Текст книги "Marked by Midnight"

Автор книги: Lara Adrian

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CHAPTER 9

 

Mathias was more impatient than anyone to begin the hunt for Ozzy’s killer, but before he could even think about hitting the street with his team and the JUSTIS officers who’d arrived to assist, he had to make sure Nova and Eddie were safe.

He’d tasked Callahan with taking them back to the Order’s command center in the heart of London. Although it was rare–almost unheard of–that civilians were permitted into Order compounds, Mathias was willing to bend that rule for Nova.

If he had anything to say about it, she wasn’t going to be merely a civilian for long, anyway. He wanted her in his life. Hell, he wanted her as his mate, if she’d have him.

The Rover was still idling at the curb. All Mathias needed to do was convince Nova that she needed to trust him, that she needed to do what he asked for once and let him take care of her.

He walked to the back room with Callahan and a few other men. Mathias knocked on the door at the same time he started to open it. “Nova, I’ve made arrangements for you and Eddie at–”

She was gone.

The back room was vacant. The rear door letting out onto the alleyway behind the shop was partially ajar, admitting a thin draft of night air inside.

Nova had left, taking Eddie with her. The reality of it raked over Mathias with cold claws.

Fuck. She was out there on her own right now, while Ozzy’s killer was still very much at large.

She had to be aware of that danger. And yet she’d chosen that risk over staying another minute under Mathias’s watch.

“Damn it, Nova.” He turned to the three warriors behind him, an odd chill blooming behind his sternum. “She won’t be coming back.”

“Where do you think she went?” Callahan asked.

Mathias lifted his shoulder. “I don’t know. She could be anywhere in the city.”

“If she’s on foot, she can’t be far,” Deacon said.

Thane nodded, his black brows knit together over dark eyes. “You want us to go after her, Commander?”

“No,” Mathias said after a moment, the word heavy on his tongue.

Every particle of his being pounded with the need to bring her back to him. But if he sent warriors after her now, it would only make her run farther.

Nova was a smart woman and a proven survivor. He had to trust she’d find a way to keep herself and Eddie safe.

The best thing he could do for her was make damned sure the Breed bastard who killed Ozzy wasn’t permitted to breathe for much longer tonight.

Sloane stood behind Deacon and Callahan at the door. The JUSTIS officer shot Mathias a disapproving look. “You’ve got a body lying in a lake of blood out there, a missing woman and kid, and no one here to explain what happened tonight except you, my friend. I think you’d better tell us what’s going on.”

He had filled them all in briefly when he’d called them to the shop, alerting them to the murder and the fact that the killer had been looking for a woman who worked there. It hadn’t seemed the best time to mention that he’d been at the scene when the assault took place, let alone that he’d been in an upstairs apartment making love to the very woman the attacker had come in to find.

Although Sloane had demanded the answers, Mathias spoke to his team. “I met Nova here at the shop two nights ago, during our search for the tattoo artist who’d left the unfinished work on the last guy fished out of the Thames.”

“A lucky break,” Deacon remarked. “We searched a dozen shops and came up empty.”

“Yeah, well,” Mathias hedged. “As soon as I got near Ozzy’s shop, I sensed something was off. I could tell there’d been an altercation here, a pretty bad one. It made me curious, so I stopped in, asked a few questions.”

“What did you find out?” Thane asked.

“That our dead scarab had, indeed, been in the shop. He came in the night before, and Nova was the one who did the tattoo.”

“But she didn’t finish it,” Callahan said.

“No. The guy was drunk, belligerent. There were words exchanged, then threats. Things turned ugly, and Ozzy killed him to protect Nova. They dumped the body in the river.”

“Jesus Christ,” Sloane muttered.

Mathias went on, holding his old friend’s rightfully indignant look. Sloane wasn’t going to like anything else he would hear now either. “I realized there were things she wasn’t telling me. I suspected some kind of connection between her and the man who came into the shop...and I was right. She knew him. She didn’t know the others in the morgue, but she was scared enough to go there and find out what she could about them.”

Now, Sloane’s hissed curse was even more profane. “You lied to me earlier today, Rowan. You acted like you had no goddamned idea who woman in the morgue video was. Yet all along you knew.”

“I knew,” he admitted soberly. “I’m telling you now, lying to my friends–to my teammates–goes against everything I am. But when it comes to this woman, when it comes to Nova...”

“You care for her,” Thane said.

