Paelotin charged again, and this time, Paxton took the hit midcenter. Ducking, he wrapped his arms around Paelotin’s stomach and twisted, flipping the man off his feet and shoving him hard to the ground headfirst. Something popped, and Paelotin screamed, kicking out and nailing Paxton in the nose.
Pax retaliated by grabbing the offending ankle and twisting until several bones fractured. Then he continued to twist. Blood spurted. Paelotin bellowed and punched out, hitting Pax in the shin. Paxton dropped him on the ground, and without missing a beat, kicked him in the ribs. He was wearing steel-toed boots. Paelotin growled, jumping up in another tackle that threw them both against the back wall.
Paxton almost casually dropped both elbows onto Paelotin’s shoulders, knocking him to his knees on the hard surface. Then Pax punched him in the nose and the teeth, hearing cartilage crunch and enamel shatter.
“You know, I don’t really give a shit about you,” Paxton said, not feeling much of anything. He should hate the useless bastard, but he just didn’t. “However,” he said, “I’ll never forget the time you tried to hurt Hope.”
As he said her name, he stuck one finger right into Paelotin’s eye, blinding him. The warrior shrieked, scrambling to reach for his face. Paxton tossed him to the ground, kicked him several times in the groin, and then dropped with a knee on his broken ribs. Paelotin shrieked.
Paxton smiled, in complete contrast to the violence he’d meted out. “Okay, so we’re going to try again. How about you tell me about my mother?” he suggested softly.
Chapter Twenty-Four
“We can’t find them,” Collin said, typing rapidly on a keyboard. “They’re gone.”
They sat in the smaller conference room in demon headquarters, one that was used by different teams at various times.
Hope put her head back and sank onto the heavy leather chair. “We are unable to trace the sisters from Paris,” she repeated, her stomach lurching. “Natalie and Annette Toussaint.” The Kurjans had them, and who knew what was happening to them.
Libby reached over and patted her hand. “We did what we could. We had to catch…” She winced. “Paxton.”
“Agreed,” Liam said from across the heavy oak conference table. “We had to catch him, or we wouldn’t have known that there was a bomb in your head. I’m sorry about those two females, but we will continue trying to track them down.”
Collin waved a hand, and a map came to life on the wall at the end of the table. “I found another enhanced female. She is in Florence, Italy.”
“Send the note to another squad,” Hope said. “We have too much going on here to go to Italy.”
“Agreed.” Collin typed something quickly.
Hope’s phone buzzed, and she looked down, her body stiffening as she read. “I’ve been called to the main Realm headquarters.”
“All of us?” Derrick asked, fire oscillating up his arms.
“Show-off,” Hope retorted. “No, just me.”
Libby’s eyes widened. “It must have something to do with the Seven.”
“It must,” Hope said. She pushed back the chair and stood. “Sorry to cut our meeting short. Let’s just stay on track. Keep trying to find the two females we lost and make sure the one in Italy is protected.”
They had finally figured out how to hack into some of the Kurjans’ vibration systems that were being used to locate enhanced females. Even so, the Kurjans kept getting to them before the Realm. “We also have to figure out what their new technology is. We’ve hacked into one system, but obviously they have others.”
“I think it has to do with satellites,” Collin said, turning away from the computer bank. “I’ve analyzed their current system, and I think somehow they’re able to use satellites to catch the vibrations emitted by enhanced females.”
Hope rubbed her left eye. Even though the bomb was gone, her head still ached a little bit. “Great. All right, let’s put a report together, and I’ll submit it to both my father and Dage. We may just have to shoot their satellites out of the sky.”
It was tantamount to declaring war, but considering the Kurjans had fired upon the Seven and blown up their headquarters, she had a feeling war had already begun. “I believe we’re at war,” she said honestly, her gut hurting.
Everyone in the room nodded. All right, so at least they were on the same page.
“Everybody stay on your current tasks,” she said. She turned and walked out of the room to find two guards waiting at the front door. “Apparently I have an escort,” she said dryly to nobody in particular.
They were both huge and silent, a pair that she recognized but didn’t know well. They walked along the path to the lake, and she entered through the rear entrance of Realm headquarters to find her father and Dage and Talen arguing loudly with her uncles Garrett and Logan.
Huh. It was more power than she had ever seen in one place at one time, and at the moment, it was angry power. She thought about leaving, just returning to her house, but instead stood there and put her hands on her hips. When nobody seemed to notice her, she finally whistled loudly.
In unison, five hard, dangerous, intelligent gazes focused on her.
She forced a smile. “Hello, male relatives of mine.”
It was interesting to see Talen and Garrett arguing, considering they pretty much looked like the same person, as father and son. Same with Zane and Logan, who were brothers. Dage stood apart from everyone as usual, but as the king of pretty much everybody, that wasn’t out of the ordinary.
“Apparently, I’m some sort of strategic mastermind,” she drawled. “How about y’all tell me what you boys are arguing about.” Considering they were all her relatives and all older than she was, her comment showed a lot of bravado, but she was in no mood for theatrics.
Her father spoke first. “That’s quite the offer, Hope. But the Seven are here, and they’re having a meeting and…”
Ah, now she got it. “The Seven don’t want the three of you in there.” Garrett and Logan were members of the Seven, but the other three males were not.
She indicated Dage, the King of the Realm; Zane, the king of the demon nation; and Talen, Dage’s younger brother and the most stubborn and yet strategically brilliant soldier ever born.
“Exactly.” Talen was the one who answered her.
“Well.” She looked at Garrett and Logan. “I guess you two were sent to deliver the bad news, huh?”
It wasn’t funny. She should not feel amusement, and her lips should not be twitching. She tried to keep a straight face when all she wanted to do was chuckle. There was something about incredibly stubborn and dangerous males that was just cute when they got all riled up with each other, especially if they were family.
“We don’t need any additional energy in the strategic meeting,” Garrett said slowly. “We’ve got the Seven, we’ve got the three Keys, and now we have the Lock. We’ve been busy creating bombs armed with their blood in the hope that we can kill Ulric with them. Now we need to plan the attack, and don’t worry, just the soldiers are going. Hope deserves to be part of the planning, and we need her brain, anyway.”