The Beloved, page 17
Totally different than the way it had been back in the twenty-twenties. Back then, the skyscrapers had been choked with professionals who commuted in on the nine-to-five grind, with the only time things were quiet being on the weekends and after dark. But now, if you wanted privacy? You got it.
As he came up to the head of yet another alley, he double-checked the cross street and then randomly looked over at a building on the far side of the four-laner. The purple glow of a billboard was bathing the entire block in a grape soda kinda way, and he narrowed his eyes on the profile of a woman with long dark hair.
Resolve2Evolve was the logo, and the tagline was real groundbreaking shit: Be Alive, Do More, Be More. Then there were details about some kind of conference that was coming to town.
Knock yourself out, he thought as he kept going, approaching that club Bathe and its blue-green entrance.
Several more blocks farther, he paused at the next intersection.Looking down the well-lit side street, he almost kept going. Some kind of echo inside of his body stopped him.
Figuring he’d scratch the itch, he sent out a ping on his location per protocol and made the turn, sticking to the right side of the brick-and-mortar valley, getting good and fucking quiet as he went about fifty yards into the flanks of some twenty-story spires and stopped. Tohr was two blocks over, Phury down one, Xcor over three. The intel hadn’t included a precise address, and even though he’d wanted to chase this lead down by himself, the coordination of effort was not just more efficient, it was better to have so many of them in a concentrated area.
If he was going to lecture Nalla on staying safe, he should at least do the same for himself.
But he didn’t like working with others.
When his instincts were certain there was nothing coming or going in the shadows, he started forward again. All the security lights were mounted at regular intervals, and he willed them off, the step-by-step extinguishing like the countdown of a horror movie. With a vampire in it. Who was hunting something.
“Yeah, but we’re the fucking good guys,” he muttered.
Up ahead, a set of plywood panels covered with graffiti was the first clue he might be in the right place. And then the wind changed directions and came from the bridge end of things… and the scent was unmistakable.
Baby powder and death.
Under his skin, the predator in him woke up sure as if the aggression was an “other” who lived inside of him, a separate consciousness all together. He was no shifter, though. It was just the duality of his nature, the civilized and the barbaric just a flip away, always.
In the past, there had even been a third part to him. But his Bella had healed that darkest fissure, only remnants of it remaining now—which was why he wasn’t like that fucker Nate. Z had things to lose, and they were so important to him, they’d brought him back from the brink of madness and kept him in place.
Broken, instead of ruined.
And this made him think of Nate’s history. That male had been raised in a human laboratory, treated like a pincushion and a petri dish for diseases, and then rescued after he’d watched his mahmen die. All things considered, his gruesome backstory was probably the only fact pattern on a par with Zsadist having been used and abused as a blood slave for a century by the Mistress. And on top of that torture, add in Nate’s immortality? You had an interpersonal H-bomb waiting to go off.
So no, he didn’t want the guy anywhere near Nalla.
Without Bella’s love, Z knew damn well that shit could very easily have gone a different way for him. But his good result was a one in a million, and he didn’t want his daughter rolling those odds.
Arriving at the boarded-up entry, he inhaled through his nose—and smelled fresh human blood.
“Nailed it,” he said into the darkness.
Gently testing the handles, he knew he should alert the others.
But he also needed a good outlet for his rage. If there was something to fight in there, he wanted first crack at whatever it was.
He was in a mood to slaughter the enemy.
Slowly.
* * *
On the other side of the plywood sheets, Evan heard the entrance rattle, and the soft sound brought his head up. He was sitting on the chipped, cold floor by the elevator, his back against the wall, his knees up, his arms around his middle. He had been in this position since dawn, and had passed the time watching a slice of daylight pinwheel across the black oily tracks on the marble.
A millimeter gap in the plywood had let the illumination in, and he had felt all the more isolated for the light—the sun’s golden gleam had been a reminder that all around him, residents and visitors of Caldwell were going on about their lives, working, driving, eating, drinking, fucking, crying, laughing. The sense that he had taken a step away from all the hustle and bustle was inescapable, and if he needed a refresher, all he had to do was look at the black ooze on his torn-up fingertips.
What was now inside him did not dry. The substance had retained its viscous consistency over all the hours, even as it ceased coming out of him. And if he rolled his forearms over, he could see that his veins were darker than they had been.
He could still taste the sickly-sweet residue of it in his mouth, and if he thought too much about what had gone down his throat, he started to get sick to his stomach—
The entrance rattled again, and he tensed up.
But maybe now he would get his answers.
Evan got to his feet and brushed off the seat of his jeans. Shortly after… whatever had been done to him, he’d run out of the building and just kept going for as long as he could. He’d ended up in some parking garage and had stayed there for a while all crying and confused. He hadn’t even wanted to go to Mickey’s hideout because he couldn’t face the comparisons with who he’d been before.
In the end, he had returned to the office building. He’d been… “made” was the word… with intention so he didn’t think the trainer would destroy him. And he needed to understand how to undo all of this. Surely, there was a way, and he knew the trainer had to be coming back at some point—
Evan froze in place. Then looked down his body.
