I expected a SWAT team consisting of DOD officers, Arum, and Luxen to descend on us as we hurried around the side of the building and through the automatic doors, but no one was around. The lobby and rows of post office boxes were empty.
“What number is hers?”
he asked.
I glanced down at the key just to confirm what I already knew.
“Eight- hundred and fifty-two.”
Hunter craned his neck and sighed, spying the rows in the back. I could tell he didn’t like this, but I headed forward, determined to get into that damn box. Hopefully this wasn’t for nothing and someone had canceled her box and all the mail had been removed.
With little difficulty, I found her PO box and after wiggling the key a couple of times, the metal door swung open.
Envelopes of all colors and sizes, magazines, and junk mail spilled forth and onto the floor.
“Holy shit,” Hunter said.
I couldn’t help it. I laughed. “Mel…well, she rarely checked her PO box and, when she did, she left stuff in it, and I’m sure a lot of this came after she… she died.”
“She didn’t die.” Hunter knelt down and began sorting through the mail on the floor.
“She was murdered. There is a difference.”
He was right. There was a huge difference between the two. Throat thick, I reached inside the box and pulled out what was left. A lot was postmarked after she was murdered.
Tossing the junk back into the box, I tried my best not to get affected by seeing Mel’s name on every letter, or the overdue bills that was so her, or the half dozen animal cruelty organizations she belonged to.
It was almost too much going through these things.
Hunter stood and wrapped his hand around my arm, drawing my attention.
Blinking back tears, I looked up and cleared my throat. “What?”
“Would you like me to go through them? Or we can take all of this out of here.”
The offer meant a lot to me, it really did, but I shook my head. “No. I can go through these, and I don’t want to take it with me.”
He looked like he wanted to say more, but went back to thumbing through his pile. I stopped on an Adam and Eve catalog and then my breath caught. “Hunter, what is it?”
His head had jerked up, eyes narrowing, and then he turned, scanning the bits of the lobby we could see. “I sense another Arum. Close.”
Unease exploded in my stomach. “Would an Arum be working with the senator or any Luxen here?”
“Not likely.” He placed the mail back in the box.
“But one could be working with the DOD. I’m going to check out the front.
Whoever it is, they’re outside. Stay here.”
I nodded and Hunter started off, but then he spun around and clasped my cheeks. Tilting my head back, his eyes locked with mine. “I’ll be right back.”
“I know.”
A half smile appeared and then he was gone in a stir of icy wind. Letting out a shaky breath, I turned back to the mail and lifted the catalog, revealing a hand-scribbled note on notebook paper.
“Oh my God,”
I whispered, dropping the rest of the mail.
This was it. The freaking letter Mel had written herself.
It was her handwriting, starting off with describing the Vanderson brothers as light bulbs. This was so it. I almost couldn’t believe it.
My hands shook as I scanned the letter quickly, and then I had to read it again because I couldn’t believe what I was reading or that Mel wouldn’t have remembered this when she spoke to me.
Or maybe she had been too scared to even speak it out loud because I almost wanted to be able to unread what I had seen.
Not knowing…dear God, not knowing was almost better.
There wasn’t anything new about Pennsylvania, but what was in here… Project Eagle was in response to the government organization known as the Daedalus.
What Mel had overheard really wouldn’t have made any sense to her, but it did to me knowing what I did.
Project Eagle was world domination.
It was a plan to contact the Luxen who hadn’t come to Earth yet—an honest to God invasion from within the Daedalus, using the origin. There was nothing explaining what the “origin” was, but those hundreds of thousands of Luxen Hunter had spoken about? Project Eagle was about bringing them here.
I shook my head. “I don’t believe it.”
“Neither do I,” said an unfamiliar voice. “But then again, seeing is believing.”
My stomach dropped as I whipped around, holding the letter close to my chest. A man stood at the entrance of the row Mel’s post office box was in. He was tall, dark haired, and had extraordinarily bright blue eyes. The faint light outlining his body gave away what he was.
A Luxen.
Air punched out of my lungs and I took a step back, bumping into the metal boxes behind me.
“Wondering how I’m here?” He spread his arms out to his sides. “We have eyes everywhere, sweetheart.
That little podunk gas station in Kansas? Didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out where you were heading.”
That fucking cop! I knew it. I forced my tongue to work. If I could keep him talking, it would hopefully give Hunter enough time to get back, unless something happened—I cut myself off there before panic took root. I couldn’t afford to even think about that. “How did you find me here?”
He tsk ed softly. “Did you think we didn’t know about that letter?”
“What?” I gasped.
The Luxen laughed jovially.
“We checked everything of your friend’s and discovered the note.
We kept it there, hoping that it would draw you back. The letter isn’t the lost link, sweetheart. It isn’t the last chain of evidence that we need to take care of. After all, we know she talked to you. About how much? Anyone’s guess. So you were the last link in this chain.”
