More Than Life (Arcane Crossbreeds) (20 page)

“But I am not willing to risk your life.”
Raife gazed back down at her with a frown.

Knowing he’d heard her thoughts made her aware of just how much of her mind he’d conquered over the past couple of weeks. It was getting harder and harder to keep him out. It made her feel bare and vulnerable to him. His need to protect her was sometimes so tangible a force that it overshadowed everything, giving her the sensation that she was being swallowed up by it. She had to struggle for every breath.

She refused to live her life gasping for air.

Determination stiffened her spine and lifted her chin when she turned to stand fully before Forestor. She could feel the weight of Raife’s disapproval. “The Bay House is unlikely to rescind that order, and I’m fairly certain the Triumvirate and the Rebels aren’t going to give up anytime soon. That means I’m a hot-ticket item until we figure out what they want. So until we figure that out, I need to learn to exist with those threats over my head, unless I intend to live inside the walls of Incog indefinitely. And I don’t.”

“Right now you need to stay safe,” Raife bit off. “I won’t let you put yourself at risk just because you’re getting restless.”

Katya refused to acknowledge his words or even look at him. She tried to reinforce the walls in her mind, feeling Raife’s anger and frustration burst heavily against the barrier she created. “I agreed to stay and work inside this building because I needed your help and I had nowhere else to go,” she said carefully around the tightness in her chest. “Is my being a prisoner here a condition of that agreement?”

“That’s a bullshit question, Kat, and you know it.”

Forestor’s expression never so much as flickered as he watched her for a long moment. There was only a nearly imperceptible thinning of his lips before he sighed. “You put me in an untenable position, Ms. Schaffer. It’s against the rules of the Alliance as well as my own convictions to interfere with a mated pair.”

“None of us are members of the Alliance anymore, Mr. Forestor. Hell, we don’t even know what I am anymore. There are no rules to apply.”

“I don’t give a damn about any of that. I know exactly what you are – mine.”

His thoughts blazed through her mind, trying to leave a mark of ownership deep inside her where she would be unable to deny him. It felt as though he was trying to take her over, to force her acknowledgment of him. She tried to pull her mind from his, but he held her there, his mind firmly entrenched.

Shock resonated through her. Her flesh prickled with the sensation. Raife didn’t back off; he didn’t look away. She was held by him, pinned beneath the intensity of his claim on her, his determination to protect her. Panic welled inside her, and for a long moment, she thought she was going to choke on it. For just that moment, she was back in the stifling dark, not knowing when she would be released or if she would die there.

Forcing air through her lungs, she lifted her clenched fists, wrists up. The memories of her helplessness and impotent anger shot to the surface, and she pushed them at him. “Would you like to snap on the silver cuffs, place me in a silver holding cell? Are you going to withhold food and clothes and basic hygiene to keep me in line?” His thoughts flared with rage and horror. With pain. In that moment, she’d struck a direct blow before she even realized she meant to. His hurt ricocheted back, winging mercilessly through her before he pulled away from her.

Instinctively she wanted to soothe, to touch his mind, but the distance felt too great between them now. Not for the first time in the past months, she wished there still existed that easy bond that she’d depended on for most of her life. Now there was only passion and distrust, anger and the endless gnawing hunger for something she couldn’t understand. Even now her stomach tightened with it.

“I don’t think it’s a good idea to risk her safety,” Raife said to Forestor.

Katya continued to stare at Raife’s profile. She heard the steady beat of Raife’s heart pounding in his big body, and her gaze was errantly drawn to the flickering of the pulse in his neck. Her gums throbbed with a hunger that grew worse by the day. Closing her eyes, she felt the weariness descend on her, eating away at her strength.

“I went to Caltech,” Katya said tiredly, and she felt the faintest brush of Raife’s mind over hers. When she opened her eyes, he was staring at her. His brows were lowered, and he looked worried. Well, that made two of them. Her gaze dropped down to that slight flicker of his blood surging beneath his flesh before she forced herself to focus on Forestor. “It’s in Pasadena. The man’s address is only a couple blocks from a restaurant I used to eat at in college. I can shimmer us there—and back, if necessary—in a hurry. Those abilities have grown strong in the last few weeks.”

