Page 37 of Burn of Obsidian

“That piece of paper is important. Not a photocopy, the original.”

She exhaled frustratedly. “I don’t know him outside the market. I don’t even know his real name.”

He gazed down at her with an expression that made her both nervous, and a little turned on. Which was entirely inappropriate, unnecessary, and clearly the wine.

“Then get him to meet you outside the market.”

Bloody hell.

“How, exactly?”

Jax pressed even closer, tension crackling the air and spiking her pulse when he lowered his head, lips brushing against her ear. “I'm sure you’ll come up with something.”

Chapter 15

Jax

There was pressure beneath his skin, almost painful as fur threatened to break free. Closing his eyes, Jax concentrated on keeping it together. He squeezed his fist, feeling Thea’s crystal dig into his palm.

He was so fucking tired, but he couldn’t risk releasing his beast just yet. Not when everyone was watching his every move. The Guardians were stretched so thin, trying to take down as many Shadow-Veyn, Skulls and Daemons as they could. But as Gideon was gaining power, it was becoming harder. There were only seven of them, eight including Lucifer.

“J, are you even listening?” Kace growled from the corner of the workshop.

Jax ignored him, simply breathing in and out until he didn’t feel like he was about to split at the seams. Everything in his life was planned with precision. Every movement. Every word. Everything, and yet Thea didn’t fit. She wasn’t something he could plan or predict, and it was setting him on edge. He needed to concentrate on those pages, in tracking them down before Gideon. Not on his mate.

There was a reason he’d kept his distance for so long, content to simply watch and track her. It made things less complicated, because now all he wanted was to be by her side, to hear her laughter wash over him like sunshine. She saw life in a spectrum of colour, while he’d only ever witnessed it in shades of grey.

Jax heard the whistle of the blade sing through the air and moved just as it passed his shoulder.

“Aw, you missed,” Lucy commented casually, and Jax opened his eyes to pin both his brothers with a glare.

Kace shook his head, palming another throwing knife from the wall. Jax could see the tension along his skin, like a violent vibration that Jax had felt more and more of late. Kace dealt with his control by fighting, using force to release his excess energy before it could destroy him. Mating with Eva had anchored him to an extent, but he was still a fucking psycho that craved violence. A psycho that was watching him way too closely while holding a knife.

Lucifer smirked at the strain between them, his legs swinging as he perched on the anvil. Scraps of metal surrounded him in neat piles, left from the last time Jax had worked. He figured out early on that creating something with his hands helped against the surrounding noise, keeping his mind sane. It gave him a purpose other than to fight, an influence in something that required no voice. His work spoke for itself, and over the years he'd become a brand name known for one-of-a-kind weapons.

He created and sold deadly works of art to carefully selected clients – knives, guns and swords. He’d also recently spread his craft to include chains with meticulously identical links and locks that didn’t require keys. And now, apparently, he was making bullets too, although that was more Kace’s expertise.

Bullets designed to stop a Daemon from drifting.

“I was listening,” Jax lied, closing the distance to see the latest design. “What’s wrong with it now?”

Kace glared as if he were going to argue. “You’ve made the bullet too sharp,” he said instead. “It’s going through and through.”

“It needs to stay in the system long enough for the charm to work.” Lucy lifted up his T-shirt to show the already healing bullet hole. “Why are we using bullets again? Why not use a piece of jewellery.”

“We’ve been through this, batboy,” Kace grunted. “What are you going to do? Wrestle him? Ride him like a bull and hope you can snap the fucking thing on? A bracelet, necklace and ring can be removed. Hard as fuck to remove fragments of a bullet from your insides.”

“Call me batboy one more time, psycho,” Lucy growled, “and you’ll be the target practice. Not me.”

Kace’s fist blurred, knocking Lucy off the anvil. He crashed to the hard concrete, the scraps of metal fluttering down around him.

“You mother fucker!” he hissed, picking up a scrap and launching it towards Kace.

Dragging a hand down his face, Jax looked at the picture Kace had drawn beside his notes. They were right; they needed the bullet to stay inside the body long enough for the anti-drifting charm to work. “Do you think you can draw a spiral at the end?” he asked, attempting to explain his idea while also not stabbing them both. “If I can plate it in something softer rather than steel, I may be able to manipulate the force and get the bullet to separate on impact.” He tapped Thea’s obsidian against the table in thought.

Jumping up, Lucy studied the paper with a frown. “Separate? As in split into pieces?”

“That’s the definition of separate, yes,” Kace muttered, grabbing a pencil. “Like this?” He added a spiral, and after Jax corrected his idea in pen, they agreed on a design.