Page 43

As the dying cleric writhed in agony on the ground, Naomi swiped the back of her hand over her mouth and stared up at Luka. Her heart was pounding like crazy. He wasn’t supposed to be here; he wasn’t supposed to know, to have seen . . .

Fuck.

Luka didn’t say a word. He merely stared at her, flickers of menace moving in the depths of his cool gaze.

Her entity watched him warily, searching for any sign of abhorrence or rejection, but it couldn’t get a read on him. Neither could she. He was too self-contained, too good at concealing his true thoughts and feelings.

Since he had no reason to be here, she could only assume that Konstantin had called on him. Before her car had exploded, she’d telepathed the bodyguard to insist that he get out of his own vehicle just in case her suspicions were correct.

Luckily, he’d listened.

She’d pyroported to him, found him unconscious—likely having been thrown by the force of the explosion—but otherwise fine, and propped him up against a nearby lamp post.

Then she’d gone hunting.

The moment she had spotted the clerics, she’d called out to Tobe, who’d swiftly appeared with Ciaran.

The two had helped her dispatch them. They’d needed to do it quickly and cleanly so as not to attract attention.

She’d thought she could have the whole thing over and done with before Konstantin woke.

She’d been wrong.

And now Luka knew her biggest secret. Whatever he was thinking right now, well, it couldn’t be anything good.

Materializing at her side with Ciaran, Tobe cursed at the sight of the now-dead cleric. “I thought we were gonna take him alive,” he said to Naomi.

They had telepathically agreed that they would let this one Elioud live so they could question him, but . . . “Luka wasn’t aware of that.”

Tobe glanced from her to the legion, his gaze turning both hard and wary. He stepped closer to her, evidently feeling protective. “If you’re standing there judging her for something she has no control over, you can fuck right off.”

Ignoring that outburst, Luka looked down at the dead male, his eyes narrowing on the emblem. His gaze locked with hers once more. “A cleric, I’m guessing. Why would he come for you?” he asked, his voice ice-cold.

Not a good sign.

Naomi’s stomach plummeted. He was going to walk now, wasn’t he? He couldn’t look at her the same way anymore, just as she’d feared. “Does it matter?” she threw out, disheartened.

His eyes flared. “Yeah, it fucking matters.”

Could’ve fooled me .

“This isn’t the time or place to talk about this,” Tobe stated.

Luka pressed his lips together. “You’re right. It isn’t.”

Daniil materialized; he’d presumably been telepathically summoned.

“I need to go to my place,” said Naomi, flicking a hand at her ruined clothing. “We can talk there.”

“Alone,” Luka specified.

Tobe stiffened. “Nome . . .”

“I’ll be okay,” she assured her anchor. “This conversation needs to be had in private.” If Luka said even one thing remotely hurtful to her, Tobe would flip and launch himself at him. The legion wouldn’t exactly stand there and take it, so the end result would be bad.

“Me and Tobe will get rid of the bodies,” Ciaran told her.

Luka stiffened. “Bodies plural? The cleric wasn’t alone?”

“I’ll explain everything when we get out of here,” Naomi said.

A muscle in Tobe’s cheek ticked. “If you need me, Nome, reach out.”

“I will.” Moments later, her surroundings briefly blurred, and then she, Luka, and Daniil were standing in her living area. After a quick look at his Prime, the teleporter disappeared.

Luka raked his unreadable gaze over her. “Are you all right?” A stiffly spoken question.

Surprised he’d bothered to ask, she cleared her throat. “Fine. No wounds. Konstantin telepathed you?”

“Yes, he did,” Luka verified. “The question is: why didn’t you ?”

She blinked. Her car had been blown up. A bunch of clerics had come for her. He’d witnessed her feed from one of them. And . . . “ That’s your question?”

“Oh, I have others.” The words were low. Clipped. Curt. “Many others.”

I’ll bet.

“Tell me about the clerics.”

Why should she, considering it was extremely probable that he had every intention of breezing out of her house never to come back?

Then again, Konstantin could have died tonight.

She hadn’t thought she was putting him in danger by leaving him ignorant of the monkhood’s existence; hadn’t thought they would target him.

That miscalculation could have resulted in the bodyguard losing his life.

At the very least, she could explain the situation.

“The clerics are part of an order known as the Lemures ,” she explained.

“They were responsible for the car bombs?”

She nodded. “I heard them speak of it while Tobe, Ciaran, and I picked them off.”

“Why did they target you?”

