Page 62 of Forbidden

Shadrach appeared near the bar, in black slacks and a half-buttoned white shirt, crisp and clean and looking starkly out of place in the burnt and bloody battlefield the club had become. “I hear I missed some excitement,” Shadrach said. His dark eyes surveyed the scene critically, one palm smoothing over his neatly shaven jaw. “At least the dead paladins outnumber the dead demons, I suppose.”

“I’ll go,” Wolf said, ignoring Shadrach entirely.

“You can’t cross the wall,” Malachi pointed out.

“No, but I can still wait for him. If they banish him—or if he manages to escape—Alex walked for hours because he had no way of contacting anyone. I don’t want that to happen to Ira. I can at least be there when he gets out.”When, he said, notif. He wouldn’t entertain anything else.

“What happened? Where’s the psychic?” Shadrach asked, looking from face to face.

“The paladins took him,” Malachi replied. “Presumably back to their headquarters.”

“Ah, with their holy wall.” He tilted his head back contemplatively.

“Wouldthey banish him?” Luke asked. “He’s a prophet. I didn’t think they played by the same rules as the paladins.”

“They don’t,” Alex said. “Ira told us they wouldn’t accept a resignation from him. That was why he wanted to make it look like he’d just disappeared. They need his visions—not just his, but every prophet’s. Sloan won’t stand for the idea that the prophets could just choose to walk away and stop doing their part. It would break down the whole routine. No prophets, no visions, no direction. Plus I doubt he’ll be happy to know Ira’s been helpingus. Having him on our side would give us an undoubted advantage we didn’t have before.”

“Hell, it already has,” Malachi remarked.

It was true. Ira had brought them all together in a way they hadn’t been before.

Luke sighed, scrubbing his hands over his face. “There shouldn’t besidesat all. It doesn’t have to be like this. Why can’t they just leave us alone?”

“Because we’re monsters to them, baby,” Malachi said gently. “And they’ll never understand how you can love us.”

Deep in his bones, worry ate at him. He remembered Ira telling him that sometimes he would have to withhold pieces of his visions, because someone might try to intervene and change the course of the future. Had Ira seen this and kept it from him, because this was the natural path? What if their limited time together was all they had? Maybe Irathought he was meant to blow in, set them on the path to finding the Rink and forming their makeshift team, only to blow back out and get locked behind the wall once more. Maybe he’d known all along that there was no stopping this.

No. He couldn’t think like that. This wasn’t the end. It couldn’t be.

Wolf snarled loudly, breaking off the conversation. “Enough of this! I’m going. Maybe I can’t get inside, but I can at least have faith that he’ll comeout. And I intend to be there when he does.”

“Wolf, you don’t even know exactly where or when he’ll show up,” Talon said calmly. “If you sit outside their wall, they’ll notice.”

He gnashed his teeth. “I’m not just going to sit here and do nothing!”

“I’ll go.”

Wolf whirled around, shocked into silence.

Shadrach glanced between Talon and Wolf and shrugged. “It’s no big deal. I can teleport. I can use the shadows to hide myself. The minute he passes beyond the wall, I can grab him and bring him to you.”

Fragile hope took root in Wolf’s chest. “You’d do that?”

Shadrach shrugged again. “You two could argue for hours about who should or shouldn’t go. Talon’s precious human will be safe, and you’ll stop looking like you want to bite someone. Besides, if I’m lucky, he’ll show up with some paladins on his heels for me to kill, since I missed all the excitement here.”

Wolf fidgeted in discomfort at the idea of Ira being chased from the grounds by paladins. “Maybe I should come with you.”

“Nonsense. I can handle a few paladins. I won’t letanything happen to the little psychic. Shall I bring him back here?”

“No,” Talon said immediately. “I don’t want to risk Lilith being on the warpath later. She’s going to give us hell for this attack.” He scuffed one leather boot on the burn marks on the floor. “Her shit’s been damaged, and there are dead bodies in her club. She’ll want to take a pound of flesh for this, and she’ll want to take it from us.”

“We should be elsewhere when she sees it, then,” Malachi said, tugging Luke to his feet as though to flee right then.

“You’d better go soon, then,” Xyra said, heels clicking on the polished concrete floor as she paced. “She’s on her way.”

“We can go to the Rink,” Alex said. He gestured to Storm and Xyra. “You guys are welcome to come, too. Lilith doesn’t know where it is.”

“And it should go without saying that we intend to keep it that way,” Talon said warningly.

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