Lover Arisen, page 15
“The only female you need to be looking for is me.”
“Fuck you.”
“That’s the plan.”
With a perfectly steady hand, Balz palmed his remaining dagger. “I’m never fucking you again.”
He put the blade right to his own throat, and pressed the sharp edge in over his jugular. Following a bloom of pain, he smelled more of his own blood and became aware that his shoulder was killing him.
“Never again,” he repeated.
The demon narrowed her gleaming black eyes. “You’re not going to do it. All it gets you is Hell for eternity and me left alone with your little friend. Not that I won’t enjoy my time with your girl.”
“She has a protector stronger than me.”
“Does she.” Devina waved her fingers beside her face and went ooooooooooo. “I’m so scared.”
“You should be. Lassiter will take care of her—”
“You think he’ll waste time on a human? Fine, so where is he right now?” Her tone was bored. “Will you just stop. You’re not going to kill yourself. Don’t you know you shouldn’t bluff with something like me—”
“I’m not bluffing. She’s an innocent, and if you hurt her because of me, she becomes one of his own.” Devina’s stare narrowed and he nodded. “I kill myself and she’s free for two reasons. No more ties to me and no way you’re going to get at her.”
“I thought you said she didn’t mean anything to you.” Devina cocked an eyebrow. “Or did you think I couldn’t hear you then?”
“Have fun with that fallen angel.”
As he tightened his grip on the hilt, Devina said quickly, “You’ll end up in Hell. No Fade if you do it.”
“I don’t care if I’m in Dhunhd forever if it saves her.”
With that, he pulled the blade over his throat, slicing his vein right open. The river of blood was immediate, and the gurgling as he tried to breathe through the flood made it hard to talk.
Nearly impossible.
And still, he managed, “Never… again.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Sitting across from Butch—on a silk sofa that belonged in a museum with a “Do Not Sit” sign on it—Vishous was trying to concentrate on what was being said in the great Blind King’s study. The Brotherhood, the Bastards, and all the fighters were crammed into the frilly room, looking like a military squadron that had been rerouted into Versailles.
The French furniture and the pale blue walls went with all the gunmetal and the leather like a lace hankie wrapped around a grenade.
But like he gave a crap about decorations.
“—destroyed,” Sahvage was saying. “And the Book, too. Why are we still talking about this?”
V checked his phone, then put it facedown on his thigh. “Because our boy Balthazar is feeling that demon—and he’s seeing her.”
“In his dreams,” Sahvage countered through the SRO of warriors. “And I’m not disrespecting the Bastard. It’s just I was there in that fire. I saw what I saw. Both were ashed.”
Sahvage was a big boy, even when he was standing next to a brother like Murhder. With his dark hair cut short and the five o’clock shadow, he was exactly what he looked like: A highly intelligent, very aggressive killer, who was willing to lay down his life for his mate, his King, and everybody else in the room.
Speaking of kings, the leader of the species was parked on the far side of a carved desk that was the PB to the J for the enormous carved-ass palace he was sitting on. Both had been his sire’s, just like his name, just like his son’s name. That long black hair falling from a widow’s peak was also inherited, but his short temper and his potty mouth? That was a no. By accounts, his father had been a gentlemale. Wrath, on the other hand, was… aptly named.
Then again, as far as V was concerned, they didn’t need a king with manners. They needed one with balls.
“I believe him,” V announced to the crowd. “And we have to take him seriously. You think he’s avoiding his home here on a goddamn whim?”
To say nothing of the ask he’d laid down the night before. Not that V was about to put that out to the group.
Conversation sprang up from all corners, and Wrath sat back, his black wraparounds as much of a mask as his tight expression was. When the voices got even louder, the King reached to the side, gathered up George, his service dog, and put the golden retriever in his lap. George hated conflict. So he spent a lot of time cozied up to his master.
And this dissension wasn’t going to last long. The King was going to once again order everyone to make like the Book and Devina were out and about somewhere in Caldie. It was the only way to proceed, and though Sahvage still maintained his position was correct, the brother was going to come around quick. It cost nothing to be cautious and assume the worst—although Wrath wasn’t going to put his shitkicker down right away. He knew the kind of males he was dealing with. They needed to blow off some steam, not that anybody was disagreeing with what Balz had reported.
V frowned and checked his phone. Then he leaned into his roommate and whispered, “I’ll be right back.”
Butch tilted in as well and kept his voice down, not that anybody was going to hear them over the booming back-and-forths. “Where are you going?”
“Smokes.”
“Can you bring some Mr & Mrs back with you?”
“If Fritz catches me with a silver tray and a glass of that new bourbon you like, I’m a dead male.”
“You can outrun him, you know. Especially for the black label.”
“Not without killing him from a heart attack. And how’d that go over in this household, true?”
Leaving that hell-no where it landed, V got to his feet and weeded his way to the door—and as he came up to Xcor, he tugged the male’s arm. The Bastard didn’t ask any questions; he just followed the way out into the hall.
