Deceiver's Bond: Book Two of A Clairvoyant's Complicated Life (55 page)

When I smiled my answer, Tíereachán cupped the back of my head and leaned down to kiss me. Just before his lips met mine, I whispered into his mouth, “When you get there, don’t move. I’ll come for you,” and then, heart in my throat, I slipped him sideways.

Without me.

If I hadn’t been so worried about casting Tíereachán to oblivion, I might have fist pumped at Azazel’s reaction to his minion’s sudden disappearance. The demon’s roar shook the room, constricting my ears and jarring me right down to my bones.

Time to dropkick this asshole back to Hell.

I wrapped my telekinesis around the gateway and, instead of pushing at it physically, I applied equal pressure from all sides, squeezing it for all I was worth. But, still—it refused to
goddamned
budge!

“Pop, you mother!” I snarled.

I glared at the yellow spray paint. Why wasn’t it—?

The circle.
Shit!
Of course!

The circle had to be physically breached before I could close it. Until then, magic would bounce off. But how the heck was I going to break it? Anyone charging the gateway would be at the mercy of the demons that crouched along its periphery, just waiting to pounce.

I wracked my brain for ideas but could think of just one that offered any hope for success.

I levitated that ridiculous knife from my backpack and slipped it into Red’s waiting grasp. The weapon was almost taller than his little bear body, but I felt him seize the handle and easily remove its leather sheath.

I pretended to check on Kieran and the others but whispered over my shoulder, “Red, the circle. Break it.” There was no time for further instruction. No time to say, ‘I love you,’ or ‘Be careful.’

Before I could change my mind, I propelled Red and the knife to the least guarded section of yellow paint.

Azazel’s gaze latched on to Red’s trajectory, its eyes going wide with understanding. It snarled something demonic, obviously shouting orders, and then the mammoth demon dropped to all fours and charged me. Tile splintered and flew in all directions as the weight of the demon’s claws tore up the floor with each massive stride. The basement shuddered under my feet.

The two hellhounds nearest Red simultaneously leapt at him.

I froze in place while my heart tried to batter its way out of my body.

Come on, Red …

Azazel made it half-way out of the circle’s boundary when I felt the hard bubble surrounding the gateway suddenly give way. With my TK pummeling into it from all sides, the portal instantly collapsed inward, like a balloon that had lost all of its air. I plucked Red away from the circle’s edge, just as one of the hounds angled its jaw to snap him up. I swear I heard the gnash of teeth when it missed.

The imploding portal swept up the now bellowing Azazel and its host of snarling hellhounds, yanking them to its center and swallowing them down until they shrank and dissolved from view.

The resulting silence was as immediate as it was welcome.

I caught Red in my outstretched arms and sank to my knees, clutching him to my chest. The knife clattered to the floor, forgotten.

Holy shit.

I did it. I closed the freaking portal. A demonic gateway. And I totally closed it. How about that?

Just to be sure, I probed the area, feeling for any unusual vibrations.

Nothing.

In fact, the quiet in the room was absolute heaven. If it weren’t for the smell, I might have breathed a monumental sigh of relief.

Naturally, Fisk didn’t let the silence last. “Fuck me,” he declared.

Red patted my arm, and I relaxed the chokehold I had on him. “My dear, you did well,” he said.

“So did you,” I replied and, in spite of the grim surroundings, I managed a small smile.

I released the others from my barrier and returned Red to his perch inside my backpack, but this time, he kept the knife at his side.

The tips of Kieran’s brown Cole Haans appeared on the floor in front of me. Raising my gaze, I took in his expression. Relief. Pride. Ferocity. Tenderness. If he kept looking at me like that, I might start believing I was ten feet tall and bulletproof.

He held out his hand, and I accepted his help up, hardly pausing for balance before sliding my arms around his waist, pulling him tight, and pressing my ear against his chest. He returned my embrace in equal measure. I loved listening to his heart beating beneath my ear. I’d never get tired of it. The only thing better was listening this way with no clothes between us. As I let the warmth and comfort of his embrace seep through me, I wondered whether he felt the same way.

The temptation to stay in his arms, to avoid dealing with what I’d just done, what still needed to be done, and what the future would bring, was huge. And Daniel … dear, sweet, annoying, stubborn Daniel. Dead. My throat constricted. Reluctantly, I pulled out of Kieran’s embrace. Behind us, Fisk paced back and forth, continuing to grace the room with his colorful vocabulary.

