INVISIBLE FATE BOOK THREE: ALEX NOZIAK (INVISIBLE RECRUITS) (31 page)

“You mean like a peace pipe?” Sabina asked, her voice incredulous.

“That’s a white man’s term. Any shaman worth his salt knows the combination of herbs and tobacco needed to create protection before any startling information is shared. Whites didn’t bother to learn; it isn’t just some quaint ritual but a way to provide immunity from an enchantment spell.”

“Which is exactly what the druid cast
.” Bran whistled.

I nodded and closed my eyes for a moment, accepting that my body was still healing, in micro bits by the aches and the pain twanging through me. But I was alive and that wasn’t anything to sneeze about.

“What now?” I murmured, feeling all vague and fuzzy.

“Seems we wait for your team to finish routing the bad guys, find us, and hope someone has a key for the cell door,” Bran said, practical and forward thinking as always.

Only one of the reasons he made me happy. Very, very happy.

Chapter
Sixty-eight

It was sunset three days later as I stood in an open balcony doorway looking out over the red and cream rooftops of Paris, my wounds mostly recovering. A few Technicolor bruises across most of my body, the spot where I’d plunged a knife into my chest still sore and a clean, deep scar on my palm healing into a white ridge. Not bad for being all the way dead not that long ago.

“You look pensive,” Bran said from the sole bed in the room. I glanced in his direction because he looked good, damn good
, rumpled and sexy among the white sheets. For a second I forgot about what was tumbling through my mind. Which was good and sorely needed.

“Just thinking.” I shrugged and turn
ed back as if to memorize the skyline. “You know, this is how I thought of Paris,” I admitted, running one hand along the crisp cotton curtains bracketing the doorway, inhaling deeply of the cooling spring breeze. Not cold enough to shut the door just yet, but enough to have me rubbing my bare arms. The ecru silk nightgown Bran had given me was not meant for warmth. Well, not the kind of stand-alone kind of warmth.

Without my hearing him
, Bran was suddenly beside me, pulling my back against his naked chest and long, lean legs, wrapping his arms around me, resting his head against the top of mine. Warlock blanket. I liked it and knew I could so easily get used to this.

“Want to share what’s putting a crease between your eyes?”

Mages could see way too much. “Is that a nice way to tell me I’m looking haggard?” I asked, trying to go for light, though I failed miserably.

“What is it?” he asked, all seriousness in his voice. “Your father and Van are well. Your team came through mostly unscathed.”

“Except for Stone and Mandy.” Sabina had been right. Stone earned a broken collarbone, several cracked ribs, and brain lash while fighting a particularly nasty Were. Mandy had reinjured her arm, the one broken when I’d called an echo demon during early days of training. A time that seemed years ago, yet was less than a month or two. Amazing how fighting preternaturals made time fly.

“Your comrades were hurt but they will recover,” Bran said.

“This time.” The words slipped out unbidden.

“Is that’s what’s bothering you?”
He turned me in his arms, no doubt trying to distract me with the breadth of his very solid, and very yummy shoulders. Ones I’d been admiring since we’d arrived here, to recuperate he’d said. Ha! No one told me recuperating could be so fun, and inventive.

Bran had been gentle, and insisting we take things slow physically between us. I think he just wanted to torture me or drive me crazy. Kisses and touches
were divine but not when my body craved more. More of him. More of us. More reassurance that we were both alive and alive was good.

Have I mentioned patience is not one of my strong suits?

“Alex, talk to me,” he murmured, grabbing both my hands in his so I couldn’t continue rubbing my fingers along his skin in ever widening swirls. And I had been having such fun.

“Fine.” Yes, I said it in that way that meant there was nothing fine about any of the situation. So I stepped back, just enough to be able to breathe instead of swimming on the scent of Bran’s skin just inches from me.

“Talk to me,” he said again in that CEO voice that said he wasn’t going to stop until I did. Didn’t he get the male handbook that said all talking was inherently dangerous? I was so going to have to get him together with my brothers for some serious clarification.

On second thought
, nix that.

I was avoiding. I do that when I’m just not ready to ba
re my soul. As in all the time. So go with the easy issue first. “Sure, we stopped Padraig, but what about the demon? There were more Council members who were working with Padraig to release that demon and that doesn’t count the Seekers. How are we going to stop them?”

Bran scrubbed his hand over his face. “One problem at a time. Your father now has some leverage over the remaining three known Council members who supported the druid. That might help keep them in line
, and your father is not without his own allies on the Council.”

Council politics made me itch. I raised my gaze to Bran. “And the Seekers?”

“I don’t know, Alex, I seriously don’t know.”

That’s not what I wanted to hear. Bran was the focused one, the one who made decisions and took action. On the other hand he was right. He was a dress designer, not a trained, or somewhat trained agent se
nt to fight the preternatural bad guys. Which is what my real problem was.

I turned away from him totally, stepping
farther out on the balcony, watching the sun inch closer to the horizon, wondering why stopping one very bad guy and saving the world just wasn’t enough some days. Like today.