She hesitated, licking her lips. “They came upon an old-ass prophecy that was probably written by one of the Nephilim’s first descendants.

They translated it; believe it says that a specific woman will birth the Antichrist, who—with some demonic help—will destroy the order and the person pulling their strings. ”

Luka’s brow furrowed. “What does that have to do with you?”

Naomi scratched the back of her head, grimacing. “They believe I’m the woman in the prophecy. We’re quite sure that their puppeteer is a dark practitioner. He obviously puts stock in the foretelling, because he seems to think it necessary for his survival that I die.”

“ We’re quite sure,” he echoed. “Who’s we?”

“Me, Tobe, my mom, Alfie, Jolene, her anchor, Khloe, and Ciaran.” And Lou, but she wouldn’t mention that just yet.

Luka’s eyes went slitted. “Tonight wasn’t the first time you’d encountered the clerics, then?”

Her nape prickled at the silken menace in his tone. “No.”

His nostrils flared. “So you knew that danger dogged your heels . . . and you said nothing of it to me or Konstantin?”

Naomi inwardly winced. “Yeah.”

There was a flash of something very dark in his eyes, but he killed the emotion fast, as if striving to maintain his cool. “How long have they been coming for you?”

“About a month now.”

He clenched his jaw, his teeth grinding. “Are there more of them?”

“Probably. We tried to find the location of the monastery, but we’ve so far had no luck.

We believe the dark practitioner is posing as an angel to manipulate them.

He’s calling himself Kushiel, from what I overheard.

I’m pretty sure that’s the name of the Angel of Punishment, so it would explain why he chose it. ”

“Why would the clerics believe that the prophecy refers to you?”

“It features a symbol that matches a birthmark I have.”

Luka’s brow creased. “I’ve explored every inch of you multiple times, and I’ve not seen a single birthmark.”

“I started covering it with concealer after I came to suspect that it was what had led the clerics to me.”

“When did they first come at you?”

“The evening you met Jolene at the pizzeria. A little over a week later, they surrounded me when I was on my way home from work. It was roughly two weeks after that that they broke into my home again. Then nothing until now.”

“So essentially you’ve been in the direct path of danger since the day I came into your life, and I knew nothing of it,” he summed up, his voice a low rumble of fury.

Naomi internally cringed. “Essentially.”

A gleam of something hard and dark came and went in his eyes. Snakes seemed to slither beneath the skin of his face and throat, telling her that his demons were pissed .

Her stomach seized as she braced herself for him to blurt out Fuck this shit and go. Her entity, too, expected it—and planned to rip him a new asshole as he made his way out.

“I knew you were keeping things from me,” said Luka, his voice eerily flat. “You were open with me about that much. But I didn’t ask myself if there was a threat aside from Iain hanging over your head, because you never seemed in any way nervous or afraid.”

She hadn’t been scared, not believing the monkhood presented a real risk to her life. They could use magick, yes, but she was more powerful. She hadn’t thought they would ever use explosives. “I wasn’t—” She cut off as Luka stalked angrily toward her.

“Why didn’t you tell me any of this?” He dipped his face to hers, pinning her gaze with his own. “ Don’t say that it isn’t my business, Naomi. I declared you mine—I was very fucking clear about it. Any possible danger to you is absolutely my business.”

She let out a heavy breath. “I said nothing for two reasons. One, I didn’t want to drag you into this mess unless I absolutely had to. Two, I couldn’t have told you the full truth; I would have had to lie to you.”

“About what?”

She thought about blowing off the question. After all, he wasn’t going to stay. He hadn’t even addressed what he’d witnessed her do, shocking though it must have been, as if to block it out. Which meant he couldn’t accept it.

Her demon urged her to keep quiet, feeling it owed him no answers.

It wasn’t merely angry with him, it was angry with itself.

Because it had begun to believe that just maybe he would be able to look past Naomi’s need to drink blood.

The fact that she apparently didn’t matter enough to him for that to be the case made her entity want to claw his face off.

And it hurt.

You don’t know that he can’t accept it , a voice in her head whispered. You’re making assumptions because you’re bracing yourself for the worst.

True. Was she doing him a disservice by deciding that he wouldn’t overlook it?

Maybe. The reality was that she couldn’t truly know what his reaction would be unless she told him everything and helped him understand.

If she didn’t do that here and now, if he walked out as a result of that, she’d never know for certain.

And she found that she wanted to know.

“About what?” he repeated.