Zoey Avenger (Incubatti Series Book 2) (11 page)

“Vikki,” he said in a low growl. “I’m the only person who can help her.”

“You’re the one man who betrayed her!” Vikki slammed the door to the gym open.

Declan gripped the bar, releasing his breath with control despite the urge to follow Vikki and force her to talk. Alienating her – and through her, Zoey – would be the worst possible action for him to take, so he let her go instead. He took a moment to calm his temper. With no sex and a soul-mate not speaking to him, his nerves frayed more easily than ever.

“Can you really help her?” Vikki called back from the doorway.

Declan looked up. She was half in the gym, half in the hallway, glaring at him the way a hungry street dog did a stranger offering a sandwich.

If she was willing to talk to him, however reluctantly, it was worse than he knew. “If anyone can, yes,” he confirmed. “Our lab has been running tests to uncover what Olivia did to you all.”

“Don’t mess with my genes,” Vikki warned. “There’s nothing wrong with any of us, something you and the Sucubatti can’t accept! But Zoey’s blackouts are different.”

“She can’t control them or what she does.”

“No.”

“Something tells me she’s getting ready to declare war on both Councils. Whoever is controlling her isn’t going to wait long to act.”

Vikki said nothing, distrusting yet listening.

“Congrats, by the way,” Declan added. “Though I hope this is an isolated incident.”

“Son of a bitch. Does no one in this city know what happens when you have unprotected sex? You and Liam can both rot in hell!” Furious, Vikki spun and left, this time for good.

Declan smiled at the outburst. It wasn’t appropriate to be amused, but the unpolished members of Team Rogue reminded him of how strapped down his own emotions were. There were days when he, too, wished he could let go, hunt down Zoey, apologize every way possible then make love to her until they passed out from exhaustion.

Instead, he waited patiently for her to trust him again, using the incredible sources of the Incubatti to keep her safe and fund the missions that killed members of his own society while refusing to let himself feel when at all possible.

It wasn’t enough. His resentment of the Cambions grew daily, along with his desire to break free of the yoke of the Incubatti and do whatever it took to win back Zoey.

His phone vibrated in his pocket, and he pulled it free.

Thank you for the book.   

Impressed at the simple words sent by the soul-mate determined to hate him, Declan relaxed. He wanted to read more into the effort it took her to send it but knew better. Less was more with her, at least for now. Wild, beautiful, proud and strong, Zoey had to come to him. If he pushed, he’d lose her forever, and no part of him could live with that. The small note tempered his frustration and gave his patience new life.

“You wanted to talk?” his father asked, entering the gym.

Declan replaced the phone in his pocket without responding. “I need to talk to my father, not the Councilmember.”

“Let’s go somewhere private,” Ethan said. “You have time for dinner? I’m cooking.”

Declan glanced at his watch, where he’d programmed in the ability to track Zoey’s movements via her cell phone signal. There was more than one reason he persisted on finding out her number, whenever she changed it. The pragmatic side of him understood the importance of finding her, while the part of him hurting feared losing her for good.

There was always a chance she’d answer the phone, too.

She was on the move, which was pretty standard. The connection between them let him experience her emotions. She was currently distraught, probably from the fire and her team being scattered. She was unhurt, and no blackout loomed that he could sense. He had time for dinner.

“Yeah,” he answered. “I was wondering if I could talk to you about something not really related to our issues.”

Ethan waved for him to follow, and they walked in silence through the compound to the dorm area housing the Councilmembers. Ethan’s underground apartment was large and luxurious, decorated in black and white with flashes of lemon and orange. He went to the full kitchen and began pulling items from the fridge.

Declan trailed, leaning against the counter, lost in thought for a moment. Rousing himself, he straightened. “I want to know about Mom.”

Ethan paused, eyes flickering up before he continued adding to the collection of food on the counter. Declan caught the near imperceptible stiffening, as if his father wasn’t pleased. “Can I ask why?”

“I keep thinking about Zoey and the Halflings. Olivia and her predecessors openly admit to genetic experiments. I can’t figure out how she was able to create soul-mates for us. There’s got to be a pattern or some sort of insight into what she’s doing.”

Ethan nodded without answering.

“Mom was a Halfling, wasn’t she?”

“She was.” His father’s tone grew softer whenever he talked about his deceased wife.

“Was she special like Team Rogue?”

“I think so.”

Declan waited. His unreserved father rarely hesitated to speak his mind. Sensing Ethan’s restraint, Declan shifted to face his father. “You’re hiding something.”

“You gonna interrogate me, Son?” Ethan asked gruffly.

“Should I?”

They eyed each other, neither willing to back off the subject.

“I have to find a way to save her,” Declan spoke first. “If there’s anything you know, any fact, gut feeling, suspicion … anything at all …”

No response.

“I know she died in a house fire. Did she ever have blackouts? Seizures?” Declan pressed.

Ethan closed the refrigerator door and drew a breath. “She did. They didn’t occur when we were together. When I left on business, they became a problem. Every one of the soul-mate rules has a tragic history. Before your mother, there were only three rules passed on to me by my father. The fourth rule I added, that nothing should ever come between you and your soul-mate. Not work, money, politics, emotions. Even distance. It’s meant to be taken literally as well as figuratively.”

“I didn’t know you added it,” Declan said. “What happened?”

“It’s not relevant. What you need to know is that the Halflings are stabilized when they’re with incubuses.” Ethan shrugged.

Declan listened, sensing there was more. “What’re you not saying, Dad?”

“I don’t know that now is the right time, Declan.”

“Zoey’s had seventeen blackouts in two months and isn’t about to let me near her. If you know anything, Dad, please tell me. I need the information,” Declan said, urgency and fear entering his voice. “Please.”

