Junkyard Queen (Alexa O'Brien Huntress Book 12) Read online

  Agent Juliet O’Brien strode through the crowd toward us, moving with purpose. My sister looked about as pissed as I’d ever seen her. She marched right up to me and threw a right hook that snapped my head to the side. Pain spread through my jaw.

  Son of a bitch.

  I caught the next fist she swung at me. With a warning growl lacing my tone, I said, “You only get one of those.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  “Welcome home, Juliet,” I said coolly. “I’m guessing you’ve heard that Briggs is a vampire.”

  Standing there with hands on her hips, looking both vicious and stunning in dark jeans and a leather jacket, my sister fixed me with furious wolf eyes. Long dark curls spilled over her shoulders. Taller than me, she’d grown up to be a leggy brunette knockout.

  No fair.

  “I did.” Her gaze slid from me to Briggs. “I just left a meeting with the head office rep. She briefed me on the shit you’ve both been up to while I’ve been away.”

  Her hand cracked across Briggs’s face before any of us saw it coming. He sat there stunned, and I savored the utter shock he wore. He gaped at her like the fool he was, unable to form words.

  “That’s for sending me off to Las Vegas so you could have access to my sister without me getting in the way,” Juliet hissed through wolf fangs. “Although I’m mad as hell for what she did to you, I can’t help but think you had it coming.”

  Briggs’s mouth moved but nothing came out. It took a few tries. “When did you get back? Nobody told me you were coming home.”

  “That’s because I instructed them not to. I wanted to see that look on your face.” Despite her harsh tone, Juliet’s face fell. “How could you do this to me, Thomas? I trusted you.”

  Well, there was her first mistake. Trusting a man as ambitious as Briggs could only lead to disappointment. Still, she was my little sister, and even though she’d just clocked me, I felt for her.

  “Can we go somewhere and talk?” Briggs exuded unease. “Alone.”

  The tension that filled the atmosphere grew almost painful. Seeing Briggs squirm made my night. He turned an imploring look on Juliet, but I saw his gaze slip as he eyed the pulse in her neck.

  She saw it too. With a head shake that made her curls bounce, she said, “Not yet. I don’t know if I can trust you to control your bloodlust. Since I sure can’t trust you to tell me the truth.”

  “Juliet, I’m still me.” He tried another angle, doing his best to ignore Arys and me. “Nothing has changed between us. I sent you to Las Vegas to keep you safe. You know that. Alexa had just turned, and you were putting your job on the line to protect her. It was only a matter of time until you were caught and punished.”

  “That was my choice.” Juliet’s sudden shout drew attention from nearby tables. She pointed a finger in Briggs’s face. “You had no right to interfere. If we’re going to work together again, things have to change. And working is all we’ll be doing together.”

  Yikes. I dropped back down into my seat. Pressing my lips tight together, I watched her lay into Briggs. It was nothing short of impressive.

  “Juliet, calm down. Let’s have a rational discussion.” Flustered, Briggs pointed at an empty table. “Over there. Please.”

  She grilled him with a scorching glare and a sharp nod. “Fine. I’ll give you five minutes.”

  After he got up to move to the empty table, she slid into the spot he’d just vacated across from me. Waving him away, Juliet turned that seething glare on me. “How could you do it, Alexa? How the fuck could you turn him?” She didn’t wait for me to answer before rushing on. “I know he’s done some shitty things and maybe he deserves worse in your eyes, but how the hell could you do that to me?”

  Juliet’s clenched fists shook. She didn’t spare a glance for Arys. Those brown orbs were locked on me, waiting for me to tell her how I could kill the man she idolized and loved.

  I shot a quick look at Arys who sat back against the booth, arms crossed, regarding my sister with open hostility. He’d never really liked her. Now that she was back, I couldn’t help but think about Gabriel’s vision from months ago of Arys sinking fangs into Juliet. With Arys’s current love for wolf blood, I worried.

