Verity strange, p.13
Verity Strange, page 13
He was the nexus.
She snapped… and was instantly transported on stage.
This was a different time. His arms were raised. He spoke of sex magick and its power, and the great gift they, his followers, had given him. For now, he could bestow upon them the full measure of all their Talents. Today. Right now.
Verity looked away from the charismatic leader and out among his gathered flock. There had to be a thousand people on the grass now. One moment they were standing, applauding… and then the chaos magick wrenched, pulling her forward involuntarily this time, and she was among the crowd again, the same scene as the first vision. Some people lying motionless on the ground. Others writhing in pain. Some stood with raised hands. But then she saw—they were conjuring. Some emitting blasts of pure magick into the air. Others spinning balls of electricity in their hands. Some were commanding water out of the grass or withering it with a magickal blast of heat. As she watched, they went from Talent to Talent, as if suddenly given a toybox full and wanting to take each one out to play. They paid no heed to the people fallen at their feet. The unbelievers whose faith had been found wanting.
Eliphas was proclaiming the New World.
He was saying none could stand before them. His army of the faithful. And their numbers would only grow.
A tsunami of guilt washed over her. How had she not seen? How had she helped this man for so long, brought him here, to her city, her friends, her family?
Her city.
She looked up and saw the pavilion for what it was.
Verity gasped in air.
Her eyes blinked open.
“Oh, Verity,” Wylde sighed. It almost sounded like a cry. There were tears in his eyes that puzzled her. Her head was still fuzzy from the vision. She still felt the threads pulling at her, distracting her. Chaos magick buzzed all around them.
“Tell me you’re okay,” Wylde whispered. She was in his lap—in his arms—and his touch was so gentle. So caring. They were naked—well, Wylde still had his open shirt on—and she remembered, mostly by the soreness between her legs as she moved, that they’d made love again.
And it was glorious. “I’m fine.” She smiled for him.
He seemed to melt with relief. “Okay, next time, for the love of magick, we are doing this lying down.”
She grinned and curled up to sitting. “Next time?” She shifted to the floor, so she wasn’t crushing him, but rose up on her knees to kiss him, gently—her body needed to recover before there could be any more love-making.
He groaned into her, his hands going rough into her hair, but his lips gentle. “I don’t know if I can take it,” he said.
She pulled back and arched her eyebrow.
“Okay, I’ll take the love-making. Or give it.” He grinned. “All day long. But this passing out part, Verity…” He shook his head, and her heart swelled. He was genuinely worried. And a little freaked.
“I am fine. I promise.” She scooped up her skirt laying nearby so she could sit on that rather than the bare, cold floor. He took it from her hands and beckoned her to stand. Then he slowly dressed her, panties first, then the skirt. Finally, he looped the top around her neck, gently brushing her hair out of the way, and tied the rope around her waist to fix it.
It was so sweet, she was rendered speechless for a moment.
Last, he pulled his pants up again, then sat in the chair next to the desk. He took her hand and pulled her into sitting across his lap. It felt… deliciously comfortable. Like of course they would cuddle like this, even though she wasn’t at all sure cuddling was part of their relationship now.
“Let’s just wait for a bit,” he said, “and make sure you’re okay, all right?”
The temporary leftover fuzziness of the vision-state had cleared, so she was fine. But his concern touched her… and she was highly in favor of cuddling.
“Tell me this was all worth it,” he said softly.
“It was.” She put her hand to his cheek, then ran her thumb along his jawline. So sharp. And his lips were slightly swollen from all their kissing. His eyes shone, and those boyish good looks were making her insides flutter. Even after they’d made love, he had that effect on her.
Her touch seemed to affect him, too. He leaned into it, eyes half closed, then gave her a serious look. “Tell me.”
So she did, step by step, with as much detail as she could remember. He soaked in every word, and by the end, his worried frown had been swept away by awe.
“You really think this will happen?” he asked.
