LIAM (The Rylee Adamson Epilogues, Book 2) (2 page)

Something I would deal with another time.

Maybe.

Or maybe I’d just ignore it and hope it stopped bothering me. Yeah, that sounded like the way to go. Stuff those thoughts as deeply as I could, away from the front of my brain where they would do nothing but distract me from the task at hand.

A task I refused to think about failing.

I jumped out of the Jeep and slammed the door hard enough to bend it inward. I didn’t really know why I’d even tried the new one other than the fact that I’d bought it for Rylee to replace the old clunker she’d been driving for years. I thought, stupidly, that a new toy would help draw her out of her head, help her see that there were still good things in the world.

That she was one of those good things.

It hadn’t worked.

And now, I had no choice but to take said clunker with its multitude of dents, bangs, and bent rims. With a leap, I slid across the hood of the new Jeep, scratching it, my bag of weapons and extra clothes dragging behind me. In seconds, I was in Rylee’s black, beat-up hunk of metal. The seat sagged under my weight and I shifted it backward to accommodate my long legs. Longer than before. I shook my head, not for the first time getting hung up on the details of my new body.

“Liam, wait!”

I twisted in my seat and stared at the kid running out the door. Levi was tall and gangly like so many teenage boys who hadn’t found their stride yet, who hadn’t started to fill out. His messy brown hair and light brown eyes reminded me of Alex. He stumbled on the bottom step as he yanked a heavy winter coat on. He had a woven cap he pulled down over his ears. Like he was going somewhere. “I . . . I’m coming with you.”

Oh, this was not happening. The kid wanted to help. I could appreciate that. But not today, not on this run.

“No, you’re not.” I turned my back on him and rolled up the window without even considering his request. The kid had only been with us a few days, and while I knew he was a good kid, he wasn’t really a supernatural. He was a half-breed elemental that could barely touch his abilities. Or maybe he couldn’t touch them at all, which made him just a body to be in the way. Cannon fodder on a good day. The other part of it was he was far from solid in another way—his past had broken him from what Rylee had told me, making him an unknown when it came to a crisis or scenario that would require snap decisions and bold thinking. I only knew a little bit about the abuse he and his sister had suffered at the hands of their father, but I didn’t need to know more.

I’d seen it with too many kids on the streets, the perpetual hunch in the shoulders, the flinch of muscles if you made a move toward them. The darting eyes. They weren’t shady; they were like dogs that had been beaten down, chained and starved. There would come a point where the break would happen and either he would lash out, or totally fold in on himself. I couldn’t afford for either to happen on this job.

He didn’t slow down. “Rylee said I should come with you.” I could hear him even with the doors shut and the windows rolled up. Wolf ears were incredibly strong even when I was in human form. Not that I’d been able to shift since I’d been in Faris’s body.

Again, a problem for another day.

Not today.

Levi hurried to the other side of the Jeep as he zipped up his coat against the constant blowing wind here in North Dakota. “She says she has a feeling you’re going to need me. And maybe you’re going to need this.” He opened the door and let himself in as he held up a cell phone attached to a long cord. He plugged the cord into the lighter.

A cell phone. Damn, that
was
a good idea. There was no way I could handle a cell phone without it shutting down on me within seconds of touching it. This would give me access to Rylee. I could get information to and from her without trying to find a landline, something that was becoming increasingly more difficult.

I bit back the words that spilled up my throat and then swallowed them. If Rylee wanted him to come, there was a reason, more than just the cell phone. Even I was smart enough to know that. I trusted her more than I trusted myself some days, so it looked like Levi was coming along for the ride. I locked down the irritation of my tagalong.

“Fine. Get in. But you do what I say, when I say it. This is no Sunday drive to Grandma’s house, and I can’t be pulling your ass out of the fire, got it?”

He nodded and shut the door on the passenger side of the Jeep, his face a careful blank. From what I knew of his father, Levi had learned to deflect a lot of abuse, verbal and physical. But I didn’t have time to feel bad for laying the truth out. The kid had to get used to things done my way. And I had to hope he didn’t melt down along the way.

I stuck the key into the ignition and threw my bag of weapons into the backseat.