“You’re thinking about us, aren’t you?” he laughed behind me. Laughed
?

I twisted to face him so fast my hair flew in a curtain of black behind me. “You think this is funny? There is nothing funny about any of this.”

He went to step closer, then thought better of it and paused, struggling to wedge his lips into a serious cant. “You make me happy,” he said, stealing all the air out of my blustery sails. “That’s why I’m smiling.”

He took that last step, that put him close enough he could cup my shoulders, not holding me as much as reassuring himself that I was really there.

“If you didn’t care too, you wouldn’t be so agitated.”

Oh, for being so dam sexy the man had a few things to learn. One did not call one’s lover agitated. No matter how true it was. “I’m not
—”

He placed his fingers across my lips. “You care, that’s what matters and so do I.”

There, he did it again, that melting my heart thing. So not fair.

“But is this real?” I asked in a wimpy-assed voice that did not sound at all like me.

“You mean what’s happening between us?”

I couldn’t speak around the solid lump in my throat so I nodded, keeping my eyes focused on his chest again, not trusting myself to meet his gaze.

“Are you thinking of the prophecy?” His voice at least had turned serious, though his fingers were playing with my hair. An action I don’t think he was even aware of.

“Yes.” He’d nailed it. “I don’t want to be here, with you, simply because of some silly announcement made by a coven and witches and warlocks who knows how long ago.”

He nodded, then repeated the words he’d used to describe the prophecy the first time he’d told me about it. “Acies, acendo, adamo. Lost in the mists of time, the meeting has been foretold between a powerful warlock and the even more powerful witch who would bring him to his knees and start the time of change.”

“Change, no problem
, before you said something more.”

“The time of loss,” he finished, shadows in his gaze.

“That’s the part that gives me the heebie-jeebies. As if fighting wicked powerful uber bad guys isn’t enough, now I have to deal with bringing loss. To who? Us? Me? The world?” I shook my head, the aches through my body punctuating my resistance. “I can only handle so much,” I said. My voice low, almost cracking. “I have barely tapped being a witch, not to mention developing as a shaman.” And fulfilling my promise to a ghost on the other side. “And now with this shifter blood … I can’t—”

This time he silenced me with a kiss. His lips firm and coaxing, covering mine, teasing me to join him, to release the frustration and fear and yes, the agitation rocketing through me. When he finally raised his head I swore my knees were weak and his body was telling me loud and clear where it wanted that kiss to lead.

“That’s not fair,” I murmured.

He smiled again, that sexy, all-male, hot warlock smile. He so did not play by Noziak rules. Yet he was serious as he whispered, his hands once again in my hair. “I don’t have all the answers,” he said, his voice low and husky. “But I’m here. I’ll be here until you push me away and together
—”

He rushed the last word when I squeaked at the thought of pushing him away. Not just yet, it’d taken us both too much to get together.

“And together,” he continued, taking my hand and leading me back to the bed, “we’ll find answers.”

“To what the prophecy means?” Have I mentioned that I
don’t do the trust thing real well either?

“Yes, to the prophecy.”

“And my being a shaman?”

“I’m sure your father will help there.” He raised his free hand to stop my jumping into the whole we’re-not-where-we-once-were-relationship-wise issue with my dad. We were doing better but shadows still remained. Bran continued, “We don’t have to solve that issue this week, this month or
anytime soon. But he will help, you know that?”

We paused by the bed, my feeling like a sulky kid as I nodded. “Yeah, I know that.”

“Good. And the shifter issue we’ll tackle, too.”

He’d said the “we” word. Hard to feel alone and overwhelmed when someone you cared about made it clear they weren’t going away, in fact
, they were staying close, to help.

“So we’re together?” I asked, looking at him, no doubt my heart was in my eyes because it sure damn well was making it hard to breathe.

“Yes. We’re together.” He gathered me in his arms then, which is the one place I wanted to be. Then he almost messed everything up by adding, “
Sometimes I want to hate you—”

My gaze locked with his.

But he wasn’t finished. “Because you have touched me like no other woman has ever touched me and I am changed until the day I die.”

Those were not tears in my eyes. So not.

Leave it to a warlock to break down my barriers.

“I know you’re scared, Alex, about what’s between us, but so am I. You hold my happiness, my sanity in your hands.”

When I could speak again I cleared my throat. “Damn, and here all I wanted was some hot, sweaty sex.”

He started laughing, throwing back his head in one of those deep chested it’s-good-to-be-alive chuckles as he scooped me up off my feet and tossed me on the bed. “Good! That works for me.”

Then he went on to prove it. Several times.

What aches and pains?

Chapter Sixty-nine

Stone sat on the arm of the chair in Ling Mai’s hotel room once again. Vaughn at his side this time. Only a week since the last time he’d met with Ling Mai alone. A lot had happened in one week. Alex was alive. A new member had joined who proved her mettle in a fight, though would take some time to settle in with the other women. Two younger recruits who looked like they’d become the nucleus of an Invisible Recruit Academy for young and gifted teens. Plus, the team had managed to stop a three-thousand-year-old demon from returning and annihilating mankind. The Council of Seven wasn’t so happy with them, being down to six members and their nasty factions exposed to outsiders.

