Chapter 13

Open your eyes, Luther. Wake the fuck up.

I force my eyelids open. Everything hurts. Every muscle, every fiber, every cell in my body. They ache like fury. And fury swirls in my gut.

"What the fuck did you do?"

I know Nico's there. I can feel him. Smell him.

In the darkness, he stares at me. Two red slits, the eyes of a hellhound, stare back.

Slowly, he moves into the light. There's a thin shaft coming from somewhere. Fuck knows where.

He's even uglier like this, close up, half-illuminated by the moonlight. It catches on his translucent skin, highlighting the curve of his muscles and the sharpness of his bones.

He is huge. Not as big as Snow, but bigger than a wolf. Bigger than Sam.

He stalks toward me, and opens his massive jaws. Saliva drips down his chin.

Before I can say anything else, a familiar voice drifts toward me. "He had to injure you to keep you safe."

"Rev?" I squint into the darkness. Then a spark catches light. Fire blooms. We're in a cave.

"The cave by the lake," she says. "Probably not the smartest hideout, but we couldn't go to my place or back to the cabin, and we were running out of options. I cast a shield. But only over the cave. I'm not powerful enough to do more than that by myself."

"You told her?" I turn on Nico again, anger vibrating darkly in my throat.

"He had to. He needed help getting you out of there."

"He's a hellhound. He couldn't carry me on his back?"

"He was scared."

"Right." I sit up wincing at the pain in my arm and looking down to see a circle of teeth marks that have drawn blood from my skin. "Scared. Sure."

Nico tilts his head at me, then shudders and begins to shift back. I look away, then remember he inherited his wolf ability to shift with clothes on, and watch as his body breaks and contorts and turns back into the body of a man.

He blinks at me, swipes his fingers through his hair, crouching on the floor in front of me. Then he stands and closes the space between him and Rev. She strokes his face gently and kisses his forehead.

"I'm sorry, Luther." He turns to me, taking a flask of whiskey that Rev offers him, drinking some down, then passing it to me. "I had to get you out of there. You were going to take us both down in flames if you carried on."

"You should have left me." I take a long, deep swig, then start to examine the rest of my body for wounds. It's only when I'm taking my second drink that I realize Nico is covered in charred skin. "I hurt you," I say darkly.

Nico nods. "A bit."

"I'm sorry."

"Don't be." He shrugs and takes the whiskey back from me. "You should never have been put in that position."

"Neither of you should," Rev interjects. "The Bureau has gone too far. I don't know what's happened to Annalise, but the things she's been sanctioning lately. Nico, the things she's made you do. It's not right."

I frown, wondering what exactly the Bureau has had Nico doing. But Nico simply shrugs again and sits down next to the fire. "We've got bigger problems right now." He looks at me. "Luther just killed a human. My hunch is that Annalise will want to cover it up – the SDB won't want the AMA knowing they're the ones who sanctioned Paul's kidnap and torture. But at the same time, she still wants her answers."

"And she's going to be pissed I took that away and went on the run."

Nico nods slowly.

"Okay then, hellhound. You've been working with them the past few months. What do you suggest we do to get ourselves out of this?"

Hands on hips, Rev stands in front of me and glowers down at me with her dark brown eyes. "Let's get one thing straight, Luther. There is no we. This was not a ‘you and Nico' situation. You caused this. You did this. Nico is helping you out. Got it?"

Her earrings sway a little with the force of her anger. She reaches up and tucks a curl of dark hair back into her yellow headscarf.

"Got it."

"Well, all right then." She turns and lifts a pot into the middle of the fire. "I'll make tea, you two make a plan."

My nose wrinkles involuntarily at the thought of Rev's tea. We all hate it. Yet she forces it on us anyway because it's ‘good for us'.

"We need a new AMA contact and quickly," Nico says. "If we can get Annalise the intel she needs about the scepter, she won't give a flying fuck about whether Paul's dead, and you'll be off the hook."

"Right, and where do we find one of those? Especially one high up enough to have the location of the scepter?"

Nico brushes his fingers through his hair again. "I might know a guy. A contact I'd been working on. He might help. But it means going to…" He breathes in and his neck twitches.

"Going where?"

"To Spine." Nico sighs heavily. "And I haven't been back there since…"

"Fuck." I stand up and, despite the pain in my leg, pace back and forth. "Last time I was there, Nova and I bought Sam back from Madame."

"Last time I was there, I was playing about in the fire play room while my brother was tortured on stage." Nico glances at Rev. "I never even knew it was him. Walked straight past."

"You didn't know he existed, Nico, you can't blame yourself for that."

"But I can blame myself for all the other sketchy shit I did in that club." Nico wraps his arm around Rev's waist. "I swear, if I go back, none of that?—"

She stops him with a wave of her hand. "Hush. I didn't think it would."

I check my phone for the time. Somehow, it survived my inferno back at the warehouse and is still functioning. "Well then we better hurry. If this is our plan, Spine opens in a few hours. We should make a move."

"Oh no, you're not going anywhere." Rev puts her hands on her hips. "Look at the state of you."

She turns to Nico. "Or you. No way. I'll go."

"Absolutely not."

"The Bureau will be looking for both of you. They're not looking for me. I can drive into Red Rock, go to the club, find your guy, and be back by sunrise."

"He won't talk to you," Nico says.

"Yes he fucking will." Rev strides closer to Nico, and he looks both turned on and intimidated as she squares up to him. "Give me what you have on him, and tell me how to get him to listen. I'll do the rest."