J Ward: Crave

Jim shook his head at his boys.

“Let it go,” Jim said to them. “We’re going to stay on the sidelines. We stay out here.”

As his comrades looked at him like he was out of his cocksucking head, he couldn’t agree more. It was going to kill him to not go in there, but he got the picture… and he was ultimately glad the archangel intervened. Thanks to Devina’s making fast and loose with the rules, the best shot Matthias had was Jim staying the fuck out of this.

Even though it went against every instinct he had.

After a moment, Nigel slowly extricated himself, and his magical illumination gradually dispersed. In its absence, Jim fell to his knees on the grass, his eyes locked on the open door of the clapboard house as Adrian and Eddie started to go off on him, demanding an explanation for the halt order.

Around the fringes of his mind and emotions, the urge to fly into the path of whatever Devina had engineered still tantalized him.

Especially as he thought of Isaac’s woman in the hands of Matthias-

Oh, God… Rothe was going to be sacrificed, wasn’t he.

Jim’s hands sought out the earth and he dug into the lawn with his fingers, holding his body in place.

Bowing his head, he prayed that his faith was well placed and good would, eventually, prevail. But the sad fact was, doing the right thing was going to be the death of a man who didn’t deserve to die tonight.

Matthias had things with the Childes all tied up well before he expected Isaac to come tooling through the front door.

After he’d stun-gunned her, he’d discovered that picking Grier off the floor and putting her into a chair required more strength than he had-so he left her where she lay, tying her legs and wrists up with some duct tape he found in Alistair’s pantry.

And as for her father?

No clue what had made the man open the way in and stand there in a trance, but the distraction and space-cadet routine had been perfectly timed. Matthias had been able to walk up right behind the guy and put a gun to his head.

So yeah, getting him to sit in a chair in the kitchen had been a piece of cake; he’d all but bound his own hands and feet.

Which had been helpful, given that Matthias’s chest hurt so badly he could barely breathe.

And now, it was just a case of waiting for Isaac, all three of them together in this house with the door wide open.

There was a groan and then a shift on the floor as Grier Childe started to come around. She had a moment of confusion, as if trying to figure out why she was lying on the hardwood and why she couldn’t open her mouth. And then she jerked in a full-body spasm, her eyes peeling wide and locking on him.

“Wakey-wakey,” he said gruffly, giving her a nod as her father started to fight against his bonds and make muffled noises under the duct tape across his mouth.

Matthias leveled his gun muzzle at the guy’s head. “Shut it.”

There wasn’t anyone around to hear, but the distress and the struggle pricked Matthias’s nerves. In fact, as he stood between the two, he was far from the calm, master-of-all-he-surveyed guy he’d always been in the past: He was in great pain. He was exhausted. And he felt that what was about to happen next was predestined, but not something he would have chosen.

He was utterly out of control and totally locked in at the same time.

With the eyes of both Childes on him and everyone quiet again, he braced himself against the counter, his creaky body protesting at the shift in position.

“You know what pisses me off about you,” he said to Alistair. “I saved the good one.” He nodded down at Grier. “I could have left you with that son of yours. But no, I took the broken one-put your dear Danny boy out of his misery and yours.”

He could remember being surprised at his own thought process at the time. It was much more characteristic of him to take the one that would have hurt worse, but he’d gone a different way at that crossroads.

Maybe he’d started to change before he’d ordered the death. Who knew.

Who cared.

He was too far down for saving, and his conversation with Jim over the phone had shown him, instead of the possibilities for his redemption, the reality of his condemnation. It was time to end this… and go out with a bang.

Only this time, get it right.

At that moment, Isaac Rothe appeared in the archway of the kitchen. His eyes went to Grier first, and not even his stoic self-possession could hide his stark fear.

He loved that woman.

Well, good for him, the poor bastard.

“Welcome to the party,” Matthias said numbly, as he brought up his gun and pointed it at her.

“Don’t do it,” Isaac bit out. “Take me, not her.”

Matthias stared at the woman’s wide, terrified eyes and the way she seemed to be mouthing something along the lines of, Oh, God, no…

“I’m really sorry about all this,” Matthias said to her. And he meant it. He wasn’t sure what was crueler: to kill her in front of Isaac… or leave her to survive the man’s death-assuming that love of his was reciprocated.

Too bad one of them was going to die now-so that Jim Heron would be forced to come in and shoot Matthias-thus evening their score. The soldier had saved him two years ago against his wishes and now… tonight… he was going to do what he should have back in the desert.

“Matthias,” Isaac said sharply. “I’ll put my gun down.”

“Don’t bother,” he murmured, still focused on Grier. “You know, Ms. Childe, he turned himself in to me to save you. Twice. It was all about you.”

“Matthias, look at me.”

But he didn’t. Instead, he glanced at Alistair’s face and that was what made up his mind.

He shifted the weapon around.

Isaac was ready-and he’d expected nothing less.

Both of them pulled their triggers at the same time.

Grier screamed against the tape that covered her mouth as the gunshots exploded in the kitchen, their echoing blasts making her ears ring and her eyes sting.

She heard two bodies hit the floor, but from her vantage point, she didn’t know who had been hurt.

Someone was moaning.

With her heart thundering, she lifted her head and craned her neck. Matthias was no longer in sight-so he must have been hit… She prayed he’d been hit.

Isaac…? Her father…?

Caterpillaring along the floorboards, she inched around the island. The first thing she saw was her father upright in the chair. And he was the one moaning as he fought furiously against the tape around his hands and feet.

Where was Isaac?

Ice-cold dread replaced every ounce of blood in her veins, and she knew the answer to the question even before she saw him lying flat on his back just inside the room.

He wasn’t moving, his gun lying in his lax, open palm, his eyes staring sightlessly up to the ceiling.

Grier screamed again, her body contracting, her cheek squeaking on the varnished floor, her whole soul and everything in her mind denying what was inescapable. Flailing around, she inched toward him, hoping to help, struggling to cross the distance-

Suddenly her hands were free.

With all her thrashing, she’d ripped them out of their bindings. Exploding into unexpected coordination, she tore the tape from her mouth and dragged herself with her arms to Isaac.

The bullet had gone right into his heart.

It was such a small hole through the sweatshirt, nothing but a relative pinprick with a sooty stain around the edges. Except it was more than enough to kill him.

“Isaac,” she said, touching his cold face. “Oh, God… don’t go…”

His mouth was slightly open, his pupils fixed and dilated, his breathing shallow to the point of nearly stopping.