The engine rolled over with a thick grumble that sounded like at least two pistons were sticking, and a third ready to blow up. Again. I shook my head and backed out of the driveway so quickly, the Jeep rocked on two wheels for a moment.

Levi gripped the armrest on the door, his eyes shut tightly. But he didn’t say anything.

I slammed the Jeep into drive and hit the gas. We needed to get to the farm on the outskirts of Bismarck as fast as possible.

The ogre tribe that Rylee had seen, the first and only ogres we’d run into in the six months since the battle with Orion, had been in Seattle.

Taking a flight to Seattle was an option, but only if I managed to not cause the plane’s engines to fail. Something I’d done in the past. On top of that, between booking and waiting on a commercial flight, I was sure Ophelia could get me to Seattle faster, and today it was all about speed.

The fear that I was not going to make it in time to save the triplets roared up in me, rolling my stomach in one giant knot. I grimaced and drew in a slow breath. My training as an FBI agent kicked in hard, and I let it take over.

There was only one way I was managing this trip. Boxes.

I took my emotions and shoved them into a box next to all the other fears hidden in the depths of my heart, locked it tightly and threw it to the back of my mind. Tasks were what I had, and what I would deal with. I focused on that and put the image of the babies away.

Slowly the fear left, replaced by a growing determination and a single goal set in a series of steps. But ultimately, it came down to one thing.

“So we’re really going to an ogre tribe?” Levi asked.

I glanced at the kid. “We have one job, and one job only, and that is to find a female ogre. The ogre mob Rylee dealt with in Seattle is extremely territorial. They have humans working for them, and they kill any supernatural who shows up on their turf without question. From what she said, they are smarter than the average ogre too, or at least, they think they are.”

From the corner of my eye, I saw Levi frown. “How are we going to convince them they should help us? I . . . I’ve found violent people aren’t really prone to reason.”

He had a very good point, one I’d seen over and over as an FBI agent. The more violent a person, the more buried they were in their own twisted logic. Snapping them out of it was rare. I didn’t answer Levi right away because I didn’t know the “how” of what we were doing, only that we were doing it. First step was to get to Seattle as fast as possible.

Convincing the ogre tribe to help would be no easy task. Then to further convince an ogre female to come back with us . . . I’d be begging the gods to help on this one. But without a female ogre, the ogre triplets would die. Their bodies shutting down as each second passed. That was not an outcome I was willing to consider, and again, I pushed those thoughts away.

“Mother Nature is a bitch, Levi. Just like some animals can’t be fostered before a certain age, ogre babies are the same. Without the specific nutrients from an ogre mother’s milk, the triplets will die. We aren’t letting that happen, which means between here and Seattle, we’re going to come up with a plan. There has to be at least one female ogre that would be maternal enough, and willing, to help.”

He slowly nodded. “Okay, so we’re really just going in on a hope and a prayer.”

I ran a hand through my hair and glanced in the rearview mirror as I sped down the highway. “Yeah, something like that.”

A hope and a prayer. That was Rylee’s style, though to be fair, she usually involved more than a bit of sword swinging and f-bombs. That wasn’t my style.

Even though I said I didn’t have a plan, the seeds of one were sprouting. The quieter we were, the better. Slipping in on the outskirts of Seattle and keeping clear of the ogres until we scoped out the situation would probably be best.

Maybe we could cut one from the herd and do an interrogation.

I glanced at the speedometer. The farm was a couple hours away, and we were making it in record time. The image of the three ogre babies, limp, unmoving, their normally colorful skin pale, and their tiny hands clenched as though in pain . . .

No.

My jaw tightened. I would not allow it to happen. They were my boys as much as Marcella was mine. As much as Zane was mine. I would fight with everything I had, down to my last breath, to save them.

“Um. Liam. The airport is the other way,” Levi said.

“We aren’t going via plane. Ophelia is going to help us.”

“The dragon?” he blurted, excitement all over him like a puppy teased with a bright, shiny new toy.

