Eternal Embrace (27 page)

“Whoa, not like that,” Agni rushed out and backed up, giving Jax a look as if he expected her man to tear him up. She gave him two seconds to worry, then busted up laughing.

Agni immediately frowned. “I can’t believe you just did that,” he grumbled.

“I can. Watch it, she bites hard too,” Jax said, sounding so pleased she tucked herself closer to his side. She knew what they were doing, trying to lighten a screwed-up situation with humour.

“Yep, and don’t forget it,” she said, giving the arrogant demon a stern look. “Come on, let’s go,” she added, heading towards the side of the hospital. She always used the back door. No one else, other than the ambulance when there was a dead on arrival, ever used it—at least at night. Occasionally someone came out for a smoke, but not this late. She turned the corner, took the flight of stairs next to the closed loading dock doors and froze at the top. Yellow police tape hung over the door. Behind her, Jax wrapped a comforting arm around her waist.

Agni cursed under his breath. “We should have thought of this,” he grumbled.

“I thought Hunter would have done something about it,” Jax countered. “Come on, just follow me, and if there is anyone, we can say you need to get your things, right?”

Joey nodded. “I guess so.”

“If things go south, Agni can distract them while we shift to your granddad’s,” Jax said, ushering her to the door. “Go ahead, I’m right here.”

“Okay.” She reached out, ignoring her trembling fingers, and pressed the code. Immediately the door clicked open. Jax grabbed it and swung it wider, giving her a push, and they were inside. Silence met them. There was no more police tape, either. Whatever happened to cause the yellow tape must have occurred outside, or they hadn’t hit the actual crime scene yet. Nothing looked wrong or out of place in the dimly lit hallway. A gurney stood by the closed elevator doors and from where they stood, they couldn’t see her lab doors.

“Will there be anyone here?” Jax asked quietly.

“No, not normally. Even if they hired someone else, or if someone is filling in, they won’t pull the night shift like me.” She headed off, reassured by Jax right behind her. They walked silently, she noticed, but still her anxiousness increased.

“Easy, it’s going to be all right. We’re just going to see what we can find out,” Jax murmured.

“Yep, sure. I just—” She cut off when they reached the entrance. It felt like forever since she’d walked through those double doors after Hunter and Viktor, scared, excited and worried the others would find out how frightened she truly was and send her back to the morgue. Now, she had Jax, a man who loved her above all else, a future ahead of them that blossomed with possibility and yet back here, the old worries, the old loneliness settled over her.

“No, none of that. We are one now. Always, remember?”

“Yes, I remember. Always.”

“Okay, let’s check this out then,” he said.

She gripped his hand and he rubbed his thumb over her knuckles, shouldered the door open, and led her into the room. They all stopped inside the double doors. The place looked like a bomb had gone off. The examining table was tipped over, water pooled on the floor and the old florescent lights were half ripped out of the ceiling. But what drew her eyes the most was the line of doors that had once housed the dead. They were blown outward, not all of them, but one in particular, she realised, had been blown to smithereens. The rest lay scattered, ripped off by some huge force that had thrown them after in a fit of rage.

“I take it this wasn’t the way you left your work?” Agni murmured, moving around the damage to lean over and investigate the nearest open door.

“No, no, this wasn’t.” She glanced at Jax and took courage from him. “He was there.” She pointed to the bottom row. The door there had been crumpled but still hung from one hinge. Jax walked over and squatted next to her, motioning Agni closer.

“Claw marks,” Jax murmured.

“Indents, too, like he busted his way out,” Agni said, nodding. He stood and turned. “Then destroyed the place in a fit of rage?”

“Oh, God, then he was…they did, I mean, he’s—” She broke off, unable to finish her thoughts aloud.

Jaxon soothed her with gentle pressure on her hand. “Don’t panic, Joey, it might not be where he was—”

“Oh, but Jaxon, it was. It was where he was and worse, there were marks on him, burn marks.”

“And? What does that mean?” Jaxon asked.

“I think it means that he was in that warehouse, and they used something on him, something like electrodes. Hunter knew. Where is
she
?” Joey paced the area, tears threatening at the thought of Evan exposed to the evil she’d witnessed. She’d had Jaxon, a warm, strong presence—who did Evan have?

