Chapter 11

Adriana was storming around her chambers. She was in a foul mood. Several days had passed since both he and Greg had fucked her. Apparently, she had been under the impression that once she’d been intimate with both of them, they would simply start taking turns or something. Nothing could be further from the truth. While both men were enjoying having their time with her, there was so much more to figure out—the least of which was the question of where they would live.

For Decker, the need to mark her and knot her was becoming increasingly difficult and more and more insistent. He didn’t know how Greg was feeling about the whole thing. After all, Greg wasn’t an alpha and, therefore, could not form a knot, and somehow the intimacy involved wasn’t something to be shared. Decker might have had an inkling of how Greg was feeling if he’d bothered to discuss it with him. But the one time Greg had brought it up, Decker had found something that needed his urgent attention.

They seemed to have all settled on the fact that both he and Greg were Adriana’s fated mates, but that was about all they had agreed on.

“You can’t go there without me,” Adriana said, reaching for and throwing a ceramic pot at Decker’s head.

He dodged the pot, caught it, and set it down on the table. “Enough, Adriana. You are not going into some unknown situation to just poke around.”

“I wasn’t planning on going alone.” Decker looked at her, arching his eyebrow. “Okay. Maybe I was, but I can take care of myself, and I wasn’t going to call attention to myself.”

“What vehicle were you planning to take?”

“Originally, I was going to get Caye to help me walk between the worlds…”

Decker took a tight rein on his temper and looked at Greg. “You aren’t helping.”

“You told me you could handle this. So, I’m letting you handle it.”

“I don’t need handling,” snarled Adriana.

“The hell you don’t,” growled Decker. “You’re still not one hundred percent and we have no idea what could be waiting in that village or the surrounding area. All we do know is that Erin’s family and her coven were slaughtered, and you are not to go sliding between worlds with Caye or any other hellhound.”

“I could always ask Caye to teach me how they do it so I could learn to do it by magic.”

“No!” Greg and Decker shouted in unison.

“The floor is yours, doctor. Maybe you can talk some sense into her,” said Decker angrily.

“Decker is right about several things. First, you aren’t going. In fact, you’re not going anywhere until I decide you don’t have any lingering symptoms. There’s no empirical evidence as to what the strain of traveling between worlds can do to someone.”

“Caye is the healthiest person I know,” retorted Adriana.

“Caye is a hellhound, and therefore neither shifter nor human.”

“They shift,” she argued.

“Not really. At least, not as we understand it, and hellhounds are pretty tight-lipped about it.”

“You might want to remind our mate that she is also not going to some place we know nothing about where we believe Eoghan has been and a whole coven of witches were slaughtered.”

“Adriana, consider yourself duly reminded,” said Greg, enjoying this far more than he should be.

Decker rounded on him. “Are you finding this humorous or not worth taking seriously? She already went wandering off to the village and ended up in a high-speed chase.”

“It wasn’t high-speed. I had a child in the footwell. I was just a better driver in a vehicle built for handling at speed.”

“She has a point,” said Greg holding up his hands to hold off Decker. “Besides, we both know we aren’t going to let her leave the abbey without an armed escort and until you know what’s going on in the village Erin came from.”

“You two can’t tell me what to do,” said Adriana in an angry voice. She started to pace. Stopped and started again. She crossed her arms and rubbed them, trying to soothe her anger.

He knew something that could take the edge off, but flinging her down on the bed and having at her in front of Greg probably wasn’t the way to handle this.

Adriana took a deep breath. “Okay, so how about we compromise. You do know how to compromise don’t you?”

“I do. Right now, I’m compromising by not turning your ass all kinds of shades of red.”

“Are you going to let him talk to me that way?” Adriana asked Greg.

“I know we haven’t ironed out how this will work between the three of us,” he said, circling his index finger to include the three of them, “but you two do not get to put me in the middle. And you might want to watch how you talk to your other mate. I’m probably far more easygoing than he is, and I’d take you to task for speaking to me that way. I have to tell you, sweetheart, even if I thought you were one hundred percent, I wouldn’t agree to you going to the village until Decker had a chance to take a group of his men up there to check out where the coven lived or the village that was located nearby.”

Decker nodded. “How’s this for a compromise—I’ll take a small unit of men and do a little reconnoitering. Once I know all there is to know, I’ll come back. We—as in you, me, Greg, Colby, and Brie—will sit down and figure out our next step.”

“Do I have a choice?” she asked.

“No,” they said in unison.

Decker left Greg to deal with their outraged mate, closing the door to her chambers as she howled in indignation and anger.

After assembling a small unit of six, including himself, he assigned four of the men to one of the SUVs. Decker and the fifth man were to take a different route on two of the Ducati Black Star motorcycles that Colby kept on hand. They were fast, sleek, and their handling, in Decker’s opinion, made them a superior motorcycle when speed and control were paramount.

“What is our purpose?” asked Samuel, one of the men in his small, elite unit.

“We are hunting shifters and shadows,” answered Decker, “those who killed the child Erin O’Leary’s family and coven.”

“Do you know who we are seeking?”

“Specifically, Eoghan O’Shea or his people. Some evidence as to why they struck and why they were chasing the child.”

“You are certain it was O’Shea?”

“As certain as I can be standing here within the abbey’s walls. Those of you in the SUV leave now. We shall rendezvous with you outside the village.”

