“You can relax now, you know,” Niamh said quietly.
The plane had just leveled out and Kiyo wanted to believe he could relax, but his body refused to. Waiting at the airport had been tense. He’d been constantly on alert for any sign of The Garm or another enemy. Moreover, he still couldn’t figure out how the hell Niamh’s vision had transferred to him. He wondered if it could happen again. The stubborn fae wouldn’t tell him about her Tokyo vision, and since she’d admitted it was partly about him, Kiyo felt he had a right to know.
Especially if it was taking him back to a city where he had enemies.
“Can I?” he muttered, glancing around at the busy plane. The passengers were reading, watching the TVs on the back of the seat headrests, or sleeping. When was the last time he slept?
Having his neck broken and being unconscious for a few minutes didn’t count.
“I have a spider sense,” Niamh leaned in to whisper. Her spicy-sweet scent tickled his senses, and his gut tightened.
Kiyo glowered at her, noting the delicate golden freckles scattered across the bridge of her nose and cheeks. “I don’t care about your spider sense?”
She quirked an eyebrow. “You’re in an awful mood.”
“Niamh …” There was a growl of warning in her name.
“Okay, fine.” She considered him, questions in her big, golden-aquamarine eyes. “Do you not like flying?”
“Breaking the contract might be worth it,” he muttered.
She rolled her eyes. “My spider sense is pertinent, so I’m telling you about it whether you want to know or not. I can sense when danger is lurking. I knew I was being followed by The Garm before I saw the cars. And if there was anyone on this plane that meant to cause me harm, I’d feel that too. So … you can relax, bodyguard. Why don’t you try to catch some z’s?”
Tempting, but he still didn’t trust the woman he’d been hired to protect. And since she had the ability to pop herself out of the plane to somewhere else, he was staying awake and alert.
“I’m fine.”
Niamh leaned into him again and his fingers curled into tight fists. “Do you want to talk about why you don’t want to go to Tokyo?”
“Do you want to tell me about the vision?” he countered.
She flicked him a dry look and thankfully relaxed back into her seat.
“You could share it with me, couldn’t you? Like at the airport with the girl.”
Niamh frowned. “I don’t know how I did that.”
“Want to try again?” He reluctantly held his hand out, palm facing up.
Her gaze dropped to his hand. Her long, spiky lashes drew his attention as she considered his offer. Then, to his surprise, she reached out and placed her hand in his, wrapping her cool fingers around his. Kiyo’s skin sparked and tingled where she touched, like he’d caressed a live wire. It had to be because she was fae and made of potent energy.
“Well?” he said gruffly.
Niamh gave him a sad smile. “Oh, I don’t know how to give you the vision. I just wanted to hold your hand. I haven’t held someone’s hand in a long time.”
Her words disarmed him.
If anyone else had dared to hold his hand, he’d have shoved them off with impatience and irritation. When he took a woman to bed, it was all about sex. Any affection shown was for sexual gratification. It never involved cuddling or hand-holding.
Yet the thought of rejecting Niamh so brutally … well, he didn’t like the thought of doing that to her.
Kiyo didn’t understand his reaction.
He hadn’t experienced soft feelings toward anyone in a very long time.
Disturbed by his response, he lifted their clasped hands and placed them in her lap before easing out of her hold. “I’m not good at providing comfort,” he said as gently as he was able. “I’m not that guy.”
She stared at him, assessing, her eyes moving to his now-free hand, her brows puckering. Wondering at the confusion on her face, he followed her gaze to his hand and realized he was flexing it.
Because it still tingled, like she’d given him an electric shock.
He abruptly dropped his hand out of sight. “Go to sleep,” he commanded.
The goddamn woman needed to give him a break for just a while.
“It’s okay to need human contact, Kiyo,” she whispered. “A little comfort. It doesn’t mean anything.”
Patience thinning, he sneered at her. “Neither of us are human. And I wasn’t the one who needed to be comforted. If you need that, find someone who’s interested when we land in Tokyo.”
Hurt flickered across her stunning face before she could hide it.
Another sensation he hadn’t felt in a long time caused an ache to flare across his chest.
Guilt.
Goddammit.
He’d never regretted taking on a job so much in his entire existence.
“What happened to make you so cold?” Niamh asked, but he could tell by the hard edge to her words that she wasn’t really asking him. She was merely observing facts.
Kiyo turned to look at her, and his agitation built tenfold. For someone as fast and powerful as she was, a woman who could break his neck without even touching him, she was irritatingly soft. She cared too damn much, and it would get her killed … or worse, put the entire world in jeopardy.
“You’re soft,” he said, his voice barely above a whisper.
Her head whipped around toward him. “What?”
“You’re soft. You care about strangers and it makes you weak. That’s not to be admired, Niamh, when that weakness could cause a war. So stop being weak. You could learn a thing or two from me, and it might just keep us all safe.” The words were harsh, and he knew as soon as he said them that she didn’t deserve them. But she made him off-kilter and he didn’t like it.
That’s when she reminded him that he didn’t know her at all. A cool hardness crawled across her features, and she suddenly looked strange and ethereal and every inch the fae woman she was. Her words, however, were very human and very irate. “I have nothing to learn from you other than how to be a complete and total arsehole. Go to sleep, Kiyo. Give the world a rest from your delightful presence.”
The guilt he’d felt over his words was nudged to the side by amusement.
She had a fire in her. Spirit.
And he couldn’t help but admire it.
