J Ward - Crave

The second book in the Fallen Angels series, 2010

To Kara Welsh, for everything!

And with thanks to Leslie Gelbman and Claire Zion

and everyone at NAL who are so amazing.

Thank you to Steve Axelrod, my voice of reason.

With huge props and thanks to Team Waud: D, LeElla, and Nath, without whom none of this would be possible-what would I do without you? And with a shout-out to Jac (and his Gabe!): My kitchen is your kitchen. No, really. Please. Dont make me beg.

Thank you also to Ann, Lu, and Opal-the most incredible line tamers Ive ever seen! And Ken-Im trainable, see? I really am-you can send back the Gorilla Glue. Also to Cheryle, who I take orders from because Im no fool.

With big hugs to all the mods on the boards-Im so grateful for everything you do out of the kindness of your hearts.

Tremendous thanks to my C.P., Jessica Andersen, who has been endlessly supportive and smart and lovely and brilliantly funny for all these years. I still wish I were in your top five. *sigh*

And, of course, with thanks to Mother Sue (Grafton).

As always with love to my mother and my husband and my family and the better half of WriterDog.

The desert, far from Caldwell, NY, or Boston, MA, or sanity.

Some two years after the fact, when Jim Heron was no longer in special ops, he would reflect that Isaac Rothe, Matthias the Fucker, and he, himself, had all changed their lives the night that bomb went off in the sand.

Of course, at the time, none of them knew what it all meant, or where it was all going. But that was life: Nobody got a guided tour to their own theme park. You had to hop on the rides as they presented themselves, never knowing whether you would like the one you were in line for or if the bastard was going to make you throw up your corn dog and your cotton candy all over the place.

Maybe that was a good thing, though. As if back then he would have believed hed end up duking it out with a demon, trying to save the world from damnation?

Come on.

But that night, in the dry cold that washed in the second the sun went down over the dunes, he and his boss had walked into a minefield and only one had walked out.

The other? Not so much

This is it, Matthias said as they came up to an abandoned village that was the color of the caramel on a Friendlys sundae.

They were fifteen miles northwest from where they were staying in a barracks full of army boys. Being that he and his boss were XOps, they were outside the stream of defined corps, which worked to their benefit: Soldiers like them carried IDs from all branches of the service and used them whenever it suited.

The village was more like four crumbling stone structures and a bunch of wood-and-tarp huts. As they approached, Jims balls went tight when his green night-vision goggles picked up movement all over the place. He hated those fucking tarps-they flapped in the wind, their shadows darting around like fast-footed people who had guns. And grenades. And all kinds of sharp and shiny.

Or in this case, grungy and gritty.

He hated desert assignments; better to kill in civilization. Although a proper urban or even suburban assignment carried more exposure, at least you had a shot at knowing what was coming at you. Out here, people had resources he was unfamiliar with and that always made him twitchy as fuck.

Plus he didnt trust the man he was with. Yeah, Matthias was the head of the organization with a direct line to God. Yeah, Jim had trained with the guy way back when. Yeah, hed been under him for the last decade.

But all of that just made him more certain he didnt want to be alone with the big man-and yet here they were, at a village in the fine township of Nowhere-anyone-could-find-a-body-ville.

A gust of wind went Nike across the flat landscape, sprinting over the sand, picking up those tiny little particles, and carrying all of them right smack into the collar of his digital-fatigues. Beneath his black, lace-up boots, the ground was constantly shifting, as if he were an ant walking across the back of a giant and irritating the piss out of the bastard.

You began to feel that at any minute, a great palm could come down out of the sky and flatten you.

This trek to the east had been Matthiass idea. Something that couldnt be discussed anywhere else. So naturally, Jim had worn a Kevlar vest and about forty pounds of weapons. Along with water. MREs.

He was a pack animal for real.

Over here, Matthias said, ducking into the doorless entry of one of the stone structures.

Jim paused and looked around. Nothing but tarps doing the cabbage patch, as far as he knew.

He got out both his guns before going inside. Bottom line? This was the perfect locale for a forcible inquisition. He had no idea what hed done or what hed learned to warrant an interrogation, but one thing he was clear on-there was no reason to run. If that was the because hed been brought here for, he was going to go in and find another two or three XOps guys in there to work him over while Matthias asked the questions. If he bolted? Theyd just hunt him down all over the globe, even if it took weeks.

Could explain why Isaac Rothe had shown up this afternoon with Matthiass protg and second in command. That pair were straight-up killers, a couple of pit bulls ready to go for anyones throat.

Yup, this made sense and he should have figured it out sooner-although even if he had, there was no escape from a reckoning. Nobody got out of XOps alive. Not the operatives, not the fringe-playing intel guys, not the bosses, either. Die with your boots on was the way you lived-not that you knew that going in.

And the thing was, he had been thinking of ways to get out. Killing people for a living was all he knew how to do, but it was starting to fuck with his head. Maybe Matthias had somehow tweaked to that.

Time to the face the music, Jim thought as he stepped through the doorway.

Might as well give em a fight-

Just Matthias. No one else.

Jim slowly lowered his guns and scanned the cramped space again. According to his night goggles, there was only the other man. With a flick of a switch, he changed to heat-seeking mode. Nothing but Matthias. Still.

Whats going on? Jim demanded.

Matthias was over in the far corner, about ten feet away. When the mans hands came up from his sides, Jim flipped his SIGs back into firing position but all his boss did was shake his head and loosen his gun belt. A quick toss and it was in the sand.

And then he took a step forward, opening his mouth and saying something quietly-

Light. Sound. Blast of energy.

Then nothing but the soft rain of sand and debris.

Jim came back to consciousness sometime later. The explosion had thrown him against the stone wall, knocking him cold, and going by how stiff he was, he could have been out for a while.

After a couple minutes of what-the-fuck, he sat up cautiously, wondering if anything was broken-

Across the way, there was a pile of rags where Matthias had once been.

Jesus Christ Jim repositioned his night goggles and retrieved his weapons, then crawled through the sand to his boss.

Matthias oh, fucking A

The mans lower leg looked like a root that had been torn up out of the ground, the limb nothing but a ragged stump that was shredded at the end. And there were patches of darkness on his fatigues that had to be blood.