Eternal Pleasure (5 page)

“Oh.” Wasn’t much she could say to that. “You came a long way to give people a second chance. Weren’t there any people in Ireland who needed help?” She did some mental wincing. This was none of her business.

He paused before answering. “I’m not from Ireland. I was just staying there for a while. I was born in Colorado. Fin and all of us worked together a few years back. We decided to join up again.” Ty stood to the side of the window, looking out. “I understand you had another job before Fin offered you this one.”

That was a neat change of subject. “I worked part-time at the zoo to help with college expenses. Mom is a veterinarian and Dad is the Director of Animal Programs, so I grew up around exotic animals. The job didn’t pay much, though.”

“Didn’t your parents make enough to help you?”

Her pride rose up and hissed at him. “I pay my own way. Always.”

He just nodded.

Her turn to ask a question. “Where’re we going tonight?”

“First we’ll eat at a Mexican restaurant near here.”

She nodded. “I’ll drop you off and then—”

“You’ll eat with us.”

“That’s not the usual—”

“
I’m
not the usual. You’ll go to dinner with us.”

“Fine.” Whoa, dominant male sighting.

“Then we’ll visit a few clubs.” He was good at not being specific. “You’ll stay in the car when we go into the clubs.”

“Sure.” Kelly had learned her lesson last night. Every time she got out of the car to follow him, bad things happened. Tonight she’d sit back and let him do his thing alone. She glanced at her watch. “Guess I’d better clear out before this guy shows up. Thanks for the coffee.” She’d never thought of herself as a coward, but Kelly had a feeling she didn’t want to be a part of their meeting.

She could feel Ty watching her every move with unblinking intensity as she put her coffee cup in the kitchen. His gaze made her feel like…prey. Confusion followed that thought. Prickles of fear hurried her out of his apartment even as a surge of excitement trailed her into her own. The excitement made no more sense than the fear had.

Closing her door, she leaned back against it. Time to get her act together. She’d drive him wherever he wanted
tonight while remaining cool and emotionally detached from everything having to do with Ty Endeka.

Just before she moved toward her bedroom, she heard someone pounding on Ty’s door. The mysterious Q had arrived.

Ty couldn’t answer the door with a snarl on his face. He had to put his predator instincts aside. This was his partner, not someone competing with him for supremacy. Now that they were both away from Fin, things should be easier. But that didn’t mean they wouldn’t want to tear out each other’s heart at the beginning.

He didn’t know which of the Eleven Fin had chosen to work with him. Ty hated suspense. He needed to get this over with. Taking a deep breath to calm himself, he opened the door.

“Why’d you take so long to answer the freaking knock?” Glaring back at him was the black-haired guy who’d had so many questions the night before.

“Why didn’t you ring the damn bell like everyone else?” He motioned the man into his living room because he couldn’t make his lips form an invite without growling. Reluctantly, he stood aside to let the guy pass him. What he’d been before, still
was
, thought that letting another predator into his home was dumb.

“You first.” The man’s expression said he didn’t trust Ty either.

They stood staring at each other. Ty curled his lips away from his teeth at the exact moment the other man did the same thing.

A moment rife with the threat of violence passed before the other guy suddenly relaxed and grinned. “You’re protecting your place, so you get a pass this time. And yeah,
you had bigger teeth than me back then, but now it’s a level killing field.”

Had
was the operative word. This confrontation only proved he had a long way to go before beast and brain worked together. Good thing Kelly wasn’t here to see him acting like a primitive jerk. He turned and walked over to the window, making sure he stood to the side of it. In his nightmares, Fin had assured him that Nine didn’t think he and the others were too much of a threat right now, so he wouldn’t be putting a lot of effort into hunting them down. But Ty remembered the black cloud from last night. Jumping out of a third-story window might not kill him, but he’d be doing some major hurting afterward.

The other man dropped onto the nearest armchair. “Don’t worry. If you jump, I’ll save you from going splat. You’re lucky Fin teamed you up with me, because I’m the only one who could.”

Ty threw him a sharp glance.

He laughed. “No, I can’t read your mind, but your expression said you were thinking about Nine’s little visit.”

Ty rolled his shoulders to ease some of the tension. “Good guess…Quetz, isn’t it?”

