“We were wrong,” Collin said.
“Yeah, we were,” Derrick agreed. “So it begs the question, do any of us really know him? We are all surprised, and our first instinct is to defend the guy and say something’s going on that we don’t understand, but we don’t really know him.” He emphasized each word.
Hope sat back, her mind reeling. “I know him.”
“Do you?” Derrick asked, leaning forward. “Why? Because you were buddies as kids? Because he stepped in front of you when his psycho dad tried to hurt you? That was a long time ago, Hope. He’s been with Santino and his group longer than he was without them, and apparently he’s been training, and training hard, while he’s been away.”
Liam’s shoulders went back. “Yeah, the male can fight. He wasn’t even breaking a sweat after he took down those two Kurjans. I’m not sure we could have contained him without the darts.”
“Speaking of which,” Libby said softly, “has Emma figured out what’s in them?”
Hope’s head was still aching. “Not yet.” She’d called her aunt first thing in the morning, but Emma didn’t have news.
“That’s not good,” Derrick muttered. “Kurjans with a concoction we can’t trace.” He dropped his gaze to the sling holding Hope’s set arm against her body. “So you can’t take any blood until we know for sure how the blood will react to whatever is still in your system, right?”
She nodded. “Yeah.”
Libby slid a bottle of pills across the table to Hope.
Hope reached and turned it around. “Advil?”
Libby stared at the bottle. “After you texted us about this new theory, I ran to the pharmacy at the nearest town, and the clerk helped me choose the right painkiller for you. She said that one would help.”
Derrick’s eyebrows rose. “She didn’t think it was odd that a twenty-something female had to ask about human painkillers?”
“I told her I was Amish,” Libby murmured, her tawny gaze directed at Hope. “Take the pills. If you’re human, we’ll figure out how to keep you alive. It’s okay to be human.”
No, it wasn’t. She shouldn’t be mortal. “I’m a prophet, with the marking and all, and I also have vampiric chromosomal pairs, so I don’t see how I could be completely mortal.” Hope opened the bottle. “Do I take them all?”
Libby wrinkled her nose. “The clerk said to start with two, and if that doesn’t work, up the dosage but never take more than what the directions say.”
Hope tossed two of the round pills into her mouth and swallowed.
Liam leaned forward. “Do you feel better?”
“Not yet,” Hope said. While the Realm hospital had some serious painkillers that would probably kill a human, simple ones like these were unnecessary and thus not stocked.
“It’ll be okay.” Collin straightened in his seat. “We’ll figure this out like we always do.”
Hope tried to believe him, but doubts still ticked through her brain like marching ants. “I appreciate the support, but we have to find those two women we lost. Do we have any sort of bead on them?”
“No,” Collin said. He was their resident computer expert and even now had a laptop open in front of him. “They were gone when the other team got there. Satellite images confirm a Kurjan squad took them. It looks like they headed first to Germany. Then we lost them. We don’t know how they got the women out of the country.”
“We’re losing too many of them,” Hope said. Hers was by no means the only squad out trying to rescue enhanced women before the Kurjans kidnapped them. But her little force was deadly precise and would soon rise through the ranks, she was certain. “Has anybody reached out to other squads to figure out if they know more than we do?”
“We just got the intelligence report from Dage,” Libby said, nodding toward the computer. “I don’t think anybody knows anything except that Ulric is definitely collecting enhanced females. We don’t know why the legends seem to be coming true, and nobody even knows the basis for the legend.”
Hope sighed. Ulric hadn’t been put away just for the damage he’d wrought but because he had some sort of plan to kill all enhanced females, even those mated to immortals. It didn’t make sense to her. She cleared her throat. “I spoke with Drake in a dream last night in one of my dreamworlds.”
Libby jolted. “You did what? You didn’t bring me in?”
“No. It was just the two of us,” Hope said. “Now that Paxton is back in the territory, apparently I can get into the dreamworlds.” It didn’t make a lick of sense, but for some reason, she only was able to do that when he was around.
“Maybe it’s something about his energy,” Derrick said thoughtfully.
“What do you mean?” Hope asked.
He shrugged. “I don’t know. I’ve been studying energy for a while. That’s kind of what we witches do. It has to be something like that. Something in you must respond to him in a way that opens the dreamworlds.”
“I wonder if that means he should be there with you,” Liam said, his gaze unrelenting.
Hope ignored the menace in her cousin’s tone. “Maybe, but we don’t exactly trust him right now, do we?”
“Absolutely not,” Liam responded. “Yet I don’t like you being alone with a Kurjan either.”
Hope felt heat rising into her face. She’d kissed both Paxton and Drake the day before, and she shouldn’t trust either of them. “It’s just a dreamworld. He can’t get to me from there. Nobody can. I can bring myself out of it at any point.”
“Well, there’s that,” Derrick mumbled. “Did you ask him why they’re taking enhanced females?”
“I think there’s a war going on within the Kurjan nation,” Hope said.
“What do you mean?” Derrick asked.
She leaned forward. “I think Drake had to step up as leader when Dayne died, and he and Ulric don’t like each other. I think Ulric is actually kidnapping the enhanced females, and Drake wants to stop him.”
“Yeah, because he’s a good guy,” Collin bit out.
Irritation rose within Hope. “If he wants to stop Ulric, he can’t be all bad.” It was time to level completely with her team. “Drake wants to meet me in person, and I think it’s time.”
A chorus of “oh, hell no” went around the entire table.
Chapter Eleven
Paxton leaned against a tree outside of demon headquarters as the sun sparkled off the snow blanketing his surroundings. Christmas lights had been strung around every eave of every home, twinkling merrily, even though it was almost noon. It seemed as if lately the demons and the vampires were competing to see who could decorate with more lights and outside whimsy, such as deer and presents and even a snowman. He wished he could get into the spirit, but considering he didn’t have much chance of surviving the next week, he wasn’t feeling it.