How long she could keep the truth hidden from these new people she cared about, Kaya didn’t know.
More and more, it tasted like poison on her tongue.
Especially when she was looking at Aric.
“Yes, it should help,” she answered, stepping into the room as he put up more images for them to review. She drifted to his side and tried to concentrate on the hundreds of faces and profiles and nondescript backs of heads--any one of which could be the man they were looking for. Her eyes scanned the crowds and candid group shots, but all of her senses were fixed on Aric. “I thought you might be somewhere with Rafe and Mira and the rest of the team.”
“Thought, or hoped?” He didn’t look at her, not even a sidelong glance. As if he hadn’t said it at all, he reached out to rearrange the sequence of images in front of them. “The patrol team has their work to do. I’ve got mine. Unfortunately, I’m not going anywhere until we find the Opus bastard who was at that wedding reception.”
And from the steely edge in his voice, it seemed he couldn’t finish fast enough.
“What about this guy?” He pointed to a mostly obscured profile on a short, brown-haired man.
Kaya shook her head. “It’s not him. The hair is lighter and longer than that of the man I saw.”
Aric grunted and moved on. He zoomed in on a different squatty wedding guest with dark hair, pausing to look at her in question.
“Too heavy. And I believe that gentleman is wearing a toupee.”
Peering closer at it, he smirked. “Damn. You’re right.”
He discarded both images, along with several others containing alternate shots of the same men. And so it went, one photo after another, none of them netting positive results for the Order.
Kaya sighed. “At the rate we’re going here, it could be days before we find Mercier’s contact.”
“We don’t have days anymore.” Aric’s voice was sober. “If the UV bullet casing we recovered isn’t bad enough, that black scarab tattoo on Angus Mackie changes everything.”
She swallowed, her nerves jangling with dread. “What do you mean?”
“The Order isn’t about to stand by and watch Opus Nostrum or anyone with alliances to them create panic among the Breed with the threat of ultraviolet weaponry. Big Mack’s going down.”
“Goddamn right he is.”
Nikolai’s voice was a low growl behind them. Both Kaya and Aric swung around to look at the Breed elder, who was suited up in black fatigues and combat boots. Around his hips was a belt studded with all manner of weapons: guns, blades, throwing stars.
Aric flashed a cold grin and a hint of his fangs. “You heading up the team tonight, Commander?”
He gave a short nod. “Lucan wants this asshole taken alive so we can question him. And if he’s got UV on hand, we need someone to bring that shit in safely and lock it down.”
Frowning, Aric glanced at Kaya then back to Niko. “Someone who isn’t going to get ashed, you mean.”
“Ideally, yes.” Nikolai smirked. “So, consider this your official graduation to the team, both of you. Congrats on making the grade. Now, suit up and get your asses down to the weapons room. Sundown’s in two minutes. I want wheels rolling on pavement the second night falls.”
CHAPTER 18
The surprise raid on Angus Mackie was a bust. Aric sensed it even before he entered the gang leader’s seedy tavern in the armpit of Dorval. He and Kaya and Rafe had accompanied Nikolai into the vacated establishment while a few miles away, Mira and her three warrior teammates had just called in the same disappointing situation when they closed in on Big Mack’s rundown house near the river.
“Find anything back there?” Niko asked Aric as he came out with Rafe after their search of the empty rear office and store room.
“No trace of Mackie, but yeah, we found something.”
Aric held out his hand. Resting in his palm was a bullet that made even a seasoned warrior and custom-crafted munitions expert like Nikolai take a step back. This was no spent casing like the ones they had recovered from the Darkhaven murders; this was a live round. Inside the diamond-glass body of the bullet glowed a small, but lethal dose of liquefied ultraviolet light.
“It was lying near the back door that dumps out on the alley.”
“Holy hell.” Niko slowly shook his head, his gaze riveted on the milky blue color of the fluid within the small cylinder. “I guess we don’t need to wonder if any of Riordan’s UV arms and ammo made it out of Ireland anymore.”
“No,” Aric said. “The only question is, how much are we talking about? There are muddy wheel marks from a hand truck rolling over the dirt and concrete out there. Someone made a lot of trips back and forth carting something out of here in a hurry today.”
“Shit.” The commander scraped a hand over his squared jaw. “All it takes is one of these rounds to ash even the strongest of our kind. Every bullet our enemies hold is one too many.”
On that, they all agreed.
Even if Aric’s memory wasn’t as flawless as his mother’s, he would never forget the sight of black ash piles that had once been living, breathing Breed civilians. Aside from a rare handful like him who’d been born impervious to sunlight, for most of their race there was no coming back from a UV assault.
Fury smoldered in Rafe’s eyes. “Mackie was tipped off that we were on to him.”
“Probably,” Nikolai muttered. “But there’s a chance he pussied out and ran after his comrade got fileted during that Darkhaven assault. It’s no secret that the Order was on scene at Mercier’s wedding where another of his longtime cronies ended up dead, so even a blunt instrument like Big Mack might’ve been able to guess