The other man’s smile disappeared. “Call me that again and I’ll tear your face off.” His voice was a low, rumbled warning. “It’s Q. I don’t know why Fin thought his dumb-ass names would stick. He should’ve let us pick our own.”

Finally Ty smiled. Well, well. A weapon. When an enemy lost his temper, he stopped thinking. And once he stopped thinking, his next step was dead.

He’s not your enemy
. Ty exhaled deeply. He really needed an attitude adjustment. But this whole working-as-a-team thing would take getting used to.

“Q it is.” Ty wandered over to the couch and sat. “I guess Fin played games in your head last night too.”

“Yeah.” Q yawned. “Not too restful.”

“Lots of complicated stuff.” Ty’s head had been whirling with Fin’s tale of godlike immortals, the end of time, and mass extinctions. It would take a while to get it straight in his mind. “Fin seems to know a lot about these guys. Wonder how he got his info?”

Q shrugged. “I don’t think we can worry too much about the big picture right now without our heads exploding. We have to take it one night at a time.”

“Right.” Ty nodded. “So these immortals are on a tight schedule to wipe out all humans by December twenty-first, 2012. They’re hitting major cities first, gathering an army of nonhumans who’ll exterminate the human race.” Just like that vampire had killed the man they’d found last night. Fin had taken a look at the body before calling the police. He’d stuck that tidbit into Ty’s dreams along with everything else. Too bad Ty couldn’t tell Kelly her mythical monster lived. Or not.

Q frowned. “Why bother with an army? If they’re so freaking powerful, why not just whack everyone themselves?”

“Who knows. Fin said they can’t kill humans directly. It would probably violate some weird cosmic code.” And why only kill humans? If you were going to go to all that trouble, why not get rid of everyone? Another question for Fin.

“So our job is to find out how this Nine is recruiting and stop him.” Q looked worried. “I see a few problems here. One, we can’t kill him. Two, we have to trap him and then send his ass back out into the cosmos. Once there, he can’t
return until the end of the next time period. Did Fin tell you how we wrap him up and ship him out? I don’t think FedEx delivers in that neighborhood.”

“With Fin, information is given on a need-to-know basis.” Ty saw his own frustration mirrored in Q’s eyes. “Give me a minute to change.” Once in his bedroom, he quickly stripped.

There was only one positive to this whole picture. These guys were so arrogant they thought one of them could take care of a whole city. Nine was in charge of raising an army and visiting random acts of violence on humans in Houston. So take out Nine quickly, and that would leave eight remaining immortals, plus their boss Zero. Ty didn’t have to worry about Zero. He belonged to Fin.

When Ty returned to the living room, Q was pacing. “We start at this Mexican restaurant. Fin said the owneris otherkin. She’ll help us if she can. Then we hit some clubs to see if we can pick up anything.” He raked his fingers through his short black hair. “It’d be great if we had a clue what we were searching for.”

Ty grabbed his jacket and headed for the door. “Nine will need to offer an incentive or else no army. That could be drugs or something else. From what Fin said, most nonhumans aren’t naturally joiners.”

“I don’t know. The thought of world domination might interest a few demons.” Q pulled the door open and walked out into the hallway. He waited while Ty locked his door.

“We only need one driver tonight.” Ty stuffed the keys in his pocket.

“Yeah. I figured that. I gave Neva the night off. Told her not to leave the apartment.” He frowned. “She was dressed for her own kind of hunt, so I don’t know if she’ll stay in.”

Ty refused to acknowledge the surge of pleasure he felt at the thought of being around Kelly for the night. He’d have to make sure he didn’t let himself get out of control or…

Wait. Q hadn’t been with a female for a long time either. Just the thought of Q sniffing around Kelly triggered a killing rage. He took deep breaths, tried to hold himself together. Tearing his partner apart on the first night would sort of sour the team spirit.

“You. Will. Not. Touch. Kelly.” Ty forced the words through clenched teeth.

Q smiled, not a nice smile. “Feeling possessive, huh?” But he didn’t make any promises.

Ty beat back the need to rend and tear. Q wasn’t stupid. Fin would lay a mega hurting on them if they didn’t play nice together. Ty was so full of aggression, he hoped they’d run into Nine himself tonight. He’d get rid of lots of negative energy by launching Nine’s immortal ass into space himself.

