Kat let out a tired breath. “They’re taking Wulf into custody to make sure he doesn’t hurt any of them. Come on, they have a doctor inside waiting for you.”
Cassandra hesitated as she looked in the direction where they’d vanished. “Do you really trust them?”
“I don’t know. Do you?”
“I trust Phoebe. I think.”
Kat laughed at that.
Phoebe didn’t find it funny at all.
Cassandra scooted out of the truck and let Kat lead her and Chris into the cave while Phoebe stewed over her sister’s response, especially given the fact that it was her husband who’d just put his life on the line to save them all. How dare they!
Ungrateful bastards all!
But she managed to be a little compassionate. After all, her sister was pregnant and she was the last surviving member of her family. “Don’t be afraid, Cassie. We all know how important you and your baby are. No one here will hurt either of you. I swear it.”
“Who arewe?”
“This is an Apollite community.” Phoebe led them deeper into the cave, past the hired human contract mercenaries who guarded the entrance during the daylight hours. “One of the older ones in North America.”
Making sure everyone was inside and it was safe, Phoebe placed her hand against the Coil Stone, where a spring release opened the elevator door.
Chris gave an exaggerated gape. “Holy hand grenade, Batman, it’s a bat cave!”
Phoebe smirked at the college-aged guy with dark hair who looked like the Dark-Hunter’s much smaller kid brother. He was actually really cute in a very wholesome, innocent kind of way. Oddly enough, he was growing on Phoebe.
Had he not been a Squire to her enemy, and if they’d met under another set of circumstances, she could have seen them being friends. He was likable and friendly. Even funny at times.
Sasquatch, on the other hand, she wanted to stab every time she glanced in his direction. And it took everything she had not to cut his head off.
Gah, Cassandra! Just … damn!
“Oh, come on!” Chris glanced around their group like an exuberant kid. “Someone other than me has to see the humor in this?” He looked around their unamused three faces, then deflated. “Guess not.”
Cassandra entered the elevator first. “What about the men I saw outside? Who are they?”
Phoebe tried her best not to think about the group who’d met them. “Those are our ruling council. Nothing can be done here without their direct approval.”
Kat and Chris joined them. The door to the elevator closed.
“Are there any Daimons here?” Chris asked as Phoebe pressed a button to start the elevator on its long descent to the facility where she lived.
“The only Daimon in this community is me. They allow me to live here because they owe Urian for his help. So long as I don’t draw attention to myself or their existence, I’m allowed to stay.” She waited for one of them to make a nasty comment about that, but wisely, they kept their mouths shut.
However, she knew her sister well enough to see the mistrust in Cassandra’s eyes. Her sister was afraid of her.
So be it. She’d risked everything for Cassie. Everything.
And she hadn’t even had the decency to say,Thank you. You and your husband might be Daimons, but how kind and generous of you to risk your lives, for your husband to kill people he considers family, and for you to hand your throats over so that I and my baby and idiot Dark-Hunter Sasquatch can survive tonight.Really, was that too much to ask? A basic, simple thank-you?
Figured, right? Phoebe had forgotten how selfish her sister could be.
When the doors opened, Cassie gasped at something Phoebe had gotten used to long ago. But she remembered the first time Urian had brought her here in 1990. It did look like something out of some science fiction movie. Everything was fashioned like some Isaac Asimov or Larry Niven future city. Made of steel and concrete, the walls were painted with brilliant murals of bright landscapes awash in sunshine that their kind had never seen except in pictures.
Urian spent a lot of time when he was here staring at this one piece in particular. And going through her old photos of her with her family, asking her what sunshine felt like.
That was when it hurt most.
