Zoey Avenger (Incubatti Series Book 2) (15 page)

Five missing, ten in need of sick bay, texted Tiff.

Bad BAD news. Call me ASAP. This one was from Vikki.

Um, how did some guy named Grant Brown find me? Chrissy had asked. He’s hot but … ???

“Oh, shit.” Zoey glanced at the other object on her nightstand. She texted Chrissy to tell her she was on the way and rose, pulling on a tank top and the comfortable cargo shorts she was accustomed to wearing.

“Your instincts have grown so dull?” a familiar, youthful voice asked with a chuckle.

She whirled, her heartbeat quickening. “Professor Alexander!”

The older – and still dashing – man was at the computer desk, his glasses in his pocket and conservative clothing unable to tame the subtle sexual draw of an incubus. He smiled at her.

Zoey ran and flung her arms around him, squeezing his slender body.

“I am well, dear. I swear it!” he said with another gruff chuckle.

“Are you?” She pulled away and scoured his face. “Those incubuses are assholes.”

“We can be,” he said, his gentle way of reminding her he, too, was an incubus.

She rolled her eyes. “You’re different and you know it.”

“Because I tolerate you?”

“Not funny.” Relieved to see him, she released him reluctantly and looked him over once again. He was better off than when she had last seen him, no longer frail, his features glowed with health. “You look good.” She frowned. “Is it because you don’t have to deal with me anymore?”

“Of course not. It’s because they won’t stop feeding me.”

Her mentor and guardian of ten years had never criticized her and always stuck up for her, no matter how his contemporaries or her society tried to quash her spirit. To have him back in her life made her feel a little less unsettled, a little more ready to take on the world again.

“I missed you,” she murmured. “You’re staying.”

He bowed his head.

“Good.”

“This is your base of operations?” he asked, observing the sparsely decorated basement. There was a small bathroom, card table with four folding chairs, microwave and mini fridge, computer desk with laptop, a box of clothing, weapons and three cots.

Compared to the fancy compounds of the Incubatti and Sucubatti, it was a hovel.

“It’s a … work in progress,” she said. “Olivia burned down my warehouse. We’re kind of scattered all over the place right now.”

“I understand.”

She relaxed. His warm features were open and his smile supportive. “God I missed you!”

“Happy to know this old incubus can still pull in the beautiful women.”

Her gaze fell to the door locked from the inside. “How did you find me?”

“Let’s just say there’s someone looking out for you.”

Declan. She shook her head. It was no coincidence she said she wanted Alexander at the meeting last night and woke up to find him here. “Welcome to Team Rogue.” She threw out her arms. “Are you healthy enough to travel?”

“I certainly am,” he said with some fire. “This old incubus isn’t ready to retire yet!”

She hid a smile. Stretching down for her weapons, she deftly secured them around her body and straightened.

The Professor was watching her, the skin beneath his eyes crinkling the way it usually did. Despite all that had changed, she still felt like the wild student and he the wise professor.

“What?” she asked.

“I’m proud of you.”

“You’d be the first.” She raised a skeptical eyebrow.

“Not true. You fight for what you believe in. Always have. There’s a saying that when change is needed, it blows in like a hurricane to sweep away the deadwood and make way for the new.”

She listened, always soothed by his low, warm voice.

“I am sad for the mess with Declan, but I have faith that things will right themselves. In the meantime, I am thrilled to see you change the world the way you are.”

At the mention of Declan’s name, she tensed. The Professor’s words sank in, and she rested the meat of her palm on one hilt. “It’s rough being the hurricane, Professor,” she admitted. “I feel like I’m doing the right thing, but if it’s the right thing, why is it so hard? Why don’t the Councils get it?”

“They understand more than you know,” he replied. “What you are running up against is politics and an old-world mentality that values the status quo, no matter how nasty it is, because they fear that change will be nastier.”

I love this man. His faith in her touched her at a level she didn’t expect, and much of the self-doubt she’d been experiencing began to fizzle. “When you say it, I sound like a superhero.”

“You are.” He smiled once more.

Embarrassed by the conviction in his features, Zoey cleared her throat. “Okay then. Guess I’ll buy a cape. Let’s go find the rest of my team.” She snatched the band off her nightstand, a protein bar from the stash next to the desk and strode towards the door, eating quickly. “Do you know the old school in –”

“Superhero or not, I can’t understand you if you talk with your mouth full,” the Professor chided.

Zoey shook her head at him and swallowed. She opened her mouth to start over when it hit her.

She froze two feet from the door, senses sharpening. “We’ve got company.” Unable to assess how many lay in wait outside the house, she was able to identify their sex magic signatures. “Cambions and succubae. What a bitch!” Anger bubbling, she whirled and strode to the computer desk. “We have an emergency … hiding spot.” She grunted and pushed the desk away to reveal a grate in the wall.

“You want me to hide.” The Professor appeared politely offended.

“Yep. And don’t back-talk me, old man,” she snapped. “This is my battle, and I won’t let anything happen to you, especially not you getting caught in the crossfire with these bastards.” She pointed to the grate and waited.

“I am here to liaise, not interfere. I have faith in you. If I need to hunker down into a dusty, cramped crawlspace, I will when the time comes. In the meantime, I prefer to sit in a normal chair and smoke a cigar while you defend me from the dragons at our door.” As he spoke, he sat gracefully and folded his legs, resting his hands on his knee.

“Fine. First sign of danger, you hide,” she ordered.

The Professor bowed his head in amused acquiescence.

Zoey drew two titanium blades with jagged edges and strode to the door. With a glance back at her calm mentor, she wrenched the door open and stepped into the stairwell leading up to the backyard. She snapped the band into place, ready to test its ability to hide her from the Cambions capable of tracking her.