“A fucking adept. With the goddamned
Deceiver
. Perfect. That’s just fucking perfect,” he ranted.

I’d had enough. My initial gut check had been right. The guy was an absolute ass. “For God’s sake, Fisk. Take a fucking pill,” I snapped. Apparently his foul tongue was contagious, but, seriously, a girl could only take so much.

His amber eyes narrowed, but before he could issue what was surely a scathing retort, Wade insinuated himself between us, getting in Fisk’s face. Wade murmured something intently and then, wonder of wonders, Fisk kept his mouth shut. Wade was definitely starting to grow on me.

Wade turned and said, “We have much to discuss. Although, I’d suggest we go upstairs.”

He snapped his wrist and his bo staff magically disappeared. I blinked at this display but couldn’t take the time to spare it any thought.

“In a minute,” I replied. “He’s waiting. I have to bring him back.” My stomach clenched. He’d be there. He would. I refused to consider the possibility that I’d just cast someone to oblivion, especially a guy I cared about.

Fisk’s eyes tried to bug out of his head. “What?” he roared.

Kieran didn’t look much happier than Fisk.

I gritted my teeth. “Like it or not, that man has everything to do with the fact that we’re still standing here. In case you weren’t paying attention, he clued me in on how to close the portal. And just so you know, I’m feeling pretty darn twitchy right now.” I swept the path of my index finger to include everyone, even Kieran. “Making any kind of aggressive move in his direction will not be looked upon kindly by me. Got it?”

I didn’t get much of a response, other than the major stink-eye from Fisk, but I didn’t want to waste time grilling them about it. Tíereachán was waiting. He had to be.

I grabbed Kieran’s hand and pulled him a few steps away. “I need you to trust me,” I murmured. “Please. Keep an eye on things while I do this.” I went up on my tiptoes and whispered, “I can’t tell how they’re going to react, and I don’t want to hurt anyone.”

He frowned but nodded. “Do what you have to do. They’ll not interfere.” He moved away, planting himself a body length from Fisk, and folded his arms.

I closed my eyes and tried not to think about what I was about to do since this was decidedly something I’d never done before. And besides that, I didn’t know whether it was possible to be any more freaked out and not dissolve into hysterics. So I didn’t dwell on it. Didn’t think about the jolts of anxiety making my skin crawl and my stomach clench. I just did what I needed to do. I reached for that strange place, slipped my web sideways into the nether, like hundreds of questing tentacles. I cast my net wide, searching for Tíereachán’s resonance until, out of breath and on the edge of tears, I finally,
finally
lit upon him.

My heart fit to explode, I wrapped Tíereachán up, giving him the equivalent of a telekinetic full-body hug, and pulled him back to Earth to stand beautifully naked two feet in front of me.

Voilà!

“Hey,” I said, grinning and pressing a relieved hand to my chest. Soul-crushing worry followed by total relief had coiled me up so tight it was all I could do to stop myself from doing a victory jig. “You miss us?”

As I considered him, I’ll admit, his continued serious expression gave me pause. For five agonizing seconds, fear froze me in place, smile going stale on my lips, until he shocked the hell out of me by dropping to his knees at my feet. He took my left hand in both of his and pressed his lips to my knuckles. His uneven breath seeped through the cloth of my glove. Even within the loose grip of his fingers, I could feel him trembling.

The action was so unexpected, I had no idea how to react. I shot a wide-eyed look at Kieran who returned my gaze with a narrowed, disapproving stare.

Tíereachán made no move to return to his feet or release my hand, so I finally knelt in front of him while trying like hell to ignore the stunned and, in several cases, downright censorious stares of everyone around me.

When he finally lowered my hand from his lips, I rotated my palm to grasp his fingers. I gave him a friendly squeeze. “Not hearing you say something cocky is scaring me. You need to fix that, pronto.”

The raw emotion that played on his face caught my breath. “You’ve freed me,” he rasped. He shook his head, awe filling his eyes. “There is nothing I wouldn’t do for you, Lire. But being an ass at this point in time isn’t one of them.”

“Bullshit,” Fisk snapped, making me jump and spoiling the moment. He stepped closer, but not close enough to challenge Kieran, and added, “Demons cannot be freed. They can only be redeemed. And
that
is not something Lire can provide, adept or no.”