As V shut the double doors and leaned back against them, he looked at his phone once more. Then he stared across the second story landing with its gold balustrade and its blood red runner. When he looked to the right, the Hall of Statues was where it had been last night, and down by the entry into the servants’ wing, he could hear two female doggen speaking in low tones about the schedule for bedsheet changing. To the left was the second-story sitting room, and beyond that, the east wing that had been opened to accommodate the Band of Bastards moving in.
When he went to look at his phone for a third time, he shook his head. “I just spoke with Balz.”
The head of the Bastards nodded once. Xcor was broader than all the others, and with his deformed upper lip, he looked like a bare-knuckle street fighter. He wasn’t crude, though. Mated of the Chosen Layla, adopted sire to Lyric and Rhamp, he was a good guy to have at your six. In your house. Guarding your King. Your shellan.
“And,” the male prompted.
“He wanted cigarettes and food.”
“Okay.”
Vishous glanced at his phone and couldn’t figure out what the fuck his problem was. “I told him after the meeting, I’d roll him some and hook him up with the calories.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
“Good.” Xcor crossed his arms over the steel daggers that were holstered, handles down, onto his thick chest. “He will not speak to me. I call, he never returns it.”
When the urge to check his frickin’ Samsung hit again, V shoved the thing in his ass pocket. Then he gave his hands something to do by lighting up a hand-rolled. As he exhaled, he thought about the conversation he’d had with Balz out behind the Caldwell Police Department’s headquarters.
“What are you leaving out?” Xcor demanded. “You tell me the now. He is mine.”
The Bastard had plenty of Old Country in his accent on a good night. Tonight? His words were almost a language other than English.
“Last evening,” V said, “he made me swear I’d kill him if the shit with Devina came down to it.” As Xcor’s face hardened, V shrugged. “He doesn’t want to saddle you with the deed. And you need to chill. I know he’s serious, but we can get that demon. I know we can.”
Xcor broke away and paced over to the head of the grand staircase. As he stared down the red-carpeted steps to the foyer below, he looked like he wanted to throttle the other Bastard with his bare hands. He also appeared devastated in the manner of someone whose best friend was dying.
It was a hot minute before he came back. When he did, there was no expression on his face at all. He was showing absolutely nothing.
But his words were rough: “He has broken my heart.”
V put up his gloved palm. “Look, I’m sorry I had to shit on your parade, but I need to know. Does he cycle, or something? Like, go through periods of depression and mania?”
“Never. He is steady. Always.”
V stroked his goatee and shook his head. “I don’t get it. Just now he called me, talking about nicotine and a meal. In the middle of everything that’s going on. Like nothing’s wrong.”
“Maybe he got some sleep, finally,” Xcor muttered. “Either way, if he was serious about what he asked you to do, we need to help him in any way we can, whether or not the Book still exists.”
“Agreed.” V narrowed his eyes. “You have to know, though, I gave him my word.”
Xcor’s upper lip peeled off his fangs. “You have a choice.”
“Not when I give my word, I don’t.” V pointed the lit tip of his hand-rolled at the Bastard. “I don’t want us as enemies if it comes down to it. If he kills himself, there’s no Fade, and he knows this. And I’m not in a big hurry to put him in his grave, are we clear. I’m telling you this ahead of time so that you and I are on the same page. You got a problem with it? Then let’s you and me fuck that demon to the wall.”
There was a period of silence, and the tense quiet went on for so long, V wondered whether or not they were going to have an issue right here, right now.
“The one you really have to worry about,” Xcor said grimly, “is Syn.”
* * *
In the dim and dusty storage room at the bookshop, Erika was blacking out from lack of oxygen. The inexplicable, invisible constriction on her body was so great, so unrelenting, that she couldn’t inflate her lungs properly and the shallow panting she could draw in wasn’t enough to keep her going. And shockingly, life-threatening hypoxia wasn’t her main problem.
“He’s mine,” the brunette said into her face, “until I’m bored with him. And in any event, our relationship’s got shit-all to do with you—”
The door broke open and the suspect filled the jambs, the light from behind turning him into a shadow with substance—as opposed to… whatever had been out there.
“Where is she,” he demanded.
I’m here, Erika answered. I’m right here…
She was yelling at him. At least she thought she was. But it was as if the suspect couldn’t see her, hear her. In desperation, she screamed as loud as she could. And screamed again. As sweat beaded on her forehead and ran down into the collar of her coat, she had to give up because remaining partially conscious was more important than repeating her vocal failure.
Meanwhile, the man came forward, stopping underneath a light bulb that hung from the ceiling on a rusted chain.
Under the harsh lighting, his face looked barbaric with rage, the hollows under his cheekbones, the cut of his jaw, the slash of his brows, the very depiction of wrath and vengeance, his anger so great it was tangible—
“I’m never fucking you again.”
The words were spoken with hatred in every syllable, and as the brunette stamped a stiletto in response, Erika tried to focus. Looking down at her chest, as if that would help, she saw absolutely nothing. No chains of steel, no bands, no compression. Yet the breathlessness and suffocation, the tilt to her body as if it were suspended in midair at an angle, were all very real.