Mathias nodded. He glanced to Sloane. “When you told me she had been at the morgue to see the other dead men, I didn’t know how deeply she might be involved in any of this. I didn’t know if she had been part of the other killings too. I didn’t know if she’d been lying to me about what she knew. I only knew I had to give her the chance to tell me first. So, as soon as the sun set, I came here to talk with her.”

“You’ve been here all night?” Callahan piped up. “You were here while the killing took place?”

“I was upstairs, in Nova’s apartment with her.” He didn’t have to elaborate on what he was doing up there. The looks he was getting from all four men said they understood plainly enough. “I didn’t know about the attack until after it was over. The boy, Eddie, was in the shop when the killer arrived. Eddie hid back there, in the storage room. He ran upstairs to Nova’s afterward, in a state of shock.”

“He didn’t see who did it?” Deacon asked.

“No, but Nova did.” At the round of confused glances that fixed on him, Mathias explained. “She’s a Breedmate. Her gift lets her see the final moments of someone’s life when she touches them. When she touched Ozzy, she saw a Breed male in a hooded jacket. She saw this male slash open her friend’s throat.”

Mathias now looked to Sloane. “That’s what Nova was doing at the morgue this morning, when she touched the dead men with the scarab tattoos. She saw that there was some kind of meeting taking place between those men and a group of Russians. The thug who confronted her here in Ozzy’s shop the other night was there too. She saw him execute his own men.”

Sloane stared at him, raked a hand over his head. “For fuck’s sake, Rowan. When were you going to divulge all of this intel? Things between our two organizations are touchy enough without the commander of the Order’s operation in London willfully interfering in an open JUSTIS investigation. Withholding information, diverting resources, fucking a person of interest–”

Mathias growled at that last charge, even though he was guilty of everything Sloane pointed out. “I want this thing sewn up as much as anyone else–more than anyone, I’d say. But Nova is my responsibility. I don’t want anyone questioning her, or pointing one damned finger at her without coming to me first–”

Sloane studied him through narrowed blue eyes. “Have you drunk from this female? Have you blood-bonded to her?” When Mathias shook his head in denial, Sloane scoffed. “No, but you want to.”

He wasn’t going to refute that. He couldn’t.

While he’d lived a very long life taking his sustenance from willing human females–women who provided sex and nourishment and little more–he’d had no appetite for basic Homo sapiensblood anymore.

Not since he’d first laid eyes on an ink-covered, metal-studded, thoroughly unconventional beauty named Nova.

If he drank from her, a Breedmate, one sip would mean forever.

A concept Mathias was more than willing to explore with her. If she’d have him, and if he managed to find her before the danger on her heels came any closer than it already had.

“It doesn’t matter what I want right now,” he told Sloane and his team from the Order. “I just need to make sure Nova and the boy are safe, and that starts by finding the murdering bastard who was here in this shop earlier tonight.”

With his warriors dispatched to split up and hit the surrounding area streets on foot, and the JUSTIS unit augmenting the search by vehicle, Mathias then turned to Sloane. “The killer didn’t come here looking for Nova by accident. He must’ve had access to the video from the morgue. I know you don’t have a lot of reason to do me any favors right now–”

“No, I don’t,” the JUSTIS officer grumbled. “But lucky for you, I don’t hold a grudge. You want a list of all the eyes that saw that video?”

“And anyone who handled the reports of the dead scarabs,” Mathias added, quirking a brow when Sloane shot him an arch look. “I appreciate it.”

The Breed male grunted. “I’ll go make a few calls. I’ll alert the coroner’s office to the situation too.”

Mathias cuffed his old friend on the shoulder and murmured his thanks as Sloane stepped outside. Alone in Ozzy’s shop, the blood coagulated under the sheet-covered body, and far less potent to his Breed senses, Mathias took a moment to consider everything that had happened that night.

His concern for Nova’s safety, and the need to know that he hadn’t lost her completely, had his emotions combating his warrior instincts most of the time following Ozzy’s murder. And now that he was resolved, a plan being put into place, he realized that something was gnawing at the edges of his mind.

He couldn’t shake the feeling that he was missing something crucial.

The pieces weren’t quite fitting together for him, and he kept coming back to the fact that something just didn’t feel right.

Sloane walked back inside, slipping his comm unit back into his pocket. “Since you’re begging favors from JUSTIS tonight, you want me to put an alert out on your female? Ordinarily, a missing persons call doesn’t go out until twenty-four hours pass, but I see nothing wrong in bending the rules for a friend.”

“No, but thanks,” he replied, those prickly instincts still nagging him.

