Blood Trinity (Belador #1)(41)
Author: Sherrilyn Kenyon

If Isak was human, then he couldn’t cut a deal with a Nightstalker for a handshake, which meant he shouldn’t be able to get any solid intel. She laughed to sell her next words. “You make it sound like Nightstalkers are informants.”

“They are if they shake hands with someone who has power.”

She reassessed Isak. “You said you were human.”

“I am, but I have resources.”

Ah, crap. “I’d be careful doing that if I were you. Most of the Nightstalkers are a half bubble off to begin with.”

“Not the one I’m looking for.”

“Who’s that?”

“He’s called Grady. I’m on my way to find him and get some answers.”

She fought to keep her shoulders relaxed. Grady wouldn’t tell Isak a thing about her, right? But then it hit her that Grady needed an hour of human form Wednesday night for something.

Would he trade her for that?

THIRTY-ONE

Evalle rode silently in the panel van with four Nyght Raiders and considered the clear skies growing lighter each minute as they reached downtown Atlanta. She had less than an hour until daylight only because she’d convinced Isak that Nightstalkers found her on occasion, not the other way around.

And he hadn’t wanted her exposed to the sun.

He’d been very accommodating after that kiss.

She couldn’t think about that right now, with a bigger worry looming. Grady. She had to find that old ghoul and make sure he didn’t talk to Isak.

How was she going to do that and not agree to give Grady the hour he wanted tomorrow night?

Just once she’d like a simple problem to solve.

The van parked next to where they’d picked her up. Wet heat slapped her skin with the unwelcome rise in temperature after her chilly air-conditioned ride.

“Need anything before we depart?” Laredo said.

“Sure. How about one of those demon blasters?” She gave her GSX-R a quick once-over just to appease him, but she’d have known immediately if anyone had touched her bike.

Isak’s man didn’t crack a smile.

Save her from men with no sense of humor. “You’re free to return to Yoda.”

He climbed into the van, which rolled away.

Isak hadn’t asked to see her eyes again, but he would eventually press that issue. If she ran out of time with the Tribunal, would he still offer to help her if he found out she was an Alterant? Or just rid the world of one more threat?

Lot of ifs and little time to spend on any of them.

Grady should have intel by now, but after an hour of stalking the old ghoul, she had a sick feeling something was very wrong. Where was he?

That hour he wanted on Wednesday night played loud in her mind. What was he willing to do to get that?

She’d have to head home soon or dig out her protective gear and ignore the heat already climbing into the nineties.

Nightstalkers normally gathered within minutes if someone with supernatural abilities stood in one spot and radiated a power field. She’d been doing that for the past hour. One wispy figure finally showed up, when Evalle would normally be engulfed in a crowd of them when Grady wasn’t around.

With no other offers, Evalle cut a quick deal and traded a handshake with a scraggly woman who had to be in her eighties. She got right to the point. “Where are the other Nightstalkers?”

The old woman lifted a hand with paper-thin skin that showed every vein and used her scrawny fingers to brush at the delicate white hair tufted over her head. “They took the others.”

“Who took the others and when?”

“Kujoo. They didn’t act normal. Offered Nightstalkers a trade to stay in this form for more than ten minutes.” She sniffed when a tear streaked along her wrinkled face.

“What’s wrong?” Evalle put her arm around the woman. She would hunt down Tristan and make his bunch very sorry if they had hurt this woman when they’d been here.

“I was too slow,” she mumbled again. “They swore we could stay this way, human, forever.”

Evalle hated having to douse the hope in the old woman’s voice, but she had to stop Nightstalkers from going with the Kujoo. “It’s a lie. The Kujoo are turning Nightstalkers into something that can’t hold a human form or a ghost form. Something evil. Pass the word around to hide from them.”

Tears drizzled down the old woman’s face and dripped off her chin at the stark disappointment in losing the glimmer of hope that she could return to her prior life. Evalle felt as though she’d taken a crayon from a child, but she wouldn’t let the Kujoo trick any more of these poor souls.

Grady was a wily old guy who understood evil. Maybe he hadn’t shown up here because he was hiding from the bad guys.

Maybe she’d convince herself that was the case in another lifetime, when in truth she had a sick feeling he’d been caught by Tristan and the Kujoo.

Daylight had pressed in close by the time Evalle made sure the old woman was safely back in her Nightstalker form and Evalle reached her underground garage.

She struggled to stay awake all the way to her apartment. Feenix thumped, thumped, thumped down the hallway, running to meet her. But he stopped short of flying at her.

He must have seen the desolation in her eyes that soaked through her bones. She forced a smile to her lips and made it real for him. “Hi, baby.”

Clapping the sides of his body with his fat little hands, he waddled to her, grunting undecipherable words, then hugged her leg. She patted his head. “Let me get a shower and type a letter, then we’ll play, okay?”

He danced around, chirping with happy sounds, before he landed on his beanbag, where he normally waited for her.

After a quick run through the shower, she pulled on a T-shirt and underwear, then plopped down on the bed with her laptop. Ignoring the possibility of being locked away by the Tribunal as a worst-case scenario or having to ask Isak to help her disappear as best-case scenario would be foolish. She opened a blank document and typed, “To Tzader and Quinn: If I lose my case with the Tribunal and don’t return …”

Thumping and grunting noises reached her before Feenix showed up at her bedroom door. He was dragging his stuffed alligator and a pair of her dark sunshades. She had five pairs besides the one she was wearing.

He flapped his wings and flew to her bed, landing softly beside her. When he tucked his wings, she lifted her arm so he could crawl up against her. He put on the dark sunshades and settled against her chest with his alligator tucked under one arm.

