For the Love of Justice: A Nightwatch World Story Read online

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Other books by Debbie Cassidy

  About the Author

  This is for the Arc Slayers…you know who you are ;)

  Copyright © 2020, Debbie Cassidy

  All Rights Reserved

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, duplicated, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior written consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  Cover by Fantasia Covers

  Chapter One

  NOTE to the Reader: If you haven’t read the Nightwatch Academy series, then this novella won’t make much sense to you. The events that take place in this novella happen a few months after the events of the main series and provide readers with an insight into what happened after the big climax.

  There is a note on the product page on Amazon, but you may have missed it.

  I strongly recommend reading the Nightwatch Academy series before reading this novella.

  HARMON

  Thomas stared at me as if he’d seen a ghost. I guess my being here was a shock to him. He must have heard about the explosion at the Academy several months ago. He must have thought I was dead.

  Maybe I should have stayed dead. Gone straight to Justice when returning from Fomoria instead of making this detour, but I owed him an explanation and a goodbye. At least I thought I did, but now, seeing the look of horror in his eyes melt to something that looked like fear, I wasn’t so sure I’d made the right call.

  “How did you get in?” he asked.

  “Seriously? I come back from the dead, and all you can ask me is how I got into your room?”

  “Dammit, Harmon, you can’t be here. I don’t want you here.”

  It’d been seven months, almost eight. I knew I’d been gone a long time, and I had no right to expect anything from him, let alone for him to listen, but damn, his rejection still hurt.

  I looked down at my gray hands, no longer huge but still stone-like. My skin was tougher and rougher than regular skin. But this was the best the Fomorian mage could do before I killed him.

  This was me now.

  A gray man with rough stone-like skin and a face that was far from beautiful but more me than it had been before.

  Still, it was obvious Thomas saw a monster when he looked at me.

  I held up my hands in what I hoped was a placating gesture. “I know I look monstrous. I’m not here to try and rekindle things between us. I just—”

  “No.” Thomas rushed to the door and locked it before pocketing the key. “I don’t give a fuck what you look like, H. I can’t believe you’d think that would matter to me.”

  Well, that was news to me. “But you said you loved my body and my face … You always said you loved beautiful things.”

  “I do,” Thomas said. “But I loved you because you were beautiful on the inside.” He took a deep breath. “When I found out what happened to you, what happened between you and Justice, I fucking hated you.”

  Justified. I deserved the hate. “How did you find out?”

  “She came to see me. Told me what went down.” His lip curled. “At least she had the decency to do that.” He speared me with his intense gaze. “Still, I hated that you could let me go so easily.”

  Guilt sat heavy in my chest. Had been since I’d left Indigo and started my quest for a cure. I’d known my journey would bring me back here at some point. I’d known I had to do this.

  “I’m sorry.”

  God, it sounded fucking lame. But there was nothing else I could say. I’d loved Justice for a long time, but it took being turned into a monster to realize I was in love with her, and in that moment, it had been easy to tell myself that Thomas wouldn’t want me anyway. To give my heart to Justice. I’d made excuses. Fuck, we both had.

  “But it was for the best,” Thomas said. “We both knew that there was no future for us in the outside world. When they stripped me of my knighthood, we were over. Hating you helped me deal with that.”

  Ah, yes, the fucking nightblood law and their no outside dick rule. “Still. I shouldn’t have started anything with Justice without ending things with you first.”

  Thomas smiled wryly. “You were always the transparent one. You never hid your conquests. I know you. I know how you always needed more. The women you had while we were together. But they never bothered me, and do you know why? Because they were just sex to you. They were just an outlet for your beast. But Justice … that hurt because that meant something. I knew it would happen one day, I just thought we had more time.” He walked over to me and cupped my face, and for a moment, I saw my lover, the old Thomas in the softness of his eyes, but then his expression hardened, and he pulled away. “Thank you for coming to see me. But you need to go now. It’s not safe for you here.”

  “Why?”

  He frowned. “H, don’t you know what’s been happening here?”

  “I came straight here from Fomoria. The mage opened a doorway for me.”

  “Fucking hell, H. You’re not even registered, are you?”

  “Registered?”

  “I thought you were at least registered. I don’t have time to explain. Nina will be up any moment. If she sees you here, she’ll want to see your papers, and if you don’t have those, she’ll arrest you.” His eyes widened as if he’d just realized something else. “Fuck, you still have Fomorian genes …”

  “Who’s Nina?”

  “My wife, H.”

  He was married?

  He closed his eyes and took a breath. “I’ve moved on. The world has changed, and you being here puts me and mine in danger. Nina works for the Infinity Watch, and she will arrest you if she finds you here.”

  I was so confused.

