“I’ll look into it, but I’ll need the locations of the suspected kidnappings and the names and addresses of the missing people.”
“Do you have a comm?”
I hold up my wrist.
“I’ll get you added to our system as Azazel’s representative and get the data sent to you.”
I drain my tea. “Great. I’ll keep you updated.”
She leaves the coffee shop, and I tap a message to Fee. It’s been almost five hours since she left for the Beyond and my gut is all squirrelly. I need to know she’s okay.
My comm beeps before I can type.
Back at the house. Meet me there, stat – Fee
I look around. The place is empty, and the owner has her back to me. Fuck it. I make the jump to Fee.
Chapter Ten
Fee
We gathered in the lounge with the Christmas tree lights winking at us. I really needed to take that thing down, but I didn’t have the time. None of us did.
Grayson and Dean perched on sofa arms, and Cora sat on the single-seater. Uriel had gone to the Academy with Keon, and they weren’t back yet, but I didn’t have time to waste.
Seventy-two hours. That was all I had. I needed to leave for the Underealm ASAP, but I needed the people I cared about to know where I was going just in case…Just in case I didn’t make it back.
“Fee, what happened?” Dean asked. “I smell blood.”
Fuck, I’d showered off the Dread blood and changed out of my battle-stained clothes, but there was nothing to rival a Loup nose.
Grayson was out of his seat, nose buried in my neck as he inhaled. He jerked away. “Dread blood?”
“I may have helped clean up the Beyond.”
“You had to fight?” Grayson’s mouth turned down. “What the fuck happened?”
I filled them in as quickly as possible. “So, I have the location of the power source, and I’m leaving for the Underealm within the hour. I just… I wanted to see you before I left.”
Grayson paled, but he nodded. “The last team they sent in didn’t make it back. Be careful, stick with the Dominions, and if shit gets hairy, you get out of there.”
Ah, crap. He didn’t know I was going solo. This was the part where I bit my tongue and smiled and let him believe I’d have backup, but my poker face was always shit.
“Fee?” Grayson looked wary. “What is it?”
“Oh fuck,” Cora said. “You’re going alone, aren’t you.”
I winced.
Grayson looked from Cora to me. “What? No. Why would they ask you to do that?”
I puffed out my cheeks, ignoring the squirming in my belly. “Because they’ve already given up. They have an escape plan. A flagship. And in seventy-two hours they’re going to drain what’s left of the power in the Beyond and propel their getaway vehicle into the ether to pastures new, leaving us to burn.”
Silence filled the room.
“We can’t get into the Underealm, can we?” Dean asked, even though he knew the answer.
“No.” I gave him a small smile. “Trust me, I’m shitting myself, but I have to do this. There is no other way. If I don’t, then we all die.”
“I’ll go with you,” Cora said. “I can get into the Underealm just fine; it’s getting out that’s usually an issue, but you can fly me back.”
“Not if I’m carrying a power source. Besides, you need to look into the missing humans.”
I still couldn’t believe Azazel’s deputy was a Mammon supporter. Cora had alerted Keon about the possibility of spies. Was that why he wasn’t back yet? Had they found spies?
Cora made a sound of exasperation. “Missing humans won’t matter if the world ends. You can’t do this alone, Fee. You shouldn’t have to.”
“She won’t.” Keon entered the room with Uriel in tow. “Because we’re going with you.”
I absorbed the information Keon recounted. Mammon, the sneaky bastard, had sleeper agents in all the academies, and Master Luena had been one of them. Bloody hell.
I glanced over at the daemon and the celestial standing by the Christmas tree as if they were getting ready for a festive snapshot to be taken, except they weren’t exactly dressed for festive.
Keon had managed to snag a new outfit, more Dominus and less…naked. Black cargo pants that allowed his tail to be free and a black long-sleeved V-neck top that hugged his lithe, muscular torso like a second skin. He’d braided his hair, but navy tendrils had come free to kiss his high cheekbones. The markings on his face seemed to stand out darker against his blue skin today. Uriel had been kitted out in a similar fashion, but he was bulkier than Keon, and the shirt stretched tighter across his shoulders. His dark hair was tousled by the elements, and his ember eyes looked like jewels framed by thick, dark lashes. They both looked dangerous and kick-ass, and they were coming with me.
Relief was a live thing sucking the panic out of my chest. I wouldn’t be going alone, and that meant I could finally breathe.
