Pure Destiny (PureDark Ones #12) - Aja James Page 0,36

scene before her.

Inanna, Gabriel, Tal and Ishtar surrounded Dalair and Benji in a tight semi-circle, within two long-legged bounds of the pair but out of arm’s length.

Dalair was standing on the two-feet-thick, four-feet-high concrete wall of the terrace, part of his heels balancing off the edge. Tal and Ishtar stood on either side of him on the ledge, while Gabriel and Inanna remained below in the garden.

In other words, if Dalair chose to hurl himself and his target off the roof, no one would be able to reach them in time to pull them back.

Sophia heard the distant cacophony of New York City at work. It was a regular weekday. Cars honking. Construction sites clanging. The noises of people chattering like busy bees, muffled by the barricade of towers that surrounded the rooftop on all sides. Occasionally, planes rumbled overhead.

But most of all, she heard the excruciating silence of helpless trepidation, the heart-stopping fear of those who stood to lose someone they loved.

Dalair held Benji in a deceptively loose clasp in front of him, his muscular forearm locked across the boy’s shoulders, right beneath his chin. His other hand held a long dagger with the blade pointed backwards, the end of the hilt facing them.

His expression was completely unreadable, his eyes an opaque black that Sophia detested.

He was not Dalair right now; he was an enemy soldier. A cold-blooded killing machine. One she had to somehow find a way to coax off the metaphorical and physical ledge and let his hostage go.

Speaking of which, she glanced at Benji, whose bright blue eyes were wide and unblinking, his face ashen pale. He was silent, still and solemn. Unsurprising, given the situation, but nonetheless uncharacteristic. However, there was no fear in those angelic orbs. Only worry.

And somehow, Sophia knew that the boy didn’t worry for himself; he worried for them.

She raised her eyes back to the boy’s captor.

“Dalair,” she said softly as she walked closer.

Inanna and Gabriel automatically shifted to let her through.

Sophia tried to ignore the sheer terror in their eyes. They were not Elite warriors in this moment. They were simply Benji’s parents. All they knew was that their greatest joy in life was in the hands of the enemy.

She squeezed Inanna’s wrist briefly as she passed, willing some calmness into the warrior.

Inanna blinked in confusion as her body relaxed involuntarily, her eyes losing their frantic gleam.

“No closer,” Dalair ordered in that toneless, emotionless voice, stopping Sophia at ten feet away.

She was closer to him than any of the others. Perhaps he allowed it because she posed the least threat amongst the group that surrounded him.

She shifted a little, shuffling slightly closer just to test him, disguising the movement by raking a hand through her shoulder-length hair.

His unnaturally dark eyes flickered, noting her progress, but he didn’t comment.

“There’s nowhere to go, Dalair,” she spoke quietly, unthreateningly, as if they were in the middle of a reasonable, normal conversation. A private conversation just between the two of them.

“You didn’t come this far to fail your mission with an accidental slip. Come away from the edge.”

He didn’t answer her, and he didn’t move. They both knew that if he fell from the edge, it wouldn’t be an accident. A warrior of his caliber didn’t do anything but on purpose.

“Why, Dalair?”

She didn’t expect him to answer, but it didn’t hurt to ask. She thought back to the time he’d abducted her. She asked him all kinds of questions that he didn’t answer, often simply talking out loud to sort through her own thoughts.

But then she recalled that there had been loop holes in his “programming.” He couldn’t answer questions he didn’t know the answer to, because why would his Masters tell a zombie soldier the reasoning behind their machinations? But he could and did interact within certain parameters.

Of course, that was then, this was now.

Since the ordeal, she wondered whether he’d been acting out orders after all, even the parts where she seemed to have reached the man within the shell. Perhaps some of his actions had been of his own accord. And perhaps his Masters had reinforced his programming since then to seal off those loop holes.

Nevertheless, Sophia had to try to reach him. There was nothing to lose now.

“If I promise not to interfere with your plans, whatever they may be, may I come closer?” she ventured, testing the boundaries of his protocol.

He stared stoically back at her.

Just when she thought he wouldn’t answer and opened her mouth to ask another