Decker watched as the SUV left the abbey. Throwing his leg over the motorcycle, he and the man who would accompany him put their helmets on, gunned their engines, and began the trip up the coast. Once they reached their destination, Decker sent the men in the SUV into the village, posing as sportsmen stopping on their trip further north. He and Samuel would find a place to conceal their motorcycles and do a little more sleuthing around.

Once they were sure the men from the SUV were in the local pub, Decker sent Samuel to the site Erin’s coven had once called home. Decker had always found the best information came from local clergymen who often heard truths others wanted hidden. As he entered the church, he noticed stones around the perimeter of the chapel stained with blood. It looked as though someone had tried to clean the stones, but they remained stained nonetheless.

The church was eerily quiet. Other than the bloodstains, there was nothing to suggest that any kind of altercation or violence had occurred there. He looked down the main aisle and spotted a parishioner kneeling before the high altar, quietly praying. Candles burned. Decker continued to search, although for what exactly he wasn’t sure. A movement to his left caught his attention—a priest emerging from the confessional. Another man shuffled out from the other half, moving down the outer aisle and exiting the church.

Decker was wary and on edge. He’d seen too much done in the name of religion to find any comfort in any holy house. The man at the front of the church stood, crossed himself, backed away and then hurried down the aisle as if he couldn’t get outside fast enough.

“May I help you, my son?” asked the priest.

Decker started to laugh at the thought that a priest could offer him anything other than information but stopped himself and shrugged mentally. Local parish priests often had the pulse of the village so might be able to save him some time. Instead, Decker nodded toward the confessional. It would give him a chance to speak to the priest privately. The priest smiled and re-entered the confessional. Decker took a last look around, checked his SIG, and then followed the priest, closing the door to his side.

The priest waited, and then said, “Are you unsure how to begin my son?”

Decker held up his gun so its silhouette could be seen through the screen and cocked it. “Tell me what I want to know and live to see another day.”

The priest stood and tried to get away, but Decker was faster. As he, too, exited the confessional, he grabbed the priest by the front of his robes, swinging him back to the side of the box so that they could not be seen by anyone entering the church and giving Decker a good view of the interior.

“Talk to me, Father, for I have sinned and will most likely sin again.”

Decker tucked his gun into the back of his jeans and pulled his knife from its sheath, laying the blade against the priest’s throat. Decker had never been overly religious.

“You will tell me what I need to know, priest, or you will never speak again.”

“I cannot break the seal of the confessional, even if it means my life,” the priest answered him stoically.

Samuel had gone to the site of the coven’s compound. Upon his return, he reported finding nothing there but the charred remnants of the buildings that had once been there—no bodies, no graves, nothing to indicate that Erin’s people had once lived there.

“I do not believe what I need to know was told under the auspices of a confession.” Decker pressed the blade a little more firmly against the man’s windpipe. “You cannot tell me you did not know of the coven of witches that once shared this valley with you.”

“They are no more,” said the priest.

“They were slaughtered, and their compound razed until nothing but a few burned timbers remain. The evidence of all those who died is gone—there are no corpses, no graves, nothing.”

“What did Reynolds expect? No one goes up against the dark lord, inciting his people to revolt and practice their evil magic.”

Decker snorted. “What are you? Some bad actor from an old horror film? ‘Dark lord?’ ‘Evil magic?’” He moved the sharp edge of the knife against the priest’s throat, drawing a small, thin line of blood.

The priest gasped—more from surprise and fright than actual pain.

“Eoghan O’Shea is not a man to be mocked nor ignored. This village remains because we did not dispute that fact. Those who lived among the trees and rocks did. Does not your own lord know that O’Shea owns most of the western coastline from Cornwall north to Hadrian’s Wall and over to the eastern coast of Ireland?”

Now that was information they didn’t have. Everything they’d learned from Adriana as well as through Colby’s network had indicated O’Shea was the leader of a minor, insignificant pack. His daring move to kidnap and turn a witch of Adriana’s bloodline, as well as his allegiance to Abraham Strode, now made more sense.

“The lynx-shifter and your unholy tribe will rue the day you settled in O’Shea’s territory. He and his men will be making their rounds soon, demanding what they are owed. The witches thought to stand with those at the abbey and were slaughtered as an example…”

“While you and your good flock here in the village did nothing and allowed them to terrorize and chase a small child who was forced to take sanctuary in another village in another church. Thank god my mate was there to thwart their plans. It’s typical of cowards like you and your fellow villagers who would rather ally themselves with someone who represents the worst of our kind than to risk anything at all.”

“You cannot judge these good people…”

Decker chuckled malevolently. “Let O’Shea and his thugs test the resolve of those of us at the abbey. He will not find us so easy a target. Colby holds more power than O’Shea has ever dreamed of. If you see O’Shea tell him we’re waiting. If he comes, we’ll meet him with the kind of force and power that neither he nor you can even imagine.”

Decker let the knife fall away from the priest’s throat as he stepped back. The priest raised his hand to the thin line of blood that had all but ceased oozing out of the superficial wound.

“I need not tell O’Shea anything. He is well aware of your presence, and from what I understand is eagerly anticipating a meeting with the clever king of the Resistance.”

Using his forearm, Decker slammed the priest back up against the wall. “Then your dark lord is doomed, for within our walls lies the seeds of his destruction. He may have been able to terrorize an unprotected coven and a small girl, but he will find my mate has the blood of the banshees flowing through her veins and the army of shifters Colby commands is more than a match for O’Shea and his minions.”

Decker looked at the priest in disgust and turned to leave him. Marking Adriana, ensuring that the tether with O’Shea was broken, and that she was safe had become paramount.