Against the Dawn (15 page)

“Muzzle that fucking beast!” Lorik shouted as he took a left to double back toward the delivery address. God, I wanted to get there already and hand the situation off into Ty’s capable hands. “Take the chain and wrap its mouth shut.”

Steve snarled his disapproval and I threaded my fingers through his fur in an effort to calm him. Did werewolves even like to be petted? “I’m not doing that, Lorik. It’ll rile him up again. The excitement got to him, that’s all. Just keep going. I don’t think we’ll have any more interference.”

He grumbled something under his breath, but I didn’t bother to ask him to repeat himself. I couldn’t give a single shit what Lorik had to say about anything. Steve sat back on his haunches, his massive body taking up the entire backseat. He lifted his nose to the wind rushing in through the broken back window and I was forced into the right corner, one hand still wound in his fur.

Could the night get any worse?

I probably didn’t want to know.

I leaned back against the seat and let my eyes drift shut. The daggers vibrated anxiously at my sides; I’d managed to push them to the back of my mind until now. I could kill Xander for saddling me with weapons that not only recognized me as their owner, but became agitated if not used. They were hungry for some action, and I hoped I’d be giving them something to do very soon.

God knew I could use a boost of confidence. Once I was assured that Steve had settled down, I released my grip on his collar. The chain jangled as he shifted his position and nudged my arm with his massive head. I reached my left hand up to scratch his snout and when the ring on my thumb brushed his nose, Steve jerked back with a whimper, shaking his head as if he’d been stung. Huh. That was new. “Do you know what this is, Steve?” I whispered and held up my hand for inspection. He shook his head and released a chuff of breath. “Bummer.”

“I can’t believe you’re talking to that animal after it tried to take my head off,” Lorik snarked from the front seat. “I hope Mithras skins it alive and roasts it for dinner.”

Steve growled and I patted his shoulder. “Not gonna happen, dude. He’s all talk. Just relax and conserve your strength. You’re probably going to need it.”

I tried to relax but I was so on edge I thought I was going to jump out of my fucking skin. Grand theft auto, hit and run, fleeing the scene of an accident, kidnapping, the list of our offenses went on and on. Even if we managed to avoid the human police, we’d still have the PNT to contend with if Steve’s buddies had any connections with the Pacific Northwest’s supernatural ruling body.

The Cadillac slowed and I craned my neck to see out the windshield as Lorik cursed under his breath. A patrol car passed us and the cops inside had their eyes glued to the banged up exterior of our vehicle. A flash of red and blue exploded in my vision and Lorik grabbed his Beretta from the front seat.

How was I going to dissuade another act of violence tonight?

I squeezed my eyes shut and clutched my left hand in my right, spinning my ring as I thought over and over,
Let us go. Let us go. Please, let us go
. The burst of color disappeared and I peeked through one eye to see that the lights had gone off and police car continued on its way.

“You must be a good luck charm, Darian,” Lorik remarked as he tossed the gun back on the seat. “Because that wolf sure as hell isn’t.” He hit the accelerator and we resumed our earlier pace. “Ten more minutes and we’re home free.”

Home free? I doubted that.

I traced the shape of the bear carved into my ring. Could
Nys’Asdar
have something to do with what had happened? Had I actually willed those police officers on their way merely by thinking about it?
These are not the droids you’re looking for…
If so, it was as equally cool as it was scary. Why did the men in my life insist on giving me things that took on lives of their own? I already had control issues. I didn’t need my person weighted down with magical relics that made decisions for me.

Five minutes later, Lorik pulled onto a dirt road that led down a winding trail through a stand of trees. Lights from a nearby building illuminated the darkness, shooting straight up into the sky as if through a skylight. Maybe Mithras had the evil equivalent of a Bat-Signal in his front yard or something. Steve grew agitated beside me and I reached out to lay a comforting hand on his fur. My own stomach was churning and a rush of adrenaline dumped into my blood stream as I geared up for whatever was to come.

“Don’t worry, Steve,” I said close to his furry ear. “I’ve got magic daggers and I’m not afraid to use them.” He snorted, totally unimpressed. “Really, Steve? That hurts. Well, I have a Jinn, too. What do you think about that?’

