Forget About Midnight (Alexa O'Brien, Huntress #9)

I sat back and regarded him with the appraising stare of a predator admiring its catch. His expression somehow conveyed both pain and pleasure. That injured wrist of his couldn’t be feeling too great.

“You should not exist.” His breath came in gasps. The man was hovering on the edge of climax, my bite mirroring the one from Arys he still bore, and somehow he still managed to muster a vicious remark.

I smiled. “You know what? To show you I’m not a total asshole, I’m going to heal that wrist for you. And while I do it, you’re going to tell me what kind of things you’ve got going on in that lab.”

With a little push of power, it was easy to heal the damage Jez had done to his wrist. As I’d commanded, he began to talk, telling me tales of study and experimentation right out of a horror film. The FPA was studying us, all of us. Not a surprise in itself, I’d expected that.

The way Briggs told it, he’d learned early on that it was better to be the one studying than the one being studied. They wanted to know what made us different. They sought to isolate it and find a way to use it. But their biggest priority was finding a way to control us. As Arys had said, they wanted to turn us into weapons.

“What about you, Briggs?” I asked, breathing in his masculine human scent. Spending the day with him while waiting for Shya was going to be fantastic. “Do they use you as a weapon? Do you do a lot of walking in the dreams of others for the greater good?”

“I do what I have to do. Just like you.” There was a defiant glint in his eyes.

Oh yeah, it was definitely going to be a good day.

Chapter Twenty-Three

The day passed quickly. Much of it was spent tormenting Briggs. As sunset approached I eased off, freeing him from my thrall. He reminded me that in just a few hours that video would be leaked when he didn’t show up for work.

I watched the sun drop beyond the horizon from a shuttered window. Jez and Shaz hadn’t returned, which I found strange. I needed a ride.

“Do you have your phone handy?” I searched Briggs, finding it shoved into the back pocket of his pants. In a cheeky move, I squished close to him on the couch and took a photo of the two of us. Then I sent it to my own phone. “That one is for Juliet.”

“Giving me to Shya will only solve one of your problems.” Briggs let his head fall back against the couch. He looked exhausted. I hadn’t taken it easy on him. I also didn’t allow him to achieve any kind of release. Poor bastard. “It will just breed more though. I don’t think you’re thinking this through.”

Ignoring him, I called Jez. No answer. So I called Shaz whose voice was thick with sleep.

“Jez told me to head home and get some sleep,” he said. “She said you’d call when you needed a ride.”

“Did she now?” That didn’t sound right. It gave me a bad feeling. I had a pretty good idea of what would make Jez disappear for a while. “Do you want to come get me? I’m just waiting for Shya, but I don’t want to stay here a second longer than I need to.”

Shaz promised to come as soon as he could. I hung up and turned the phone off so it couldn’t be traced. When Shya hadn’t shown his stupid face nearly half an hour after sunset, I began to grow impatient.

“It’s not too late to strike a deal, O’Brien.” Ragged and weary, Briggs maintained his stiff agent persona. Always business.

“Pretty sure it is.” I eyed him, curious as to what Juliet saw in him. “Why the hell would you want to make a deal with me after what I did to you all day? You had fun, didn’t you?”

Briggs sighed and rolled his head to the side to meet my eyes. “Between you and Shya, you’re still the lesser evil.”

“Oh, well good for me,” I quipped. “Too bad you’ve violated any chance of me trusting you ever again. I don’t make a habit of believing liars.”

Annoyed that Shya was absent, I rolled up my sleeve and dragged a claw through the dragon marring my skin. The demon would sense it, and it would draw him like a lion to a lamb. I was anxious to get this deal done with and be rid of this damn mark.

I watched blood well up from the cut I’d slashed through the dragon’s tail. It was a minor wound that started to heal right away. I counted the seconds. Thirty-three seconds passed before I felt the air ripple. Finally.

“What the hell took you so long?” I demanded, beating Shya to the first snarky remark. “I’ve been waiting all damn day for you.”

Shya stood in the middle of the living room. His red gaze darted from me to Briggs, and he raised a brow in intrigue. “Have you brought me a gift?”

I stood in front of Briggs, unwilling to let Shya too close until my mark was removed. “I brought you your damn dreamwalker.”

The demon stared hard at Briggs, his mouth curving in surprised pleasure. “Well, this is interesting. Agent Briggs, I had no idea. That is a secret you guarded well.”

Briggs sat stiff now, using what was left of his strength to brace for what might come next. He didn’t speak a word.