I rubbed a hand over my face and leaned back so my head was against the paneling of the helicopter. My eyes stayed closed as Killian sat next to me, the line of his body warm against mine.
“Hello, Lad,” he said. I cracked an eye as he gave Abe a rub between the shoulder blades. “You stick close to her.”
Abe snorted and rubbed his face against my thigh as if to say, What do you think I’ve been doing?
I let myself lean into Killian, just a little bit. Not enough that anyone watching would be able to see it, but enough that he took some of my weight.
“I’ll keep my eyes open, Lass,” Killian said through the headset. “Try to rest.”
“Where are we going, again?” I blinked up at him even as a massive wash of fatigue worked to close them against my will.
“We’ll head to a safe house not far from here, a couple hours. Then we’ll make a plan.” He didn’t touch me, other than offering his body for me to lean on. Didn’t tell me not to worry, or that we’d get Bear back. None of that. He knew I wasn’t looking for anything other than a partner to get my son away from Romano. And yet he was there beside me, helping me through it when he didn’t have to.
“We’ll take care of this mess,” he said softly, barely heard through the headset.
We . . . there was that word again. I wasn’t sure I liked it, wasn’t sure I disliked it. For now, though, his help would be a godsend. A partner I didn’t want, but knew I needed to get through this shit storm I faced. With each passing second, I could feel it looming larger, coming for me faster. I closed my eyes again and sleep swept over me between washes of the helicopter’s blades.
Dreams. I had begun to hate them for they held my fears and my hopes and dashed them both. So even while I knew this was a dream, I also knew it held something more, some piece of information I needed to be aware of that my waking mind refused to see.
“Bear?” I called for my boy as the scene around me slowly came into focus. He was only ten; there was no way he would survive with Romano. I’d at least had my mother and Zee looking out for me at that age. Bear had no one. Not even me. My heart twisted with that shitty truth.
There was no answer from him and the fog that surrounded me faded, revealing a dusky landscape of flattened buildings and expansive desert all around.
“This is not Kansas anymore, Toto.” I glanced to my side looking for Abe but he wasn’t there either. I frowned and took a step, a click sounding under my foot.
I leapt to the side as the landmine went off behind me, sending me ass over head. The only thing that saved me was my abnormal ability. The survival instinct that had kept me alive so many times before. Before I even knew it was a part of me. But this was more than that. The mine should have shredded me to pieces even if I leapt off it.
A warning then of what was coming?
The scene shifted and went from dead silent to a roaring war zone in a matter of a single heartbeat. The ratta-tat-tat of rapid fire weapons, of mini-guns, and the massive concussions from landmines and hand grenades alike. The screams of dying men, the calls of their leaders as they were pushed into battle, in a language I didn’t know, but I knew the cadence. My hands went for my own guns and I found neither.
I searched my body. Dinah and Eleanor were not there.
I was truly on my own for the first time in I didn’t even know how long. I should have been more afraid than I was.
I crept forward, searching the area for something to use as a weapon, to find Bear because I knew without a doubt he was somewhere here in this war zone. I blinked and I was in the middle of the battle, no longer on the edges. Bullets zinged by me, the resounding boom of something larger went off over my head, and after the concussive ringing in my ears eased, I saw him. There on the far side of the red zone was Bear, pinned down by fire, his hands over his head as he lay flat on the ground.
I bolted toward him, ignoring the way the bullets whipped by me, ignoring the pain as they slammed into my limbs, back, hip, shoulders, ignored them until I fell at his feet.
He jerked away from me, staring up at me, his face twisted with anger and even hatred, emotions I’d not thought I’d ever see on his sweet face.
“You lied to me. You never tried to save me.”
I snapped awake as we dropped from our cruising altitude, the air pressure popping my ears. Abe scrambled to keep his footing and I pulled him up beside me on the bench seat, looping an arm around him as he trembled. Almost like he’d been in the dream with me in spirit.
“Bad dreams?” Tommy asked me from his spot across the way.
I nodded and ran a hand through my hair. “Yeah. Was I talking?”
“More like yelling.” He grimaced. “Bear is a good kid, and he’s stronger than all of us. We’ll get to him in time.”
I nodded. “Yeah, he is. He’s better than any of us too.”
Tommy laughed. “That isn’t so hard, to be better than us, I mean. We were all assholes.”
A part of me didn’t want to let him back into my life. He was my brother by blood, but my enemy by the same blood. The better sense in me said not to soften, to keep the hard exterior up. But I couldn’t help it. I still wanted something that resembled family. Even if it was royally fucked up. My lips twitched. “Yeah, you were all born assholes. I had to learn to be an asshole.”
“Learned, or born to it, your son isn’t like that. You did good with him, Nix.” Tommy gave me a nod and then he frowned. “I always hoped you wouldn’t get sucked back into this life.”
My heart gave a funny twitch. “What made you turn on him?” Him, as in our father, Luca Romano.
“He . . .” Tommy winced as if pained, “he raped my wife and then she killed herself.”
Everything in me lurched because I knew the pain of losing a spouse all too well. “I’m sorry, Tommy.”
“Me too.” He shook his head. “I thought I could protect her because I was his favorite, you know? But he knew how to hurt me, and when I refused to go to the Middle East for him, he tried to force me.”
The Middle East . . . there had been rumblings about powerful abnormals there even when I was still in my father’s employ. Was that what my dream had been about, the Middle East? What had Romano wanted from Tommy’s visit there?
“Why didn’t you want to go there?”
His sigh came through with a crackle over the headset. “Guy named Shaitan holds the power there. He’s a total power-hungry shit that makes Dad look like a child in the playground who can’t figure out how the swings work, and this Shaitan was the one who made the playground. I tried to tell Dad he was messing with darker forces than just a damn abnormal. He wouldn’t listen. I think he planned to try and marry one of us boys to one of Shaitan’s girls.”
“Shit,” I muttered. “After I was gone, then, this all happened?”
“Yeah.”
“Did you end up going?” I felt Killian stir beside me a split second before he got up and headed to the cockpit to check on the pilot, but more likely to give us some semblance of privacy, even if the headsets were still transmitting to everyone. The man could nearly read my mind, and while I appreciated it at times like this, I wasn’t fully sure I liked that he knew me so well already. It made Killian dangerous to my health in more than one way.