Page 38 of Inflamed By an Incubus

“Stay away from the incubus,” Archer said, each word hard and clipped, sounding like an order.

She lifted her gaze to meet his. His look was serious, sober, and as hard as his tone had been.

“If you see him, you stay away from him.” He took hold of her hand, his gaze holding hers. “Promise me that you will.”

She looked at his hand and then back into his eyes, frowned a little at how deadly serious he was, and then said, “I will.”

A new question drifted through her mind.

Why was Archer so insistent about it?

She dropped her gaze to his arms again.

And saw a flash of the markings that had been in her dream.

Chapter 11

Fenix had lost track of how many weeks it had been since he had escaped Archangel. He idly scratched the point where Oberon’s mark sat on his skin, the lines and symbols slightly raised, enough that he could feel it through the black material of his shirt. The heels of his boots were a steady tap against the black cobblestones that lined the main thoroughfare in the sprawling town in the free realm of Hell where he had exited the portal. This had to be the right place.

In between attempting to resist the urge to see Evelyn, and failing dismally at least once or twice a week, he had busied himself with following up the leads Hella had given him, and had been tracking down a lead on something else.

Something vital.

A way back into Archangel.

Whenever the need to see Evelyn had become too much for him to bear, Fenix had ended up stalking her, watching her from a distance for the most part. There had been three, possibly ten, times where he had approached her though, and every time he had tried to make contact with her again, her damned partner had been quick to shut him down and drive him away.

The last time he had tried to talk with her, she had been the one to tell him to leave her alone, or she would capture him and put him back in the cells.

As much as he wanted to be close to her, to have the opportunity to work on convincing her that she wasn’t human and that her partner was a liar—and an immortal—he hadn’t fancied being experimented upon, studied and possibly vivisected, so he had left.

Since that encounter, she had been spending all her time inside the Archangel building, beyond his reach. The need to see her again was building to an unbearable degree, had him restless and unable to sleep, and he couldn’t focus for shit.

He needed his mate.

But what could he do?

Sure, he could teleport to a place he had been before, but that left him with some poor options. The only places he had been inside the building were the cell blocks, the rooms where the white-coats took pleasure in torturing immortals, and the corridor on the lower level that had always been busy with hunters.

To stand a chance of not being taken captive on the spot, he would have to charm a male hunter out on patrol, convincing him to hand over his uniform so he could use it as a disguise. And then what? He wandered the halls searching for Evelyn? He walked around asking after her?

He could charm anyone who grew suspicious, but it was too dangerous.

If he ran into Archer, he was screwed. If he ran into Evelyn when she wasn’t alone, he was probably screwed too. Hell, if he ran into Evelyn when she was alone he was probably also screwed, unless he could snatch her before she tranquilised him, cuffed him and tossed him back in a cell.

So going in solo wasn’t an option. He was damned if he was going to end up back in a cell again. He needed to take every possible precaution.

Which meant he needed someone who knew the building better than he did or who was powerful enough to create a diversion without endangering themselves while he searched for her.

Or both.

So Fenix had hit upon an idea.

Which hadn’t panned out.

It turned out that finding the Unseelie Court wasn’t as easy as it had sounded.

In fact, finding an unseelie or a seelie to speak to had proven impossible. Most people he had asked had spoken of the breeds as if they were just a fairy tale, something wild and fanciful told to young and impressionable fae to make them want to grow up big and strong, honest and judicious, or terrified of the things that went bump in the night. They had given him looks that had questioned his sanity.

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