Primal Heat 05 - Darkness Reborn

gaining power. "Tonight," he said aloud. "I will come for you tonight."
    Then the rest of him dissolved into smoke, and he tore through the woods, a lightning-fast streak of pure evil that left behind a trail of death before he slithered through a crack in the earth and disappeared.

Chapter Eight
    Gideon scowled when he walked into the dungeon in the basement of Dante's mansion and saw the only person on earth who mattered to him sitting too damn close to the bastard who had almost killed one woman already. It didn't matter that Quinn and Elijah were also in there, armed and within about two inches of Lily. He'd seen Jacob try to kill his own sister, and Gideon wanted him nowhere near his woman. "Lily," he said, unable to keep the edge out of his voice. "What are you doing with Jacob?"
    His soul mate looked up at him, her face glowing with that same intensity that she always had when she was acquiring information. As the world's leading expert on Calydons, Dr. Lily Davenport was in sheer heaven living at the mansion and becoming the Order's most important intellectual resource.
    Damn, she was beautiful when she was working. Her blond hair was tumbling around her shoulders and her eyes were a lively green, so different from when he'd first found her, nearly broken after two years of imprisonment at the hands of a psychotic bastard. "I sedated him," she said cheerfully.
    "You did? Why?" Gideon strode across the room, nodding at his teammates even as he blew by them. He set his hand on Lily's head, entwining his fingers in her hair, needing to reassure himself that she was safe.
    "He was waking up," Quinn said, backing up just enough to give Gideon space, but not venturing far from Jacob's side. Quinn's dark hair was tightly cropped, and his customary black tee shirt was stretched tight across his upper body, showcasing exactly how strong he was. Not that it eased Gideon's mind. There was no one he trusted to protect Lily as well as he could.
    "Jacob hadn't even fully regained consciousness before he started to teleport," Quinn said, his brown eyes gleaming and focused. "So I knocked him out until we could figure out how to hang onto him long enough to interrogate him."
    Lily rolled her eyes. "If you guys keep hitting him in the head like that, there will be nothing left in his brain for me to learn from." She held up a syringe. "So, I sedated him."
    Elijah's face was dark, his body shifting restlessly as he stepped away from Lily and paced the room. Elijah's green eyes were clouded and turbulent, his brown hair ragged and unkempt, and Gideon knew the warrior was still treading too close to the edge that had almost done him in.
    "I don't agree with Lily's approach," Elijah said. "We're a race of violence, and that's how we need to handle him. I don't like that she figured out how to knock us on our ass and fuck with our minds by making us sleep." He eyed the syringe with suspicion and distrust. "That should be destroyed. Now. And why are you trying to figure out how to manipulate us, anyway, Lily?"
    Lily looked at him calmly, her face soft with understanding. They all knew what Elijah had gone through. "It won't work on you, Elijah,'" she reassured him. "You're too old and powerful. Jacob is only eighteen, and he's got a lot of humanity still left in him. You're way beyond my reach."
    "It's not his age that makes Elijah immune," Quinn interrupted, spinning his sword restlessly in his hand. "It's the fact he's Order. It's the fact we're all Order. Shit doesn't work on us that works on others. Never has."
    Gideon grinned. "True. We are a bunch of bad asses."
    "Not funny, and not true. Not anymore." Elijah stalked across the room and looked out the window that looked down at the courtyard behind the mansion. "We almost got taken out by that kid out there, who's only eighteen years old. We're not indestructible. The world is shifting, and we're playing catch up."
    Gideon knew that Elijah was referring to Drew Cartland, Dante's son, who was training with Gabe and Zach. Elijah was correct that there was shit going on that they hadn't seen before: males that were stronger than they should have been who went rogue for no apparent reason. The Calydons who had invaded their domain with their claws and teleporting ability made it damned clear that they had some new challenges to deal with.
    Gideon looked at Lily. "Any word on who these guys are? On what their deal is?"
    "No. Not yet." Lily picked her computer up off the small