  He ran a hand over his face. “Okay, we have time. She’s working out.” He looked at his watch. “Another fifteen minutes, maybe? Come on, I’ll sneak you—"

  The doorknob rattled. “Thomas? What the hell. Let me in.”

  Thomas’s face drained of color. “The window.” He rushed me toward it, but the thing wouldn’t budge.

  “How did you get in?” Thomas whisper-hissed.

  “The back door and up the stairs. I followed your scent here.”

  “Fuck!” He shoved his hands in his hair and tugged. There was a clink, and the sound of a lock turning.

  Thomas backed away from me and shook his head, his eyes filled with sorrow. “I’m sorry, H.”

  The door swung open, and a woman stepped into the room. She was petite and dark and in workout clothes. Her dark eyes widened in horror at the sight of me.

  “Thomas, who the fuck is this?” she asked.

  “I’m so sorry,” Thomas said softly one last time, but I wasn’t sure if he was apologizing to me or her.

  Chapter Two

  Indigo

 
“Human lover. Traitor. Bitch.”

  The goblin hogtied in the back seat of my car rattled off insults in his guttural voice. I turned up the radio to block him out. Truth be told, his traitor barb hurt because it hit home. Hard. I mean, what the fuck was I doing bagging supernaturals for minor infractions? So what if he’d gone to the supermarket with his tackle on show? Goblins didn’t wear clothes. It was natural for them to be naked. When the universal glamour had been in place, it would have compensated for his nude state, and humans wouldn’t have given him a second look, but now, all supernaturals were exposed, warts, arse cracks, and crotch ornaments on display.

  So, he’d forgotten to garb himself before heading out for his weekly shop. Back in the Nightwatch days, minor infractions earned a slap on the wrist and a caution. But not any longer. Infinity Watch—the human-led enforcement organization that dealt with supernatural infractions and crime—had only one sentence. Incarceration. He’d probably get a few days in lockup at the general facility. He was lucky no one had been inadvertently hurt by his nude walk down the aisle. Otherwise, he’d be taking a longer trip to one of the satellite prisons for a more permanent stay.

  Any excuse to lock us up.

  Nightwatch, the umbrella organization, was gone, swallowed by Infinity Watch, a human government-run agency that now monitored all the supernatural enforcement factions. There’d been no way I was working directly for them, so the guys and I set up our own enforcement agency. Night Watch Agency. Yeah, so, technically, we still had to work to Infinity Watch standards and take on cases handed down to us, but we were also free to take on our own cases.

  The goblin pickup was an Infinity call as it occurred in our jurisdiction, which covered Scorchwood and the neighboring town.

  The song on the radio finished.

  “You’re a sellout,” the goblin continued. “I have sprogs to feed. They need me. They’ll be hungry. They’ll be waiting.”

  A new song began, and the goblin began to cry.

  Fuck this shit. I swerved left and parked the car.

  If I did this, there’d be a fallout. I’d be in shit with dispatch. Crap. Hanging out with Kat was making me soft.

  I climbed out of the car, yanked open the back door, and untied the goblin before I could change my mind.

  I’d made him put on a T-shirt and an old pair of kid’s joggers. Yeah, this job called for keeping a whole load of spare shit in the trunk.

  “Get out.” I stepped back to give him room to oblige.

  He hopped onto the tarmac and stared up at me in fear. “Please, don’t kill me. I’ll go to jail. I’ll be quiet.”

  “I’m not going to kill you.”

  “You’re not?” He looked seriously surprised by that statement.

  “Tippen was killed last week for being out after midnight,” he said.

  “What?”

  He nodded emphatically, his fleshy bulbous nose quivering with the action. “Humans …” His eyes went round and then filled with tears. “He was my friend. He had sprogs, too. The humans took them.” He shook his head, so the tears spilled. “They took them, and they probably killed them, too.”

  Anger heated my chest. I clenched my jaw and took a deep breath through my nose and exhaled through my mouth. They’d killed a creature for breaking curfew, and they called us monsters. Ever since discovering our existence, the humans had done unspeakable things to us in the name of protecting themselves.

  It didn’t matter that we’d been around forever, coexisting in peace while keeping them safe. No. It only mattered that we were different.

  “I’m not going to hurt you. I’m letting you go. Get your sprogs, and get out of town. Find a new hovel, and stick to the law.”

  He blinked up at me. “You’re letting me go?”

  I couldn’t believe I was doing this. “Get out of here before I change my mind.”

  He tugged up the joggers I’d loaned him and then turned and ran. Smart chap because I’d been so close to shoving him in the trunk.

  Now, this situation needed to be handled. Infinity didn’t take kindly to unresolved pickups, and as much as I’d like to tell them to eat shit and die, I’d learned that the balance of power was not in my favor. I pulled my mobile out of my pocket and hit speed dial.

