Drago (Second Wave Book 2) Page 10

  Drago grinned when everyone looked at one another in startled surprise. He also felt like kicking himself for being a fool. It made sense. It explained why she didn’t kill him and why he didn’t feel the evil in her that her past deeds would have left written in her energy and soul.

  Dread turned narrowed eyes to Drago. “Is that what you think or what you want to believe?” He asked, knowing his brother wouldn’t lie to him.

  Drago shrugged. “I honestly don’t know. I would have thought I would have known by her energy if she is a hybrid, but we don’t know her talent either, she may be able to hide her energy signature. We can always ask Grai. If she is one of his own, then he would tell us rather than allow us to possibly harm her,” Drago suggested, already sending out a call through the Shengari’ to his friend and ally.

  Lara snorted. “I have no doubt he’s the reason we are sensing more than half of the hybrids that we’ve detected. Did you get any clue out of her while you were there? Did she tell you anything about her boss?”

  Drago shook his head. “She was really tight lipped and evasive. She knew who I was and she knows we are here. She warned me to leave and stay out of her business. If she was the cold bitch that the reports say that she is, then she would have killed me.”

  “Or had us surrounded before I ever got to her home. It makes no sense that she is a willing participant in Satalis’ plans, if that is indeed who her boss is,” Drago said honestly. No matter the pull of his soul towards his beautiful mate, he wouldn’t lie to his family and knowingly put them in danger.

  Trick, who had remained eerily quiet during the exchange stood and cleared his throat. “Dree doesn’t think that Devon is the monster we assume either. I have learned over the years to trust her instincts. I also do not think that we can make any assumptions where Devon is concerned. We need to tread very carefully with these illusions and anyone around them,” Trick warned as he looked intently at Lara.

  Lara narrowed her eyes as she sifted through Trick’s energy. “You think she may be part of the illusions?” Lara asked, stunned that she hadn’t thought of it earlier.

  Trick, Mir and Dream looked at one another before they nodded their heads in unison. Drago tried to work his mind around the idea and couldn’t seem to understand what they could mean by it.

  “How would that work? What would it mean?” Drago asked, ignorant over how the illusions worked.

  Trick moved his chair in front of Drago and put his elbows on his knees. “An illusion only appears to be an illusion because it does not exist here, in this realm. The power for the illusion is created in another energy realm of the Shengari’, where the image is created and exists for real, in that reality. It’s the reality of it elsewhere that allows us to pull the image into this realm.”

  “It’s a basic manifestation of energy transfer. Create it elsewhere and pull it here because until the conversion, we can’t use the energy here to manifest it in this reality. Which is what Satalis is doing, but he’s using more realms to create them, than we have access to. It’s possible for him to have created an illusion in the home that can project a much different picture to someone unaware of it,” Trick explained.

  Seeing that everyone was still confused, Dree tried to explain it differently. “He could be using an illusion over the true woman in the home. Which could make her appear as Devon Sinclair, but be someone completely different than the real Devon. Which means she could be a hybrid, who discovered the illusion and she’s using it for her own reasons. She could also be completely unaware of the danger she stumbled into,” Dree said.

  Dread interrupted. “Or she could be a pawn of Satalis, who is hiding behind the illusions that he created for her.”

  Dree sighed and looked at Drago apologetically before nodding her head in agreement. Dread threw his hands up and continued to pace the room. “So we still know nothing and only have more questions.”

  Drago felt his heart sink when he received a reply from Grai through the Shengari’. Grai admitted that he had teams close to their location, but he knew nothing of anyone named Devon Sinclair and he had no idea if she were a hybrid or not.

  Grai had also assured him that his teams were not here because of them, but were here on a separate mission that should not have anything to do with them at all. Drago felt a lot better knowing that Grai had offered the assistance of the teams if they needed it but he also promised to warn the other teams to stay away from the Prime unless called.

  He was curious why Grai was so willing to keep his teams away but didn’t want to think about it right now as he thought of his mate. He didn’t like that the options regarding who Devon truly was, were rapidly increasing for both the bad and good. All he knew was that his soul was telling him that she wasn’t the sadistic bitch that the reports said she was and he needed to make sure she wasn’t harmed.

  He looked up at the others and stood. “I’m going back there.”

  Dree stood beside him with a cheeky grin. “I’m game!”

  *****

  Angel T’Alq had just left the shadow of the house when her phone vibrated and scared the hell out of her. She sprinted to the bushes near the sidewalk and popped out onto the concrete at the end of a row of bushes, walking nonchalantly towards home. Digging her phone out of her pocket she sighed when she saw the number and hit the button to accept the call.

  She pulled her fluffy jacket hood over her head and tried for a cheerful voice. “Hi Daddy! Two phone calls in one week! And you say I’m not spoiled!”

  Angel knew this wasn’t going to be good when he didn’t chuckle. Not even a snort. Uh Oh, she thought, wondering what part of her plans he’d figured out and whether or not she should just shut up and wait for him to explode before she tried to explain or confess all her sins now and throw herself on his mercy.

  She decided to try for stupid and roll the dice. “Daddy? What’s wrong? Is Tristan and Tricia ok? The baby?”

