Something was very wrong with that girl.
“Well, now we need a new plan, because she’s going to be twenty-one tomorrow night at midnight, and we all know what will happen when she gets her wings. She can’t be in public when she goes through the Transition,” I said through clenched teeth.
This whole situation was more than I signed up for.
Cabe was still looking down the alley, his eyes sad and brimming with hurt. I sighed, shaking my head. I didn’t know much about Annalise, but I did know that for eleven years, he’d been seeing her. I could tell that he’d grown attached to her, and I couldn’t blame him. Having someone in your head for that long…he was bound to become possessive of her. But he never expected the girl we were hunting to be the very same one he’d been looking for all this time.
“She looked the same?” I asked, trying to get him to stop staring after her.
She was long gone.
“That was her.” He looked at me, and I tried not to freak out. He was in bad shape. His blue eyes were full of desperation and longing, his heart bleeding on his sleeve. This girl owned him, and he’d been breathing the same air as she had just a few minutes ago…before she got away. “How did I miss that she was Nephilim? I thought, all this time, that she was a Human. Annalise never showed any signs of being anything but an ordinary girl. But then tonight…the way she fought…that was brutal. I’d never seen a vision of her fighting before. I think I’ve seen everything else, but now I’m not even sure if I’ve touched the surface. What is the fucking point of these visions if information is being left out? I don’t understand.”
He grunted and kicked the wall, falling apart.
“What have you seen exactly?” I asked hesitantly. I’d never cared before, but now I wanted to know anything that he knew. My beast perked up his ears, searching for any intel on the girl.
“That’s not my story to tell,” he said harshly, looking up at me with new eyes. Something was shimmering in them, rolling like a tidal wave. “Her life is her life; I shouldn’t have been able to see it at all.”
“What the fuck? Who cares about her privacy?” I laughed a humorless sound. “We were asked to find her, and now we’ve lost her. We need every scrap of help we can get before Quint’s dad orders our asses dead.”
“This is bigger than him now!” Cabe shouted, no doubt frustrated that I was taking this too lightly. “This is about Annalise and the fact that she has no idea that she’s a fucking Nephilim, and tomorrow night she’ll be in a world of fucking pain. I don’t have access to her anymore, so we’re going to have to come up with a plan to find her and get her to trust us enough to help her through it. I’m not going to spill her secrets, it’s not my place, but I will tell you that I have no idea what the fuck that was just now. She went on the defense immediately, and I didn’t expect it. She’s broken, sure, life hasn’t treated her kindly, and the shit she’s been through…” His voice trailed off as he hung his head, his shoulders bunching up under the weight of his concern. “You guys have no idea what she’s been through, but I guess I expected her to be different. Not so fucking hard, so vicious. I have no idea what that was.”
I knew what that was.
That was a fucking mask. Annalise was fighting for her life. Sure, she might be sweet somewhere deep down in that fiery soul of hers, but to get to that girl? Yeah, Hell itself would have to freeze over before anyone got to see what she was really like under those tough fists.
“Well, now we have to find a fucking way to get her to trust us, and this big asshole growled at her the whole time like some raging animal.” Quint punched me lightly in the ribs to emphasize his point. I didn’t bother responding since it was the truth.
Something about her rubbed me the wrong way.
“MINE!” my beast roared, his voice echoing in my head.
Fuck.
I groaned, pulling on my hair, feeling the black strands fold and twist between my fingers. I didn’t want to take this mission in the first place, but Quint’s father was a hard man to refuse, and I was bored, frustrated, and needed a distraction from all the fruitless research I’d been doing. Now I was all wound up, and nothing had changed. I felt even worse than I did before I agreed to find her.
“I’ll see if a vision comes tonight, though I doubt one will. I haven’t gotten one in the last month, and if I heard that JD guy right, he said she’s gotten stronger. Which probably means her body is gearing up for the Transition. That’s probably why I’ve lost my visions,” Cabe said, still pacing.
“So what’s the fucking plan?” My voice was harsh and bitter. I wanted out of this conversation, and I wanted to be balls deep in any pussy I could find before the night was over. I didn’t like that I wanted to crack Cabe’s skull open and pull out every memory he had of her. I wanted to know what made her tick, what made her angry, what made her laugh. My beast was still raging.
Something was fucking wrong with me.
“We’ll throw a party tomorrow night at Hellhound,” Cabe began, shaking off his melancholy attitude and getting excited about his new plan. “We’ll have to slip an invitation under her door, but with Hellhound’s reputation and her obvious need to find trouble…I bet you she’ll show up. Quint, can your Bull sniff out her scent and find out where she lives? You can cloak yourself and leave it under her door. I’ll give her a plus one, and she can bring the guy she lives with, that way she’ll be more likely to come. She can bring backup.”
“She has a fucking boyfriend?” I shouted. My hands shaking with rage, clenching and unclenching at my sides.
What the hell was happening to me?
I couldn’t breathe right. The beast inside me was snarling and foaming at the mouth. All I could picture was dragging her kicking and screaming from wherever the fuck she lived and getting her far away from whoever the fuck he was…fuck!
I felt my beast stand up and sniff the air. His dark brown eyes widened as he pulled in the remaining tendrils of her scent out of the air. I closed my eyes, letting her sweet flavor waft over me, lilacs and a hint of sweat.
He began whining, whimpering, pacing. He was itching to get out, to get to her, to protect her.
He wanted her.
And I was powerless.
Boyfriend.
“Lanier, bro, calm down.” Quint chuckled as if he had no care in the world.
He laughed at fucking everything. It only made my situation worse as I was losing control—and quickly.
“Cabriel, she has a boyfriend?” I asked through clenched teeth.
“I mean, I’m pretty sure they’re broken up, but she lives with a guy named Joey. She’s been living there for three years. I’m not sure why she hasn’t left yet, but I imagine it’s because New York is expensive and the diner she works at isn’t enough to support her on her own. I always wondered what she did to make real money, to pay her bills and stuff. Never pictured underground fighting though. That was entirely left out.” He sighed as if in pain. I swear to all fuck, if he was going to fight me on having her, I’d kill him. Brother or not, I’d kill him.
Wait, what?
“What are you doing to me?” I accused my beast, confused as hell.