“I’ll be fine,” he murmured into her hair. “I was battling demons even before I became all untouchable and immortal.” And before he learned he had an angel in his family tree.
“I don’t care.” She gave a petulant shake of the head and stepped back, hands on hips. “You never had a trained killer after you before.”
“I’ll be surrounded by Guardians, Gem. Tayla will be with me the whole time you’re on shift. Your sister would never let anything happen to me.”
Gem tugged on one violet-streaked braid. “I know. But what if—”
“Shh.” He pressed two fingers to her lips. “I promise I’ll be okay. I have an angel watching over me, too.”
She grasped his hand. “They should all be watching over you. It’s stupid that they can’t.”
He thought so, too. Reaver had explained the situation back when Serena had been keeper of the amulet, Heofon, and even then Kynan had to call bullshit on the whole can’t-interfere-with-human-will crap. At least his Primori status—whatever that was—had gotten around the no-interference rule a little.
He understood Gem’s worry, though—the chain around his neck held the key to unimaginable destruction, and thanks to the events of last month, it wasn’t as secret as it should be. It made him a target, and he couldn’t help but wonder who could have known that Lore was the only non-angel who could kill him. Only a handful of people had been present at Kynan’s resurrection and gifting of the necklace and immortality charm, and there was no way the Sem brothers would have talked, any more than the Guardians would have. Probably. Not everyone in The Aegis was happy about the fact that Tay and Ky were still Guardians, and they were both still dealing with the fallout.
Gem’s green eyes became liquid as she kissed his knuckles. “Just be careful.”
“Always.” He had a baby on the way, one who would be born charmed—the first ever to receive the immortality gift in that manner—and he would make damned sure he was around to raise it. And to make more. Gem wanted a big family, and so did he.
But in order to have his big family, he had to deal with the threat to it.
Lore.
His gut knotted. He owed the Sem brothers big-time. They’d given him a job, a wife, a life. But he’d take out the brother they hadn’t even gotten a chance to know in a heartbeat. Though he hadn’t told Tayla, he had every member of the Sigil using their resources to scour the planet for the demon.
Eidolon had better pray that he found Lore before Kynan did.
* * *
“She’s definitely our sister, Shade.”
Eidolon stared at the DNA report as he spoke into the phone. This was crazy. Unreal. He’d had the test run twice to ensure accuracy and to confirm that no one had tampered with the report, even though in his heart he’d known since yesterday.
Sin sat on the bed in one of the patient rooms, feet swinging while she waited for him. Through the window to the room, she looked small and innocent as she stared at the anatomy posters on the wall. She’d come back as she’d said she would, though Eidolon had no doubt she wouldn’t stay once she got the autopsy report on the warg she’d killed. She had no new helpful information on Lore, except that she’d had a tense confrontation with Idess, and Eidolon was starting to worry.
Making matters worse, he’d had to suspend four staff members for fighting, three for dereliction of duty, a patient had died today when a nurse had accidentally injected a lethal dose of medicine, and now the family of the dead Mamu was threatening bodily harm against all staff members. To top it all off, tension still pulsed between him and his brothers, particularly Shade.
All this time, he’d taken pride in the hospital he and his brothers had built from the ground up, and yeah, UG was an amazing accomplishment. But now its heart—its denizens—were sick, and he couldn’t help but feel that it was his fault, that he’d neglected them somehow. And by suspending workers, he was treating individual symptoms instead of the underlying illness, but at this point, slapping on a bandage was his only option.
“E,” Shade said, his voice drowned out by the sound of the ambulance engine, “this is freaky. Hope dear old dad doesn’t have any more surprises in store for us. Half-goats, dog-boys…”
“I know.” Eidolon glanced at Tayla, who had just joined him. “Look, I gotta go. Runa’s waiting for you. Wraith will be here any second with an exorcist.”
He hoped that getting rid of the ghosts would end the problems plaguing the hospital’s staff, but even if it did, this was an example of his failure to consider all potential problems that might affect his workers. He should have been practicing preventive medicine instead of waiting until an emergency cropped up.