“She should be here, but if she thought Evan had been at the warehouse, maybe that’s where we should be,” Agni offered.

Jax suddenly caught her hand and moved back to the corner of the room where her desk had stood but now lay tipped over on its side. “Visitors,” he hissed. “Not immortal, humans. Two. Hit the mist, demon.”

Agni saluted and nodded to the other side of the room. As she watched, he walked to the lab’s long counter on the far wall, his form became misty, then he was gone.

“What…what did he just do?”

“It’s a demon thing. Here, quiet, I’m shadowing us.”

A moment later one of the doors swung open and Jax settled her closer to his side as two humans dressed in black military-type clothing entered the room. They reminded her of every sniper movie she’d ever seen. Only scarier. These men were killers, much as Jaxon and Agni were—and, she now understood, she was too. Only these men were fragile, unable to recover from mortal wounds or syringes like she’d experienced.

“The humans.”

“Yes, from the warehouse, right?”
She thought one of them looked familiar, maybe the man with his chest cut open.

“Yes. They must have escaped.”

She glanced at him for the laugh in his tone.

“What? They’re resourceful.”

“Huh, nosey more like it.
Worse, unlike us, they are in more danger—they could die, right? Or worse, become whatever it is Evan is now! They should not be here.”
She tapped Jaxon on the nose and smiled when he mock bit her.

The man from the warehouse froze and the other, a blond, stopped a step behind him. They both hunched over, ready to use the assault rifles they aimed in a low arc around the room. A red bead of light swept by, going over their heads, and Jaxon’s grin grew.

Grayson, she thought his name was, stood straighter and said, “Steady, they are in here, just keep your—”

“Gray, you look good, man, how’s things?” Jax asked, stepping out and catching the bullet the blond fired at him in his fist.

Joey swallowed a scream and moved out of the shadows. “Watch it! Geesh, aren’t you supposed to be trained or something? Do you always shoot first?”

Grayson and the man behind him both froze. Slowly they lowered their weapons slightly and stood to their full height. The blond looked at Jaxon, then at her, but didn’t look sorry and he didn’t lower his weapon as much as Grayson either.

“It’s good to see you survived,” Grayson said.

“Really? Why do I sense that’s not what you truly want to say,” Jaxon said. His voice held such power she shivered. This was Jaxon, badass and ready to knock some heads together if need be. He opened his fist, tossed the bullet on his palm and with a frown, dropped it. The ping it made on the linoleum floor sounded loud. “Nice way to say hello.”

Grayson shot the man next to him a frustrated look, but immediately shrugged. “It’s been tense.”

“Yeah, I bet. What do you know about this?” Jaxon indicated the room with a hand.

“Not much. This happened two nights after you broke us out.”

“What? Two nights? But that’s just two days ago…” Joey trailed off. What did that mean?

Without warning, both human men grimaced and swore. They hunched over, hands over their heads, then ripped something from their ear.

“What—” Joey began, but shut up when the doors opened again and Hunter waltzed in, tapping each man on the back of the head with a grin. Another woman stood behind her, but stalled at the doors and didn’t move even when one swung into her.

“Yo, boys, you are in a wee bit of trouble, huh?” Hunter said, distracting Joey from examining the dark-haired girl. “Seems you’ve been busy since last we met.”

Agni misted in behind them. “Busy and into shit that doesn’t concern them.”

Grayson spun to confront Agni, then stepped back and nearly knocked the poor woman by the door over.

“Oh!” She stepped farther into the room to avoid him and motioned to Hunter. “Hunter, come here,” she whispered. Her accent was thick, Scottish, Joey recognised under the urgency. “Now, Hunter,” she said and flung her hand in a warding gesture when Jax stepped closer. “Dinnae move.”

“What? What gives,
chica
? These are the people—well, not these two, but the rest, they need you to cloak something—” Hunter broke off with a hiss and turned to Joey, or rather Jaxon and stepped backward slowly. “What the hell is that?”

With an exasperated snort, the black haired beauty tossed her hair. “That’s what I was trying to tell—”

“All right, all right. So,” Hunter let out a deep breath through her nose like she smelt something bad. “That is what you want Aubrey to…work on?”

Agni frowned at Hunter, then examined the new woman, Aubrey, Joey assumed. “This is the ancient witch?” he asked.

