The Adversary by Thea Harrison

Chapter Seven

When Graydon started to follow, Dragos told him, “On second thought, let’s all go back and convene there. I want to rinse the mummy dust off and change into fresh clothes.”

“Sounds good,” Graydon said.

Pia glanced at the sky that was lightening with predawn. The interloper had gorged on plenty of food at the beach party, so Dragos’s body had been fueled recently, but she never did have that smoothie Liam was going to make.

It had been almost twenty-four hours since she’d been able to choke down any sustenance, and not only had she expended a lot of energy, she had also been pumping breast milk for Niall.

She was starting to feel hollow and lightheaded. As much as she wanted the interloper destroyed for good, part of her was relieved at Dragos’s decision. She just needed a few fucking minutes before the next thing happened.

They followed Liam back, and the house very quickly became overcrowded with everyone present at the same time. A few people spilled onto the deck outside the master suite, which made Pia give Dragos a wry scowl, and he returned. It was good to have such a tight-knit community, but it also meant they weren’t going to get any alone time soon.

We need that bigger place, he told her telepathically. Like right now.

I know.She stroked the long, powerful line of his back. We need a place so big everybody can have their own space in it, and then they won’t even notice when we leave and get our own real place.

Both hunger and laughter glimmered in his darkened gaze. I don’t want to take too long before resuming the hunt, or I’d pull you into the bathroom and to hell with everybody else.

Hold that thought for now. We’ll pick it again soon.Pushing his arms away so he didn’t forget and touch her with the mummy cooties on his hands, she stood on tiptoe and kissed him quickly.

Growling under his breath, he deepened the kiss before pulling back. Frustration hardened his features.

By that point, she was so hungry she was starting to feel faint. “I have to eat.”

“Go,” he said immediately. “I’ll be there in five.”

She made her way to the kitchen, where Liam stood at the counter, wolfing down beef sandwiches. Aryal, Quentin, and Grym were there as well, drinking beer and polishing off a huge platter of wings and chicken legs.

Quentin left the food to give her a hug, and she leaned into him gratefully. “The things you and I have seen since getting entangled with this group,” she whispered.

His chest moved in a quiet laugh. “Yeah, the things we’ve seen. Glad you’re okay.”

“Thank you.” She kissed his cheek then stood back and said to all of them. “Thank you for everything.”

Aryal nodded, and Grym tilted his beer bottle at her. They would never talk about what they had done, she knew. What happened in the sentinel club stayed in the sentinel club. But that was okay by her. She didn’t need the details of what they did to Dragos in that beach tent.

Grabbing juice from the refrigerator, she drank it thirstily straight from the pitcher and as the sugar hit her system, she started to feel better almost at once. Then she gathered up vegan dishes indiscriminately—a platter of snickerdoodle cookies, a bowl of pasta, and another bowl of salad—and set them on the counter.

“Now that Dragos isn’t possessed any longer, we should think about going back to New York,” Grym said. “As fun as a bug hunt sounds, they don’t need us for that.”

“I kind of want to stay,” Aryal replied. The harpy sucked the meat off a chicken wing. “I like bug hunts. I just have so much to do with that harbor investigation.”

Grym muttered, “I have so many reports on my desk, they’ve acquired intelligence, formed their own civilization, and are in the process of having babies. In fact, their babies are having babies.” He smiled at Pia. “Speaking of which, I’m sorry we missed seeing your little nutcase. You must be looking forward to getting him back home.”

“Can’t come soon enough for me,” she said around a mouthful of cookie. Ah, carbohydrates. “Just as soon as we’ve hunted down that bug and know that it’s safe again. All the parents here must be anxious to get their children back from hiding.”

“Where are the children again?” Liam asked casually.

Grym shrugged. “Not our department.”

Pia frowned down at her half-eaten cookie, then looked at Liam. Was it okay that he asked that? How could it be okay that he asked that? They had just talked about it, when he had found her in the forest clearing. Liam had agreed with the decision to keep the children’s whereabouts a secret.

Dread can come in many ways. Sometimes it hit like a lightning bolt. At other times, it took over the body like a slow, creeping rot.

She stared at the long, graceful form of her handsome son, while nausea churned and blood pounded in her veins. This horrible suspicion… this had to be a PTSD reaction, right? Bayne said that he found Liam flying along the coastline. She had seen Liam’s dragon form for herself when he landed at the construction site.

The thief of everything wasn’t Wyr. He had never accessed Dragos’s Wyr capabilities. But like Graydon said, just as they had been learning about him, he had been learning about them.

And that thief might not be Wyr, but Liam’s body was.

Heart pounding, she abandoned her food and walked over to lean against the counter beside Liam. “Mm,” she said, smiling. “Your sandwich smells good. Can I have a bite?”

He offered it to her.

The beef sandwich.

She met his blue, watchful gaze.

He was very quick, she had to give him that. He must have seen the comprehension in her face and realized he had made a misstep. Even as she shrank away and opened her mouth to scream, he snatched her hard against his side, pulling her off her feet.

