Liam took a slow breath, but never looked away from his boss. “I’m not coming back to the office. Things have changed.”
Frowning, Agent Valley shook his head. “No, I won’t accept that. You are one of our best agents, O’Shea. My understanding is you are a … werewolf now. Is that correct? We can find ways to work around this disability. I have no doubt of that.”
Liam stiffened, his whole body seeming to freeze up.
I stepped in between them, stuck my face in Agent Valley’s, about as pissed off as I’d ever been. But I did manage to control myself; damn, I didn’t even pull a blade on him. Go me.
“Take your disability and shove it up your ass, Agent Valley. We’re leaving.”
Alex and Pamela made their way to the cab without being told and slid into the back seat. I scooped up my bag of weapons and followed them. Liam, though, stood there unmoving. Shit, the last thing I needed was for him to be unsure about this. We’d talked about it already, and Liam had agreed that the FBI put too many stipulations on its agents that worked with the supernatural. There was no way either of us could truly work for the FBI and still get the job done. They just didn’t understand what it took to get a job done, and they weren’t willing to bend.
Not to mention, Agent Valley had tried to throw me under the bus when I’d worked with him last. Not cool, not cool at all. And it wasn’t something I was about to forget.
Liam reached out and shook Agent Valley’s hand. “Thank you, sir. But we’ll both pass.”
Agent Valley, King of Dramatic reveals, waited until Liam was at the cab, his hand on the door.
“Of course, if that’s your decision, then I can respect that. But tell me just one thing. What do you know about a demon named Orion?”
My back stiffened and I clenched my jaw shut to keep from giving anything away. I turned ever so slightly and caught Liam’s eyes as they widened a fraction before he, too, caught himself.
“Nothing, sir,” Liam said, his voice even and smooth. Perfectly believable, I thought. Yet Agent Valley didn’t look convinced. Not a bit. His eyes narrowed and he clasped his hands in front of his belly.
“You’re telling me you don’t know anything about a demon named Orion? Or some prophecy that goes like this: the heart of the mountains he will prick, and the land will know Orion’s fury for being condemned to the seventh veil. He shall cleanse the land with fire for his coming.” Agent Valley’s eyebrows shot up over his muddy brown eyes. Liam shook his head and I mimicked him, as did Pamela and Alex. All together now, kiddos, and maybe Agent Valley would believe us. Though how he had this information intrigued me, it wasn’t enough to make me ask.
Will and Deanna withdrew. Though they didn’t know the particulars, they did know that I’d stuffed the black-skinned demon book into my weapons bag, which happened to speak a great deal about Orion. Not that Jack knew I’d taken it—no, we’d left a dummy book in its place.
I shrugged, going for casual. “Nope, not a single thing.” Nor did I want to know what Agent Valley had going on with his intelligence gathering. Humans were notorious for reading into things that weren’t there and missing the things that did exist. Nor did I want to guess at the prophecy he’d quoted to us. I’d been reading the black-skinned demon book of prophecies and there was nothing good in them. Not all of them were about Orion, but a lot of them were, enough to seriously worry me. Mostly, they were about how he would help the demon nation be reborn to the world, how he would kill the ‘Tracker’ and defile her corpse in a variety of ways.
Yeah, not exactly bedtime reading material.
Giselle had always told me prophecies were not to be ignored. But honestly, they were all so freaking contradictory, particularly when it came to comparing the demon’s prophecies to any other supernaturals. Black and white. So how could they both come to pass? That’s right, they couldn’t. I had to believe that. Giselle’s teachings, her words, floated in my head.
Different branches of possibilities. You know that. Don’t delude yourself, either side of a prophecy can come true dependent on people’s decisions.
Yeah, I did know it. I just didn’t want to think about any of the demon prophecies as being even remotely possible. Or of people being stupid enough to help the dark branches of prophecy along.
I slid into my seat beside Pamela in the back of the cab and shut the door. Or tried to. Agent Valley stuck his hand out and caught the door before I could shut it completely.
“Adamson, this is serious. The rumors that are flying—they make our little zombie problem from last month look like a picnic on a fine summer’s day. We don’t even know what the seventh veil is—worse, we have nothing on this Orion fellow. We need your help.”