Page 16 of Forbidden (Dark Delights #3)
It was a fucking bloodbath. Black and red blood coated the dance floor in sticky, viscous pools. The human customers had all run from the club, so luckily there were no civilian casualties to make things messier than they already were. Paladin and halfling bodies littered the floor. Storm was alive, if injured—worse than he already was. Talon was spitting mad, repeatedly checking over Alex, who assured him exasperatedly that he was fine . Malachi was doing the same to Luke, sitting with him at the bar and talking softly, touching him all over as though reassuring himself that Luke was still whole. They had put out the literal fires, and Xyra was on the phone with someone to handle the metaphorical ones. Lilith hadn’t been to the club tonight, but she was going to lose her shit when she found out what happened. Wolf could barely spare any concern for her impending reaction, though.
All he could think about was Ira.
“We have to get him back,” Wolf said, pacing frantically .
“We will,” Luke said. “But none of us can go across the wall. Alex and I have been banished, and none of you can cross the threshold at all.”
“Then what am I supposed to do ? They took him. They took him.” He snarled, kicking over a nearby chair, and the clatter of it across the floor seemed deafening in the otherwise quiet, cavernous room. He’d never felt this kind of panic before, this kind of clawing desperation to get his eyes and hands on his human.
“I could go,” Alex offered.
“No the fuck you could not,” Talon said immediately.
“I can get in quietly. You could help me scale the wall somewhere?—”
“Absolutely fucking not,” Talon interrupted.
“Talon, we have to help,” he entreated.
“In a way that doesn’t involve you walking into the lion’s den, yes.”
Shadrach appeared near the bar, in black slacks and a half-buttoned white shirt, crisp and clean and looking starkly out of place in the burnt and bloody battlefield the club had become. “I hear I missed some excitement,” Shadrach said. His dark eyes surveyed the scene critically, one palm smoothing over his neatly shaven jaw. “At least the dead paladins outnumber the dead demons, I suppose.”
“I’ll go,” Wolf said, ignoring Shadrach entirely.
“You can’t cross the wall,” Malachi pointed out.
“No, but I can still wait for him. If they banish him—or if he manages to escape—Alex walked for hours because he had no way of contacting anyone. I don’t want that to happen to Ira. I can at least be there when he gets out.” When , he said, not if . He wouldn’t entertain anything else .
“What happened? Where’s the psychic?” Shadrach asked, looking from face to face.
“The paladins took him,” Malachi replied. “Presumably back to their headquarters.”
“Ah, with their holy wall.” He tilted his head back contemplatively.
“ Would they banish him?” Luke asked. “He’s a prophet. I didn’t think they played by the same rules as the paladins.”
“They don’t,” Alex said. “Ira told us they wouldn’t accept a resignation from him. That was why he wanted to make it look like he’d just disappeared. They need his visions—not just his, but every prophet’s. Sloan won’t stand for the idea that the prophets could just choose to walk away and stop doing their part. It would break down the whole routine. No prophets, no visions, no direction. Plus I doubt he’ll be happy to know Ira’s been helping us . Having him on our side would give us an undoubted advantage we didn’t have before.”
“Hell, it already has,” Malachi remarked.
It was true. Ira had brought them all together in a way they hadn’t been before.
Luke sighed, scrubbing his hands over his face. “There shouldn’t be sides at all. It doesn’t have to be like this. Why can’t they just leave us alone?”
“Because we’re monsters to them, baby,” Malachi said gently. “And they’ll never understand how you can love us.”
Deep in his bones, worry ate at him. He remembered Ira telling him that sometimes he would have to withhold pieces of his visions, because someone might try to intervene and change the course of the future. Had Ira seen this and kept it from him, because this was the natural path? What if their limited time together was all they had? Maybe Ira thought he was meant to blow in, set them on the path to finding the Rink and forming their makeshift team, only to blow back out and get locked behind the wall once more. Maybe he’d known all along that there was no stopping this.
No. He couldn’t think like that. This wasn’t the end. It couldn’t be.
Wolf snarled loudly, breaking off the conversation. “Enough of this! I’m going. Maybe I can’t get inside, but I can at least have faith that he’ll come out . And I intend to be there when he does.”
“Wolf, you don’t even know exactly where or when he’ll show up,” Talon said calmly. “If you sit outside their wall, they’ll notice.”
He gnashed his teeth. “I’m not just going to sit here and do nothing!”
“I’ll go.”
Wolf whirled around, shocked into silence.
Shadrach glanced between Talon and Wolf and shrugged. “It’s no big deal. I can teleport. I can use the shadows to hide myself. The minute he passes beyond the wall, I can grab him and bring him to you.”
Fragile hope took root in Wolf’s chest. “You’d do that?”
Shadrach shrugged again. “You two could argue for hours about who should or shouldn’t go. Talon’s precious human will be safe, and you’ll stop looking like you want to bite someone. Besides, if I’m lucky, he’ll show up with some paladins on his heels for me to kill, since I missed all the excitement here.”
Wolf fidgeted in discomfort at the idea of Ira being chased from the grounds by paladins. “Maybe I should come with you.”
“Nonsense. I can handle a few paladins. I won’t let anything happen to the little psychic. Shall I bring him back here?”
“No,” Talon said immediately. “I don’t want to risk Lilith being on the warpath later. She’s going to give us hell for this attack.” He scuffed one leather boot on the burn marks on the floor. “Her shit’s been damaged, and there are dead bodies in her club. She’ll want to take a pound of flesh for this, and she’ll want to take it from us.”
“We should be elsewhere when she sees it, then,” Malachi said, tugging Luke to his feet as though to flee right then.
“You’d better go soon, then,” Xyra said, heels clicking on the polished concrete floor as she paced. “She’s on her way.”
“We can go to the Rink,” Alex said. He gestured to Storm and Xyra. “You guys are welcome to come, too. Lilith doesn’t know where it is.”
“And it should go without saying that we intend to keep it that way,” Talon said warningly.
Storm nodded in agreement.
Xyra carded her fingers through blood-streaked blue hair. “I’ll stay. Someone’s got to let the clean-up crew in to deal with these bodies. I’ll tell her you all scattered after the prophet was taken.”
“Thanks, we appreciate the help,” Malachi said, giving her a fist bump.
“I’ll text the paladins from Ira’s list,” Alex said. “Maybe they can at least give us an update on how he is. I don’t think they’ll hurt him. He’s too valuable.”
It was meant as a reassurance, but the knowledge made Wolf rage internally nonetheless. He was valuable, so they wouldn’t want to let him go. How long would they hold him ?
“Good.” Shadrach clapped his hands. “I’ll see you all there soon, then.”
He disappeared before Wolf could say anything else, and he could only hope Shadrach meant what he’d said about making sure nothing happened to Ira. He didn’t know what he’d do if he lost him now. Maybe he’d just let Lilith kill him. Anything would be better than an eternity without Ira.