and now she’s bound and determined to nose around because you couldn’t be bothered to take care of yourself.”
“Lecture me one more time, little brother, and I’ll—”
The words died in his throat as Rafe stared at the flophouse before them. Enormous flames licked the walls, spiraling toward the sky as people spilled onto the lawn, disgorged from the smoke.
“What the hell?”
“The fires of hell, more like.” Rafe watched the flames as they crawled up walls, something seeming to pulse in the atmosphere around the degenerated apartment. A light, sickly-sweet scent on the air caught his attention and before he could check the impulse, Rafe was out of the car and across the lawn.
A woman and her children limped from the home, a baby squalling on the woman’s arm as two kids hovered around her legs. Snagging the children under each arm, he screamed to the woman, “Run!”
Fear and exhaustion painted her features, yet in that moment, he saw understanding.
“Now! I’ve got them!” Rafe held the children beneath his arms, their screams echoing in his ears as smoke filled the air around them. The smaller child, a little girl, kicked hard at his leg but he ignored the stab of pain, moving—always moving—away from the house.
Noise, great and hulking, hovered in the air around them, but it was the transitory moment of silence that had him taking his next move. On a hard push, he pressed the children into their mother, a few paces in front of them, then leaped on top of the family.
The air nearly rent in two as the apartment house exploded behind them. A great cracking sound filled the air the briefest second before heat engulfed them in thick waves. Rafe channeled his own inner fire, the move as natural as breath, and used the power in his own frame to press back against the wild conflagration behind them.
Power poured from him, thick, wild waves of fire that pressed back on the demonic blaze that continued to eat the apartment house. Smoke billowed everywhere, choking the air, and still, Rafe stayed where he was, his body a living cover for the shaking woman and her children beneath him.
Slowly, he felt the atmosphere shift, the immediate danger fading as the initial explosion died, the rapidly disintegrating building giving less and less fuel to keep the blaze aflame. The woman beneath him shifted, her eyes going wide as she caught sight of an area over his shoulder.
“But…you’re on…fire!”
Rafe shook his head, using her disorientation and fear to his advantage. Pressing her face to his shoulder, he let his own power fade, only letting go of her when his fire had fully winked out. “Shh. It’s okay.”
The woman scrambled from underneath him as Rafe sat back on his heels. Smoke still filled the air, but other than the soot that covered all of them, his clothing was intact.
“I don’t understand.” The woman scrambled up, her fear fading as curiosity and determination lit her features. “You were on fire.”
“It was behind us.”
“No. You—” She broke off as her crying children tugged and pulled at her, their keening wails diverting her focus. Rafe used the momentary distraction to his advantage, waving over several paramedics.
Gabe followed close behind, his hand extended to pull Rafe up, his face dark.
“Not here.”
His brother shook his head. “My thoughts exactly.”
It was only when they were back in the car that Gabe spoke. With a hard toss, something thick and metallic thudded into the SUV’s cup holder.
Rafe eyed the piece, a brass token with the distinctive marks of a swirling sky, wrapped around an all-seeing eye. “Son of a bitch.”
“I’m not sure which is worse. The Mark of Chaos or the fact you flamed up in front of a fucking lawn full of humans.”
Rafe turned the small medallion over and over in his hands, the noise of his office flat-screened TV filling the air in the executive suite with a steady drone. The flat disc about the size of a silver dollar practically burned in his palm, a physical embodiment of all his people fought against.
There were Hunters in Las Vegas.
And if the medallion were any indication, the ones here were more than the simple, bumbling fools usually impressed into service on behalf of the great and all-powerful equalizer of the universe.
Chaos.
Oh, no. These would be well trained. Well funded. And far more lethal than the typical minion who wreaked havoc and discord.
Images of the fire still filled his thoughts, the physical imprint of that family still pulsing against the nerve endings of his chest. And that smell, its thick, sweet redolence filling the air moments before all hell broke loose. The news claimed it was a tragic outcome of a meth lab gone wrong, but he knew different.
The lab was the overt cause, the production of the dangerous drug coating the house with a lingering miasma that led to the explosion. But it was the power beneath it—the sickly fingers that had directed it all—that was the real and true danger.
Rafe crossed to his office safe and tapped in the ten-digit code. A small light flicked to green before a light hiss of air opened the thick metal door. He reached in and pulled out what lay hidden—protected, really—behind the reinforced metal wall of the safe.
The thick wood was heavy in his palm, an icon from another age. A spoke from the wheel of Helios’s chariot, nearly as powerful as the immortal hand that had crafted it.
The spoke was his family’s own personal talisman, entrusted to them from the dawn of the Stavros line. Though not immortal like their great ancestor, they were imbued with his power and his wards of protection.
And with that power and authority, they willingly protected the race of Phoenix that called Helios for their first ancestor. Rafe and Gabe, and their father before them, understood the responsibility—had lived with it since birth—but a battle had always seemed distant. Separate, somehow.
But no longer.
An image of Evangeline shimmered to life, her delicate features never far from his thoughts. Was she the source? The root cause of what was steadily rising to life? He’d have hardly believed it, but now found it hard to deny the evidence.
She was the child of a Hunter. And she had unfettered access to the Archangel. Was it possible she’d been the Trojan horse, delivered in a spunky, fiery package designed to distract even as it laid the groundwork for their ultimate demise?
He didn’t want to believe it, but the previous night had left him with a layer of anxiety he’d never felt before. His skin crawled with a strange energy, as if it recognized the seething, writhing threat that hovered nearby. He and Gabe had gone to the apartment house with the intention of finding Evangeline’s ex-employees, Troy and Victor. Instead, they’d found destruction and a very clear message in the planted medallion.
They’d