“I’ve only had a few visions in my life,” she said. “Some minor ones when I was small. They always came true. And then my mom dying, of course. That one was exactly as I saw it, down to every detail.”
He scowled. “But there has to be some way to change it.”
“I tried everything. Told my mom she should go get checked. Tried to change the doctor. Even canceled one of her chemo appointments just to see if anything would change. But every time, it always worked out exactly as I’d seen in my vision. Sometimes, the very thing I changed caused it to happen.”
“A time paradox?” He shook his head. “That’s like saying there’s only one fate for all of us. That none of our choices make a difference.”
“I’m not sure that they do.”
He looked so taken aback that she wriggled out of his lap and stood. “Let’s head back to the room. I’m tired.”
He frowned but rose up. “Are you okay to walk?”
She nodded. Mostly, she needed time to process. She didn’t want to explain what she really thought—what she felt every minute of every day. That everything moved along a pre-determined course, you couldn’t change any of it, and the only thing that seeing the future did for you was eliminate the surprise.
Usually, the surprise was better.
Wylde snagged the knife he’d used to jimmy the lock, and they closed the office as they left, leaving the knife in the kitchen just as he’d found it. They didn’t talk as they wound their way back to the room.
It was still early for lunch, so the cafeteria was clear, but the hallways were crowded with followers practicing sex magick. It was only the second day of the consecration, but word must have gotten out. Usually, the crowds peaked in the third day then tapered off. Many came for the license to fuck—Verity had always known that, but when she was still in thrall to Eliphas’s ideas, believing they were the road to her personal salvation, the taming of this wild divination Talent of hers, it didn’t bother her so much. Now that she saw the debauchery for what it was, it seemed tawdry and sullen. It reminded her that she could easily have joined their ranks, giving herself over to Eliphas and his Initiates as another body to add to the mix, revving up each other’s magick by the power of sex. Some of that was certainly real—everyone knew that sex enhanced your native Talents, whatever they were—but Eliphas took it one step further, promising to pierce the veil between the real world and the luminous one, unlocking new Talents in the process.
That part was bullshit.
But then again… wasn’t that precisely what she was doing with Wylde? Using him to reach that orgasmic state where she could access her Talent? Yes, she was using it to help solve his case, but in the process, she was also learning how to wield it. Was that better or worse than just looking for an excuse to fuck someone, anyone, in the hallway? Was she any different than any of them?
These questions tangled up her head and knotted her stomach so by the time they got back to the room, she was a mess. And tired. And had no idea what they were supposed to do next.
Once they were safely inside, Wylde propped himself on the bed, like he wanted to talk. “Tell me more about where this is going to happen. You said you recognized the stage.”
“It’s right here in downtown Chicago,” she said wearily, folding her legs up to sit on the bed across from him. “It’s the pavilion in Millennium Park. I should have recognized it right away. The vision state is weird, kind of like a dream. Sometimes, I can see things for what they are, and sometimes I can’t.”
“We can literally walk there from here.” He was rubbing his chin, thinking. “And you say he was giving people Talents.”
“I think so, although I don’t know how.”
“Well, he turned them on at the conference.”
“Yeah, but those were Talents people already had.” This discussion was sapping her energy. “He was just restoring them. In my vision, people were playing around with multiple Talents. Like they’d never used them before.” She rubbed her temples. A throbbing had started there, like a headache knocking on her skull asking to be let in.
“And you say you can move around in the vision.” He was getting excited now. “Like you can control which part or time that you see.”
“Yeah.” She sighed. “But I wasn’t always in charge of that. The nexus pulled me too. I guess I could work on that.” God, she was tired. She let her hands fall from her temples. “He’s building an army, Wylde. A magickal army with a full complement of every kind of Talent. I don’t know how you fight that.” Or if they should even bother. If it was in the vision, it would happen.
He gave her a sweet smile. “Well, we have you as our secret weapon.”
“I don’t feel like a weapon.” She scowled. “At best, I’m just telling you before it happens.”
“There has to be some way to change it,” he insisted.
