On one hand he had to admire the wolf hiding in the innocent sheep’s clothing. It was a stroke of brilliance that allowed him almost carte blanche entry into places and into peoples’ trust that would normally not be so easy to access. On the other … Chatha was as evil an entity as anything he had ever seen. If there were a way to destroy Chatha’s soul forever, Kamen would very much be inclined to see it done. And then he would see it done to Menes, an act that would end the war in a single stroke. Without Menes to flock to, the Politic would swiftly unravel … just as the Templars tended to unravel” she stammered body g. whenever Kamen and Odjit were killed and sent into the Ether. But to do so with permanence … to make a spirit rest once and for all in the afterlife …
Perhaps he would simply use the method where he craved using it most.
On himself.
“Listen, ya big hunk of ignoramus, if you don’t put me down right this minute I’m going to kick you in the balls again and this time your kids are going to be born with black eyes! You feeling me, mister?”
The loud pronouncement rang throughout the house, alerting Marissa instantly of her sister’s arrival. Marissa had been hiding from Jackson, keeping herself closed away in a sunroom just off the porch that wrapped around the entire house. She found that amusing, actually. What use would these people have for a sunroom? If the sun touched them …
She shuddered, thinking that he had actually had the gall to ask her if she wanted to be like him. To tell her that was his plan. Well, he could just take his plan and shove it where he didn’t have to worry about the sunshine. She wanted no part of any of this. It infuriated her to think of how much he had screwed up her life and, by association, so many others. Leo Alvarez for one. Where was he? Was he even alive? If what Jackson had told her was true, then it wasn’t very likely. She had met the darkly mysterious man only a few weeks ago … well, she had seen him many times before that, meeting up with Jackson, sitting in his chair with his feet up, looking for all the world like he owned the entire precinct. She had actually met him when Docia had gone missing and had found him to be quite intimidating when the fate of someone he loved was in jeopardy.
Now Marissa came hurrying through the rooms, the clicking of her heels sounding loud on the tiled foyer floor. She saw Lina up in the air, way way up over the shoulder of the gigantic man who was holding her. He had an arm bound tightly around her legs at the knees, presumably to keep her from kicking him, and she was hanging headfirst down his back.
“I swear to god, I would bite you on your ass if I was close enough!” Then she muttered. “Probably chip a tooth on the damn thing. What the hell have you got in these jeans, a coupla boulders for ass cheeks?”
“Lina!”
Hearing her sister’s voice made Lina swing wildly around, pulling herself upright in an impressive show of abdominal muscles and grabbing Asikri by the hair to hold herself up so she could see Marissa rushing toward her.
“Holy Hannah! They got you too? What the hell—” She broke off when Jackson came into the room. Her eyes widened and she zeroed in on Marissa. “Never gonna happen, huh?”
“Lina, will you be quiet?” Marissa hissed at her, working furiously to keep from blushing. So what? So she’d had a few illicit thoughts about a good-looking man. Big deal! An active imagination was perfectly normal. Sexual fantasies starring the good-looking man were also perfectly normal. The good-looking man himself? Not normal. Far from normal. Too damn not normal for her. “Will you put her down please?” she asked Asikri.
He growled, which she could only assume was a reluctant assent. Without giving her time to plan any lethal strikes on her way down, Asikri practically tossed Angelina onto her feet. Lina immediately ran up to hug her sister in a desperately tight embrace.
“He threw my phone away. A perfectly good iPhone!” she spat over her shoulder at him. “You owe me a new phone! And I want a pink case to go with it! Pink camouflage!”
“There is