  “Juliet,” I began, wary of how close she seemed to snapping, “I’m sorry. My decision was never about you. Briggs crossed too many lines. Shaz is still suffering because of Briggs’s twisted experiments. So many people died. Human, werewolf, vampire. All that misery because of the shit Briggs started in his lab. How can you be ok with that?”

  Turning it back around on her wouldn’t bring us to a place of peace, but dammit, there was no way I would sit here and play the bad guy. Briggs had become quite the supervillain himself.

  “But why turn him? Of all the things you could’ve done to him, why that?” Desperation shook her. She was still trying to absorb the reality of what Briggs had become. It would take some time for her to process.

  What could I say? That I’d flown off the handle in a fit of rage and turned a man who probably never should have been a vampire? Not likely. “I didn’t plan it,” I volunteered, unwilling to recount the events of that night. “But it happened. And all I can say now is that I wish I’d just killed him.”

  She stared at me as if I’d struck her. Slowly her eyes filled with angry tears she furiously blinked away. “I never should have left. Something told me not to go, but I obeyed my orders anyway.”

  Aware of Briggs watching from where he waited for Juliet, I took a risk. “I’m not sure you realize how obsessed he is with replicating my abilities. Not only did he concoct experiments using my blood, he blackmailed me into ‘working’ with him by putting a hit out on Kale.” I used finger quotations when I said working. “I already regret turning Briggs. I know you have feelings for him, Juliet, but please don’t let that cloud your judgment.”

  Juliet shoved to her feet. “Clearly I don’t know everything that’s been going on while I’ve been gone, but I don’t think I’m ready to deal with either of you.” Without so much as a word to Briggs, she stalked out the door.

  He watched her go, confused.

  When he got up to follow her, I intercepted. “Stay the fuck away from my sister, Briggs. She doesn’t want to talk to you right now, and if you dare lay a fang on her, I’ll pull them both out of your head.”

  “Stand aside, O’Brien.” He dared to hiss the words right in my face. “This doesn’t concern you.”

  He made as if to shove past me, and I stopped him with both hands on his shoulders. I gave him a push that knocked him back a few feet. When he’d been human, it would have put him on his ass. As a vampire he only staggered.

  His concern for what Juliet thought and felt exceeded his concern for his personal safety. That could have won some points with me. Instead, despite knowing I could crush him like the worm he was, Briggs came at me with fists clenched. The atmosphere crackled with his high-strung energy.

  He took a swing.

  I caught his fist, but the power he threw with it smacked me with a teeth-jarring impact. “Nice shot, Briggs. I see you’ve been practicing. You know you can’t take me though, right?” Both hands splayed in front of me, I followed my taunt with a blast that dropped him to his knees.

  Because I could play fair, I dropped the flow and let him get up.

  He did so with a strange half smile. “Well, you know I don’t sleep a lot, so I have the time to make use of what you were stupid enough to give me.” Briggs stretched his arms before tilting his neck from side to side. The moron thought he could hold his own in this fight. “I don’t need to beat you, O’Brien. I just want you to get the hell out of my way.”

  I had to give him credit for one thing. It had been stupid of me to turn him. He didn’t have the level of power that Arys and I did. No vampire in our bloodline did. However, a few vampires in our bloodline were pretty damn powerful in their own right, Gabriel and Jenner to name two. Briggs didn’t reach their level, but I didn’t create a lightweight.
I’d be lying if I said it didn’t impress and terrify me. Turning the Fed into a preternatural powerhouse most definitely had been stupid.

  “Juliet needs time, and you’re going to give it to her.” I stepped into his path again, glaring up into his face from my shorter frame. “You’ve gotten so used to controlling everyone and everything around you. That’s going to change.”

  “Is that so?” His face inches from mine, Briggs bared fangs. So strange to see them in his rugged face. “You may be the so-called vampire queen of this city, but you are nothing to me but a means to an end.”

  A dark laugh bubbled up, sounding more like Arys than me. “Oh, pray tell, Agent Briggs, what end might that be?”

  We were so close I could feel his breath on my face. Like two fighters we stared into each other with ill intentions. I willed him to break first so I’d have a good reason to beat the ever-loving shit out of him.

