Page 9 of Priest

“He’s breathing, and he’s not going to die. I was right behind him, so I was able to shield him from a lot of the blast, but his bookshop is gone, and so is a good chunk of their neighbor’s living room wall.”

Priest let out a sound of grief he didn’t know he was capable of making. Oliver loved that place. They could rebuild, but fuck, it wouldn’t be the same. Taking a breath, he listened to the sound of Azriel on the line, and he realized there was more.There was something worse than the shop. “What aren’t you telling me.”

He loosened his grip on Knight, who took a very grateful step back and wrapped his arms around his middle. Their gazes connected. Knight knew.

“They haven’t found a body,” Azriel said very slowly, “but they’re pretty sure that Poe didn’t make it.”

Priest’s ears began to ring. He knew Poe. HelikedPoe. He was a lot like Az but less obnoxious, and from the bits and pieces he’d overheard about their lives, Poe had saved Oliver after he’d run from his heinous, bigoted family. He’d picked Oliver up off the streets, and they’d been inseparable ever since.

If Poe was gone—if he was actually gone—Oliver would never recover.

Priest didn’t fight when Knight took the phone back. He backed up, sinking down on the end of his bed as Knight finished the call. Oliver was hurt. The shop was destroyed. Poe was likely dead. And someone had done this deliberately because there was no way the shop had blown up by accident. This wasn’t some gas leak or wrath of the gods.

Someone had targeted them.

But why?

“We have a flight,” Knight said as he walked back into the room. His hands were trembling a little, and Priest knew that was his fault. He’d gotten too close.

Knight was okay with touching them sometimes, but it had to be on his terms.

“I’m sorry,” Priest whispered.

Knight shook his head and sat, a larger-than-normal space left between them. His dark brown hair was starting to look a little too long on top, nearly falling in his eyes, and his five-o’clock shadow was beginning to become more of a beard thanjust stubble. Protecting the Siren royals had taken a lot out of all of them.

“How did you know?”

“I didn’t,” Priest told him, not even pretending not to know what he was talking about. He pressed his hands to his face and let out a trembling breath. “I woke up, and I felt… something. Like I could sense something was very wrong. I don’t know how to explain it. It’s never happened to me before.”

When he dropped his hands, he saw Knight’s brow was furrowed.

“You’re starving.”

“I’m not starving,” he started to argue, but Knight held up a hand.

“You’re weaker, and you’re sleeping too much. You never nap, but you’ve been out cold in here for nearly two hours.” Knight ran his fingers over his pursed lips. “You just fed a couple of days ago. Something’s going on with you.”

He hadn’t, actually. He hadn’t fed in far too long. But the very idea of feeding on someone who wasn’t a bespectacled bookworm had begun to repulse him so much he hadn’t been able to go through with any of his attempts.

Priest knew what was happening—the first signs of lacking a feeding partner who could satisfy him were starting to take a toll on him. Luckily for him, it could last years and years before he got to the point he wasn’t able to function. And a few years after that before he went mad and began to kill.

“Seriously, I’m fine. My hunger has nothing to do with Oliver.”

Knight’s mouth twitched. “I didn’t say it did.”

“Can you just…” Priest groaned. “Do you know what the fuck is going on? Who would bother targeting a human bookshop? This can’t be related to the thing with the Sirens, can it?”

“No one’s sure right now. I’ve been on the phone since this whole thing went down. Storm got an unsubstantiated threat report a couple of days ago, but we thought it was just people still stirred up and venting about McCornal and his kid. People say all kinds of shit online, and there wasn’t a specific target or upcoming incident mentioned, so it went in the pile.”

Priest bared his teeth in a furious grimace. “Sunshine is going to kick both your asses for not sharing that, you know.”

“Maybe.” Knight’s lip curled back in distaste, his canines pointed and deadly even while his friend was completely in control of his Vampire. “But we’ve been getting dozens of reports like that from the analysts since news broke about the princes and princess getting rescued, and most of them haven’t turned into anything we can actually investigate or even hand off to local law enforcement. Just whispers of anger and larger-than-normal piles of bullshit being spewed in hate groups.”

“Except there’s obviously more going on. Something like this? It doesn’t come out of nowhere.”

Knight’s eyes went red. “No. There have been a few instances in the last few weeks of people going missing.” His gaze turned distant. “Humans. Not enough in a single place to draw most people’s attention, but…”

Priest sat up. “But our analysts aren’t most people. They caught it, and you think this is connected.”

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