He should have seen this coming a long time ago, though he had to wonder why it was happening now.
“Good. I’ll be there in five.” Shade paused. “I’m bringing in another warg.”
Eidolon’s stomach slid to his feet. “Diseased?”
“Looks like. Same symptoms as the first two.”
The first two. Who were dead. Apparently, the one Sin had diseased had transmitted his mysterious ailment to another, who had come in just hours after the first warg. If Shade’s patient was sick with the same symptoms, they could be looking at a possible outbreak. Eidolon hadn’t told Sin about the second warg, but a few minutes ago he’d taken more blood from her to analyze.
“Tell Runa to go to my office,” Shade said. “I don’t want her and the boys anywhere near this patient.”
“You got it,” E said, but Shade had already hung up.
Eidolon snapped his phone shut, called the triage desk with the message for Runa, and then stared at the DNA report again. “This is so f**ked up.”
Tayla stole a peek at the report. “What’s f**ked up? The Smurfette?”
“The what?”
“Smurfette.” Tayla rolled her eyes. “You’ve never watched cartoons, have you?”
Wraith came around the corner, his leather duster flapping around his boots. He shot Tay a look drenched with sympathy. “E’s way too starched to watch cartoons. That’s so not happening to Stewie. He’s already digging The Simpsons.”
“He’s three weeks old!” Tayla gaped at Wraith in out-rage.
“Almost four.”
Tayla huffed. “Good God. I can’t believe you are raising a child. Isn’t there some sort of demon equivalent of Child Protective Services?”
“Hey.” Wraith crossed his arms over his chest. “I have as much right to screw up a kid as anyone else. So what’s going on, anyway?”
Eidolon really had no idea, since he’d never seen The Simpsons, and Stewie, Wraith’s son, had been named after some hell child on another cartoon Eidolon hadn’t seen. Fortunately, the kid also had a proper demon name, but Wraith and his mate, Serena, seemed to think he needed time to grow into Talon, so for now, Stewie it was. In any case, this conversation was either way over Eidolon’s head, or way beneath him. He was going to go with the latter.
Tayla cursed under her breath. “I was just explaining to Eidolon that Sin is a Smurfette.”
Wraith swung his big body around to study Sin with blue eyes that were very different from Shade’s, E’s, and Lore’s. Sin’s, too. “Nah. Smurfette is way hotter.”
“What the f**k is a Smurfette?” Eidolon was seriously getting annoyed now.
“There’s this cartoon called The Smurfs,” Tayla explained, slowly, as though Eidolon were the child here. “They’re these little blue people, and they’re all male. But one day a female shows up. She shouldn’t exist, but she does.”
Eidolon considered that for a second. “How did she get there?”
“An evil wizard named Gargamel made her,” Tayla said. “In a lab or something.”
“So you’re suggesting that an evil wizard made Sin?”
“Of course not, silly. I’m just saying she’s a Smurfette. A lone female amongst males.”
Eidolon frowned. “Did the Smurfette mate with the males?”
“Dude.” Wraith grimaced. “It’s a cartoon.”
“Then why are we talking about this?” Eidolon asked, and Wraith and Tayla exchanged looks that said he was a hopeless case. “Wraith, did you find an exorcist?”
Wraith shoved his blond hair back from his face. “Yup. He’s a weird one. Left him in the emergency department to get a feel for things.”
“Good. I’ll have him start work right away. If there’s anything he needs, I want you to get it for him.” As the hospital’s procurer of nontraditional supplies unique to demon medicine, dealing with an exorcist’s needs fell within Wraith’s job description.
“No problem.” Wraith jerked his chin at Sin. “Did she find Lore?”
Sudden tension took root at the mention of Lore’s name. “No.”
“Hope he’s not dead,” Wraith said, startling Eidolon. His brother stuck his hand in a coat pocket, probably feeling up a weapon. “If he needs killing, we should do the honors.”
