Smashed (Alexa O'Brien, Huntress #8.5)(20)

Gabriel shrugged, offering no further apology. He stood there looking like a dog who’d just been kicked. It was convincing enough to make me question the validity of it.

I pinned him with a fierce glare. “Don’t mistake my mercy for weakness. The second you give me a reason to think you’re up to something, you die. I don’t give a good goddamn if it pisses Shya off either. Oh, and another thing. If I find out you’re making vampires for him, I will destroy you and every damn one that you make.”

The atmosphere was tense with the weight of my promise. We stared at one another until Gabriel’s composure faltered.

“He wanted me to do it. That was before everything went down. I haven’t though and I don’t want to.” Something like sorrow crossed his face. It tugged at the pesky sympathetic spark that flickered deep within me. I suppose I should have been grateful to have Alexa’s light, but at times it produced more guilt than I deemed necessary. Though I imagined it was much the same for her with the darkness.

“Are you asking for help?” I questioned, feeling oddly obligated to this vampire I’d made. It was an unwelcome sensation.

“Not yet. I’ll deal with it.” Gabriel’s expression hardened. He thrust out a hand and said, “Thank you. For not killing me. I know Alexa wanted you to do it when you turned me.”

I stared at his hand and laughed. “Thanks, kid, but I’d rather not. Better watch out for Alexa. If she comes across you, she probably won’t be as forgiving.”

“I saw her, before it happened. I touched her, and I saw how bad it would be when she became a vampire.” He shook his head as if it were a shame.

“Alexa isn’t like us, Gabriel. She’s a creature of light forced to live with a hunger rooted in darkness. You and me, we’ve always been ruled by the dark. We can’t even begin to understand what she’s going through.” There was an unspoken warning in my words. I trusted that Gabriel was intelligent enough to catch it.

With a nod, he said, “I should’ve let her help me. Everything happened so fast. I made some stupid f*cking choices.”

“As we all have. And you will have more to make yet. Choose wisely.” I wasn’t the best person to hand out advice, yet I felt obligated to say something.

Gabriel made a sour face and shrugged. “I’ll let you get back to your night. Thanks, Arys.”

I watched him go, walking down the street with a lanky shuffle. I hoped like hell that I hadn’t made a mistake by letting him live. His remark about Juliet stuck with me, burrowing inside my mind to take root like a parasite.

Whatever it was, it had to be bad.

* * * *

Using the burner phone from the glove box of my car, I placed a call to Juliet. She answered with a short, clipped greeting that went from professional to personal once I announced myself.

“I thought you were going to do something about Alexa,” she snapped. “An agent has gone missing, and Briggs is sure that she’s behind it. He’s insisting we issue a capture order for her.”

“A missing agent?” I pondered this, curious.

“Sylvia Rollins,” Juliet said. “She was one of the agents in charge of Kale Sinclair when he was in our facility. She has a way of dealing with vampires that Alexa found distasteful. Now she’s missing. You put it together.”

I chuckled. Yeah, that sounded like Alexa. The woman could hold a grudge.

“If Alexa has her then don’t expect to see her alive again.” It meant nothing to me if Alexa wanted to settle some unfinished business with a torture happy FPA agent. I was only disappointed that I couldn’t watch.

“I don’t expect you to give a damn about Sylvia, but you should give a damn about what will happen to Alexa if she ends up our prisoner.” Juliet’s tone held a note of concern rather than a threat. “My hands are tied, Arys. I don’t have the clout to change orders like this. We will be hunting her.”

“Like I said, then I will be hunting you. Every one of you who makes a play for her. Should I come by and tell that to Briggs myself or can you handle passing that message along?” My tone very clearly held the promise of bad things to come.

Juliet rushed to respond. “No, don’t do that. I can tell him. Nobody has to die, ok?”

I picked at a mark on the seat of the car beside my leg. “Can you meet me somewhere? I just want to talk about this. Face to face. You pick the place.”

There was hesitation on the other end as she analyzed my request. I thought about what Gabriel had said and wondered if I should have found out what it was he’d seen. No, I decided; I didn’t want to know. Just because he saw something to do with Juliet and me didn’t mean he saw the worst-case scenario. I would never harm Alexa’s sister. On second thought, it was very unlikely that I would do such a thing, though I suppose it was always possible.

“I can meet you at the Tim Horton’s on 104th in an hour.”

“Perfect. I’ll see you then.”

I hung up the phone and tossed it back into the glove box. I wasn’t entirely sure where I was going with this little meeting. If she was as much of a stubborn, hardheaded woman as I suspected she was, I expected Juliet to come alone. That’s what I was counting on.

When she arrived at the coffee shop, I was already there, observing the few late night customers. The place smelled of strong coffee and humans. Juliet sauntered in, adding the aroma of wolf and perfume to the mix.