He leveled his narrowed blue gaze on me, lowered his nose to my cheek and sniffed. Weird. But he didn’t snort so I assumed whereas he found my daggers to be no big thing, the mention of my very own genie was enough to get his attention.

Lorik pulled the car up to the front of a building that didn’t even remotely resemble a house. It always amazed me at the types of structures that could be hidden out in the trees on the acres of private property outside of the city. The PNT had a veritable fortress not far from the freeway and what I was looking at now could only be described as a temple.

There appeared to be a large round circle cut into the roof which was the source of light shooting up into the sky. Their electric bill must have been outrageous. The building itself was nothing more than a dome of marble curving up from not high off the ground. Raif’s proffered knowledge of Mithras came back to me. Could this structure be some sort of cave with a domed ceiling? Whoever this Mithras was, he took the Roman theological roots of his name pretty seriously.

To add credence to the assumption that Mithras had an overinflated ego, we were met in the driveway by a throng of men, all bald, all wearing the same strange crimson outfit. Huh. I’d thought Baldy’s style choice was some sort of tough guy thing, but it looked like all of Mithras’s cronies sported the same shaved heads. Their outfits looked like a throwback to New Age spirituality. A sort of yoga-meets-martial arts-expert combo that made me think of herbal tea and meditation. They were a little too serene for what I expected from a criminal organization that specialized in the arms trade.

“Wait here,” Lorik said as he jumped out of the Cadillac. I only now noticed that the engine was billowing smoke and smelled like burned rubber and rancid oil. Jesus. We were in rough shape.

I looked at Steve, who’d begun to pant beside me, no doubt as nervous and anxious as I was. While Lorik recounted his acts of valor and skill to the pod people in the driveway—they appeared totally unimpressed—I spoke a silent wish under my breath, “I wish Tyler was here.”

The atmosphere shifted, charged with particles of magic. Steve canted his head beside me as though hearing something at a frequency too high for my own ears. He sniffed the air for a few minutes before letting out a long howl that was no longer mournful or hollow. This sounded more like a battle cry.

I was so damned tired that I could barely move. And the relief that I felt at Tyler’s presence was a physical thing that soaked into every pore of my skin, every vein, every tiny, microscopic particle that constructed me. I don’t know what I would’ve done without him.

“We’re golden, Steve,” I said to the werewolf who must’ve sensed the calm that settled over me. He’d stopped panting, and I no longer felt the ripple of anxiety when I touched him. “I’m sorry you had to go through all of this bullshit tonight, but Ty’s going to get you out of this mess.”

I leaned back in my seat and sent out invisible feelers as I searched for a powerful supernatural presence. Ty was somewhere nearby, he wasn’t hard to identify since I felt him everywhere. I sensed Steve sitting beside me, a sort of primal, raw sensation that irritated my skin like a sunburn. Mithras’s groupies threw off as human a vibe as Lorik did: which was nothing. And as for the head honcho…I had a feeling that we’d been stood up yet again and I could officially declare tonight’s escapades a total loss.

Awesome
.

As I contemplated sitting there forever and becoming one with the leather upholstery, Lorik snatched the back door open, his expression one of fierce annoyance. Looked like I wasn’t the only one bummed out about how the night had turned out. “Will you be so kind as to hand over our cargo, Darian, so we can get the hell out of here?” His tone was clipped, each word forced through clenched teeth. I’m sure Lorik wasn’t used to jumping through hoops. Really, he should’ve given up on Mithras and found some other criminal activity to indulge in. Something more his speed, like running books or maybe working on Wall Street.

Lorik stepped aside and I wound my fist around the length of silver chain fastened to Steve’s collar. I opened the door on my side of the car—seriously, did Lorik think I could simply push him out the door?—and gave the leash a gentle tug. “Sorry about everything, Steve,” I said as I urged him out of the busted up Cadillac. “But Ty’s here and he’s a fixer. He’ll get you out of this. I wouldn’t have promised you otherwise. In the meantime, though,” I said close to his ear, “It would help me out a lot if you could put on a good show.”

The full moon lit up the night sky overhead and Steve extended his neck, tilting his head back as he let out a dramatic howl that ended on a vicious snarl. He thrashed against the chain, pulling and biting like he was some sort of mindless animal. I hoped that the bald idiots waiting to take possession of him bought the act because Steve was certainly not mindless. As for the animal part, I had a feeling more than a couple of Mithras’s guys were going to meet their ends tonight.

