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The large black SUV rumbled, silent as a wraith, through one of Las Vegas’s poorest neighborhoods. Apartment houses had the look of the abandoned or the damned, and the few souls who loitered in front suggested both. Rafe fought an inward shudder at the evidence of such poverty and despair. He wasn’t immune to the plight of those who lived mere blocks from the Archangel and they had several programs in place to ensure they didn’t further contribute to such problems.
But none of that stilled the inherent frustration that such horrible conditions existed next to the opulence and refinement of the Strip.
“Strange place, our hometown.”
Gabe’s comment was a funny mirror to his own and Rafe shifted his attention from the street. “I was thinking along similar lines.”
“Beauty and horror, wrapped up in one big package.”
“The universe does love balance.” Rafe murmured the words, and Gabe picked up on them quickly.
“Dad’s preached yin and yang for years. Nothing exists alone.”
“Just like us.”
The thought lingered in his mind, emotional ballast he was never fully able to shed. Even during each period of renewal, when his thoughts should be on rebirth and rejuvenation, he was innately conscious of the weight and responsibility that rested on his shoulders.
Their father had seen to that. For all his joviality and easygoing nature, Michael Stavros had always impressed upon them their duties and their responsibilities. Their people guarded the gates of the ancients. And while the Stavros family had made their life in Las Vegas, acting as protectors in the human world instead of taking up arms at the gates, they knew the path to the ancient world.
The Stavroses understood their destiny wasn’t the Archangel or Las Vegas or even the lives they’d live to the fullest. Their legacy was the fire they carried inside, born of the earliest times and entrusted to them by the very gods that ruled over the heavens, the earth and the lower realms.
“Are you prepared if there are Hunters in here?”
“Yes.”
“Your Rejuvenation came early.”
“And?” He shot his brother a dark look, the subject still a sensitive one.
For his part, Gabe ignored the attitude and plowed forward—his style since birth. “Any ideas why?”
Rafe had no clue and that nagged nearly as much as the fact that it had come upon him so early. They were creatures of the earth. Driven by the cycles of nature as surely as the moon and the tides. Yet instead of his Rejuvenation at the winter solstice, it had come upon him with unexplained prematurity.
A few days here and there were normal. Shedding one’s mortal form through the most ancient of fires took time, and pending overall mood, health, age and attitude, the process could take a few days. But nearly a month early?
Hell, he hadn’t been so misadjusted since puberty.
Gabe pressed on, oblivious—or uncaring—of the lack of response. “You haven’t said much about your date. Were you successful in persuading the beautiful Evangeline that she saw nothing last night?”
“No.”
That lone word hovered there, shimmering in the air between them as vivid—and lethal—as his own fire.
“What are you going to do about it?”
“I’ll be damned if I know.”
“No, you’ll be damned if you don’t do something about this.”
The dark snarl in his brother’s words matched his mood and Rafe had no interest in another lecture. They’d been down this road already. Hell, he knew the stakes and knew what was at risk. He didn’t need a freaking lecture to boot.
“Gabe—”
“We don’t know this woman. She’s a possible threat and now she’s bound and determined to nose around because you couldn’t be bothered to take care of yourself.”
“Lecture me one more time, little brother, and I’ll—”
The words died in his throat as Rafe stared at the flophouse before them. Enormous flames licked the walls, spiraling toward the sky as people spilled onto the lawn, disgorged from the smoke.
“What the hell?”
“The fires of hell, more like.” Rafe watched the flames as they crawled up walls, something seeming to pulse in the atmosphere around the degenerated apartment. A light, sickly-sweet scent on the air caught his attention and before he could check the impulse, Rafe was out of the car and across the lawn.
A woman and her children limped from the home, a baby squalling on the woman’s arm as two kids hovered around her legs. Snagging the children under each arm, he screamed to the woman, “Run!”
Fear and exhaustion painted her features, yet in that moment, he saw understanding.
“Now! I’ve got them!” Rafe held the children beneath his arms, their screams echoing in his ears as smoke filled the air around them. The smaller child, a little girl, kicked hard at his leg but he ignored the stab of pain, moving—always moving—away from the house.
Noise, great and hulking, hovered in the air around them, but it was the transitory moment of silence that had him taking his next move. On a hard push, he pressed the children into their mother, a few paces in front of them, then leaped on top of the family.
The air nearly rent in two as the apartment house exploded behind them. A great cracking sound filled the air the briefest second before heat engulfed them in thick waves. Rafe channeled his own inner fire, the move as natural as breath, and used the power in his own frame to press back against the wild conflagration behind them.
