Shaker of Earth (SPECTR Series 2 Book 5) by Jordan L. Hawk

Author:Jordan L. Hawk [Hawk, Jordan L.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2018-09-13T18:30:00+00:00

Chapter 9

John sat silently by the stretcher Caleb and Gray lay on in the back of the van. Their hand in his was slack—limper even than that of someone in a deep sleep—and the skin against his had cooled noticeably. He kept his gaze directed on their fingers, rather than their unmoving chest, or the pale face, or the bloodied tangle of hair.

Zahira shifted uneasily on the other side of the stretcher. “Are you sure they’re…?”

“I’m sure.” John brought the cold fingers to his lips. Dried blood coated their fingertips, where Gray’s claws emerged when he manifested. “I’ve seen it before. We just have to wait it out while Gray does his work.”

Sekhmet knew, he understood her uncertainty. They looked dead. It was hard to believe the men—no, that wasn’t right. The people he loved were still in there somewhere.

Even more than the claws and teeth, it was a reminder Gray wasn’t human. And he never would be, no matter how hard anyone tried to make him.

Even if the person trying was John.

Time and again, he’d asked Gray to behave less like a drakul and more like a human agent of SPECTR. To follow orders. To hunt only when told to—or, after he and Caleb had been handed off to Ericsson and Steele, not at all. And John did it without offering any alternatives, without trying to figure out how to give Gray a way of satisfying inhuman instincts. He hadn’t tried to really understand Gray’s psychology, just asked him to be patient. When Caleb told him how trapped they both felt, John had heard, but he hadn’t really listened.

John had tried to stuff a tiger in a business suit and ordered it to sit quietly in a cubicle. Then when it finally bit someone, he’d had the gall to act surprised.

“I should have pushed harder for them,” he said, voice low as if they were sleeping rather than as close to dead as it was possible to come. “I asked them to take whatever Barillo handed out and wait patiently until the situation changed. What I should have done was go higher up the ladder. Made noise. Done something.”

No wonder things had gone so wrong. It was a miracle they hadn’t run off with Yuri and Drugoy the first night they met the other drakul. If not for John, maybe they even would have.

“There’s plenty of blame to go around,” Zahira said. Dark circles showed beneath her eyes; neither of them had slept in well over twenty-four hours. “Barillo is the one who put you in the position you were in.”

“Still, I can’t help but feel I wasn’t a very good partner. At work or at home.” He sighed. “I just…I could have done more.”

The van jounced over a speed bump, then started down an incline. The parking deck of HQ, John assumed, since there weren’t any windows to see out of. A few minutes later, it came to a halt. The doors swung open, revealing a couple of agents John didn’t recognize waiting for them.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.