Page 51 of V for Vengeance

After Grams and Kris returned with more news about the Hunters we’d recruited to the uprising, it was our turn to go off on an adventure to secure our next mark, Harmony. Or as Cash preferred to call her, that old slag.

Pretty butterfly dude had given us a location to check, but as with anything, we wouldn’t take his information at face value. Recon was necessary. It could be a trap. Despite Cash reassuring us that the bro was too afraid to lie at this stage, Phillip and Jo seemed to find common ground and agree that our captive still couldn’t be trusted.

The journey to Canada was uneventful at best, aside from the usual bickering between the other three in my group. Which suited me just fine. Believe it or not, I’d rather my days be filled with the sounds of Cash’s high-pitched Karen war cry and Phillip’s sarcastic antagonization than to drown in the Organization’s bullshit assassination attempts. But I knewbetter than to think it'd be quiet for long. Being what I was meant I never got a damn day off.

Honestly, it was good I had something to focus on that wasn’t Cash’s crazy new powers and sex appeal, or Jo’s seductive stolen glances and unexplained shadow version. I’d gotten myself back into a messy situationship, and I didn’t have any idea how to fix it. Or where to even begin.

As much as I’d like to say that the sexcapades of Sloan and Phillip were enough to keep me away from distractions, that didn’t seem to be the case. I still thought about the way Jo’s kisses and fingers unlocked a secret part of me I didn’t know existed. Or how Cash being who and what he was had started to intrigue me in ways it shouldn’t.

The Dark Fae had gotten under my skin, and the numerous sex dreams where he wrapped my body in his black magic and had his way with me were starting to make me worry I might actually have a thing for him—more than simple intrigue or a bad boy fascination.

But as was my way, I stuffed it all down until I had time to deal with it. Right now, we still had several of Lux’s boyband left to kill. Not to mention whatever was presently waiting in the wings to get their hands on the weapon the Organization had unwittingly created.

Me.

I hadn’t called on the goth Tinkerbell’s favor yet. I would when we didn’t have Harmony to hunt down. I had a lot of training to do with my powers—made painfully clear by my mishaps with Serine—so I figured this would give us time to do that and get another name checked off our list.

“A cave? Really? That’s something straight out of a fantasy movie,” I complained.

I was crouched at the edge of a cliff, using my heightened vision to scan the hideout pretty butterfly dude’s coordinatesled us to. One of Phillip’s inventions was on the ground, continuously checking for residual magic and temperature fluctuations in the surrounding area.

Since Harmony was a witch, she’d retain body heat. Upside to her not being a vampire. His knick-knack would find her if she was out of the cave, but so far, nothing. Unfortunately for us, it couldn’t penetrate rock, so we’d have to get inside to know more.

We’d already confirmed that it was likely the witch’s hideout. Magic was everywhere. Cash even claimed several times that hesmelledher magic in the air. And any time he did, all I could see in my head was Cash walking around with his nose up like a dog, sniffing. Hilarious, but not helpful when we were trying to keep a low profile.

I still couldn’t pick out magic. I sensed it, sure, just not whose or what kind. Granted, it probably helped that Cash had personal history with the witch where the others and I didn’t. So, for the first time since our little group was forced to band together, Phillip listened to him and let the Dark Fae lead the way. Oh, definitely begrudgingly and verbally resentful but resolved to the fact that Cash had information we didn’t.

“What is it with these villains and their dark and dank hideaways? It’s such an overused trope, my dudes,” I glanced at Cash, and his Southern belle huff made me laugh into my hand. He hated when I made him out to be the only villain in our group. Maybe because he was trying so hard to prove he wasn’t one to me. But that only made me want to tease him more.

With another one of his front cover of Vanity Fair poses, Cash shrugged. “Not that I have anything to do with all that nonsense anymore, love, but why fix what’s not broken?”

“Fair enough.” I grinned.

It was hard not to stare at how perfect he looked in black leather pants. The man was absolutely insane to wear a tight and entirely unforgiving fabric to a fight, but it wouldn’t be Cash if hehadn’t. And I’d be lying if I said he didn’t look amazing. It was annoyingly distracting after everything that happened the week before.

Focus, V. Do your damn job.

Which was harder than it seemed when the gorgeous man-child always stood close enough to be a distraction. Even Phillip’s scathing glares didn’t put the shameless asshole off anymore. He’d hover at my side and send me texts complaining about my “overprotective boyfriend” and the “she-devil” any chance he got. One such text pinged shortly after he tried to touch me and was forced to dodge another dagger aimed at his arm.

Jo hadn’t lost her edge or punishing ways, but she did seem more engrossed in the Dark Fae these days. Not in a way that made my pining heart jealous, but in a way that set off the well-developed Hunter alarm I’d honed over the years when tracking my marks.

While the heat in her stare was already incinerating my flesh, the tension between us always seconds from combustion, the look she leveled on Cash was colder. Calculated. On edge and ready for something to go awry. What, I couldn’t tell you, though. The woman had been an enigma since the day I met her. I tried not to worry too much about it. Jo didn’t trust anyone, and after everything went to shit, it’d be weird if she didn’t suspect the Dark Fae of tipping off the enemy.

I wasn’t worried. Oddly, I trusted the light-haired menace. After seeing what he’d done to Serine and how far he’d gone to track me down after she took off with me, I was pretty confident he’d never betray me. Which was an entirely different issue, my overpowering trust for someone whose past I knew almost nothing about.

Still, I couldn’t spend my life on guard.

Despite Jo’s insistence that I’d be smart to trust no one, I couldn’t live like that. If one day it got me killed, I would’ve at least lived like me and no one else.

Cash caught Jo’s straying glance and quickly typed another text to me. Another grievance about her, no doubt.

Little did Cash know, after the last epic tiff between him and Phillip that ruined my much-anticipated café breakfast, I’d been planning a brutal revenge with the insistence of Jo. I was just waiting for a perfect moment to revel in their joint disgust. All in the name of training my power, I’d argue.

I still needed to practice slipping into frozen time and deactivating abilities, so why not in ways that gave me some joy? Also, what was the point of being a genetic monster if I didn’t prank all the arrogant men in my little renegade group anytime they deserved it?

With the usual indignant huff, Cash dared to touch my hand again before taking space. Then he was on his phone, monologuing about Jo in another text to me. Apparently, writing his next novel from the number of vibrations that hit my back pocket.

I’d smartened up and silenced my phone when it was clear he’d happily give away our position if it meant he could lay out every possible grievance he had about the other two, and I’d rather not die because Cash was forever annoyed by Jo and Phillip.

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