She got the impression Forester hadn’t missed a single blow in their silent struggle. His nostrils flared, and his enigmatic gaze slid over Raife before falling back on her.

“I’ll be able to copy his computer files in seconds. Besides,” Katya added, “I doubt the Bay House or the Triumvirate would expect us to just appear at the doorstep of a random ex-cop four hundred miles from San Francisco.”

Forestor gave a short nod. “I have to admit she’s right. She can’t be held here forever, and the threat against her is not likely to go away anytime soon.” He gave Raife a pointed look, though his words were directed at her. “You’re going to need to know how to defend yourself and those in your care.”

Katya gave a hesitant nod and shot a glance at Raife. A muscle in his jaw flexed, and there was that telltale spark in his eyes. They were more golden than she’d ever seen them when he turned them on her and raked them down her body with the unmistakable light of possession glowing behind their depths. She shivered in reaction.

“Just remember something while we’re out there; if things go from sugar to shit, I
will
kill everything that stands between us.”

THOSE WORDS WERE rolling ominously through her mind thirty minutes later when she shimmered them to the alley next to Bailey’s Bistro in Pasadena and stepped out of Raife’s arms. It was warmer here than San Francisco, and the change was abrupt, clinging to her skin with a heaviness that had nausea pushing at her throat. Shimmering that far must have had more of an effect on her than she’d initially suspected it would.

The smell of rotting food emanating from the Dumpster didn’t help.

Swallowing hard, she glanced up at him. He was closely tracking all movement around the alley, still silent after their heated discussion in Forestor’s office. He had an arsenal of weapons stashed into his tactical-style khaki pants. A formfitting tank was tucked into the waist, and a button-down shirt hung loose and open, hiding most of what she’d just watched him pack into his pockets.

Katya dragged her gaze from the ridges of his belly and pulled the modified cell phone from the back pocket of her faded jeans. She’d already loaded Defoe’s address into the GPS application. As they exited the alley, Raife glanced up and down the busy street and casually laid one muscled arm around her shoulders, pulling her in tight to his body.

He felt warm and smelled so good. It took effort to focus on the map displayed on her device.

“Three blocks north and then two west. It should be the second house from the corner,” she murmured and hesitated before sliding an arm around his waist beneath the open shirt. They looked like two normal people walking down the street. She watched the cars drive by with dull hisses of sound and thought how far from normal she felt. Five years ago, she’d walked down this street, but she hadn’t felt any more normal then either.

As they turned the corner onto Defoe’s street, Raife pulled her to a stop, his arm tightening around her shoulders. Two blocks down, there was a crowd of people on the opposite side from where their GPS said Defoe’s house was. Two Pasadena PD squad cars were parked in front of a house, and an emergency services van pulled away from the curb slowly. The coroner’s vehicle remained.

Well, that didn’t look good.

Raife steered her across the street and guided them into the crowd of people. She didn’t need to recheck her GPS to know that was Defoe’s house decorated with crime-scene tape.

“Hey, guy,” Raife said to a kid standing on the curb with a skateboard braced against his knee. “What the hell happened there?”

The kid shrugged with a snort. “Some dude bit it, man. Guess his wife came home and there he was.” The kid dragged his thumb across his throat with a comical expression and a dry gurgling sound. “Sucks, though. Now my mom’s gonna get all crazy on me.” He snorted again with a shake of his head and dropped his board down before jumping on.

Katya watched the kid ride up the sidewalk to a nearby house and pull to a stop to talk to someone else. She turned back to find Raife staring down at her. “What?”

“You doubt anyone would suspect we’d show up here at some ex-cop’s house, huh?” He cursed and ran a hand through his thick hair in agitation. “You said he was a PI, right?”

Katya nodded absently as her eyes raked over the scene across the street. The crime-scene investigators pulled up in a van, and she watched a woman get out and lift the hatch. The woman waved to one of the cops before reapplying lipstick and pulling her jacket off. From the way she sauntered off, she was more interested in flaunting herself than protecting her gear. That gave Katya an idea.