I nodded. “Yes.” I didn’t elaborate that Ophelia was the reason I doubted I was going to need Levi’s help. Dragons were naturally immune to magic, and they were as tough as they came. Though, it had been ogres who had taken out Blaz, Ophelia’s mate and one of Rylee’s closest friends. I had to believe she would be willing to help. She was, after all, a mother herself and bonded to Rylee so she knew what the ogre babies meant to her.

The highway was mostly vacant, dotted here and there with vehicles or the odd tractor moving like a plodding green or red speed bump.

I wove the Jeep around vehicles, and as beat-up as it was, the clunker was still responsive in handling.

Levi grunted as we skimmed next to a car. “Um, that’s a bit close.”

Two vehicles in front of us blocked the way, but I didn’t slow. That wasn’t an option. I jerked the wheel hard to the right and hit the gas pedal, taking us up the shoulder, spitting gravel behind us. Levi’s face paled. The gravel tugged at the Jeep, pulling it toward the deep ditch. I kept the wheel steady, muscles tense as I kept us from rolling over altogether.

Barely.

Signage for the posted speed limit raced toward us in our improvised driving lane. The space between the sign and the large truck on my left was going to be tight. I held the Jeep steady and kept the gas pedal down as far as it would go.

“Hang on, this will be close.”

“Holy shit, man!” Levi yelled as we shot through the tight space, the Jeep’s right side mirror ripping off against the sign pole with an audible tear and ting of metal on metal.

“Hold on to your panties,” I said as we sped down the shoulder of the highway, finally passing the blockade. I pulled the wheel to the left, once more on the main road. I didn’t look at Levi, but I could feel him staring at me.

“I thought you were a cop?” he breathed.

“FBI,” I said. “Doesn’t mean I won’t break the law if I need to.”

“Yeah. I’ve seen that before,” he whispered. There was pain in those words I didn’t like.

Which led me to the obvious next question. “Was your dad a cop?”

He shrugged and shook his head. He stared out the window, lost in whatever memories haunted him. “No one believed us when we told them what he was doing to Belinda.”

I kept still and let him talk. As if the floodgates had opened, the words poured out of him.

“They said he was one of the best police officers Bismarck had, and they wouldn’t hear us bad-mouthing him because we were a couple of spoiled kids. He told them Belinda was a whore, that she was a druggie. That I was her pimp.”

Anger sliced through me because I’d seen it before. Not just cops, but anyone in power who thought they could use their position to break the law and get what they wanted no matter who it hurt. I almost eased off on the gas pedal. Almost.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean I would break the law like that. When someone you love is in danger . . . you will do anything to save them. No matter the cost.”

He shrugged. “It doesn’t matter now, Rylee fixed it. He never would have stopped, you know, what he was doing to little girls. He told me once, when he was drunk, he already had another girl picked out after Belly went missing.”

It took me a moment to remember that Belly was Belinda. “Who did he have lined up?”

“There was a single mom across the street who was struggling to keep food on the table.” He stared out the windshield. “He’d already been charming her. She had a ten-year-old daughter.”

My guts churned with disgust and a slow-burning rage. I almost wished Rylee hadn’t shot the bastard in the head, just so I could have the distinct pleasure of watching him piss his pants as I came at him in wolf form.

Levi shifted his weight in his seat, drawing my eyes to him.

For just a moment, it felt as though he was someone else. The image next to me wavered and it was if Alex sat beside me, not Levi. That did make me really look at him. Same brown hair, gangly build, but the eyes were wrong. Alex’s eyes were never shuttered with past pain as Levi’s were. His golden eyes had been full of nothing but love for his people and love for life despite what he’d seen. Alex had lost his sister and father, but it hadn’t cut into him like it had Levi. Even after Alex had been able to fully shift, there had been no loss of that joy he carried in him.

Levi, on the other hand . . . he was so serious, it was hard to look at him for too long. Like he carried the weight of all he’d seen in his soul, and it spilled out his eyes, making you re-evaluate your own choices. Had you protected those around you enough? Had you stopped enough bad guys to make the world a better place? Or were you no better than them, breaking the law for your own cause?

I snorted at myself. I was starting to sound like my grandfather with his words of wisdom that usually made sense too late, far beyond the time they could’ve been helpful.