Page 9 of Legacy of Chaos

“First of all, stop being a jackass. I’m trying to help you.” Eidolon glanced at a clipboard in his hand and then looked back up. “Second, you’ve got to stop taking your suppressant.”

Not this again.

“I told you I’m not switching back to yours. It doesn’t last long enough.”

“That’s the thing.” Eidolon tossed the clipboard onto his desk. “You can’t take mine, either. You can’t take any.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Your dependence on it is what’s causing your symptoms. You came to me because your heart is racing, and you’re suffering from dizzy spells. You said you trust me. So, trust me when I tell you that you have to stop. Now. Or tachycardia and vertigo will be the least of your problems.”

Eidolon was a great doctor, but he was too conservative and overprotective when it came to his family. He’d also been critical of Stryke’s formula from the very beginning. Maybe because Stryke’s product outsold Eidolon’s in the underworld market ten to one. Twenty-four hours of relief, or up to forty? There was a clear winner, and it had to chafe.

“I’ll think about it.”

Stryke wouldn’t think about it at all.

“Dammit, Stryke. I don’t have time for your denial of reality. I’m dealing with an Oni pox outbreak and a virus in the hospital’s security software.” Eidolon stepped closer, his eyes flashing gold with anger. “Your body is shutting down. I don’t know how much more you can take.”

“Bottom line it for me, Uncle. I have a busy schedule today.”

“Bottom line?” The doctor’s deep voice turned grave. “I don’t know if it’ll be the next injection or the fiftieth, but at some point, the suppressant will kill you.”

Chapter 2

Cyan stared at her chalkboard and growled in frustration. None of her calculations were correct. Again.

Son of a bitch.

Viciously, she erased her pretty, blue, yellow, and red formulations to upgrade the comms implants that could translate demonic languages. When there was nothing but a blurry blackboard, she cursed and hurled the eraser to the floor. A rainbow cloud of colored chalk dust poofed into the air and left a coating of pigmented dust on her desk.

She took a deep, calming breath and turned her attention from the board and back to her actual job at DART—one she loved, which allowed her to afford a nice apartment in an upscale Brussels neighborhood. Except, now that her roommate and best friend was dead, Cyan would have to tighten the purse strings.

Which made her want to cry. Not for her new budget since Shan had been in the middle of moving out to go live with her fiancé anyway, but for the loss of her friend.

Blinking against the sting of the tears in her eyes, she grabbed a plastic evidence bag off her freshly sanitized lab table and dumped a comms unit into her palm. According to her boss, Kynan Morgan, the thing was possessed by a demonic spirit. Usually, the souls of dead demons were handled by the Spirit Management division, but not even Logan, who had the extraordinary ability to expel demonic souls from physicalbodies to trap them, could force this spirit out of its home. Kynan hoped Cyan’s ability to manipulate electronics would allow her to exorcise the demon ghost.

Cyan charged up her powers, pulling from deep inside her to pierce the bit of tech. Instantly, the circuitry and programming codes popped into her head. From here, she could do almost anything to the comms unit with a tech spell. By simply reimagining the programming, she could turn it into a device that could immobilize a pickpocket or boil the blood inside a rude waitperson. Or she could turn it into a ticking time bomb for the wearer. Just a little tweak in the coding, and she could make it connect with the user’s implant chip and cause a life-ending shock.

Not that Cyan had ever done that. But it was sometimes fun to think about.

Today, she wasn’t running hypothetical scenarios through her head. She was looking for a literal ghost in the machine.

“Cyanide?”

She jumped at the sound of her boss’s voice on the intercom. He always called her by her given name over the comms systems but used her nickname in person. He had some odd quirks.

“Yes, Mr. Morgan?” She powered herself down, and the inner workings of a very expensive communications device faded away.

“I need to see you in my office. Got a minute?”

“Sure thing, boss. I’ll be right up.”

She hurried out of her lab and took the stairs to DART’s main floor, where she returned waves and greetings as she slipped inside the elevator. When the door opened on the second floor, she stepped out into a massive atrium with a spectacular view of the main floor fountain below.

She loved the design, openness, and modern touches of the old building on the outskirts of Brussels’ historic center.Kynan had hired her just after the renovations on their global headquarters had been finished.

Nineteen years ago.

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