She hugged him, her heart aching over the impossible thought of leaving Feenix, her apartment, Tzader, Quinn … and the rest of the team who had stood by her tonight.

And there was Storm, who knew she was an Alterant and had no issues with that.

She was beginning to think he might actually be telling her the truth about not helping Sen put her away. But he couldn’t prevent Sen from carrying out a Tribunal decision.

Using one hand to type so she didn’t have to give up any chance to hold Feenix, she pecked away. The pain of losing this little guy cramped her lungs when she tried to breathe, but she would make sure he was never left to depend on the world’s mercy like she had been.

There was no mercy in this world for misfits.

Tristan had called that one right.

When she finished typing the letter, she attached it to an email set to send to Tzader and Quinn on Thursday by noon. If the Tribunal locked her up, the email would ensure Feenix’s future was secure, but her baby would be lost without her.

People liked dogs and cats.

Not something that ate lug nuts and breathed fire. Only Tzader and Quinn would protect him.

He stopped muttering words and sounds when she closed her laptop. She should tell him she might not return, but she couldn’t do it yet. “Let’s go see what’s in the kitchen utensil drawer for you.”

Feenix turned and hugged her with one arm. “Mine.”

She swallowed against the lump in her throat and hugged him back. “You’re mine, too, baby.”

For now.

There had to be something she could do, but what? The only Nightstalkers left in the city had no intel on the Kujoo. The human woman with the rock couldn’t be tracked after teleporting. Vyan clearly did not like Tristan, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t going to hand the woman and the rock over to the Kujoo.

Sitting here with time disintegrating was driving her nuts. She had to do something.

She scrolled through emails while she groused mentally and stopped at one from Nicole with a subject line of IMPORTANT. It read:

Must see you soon. Even daytime.

Evalle lifted her phone and dialed Nicole, who answered on one ring. “Hi, Nic.”

“Where have you been?”

“Butt deep in alligators. What’s up?” Evalle shushed Feenix, whose eyes lit up with excitement when he realized she was talking to Nicole.

“You’re in deep trouble.”

“Tell me something I don’t know, Nic.”

“Come over and I will. Not on the phone. Sorry, but I don’t trust it with the work you do and what I want to tell you.”

Nic had a point. No telling what Isak could tap if he found her number. But going to see her friend now meant putting on gear to ride in the heat and she had no time tonight. Ugh. “Can you give me a hint?”

“You looking for a stone?”

Oh, shit. The heat be damned. “I’m heading your way.”

“Ride.” Feenix pushed away and stood up on the bed, bouncing as she ended the call. “Go ride. Go ride.”

She’d taken him for a late-night ride on the bike once and he’d loved it, especially when she’d stopped by Nicole’s to show Feenix to her. He loved Nic.

Nicole had never driven a vehicle, and she required someone to drive her wheelchair-accessible van when she did travel. For her, Evalle would make the ride in daytime. And to get a hand up on finding this stone. If traffic worked in her favor, she could make Avondale in fifteen minutes. Riding alone would be quicker, but she had little time left with Feenix if she lost her bid with the Tribunal. “Come on, baby. Let’s get you dressed and go for a ride.”

Feenix tossed his alligator up in the air and caught it, stomping back and forth on the bed. “Go ride, dammit.”

“We’re going to have to work on your vocabulary,” she told him on the way to finding his T-shirt. “You’ll need those sunshades, too. We’ll be in midday sun.”

But she was wrong. By the time she’d covered herself in a custom lightweight Aerostich riding suit she’d just received in the mail and wheeled her bike out of the elevator car, the skies were overcast, with temperatures in the eighties.

Not ideal, but a welcome break.

Putting the side stand down, she turned to Feenix, who hopped out of the elevator and landed next to her.

“Don’t forget, you’re a robot today,” she told him.

Feenix immediately straightened up and pretended to move his hands and feet like a robot while he walked around in a circle.

“You’re good.” She put goggles on him to cover his eyes that glowed sometimes, and gloves, to keep him from using his power inadvertently. Then she lifted him up to the back of her bike seat. He gripped a looped strap on each side that gave him the look of a stuffed animal attached to the chassis.

The black T-shirt Nicole had given her for Feenix raised a smile to Evalle’s lips. Just above his potbelly, it read EVL TOO. Nicole’s idea of the perfect match for Evalle’s vanity motorcycle tag, which read EVL ONE.

“Go fath, dammit.” Feenix kept staring straight off the rear of the bike, but his mouth curved up.

“Will you stop saying ‘dammit’ if I get you a bucket of lug nuts?”

“Yeth. What ith bucket?”

“Never mind.” Her gear was lightweight but hot standing still with no air moving. “Sit up straight and don’t talk to anyone. Got it?”

He looked at her and pointed at his mouth, as in you told me not to talk.

She smiled. He had her there.

Climbing on, she cranked the engine and kinetically closed the elevator door.

The ride to Avondale, which was east of downtown Atlanta, took a few minutes longer than expected. A good little backseat rider, Feenix leaned with her through the curves and made a high-pitched whistling sound when she revved the RPMs.

Nicole lived in a remodeled warehouse near Main Street, not because living in a loft apartment was the style for a woman in her late twenties but because she liked the sense of community she found here.

Evalle used the security code to enter and parked in the secured garage beneath the four-story building.

Feenix hopped down and hurried over to the elevator, where he flapped his wings to reach the button.

“Feenix! Robot, remember?”

“Thorry.” He dropped back down to the concrete and did his robotic circle walk.

Evalle reached the elevator as the door opened and two women walked out. They took one look at Feenix and stopped. Evalle lifted her key ring, which had a small black box on it, and pointed the box at Feenix. “Walk into the elevator.”