Power poured from him, thick, wild waves of fire that pressed back on the demonic blaze that continued to eat the apartment house. Smoke billowed everywhere, choking the air, and still, Rafe stayed where he was, his body a living cover for the shaking woman and her children beneath him.
Slowly, he felt the atmosphere shift, the immediate danger fading as the initial explosion died, the rapidly disintegrating building giving less and less fuel to keep the blaze aflame. The woman beneath him shifted, her eyes going wide as she caught sight of an area over his shoulder.
“But…you’re on…fire!”
Rafe shook his head, using her disorientation and fear to his advantage. Pressing her face to his shoulder, he let his own power fade, only letting go of her when his fire had fully winked out. “Shh. It’s okay.”
The woman scrambled from underneath him as Rafe sat back on his heels. Smoke still filled the air, but other than the soot that covered all of them, his clothing was intact.
“I don’t understand.” The woman scrambled up, her fear fading as curiosity and determination lit her features. “You were on fire.”
“It was behind us.”
“No. You—” She broke off as her crying children tugged and pulled at her, their keening wails diverting her focus. Rafe used the momentary distraction to his advantage, waving over several paramedics.
Gabe followed close behind, his hand extended to pull Rafe up, his face dark.
“Not here.”
His brother shook his head. “My thoughts exactly.”
It was only when they were back in the car that Gabe spoke. With a hard toss, something thick and metallic thudded into the SUV’s cup holder.
Rafe eyed the piece, a brass token with the distinctive marks of a swirling sky, wrapped around an all-seeing eye. “Son of a bitch.”
“I’m not sure which is worse. The Mark of Chaos or the fact you flamed up in front of a fucking lawn full of humans.”
Chapter 5 (#u494d2c68-0de1-5f3e-a778-21e0e7a50b47)
Rafe turned the small medallion over and over in his hands, the noise of his office flat-screened TV filling the air in the executive suite with a steady drone. The flat disc about the size of a silver dollar practically burned in his palm, a physical embodiment of all his people fought against.
There were Hunters in Las Vegas.
And if the medallion were any indication, the ones here were more than the simple, bumbling fools usually impressed into service on behalf of the great and all-powerful equalizer of the universe.
Chaos.
Oh, no. These would be well trained. Well funded. And far more lethal than the typical minion who wreaked havoc and discord.
Images of the fire still filled his thoughts, the physical imprint of that family still pulsing against the nerve endings of his chest. And that smell, its thick, sweet redolence filling the air moments before all hell broke loose. The news claimed it was a tragic outcome of a meth lab gone wrong, but he knew different.
The lab was the overt cause, the production of the dangerous drug coating the house with a lingering miasma that led to the explosion. But it was the power beneath it—the sickly fingers that had directed it all—that was the real and true danger.
Rafe crossed to his office safe and tapped in the ten-digit code. A small light flicked to green before a light hiss of air opened the thick metal door. He reached in and pulled out what lay hidden—protected, really—behind the reinforced metal wall of the safe.
The thick wood was heavy in his palm, an icon from another age. A spoke from the wheel of Helios’s chariot, nearly as powerful as the immortal hand that had crafted it.
The spoke was his family’s own personal talisman, entrusted to them from the dawn of the Stavros line. Though not immortal like their great ancestor, they were imbued with his power and his wards of protection.
And with that power and authority, they willingly protected the race of Phoenix that called Helios for their first ancestor. Rafe and Gabe, and their father before them, understood the responsibility—had lived with it since birth—but a battle had always seemed distant. Separate, somehow.
But no longer.
An image of Evangeline shimmered to life, her delicate features never far from his thoughts. Was she the source? The root cause of what was steadily rising to life? He’d have hardly believed it, but now found it hard to deny the evidence.
She was the child of a Hunter. And she had unfettered access to the Archangel. Was it possible she’d been the Trojan horse, delivered in a spunky, fiery package designed to distract even as it laid the groundwork for their ultimate demise?
He didn’t want to believe it, but the previous night had left him with a layer of anxiety he’d never felt before. His skin crawled with a strange energy, as if it recognized the seething, writhing threat that hovered nearby. He and Gabe had gone to the apartment house with the intention of finding Evangeline’s ex-employees, Troy and Victor. Instead, they’d found destruction and a very clear message in the planted medallion.
They’d also missed their targets. The meth lab explosion had left significant destruction in its wake, including two apartment residents who didn’t make it out alive, but the bumbling members of Evangeline’s team weren’t accounted for in the dead or the living.
Which only forced the additional question of just how bumbling and stupid Troy and Victor really were.