She glanced back at the house thoughtfully.

“You don’t happen to have the address of his business?”

“You’re looking at it.” Katya smiled when Raife cursed. Sliding from beneath his arm, she slowly maneuvered to the rear of the crowd. She needed an inconspicuous place to shimmer from.

“Goddamn it, Kat. Whatever you’re thinking, forget it,” he whispered.

Katya barely spared him a glance as she found a nicely enclosed spot between a section of fence and a bush with Raife following closely. “And pounding your chest isn’t going to work any better for you now than it did before. We need in that house.”

“Katya.” Raife rumbled a warning as she crouched down on her heels and focused at a point just behind the investigator’s van.

Kel had been working with her on this particular type of shimmering, and she’d been able to do it once before. Sanguen weren’t supposed to be able to shimmer to a place they had never been before, but Katya wasn’t the average Sanguen. She was more. Kel was always reminding her to forget everything she’d been told as a child. That wasn’t her world anymore.

So she built the image of that place across the street in her mind, the bend of the grass, the shadow of the hatch. Eyes intent, she focused on the scent of the air, the feel of it against her skin. When her body started to tingle, she glanced up at Raife. “Don’t kill anyone while I’m gone. I’ll be right back.”

The sound of his throaty growl made her smile as she shimmered. A sense of elation accompanied the faint tingling as she reappeared exactly where she wanted to. Shaking off the dizziness, she came to her feet and glanced around to be sure no one noticed her sudden appearance.

“Where the fuck did you go? I can feel you nearby.” Raife’s voice in her head, despite sounding a little past disgruntled, was a comfort.

She picked up a red jacket with the forensics-unit logo emblazoned on it as well as a pair of clear glasses. Quickly slipping into both, she gripped the handle of the evidence case and sidestepped so she could see Raife on the far side of the road.

“I’m just paving the way, fire breather.”
She gave him a little salute with the case and felt the heat of his anger roll through their connection when he spotted her.

“You’ve got five minutes, little kitten, before I start racking up a body count.”

“All I’ll need is two.”
Katya sent the thought to Raife with a roll of her eyes and headed for the house. She flashed the badge hanging from the jacket, careful to keep a finger over the face in the photo, and the cop at the door nodded her through. That was easy enough. Thank God the forensic investigator was a blonde.

She’d barely made it across the threshold when the scent of cigarettes and blood slammed into her. There was a faint thread of something else too. It was vaguely familiar, but she would first have to get a big enough breath without gagging to discern what that something else was.

Initially her intention was to get inside and then find a safe place to shimmer so she could come back later when all the officials left. Yet as she cautiously approached the scene, she felt a sensory onslaught. Emotions and impressions were so strong and unguarded in the humans standing around that she could almost see them radiating off their bodies like heat. If she could sort them out, she might be able to get some information before Raife started growling again.

Inhaling deeply, she pushed down the nausea from the scent of death and blood and focused on that faint, musky odor. Her nose wrinkled as it hit her. Guardians. A jolt of fear ripped through her, and for one brief second, she could feel them at her back, feel their claws.

“You got three minutes left. Talk to me.”

But the scent was too faint for the Guardians to still be around, and she knew that. She had to reinforce that rationale in her mind and focus on the job at hand. The coroner had stepped away from the body and was talking to a detective, so Katya moved in and leaned down cautiously to get a better look at the body of Defoe. He was crumpled on his side, one arm above his head and the other behind his back. His face had a gray cast with dark ash stains marring his skin. Bruises. There were abrasions on his hands and arms. He’d tried to fight. She could see where his chest had practically been ripped open, and blood pooled beneath him. Some of it had coagulated in thick dark clumps on the gleaming wood floor.

Katya’s stomach turned. Tossing a quick glance to be sure she wouldn’t be noticed, she leaned in farther and drew in a deep breath through her nose. Definitely Guardians.

“Katya? Tell me what the fuck is going on.”