Ethan studied him, a dark look crossing his features. “Very well, Declan.” He paused. “This is something you can’t tell your brothers.”

Declan held his breath.

“Your mother didn’t die in a fire. When you were five, we had a bit of a falling out. It happens sometimes between couples. There were nine of you little buggers, six of you in your teen years. I’d just been appointed Enforcer Chief, and we were stressed to the breaking point.” Ethan’s golden gaze grew haunted. “We knew she had no issues when we were together, but we didn’t realize the extent of whatever it is the succubae do to their Halflings. Having the temper I do” – he gave a half-hearted smile – “I stormed out one day after we had a fight. I don’t even remember what it was about.”

Declan waited, dread in his gut. There was deep pain in his father’s voice, and it sent a tremor of concern through him.

“Anyway, we decided to separate for a while,” Ethan continued. “You kids stayed here, and she left. Before then, we’d never been apart for more than a week. She was gone a month, then two. I decided to go look for her if she was gone much longer. Our connection snapped one night. I went to find her, but it was too late.”

“What happened?” Riveted by the tale, Declan leaned forward.

“She met the fate of those Halflings that don’t get put down. The autopsy said she went through sudden, extensive organ failure and simply dropped dead where she was.”

Declan took a moment to digest the information. “Why would you lie about her death?”

“It’s not so much her death I lied about but what we discovered afterwards to prevent the Sucubatti from figuring out that we knew what they were doing,” Ethan explained. “Sienna preceded the first genetically altered Halflings, strong like Zoey, but far more unstable. She had the capacity to collect sex energy that exceeds anything our Cambions can do today without the ability to turn it around and disperse it the way Team Rogue can. It meant that you boys were born with unnaturally strong abilities, but it also basically melted her from the inside out, only after she was tortured and drained of most of her blood.” The vacant look returned. “Turns out that she was captured by the IAB the second day after she left, when she was on her way home. She spent two months being tortured and torn apart for medical experiments, and I was too angry to go look for her. I knew something was wrong but … She died. She died because I was too much of an egotistical bastard to go get her, like I should have.”

Nothing could’ve prepared him for the truth. Silence fell, and Declan remained in place. His mother had died when he was five, turning the next older sibling, Liam, into his personal protector. He recalled a time when his father was gone immediately after his mother’s death but never a time when his father ever let his agony show.

Losing Zoey in this way was unfathomable. Knowing the struggle between Incubatti and Sucubatti was a hundred years old, Declan was only now learning how horrific the relationship between societies really was.

“My mother was killed by the same people hunting Zoey,” he spoke finally.

“She was.”

Declan gazed at his father with renewed admiration. A single child, Ethan had then had the task of raising nine boys, dealing with excruciating heartbreak and being the head of the Enforcers, where he was forced to deal with his wife’s murderers on a daily basis. The amount of pressure he had to have been under made Declan feel inferior, if only for a moment, for not being able to manage a soul-mate and the job.

Ethan poured himself two shots of bourbon before pausing to stare into space, his frown deep. Unable to imagine what it was like to suffer with this knowledge alone for so many years, Declan reached out to his father the way his father normally did him. He settled his hands on Ethan’s shoulders.

“It’s not your fault, Dad. Shit happens between couples,” Declan replied resolutely. “The IAB hurt her. You loved her.”

“I know, Son.” Ethan squeezed one of his forearms. “The Sucubatti knew she was special when they grabbed her. They studied her anomalies in the hope of creating more Halflings like her. She is the mold Zoey and her team were made after, strong enough to lure in you boys and unstable enough that they can be controlled by Olivia. Or so she thought. Sienna’s uniqueness was a natural genetic mutation, and Olivia was able to copy it, including the kill switch bred into all the Halflings. We never were able to figure it out. There wasn’t enough of your mother left over from what they did to her for us to research, and I refuse to subject any of you to the pain of losing a soul-mate by taking any member of Team Rogue for experimentation.” Ethan moved away from him, tossed back the golden liquid and poured two more shots. “I’m not about to do to them what was done to Sienna. She was taken apart, piece by piece, to find out what made her special.”

A chill went through Declan, followed by fury.

“The Sucubatti meant to burn her body. It was smuggled out by the Professor, who was assigned to the Sucubatti after The War. Our scientists took what blood and tissue the Sucubatti didn’t for study without being able to come to conclusive results,” Ethan finished. “Everyone pretended it was a house fire that killed her.”

“How could you possibly work with the IAB after that?”

“It took time. I didn’t for several years and stepped aside to raise you boys. The Professor helped me where I’d let him, drilling into my head that the greater good was more important than a broken heart,” Ethan said bitterly. “I beg to differ, but he was right about one thing. I had to look from the past to the future and do what was best for my sons. The Sucubatti have been plotting against us since The War, no matter what their Council claims. They need the perfect warriors in order to wipe us out. I suspect since Olivia is allied with Paul, she’s found something in the Cambions that’s helping their efforts.”

“I’m twenty three, Dad. At what point were you going to tell any of us the truth?”

“I wasn’t going to,” Ethan admitted. “To keep the peace.”

“There shouldn’t be peace!” Declan fired back. “Why have we ever backed off any of our beliefs? Why didn’t we take down the Cambions this spring and then fuck up Olivia’s plans?”

“Because we can’t have a war with two fronts. My boys are strong, but we need more time, and we need to break this unholy alliance between Olivia and Paul,” Ethan said with patience Declan didn’t feel. “Declan, we get one shot at fixing our society. If we fail, it’s not just our lives at stake.”

“Olivia wants Zoey. She’s already in danger,” Declan managed to keep his voice level when he wanted to shout. The same organization that killed his mother wanted his soul-mate. Knowing what might happen if they got to her turned his stomach.