Steal the Night (Thieves #5)(73)

“I’m surprised that escaped you.” Bris brought the gun down. He nodded to Lee, who lowered his weapon as well. Bris gestured that he wanted me to come to him. I stood and joined him. “My goddess, this is a prophet. He’s walked the Earth plane since…well, long before I came into being. He’s a creature of great wisdom, though for the most part he uses his wisdom for his own betterment.”

Jacob’s eyes narrowed as he shot Bris a perturbed stare. “I haven’t seen you in thousands of years, Bris. While you slept and waited for your perfect host, I’ve been here with the humans, watching them and guiding them. Allow that thousands of years’ congress with these beings may have changed me.”

Bris’s hand slid to my wrist, like he was waiting to pull me or push me out of danger. “I’ll believe it when I see it. Now, I’ll ask again, why are you here?”

“Your goddess took one of my men prisoner,” Jacob replied.

“You came to spring me?” Terry sat up a little straighter and a grin lit his face.

“Despite what that fertility god will tell you, I don’t leave my men behind,” Jacob replied. “I admit that I also wanted to speak to the female again. I meet so few true nexus points.”

“The bean si called me that,” I said quietly as Marcus said something under his breath in Italian.

“Is this true, Oracle?” Marcus asked, his mouth a tense line.

“It is,” Bris replied for Jacob, who was staring at me. “I’ve found it terribly amusing that everyone is so concerned with the vampire when the truly important one was standing right in front of them.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” I asked the god in my husband’s body. I was getting the same panicked feeling I’d gotten when the washer women had called me that. I hadn’t understood it all at the time. I had my mind on other things that night.

Lee crossed his arms. He didn’t like the mystical crap. “The washer women said something about her having no fate.”

“She is fate,” Jacob said with a small laugh. “Everything on this plane rests on her small shoulders. If she succeeds, we all get to live another day. If she fails, this plane will run red with blood.”

Bris sent Jacob a dark look. He felt my panic. He took my hands in his and rubbed them briskly because I was suddenly very cold. “A nexus point is like a blank space in the fabric of history, my goddess. It merely means that you have no particular fate written for you.”

“And because of that you change the fates of those close to you,” Jacob continued. “Someone with the power of prophecy can see the way a person’s life will most likely go. Nothing is for certain, but we tend to be correct most of the time. I can look at the British woman upstairs and tell you that in forty years’ time, she will die in a plane crash. Her vampire lover will miss her terribly, but he’ll take a companion ten years later and be very happy with her. I can look at the faery Bris currently inhabits and know that he should be dead many times over. He entered this plane with a death wish. He’s impulsive and prone to rages that should have gotten him killed on at least seven different occasions, but he got close to the nexus point and now his fate is tied to yours.”

“And Daniel would have lived if he hadn’t been involved with me,” I said, repeating what the bean si had told me.

Jacob nodded. “Yes. Donovan would have lived a nice, simple life as a boring IT guy who would have been far too old to be effective when he turned. Daniel Donovan needed to turn in the prime of his life.”

We were all looking at the prophet now. There was something about the way he said the words that made me wary. This Jacob had been watching us for a very long time. He’d been the one to send Marcus to protect my grandmother. Just how much of a hand had he had in our lives?

“Did you kill Daniel?” Neil asked because he never prevaricated.

Jacob held his hands out, trying to bring the intensity level down. “I did not. I merely see patterns and play the odds. I knew that it was likely Donovan would die young if he had a companion in place. You’ll find latent vampires tend to die young when a companion is right there, ripe for the taking. Something deep inside tells them to end their human life and begin to walk the night. I didn’t have to kill Donovan. I’ve only made three moves in this little chess game.”

“You sent me to protect Zoey’s grandmother.” Marcus offered one of the moves.

“Yes,” the boy agreed. “And I introduced Harry Wharton to his best friend, George Donovan. I also chose to keep Donovan off the Order’s radar. I feared if the Order knew about Donovan, they would figure out what Zoey was and then all hell could break loose.”

“Are you telling me you joined the Order seven hundred years ago so you could protect one girl from people trying to influence her?” Terry asked, awe in his voice.

“It was a long game.” Jacob sighed with satisfaction. “And now it’s almost over. I’m very interested in seeing how it all turns out, but alas, I must watch the play from the cheap seats, as the Americans would say.”

Bris’s eyes were wary. “You mean to leave her alone now?”

“I do. I fear if I stay, the temptation to interfere will be too great, and I have promised to allow things to play out as they will from this point on,” Jacob insisted. “I merely came back to retrieve my Australian friend. It’s time for me to travel again. The Order is well established. They will act as a check on the demonic influences on the plane and, if Zoey succeeds, they’ll represent humans on the new Council.”