“If you say so.” She stretched out on the bed, her toes barely reaching him at the end. “I just need to rest for a bit.” A yawn overtook her as she pulled a pillow under her head. She felt him jostle the bed behind her, climbing over to where she’d settled.
“I was up all night.” He was tucking up behind her, his front to her back. Spooning. She knew what it was, but she’d never done it. He smoothed down the hair on her head. She thought he was just petting her, which struck her as tremendously sweet, but then he whispered in her ear. “Sweet dreams, Verity Strange.” He nuzzled her ear, which sent jolts of awakeness through her. She honestly hoped he didn’t want to make love again—she just couldn’t—but he simply slid his arm around her waist, pulling her snug against him, and let out a long sigh.
That sound was like a signal to close her eyes, and the moment that happened, she was halfway drifted off to sleep. Her half-asleep mind conjured scenes of Eliphas, his arms raised high, promising the moon and the stars… and all she could think was that Wylde had saved her, and she wasn’t sure if she’d properly thanked him yet. Not with kisses or sex but just telling him.
And maybe more sex later after that.
She drifted into darkness with sweet dreams indeed.
Chapter Twelve
Wylde was awoken from a dead sleep by pounding on the door.
Verity jolted up from where she lay next to him, then scrambled out of bed and stumbled to the door. Wylde squinted and propped himself up on his elbow, still in a haze of sleep. Verity opened the door.
“This is the third time I’ve come knocking,” the woman outside complained. It was Alana, their “guide” from before. “Where have you been?”
“We were here, sleeping.” Verity yawned convincingly and smoothed back her mussed hair. Wylde couldn’t remember if it was that way from their love-making or just from the hard sleep. He fumbled his phone out of his pocket. Holy shit, they’d been out for five hours. It was mid-afternoon.
“Yeah, well, Eliphas has been asking for you.” Alana seemed very put out by this, maybe because she was Eliphas’s errand girl.
Then Wylde’s brain woke all the way up. Eliphas is asking for Verity. He swung his legs over the side and practically leaped out of bed.
Verity still seemed half awake. “What does he want?”
Alana gave her a look like she was nuts. “Does it matter? He’s asking for you.”
Wylde lurched over to the door and peeked over Verity’s shoulder. “Tell him we’ll be right there.”
Alana scowled at him. “Yeah, he wants you both in his private chambers.”
It was good Eliphas wanted them both because no way in hell was Wylde letting Verity go see him alone.
“I need a shower,” Verity said, more clearly awake now. “Tell him I’ll be there soon.”
Alana nodded and trotted off. Verity closed the door and brushed past him with a frown on her face. She really was headed for the shower. Which, to be fair, he needed as well. He tried to follow her, but Verity just held up a hand. “I’m showering alone, thank you very much.”
Wylde stopped in his tracks and watched her disappear into the bathroom. He couldn’t help feeling like she’d just punched him in the gut. Which was stupid. It was just a shower. And they owed each other precisely nothing, certainly not erotic couple’s showers. This whole tangled mess of hot sex and passing out and cuddling on the bed had gotten inside his head and was spinning it around. He’d had a lot of sex in his life—his father’s cult made sure of that, just like Eliphas’s. And he’d had a lot of relationships with girls—even normal, healthy ones, although that had all been after he left the Immortals. The only good relationships he’d had inside his father’s cult had been fraught with horrors… and those had essentially died when he left. He didn’t know what the hell he was doing with Verity Strange, but it wasn’t like anything he’d done before. Everything was more intense. The sex. His need to rescue and protect her. This insane Talent of hers. The fact that all of it was buried deep inside a case with sky-high stakes.
