Chapter 20

Benji just had this open, innocent look about him, even though he was covered in tattoos. It was just so easy to believe him when he was lying to your face about the most ridiculous shit. He was the perfect addition to our team when we needed to butter someone up.

Most of his unpredictability ended up paying off in the end. Pax and I knew the whole thing with the food just started out as a way to get our mate fed, but if we could get everyone else fed, too, they could help us fight our way out once we got rid of the angel tears. And no one should be starved, anyway.

The diarrhea thing was just for shits and giggles, literally, but it would keep Hannibal away from her.

We had Benji on Hannibal duty because Hannibal thought he had all these answers on curing demon possession. Pax and I were on research. The rest of the fake nuns and priests here seemed to be uncomfortable around Pax.

Which, yeah, I was totally going to kill them because fuck them. Humans couldn’t tell we were supernatural unless they caught us using magic. Most of the time, they were drawn to us because we were made to be beautiful. A lot of us were predators or a parasitic race. We needed that beauty to draw people close to us.

Pax was neither, but he was still a beautiful man. He had inky black hair and back when the Coalition had him, things were less sanitary. Lice was a problem, so they shaved everyone’s heads. Pax had refused to cut his hair ever since he got out and moved in with me. Pax had flowing black locks and a lithe frame.

Most people reacted to Pax the same way. They were either drawn to his beauty or his blindness made them uncomfortable. A lot of the fake nuns and priests here treated Pax like he was damaged because of his eyes, even with the lie we told about how he lost his vision. If they had to talk to him, they yelled like it was his hearing that got damaged.

Since they left us alone and we had Hannibal occupied with Benji, Pax and I had free movement to research. The patient records weren’t just a bust. They weren’t even good fiction. Benji got us all hooked on A03 and we all had different reading habits.

I stuck to the bear-shifter stuff. Some of it was written by humans who had some pretty wild ideas about my dick, but I still enjoyed the shit out of it because they got a lot of stuff right, too. Plus, it was just fun. It was a good escape.

Those patient files were completely inaccurate and just pissed me off. But I had to push that aside because this was probably the most important job we’d ever taken, our mate being here aside. There was something about Di that drew me in, but the logical part of my brain still didn’t trust him.

All of his intel had played out exactly the way he said it would. I wouldn’t have agreed to meet with him, so he went directly to Benji. Pax happened to have a bond with Father Nathan who had already tried to infiltrate the Coalition and failed. Father Nathan knew what didn’t work and our priest friend happened to have some illegal hacking skills he had no problem putting to good use if it would take the Coalition down. I was sure there was something missing about getting taken on the full moon, too.

It wasn’t just that our fucking mate was here that made us uniquely qualified to do this. It was our skills, personalities, and acquaintances. We’d probably never get this opportunity again. It wasn’t every day supernaturals were going to have access to the Coalition’s database. If we were going to take them down, we needed a lot more information than just their patient files.

We all adapted as the world changed around us. I bought a computer when they first became available. We learned to use them and got pretty good at it. Pax had been limited in using one until they added accessibility features and a kid with a crush made it even easier.

I was pretty much Lawfully Good with the computer and Benji was Chaotic Evil, which paid off in certain situations. Benji could probably get deeper into the bowels of this hard drive than I could, but he’d leave some surprises behind that would blow our cover. And frankly, Benji was right where he needed to be right now.

“Do you think this is going to be like 1998, when Benji partitioned the hard drive to bury a folder of porn in the D drive because he thought we gave a shit?” Pax asked.

“If the Coalition kept the whole celibacy thing and they are around insanely beautiful supernaturals all the time, it might be exactly like that. Think they are into Hentai, too?”

“Ew, Cas. I didn’t mean porn. I meant something Hannibal wouldn’t want his subordinates to find. Something like porn, but not porn.”

“Are you comparing Coalition secrets to Benji’s tentacle fetish?” I grinned.

“Oh, fuck you. You’re doing that on purpose. See if the drive is partitioned and there’s anything hidden on it.”

Sorry, but I was the one who found Benji’s secret porn file back when we all shared a computer. We hadn’t had the internet for very long and neither of us had heard of Hentai. We knew Benji had a thing for obscure anime from the video store. Neither of us were prudes and would never kink shame anyone, but I’d never seen anything like that before and I think I traumatized Pax trying to explain it to him.

Pax called it. The hard drive had been partitioned. Most of the files were backups, but there was one folder that didn’t make sense, so I opened it. Jackpot! Honestly, keeping any of Coalition data on a hard drive instead of the cloud was both risky and smart. If something happened to the hard drive or the file got corrupted, they were fucked, but keeping it offline meant it was harder for us to find it.

I’d amassed a pretty big network who had been trying, and I was betting Father Nathan had, too.

“I think I found what we’ve been looking for.”

“No shit?”

“Hannibal isn’t just a fake Monsignor. He’s the closest thing they have to the Pope. They just won’t use that title because they think it’s blasphemous. He’s running the Coalition. There’s a long-running plot in here for a coup since everyone who joined the Coalition is considered excommunicated. They have been trying to get one of them inserted as Pope ever since that happened because they think it will give them more power.”

“They know there’s not a chance in fuck for that, right? They’ve got a lot to atone for, but they caught up and got on the right side of things on this. They’ve acknowledged we’re born like this and at least tried to make things right. They have also used their considerable power and resources to help us in the last few years. They won’t have anything to do with you if they think you’re a Coalition sympathizer,” Pax said.

“Oh, there’s a chance. There are names here of people who are still there trying to turn the tide back to them working with the Coalition or at least getting one elected as Pope. I also found their donor list, so we know who is funding them. We traced the shell corporations, but these are actual names. There are some politicians on here.”

“Fuck. Can you see if there’s any kind of tracking on this computer? I’ll bet Father Nathan could fuck some shit up with this.”

I’ll bet he could. He’d been an amazing help with all of this. I was fairly certain he knew all three of us were supernatural and had never said a word, not even to us. Still, we needed to play this carefully.

“We can’t risk it. Take a picture with your phone and email it, but tell him not to do anything with it until we’re out. If this information gets out, the first person they are going to look at is you since you’re so new here.”

“Good call,” Pax said, snapping a photo and telling his phone assistant to email it to Father Nathan. “Think Hannibal is still alive?”

“Nah,” I laughed. “Benji will rant about cats being degenerates because they play with their kills, but he totally does the same.”

“If you tell him that, he’s going to fuck with you for at least a decade.”

Oh, he totally would. It would be just as bad as the shrimp in Sheriff Riddle’s curtain rods and the anal leakage he just gave Hannibal.

Which is why I’d never say that where he could hear it.