Page 10

Ten

Daphne’s body had barely dropped between him and Robin when Adam and Icarus came rushing back through the door—sans pretender. “Where’s Dyami?” Robin barked.

“Gone,” Icarus replied. “Getaway car.”

“Fuck!” Atlas cursed, then because he needed to do something with the anger and resentment, the hopelessness, spiraling through him, he shoved Robin in the chest, two-handed. “Why didn’t you go after him?”

He gestured at the lifeless witch between them. “Because I was holding her fucking fingers apart. Like you asked me to.”

“Dyami knows what she looks like now. I have to?—”

“The pack has her.” The coyote’s calm confidence was the only thing keeping Atlas from flying into a million magical pieces, from giving in to the awful energy raging inside him. Robin glanced past him to the other pair. “Was the hunter ever here?”

Adam flashed a keycard. “Bribed the front desk clerk for it. Let’s go find out.”

“Did you also tell them to stay out of here?” Atlas asked with a sweep of his hand at the death and destruction surrounding them.

“I have been doing this for a while,” the ex-cop deadpanned, before following his partner down the hallway toward the internal staircase leading to the rooms upstairs.

Atlas moved to follow but was stopped by Robin’s big hand splayed against his chest. “Channel it.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Your magic. It’s bordering on chartreuse right now. It’s supposed to be moss. Fix it.”

“Fix it?” The magic he tried to channel to the hand in the center of his chest hit a brick wall, rebounding on Atlas and causing him to stumble back a step, gasping. “How?”

“You tell me. Later.” He moved to block the hallway, arms crossed. “Channel it for now.”

It was on the tip of Atlas’s tongue to argue, the defensive instinct so ingrained at this point when it came to Robin, but they didn’t have time for that today.

Not with Dyami and the hunter on the loose, Evan too.

He closed his eyes and inhaled deep, smothering the darkness with his mission, his purpose, his vow.

When he was steady, his magic no longer pinging around like a reckless pinball, he opened his eyes.

Whatever Robin saw there must have been enough, the shifter dropping his arms and turning for the stairs.

Atlas followed him up to the second floor, then to the open door at the end of the hallway. A half step over the threshold and Atlas had to clasp the doorframe to keep the magic he’d just channeled grounded.

“Doesn’t look like he was ever here,” Icarus said, Atlas hearing him as if in a tunnel.

“But the clerk’s description matched,” Adam said. “He was here, at least briefly.”

“Or someone was magically pretending to be him,” Robin said.

Someone like Evan, who’d definitely been here, his magic lingering.

And if Daphne had sent him a quick mental word about Mary’s best protectors all being in LP instead of at the safe house, a property Daphne knew about from Cole’s final days, then Atlas knew exactly where Evan would be headed.

Fuck. “We need to get out of here.”

“We’ll search the surrounding area and deal with the body,” Adam said, as the ringing in Atlas’s ears grew louder.

“The body?” he practically shouted. “She was my cousin.” Even if it had been his own hands that had taken her life.

Another death in the family he was responsible for.

Robin’s increasingly, annoyingly familiar hand landed on his shoulder, and Atlas shrugged it off.

“Don’t touch me,” he barked at the dog, before setting his irate sights on the hometown resident in the room.

“You don’t think anyone will recognize you?

” he said to Icarus, same as he had to Mary.

“If they do, they won’t understand why I look the same as I did thirty years ago.” He flicked a hand at his ginger hair. “And it’s the first time I’ve had my real color since I was ten.”

“What about the barber who dyed it the first time?”

Icarus laughed. “The guy at Shorty’s in Santa Maria? He was ancient back then. I’m sure he’s dead by now.”

If he knew Shorty’s, then... “You remember the cemetery a block over from there?”

He nodded.

“Bury her between her mother and Canton.”

Color drained from Icarus’s face, and he gulped, his words seemingly caught in his throat. Did the nurse turned vampire turned field medic suddenly have an affliction against dead bodies and graveyards?

Before he could ask, Adam stepped in for his partner. “We’ll take care of her and meet you back at the safe house.”

“Fuck, Robin,” Atlas said, spinning on his heel. “How many people did you tell?”

“The ones who needed to know,” he replied. “Who won’t try to kill her.”

Fair. But dirty. “Fuck you.”

Robin brought his hand down on his shoulder once more. “Be mad at me later. Right now, just get us the fuck out of here.”

Also fair. And not up for debate. Atlas raised his hand and snapped.