As much as he appreciated Sloane’s offer of support, he preferred to keep all eyes focused on finding the killer. And there was a part of him that wouldn’t trust anyone where Nova was concerned.

He thought back to what she’d told him about the things she saw when she touched the dead scarabs in the morgue. “Nova said there was someone else on the dock that night,” he murmured, thinking out loud. “Someone who shot and killed one of the Russians, maybe more than one.”

Sloane grunted. “That’s odd. The only thing we pulled out of the river so far are dead scarabs. Not a single Russian among them.”

“She seemed pretty certain that’s what she saw,” Mathias said. “Which means we’ve got another killer out there.”

“Maybe that’s the guy we need to be looking for tonight,” Sloane suggested. “Was she able to ID anything useful about the guy who shot the Russians?”

“She didn’t say.”

“But she was sure it wasn’t Doyle?”

Every tendon in Mathias’s body went as tight as a bowstring. His veins started to pound. “Yes, she was sure...”

He glanced at Sloane, who had now gone equally still, staring back at him.

“I never told you his name,” Mathias said.

At first, he thought Sloane was going to deny it. But then the big Breed male cocked his head slightly, a wry smile lifting one corner of his mouth. “No. I guess you didn’t.”

Mathias felt sucker-punched. He looked at his old friend in sickened disbelief. “You did this tonight? You would’ve killed her too?”

“It wasn’t about the old man or the girl. They had nothing to do with any of this.” Sloane’s eyes took on a flinty edge. “If you want to blame someone, blame that drunken idiot, Doyle. He’s the one who put the target on their backs. He had no damned business letting himself be seen anywhere people might know him. So, he goes off and gets a tattoo? Fucking humans.”

Mathias dismissed the rant with a snarl. “Tell me what’s going on, Sloane. You and Doyle. It was you with him that night at the docks? What were you two doing? What kind of deal were you trying to make that night?”

He gave a slow shake of his head. “My only hand in the deal was to make sure things went smoothly, and that no one got nosy that night.”

“You and Doyle,” Mathias pressed. “You killed all of those people in cold blood?”

“They were scum, all of them. Especially Doyle. I would’ve killed him soon enough too, but your female and the old man here did the job for me.”

“Why? Are you a scarab too?”

“Fuck no,” Sloane spat out. “My only affiliation is to myself.”

“Then how’d you get mixed up in all of this?”

Sloane grinned. “I got paid, friend. I got paid very fucking well to make sure a package reached its destination, and that there were no loose ends.” He chuckled. “Guess I’m the last one.”

“What about Nova?” Mathias said. “Is anyone else after her?”

“No one ever was. I don’t know what her connection was to Doyle or his associates outside London, and I don’t care.” He shrugged. “Far as I’m concerned, she was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

Mathias was relieved to hear it, but still cognizant of the fact that Nova’s past would need to be dealt with at some point. When she was ready. And he meant to be at her side when that day came.

“I have to take you in, Gavin.”

He stared, expressionless. “We both know that’s not gonna happen.”

Slowly, he turned around as if he meant to stroll out of the shop.

Mathias pulled his gun from its holster on his weapons belt. He cocked the 9mm pistol. “Sloane, stop.”

He paused, but didn’t turn around. His arms hung loosely at his sides. “You gonna put a bullet in my back?”

Mathias cursed through gritted teeth. “I’d rather not. But you’re not walking out that door.”

“Okay,” Sloane said after a moment. “I’ll make it easy on you.”

He pivoted suddenly, and Mathias saw that he was holding his own gun. It exploded an instant later, and a fireball of pain opened up in Mathias’s gut.

He fired back.

His bullet hit his old friend between the eyes.

Sloane hit the floor.

Mathias staggered down to one knee, blood pouring out of him.

CHAPTER 10

 

Mathias walked into the war room of the Order’s London command center that next morning, a bandage wrapped around his bare midsection. His pain was mild, but the gunshot wound that perforated several internal organs was going to take a few more hours to heal.

He hadn’t been happy to be dragged to headquarters by Thane and his other men after he called them back to Ozzy’s shop. He’d wanted to go looking for Nova last night. Turn the city inside-out in order to find her and tell her that Ozzy’s killer was dead and she had no reason to be afraid.

But dawn had been coming fast, and the bullet Gavin Sloane had fired through him had grounded Mathias on base for the rest of the night instead.

The Order’s report overnight of Gavin Sloane’s death in the line of duty had been met with shock by his colleagues at JUSTIS. The fact that the long-time law enforcement officer had been corrupt, on the take from a troubling underworld organization with ties and motives not yet determined, had been a detail Lucan Thorne had decided to omit from any official filings.

