Deviant Knights (16 page)

If she were meant to be his, she would come to
him willingly.
 
With
open arms.

****

Alain stood in the corner, carving an apple with
one of his sharp daggers, throwing bits into his mouth as Michel sat in the
oversized chair facing Thierry’s desk attempting to look unaffected.
 
He was anything but unaffected, the
need to know the truth gnawing at him like
the maw of an
angry beast.
 

Thierry dug through materials, readying himself
to share his thoughts with the group.
 
As
usual, the large oak top was covered in old tomes and papers, a virtual
treasure trove of medieval and pre-medieval manuscripts.
 
If a museum curator ever saw what was housed
in this library, he or she would faint dead away.
 
The Templar Historian was constantly
researching, charting, and seeking more knowledge.
 
 
Thierry
had always been the scholar of the group, his nose always in some book.

He’d also been their conscience.
 
Wise even before Gaia had gifted them with
eternal life, Thierry had always been the one man they all could rely on to
bend his ear to listen and give sage advice.
 
He always had the answers they sought, and if he didn’t, he could
usually find them or set them on the path to find it themselves.

Michel had always envied that self-control and
insight.
 
And did even more now than
ever.
 
Rage still filled him at Gabriel
and
Kadence’s
night together.
 
Her light shone bright, and he wanted a taste
of it in his life.
 
Gabriel had gotten
there first.

Gabriel had trusted in her when Michel had been
unable.

The pair came into the room as his thoughts
wound down.
 
He averted his face, unable
to look at the satisfaction that glowed around them.

Thierry looked up from his papers and smiled at
the two.
 
“Have a seat.
 
I think I have found something that will
interest you all.”

He continued as they sat, “I have acquired
several old, handwritten manuscripts recently and determined they were from one
of the older pagan religions that centered near
Gaul
.
 
This particular sect followed Gaia and worked
in harmony with the Earth.
 
They talk of
five female
demi
-goddesses that embodied all of
Gaia’s
traits collectively, as well as a race of women that
all carried
Gaia’s
blood, that would come to Earth
when Gaia needed
them
most.”

Michel sat up at that, his interest piqued.

“I’ve been working for months to translate the
manuscripts, so some of this should be taken with a grain of salt, but it
appears the
demi
-goddesses are to be a healer, a
warrior, an enchantress, a princess…” Thierry looked directly at
Kadence
.
“…and a seer.”

“A seer?”
 
Michel wasn’t sure what
Thierry was getting at.

“A woman who could see evil
and knew the enemy on sight.
 
From another manuscript I found, I believe
the seer could also have the ability to dream-cast, or see the future in her
dreams.”

Kadence
stood, her hands digging into the pockets of her loose jeans.
 
“The dreams only started a couple of years
ago.
 
And seeing the crazy faces just
started in the past few days.
 
So these
skills
are new, not something I was born
with.”

“Moving to NYC put you in closer range to
Gabriel, so that could account for the dreams beginning, I suppose.
 
Did you see the faces contort on the
attackers in the penthouse?”

“I can’t rightly say that I even looked at their
faces in the melee.
 
The Errol Flynn
swashbuckling of swords kept my attention.
 
But I don’t recall noticing,”
Kadence
said.

“It may have started once you absorbed their
ashes.
 
But I can’t see anything in the
manuscripts that denotes any sort of catalyst or if the
demi
-goddesses
would be born with their gifts.”

“What’s the purpose of the five?”
 
Gabriel asked.
 
“It says when Gaia needed them most?”

“That I’m not exactly sure of.
 
But I think that their arrival marks a major
shift in something.
 
I don’t like to
guess without complete assurance, but I think we all need to be ready for
cataclysmic events.”

Michel was quiet, as they all were, as minds
seemed to churn in the room.
 
“So you
think that
Kadence
could be this seer?”

“I’ve found nothing about the seer absorbing the
ashes of evil, but you told me she’d seen demons chasing you as well as the
dreams she had of Gabriel prior to meeting him.
 
The Spanish sects had a name for the seer…
Profeta
del mal.
 
The Prophet of
Evil
.
 
I can’t
say for certain, but my gut tells me she is her.”

The Prophet of Evil?
 
Still no
real
answer.
 
Michel had relied on Thierry’s gut reactions
on many occasions, but in this, it wasn’t enough.
 
He needed concrete evidence.

Feeling eyes on him, he turned to see
Kadence
staring.
 
He
saw the look of disappointment in her eyes and felt as if she could read him
completely, knew what thoughts were going through his mind.
 
Guilt coursed through him at that look, but
he had been hurt too badly to allow the emotion to gnaw at him too long.

“It’s not enough for you, is it?”
 
Kadence’s
eyes grew
dark with fury.
 
“What do I need to do to
prove to you that I’m not going to harm any of you?”

