Jax continued to prod, tweezers pausing for the barest second. “The heart’s healing around the bullet. Fast enough that it’s continuing to pump. Pretty sick, actually.”
“You able to take it out?”
Pressure on his chest, the pain blossoming out until the surrounding muscles were rigid. A second later Jax pulled the bullet free, dropping it into his own palm. “Looks like a .300 Winchester Mag.” Curling his fingers, he dropped his hand to the side. “I’ll analyse the shell, and get back to you.”
“Look forward to it,” Titus grumbled, rubbing the heel of his hand against his chest, as if it could ease the throbbing. “Thanks.”
Jax stood, free hand squeezing Ti’s shoulder before he slipped out of the room, taking the bullet with him.
“You wanna tell me what happened?” Riley asked, widening his stance.
Titus grabbed the tissues from the first aid box, wiping the blood from his skin. The hole was already beginning to heal, far faster than any of the other Guardians, and from the expression on Riley’s face, he’d noticed it too.
“I was shot –”
“No shit.”
“ – And I think it was a professional hit.” Titus threw the tissues down, leaning forward to drag his hands through his hair. His entire body still ached, and for once he felt like he could sleep. At least for an hour, maybe two if he was lucky.
Riley stilled, a vicious predator in human skin. His eyes swirled into liquid silver when Titus looked up, his beast just as raged. “We need to figure this out quick, we’re already down one Guardian with Sythe going dark.”
Meaning Sythe wouldn’t be contactable at all, not until the job was done. Which explained his voicemail. “How long this time?” He’d disappeared for three months before, infiltrating a small gang who specialised in black market body parts. He’d destroyed them from the inside out.
“As long as it takes.” Riley’s gaze was direct, their beasts calling to one another. “The Guardians don’t exist.Youdon’t exist.”
So how the fuck had he been targeted?
Titus clenched his jaw, pulling out his shattered phone to check the last photograph taken. It was dark, the night mode terrible, but he could just make out the details of the licence plate. It would be fake, he was sure, but every time that particular plate flagged on any camera in the entire fucking city, he’d know. And then he’d find the bitch that had tried to kill him. “I’m dealing with it.”
The Guardians were able to withstand damage that would usually kill an ordinary man threefold, their bodies coated with glyphs, the tattoos syphoning the excess powers from their beast. They’d been forced through such training that they were stronger, faster, and more agile than almost every other Breed
But the silence stretched between them, the knowledge that Titus shouldn’t have survived a shot to the heart a heavy tension that caused something dark, and volatile to burn in the pit of his stomach. The Guardians may have been able to withstand more damage than most, but they weren’t invincible.
Nothing could survive a hit like that.
Except, possibly a Daemon.
Chapter5
Rae
Rae glared at her target’s photograph, imagining all the ways she was going to kill him. Painful ways that involved her using her precious knifebeforefolding his lifeless body into the boot.
How the fuck did he survive a shot to the chest?
Not even his chest, his heart. Her bullets had been the length of her fucking hand, and she never missed. Okay, she missed sometimes, she wasn’t a robot, but her aim was usually spot on. And she’d seen the damage, his wound a bloody mess when she’d checked his pulse. Nothing. Nada. No sign of life. And yet he somehow climbed out of her boot with a mortal wound, and what? Walked away?
Rae rubbed the heel of her hand against her sternum, the dull burn a constant reminder that she was running out of time. One entire week had passed, seven days and nights and she still wasn’t any closer in tracking down her target. Titus-fucking-Liu Wood, a man who had apparently disappeared after birth. He’d never had a job, or a parking fine, or even a speeding ticket. And according to the details, he had no other aliases, which made him a fucking ghost.
Her staying alive was reliant on her hunting down a ghost.
Again.
It wasn’t uncommon for Rae to feel out of place. Her clothes had been more often than not threadbare, dirty, and covered in holes. Sometimes they’d been missing entirely, leaving her in nothing but a t-shirt in winter. She’d received attention even if she didn’t want it, a child who didn’t understand why people looked, whispered, and pointed.
She hadn’t felt like that since she was fourteen and was forced to live with her aunt, but right then, as she walked into the gleaming skyscraper that was a sharp sword piercing the sky, she felt that familiar attention prickle against her skin. Rae tossed her hair, tied high in a ponytail on her head, over her shoulder, ignoring the sound of her heels on the shiny marble floor. Her pencil skirt and white button-down shirt stuck to her body like a second skin, and even though she’d stolen it from a respectable shop, she knew she stuck out against the expensive business attire that surrounded her.
But she was desperate, enough that she risked walking into the atrium of the one place Mr Storm had to be. In the last few years Riley had been breaking down his empire, giving away more money than she’d ever see in her lifetime to various charities. It was suspicious, to say the least, but people saw what they wanted.
