his back.

Akil appeared in our path, spooking our audience and sparking off a few muttered curses. His dark eyes raked over the enforcer lines. He’d sauntered out of their super-secret base with their entire cadre of demons in tow, like the Pied Piper. He’d played the Institute the same as he’d played all of us at some point. That had to grate on our heavily armed crowd. Every single one would love to put a bullet in Akil’s head.

“Well?” I asked Akil as we drew closer. Adam clutched my arm and scanned the grounds, looking for Yukki. He had reason to be nervous. Yukki’s word was as good as that of any demon’s.

Akil blinked lazily. “They appear to be in the process of abandoning this facility. There’s no indication of Dawn being within a five-mile radius.”

“She’s here.” Adam winced.

Sabine joined us and demanded answers from Adam. While they discussed what it meant to allow three demons inside their base, albeit a decommissioned base, a grumbling V8 engine snagged my attention. A battered mustang pulled into the parking area. Different colored doors, mismatched tires—the car had seen some action, much like its owner. Ryder climbed from inside and grinned over the roof at me. Despite the weight of the world on my shoulders, I grinned back. I’d missed that surly badass. Jenna climbed from the passenger seat. Her face bore the swirls and symbols of anti-elemental tattoos. Protection from Val. They weren’t nearly as deep or as abundant as Jerry’s. On her, they looked almost pretty. She no longer needed them. My brother was dead and gone for good, but it looked as though she was happy to keep them. The markings made her elementally untouchable. A nice trick to have for an enforcer.

Ryder and Jenna crossed the parking lot together, hands in pockets, swaggers almost identical. They were made for each other. His idea of a date would be a few hours down the range, and she’d be right there, firing off a few rounds, trying to outdo him. It was sweet and what they both deserved.

“Hey, lil’ firecracker.” He offered me his fist. We bumped. It was only Adam’s steely grip that stopped me from throwing my arms around Ryder. At some point in all of this chaos, we’d become the type of friends who hugged.

“Hey,” I clicked my tongue, “last on scene buys the beers, y’know. You owe me one.”

“C’mon, I was in Boston when the call came in. Two Princes of Hell and the Mother of Destruction are holding Adam Harper hostage. That ain’t a call I’m gonna miss.” Ryder acknowledged Stefan with a nod. A smile cracked across Stefan’s mask. He nodded back, and then settled into sentinel mode. Ryder’s keen eyed gaze hooked on the Prince of Greed. For a moment, both men locked gazes like rams looking horns, and then Ryder shrugged off Akil’s gaze and grinned at me. “So this is where the party’s at?” I wanted to hug him all over again.

Sabine cleared her throat. “I am fully aware that the three of you could quite easily reduce this facility to rubble. Please know that we’re in the process of moving our operations elsewhere. Epsilon was to be transported at first light. There is very little here worth destroying. I only ask that you keep it civil and maintain absolute control of your element while below ground level. I understand you’re here for Project Epsilon. I have the necessary access codes. I will walk you to her containing cell. She is heavily sedated. I don’t envisage any problems. I appreciate the fact you have so far behaved cordially. I do not wish an incident and certainly do not want to lose any lives here today. Stefan, in light of the recent events, which somewhat overshadow the termination order on you, I hereby rescind that order.” Sabine checked her men and us for any sign of dissent. “Can we all agree to keep our fingers off our triggers?”

I waited a few beats for anyone to speak up and nodded. “Agreed.”

First Akil and Stefan were able to withstand each others company without one trying to kill the other, then Adam started to see sense, and now the Institute agreed a truce.
This is too easy. Nothing is easy in my world. Where’s the catch?

We filed inside the facility, exchanging wary glances.