Warrior (Relentless #4)(187)
“Khristu!” I braced my hands against the tile as the cold water flowed over me. This was becoming a nightly routine for me, and every time I stood here, I wondered how much longer I could go on like this. It wasn’t just my unfulfilled desire for Sara; it was nature demanding we finish what it had started and complete the bond.
I groaned and turned my face up to the frigid spray, feeling it run down my body in rivulets. Had any bonded male ever gone this long without mating?
I knew the answer to that already. You could delay completing the bond for a period, but only if you maintained a distance between you and your mate, meaning no touching, no kissing, and definitely no sleeping in the same bed with them. I’d passed the point of no return with Sara the moment I’d kissed her back in the medical ward at Westhorne.
But I would wait. Whether or not she felt the bond as I did, I knew she cared deeply for me, and she was affected by my touch too. I’d wait for her to be ready to take the final step, for her to come to me and tell me she loved me.
I loved her too much not to.
Chapter 36
“You guys hear about that warehouse in Minneapolis?” Raoul called as Chris and I walked toward the control room a week later.
“No, what about it?”
“Last week, a truckload of people showed up at a hospital in Minneapolis, going on about giant lizard people stealing them from their beds and keeping them in cages. The humans were all young – late teens to early twenties – and at first the hospital thought they were a bunch of college kids on drugs. They called in the police to try to make sense of the victims’ stories. No one could tell the police exactly where the warehouse was, but they all said someone showed up out of the blue, killed the lizard people, and helped them escape.
“The Minneapolis unit found the warehouse before the police did. Inside, were two dead gulaks and a dead ranc demon. One of them was a gulak master – a big one – and he had a hole burnt through his chest.”
“Giant lizard people,” Chris said, shaking his head.
“Yeah. They found a bunch of cages too. Looked like the gulaks were running slaves and someone took exception.”
Chris frowned. “Couldn’t have been a rival demon. They wouldn’t have let the humans go.”
“That’s true,” Raoul said.
“How did we not hear about this before now?” Chris asked.
I let out a short laugh. “Because we’ve been too busy to read the reports from the rest of the country.”
“I’ve been searching the central database for any reports that mention strange incidents like this,” Raoul said. “None of these kills were done by our people.”
“Do we have any intel on who might be doing this?” I asked as we entered the control room.
As usual, my eyes sought out Sara who was in her spot on the couch. She smiled at me, and I started toward her.
“Whoever they are, they are deadly and fast,” Raoul said as he and Chris followed me. “I hate to admit it, but their kill rate is better than ours right now with zero human casualties. They move around a lot too, which makes it impossible to get a lead on them. We have reports coming in from all over the country.”
I joined Sara on the couch, and Chris and Raoul grabbed chairs for themselves.
“Are you sure it’s the same people?” Chris asked Raoul.
“No, but my gut tells me it is,” Raoul replied. “All the strikes have the same feel to them, and the hostiles were killed by some kind of weapon we haven’t seen before. The warehouse in Minneapolis, the vampire in Seattle, the nest at the old amusement park in New Jersey. The person shows up, makes the kill and leaves. And each time the victims recovered had no clear memory of their rescuer or what happened to them. It’s like someone messed with their memories. Twenty-two people were rescued from the gulak in Minneapolis, and every one of them gave a different description of the person who helped them.”
“One person?” I stared at him. “Didn’t you say we found a dead gulak master in the warehouse? It would take an experienced warrior to kill a demon that powerful.”
Across the room, Raj looked up from his work and laughed. “Maybe we have a rogue warrior taking it on the road.”
“Or it could be a human hunter with a new kind of weapon,” Brian suggested. “Whoever he is, he has a pair to go into that nest on his own.”
Chris laughed. “Maybe we should try to recruit him.”
“You guys automatically assume it’s a male,” Jordan said derisively.
“No offense, Jordan,” Raoul said. “But the odds are small that this is a female.”
Beside me, Sara spoke for the first time since we’d come in. “Why?”
Raoul smiled at her. “Most females don’t have the stomach for that kind of killing.”
Jordan shot him an angry glare, and I almost laughed when he rushed to say, “Mohiri females do, but I doubt one of them is behind this. I think we are dealing with someone new.”
“Why does it matter who they are as long as they are helping people and killing the bad guys?” Sara asked.
I squeezed her bare foot, which rested against my thigh. “It doesn’t as long as they keep a low profile and don’t endanger humans. We monitor the police bands in most cities, so we heard about the warehouse in Minneapolis and were able to get it contained before the local authorities arrived.”