  She heard him clear his throat. “I want you and Chris to give me a very detailed and comprehensive report on your activities and the status of your mission. Immediately,” Grai said, the tone of his voice giving Angel no doubt that she needed to comply. Now.

  Angel smiled as she walked past the house with the Prime and the Tezarian’s inside. “Of course! In fact, I’m almost home now. Chris and I can jump on the vid and give you a run-down of where we’re at,” Angel said confidently as she walked into the house across the street from the Prime and made a pre-planned hand signal to Chris who had met her at the door.

  She watched as he ran into the other room and set the plan in motion as she pulled her jacket off and calmly spoke to the most fearsome man on the planet. Her father. Grai T’Alq.

  “Daddy, does this have something to do with the Prime and the pack of Tezarian’s you put across the street from us?” Angel didn’t expect an answer and had only hoped to throw her father off her own plans.

  She walked into their control room in the basement and Chris gave her the thumbs up. Waiting until her father spoke, she deliberately interrupted him, trying to keep his suspicions at bay. “Wait a minute, Chris is here. We’ll go to vid.” Angel winked at Chris as she stood beside him and watched her father come on the screen.

  Angel spoke first. “Is everyone ok?” She asked again, pasting a worried look on her face. She knew damn well everyone was fine. Her and her brothers cared very much about their family and kept very close tabs on them all. Even their father.

  Grai looked at his children with narrowed eyes for a moment, trying to put his finger on what was off about them. Placing it in the back of his mind for further consideration later, he gave his baby girl a gentle smile before he gave a nod of respect to his son.

  “Everyone here is fine and all is going as planned. Have you encountered the Tezarian’s or the Prime?” Grai asked, watching their expression’s carefully.

  Angel snorted. “It was hard to miss them since they are right across the street! We haven’t exactly baked cookies and gon
e over and introduced ourselves though, and have no intentions of it. What’s with them anyway? Why are they here?” Angel gave him her best pout face and hoped that the childish manipulation would work like it usually did on her sweet but fierce father.

  Grai scowled. “Stop that, it won’t work this time baby. What they are doing there, does not concern you. I want you to have no contact with them at all. If they are in trouble, I expect you to call in the back up teams, but you and your brothers are to stand down. Do you understand?”

  Christopher, sensing that his father was more concerned than normal about them, spoke up. “Dad, what’s going on? Are our missions in danger? Should I get Angel out of here?”

  Chris ignored the hard punch to his side from his sister and looked intently at his father to say the word. He was almost disappointed when Grai shook his head.

  “You should be fine as long as you keep a wide berth from them. No contact. At all. Or every one of you will be pulled and put in seclusion,” Grai said sternly, hoping they would take his warning seriously.

  Chris could feel Angel getting ready to exercise her smart mouth and he nodded his head at his father. “I will personally ensure her safety and if I cannot, I will personally cuff her and put her on a transport. Now, we should probably go over the mission progress since we have you on the vid. There have only been minor adjustments to the original plan…,” Chris said, moving easily from the heavy conversation to the mission status briefing.

  Angel glared at her brother for a minute before turning her attention to the briefing and easing her father’s peace of mind. Which was never easy to do unless he was with you or had you surrounded by dozens of trained killers. Or both. The man invented the word ‘overprotective’, Angel thought with a grin.

  She’d certainly had an interesting childhood between her father and her many brothers, Angel thought to herself. So this macho, protective act was nothing new to her. Even if it was still irritating. It seemed to come with the territory of being the only girl in the family. Angel was seriously hoping that Tricia would give them another little girl to smother, so she could live a little.

  “Are you listening?”

  Angel smiled sweetly at her father’s stormy look, giving no indication that he had startled her from her thoughts. “Of course I am! Having boobs doesn’t make me stupid, remember?” Angel countered. Grai sighed and Chris groaned loudly, while Angel tried to smother her grin. Girl talk always shut them up, she thought as she mentally patted herself on the back for disrupting her father’s train of thought.

  Grai ran his hands through his hair and glared at his daughter. “Now is really not the time for your speech about being as omnipotent and tough as your brothers. This situation going on around you is very dangerous and I need you to stay focused on your own tasks. Are we clear?” Grai asked more gruffly than he normally would have.

  Every instinct told Grai to pull his children out of there, but he knew that they would rebel on him if he tried. He had raised them to be strong, protective, assertive and confident. He’d done too good of a job and he knew that they would not leave things unresolved.

  He’d been far too protective of them when they were growing up and they were tired of being coddled. He understood it of his sons. But, he had not counted on the all-male household creating a tom-boy monster of a daughter who felt the need to get into every scrape and fight alongside her much larger and stronger siblings.

  Grai barely suppressed his shudder at the memory of some of the girl’s injuries as a child. Hell, he thought, there had been days where he wasn’t sure he’d ever see her reach adulthood. His beautiful Angel was incredibly reckless and had no sense of self-preservation at all.

  He sighed when he realized that Chris and Angel were waiting for him to say something. “I trust you to continue your mission uninterrupted. For now. Chris, put the backup teams on stand-by for the Tezarian’s and the Prime. They will eventually need assistance and I don’t want them waiting for it to get there when they need it the most.” He waited until Chris nodded his head before turning to his headstrong daughter.