Senses straining for the smallest indication that an ambush awaited her, she silently ascended, tense and ready for battle. The morning sky was clear and the sun bright, the scent of dew and danger in the air.

She stood on her tiptoes to see over the concrete wall, not surprised by the amount of Cambions awaiting her.

Thirty five. Best way to start my morning.

There were three succubae in their midst, and she didn’t give Olivia’s lackeys the time of day. There was no reason not to take them out, not when Olivia had made her position clear.

Zoey ducked back down and pulled out her phone. She messaged Chrissy and Ginny before tucking it in her pocket. Relishing the idea of a fight after her night of rest, she took the remaining stairs two at a time and launched out of the stairwell into the backyard, unleashing her pent up sex energy. Its effect on the Cambions was immediate. Those close enough to bear the brunt of the compelling magic inched forward, drawn to her.

“This is all you brought?” she taunted, lowering into a fighting stance. “Tell Olivia I said thanks for the morning workout. She has no fucking idea who she’s up against”

Chapter Eleven: Cornered

Declan awoke revitalized for the first time since he’d last slept with Zoey. A check on her through their bond revealed she was on the move – but not in blackout mode. Content to think his blast of sex magic last night helped them both get some rest, he sat up and tugged on a pair of shorts before striding across the small suite in the underground bunker to the kitchenette. He rarely, if ever, made it back to his penthouse anymore and had adopted the guest room in the dorms as his own, when he didn’t sleep in his office.

Snagging his phone off the counter, he glanced at the symbols indicating he had two dozen voicemails and just as many texts.

He pulled a carton of milk from the fridge and poured a glass before beginning to scroll through the messages. The tumbler was halfway to his mouth when his heart felt like it stopped and dropped to his feet.

Councilmember Ethan O’Connor is missing. The text was from the Incubatti emergency channel.

He tensed, his chest tightening and muscles poised to attack. How did the second most powerful incubus in the world end up missing?

Declan dressed hastily and left without breakfast or bothering to check his messages, hurrying through the hallways to the operations center, where handling of the crisis would be centered. Dread made his blood sluggish and his thoughts dart towards possible scenarios where maybe someone had simply gotten something wrong. He didn’t want to know who had the fucking lack of sense to draw the vengeance of a society, not to mention Ethan’s nine super incubus sons. He slowed and forced his calm façade into place before striding through the doorway into the ops center.

It was packed, with no less than three Councilmembers, a herd of Cambions whispering in one corner and two dozen incubuses, including Wes and Aiden.

“Report,” he ordered the watch commander, who sat in the central workstation, monitoring all video and communications traffic.

The watch center fell silent at his command, and Declan looked twice at his brothers. Their expressions weren’t what he expected: concerned – but wary, as if they weren’t comfortable among their own. Wes’s attention was on the Cambions while Aiden’s was on Declan.

The nagging instinct he’d refused to acknowledge when he read the news reemerged stronger, and Declan waited with restrained impatience as the watch commander’s fingers flew over the keyboard.

Still images appeared on the wall of screens ahead of them. Declan looked up, recognizing the figures. He kept his face expressionless, aware everyone in the center was waiting for his reaction.

“Show me,” he said more quietly.

The watch commander played the videos simultaneously on a loop. One was super short: that of Zoey dumping the lifeless body of Heidi, the ops officer for the Sucubatti and his former lover, in front of a store in the middle of DC.

The second nearly knocked him flat. Zoey and another woman, whose face hidden by a mask, each held the arm of his father and were dragging his unconscious body out of the back of the apartment building where the incubus society lived near Rock Creek Park on the border of Maryland and DC.

Speechless, he walked from the watch commander to the screens, watching over and over. He clasped his hands behind his back to keep from snatching his phone and sought some sort of rational explanation.

Convenient. The one night I take sleeping pills. He’d made the mistake of believing her to be safe from the blackouts because of the magic he’d pumped into her. He’d lowered his guard and slept. She’d not only gone off the map, but also dragged his father with him.

It took him a moment for the calm, cool, analytic thinker to overcome his emotions, and he began evaluating what was playing before him.

She wasn’t in control; she couldn’t have been, because she never was during a blackout. She wouldn’t kill Heidi, and if she did, she was smart enough to get rid of the body instead of dumping it in a public area where it was certain to be discovered.

The kidnapping of his father was something she’d probably do, if motivated enough. He wasn’t able to rule that out, except that he saw the blank look on her face and recognized it as being a sign she was in blackout mode.

By now, the Council and every incubus in their society had heard Ethan was gone and possibly even seen the video. Declan wasn’t able to explain away her involvement or shield her this time. They wouldn’t care if she was brainwashed and someone else was in control. They’d demand swift, brutal action and the return of his father immediately.

Worse, he had a feeling it was Olivia who had Ethan. If she was willing to kill her loyal minion Heidi to frame Zoey, she’d be willing to kill Ethan as well, if the Incubatti didn’t respond the way she was manipulating them to.

No part of him was angry with Zoey. If anything, he empathized with her. There was a time when his world was very black and white: good and bad, clear lines between the two supernatural societies, family and non-family.

Those pretty lines had begun to blur, if not shatter, when he met his soul-mate and realized she didn’t belong to either world. He had been drugged and manipulated into cheating on her. It became even difficult to balance his heart, conscience and duty as the days passed.

Olivia had done him a favor by drugging him, he realized grimly. If he hadn’t experienced the brainwashing first hand, he wouldn’t be able to view the videos before him and see what was going on beneath the surface.