Oh.
Oh crap.
He stepped forward, tipping his chin down, and I pushed away from the boxes. “Now, don’t try to run. You’re not going to escape. And your Arum friend? He won’t be coming to your aid.”
My chest seized.
“You should never trust an Arum .” The Luxen’s smile was almost as blinding as the light radiating down his arm.
“They only care about themselves.”
Refusing to believe that Hunter would’ve betrayed me in such a way, I held my ground as I eyed the lobby behind him. “You’re lying.”
The Luxen shook his head slowly, still smiling.
“Silly human…”
Around his arm, a light flared and pulsed brightly.
In a split second, every instinct I owned roared to life. My legs moved before my brain caught up with them. I twisted at the waist and started to run. A scream built in my throat and my fingers tightened around Mel’s letter.
Bright light burst through the entire room. White-hot pain exploded along my spine before I could take a step, frying every nerve ending. Pain stole my breath and tripped up my heartbeat. My legs folded under me like an accordion…and then there was nothing.
… The moment I stepped out into the thick night air, I realized it was a mistake— a stupid, motherfucking mistake. I turned to go back inside when a dark shadow pulled away from the side of the building, materializing as he grew closer.
It was the Arum from the airport, the day I had received my orders to watch over Serena and retrieve her.
“Interesting seeing you again,” I said, squaring my shoulders.
He wore his sunglasses, at night, like a total tool. “Is it?”
“I think so.” I took a step forward, and then felt it.
Others. Luxen. My entire being focused not on what was in front of me, but on Serena.
I’d left her unprotected in there.
“Working with Luxen?”
“I wouldn’t say I was working with them, more like freelancing.”
My brother—Lore— freelanced like a mofo, and even he didn’t work with Luxen. “Yeah, whatever.”
“It’s best to just walk away from this, brother.”
I didn’t even bother responding to that.
Reaching behind me, I gripped the handle of the obsidian blade and pulled it out of its protective sheath.
The Arum caught sight of the glowing red blade and shifted. I wasn’t wasting time with this shithead, though.
Moving lightning fast, I shot forward and slammed the obsidian blade deep into the Arum’s chest. He shuddered as I withdrew the blade, and then he rose up, blocking out the dim entrance lights before the mass splintered and broke apart.
I made it to the door when a ball of fucking light slammed into my shoulder, knocking me sideways. I threw out my hand, catching myself on the brick wall. Holy shit, they were using the Source in the wide open?
They weren’t fucking around.
There wasn’t much time to think.
A seven-foot glowworm barreled out from inside the post office and crashed into me. I skidded back several steps and then dug in, pushing the glowing bastard back.
Glass shattered as he hit the door.
He rebounded, shaking it off, and charged me. More prepared this time, I spun out to the side and then saw two more coming straight at me. I didn’t have time for this shit. If the Luxen had been inside, it meant they had gotten in from another entrance and they had been inside with Serena.
My heart thundered in my chest.
Cocking back my arm, I let the obsidian dagger fly.
It hit the Luxen straight in the chest. Obsidian wasn’t deadly to Luxen, but a blade in the heart sure did the trick.
Another slammed into me and we went into the air, spinning in and out of our true forms as we hit the roof of the post office and slid across it. The Luxen was on top and there was a flash of a red- hot blade swinging down.
Blocking the downward attack, I rolled the Luxen onto his back and wrenched the obsidian from his hand. Without the leather handle, the blade burned, but I ignored it as I shoved it deep into the Luxen’s chest. Then I shifted and fed.
Immediately I tapped into the Luxen’s last thoughts. He blocked most of them, but I saw through his eyes Serena’s wide eyes filled with fear, heard his taunts. Saw Serena on the floor, eyes closed and face contorted in pain. She had been handed off to someone, taken.
I drained that fucker dry.
Dropping his body, I sprang to my feet as the other Luxen rushed over the ledge. With the last feeding, this one, and the opal, these fuckers were absolutely no match for me. I caught him around the throat, slamming him into the roof with enough force that the cement cracked.
I latched on to the Luxen as I shifted into my true form. Where isss ssshe?
The Luxen slipped into his human form, eyes wide as his back bowed off the ground. “I-I don’t know.”
BULLSSSHIT. TELL ME WHERE THEY TOOK HER AND I’LL LET you live.
When the Luxen didn’t answer, I reared back with my free arm and slammed my fist into his jaw, cracking his head back. I CAN DRAG THISSS OUT FOR AN ETERNITY.
DO YOU UNDERSSSTAND ME? TELL ME WHERE SSSHE ISSS AND YOU will walk away from thisss.
It took a few more minutes of convincing, and by then dark red blood that shone a shimmery blue spilled across the roof. The Luxen started singing like a canary.
“They took her to the senator. He…he has her.”