Steve snapped at me and I jumped back as though worried he’d get a chunk of my calf. I wrangled him in a tug of war as I rounded the bashed front end of the car and handed the reins over to one of Mithras’s groupies. “Here. Good luck, he’s been a real pain in the ass. I think we’ve proven ourselves tonight, don’t you? Pass that on to your boss.”

I slapped the chain in the guy’s hand, staring him down for a couple of seconds before I turned on a heel and headed for the car, my heart hammering in my chest. “I’ve had it with these assholes; let’s get out of here, Lorik.”

Steve snarled and his chain rattled. I sensed a scuffle about to start but I didn’t turn around no matter how much I wanted to see what was going on. My stomach seemed to fly up into my throat before flopping down and twisting in on itself. It went against every instinct I had to leave Steve behind, but I trusted Tyler. Trusted that he’d help get the poor wolf out of this mess I’d managed to help get him into. It was all part of the contract, a necessity to get close to Mithras. And I never left a job unfinished.

The passenger side of the car was so dented, I couldn’t get the door open, so I left my corporeal form behind, gliding through the twisted bits of metal and broken plastic, regaining my solid self once I was planted in the passenger seat. Lorik hopped in beside me and I have to say it surprised the shit out of me that the engine was still running and we hadn’t blown ourselves to pieces yet. If we made it back into the city it would be a miracle. He took off down the driveway and I watched through the rearview mirror as Steve fought against his captors. And right when I thought my heart would explode from the stress, Ty appeared from nowhere and joined the fray.

“What’s going on back there?” Lorik asked as he squinted up at the mirror. The sounds of a fight filtered in through the open window, almost too quiet to hear over the rush of wind.

“Nothing,” I said. My own eyesight was keen in the dark and I watched as Ty and Steve gained the upper hand. “Just keep driving, Lorik.”

It was time to call it a night.

Chapter Thirteen

We dumped the car in an abandoned lot near the waterfront, and I helped Lorik wipe it down from stem to stern, erasing any fingerprints we would have left behind. As for other trace evidence: hair, fur, and other DNA, we took care of that when Lorik returned with a can of gasoline and a match. I watched as the vehicle went up in flames and prayed that the owner had top-notch insurance.

“I hope tonight was worth it, Lorik.” We’d had quite the adventure and neither of us was any closer to meeting Mithras than we’d been a few days ago.

“I proved myself. That’s all that matters. What happens from here on out isn’t in my control. Will we be contacted again?” Lorik shrugged his shoulders. “I have no idea. But if he’s found me worthy, Darian, we’ll be set for the rest of our lives.”

I didn’t want to break it to him that if Mithras found us “worthy” I was going to kill him the first chance I got. “Well, I guess we’ll have to wait and see.”

“It’s still early, want to hit a club or two?”

I caught a glance at him from the corner of my eye. His expression was rapt as the Cadillac burned to a crisp in a noxious bonfire not a hundred yards away. It wouldn’t be long before police and fire personnel were on scene and I wanted to be as far away from this place as possible when that happened.

“I think I’ve had enough excitement for one night. You go ahead. I’m going to bed.”

He pursed his lips in disappointment and gave a sad shake of his head. “Suit yourself. I don’t know about you, Darian, but I miss the old days. You. Me. Azriel.” A heavy silence descended, one that made me damned uncomfortable. “Why don’t you ever talk about him?”

There was a warning in his tone, something dark that sparked my self-preservation instinct. The daggers practically sang at my sides, begging to be drawn. Not a good sign. “Sometimes the past needs to stay in the past, Lorik. I’m going home. Good night.”

I couldn’t leave my corporeal form fast enough. And even in the company of shadows, I felt threatened. Exposed. More convinced that I needed to keep a close eye on Lorik. He didn’t turn to see where I’d gone; he just stood there watching the fire. I suspected he’d wait until the damned thing exploded or the firemen showed up, whichever came first. Really, as long as he stayed put, I didn’t give a shit what he did. As my shadow self, I raced through the city, back to the safety of my apartment. I planned to lock myself up inside of the secured and warded walls and I wasn’t coming out until I absolutely had to.