Fisk was lucky I had restraint because I briefly considered giving him a telekinetic slap upside his head. “Perhaps not,” I retorted, “but Tíereachán isn’t a demon. He never was. He’s a sidhe.”

“Tíereachán?” Fisk exclaimed, sounding equal parts stunned and incensed. Narrowing his eyes, he hissed, “Lies.”

Kieran’s entire body jolted before turning to stone. “Consider to whom you are speaking,
half-blood
. My future mate does not lie.” His already cool voice turned positively menacing. “You have been warned.”

Future mate?
My stomach dipped at the thought and I might have issued a shocked gasp.

“This from the sidhe who lived a sham under the Amhaín’s very nose?” Fisk sneered.

“John, that’s enough,” Wade said, interrupting. “Do not make me tell you again.” Pulling his stern gaze from Fisk, he stared down at Tíereachán. “You will explain. Upstairs. Then we will decide what is truth and what is not.”

Interesting. It seemed Fisk was not the high man on the totem pole after all.

“Very well,” Tíereachán replied, releasing my fingers and easily rising to his feet.

Both Tíereachán and Kieran leaned in to offer me their helping hand. I took Kieran’s, mainly because, as his lover, it was the right thing to do. But it wasn’t lost on me that if I’d accepted Tíereachán’s assistance, the trip to my feet would have put me face to face with parts of his anatomy I had no business considering.

“Thanks, baby,” I said, leaning into Kieran’s embrace, before I turned to consider the others.

Kim’s sharp gaze bounced between Tíereachán and Kieran. Jackie stood at her side, protective hand at her back. Michael huddled several feet away, hugging himself and staring at the floor, his eyes haunted.

“After you.” Wade gestured toward the stairs.

I murmured to Kieran, “Go with Tíereachán. I need to talk to Michael for a minute.”

I could tell he didn’t want me leaving his side, but he nodded before shooting Tíereachán a suspicious glare and jerking his head toward the stairs. “Lead the way,
cousin
.”

Kieran may have defended my honor, but that didn’t mean he believed Tíereachán. I just hoped things didn’t go nuclear without me there to mediate or, at the very least, administer telekinetic wedgies.

I waited for everyone to head upstairs before approaching Michael. He was slow to consider me.

“Michael … I’m sorry. So, so sorry. I wish—” my voice cracked and I swallowed before continuing, “I didn’t know. I didn’t know what I could do. If only …” My vision blurred, but it was just as well. I couldn’t bear looking at his broken expression any longer.

“He just wanted you to be safe and happy,” he said softly. “I know you think he was using you, but he wasn’t. He would have done anything to protect you. It was his idea that Kieran stay at your place, for him to guard you. Not mine.” He snorted angrily. “If it had been up to me I’d have kicked that bastard out on his ass at the first opportunity. I knew he was trouble.”

“Michael—”

“But I never thought he’d end up in your bed,” he continued, voice harsh, “but not Daniel. He knew. When Kim told us the two of you would likely bond, that you’d become their next emissary, Daniel wasn’t even surprised. So I cornered him about it, about keeping shit from me, and he finally told me the divinors had predicted it. Said that I needed to get my fucking act together, that my role was just as important as yours. You had your destiny and I had mine. You and I would be partners but not in
that
way. Not in the way he knew I wanted. He said I could piss everything away by dwelling on the past or I could man up and do what’s right. But I didn’t know what that meant. I didn’t know what that
fucking
meant, until now.”

His gaze slipped toward Daniel’s body, but before it could dwell there for more than a second, he jerked his head away and stalked to the other side of the room. He stopped not far from the open safe, hands fisted at his sides, and then spun to face me. “Don’t you see? He knew he was going to die, just like he knew about you and Kieran. The divinors must have predicted it and yet he still came with us. He didn’t try to change his future. He didn’t abandon his principles, even when—” His voice broke along with the set of his shoulders. He covered his face and turned away.

Maybe it was a mistake, considering the way he felt about me, but when I saw him fall apart, I couldn’t stand by and watch. I flew to his turned back, slipped my arms around his waist, and pressed my cheek to his shoulder. I held him close, absorbing the tremor of each strangled sob, and it shattered me. The memories imbued in Michael’s clothing spiraled into my mind, but I kept them behind my shield, thinking only of Daniel. After a long minute, we both quieted and finally pulled apart.