  “Angel, I expect you to follow my orders. No excuses, no stories, no word manipulation, none of your regular means of back door defying me. I mean it. You are never too old to be spanked all to hell for your defiance,” Grai said with a dark scowl.

  Angel barely managed not to choke on her laughter. No one had ever laid a hand on her in her life and his bluffing only served to amuse her. Clearing her throat she gave her father a brilliant smile as she tossed her dark mane behind her shoulder flippantly.

  “I will behave father,” she said with false timidity. Chris snorted while her father rolled his eyes at her, neither fooled by her act of acquiescence.

  “Chris…,” Grai began before Chris interrupted him.

  “I’ll take care of it father,” Chris said with a glare at his sister. Damn if the crazy little imp didn’t know when to shut the hell up, he thought with exasperation.

  Grai gave them a small smile. “I love you. Please be careful… I can’t lose you…,” he said gruffly.

  Angel’s heart melted. “I love you too Daddy. Don’t worry, I’ll keep the guys from being stupid and getting hurt,” she said with a jab in the ribs to her brother.

  Chris rolled his eyes and nodded at his father. “I love you too, Dad. You keep everyone safe there and I’ll keep them safe here.”

  Chris rounded on Angel the second the screen went blank. “Why do you always let your mouth run away when you should shut the hell up? You could have blown everything!” Chris said throwing his hands up in the air and praying for patience.

  Angel snorted and twirled around, heading back up the stairs. “Oh please, if I had acted any differently he would have known that something was up! Let’s see what we got on the Tezarian bugs!” She said as she disappeared up the stairs.

  Chris shook his head and checked the portal. He also double checked the scans and stats going across the screens that surrounded the basement before he took a deep breath and followed Angel up the stairs to their living quarters. He’d just reached the top step, and a decision regarding her antics when he heard Angel shout from the living room.

  “Oh my God! No wonder Dad’s paranoid! Wait til you hear what the Tezarian’s and the Prime are doing here!”

  Chris growled and wanted to punch the wall. Somehow he knew that whatever she’d found out by bugging their house, was going to come back and bite him in his ass. Dad’s going to kill me, he thought before he headed into the living room and his sister’s latest scheme to see him dead. Or bald from pulling all of his hair out in frustration.

  Chris sent up a prayer that Tricia was not carrying a girl child. He wasn’t sure if he and his brothers could survive another girl, he thought as he shook his head and went into the living room to see how Angel was going to get him in trouble this time. He had to figure out a way to rein her in before she really went off the rails this time.

  Yeah right, he thought with a shake of his head. If he knew how to do that he wouldn’t be waiting for reinforcements to come and help him control the impulsive and reckless sibling they all adored, yet wanted to strangle. Regularly.

  Chapter Eight

  Drago ignored the two boys building a snow fort and the two balls that smacked into his back as he turned off the sidewalk and headed down the walkway towards Devon’s house.

  “Don’t worry, I will get even with them,” Dree said in his mind as he knocked forcefully on Devon’s door.

  The last thing he cared about right now was her two brothers hitting him with some snow. He’d spent the entire night pacing his room, unable to sleep. After declaring that he was going back to see her, Drago had tried. More than once.

  He had arrived at her home and tried knocking. He had tried calling her as well and either she was ignoring him or she was in danger. He didn’t like either option at all and was determined that this morning, if she didn’t answer her door, he was going to break in.

&n
bsp; In his worried mind, it would be a win-win situation. He could make sure Devon was all right and search for the original illusion at the same time. Which in turn may collapse whatever illusions may be affecting her, and he may find the truth about who she really was.

  He had convinced himself it was the best plan for them all when Devon opened the door, slightly out of breath and a little flushed. As if she had been running or exercising. Drago’s suspicion was immediately peaked.

  Devon tried to slow her rapid breathing and glared at the giant on her doorstep at such an early hour of the morning. She looked at her watch with irritation and noted it was nine in the morning. Ok, so it was later than she had thought, but it didn’t explain why the hell he’d shown up at her door after she told him to get lost and not come back.

  She had very little sleep, again, and wasn’t in the mood to play games with him this morning. She also had a lot more work to do than she could handle and needed to get started. Her boss wasn’t the forgiving kind of guy and she didn’t want to piss him off again so quickly on the heels of her last screw up.

  Uncaring if she seemed snippy, Devon glared at him and crossed her arms over her chest. “Why are you here? We settled this yesterday evening. Or do I need to draw it in pictures for you?”

  Drago grunted in frustration and gently pushed her back inside her home and closed the door behind them as he ignored her indignant sputtering.

  Devon turned red at how easily he could make her do as he wished and slapped him in both shoulders to make him back away from her and vent her frustration with him. It only served to sting her hands and didn’t move him in the least. Damn, the guy was like facing a brick wall, she thought as she looked into his blazing blue eyes. Yeah, maybe a large furnace, she corrected herself as she felt the heat of him soak through her from his nearness. She no longer felt the least bit chilled from the cold air that had invaded while she had the door open.