That was the problem. He couldn’t help but admire—
The hair on Kiyo’s neck rose, stalling his thoughts. He felt strangely disconcerted.
Something wasn’t right.
Growing still, tense, he tried to feel out his surroundings.
“Kiyo, what’s wro—”
He held up a hand to cut off Niamh.
And then it hit him.
Tapping the screen on the headrest in front of him, Kiyo searched for confirmation.
He brought up the map.
His muscles locked tight. Niamh leaned in to look at his screen and he heard her slight exhalation.
“We’re going the wrong way.”
He nodded, quickly tapping off the screen. “We’re not heading south. We’re heading west.” Kiyo studied her shocked expression. “You can’t sense anything?”
They both tried to look circumspectly around the plane. Something about what he saw wasn’t right.
“Kiyo …” Niamh’s voice was hushed with fear. “Everyone is … sleeping.”
Every single passenger had their eyes closed.
He turned to Niamh as she lifted a hand into the air and flexed her fingers. Her cheeks paled as her horrified gaze flew to his. “They’re dead.”
“Get up,” Kiyo bit out. “We need to get off this plane.”
They both unlatched their seat belts and Kiyo slid out first, holding a hand to help Niamh onto the aisle. He was still holding her when every hair on his body rose. A figure appeared out of a shimmer in the air at the head of the aisle; he walked toward them. Behind the man, the air shimmered again and someone else appeared.
“Cloaking spell,” Niamh said as the three warlocks and two witches lined up on the aisle ahead of them.
“How?” Kiyo growled. Niamh was supposed to be able to sense magic and supernaturals.
“They can cloak themselves, even from me.” Tears brightened her eyes. Eyes that were filled with rage as she stared down the coven members. “But at great sacrifice.”
Kiyo knew about magic. He knew that unlike Niamh who was made of energy, connected to it, and could use her powers with no need of an exchange, witches and warlocks couldn’t. To cast spells, to use magic of any kind, they required fuel for the energy. A tree in the woods in exchange for an offensive spell in battle. An animal in exchange for wounding an enemy.
A human being in exchange for a spell of invisibility against the most powerful species on earth.
White witches and warlocks had great limitations upon them because they refused to hurt others for their power.
Some covens, like the Blackwoods, however, were large enough that their combined natural energy allowed them to do much that individual witches and warlocks couldn’t. That’s why most magic users wanted to belong to a coven. It made them more powerful.
And then, of course, there was the fact that when covens became as powerful as the Blackwoods, they got away with using dark magic while pretending the very thought abhorred them.
“They killed everyone on the plane to cloak themselves from me,” Niamh said in furious horror, grief darkening her eyes.
“Not technically necessary.” The warlock leading the charge gestured to the dead passengers. “But we did need about half of them. You’re very hard to trick, you see.”
“Why kill all of them?” Kiyo stared blankly at this warlock who had no honor. It was something Kiyo had mastered over the years. Keeping what little emotion leaked through locked down tight. He’d seen much in his life … but even as soulless as he felt most days, Kiyo knew in that moment that he still had one. Because he felt the deaths of all those passengers pressing in on his chest.
He couldn’t look at them.
At the humans who had gotten on a flight like they’d probably done many times, and their energy, their lives had been snatched mindlessly so five fucking magic users could hide from one fae woman.
Dirty, dishonorable pieces of shit.
“I don’t like loose ends,” the warlock said. His pale gaze was fixed on Niamh. “You’re lucky we need you so badly or I would kill you for what you did to Layton and his sisters. But Layton’s father doesn’t want that. You’re too important.”
“She didn’t kill them.” Kiyo spoke for her.
The warlock flicked an irritated look at him. “And I would believe the word of a mercenary? What business have you here, you filthy, mangy half-creature?”
Absolutely the wrong thing to say to him when he was already feeling more than he wanted to.
Kiyo was a blur, closing the short distance between them.
His fist smashed through the warlock’s chest; he gripped the son of a bitch’s heart and yanked it out. The warlock’s eyes closed and he flopped to the floor like his battery had been removed.
Which it kind of had.
Kiyo had just dropped the heart on the warlock’s body when he felt invisible fingers tightening around his throat. The sensation was unpleasant, startling him to his knees. It wouldn’t kill him, however, and he pushed to standing to face the witches who were using their combined power to choke him.
Suddenly, he smelled Niamh brush past him. He barely saw her. She was so fast, just a whirl of color and movement. The first time he’d seen someone move that fast was a few months ago when Rose and Fionn tracked him down in Bucharest. They’d been attacked by coven members then too.
One by one, like dominoes, the coven members dropped to the aisle floor.
Niamh stood in amongst the carnage, her chest heaving with emotion, tears streaking her face as she stared down at the bodies. Kiyo didn’t know if they were unconscious or dead.
She lifted her tortured gaze to his, and Kiyo had the strongest urge to go to her.
To comfort her.
It made no sense.
Then the plane lurched, stealing him from the disturbing thought. “What the hell?” he bit out, getting to his feet only to stumble against a seat as the plane lurched again.
“The coven!” Niamh flew at him. “They must have been controlling the plane.” She wrapped her arms around him, shocking him. “Hold on tight! Don’t let go!”
Kiyo did as she demanded without thought and abruptly everything went black.
And then cold.
Wet and cold and darkness surrounded him, pressure pushing down on his chest.
It took him a moment to realize where he was.
In water.
Drowning in the dark depths of the sea.