With her mind trying to reconcile the inexplicable, she had a thought that either none of this was happening… or the world she had always known was a lie: The thin veil between nightmare and consciousness had been blurred to such an extent that she was beginning to believe in things that made no sense—
Was he taking out a knife?
As her vision went on the fritz, she blinked things back into focus. Surely he wasn’t putting it against his—
“You’re not going to kill yourself,” the brunette snapped. “You shouldn’t bluff with something like me.”
“I’m not bluffing. And I don’t care if I end up in Dhunhd forever if it saves her.”
With a savage yank of his arm, the man sliced open his own throat, blood geysering out of his vein. As Erika screamed again and still made no sound, he spoke in a horrific gurgle.
“Never again.”
The man went down on his knees, that illumination from over his head casting him in a theatrical light, the terrifying red rush pouring over his black leather jacket and covering what appeared to be a weapons holster. He did not raise his hands to try to stop the flow, he did not fight the effect of a critical hole in his windpipe. He just stared in utter fury at a spot up and over to the left of Erika.
She yelled again, feeling the stretch of her mouth, the burn in her throat. Nothing came out—and all the while, the sound of him breathing through the blood, the most terrible thing she had ever heard, seemed to be loud enough for the whole world to hear—
“You’ve got to be kidding me.” The brunette’s voice was merely annoyed. Like people killing themselves in front of her was at least a monthly, if not weekly, inconvenience. “I mean really. You’re just going to see me in Hell.”
As the man bled out, his face paled to the point of fresh white wall paint, his skin becoming matte in a way Erika knew she was going to never forget. Then he fell forward and landed on the floor in a clang of metal from the weapons on him hitting all that dirty concrete.
God… the copper in the air—
The brunette passed through Erika’s field of vision, those stilettos clipping along until she stood over the man. A pool of blood was forming fast around his head, and she extended one of her shapely legs, cocked her fancy shoe, and drew the fine point tip of her heel through it in some kind of pattern.
Erika’s eyes strained to track what she was doing.
Devina
“Well, shit,” the brunette muttered as she finished what clearly was her name. “You were a really good lay.”
Then her head flipped up and she looked toward the storeroom’s open door. “Oh, come on.”
In spite of Erika’s delirium, she saw what had gotten the brunette’s attention: A light had gathered out in the shop proper, at first little more than a pinpoint, now becoming bright as a car beam… and continuing to intensify until it was the kind of floodlight you’d find at an airport or running up the side of a skyscraper.
The brunette put her hands on her hips and stamped one foot again, a splash of the man’s blood landing on her pant leg.
And then something close to a miracle happened.
The illumination somehow entered the storage room, as if it were a sentient being moving at will. And instantly, Erika felt an easing of her discomfort, her fear, her sense of impending doom. A split second later, she knew why. The glow coalesced into a figure that was at first made only of the light, but then solidified into something that appeared to be living and breathing, a man with blond-and-black hair that was down below his shoulders… who had eyes that were as compelling as a rainbow, as full of vengeance as a crusader’s.
“Oh, and now you’re going to do what you accused me of doing.” The brunette jabbed a manicured finger at the apparition. “You’re interfering, you’re over the line—blah, blah, blah. The Creator’s going to have a goddamn opinion about you playing the resuscitation card here, unless you just showed up to watch him die.”
There was a petulance to her now, like a kid threatening to tattletale because someone ate Play-Doh in the back of a classroom.
“You save him, and you and I are even,” she announced. “I may have trespassed, but you’re stealing from fate if you intercede now—oh, and if you let him live? I’m not leaving him. There’s still only one way I’ll go, and you know what it is, angel. He gets his freedom if I get what I want from you. So be a savior, or don’t. I don’t give a fuck.”
With that… the brunette disappeared.
Right into thin air.
Closing her eyes, Erika moaned and prayed for an end to the pain she was in, the confusion, the conviction that she was in a different world altogether… even as she was ostensibly in Caldwell—
Instantly, the pressure on her chest disappeared. Between one heartbeat and the next, the squeeze was just gone, and she fell to the floor, landing on her back, her head smacking into the concrete and stunning her. But now was not the time for that. The ragged inhale she took was loud in her ears. She grabbed another. And another.
That was when she realized the gurgling had stopped.
Rolling onto her side, she reached a hand out for the man, and opened her mouth to say his name. But she didn’t know what it was—
She was not alone.
Turning her head, she looked at the figure who had come through the doorway in the form of illumination. She should have been afraid. She wasn’t—and not because she was confused.
When the entity just stood there, staring at her, she refocused on the man who had cut himself. As a feeling of helplessness choked her, she stretched even farther to reach the suspect, not that she could save him. Nothing short of blood transfusions and an operating room could—
“Save… him…” she whispered as she looked back up to the mysterious man. “Please.”
The man looked over his shoulder as if he were checking to see if the coast was clear. Then he stared off at something that was beyond her, maybe to a back door.
As he seemed suspended by his inner thoughts, she knew he was their only hope. She was losing strength fast, and she was worried she was going to pass out. And the suspect—well, it was probably already too late. But she couldn’t not beg.
“Please…”