With anger driving him, Ty didn’t even think about using Kelly’s doorbell. He pounded on her door so hard it shook.

Q grinned. It was the kind of grin Ty knew he’d had when Q went ballistic over his name.

Growling low in his throat, he raised his fist to rain down more punishment on Kelly’s door.

Kelly decided she would listen to her mom from now on, because there was a home invasion attempt going on right outside her door. She squinted through the peephole. Ty?

She opened the door and blinked. Ty had his hand raised to knock again. Kelly backed up a step as a wave of testosterone-driven rage smacked her in the face. “I heard you the first time. People ten blocks away heard you.”

Kelly held her breath as he lowered his arm. Good grief, he was actually shaking as he worked on his control. What had brought
that
on? “We’re ready to leave. This is Q.” Ty didn’t even look at the other man.

Kelly did. Tall, only about an inch shorter than Ty. Hair so black it had a blue sheen. Lots of lean muscle. The same hard, savage kind of face as Ty, but with deep blue eyes. Both men had faces and bodies that sent out a primal call to all women. A call that promised to put adrenaline-pumping excitement into their lives and bring heart-stopping sex into their beds.

She chose Ty. Not that she was in the market for all that was scary and wicked, but a little fantasizing wasn’t a bad thing. And his pheromones or whatever sang to her.

“Hi, Q. I’m Kelly.”

Ty glowered. She’d never seen an expression that qualified for that word, but his did.

“Glad to meet you.” Q grinned as he shook her hand, holding on to it a few seconds longer than necessary.

She sensed Q was enjoying Ty’s temper a lot.

“Time to move it.” Ty turned away and strode down the hallway to the stairs.

Q waited while she got her purse and locked the door. “Don’t mind Ty,” he said. “He’s a throwback to when males pounced from behind trees and then had wild sex in the grass with the female of their choice.”

“Caveman?”

“A little further back.”

She smiled. “And you?”

He returned her smile. “The same, but I hide it better.”

By the time she reached the car, Ty was standing beside the front passenger-side door. Kelly didn’t say anything as she unlocked the doors and the men climbed in. Ty gave
her the address of the restaurant, and then both men lapsed into silence. But the tension between them twanged like an out-of-tune guitar string.

Sometime during dinner, the guys relaxed a little. Kelly paused halfway through her chiles rellenos. She was enjoying her meal, but not half as much as the two men were. “If you like Mexican food, you’ve hit the mother lode in Houston.” Maybe it was just her imagination, but they ate as if they’d never tasted Mexican food before. Was that possible? Kelly mourned for their deprived taste buds.

Ty started to answer, but he never got the chance.

“Welcome to my restaurant. Fin told me to expect you.”

Kelly glanced up.

The woman standing behind Ty appeared to be in her seventies, with fluffy gray hair forming a halo around her face. Her body had a comfortable, grandmotherly roundness. Kelly’s gaze returned to her face. Definitely not grandmotherly. No laugh lines around
her
eyes or mouth. The rest of her might say senior citizen, but her eyes said something else. Something that reminded Kelly of the terror she’d felt when she first saw Ty. And if she wasn’t having a paranoid event, Kelly didn’t know what the hell it was.

The woman’s mouth formed a tight smile when Ty looked at her, but her eyes remained cold and assessing.

“Right. You must be Celia Gustavo.” Ty’s smile held no more warmth than hers.

Kelly frowned, unable to make sense of their body language.

Celia nodded. Her gaze shifted to Kelly. “Introductions.” It was an order.

No matter how great her food was, Kelly hoped Celia
stayed out of the dining room. She shivered. The woman sucked every bit of warmth from the room.

Q spoke up. “This is Kelly, our driver. I’m Q, and that’s Ty.” He nodded across the table.

All Q’s playfulness from a short time ago had disappeared. There was an edge to his voice that Kelly didn’t understand. She put down her fork carefully. Appetite gone.

Celia continued to study her for a moment before shifting her attention to the men. “I see.” She seemed to be trying to decide something. Finally, she nodded and turned back to Kelly. “Do you mind if I borrow your men for a few minutes?” Her expression said she didn’t give a damn whether Kelly minded or not.