Okay, yeah. That was more like it. “Wraith—”
“What?” The challenge in Wraith’s voice was what made Eidolon back down. Not that he was afraid of going toe-to-toe with his brother, but that was exactly what Wraith wanted, and Eidolon wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction. There had been too much fighting between them lately.
“Nothing. Just make sure Kynan has a lot of backup. If one assassin has been sent after him, there could be more.”
“Kynan hasn’t been left without a Guardian since all this began,” Tayla said. “In fact, it’s my turn to stay with him. I need to go.”
“Be careful.”
“It’s no fun if I do that.” She kissed him and took off, and Eidolon took a much-needed moment to admire her swinging retreat.
Wraith stared after Tayla, but for different reasons. “What does The Aegis think of all this?”
“They don’t know any more than we do,” Eidolon replied, returning his gaze to his brother. “Kynan said they know a hit has been put out on him, so they’re prepared to have to fight fallen angels, but they don’t know who’s behind the hire.”
“You know,” Wraith muttered, “life was a whole lot easier when we hated all humans and didn’t give a shit what happened to the lot of them.” He laughed. “Okay, I couldn’t say that with a straight face. I still don’t give a shit.”
That wasn’t entirely true—Wraith considered Kynan a friend and brother, and then there was the fact that he’d fallen in love with Serena while she was still human. And he had a human father-in-law who also happened to be a member of The Aegis’s Sigil. Wraith wheeled around. “I’m going to see if Exorcist Dude needs anything, and then I’m going home to Serena and the hellspawn.”
He jogged off, nearly colliding with Shade as their brother took a corner.
“Where’s the fire?” Shade shouted after him, but Wraith kept going. Shaking his head, Shade stopped in front of Eidolon. “What’s going on?”
“Sun’s up.”
Shade nodded in understanding. As a vampire now, Wraith’s mate was all but trapped in their home during daylight hours, and Wraith didn’t like leaving her unprotected. Not that she was completely helpless. He’d had an underground tunnel built from their cellar that led into a maze of caverns with exits near Harrowgates, and within a month, one would lead directly to the hospital.
“How’s the warg?” E asked.
“Not good. Shakvhan is working on him, but he’ll be lucky to make it another five minutes.”
“Damn.” Eidolon shoved his hand through his hair. “I’m going to set up an isolation room in case we get any more. And until further notice, I want all warg staff to avoid the emergency department and all warg patients.”
“And I’ll inform my warg medics that they’re banned from responding to any calls that involve werewolves.” Shadows came alive in Shade’s nearly black eyes, writhing angrily. “This was the last thing we needed right now.”
“The ghost problem should be fixed soon, so that’ll be one thing off the plate.”
“Good. This morning both ambulances had flat tires.”
Eidolon growled in frustration. “And we nearly lost another patient because his respirator had been turned off.”
“I hate ghosts—” Shade broke off at the sight of Sin, still sitting on the bed, now pawing through a medical text. He swallowed, and the shadows in his eyes settled. “Is that… her?”
Eidolon inclined his head. “She’s been waiting a while. I need to grab her paperwork.”
“Guess I should go say hi.”
“Does this mean you’re willing to give Lore a break?”
Shade glared. “I’ll do what I have to do to protect Ky, whether you get that or not.”
“Gods, Shade! It’s not that I don’t get it—”
Shade cut him off with a dismissive flick of his hand and started toward the room where Sin waited. E stopped him with a hand on his forearm.
“Shade. She’s not… she’s not what you’re used to.”
For a moment, Shade looked perplexed, but gradually, his expression shuttered. “She’s not Skulk, you mean.”
Shade had been extremely attached to all his Umber sisters, but as the only survivor of a slaughter that had killed the others, Skulk had been special to him. Now there was a hole inside Shade that E was afraid he’d try to fill with this new female, and Sin didn’t seem to want anything to do with her newfound brothers.