Page 64 of Muzzled

Waving the waiter over, he was granted a short reprieve from answering as she ordered her cheesecake. Bo and Alex chimed in their own requests while their coffees were topped up. “Very old.”

Plucking another napkin out, she resumed sketching, another familiar face taking shape before their desserts arrived. All attention remained on the square paper while her pen moved with expert strokes, until she paused, the blackening of the eyes the final touch before she picked up her fork. “Then who’s this?”

“Alonso del Rio,” Bo muttered, shoving a spoonful of chocolate cake into his mouth and looking at him pointedly. “Ryan?”

Another napkin was already in front of her, the cheesecake forgotten after only one bite.

“Micah? I think—”

“I think”—she echoed, balling up the paper as it tore in half—“I think it’s close.”

Alex shot out of the booth, pulled his wallet out, and walked quickly to the server as Bo wolfed down the last of his dessert, stood, took a bite of Micah’s cheesecake, and tossed a wad of bills onto the table for a tip.

She got to her feet slowly, her pen rolling in her fingers as her gaze locked on the napkin dispenser, as though the need to draw more wasn’t abating. “Which shade was Alfonso del Rio?”

Placing his hand on the small of her back, he led her out of the restaurant. The twins flanked them as they hit the dark street. “We tracked him down seven hundred years ago,” he replied, his attention torn between her and the rooftops. “One of the few full feral Pirithous. Completely lost to bloodlust by the time we managed to take him out. Augustus Brooker was the same two hundred years later. Managed to murder eleven people before we took him down.”

She stayed tight to him while they walked to the car, her head bowed. “But they look so human in my drawings,” she said softly. “They look nothing like the shade following me.”

“They look exactly as they did at first sighting.” Bo and Alex spread out to monitor the area while they got into the car, the back seat filling only when the engine revved to life.

She stared out the window as he pulled onto the road and headed toward her suite. “What now?”

“Now, we take you home so you can rest,” he stated, signaling his turn. “And then the three of us are going to track that bastard down and drag him back to hell.”

Chapter Twenty-Five

Ryan skulked alongthe side of the house, growling in frustration over their failure to lock onto the shade after hours of hunting the neighborhood surrounding Micah’s suite. Wherever it was, it had managed to stay close enough to drown out all other scents while remaining just out of sight, just out of reach.

Bo and Alex padded behind him, their moods as sour as his and their irritation feeding his own, the knowledge their target was outwitting them chafing.

The twins were first to shift, their terse mutterings as they dressed behind the shed parroting the thoughts bouncing through his head while he did a final patrol and then joined them.

“Fucking bullshit,” Bo snarled, storming over to close the gate before they went inside. “It’s right fucking here. Here. Like, it’s probably watching us.”

Alex turned to him. “Tomorrow, I’ll stay on foot and you and Bo hound it. There are a few sniper sites I can access to get a bird’s-eye view.” When Ryan responded with nothing more than a quick nod, Alex grabbed his shoulder. “We got this. That asshole doesn’t know who he’s fucking with.”

“He knows exactly who he’s messing with,” he replied. “He feeds her our memories. Things only you or you or I have seen.” Opening the exterior door, he held it while the others descended the stairs. “He’s been hunting us a lot longer than we’ve been hunting him.”

Bo grunted, turning the knob slowly to avoid waking Micah. He took two steps into the room and froze, his balance wavering as Alex bumped into him.

“Ryan,” Alex said slowly, backing out of the room. “I think you better get in here. Now.”

His heart jumped into his throat as he tore past his brothers into the suite, his stomach sinking when his eyes adapted to the dim lighting. He felt Bo’s hand on his back while he took in the scene. The steadying pressure kept him grounded as he scanned the small room, his eyes finally settling on Micah. “Micah?” he called out, his voice tight. “Angel?”

Her back remained to him as she continued to slather glue on the far wall with her hands. She snatched up one of her sketchbooks and tore a page off, smearing the drawing while she flattened the paper against the wall. Muttering under her breath, she picked up a tube of black paint, squirted some into one palm, and yanked a brush from the back pocket of her jeans. After a few frantic strokes across the sticky paper, she wiped the remaining paint on her pant leg and turned her attention to a shredded pile of books. Crouching down to grab a pair of scissors, she began to trim words and letters out. When her mind moved too fast for her hands, she tore the papers apart, coating them with glue and placing them with mad precision alongside the drawings.

He stepped farther into the room, Alex and Bo at his back.

“Fuck,” Bo breathed, his gaze locked on the side wall, where a grotesque collage of prints had been ripped and reassembled, layered to create a textured collection of images torn from their memories. Interspersed among them were letters shredded from the books and reassembled, the names of every one of their Pirithous trophies still damp from the glue coating the walls in clumps.

Alex’s attention was locked on the opposite side of the room, on a mural surrounded by scads of empty paint tubes and discarded pastel boxes, the color palette a surreal blend making the bleak image appear more warped, as though the hysteria driving the hands was determined to shine through. “What is that?”

Ryan tore his eyes away from Micah for a moment, monitoring her frantic movements in his peripheral. “It almost looks like a baby,” he whispered, squinting to blur the harsh lines. “Two babies?”

Bo backed toward the door and cocked his head. “A baby going full-on Cronus on another one?” He shivered slightly. “This is all kinds of fucked up.”

“Absorbed,” Micah murmured, her glue-drenched hands pushing her hair off her face as she emptied a tube of red on the wall and scooped up the drips with her fingers. She smeared long claw marks over her recent sketchbook additions. “Fused. United. Fused.” She crumpled up a paper, twisting it tight before adhering it along the red strips.

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