Vicki Pettersson - The Taken

Which put her and Grif at absolute odds. Because Grif was no longer here just for himself, or even for Evie. His wife was long dead, and whatever restitution he could give her would be a cold, unknown comfort. However, Kit was warm and alive, and if she were to perish now, he wouldn’t feel mere guilt.

He’d want to die, he realized… and then he’d want to die again.

The thought pulled his chest tight. If he wasn’t careful, his headache would return. Sarge might be controlling the strength of his fierce mental attacks, but it also seemed the longer he was on the mud the more he could do the same.

But he still couldn’t find his way around this damned city. Where the hell was the entrance to the Country Club?

Grif turned his mind back to Chambers as he searched. He believed, though he couldn’t prove, that the man was behind the murders of those closest to Kit. He also believed and couldn’t prove that those murders were linked to the list initially acquired by Kit and Nicole. More than that, he thought as he finally spotted the club’s exclusive entry, the man’s openness with Grif about the sexual frat parties, and his willingness to host them at his personal property, meant he was also unconcerned with the world at large discovering his little secret. And why would he be? All those men gathered in one room like powerful little lemmings… and not one of them was talking.

And people love to talk, Grif thought, cursing as the road dead-ended before him. Backing up, he wondered what sway Chambers held over the powerful politicians, entertainers, and judges. The cameras in those rooms were part of it, but that wasn’t why Nicole Rockwell had died. Like Kit, she’d no idea about his estate parties.

So back to the Wayfarer Motel. To something connecting the two sexual enterprises. But what? Grif thought, finally spotting Tony’s long horseshoe entry. And who?

Pulling the car to a stop at the top of the private drive, Grif inwardly patted himself on the back for seeing Kit’s little treasure safe, and stretched into the night. Exhaustion was etched on his insides. Fatigue was something else he’d forgotten about his mortal years.

And the bone-weariness cost him. Grif had already shut Tony’s front door when his intuition caught up with his thoughts. The dregs of the weighty, ash-strewn night weren’t ready to be washed away after all.

A shadow lunged. Six feet, one-ninety, favoring his right. Grif leaped left… right into Lance Schmidt’s iron grip.

“You’re not as pretty up close,” Grif gasped, right before Schmidt blew out his kidney. He folded with the bolt of pain, immediately hobbled. The fist that rocked his jaw corrected his posture, and the headache he’d been dodging all night splintered his brain.

Booted feet caved in his stomach, cracking ribs, then a thud, and he was flipped, his mouth blooming with numbness and blood.

“Not so pretty, either…” he heard, right before steel-tipped toes found his head, his ear. Then he heard nothing.

His breath wouldn’t come. He was dying-he suddenly remembered it from the first time, and couldn’t help wondering if Sarge would send another Centurion or if he’d be expected to trudge back into the Everlast alone. Probably the latter. It wasn’t as if he didn’t know the way.

Unfortunately, he wasn’t dead yet. Grif opened his eyes-about all he could manage-and immediately regretted it. He’d only suspected that Hitchens was headed down a violent path, but Schmidt’s cold, marbled gaze told Grif that he’d killed before… and he enjoyed it.

Grif almost wished the man would torture him. Then, once Schmidt’s time was up on this mudflat, his soul would be shipped directly off to the forest. He’d have to endure every moment of pain he’d ever caused, and do so at the hands of the relentless, single-minded Third. And, oh, how they’d love to destroy this cruel soul again and again and again.

But Schmidt pulled out a gun instead. So it was to be silent and fast. Without another word, Schmidt compressed the trigger in a slow-motion squeeze that still lasted too long. Braced for death, Grif could only watch in frame-by-frame increments as the bullet left the chamber.

Then Grif’s shoulder blades flared with pain as Anne intercepted.

No. Not Anne. That was an unremarkable name meant for mortal lips. The creature who caught the fired bullet with the sharp edges of pointed teeth was Anas-the Pure, created by God, numbered among the Powers, tribal kin to the Dominations and Virtues, the first of the created angels who controlled demons and guarded the heavens… and who, self-admittedly, wouldn’t help a mortal even if her own soulless life depended on it.

Spitting the bullet back at Schmidt, who flinched, wide-eyed, when it burned his skin, she checked on Grif with a sidelong gaze and a growl.

“Your eyes are healed,” Grif slurred… or maybe he just thought it. He couldn’t be sure his larynx wasn’t crushed. He couldn’t be sure of anything, because that was when all hell broke loose, though Grif was no longer conscious to see it.

Memory. Teeth and wings, fire and full-throttle screams. It was all that remained of the chaos following Anne’s rescue. Or maybe he’d dreamed his second death, the blood slowing, the tissue dying. Even Grif’s beaten and bruised flesh merely echoed with the abuse, like a sad note lingering on the air, though paralysis had settled in his bones. When he tried to lift his head, nothing happened.

“A few more minutes,” Anne said, a giant shadow passing above him. Memory flashed again and he saw her bending, lifting, healing, but then she, and the thought, disappeared. “You’ll never even know it happened.”

Untrue. His memory had proven intractably stubborn… though his flesh was proving as weak and fragile as ever. Yet Anne’s healing touch worked. He was sitting up within five minutes, standing unassisted in ten. Even his back, where his wings had been ripped away, felt strong, solid, and whole. “You saved me,” he said, wobbly as a newborn deer in the middle of Tony’s wide, wood-paneled living room.

Anne cut him an annoyed look, and his breath caught. Her eyes were blue from corner to corner, and roiling like storm clouds beneath tightly curled lashes. She waited until his heartbeat had settled, then went back to staring out the window as the sun rose over the dewy green.

“Did you kill them?” Grif asked.

This time she looked at him like she wished she’d let him die. “Kill a child of God?”

“Right.” Stupid question. He cleared his throat. “So…?”

“They left,” she said, back to him. “Ran. Though your would-be assassin accidentally drilled a hole in the side of his partner.”

“Must have seen a ghost,” Grif said, stretching. That was better. “So how’s his buddy?”

“Couldn’t you tell? He’ll be dead within the hour.”

Grif froze mid-stretch.

“Come on, Shaw,” Anne said with undisguised disgust. “You’re a Centurion. You can still sense death coming for others.”

Grif shook his head. “I blocked it out.”

He’d been working so hard to ignore his angelic side, to use the time left on the mud to clear his name, that he’d missed death coming for him.

Yet Anne’s words jogged another memory from Chambers’s gala.

“Didn’t you smell that?” he’d asked Kit after they’d walked away from Paul, but she’d waved the question away and Grif let it go. But he recognized it now. Paul had reeked of post-mortem plasma.

“Use it or lose it,” Anne said, without sympathy.

That must be why Grif hadn’t perceived the swirling mist, the sign of impending death he’d relied on most, though in retrospect even Paul’s voice had sounded tinny, the echo of the hourglass running out. “It was the same smell that was stalking Paul earlier tonight.”