Michel sat back, looking at the anger boiling in
her glare.
 
He knew she had every right
to be angry, but she didn’t understand all the pain he’d endured due to his
trusting of a woman.
 
He wanted to let
loose.
 
He wanted to pull her close.
 
But he couldn’t.

She would accept that, or she would turn
away.
 
And she deserved better than
that.
 

He loved the fire she enflamed inside him, loved
the light she shined in on him.
 
She was
special in a way he’d never sensed in another.
 
But ultimately, he feared his darkness would extinguish her.
 
And he couldn’t live with that.

Yet, he also couldn’t live with not tasting a
bit of her.
 
She’d been in his head and
his blood for days now, and after last night, he knew that he couldn’t resist
her charms.
 
At least
once.

He was a selfish bastard.
 
He knew it.
 
She knew it.
 
He just hoped he
wouldn’t ruin her.

Chapter Thirteen

Kadence
stormed out of the room without waiting any longer for Michel to
answer.
 
The asshole!
 
He looked so smugly sexy lounging in the
chair, watching her closely, his very thoughts an expressive wave over his
usual cold expressions.

Thierry’s suppositions bounced around in her
head.
 
A part of Gaia?
 
What did that spell out for her?
 
Did that mean she would see the evil, demon
things for the rest of her life?
 
Would
she run from the Illuminati as well?

Was she irrevocably tied to these men forever?

Her life had been plain.
 
Boring.
 
But she had one important thing.
 

Choice.
 

She was being sucked into a war she hadn’t known
existed, to do…what?
 
She saw evil.
 
She wanted to un-see it.
 
Perhaps Gaia could take it all back, make her
normal and boring again.
 
Remembering her
desire to be a part of these men’s world…the illusion she clasped hold of that
first night…she’d wanted to live their kind of life.
 

Be careful
what you wish for.

She was now into it up to her tits and it didn’t
look like there was any way back to terra firma.
 

Gabriel and Michel had already made an indelible
mark on her.
 
They’d marched into her
life and pulled her from it, kicking and screaming.
 
No matter what she wished for, she couldn’t
go back to who she’d been.
 
They’d
changed her, molded her into a new person, one who knew about a whole new world
that existed right under her nose.
 

Having her eyes opened was a life-altering
experience.
 
She just hoped she would be
all the better for it.

Michel couldn’t see the good in her at all.

She still wanted him, even after he was such a
prick that she shouldn’t want to even touch him with a ten-foot pole.
 

Her thoughts drifted to the shared intimacies of
last night, and how she wanted him to fit into their lovemaking.
 
And that angered her even further.
 
He didn’t deserve a place with them.
 
There was no offering of trust or yielding to
his instincts.
 
She knew he sensed the
truth, but refused to open himself to the possibilities.

Yet she yearned for his touches.
 
Even if they burned her.

Then she thought to Gabriel.
 
He accepted her for what she was, had helped
her keep the darkness at bay, for at least one night.

He demanded her submission to him.
 
But to what end?
 
There was so much going on in her life now,
so many unanswered questions that even if there had not been the separate issue
of Michel, she would have refused to surrender to him completely.

But she could turn to him.
 
Feel cherished instead of reviled.
 
And he made her forget all the bad, for at
least one night.
 
He’d shown her he could
control her passions, drive her sensuality, and push her over the edge into
satisfaction like no other man before him.
 

She didn’t know what tomorrow brought.
 
But she could give her body over to
Gabriel.
 
Not for forever, but for now.

Now was all she had.
 

****

Gabriel was fuming at Michel.
 
Kadence
had done
nothing to deserve this treatment.
 
His
fist tightened with the need to knock some sense into his Templar brother.
 
It wasn’t the first time the two had come to
blows.
 
The last time had been when Michel
had refused to listen to Gabriel in regards to
Paloma
.

Would a woman always be at the center of their
fights?

Last time, Gabriel had been right.
 
As he was now.
 
Michel needed to stop comparing
Kadence
to the Spanish whore who had tortured him.
 
Gabriel had warned Michel that the woman had
been trouble; he’d sensed it from the moment he first laid eyes on her.
 
Seeing
Paloma
in
the present hadn’t been easy for either of them, especially Michel, and Gabriel
was sure it helped fuel his feigned indifference.

Thierry interrupted his thoughts.

“If this is true, we need to find the other
females and bring them close.
 
Or they
may find us, as
Kadence
has.”
 
Thierry sat behind his huge desk, his eyes
drifting over them.
 
“Illuminati attacks
have been increasing as of late, and the assaults have been very close to
home.
 
Personal, it seems.
 
They were in your home, Michel.
 
Nicolas called.
 
He and Matthias were confronted just this
morning.
 
He barely escaped with his
life.
 
And there was a woman with them.”