“Ancient? Who said that? This is Aubrey, she has skill, but that…” Hunter waved at the satchel. “That’s—”

“Evil,” Aubrey said quietly. She walked forward and motioned the two humans aside. When they didn’t move she turned her head and gave a frustrated huff. “Move back, are ye daft? That”—she pointed at Jaxon with a scowl—“will surely kill ye, and no’ in a nice way.”

“Is there a nice way?” Agni asked, sounding philosophical.

Aubrey stared at him as if he’d lost his mind, must have decided he had and dismissed him as a lost cause to meet her eyes instead.

Joey liked her instantly.

“Can you help with it?” Joey asked, then stepped forward. “I’m Joey, by the way, and this is Jaxon and the man behind you is Agni. I’m not sure who the trigger-happy man is, but the other is Grayson, who owes us for getting him out of a messy situation.”

Aubrey glanced at each person she introduced, and gave her a quick smile when she shot her dig at the trigger-happy soldier.

“I am Aubrey Mac Cinaed. I’m no’ ancient, but I do come from a different time, you ken? I can try to”—she nodded towards the satchel—“aid you with this.”

“Are you saying you can sense this thing?” Jaxon demanded.

“Aye, who cannae? It’s…” She grimaced and swung her long hair over her shoulder. “I can shield you from it. ’Twould be best. Hunter has told me you wish to kill a man with this.”

“Not a man, a monster,” Joey clarified.

The humans, silent until now, shifted on their feet, and Grayson folded his arms over his chest. “What man?”

“Not one of yours, but if that’s why you’re here still, you might be out of luck. Try looking in Russia,” Jaxon offered. Through their link, his humour blossomed bright, but she shook her head at him. He admired the humans, and she supposed that was good, otherwise both men might not be standing.

“Jaxon means that when we were spun out of that warehouse”—she waited until Grayson nodded—“some of the changelings went with us to a place in Russia. The changelings, for the most part, left us after we got out of there.”

Silence filled the lab and Aubrey stepped closer. A look of concern filled her small face. “We need to confine this, now. I dinnae know about these changelings, but this, this is evil and evil such as this calls to other wickedness. ’Tis a thing of destruction, seeking out to kill, and I dinnae think it cares who it kills, as long as it tastes death.”

Jaxon nodded. “Do it.”

Aubrey glanced at him then down at the satchel.

“Do you need to see it?” he asked.

“Nay, nay, I dinnae want to see it, being this close is bad enough,” she murmured. She stepped forward until she nearly touched the satchel, and lifted her hands over it. Joey stared at her hands, shocked to see light blue swirls, looking like tattoos, bleeding outward from under her skin. The marks didn’t simply appear though, they linked and moved under Aubrey’s skin. When Joey glanced at her face, the same marks darkened her forehead, and on both her temples.

Jaxon lifted a dark eyebrow, still not completely sure the witch knew what she was doing, Joey could sense.

“What are those marks?”

“Pictish markings, I think. I’m old, but not that old.”

“Funny, very funny. But the Picts, they were around when the Romans were…right?”

“Yeah, around then. The Jade Coven, Hunter’s coven, traces its roots to that time, I believe. Aidan would know more about this, but you kinda pissed him off when you dissed him.”

“I did not!”

“I loved how you dissed him.”

“Jaxon, focus.”

“I can concentrate on you, the room and the witch all at the same time.”

She ignored how sexy that was, and focused back on Aubrey. The language Aubrey used sounded musical, but the words weren’t familiar. Aubrey’s brow furrowed as she chanted, clearly working on whatever it was she did to the knife.

Hunter stood at her side, watching as well, but Agni had moved away to lean against a wall, appearing bored with it all. The two humans stood on alert, and the blond seemed to be trying hard not to stare at Hunter. Joey frowned at that, but Aubrey made a louder sound, and suddenly the bag began to glow with interlocking swirls of blue, growing tighter and tighter, like a snake winding tight around something. Darkness, though, began to ooze outward and Aubrey’s chant grew louder, sharper in response.

“Step back,” Hunter said to the human men. “You’re too close to her.”

Grayson frowned and the blond zeroed in on Hunter, then Aubrey, but took several steps back.

“You’re interfering with her spell, you know?” Hunter snapped at Grayson. “Step back, over there.”