Tangling his fingers in the hair at the back of her head, he snarled at the others, “Stay back, or I’ll snap her neck.”

The sentinels had begun to lunge at him. They stopped.

“This is why I hate surprises and don’t want Christmas presents!” the harpy roared.

Quentin’s gaze met Pia’s. His eyes were filled with shock and rage. “But he flew.”

“I know.” She broke into wild struggles, but the interloper had Liam’s strength and speed. He yanked her head back cruelly, and she choked and went still.

The house went by in a chaotic blur. It was a short trip from the kitchen to the living room. With her head forced back so far, she could hardly see anything, just snatches at the corners of her eyes.

Exclamations, chairs scraping across wood. Someone—Graydon, she thought—grabbed at Liam’s shoulder, but the interloper spun away, slammed back into a wall, pushed off it to charge through the front door, splintering it into pieces.

The impact knocked the breath out of her. Struggling to get air into abused lungs, she tried to wedge one arm between them while she grabbed the wrist of the hand tangled in her hair.

He hissed in her ear, “I swear to all the gods, I will rend you limb from limb in front of your mate if you don’t hold still. Just think how happy that would make me. You’ve been nothing but trouble since we met, you traitorous bitch.”

He could do it. He was strong enough he could tear her apart with his bare hands.

Dragos shot out of the house, barefoot and shirtless and dressed in jeans, moving his tremendous body with deadly, powerful speed. She would have called him an unstoppable juggernaut—she had, many times before—but when he laid eyes on them, he jerked to a halt.

The others poured out behind him. She caught a glimpse of Bayne’s horror-stricken expression. “Oh my fucking God. But he was in dragon form. He flew.”

Then the interloper in Liam’s body whirled to face the house, and Dragos, Bayne, and the others disappeared from Pia’s line of sight. As the interloper backed up, he began to laugh. “This body is amazing. Just like yours was, Dragos. Unbelievably strong. The smells, the sights—the sounds.” He shook Pia like a rag doll. She felt a rib snap and cried out sharply before she could stop herself. “Tell them to stop trying to surround me.”

“Stop,” Dragos said.

Silence fell over the clearing.

“He’s every bit as strong as you are, your son,” the interloper said. “But he doesn’t yet have your expertise with magic. He doesn’t yet know that struggling against the sleep spell makes it stronger. Now, kneel.”

The silence grew deadlier, heavily weighted with the promise of violence and death. Pia didn’t have to see Dragos to know that he went down on one knee immediately.

“Very good,” said the interloper. “The rest of you do the same—excellent. I am your sovereign now. Say it, all of you.”

The words echoed through the clearing. Pia heard the lie ringing through their many voices. Everyone who had been present in the house said it….

Except Morgan and Sidonie. They had also been in the house, hanging out with the others in the living room. If they had been present in the clearing, she had no doubt they would have spoken the words along with the others.

Where had they gone? She couldn’t look around to doublecheck her theory, but despite everything she smiled.

“Those shackles you used to chain me,” the interloper said. “I want them. Get them now.”

“We don’t have them any longer,” Aryal said, and Pia heard the lie in that as well. “Since we didn’t need them, we sent them back to New York.”

“That is not what I want to hear.” The interloper tightened his arm around Pia’s ribcage, and another bone snapped. The world went gray. “Get them now.”

“Go,” Dragos said.

Someone raced out of the clearing. Pia watched the early morning clouds overhead. There was nothing else she could do. Or was there?

The interloper said coldly, “I did not say you could rise.”

Telepathically, Dragos asked, How badly are you hurt?

Two ribs. Not bad.The broken ribs burned like hot pokers thrust into her side. To take her mind off them, she focused on the sky that writhed with the unseen.

Hang tight, Pia, he said. The gentleness in his telepathic voice was at complete odds with the rage radiating through the clearing like an invisible sun. I’ll get you out of this.

I know you will, she told him.

“You do realize that if you kill her, there will be nothing holding me back,” Dragos said.

“Yes, I do realize,” the interloper spat. He backed further away from the house. “That’s why I need those shackles. Keep back! I might not want to kill her—for now—but I’m going to very much enjoy hurting her. Every sacrilegious burn and bruise your servants gave to me, I will give to her. She dared to defy me, and I will crush her underneath my heel and rain pestilence down on all of you for disrespecting my holy resting pla—”

“Jesus Christ, shut the fuck up,” Pia snapped.

Her Wyr form had been freaking out for a while now, and she let the insanity take hold. Wrapping her legs around his hips, she hooked an arm around his neck, called up feral strength from the base of her spine, and yanked her head free.

Searing pain blazed along her scalp as she left a handful of hair behind in his grip. Snaking her head around, she sank her teeth into his ear. I’m so sorry, baby boy.

Liam’s blood filled her mouth, and the world went batshit.

Screaming, the interloper tried to pry her head away. She hung on with everything she had, arms, legs, teeth. He got his fingers around her neck and squeezed, cutting off her supply of air.

Then Dragos tackled them. When they hit the ground her broken ribs ground together, and pain washed over her in a towering tsunami.

Darkness came as a relief.