He and Gabe had argued the point until early morning, going round and round without answers. Gabe wanted to exorcise Evangeline from the property and Rafe continued to press for her to stay. His overt argument was so they could watch her. If she was a channel for the Hunters, she was far more useful to them nearby than from a distance.
And if a small part of him fervently wished she was oblivious to the threat that swirled, he’d live with that. Their stolen moments in the corridor downstairs had been some of the sweetest of his life and he refused to believe he was simply thinking with his hormones.
Even if he knew damn well they played a role, too. He wanted the woman. The razor-sharp claws of desire had dragged at him for days—hell, since she started at the hotel, if he were being honest—and something in spending time with her had only made that need more intense.
More urgent.
And far more potent than if he’d continued to deny his interest and stay away.
None of which answered the lingering questions that swirled around the subject of Evangeline Kennedy. Was she the reason for his early Rejuvenation? He’d felt the change coming on for a few days, but in those moments in the high-roller suite, hosting their potential clients, he’d been nearly overcome. Hell, he’d practically stumbled from the high-end villas across the back of the property.
And then he’d fully regenerated, practically in front of her.
Was it possible she had a hand in his early transformation?
He crossed to his desk and picked up the flat disk once more. The thick metal was warm to the touch, a strange, heavy counterpoint to the wood he held in his other hand. Power seemed to pulse between the two objects, that yin and yang his father was so determined to preach.
That strange, precarious balance that dictated their lives more succinctly than any plans or goals they set for themselves.
Rafe tightened his fingers around the objects before crossing back to his safe and relocking both firmly behind the metal door.
It was time to get some answers.
Evangeline let out a heavy breath as she took in the row of sculptures, set at odds among a bright, vivid infusion of flowers. The installation was a centerpiece of the Archangel’s entertainment corridor, an effusive welcome as casino patrons moved past several restaurants and bars.
And someone had craftily positioned two statues beside each other in flagrante delicto.
Where was Security when you needed them?
And worse, why was her mind immediately filled with impressions of Rafe?
Shaking off the erotic image of his mouth trailing along her skin, she desperately tried to focus on the problem. And off all the delectable places Rafe might put those lush, gorgeous lips.
The Archangel’s curator, Arturo, was bound to throw a fit when he saw that his prize sculptures, on loan through the New Year, had been tampered with. Worse, the insurance risk was enormous. She’d done a cursory scan of the marble to see if she might be able to move it herself or secure help from her crew, but there was no way around the problem. She’d have to call Arturo down from his lofty perch in the hotel’s third-floor art museum and get him to put a specialized team on repositioning them.
She dragged out her phone, already preparing herself for the inevitable shooting she’d receive as messenger, when she caught sight of security. Waving down the large, beefy figure, she continued to pace around the sculptures after catching his eye.
How had someone managed this unnoticed? She’d been there when the statues were set in place. Each easily weighted at least three thousand pounds, the Italian marble hewn into the erotically lusty figures that now stood before her. Where their original placement had suggested a sensual feast, sexy nymphs lounging or traipsing through the lush garden she’d wrapped around them, the new placement suggested raw sex and something decidedly dirty.
Like a public shaming. Or the ravages of original sin.
The ringing of the phone in her ear ended, replaced with Arturo’s clipped voice as his voice-mail message rattled off in her ear. Unwilling to linger, she ordered him down to the lobby and shoved her phone back in her cargos. Like she had time for this.
Just like she didn’t have time for dates or kisses or erotic images of Rafe.
The guard she’d motioned for still stood at the opposite end of the hall and she waved him down once more, adding a wolf whistle for good measure. Was the guy blind? And what was taking him so long? He’d be in trouble enough for leaving the statues in the first place, but to ignore a direct request?
“Why, Evangeline, I had no idea you’d planned such a fascinating display for the promenade.”
The dark voice, rich as sin, seemed to float over the back of her neck like a brand. The erotic images she’d fought against rose up once more, a tantalizing replacement for the side of beef who continued to ignore her from the opposite end of the corridor.
Turning on her heel, Evangeline went into damage control mode. “I did no such thing!”
“I’m not saying I don’t like it.”
“You shouldn’t like it. Someone’s tampered with the sculptures and I can’t seem to find Arturo and security’s gone MIA.”
The litany was enough to draw his focus off the sexy art and Rafe’s brows lowered. “Where’s security?”
“I have no idea. I’ve been flagging that hulk down there for the past few minutes and he’s ignoring me.” Evangeline glanced over her shoulder, surprised to see the end of the corridor empty, the mountain of a man nowhere in sight. “I… Where is he?”