Tough, they could deal with it. His team was still alive, though hurting, even more than last week, with the bandages around his shoulder and
ribs chaffing on a lot of levels.

Ling Mai walked in looking as she always did, calm, collected and totally enigmatic. “You are feeling well?” she asked of him.

“Well enough.”

Vaughn gave him a small nudge to his hip, probably one of the only places on his body not damaged. What? Was he supposed to moan and groan?

“Good.” Ling Mai cut short the glare Vaughn was giving him. “I have been considering what you said not long ago. About the need for further training and more recruits.”

“And?”

“Your concerns have merit.”

Stone bit back a snort. Damn right they had merit. Every fight they’d gone into so far they’d walked away from by the skin of their teeth. That was a
crapshoot waiting for casualties.

But Ling Mai obviously had an agenda. Nothing new there. She gave a soft cough as if to refocus him.
“I think it would behoove us to accept a small job, one where all the team is not needed to participate.”

Stone didn’t say anything, though the skin along his neck told him there was no such thing as a small job. Not in their line of business. It was Vaughn who was left to ask, “Meaning?”

“There is an item. A rare one which is called an
orkheos
.”

“An orchid?” Vaughn asked. Leave it to her to understand Latin or Greek or whatever language the word was in.

“The word orchid derives from
orkheos
but it does have other meanings.” She and Vaughn exchanged a funny smile.

“I’ll explain later,” Vaughn said to him as if there was a private joke.

They were going flower collecting now? He asked, “What’s so special about this orchid?”

“I have information which indicates this
orkeos
is a key which can lead us to more intelligence regarding the Seekers.”

“The ones Alex spoke about?” Vaughn asked, stifling a shudder that Stone caught in spite of her best attempt.

“Yes.”

“Do we have any other intel about who they are or what they want?” Stone
asked.

“Not enough to create an effective defense against them,” Ling Mai said,
her voice sounding determined. “I have the Librarian working on seeing what she can find.”

Ah, the all-knowing librarian. This mysterious figure who kept track of preternaurals, to figure out who bred with whom to see if their offspring were human or non-human. She also appeared to keep a tab on all things preternatural and then sold that intel to those willing to pay.

“So we do what?” Stone asked, zeroing in on business. “Send a small group in to collect this orchid, or
orkheos
?”

“That was my idea. We don’t need more than three or four agents at the
most.”

It was sounding too easy again. Then Vaughn spoke up, “If it’s a straight
snatch and grab undertaking I think it’s time Kelly led an assignment.”

Both Stone and Ling Mai looked at her,
waiting for the punch line.

Vaughn offered her palms up, classic body langue for giving. “I’m not
ready to be much help and neither are Mandy or Stone.”

Nice way to massage his ego
, which they both knew she was doing.

She continued
, “Nicki isn’t ready in spite of her shifter abilities. Alex needs some recovery time so why not let Kelly take the lead, and Jaylene and Nicki back her up with Mandy acting as control central in a stationary location.”

“She has a point,” Stone conceded, earning another poke at his
hip. At this rate it was going to be as bruised as the rest of his body. “If it is a straightforward operation.” His tone indicated that he was still concerned. Still, he continued, “Running an op will give her some more self-confidence. Make her a stronger team member.”

Vaughn was nodding even as Ling Mai cleared her throat again. “There
might be one small problem.”

He knew it. He absolutely fucking knew it. It was never easy, especially
with Ling Mai. He found himself bracing as he asked, “Because?”

“Because the orchid is blooming near the area of Africa where Kelly’s
sister was killed.”

That was it? He glanced at Vaughn before saying out loud what they were
both thinking. “That shouldn’t be an insurmountable issue.”

“I don’t know.” Vaughn was pursing her lips and not in the good let’s-kiss
way. More let-me-throw-a-kink-in-the-works kind of way. “That could be very emotional for her.”

“Agents can’t afford emotions,” Stone snapped, wondering, and not for the
first time, what he was doing leading a team of all women. Talk about a touchy-feely quagmire.

“Don’t be stupid,” Vaughn shot back, then turned toward Ling Mai. “I’m
still sure Kelly can do an excellent job. Not—”she cut a sharp glance at Stone. “Not because she can not handle her emotions but because she knows there’s a job to do and she’s qualified to see it through.”

Whatever.

Ling Mai looked to Stone. “Do you agree?”

“Yeah. The part about letting Kelly lead. She’ll have back up. Vaughn and
I can give feedback via headquarters in Maryland. Those who need some healing time can get it. Let Kelly go in, find this
orkheos,
and get out.”

Ling Mai’s smile told him he’d said the right thing. The absence of Vaughn
poking at him also let him know he had her support, maybe not for the reasons she wanted, but it wouldn’t be the first time he said tomahto and she said tomato. So why was his gut telling him even easy missions could backfire?

THE END