Impulse

“Everything falls apart.” It sounded too much like a proclamation, an abso-fucking-lute state of being. Julio’s mind whirled. “There isn’t much that could knock Alec off course. Just—just Carmen being hurt.”

Wesley leaned forward and jabbed Julio in the shoulder. “Dominoes,” he said again, and pushed.

The realization hit him harder than the sharp poke. “You’re talking about me and Sera.” It was easy to see the progression once he started with Sera—hurt her, and you could hurt him and Franklin. Hurt them, and you hurt Carmen and Alec. It went on and on, a lightning strike that splintered into a hundred forks of pain.

“Another place, another time, it would have been someone else. But in this place at this time…” Wesley dropped his hand. “Something changed yesterday. I don’t know what you two are doing together, but something changed, and you need to promise me, Mendoza. Promise me you’re not going to let her out of your sight, because you’re the wild card. I never see my own future coming, but you can.”

“I promise.” He offered the words because Wesley expected them, and because they were true. “I’ll protect her.”

Wesley glanced toward the bathroom as the shower cut off. “In my dream she had a gun, like the ones Patrick McNamara uses. Silent and untraceable. You should get her one of those.”

Magical weapons. Unseen threats. It made Julio want to bare his teeth and snarl. “Anything else?”

Wesley’s gaze drifted to the bed again. His lips twitched. “It’s already changing. It’s always changing. Everyone thinks I’m the powerful one, but they have no idea how many times a day you use your gift.”

“Yeah,” Julio deadpanned. “My all-powerful, consuming visions.”

“Your goddamn hunches.” Wesley laughed. “Hell, Mendoza, you don’t even know, do you?

Maybe half the time you think it was just whim, or you blame some shapeshifter instinct. Maybe it’s all tangled up together for you. Fate can’t pin you down because the second she does, some part of you knows to go left instead of right, to take the back roads instead of the interstate. Knows to kidnap Franklin Sinclaire’s daughter for a debauched road trip, even though the rest of us would be scared of losing our balls.”

Sera exited the bathroom in a cloud of steam, dressed in jeans and a thin tank top that clung to her damp skin. “For the record, I went willingly. No kidnapping necessary.”

Wesley grinned at her. “Quit flirting with me, Miss Sinclaire. Your boyfriend’ll wrap my spine around my knees.”

Julio’s retort slammed into a dizzy wave of power, silenced by the way the room faded and brightened at the same time. Some hazy bit of the future, slick and evasive, danced before his eyes, but it vanished before he could get anything but the slightest sense of it. Too far away, perhaps, too uncertain. Unformed.

He shook away the vision with a laugh, suddenly certain of at least one thing. “You still need to be worried about the safety of your balls, Wesley. Just…maybe not quite yet.”

Wesley’s eyes widened in surprise, then narrowed. “Wow, that’s more annoying than I realized. You guys must want to punch me all the time.”

Sera grinned. “You’re lucky you’re pretty. Though I doubt that carries much weight with my dad and Alec. Maybe Carmen.”

“Carmen loves him, warts and all.” Julio stepped closer to Sera and quirked a brow at Wesley. “You sticking around?”

“Hell no. I make a damn squeaky third wheel.” He winked at Sera as he pushed off the table.

“Besides, I came all the way down here. It’d be a shame if I didn’t take a look at the local casinos. Maybe my luck’s better in the sunshine state.”

“Don’t call me to get you out of trouble,” Julio warned. He’d be busy anyway, looking up where to find one of those nifty guns Patrick liked to tote around.

Wesley winced. “Yeah, about that. McNeely’s going to be giving you an earful when you get back. But whatever he says, it’s an exaggeration. I didn’t start the brawl, and I really didn’t see who stole the fertility statue.”

If it had been anything less ridiculous, Julio might have questioned it. Instead, he ran with it.

“Right. You never throw the first punch, huh?”

“I’m an angel, man.” Wesley extended a hand. “Now, since I got on a plane to deliver your warning in person, you owe me. Get McNeely off my back. Jackson may not bail me out next time.”

“He’ll always bail your ass out.” Julio pulled Wesley into a hug and clapped him on the back.

“I owe you one.”

“Yeah you do.” Wesley released Julio and sized up Sera. “I’m trying to decide if being the last one to steal a kiss from you is worth having Julio dent my head.”

Sera laughed, though her cheeks turned pink. “My dad’s right. You like to push your luck.”

“Yes, he does.” Julio nodded toward the door. “Blackjack table’s waiting.”

When he’d gone, Sera dropped to the bed with a self-conscious laugh. “He was laying that all on a little thick. What is his obsession with getting people to punch him?”

“Control.” It made a twisted sort of sense, he supposed. “Wesley can’t see his own future, but he can make it. Hit on some guy’s girl, get punched. Pretty simple equation that means he does know what’s coming, after all.”

“Some guy’s girl, huh?” Sera braced her hands behind her and stared up at him, her smile so teasing it was trying too hard. “Am I your girl?”

She was waiting for him to turn it into a joke, so he stroked his thumb over her jaw and wrapped his hand around the back of her neck. “You’re my girl.”

Her smile slipped away, replaced by tension and heat. “I always did suck at taking things slow.”

“That’s okay,” he murmured. “So do I.”

She hooked her fingers under the waistband of his jeans, dragged him forward and nuzzled his bare abdomen. “We haven’t shifted in a few days. I’m getting antsy.”

After he’d talked to Patrick and located an arms dealer, he’d find a good spot to run. “I’ll take care of it.”

“You’ve got a lot to take care of.” She sighed and wrapped her arms around his hips. “I heard everything he said, you know. Even over the shower. I don’t want the fate of the world resting on my shoulders. They’re not that strong.”

“Hey. They’re as strong as they need to be, and that’s the part that matters.” He gathered her hair back and watched her lashes fall and rise through several slow blinks. “And you can’t change the fact that people care about you.”

“I guess not.” She closed her eyes and nuzzled against him again, the touch seeming more innocent than sensual. “It still scares the hell out of me. You’ve scared me since the first moment I laid eyes on you.”

He’d never shared that fear, only a strange, heavy sense of destiny. “My mother thought I was doing the psychic thing wrong, you know.”

“Why?”

“She believed in Fate, I guess, only she called it God’s will.” Whenever his mother had had a prophetic dream, she’d filed it away as an inevitable occurrence, something willed into existence by her maker. Good or bad, she’d never acted to change anything.

Sera pulled back to study his face. “God’s will was for us to have free will. If precognition fits into that, it should be to give you choices. Or did she think it was a test?”

“Not a test, exactly. More like…a burden. Her cross to bear.”

“And Joan of Arc thought they were a promise, and that didn’t end well for her.” Sera tugged at him until he knelt in front of her, then cupped his face. “The middle ground may not seem as noble, but it’s a lot less likely to get you martyred. And I would be really sad if you got martyred.”

“That’s the argument, isn’t it?” Julio shook his head. “Wesley came here because he had a vision, and he acted on it. What if that’s the shit that gets you dead?”

“Self-fulfilling prophecy?” She stroked her thumbs over his cheeks. “It’s not just for precogs.

My dad spent his life terrified that I was going to get kidnapped by some coyote looking for a mate. I ran