  “Justice, what’s wrong?” Hyde said.

  My muscles relaxed at the sound of his smooth tenor tone. “I just let the goblin go.”

  Silence. “I’ll deal with dispatch.”

  Dispatch as in Cherry, the human who had fuck-me eyes for him. God, I hated that I was asking him to flirt with that bitch, but if it saved the goblin’s life …

  I sighed. “Thank you.”

  “Come back to base, and you can thank me properly.”

  My nipples hardened in response to the sexy drop in his tone, but I kept my voice light and casual. “I do need a shower.”

  “That can be arranged.”

  I ended the call and climbed back into the car, my body thrumming with anticipation of Hyde’s touch. Brady and Kash were on a job out of town. I missed them like crazy.

  Kat and her guys were in the city on an Infinity case while the twins, Devon and Aidan, were on vacation with their pack. Scorchwood mansion felt empty without the team in residence. But it was nice to have some one-on-one time with Hyde. Kash and Brady would be back late tonight and the rest of the team the night after. The house would be filled with bodies and testosterone once more.

  My mind drifted to Harmon. Two more weeks, the guys and I had agreed. Two more weeks, and we were taking a vacation to Fomoria to find him. He’d wanted to go into Fomoria and find a cure for what had been done to him, and he’d wanted to go alone. I’d stepped back and let him go, but he’d been gone over six months, and every day that passed was another weight on my chest. There was a hole in my heart that he needed to fill, and I was done waiting for him to find his way back to me.

  It was time to bring him home.

  * * *

  I was ten minutes from home when traffic hit.

  A fucking checkpoint.

  They were doing this more and more. Setting up random checkpoints across the city to weed out any supernaturals that hadn’t registered. With the glamour gone, we were easy enough to identify, and those of us who could pass for human were subjected to an iris scanner created courtesy of Winterfell Enterprises. The fucker, Orion, was the human government’s bitch now, handing over tech that could help identify and subdue us. If I saw him again, I’d punch his stupid, smug face in.

  The car ahead moved forward a space. I tapped my fingers on the steering wheel and hummed along to the track on the radio as I inched toward the checkpoint. It was finally my turn.

  A human officer dressed in dark blue and gold made a winding motion with his hand. I lowered the window.

  “Human or other?” he asked.

  “Other.”

  “Papers, please.”

  I opened the glove compartment and froze. Shit. My papers were in the other car. The one I’d used on my last case.

  I winced. “Sorry, Officer. I seem to have left them in my other car.”

  “Other car?” His lip curled in derision as if the idea of my having more than one vehicle was repulsive to him. “Step out of the vehicle, please.”

  “Look, I’m with Nightwatch enforcement, registered with Infinity Watch. I know my reg number. You can call it in and check.”

  “Step out of the car, please,” he repeated.

  Fuck my life.

  I climbed out, and before I could make any other moves—not that I was planning to—he’d clipped a cuff onto my wrist. A tingle rushed over me, and my body felt heavy. The fucker had just muted my supernatural abilities. My shadow knight gene meant that I could hang out in the sun and not be weakened. But now, with it shut off, I felt shaky and sick.

  The officer smiled in satisfaction. “You think I haven’t heard the left-my-papers-at-home excuse before? You think I don’t know how you fuckers operate?” He raked me up and d
own. “Parading as human so you can feed on us, you filthy bloodsucker.”

  My gums ached from clenching my teeth. Do not rise to the bait, Justice. Calm and cool.

  “I understand your disconcertion, Officer, but if you’ll call in my registration number, you’ll be able to con—”

  My head rocked to the side with the force of his blow. My body wanted to react, to lash out, but I was hyperaware of car doors opening, of people stepping out and holding up cameras—witnesses to whatever I would do.

  He wanted me to attack him. There was no law against a human assaulting a supernatural, but if a supernatural assaulted a human, then it was a one-way trip to one of the high-security prisons in the city.

  Stay calm, Justice. Just keep a lid on it. I didn’t bother to wipe away the blood trickling from the corner of my mouth. Instead, I met the officer’s gaze and swiped my tongue across my busted lip.

  “You want to lash out at me, don’t you?” he taunted.

  “No.” I smiled with my mouth but not my eyes. “I would never hurt a man who’s trying to uphold the law. After all, we’re on the same side. On the same register. With access to the same information.”

  I let that sink in a moment. Let him figure out what I was saying. Yeah, bitch. I can find you. I can hurt you.

  His eyes narrowed. “Are you threatening me?”

  “I don’t make threats.” I canted my head, allowing the monster within to look out of my eyes, letting him know that I may be muted, but I was still here. Waiting. Biding my time. “Threats are for the idle, Officer Tooley. I simply take action.”

  His face drained of color.

  “Now, how about you take my registration number and call it in.”