  “Alright, that’s enough,” Arys announced, coming to stand next to us. When we ignored him, he snapped his fingers and all but flung us apart.

  I lost my balance and stumbled into a table of people, jostling a guy. He looked at me first with upset, then uncertainty upon seeing who’d bumped him. “Sorry,” I muttered before scowling at Arys.

  He held Briggs off with a hand. “Now is not the time, Alexa.”

  “Seems like as good a time as any.” The temptation to push back at him was strong. Somehow I managed to take him seriously instead.

  Seeing the mischief in my eyes, Arys gave his head a warning shake. “I know that look, my love. He’s not worth the risk, and you know it.” In my mind so that Briggs could not hear, Arys added, ‘Don’t let your ego endanger Sinclair. You’ll never forgive yourself.’

  Shock. Since when did Arys give a shit about Kale? Easy answer. He didn’t. But he adored me, and therefore was willing to set aside his hatred for Kale to remind me that getting into it with Briggs now would come with repercussions that could hurt someone I cared about.

  Not to mention my sister. Killing her lover as soon as she got home wouldn’t help repair our fragile relationship.

  “I’m not going to say you’re right,” I purred, playful despite my Briggs-inspired irritation.

  Arys grinned. “But I am and we both know it.”

  He didn’t give me a chance to fire back at him before turning on Briggs with hands crackling with blue and gold. “I’m only going to tell you this once. Stay away from Juliet until she’s ready to talk to you. I’m not asking. Between you and me, I don’t give a shit about Sinclair or Juliet, so I’ll happily end you.”

  Briggs’s stony silence spoke volumes. He didn’t spout off to Arys. No threats, no throw down. I was mildly offended. I’d killed him, but he regarded only Arys with something akin to respect, if not fear.

  I suspected he wanted to call Arys’s bluff. Surely he realized, if it were that simple, Arys would have taken him out already. But Briggs was smart. Smart enough not to question a guy like Arys who was unpredictable at best and downright sadistic at worst.

  A vibration in my jacket pocket alerted me to an incoming phone call.

  Smudge. She didn’t call without a damn good reason.

  “What’s up?” I kept Briggs in my peripheral view, expecting him to make a break for it.

  “Got a bit of a problem here, Alexa. This is demon territory, but I figured you were the best one to call first.” She spoke in a rush, like she moved fast.

  Dread filled me, dousing me in cold. “Why me?”

  “It’s Willow.” Those two words crushed my spirit. “And it’s bad.”

  CHAPTER SIX

  I stared down at the broken, bloody body of Father Andrew. Trying to make sense of what I saw, I just kept blinking, waiting for the image to change. It never did.

  Fuck me.

  Father Andrew’s brutalized body had been left in front of the altar. His once friendly eyes were now frozen open in terror. The glow of several candles flickered across his face, chilling me to the bone.

  “And we know for sure this was Willow?” I asked for what had to be the fourth or fifth time. I just couldn’t wrap my head around it; I didn’t want to.

  Smudge nodded, patient despite my annoying repetition and obvious shock. “There’s a witness, Alexa. We have to do something about that.”

  Again she pointed to the woman sitting in the back pew, bawling into a handkerchief. Arys lingered close, ensuring she didn’t run for it. She’d been here when it happened.

  “I just can’t believe this,” I murmured to myself. The Willow I knew would never, could never, have done such a thing.

  Blood hung heavy on the air. Every breath I took filled my lungs with it. The predator within loved it, wanted to bask in it and even dip a finger for a little taste. I was disgusted with myself, but not as disgusted as I was with Willow.

  Smudge stood there, arms crossed, awaiting some move from me. Her short, spiky black hair, longer in the front, fell into her face. With a little head tilt, she tossed it out of her eyes. “Go talk to her.” She gave me a gentle push toward the crying woman. “Hear what she has to say and let me know how you want to handle this.”

  That was the problem. I didn’t want to handle it.

  Having no choice, I steeled myself and took a seat next to the woman who peered at me with wide, terrified eyes. “I’m Alexa,” I began, trying to set her at ease with a smile I hoped was friendly and fangless. “I promise you’re safe, but I need you to tell me what you saw.”