“Sleeper agents aren’t just at the Academy,” Cora said to Keon. “Azazel’s deputy is one too, and he was pretty cocky about it.”
Keon hissed.
My temple throbbed with the threat of a headache. “We need to let Azazel and Mal know.”
“Already done,” Keon said. “I sent out phoenixes. We’ll meet them at the Hog and Boar on the far side of the Enmity River. We can spend a few hours and rest after our flight. We’ll hand over the coordinates to the cadet drop-off and fill them in on what Mammon is doing. Master Luena is meeting us there with a few chosen senior cadets.”
“She’s going to go through the motions, isn’t she?” Cora asked.
“Yes, and Azazel and Mal will be there with their men to capture the demons who come to collect the cadets.”
“Smart,” Grayson said. “What about the sleeper agents at the other academies.”
Keon’s mouth turned down. “Two academies have already lost contact with cadets who left on a field trip. The other two have identified and arrested the spies in their midst. It turns out that the drop-off was meant to occur in two batches. Our Academy was in the second batch.”
So Mammon already had some of our cadets. Fuck. Still, we were lucky we’d cottoned on to Mammon’s plot when we did.
“You won’t be alone,” Uriel said. “I promise I will protect you with my life.”
All this time, I’d believed that the Underealm was a no-go area for celestials. Conah had sent Uriel a message by phoenix when we’d needed to contact him, so I’d naturally assumed he couldn’t come into the Underealm. But the Powers had gone into Limbo centuries ago, and Seraphim had patrolled the nine circles back in the day, so my understanding of how things worked was obviously flawed.
“I always thought celestials couldn’t come into the Underealm. I mean, you never visited.”
“You never invited me,” he said with a wry smile. “Although, in honesty, I would probably have declined. Too much time in the Underealm taints a celestial.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I was possessed by a malignant, Fee, so I think we can safely assume I’m tainted. But even if I wasn’t, I’d still come with you.” There was a warmth in his voice that was different from his usual sincerity. His throat bobbed, and the corner of his mouth lifted. “So, yes, I’m with you.”
Keon’s plan could work, and if it did… “Azazel and Mal will be able to find out where Mammon might be holding Lilith.”
“It could be just the break we need,” Keon said.
“But what if Azazel and Mal don’t get the messages you sent?”
Keon’s eyes narrowed. “Then we hope the three of us will be enough to keep the cadets safe and capture one of Mammon’s men.”
Seventy-two hours was beginning to look smaller and smaller.
“I hate this,” Grayson said. “I hate that I can’t come with you.”
I pressed my cheek to his chest, memorizing the feel of him and filling my lungs with his scent. He stroked my hair and pressed his lips to my temple, infusing me with a sense of security.
“Keon and Uriel will be with me. I’ll be fine.”
He didn’t say anything, and he didn’t need to. We both knew that a team of celestials had failed at what I was about to attempt. I was merely a reaper. A Dominus with only a fraction of celestial power, and I was headed into Limbo, a place that even the demons who resided in the Underealm chose to avoid.
Not even Keon knew what we could expect when we got there.
I’d found home in my guys’ arms. Grayson, Mal, and Azazel. They were my everything, and the possibility that I might not see them again made my chest ache with loss.
I held Grayson tighter. “You’ll find Hunter. You’ll make peace with him.”
He pulled away from me. “Stop it. Stop talking as if you aren’t coming back from this, because if you don’t, there’ll be no me or Hunter. If you fail, there’ll be nothing.” He cupped my face. “You have to succeed, Fee, and to do that, you need to stay alive. Do you understand?”
His husky eyes were bright with passion, and my heart swelled with love for him. Love.
“I love you, Grayson.” My words were a whisper.
He stilled. “What did you say?”
The words swelled in my chest like a live entity, making me breathless. “I love you. I fucking love you, Grayson, and I need you to know that, okay?”
He kissed me hard on the mouth, and my eyes grew hot with emotion. He broke the kiss, his nose brushing mine. “I love you too, Fee. So fucking much. Promise me if you can’t find this power source, you’ll come back to me before the end. If we have to end, then I want to do it together.”
I kissed him softly. “I won’t fail. I can’t.”
But even as I said the words, something clawed at the back of my mind, and ice filled my stomach because there was a part of me that didn’t believe those words.