He ran his hand through his hair and paced while she showered. He thought he’d worked through all his issues. All that baggage from growing up isolated from the real world and anyone with any sense of how to be a real human. He figured out, mostly on his own, how to have normal sex. He found a way to trust people again. Then, from the first moment he saw Verity in her apartment with her insanely hot innocence and her insistence that Eliphas wasn’t the maniacal cult leader he obviously was, Wylde had been hooked right back in. Like a drunk who hadn’t had a drink in ten years and then one cocktail kicks off a three-day bender. It wasn’t Verity—she was lost in all this, even more than he was. It was him. He knew this case would hit close to home, but fuck. He’d fallen down the rabbit hole with her, and it had been only two days.
All of it was blaring red warning lights in his head.
But when he ignored all that and just thought about her… it all made a crazy kind of sense. She needed him. He was the right guy at the right time to break Eliphas’s hold on her. But it was more than that. That time in the kitchen office wasn’t just blow-the-doors-off hot for him. She was into it. And exploring her Talent. Which was real… honest-to-magick divination. It was a supremely rare Talent, and hers was like none he’d seen cataloged in the Registry. That was still blowing his mind. And again… he was the right guy at the right time to help her discover how to use it. Plus they were still deep in the case. Eliphas was asking for her, they had to maintain cover to find this secret lab, but Wylde would not let Eliphas get his hands on her. Who knew what that asshole would do. And she was fragile. Not that Verity wasn’t strong—no one went it alone like she had all those years without having some serious badassery under the skin—but she was in a vulnerable transition state, and that brought out every ragingly protective instinct Wylde had.
No matter how all this went down, he would not let it break Verity.
But after that?
Eventually, she’d discover all the sordidness of his past. He wouldn’t be the right guy at the right time anymore. Probably not the right guy at all, ever. The thing was—that shouldn’t bother him. It shouldn’t even be a factor.
And yet it was all he could think about.
Focus on the case. Save the girl, get the bad guy, get fucking out of this cult… then he could figure out how to go back to his normal life with the bureau. Ninety percent of the time he was strictly an analyst. The other ten percent was minor fieldwork breaking up small-time family cults on weapons running or maybe farming drugs. He’d had one sex-magick-trafficking case in his five years in the bureau. Once he was done here—the biggest, most dangerous sex-magick cult in the world—he could go back to his normal job and his normal life and put all this behind him.
He kept his gaze down when Verity came scurrying out of the bathroom, hair piled on top of her head, sweet body wrapped in a white towel. He jumped in the shower himself and made it quick. She was thinking ahead with this, erasing any signs or scents of sex between them to maintain cover. Smart. He had to get his head back in this, too. Because whatever Eliphas wanted with them, Wylde needed to be on top of his game.
Just as he was slipping his clothes back on, his phone buzzed.
It was a text from the bureau, using his cover contact, Temperance—his actual sister was long dead, but no one should know that while he was undercover. Talk? it said. Yeah, he sent back and finger-combed his hair while he waited for the call. Phone conversations were more secure, but checking first avoided blowing his cover.
He picked it up on the first ring. “Hey.”
“You good to talk?” It was Agent Walker, resident incubus.
“Gotta keep it short.” He stepped out of the bathroom and held up a finger to Verity to let her know he would be a minute. “Eliphas wants to meet with us.”
“Copy that. Here’s the update: we scored on the drug factory downstate, the one Violet gave us intel on. Farmhouse in the middle of nowhere. We think that’s the only manufacturing facility for the gene-editing drugs, but we’re still uncertain on the purpose of this supposed second lab at the temple. The downstate facility is substantial—not only manufacturing the gene drives that install the genetic Talent switches, but also the magick-stabilized delivery system. It’s complex. I’m not seeing Eliphas setting up something like that in the temple.”
“Maybe she was just confused?” Wylde offered.
“Doubtful,” Zane said. “She is pretty unstable—Agent Payne’s bringing it hard on her with his emotion-mancing—but everything she’s giving us checks out. The lab. Details on how the med-magick works. She’s deciphered some of the lab reports, and Mercy’s taken that and replicated it in her lab. Mercy has an antidote cooking right now. So consensus at MCD is that Violet’s intel is solid gold. Which means there’s a lab somewhere in the temple for some unknown purpose.”