Documents had been pulled, photographs and video destroyed, data obliterated. And, where necessary, human minds had been scrubbed of any and all recollection to the contrary of what Mathias’s official statement read.

For all anyone knew outside the Order, Sloane had stumbled upon the scene of a homicide at a Southwark tattoo shop, apparently surprising a pair of perpetrators–one who had a knife, the other a gun. Unfortunately for Sloane, Mathias and his patrol team from the Order discovered the crime too late to save the respected Breed officer, who had been killed with a lucky shot to the head, the criminals having fled the scene.

Never to be seen or heard from again, of course.

As for Mathias and his team, they were already looking into another unusual string of killings.

It seemed someone had begun quietly targeting London’s banking community. Three high-ranking finance executives had been found dead in their homes in the past handful of days–one victim human, the other two Breed. JUSTIS was under immediate and great pressure to make the murders stop before the public found out and began to panic.

Mathias understood the urgency, but his mind was on another unresolved matter of great concern.

He had to see Nova again.

He had to let her know she was safe.

And that she would always be safe, so long as he had breath in his body and blood running through his eternal veins.

He just needed to find her first.

“Nice ink,” Callahan said, strolling into the room to where Mathias sat with a computer tablet, reviewing the intel from the recent murders. The young warrior sat down next to Mathias at the workstation, studying the sword tattoo on his back. “Think your lady will do one for me?”

“I don’t know,” Mathias answered. “What would you want?”

The warrior shrugged. “Something badass, like the one you have.”

“No way,” he said. “That one belongs all to me.”

And so does the woman who created it.

“What about the one you’re drawing on that report, then?”

“Hmm?” Mathias glanced down to where he’d been idly toying with the stylus on the tablet. He didn’t have a fraction of Nova’s talent, but he recognized the symbol immediately.

The rose window from the ruins of Winchester Palace.

One of Nova’s many tattoos.

One that meant something very important to her.

And that was where he would start looking for her as soon as night fell.

~ ~ ~

Nova tucked Eddie into the thin cot in the basement of the cathedral. The poor kid was exhausted. She was too. She sat on the edge of the mattress and smoothed his hair off his drowsy face.

“How long do we have to stay here?” he asked her, his words slurred from the sleep that was already pulling him under.

“I don’t know,” she answered. “For a while. Until I find us someplace better.”

He nodded sleepily. “Okay. Just don’t leave me.”

“Never,” she whispered, realizing only now that she had just stepped into Ozzy’s shoes. They wouldn’t be easy to fill. But she would do her best. She would find a way to give Eddie the same security and support that Oz had given her all those years ago.

God, she missed him already.

Would always miss him.

And she missed Mathias too, although that was a pain she didn’t have to accept.

She could contact him. He’d given her his number. A number she’d tossed in the trash almost the same moment he gave it to her.

Now, she wanted nothing more than to pull that moment back to her. Rewind it. Play it out a different way.

Maybe Ozzy would still be alive.

Maybe she and Mathias would be together.

Maybe she was a fool, losing her heart to someone she’d known only a handful of days.

As Eddie’s soft snores drifted up from his pillow, Nova carefully eased herself up off the bed.

It was early, just past sundown. She was restless, twitchy, even though she hadn’t slept more than a few minutes last night.

She glanced around at the dozens of other similar cots, occupied by men and women and children, a community of all ages and descriptions. She was homeless again. Faced with the decision to either run some more or hide.

She needed space to think. Time to heal after Ozzy’s death and all of the awful things that had surrounded it.

And she needed to feel Mathias’s arms around her, with a desperation she could hardly reconcile.

She’d fallen in love with him.

She didn’t know how, didn’t care why.

She only knew that she needed him.

And right now, all she wanted to do was walk out into the night air and scream Mathias’s name.

Quietly, she left the basement shelter and walked up the stairs to the door leading to the cathedral grounds. She found a wooden bench and sank down onto it. It was a place she’d sat many times before, her private meditation nook in the middle of the bustling city.

Tipping her head back, she looked up, beyond the cathedral towers at the stars and the waning crescent moon. She closed her eyes and remembered the terrified, brutalized little girl who’d come here the first time.

She was back again, scared and hurting, but she was different now. She had a new strength, thanks to Ozzy and the home he had opened to her. Now he was gone, but she was still standing. And he would want her to stand. He wouldn’t want her to run.

She didn’t want to run, not anymore.