  I listened as she recounted the events of Father Andrew’s untimely death. She’d come for a meeting with him. They were praying together when a sound like a terrible storm shook the building. It went on for several minutes before Willow burst in.

  Willow burst in? To my knowledge demons couldn’t enter churches under the watch of an angel. As a fallen angel he’d been unable to enter this building when last we’d come. Meaning it had a guardian. So what had changed?

  As the woman talked between sobs and sniffles, I put it together. The sounds, a battle. A battle Willow had won. He’d bested an angel? How could that be?

  “You heard Father Andrew call him Willow?” Panicked, I grabbed the woman’s arm. “Are you sure you heard that?”

  Bottom lip trembling, the woman tried to pull away. I released her and clasped my hands to keep them to myself.

  “Yes, Father Andrew recognized him. That’s the name he used. Please, can I go home? Are the police coming?” Her energy quaked with anxiety and fear. It left a bitter taste in my mouth.

  I slid a glance toward Smudge who shrugged. The Circle wouldn’t want a witness to a demon attack walking around unchecked. Yet her shrug suggested this was in my hands.

  No. No way was I killing an innocent bystander.

  “Arys?” I didn’t need to say anything else.

  He slid into the pew on the woman’s other side and gently took her shaking hands. Unable to sit still with the growing swell of nausea, I got up and did my best to avoid looking at Father Andrew’s remains.

  Smudge and I watched Arys work his magic. So deep could he pull humans under his thrall that they would do just about anything he said, including forgetting entire scenarios. Though his ability had limits. If this failed, I’d browbeat Falon into manipulating her memory. I knew he could do it. Killing this woman was not an option.

  While Arys drew her under, speaking in soft, seductive tones, I fought a panic attack. For months now Willow had been slipping further into the abyss. I’d hoped against hope that each incident was somehow isolated.

  Talk about denial. Willow had fallen too far to ever crawl back out of that hole.

  “How does The Circle usually handle shit like this?” I asked, voice low.

  “You’d be better off asking Nova. I watch and report. I try not to get involved in shit that doesn’t concern me.” Smudge shoved a hand through her hair, forcing the long piece to the side. In leather and biker boots, her blue eyes lined in black, she conveyed attitude and sass. Although
in my limited experience she was actually quite nice, if a little detached.

  Nova, however, was far from nice. An incubus demon with an inflated ego, he’d proven to be unpleasant to deal with.

  “Fair enough.” I nodded toward Father Andrew. “So what happens now?”

  “I send in the clean-up crew, and by morning it will be like it never happened.”

  The atmosphere warmed as Arys drew enough power to successfully scramble the mind of our witness. I felt a tug inside me in response. She fell into him easily enough, gazing up at him in false adoration.

  Leading her by the hand, he urged her toward the door. “You never came here tonight. Father Andrew was busy so you went straight home to bed.”

  “I went home to bed,” she repeated, unable to take her eyes off him.

  I knew the feeling.

  “Not bad,” Smudge remarked. “There’s a different vibe to you two. It’s not the same as Nova’s thrall. You’ve got this sensual heat whereas he’s all blatant sex. There’s a difference, ya know?”

  She stood close enough that I could see her pupils dilate. Yeah, I got it. We had that effect on people, and vampires were no more immune to it than humans. In fact, they seemed even more drawn.

  Smudge preferred the ladies, but right then she eyed up Arys like he was candy, proving the power of his incubus abilities.

  “Thank you?” I tried to not sound awkward and failed.

  “I’m gonna take off. I’ll send the clean-up crew.” She started for the door, paused, and turned back. “You can handle Willow, right? I figure the angels already know about this and they’ll step in if they want, but in the meantime, can you deal?”

  She painted an unsavory visual. How far did a demon have to go before the angels stepped in? And when they did, what then?

  Arys disappeared outside with our witness. I watched him go, feeling a heavy sense of dread. Though we were a team, interrogating Willow was something I’d have to do alone.