Not from anyone, ever again.

Not even from Mathias, and the feelings he had awakened in her.

“Is this seat taken?”

She dropped her chin, her eyes flying open. “You found me.”

“I found you,” Mathias said. He sat down next to her on the bench. “Ozzy’s killer is dead. You’re safe now. I wanted you to know that.”

“You...?” she asked, unsure what she needed to know in that moment. The fact that he was there with her was the only thing that really mattered.

“We got him, Nova. And from what we’ve gathered, it doesn’t appear that anyone else knows you’re in London. Doyle and the others weren’t looking for you. You and Eddie aren’t in any danger now.”

“Thank you,” she murmured. “You came here just to tell me that?”

He nodded. “Are you...all right?”

“I miss Oz,” she admitted. “I’ll always miss Oz.”

“I know. I’m sorry.” He frowned, gave a mild shake of his head. “If there’s anything I can do...”

“I’ll be fine,” she assured him. “Eddie and I will be fine. We’ll figure things out.”

Mathias smiled at that, a smile that seemed heavy with regret. “Have you thought about what you’ll do...whether you’ll go back to Ozzy’s place...?”

“I don’t want to take Eddie back there,” she said, realizing it only now. She hadn’t really thought about alternatives, but she knew she’d land on her feet somewhere. “We’ll figure things out.”

“You already said that,” he murmured. He reached out to her, stroked her cheek with a light caress. “Why don’t you figure it out while you’re staying with me.”

Nova frowned. “Staying with you, where?”

“At my place in the city.”

“You mean, the Order’s headquarters?”

He shrugged. “I’m the commander of the London office. So, technically, the headquarters is my place. You and Eddie would stay with me, in my private quarters in the mansion.”

“Mansion,” she said. She pictured gleaming marble and elegant furniture. Things she’d known as a child and learned to despise. “I don’t know...”

“What don’t you know?” The fingers stroking her cheek now wandered into her hair, his warm, strong palm cupping her nape. “Come back with me. There’s no point in you and Eddie living here, when I have all the room either of you could ever need.”

She shook her head, even as tempted as she was by his offer of comfort and a luxurious place to stay. “It wouldn’t be right. I can’t trade one temporary shelter for another.”

He stared at her, a scowl forming. “No, that wouldn’t be right.”

She exhaled a heavy, pent-up breath. Letting it out seemed to deflate some of her soul along with it. “I’d rather stop this now, Mathias. I’m not afraid to be on my own, but I don’t want to fool myself that accepting your offer won’t make it harder for me to leave later.”

He nodded soberly. “I agree, that would pose a problem. For both of us. That’s why my offer isn’t a temporary one.”

She gaped at him. “What?”

“I want to take you home with me, Nova. You and Eddie both.” He took her face in both hands now, holding her as tenderly as an eggshell. “I want to take you back with me, right now. Where I plan to romance you properly...and thoroughly. You, at any rate. Not the boy.”

Nova laughed. “You can’t be serious. We hardly know each other.”

“We have time. All the time in the world.”

“You don’t even know my real name.”

He smiled, his eyes sparking with challenge and determination. “So, tell me.”

“Catriona,” she said softly. “Catriona Riordan.”

He grunted, as if testing the feel of the name in his mind. “I like it. And I like you. I love you, Nova.”

He loved her. Her heart leapt in her breast, a giddy, girly jolt of elation. She’d been so leaden with grief, the joy she felt now was like a sudden burst of sunlight after a heavy storm. “Are you trying to sweep me off my feet or something, Mathias?”

His grin widened. “Like some kind of knight in shining armor, Nova. Yes, that’s exactly what I’m trying to do.”

She touched his face, his handsome, earnest face. “Well, in that case, I don’t mind telling you that I love you too.”

“Good answer.” He stared into her eyes, his own irises glittering with bright amber sparks. “Now about the rest of my question...”

“The part about spending the rest of my life with you?”

“As my mate,” he clarified. “I won’t settle for anything less.”

“I’m not an easy woman to live with,” she warned him. “I’m moody. I’m stubborn. Sometimes I don’t play well with others.”

“Fortunately for both of us, I enjoy a challenge.”

She laughed, then sighed as he pulled her into his arms and across his lap.

When his mouth found hers and he kissed her, slow and sweet and sensual, she felt all of her fears melt away.

She felt hope, and the promise of a future–and a happiness–she’d long imagined was out of reach.

But nothing was out of her reach now.

Not when her heart was overflowing with love and Mathias was holding her close in his strong arms.

~ * ~