The strangest sensation was going through him. His skin had tightened until it felt like shrink-wrap over his muscles and bones—and underneath it, there was a vibration, like the oily substance was boiling in his veins.
Get out.
The instinct for him to run was so strong and clear, it was nearly a voice from outside of himself—and he heeded the impulse without being aware of choosing to.
Cursing, he hit the down arrow to summon the elevator. Punched it again. Punched it a third time.
A whispered prayer left his lips, and his heart pounded.
Abruptly, the mouse-soft sounds at the entry silenced, and all he could hear was the rushing in his ears—
Bing!
The sound made him jump and he quick-pivoted to the doors that opened a millimeter at a time, like they didn’t want to wake up from a nap. Glancing back over his shoulder, he felt that sizzle under his skin again, and he knew that whoever it was… they hadn’t left the entrance. It was so fucking weird. It was as if he could see the presence just outside on the sidewalk, sure as if he had X-ray vision and could visualize them through the glass, steel, and plywood.
It was a man and holy shit, they were backing away from the boarded-up entry, in a crouch.
“You’re blowing the door,” Evan breathed as he squeezed into the elevator. “And you are my enemy.”
Even though that didn’t make any sense. How would he know this?
Except it didn’t matter. He just had to GTFO. He was not up for any fight at the moment. He didn’t have any weapons, and he still felt dizzy. Plus he sucked at it, like he sucked at everything.
Frantically pushing the LL button, he kept his eyes locked on the barricaded entry, the sound loud as he wore out the little glowing circle, chk, chk, chk, chkachkachka—
“Come on, come on, close—”
Pop!
The breach was less a proper explosion, more a firecracker, but it got the job done. One side of the boarded-up doorway went loose, the panel flopping free of its hinges and falling out to the sidewalk like a dead body landing on a bounce.
“Oh, God, close, close—”
The elevator’s doors were tentative as they emerged from their sheaths, and he planted his palms on them and tried to get them to hurry—
Over at the lobby’s entrance, a figure stepped into the opening that had been created by force, tendrils of smoke swirling around its legs. The size of the entity alone would have scared Evan. The fact that his internal senses began to scream turned whoever it was into a serial killer with an axe over his shoulder.
As the doors got closer and closer, the massive male was like a spotlight in Evan’s face—and he knew he would never forget what this particular enemy looked like, from the scar that ran in an S-curve down his face and distorted his mouth, to the skull trim and all the black leather.
Their eyes met, and Evan felt a sucking sensation, as if the elevator had already started for the basement: All at once, like it was a resurfaced memory rather than a conclusion he was coming to, he realized he was involved in something bigger now, something that, though he had just fallen into it, had been going on for millennia.
A war, with things that looked human, but were not.
Like he was no longer human.
Evan broke out in a cold sweat as he realized that the black blood in him carried with it information and… some kind of legacy.
“I’m going to kill you, lesser,” the man in the doorway growled. “I’m gonna fucking k—”
The elevator shut with a thump, and the descent to the lower level began.
Evan backed up until the panels of broken mirrors caught him, and he splayed his arms out as if he were about to get attacked.
If that creature out there found the basement stairs?
He was going to die.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
In the bedroom at Luchas House, Nalla stared into Nate’s eyes as he looked at her over his shoulder. Though his pupils and irises were her focus, she saw everything about his face: From his long lashes to the curve of his skull, the line of his full lower lip to the thrust of his jaw.
And she wanted to tell him to be serious. That when she’d suggested taking off his clothes, it had been for a medical reason.
Or okay, fine, a comfort one. Immortals like him—what the hell?—didn’t have medical problems.
But out at that fire, after he’d burned a sweatshirt that she knew damn well had something to do with another female, they’d crossed the line that distinguished friends from lovers.
Acquaintances from lovers, more like it.
So “naked” meant different things now… and she didn’t believe what he’d told her about changing his mind about timing.
Yet as he stared back at her, he wasn’t stepping off from what he’d said. There was no Ha-ha, I didn’t mean that like it sounded. No Just kidding. No Wow, this is awkward.
Because he did mean it, he wasn’t kidding… and this was awkward.
But this was also something that had been started out in that forest—and needed finishing.
“Okay, let me help you,” she said in a husky voice she didn’t recognize.
Except then he shook his head. “Nah, I can do it.”
Like she’d called his bluff or something?
As she tried to figure out what was going on between them, Nate eased onto his side, his torso shifting stiffly, his jaw locking in pain. And now he was sitting up and gingerly peeling the burned leather and the fragments of his t-shirt from his shoulders and arms. She could only stand by and watch for so long, even though as she went to the bed, she wasn’t sure how to make it easier on him. She settled for helping him get his holsters of weapons off.
Oh… God.
He had been burned on the front and the back, probably because he’d been hit by some blowback accelerant during the explosion, and then he’d rolled in the snow and spread it and the flames around while he’d been trying to get things extinguished. As a result, the damage was widespread and shocking, the ropes of muscle over his bones exposed, the latter showing through bright white against the pink and red—yet his skin wasn’t so much healing as regenerating before her very eyes, his epidermis reknitting so fast she could track the change by watching his tattoos reemerge: The ink that was permanent reappeared along with the skin, the swirls of the patterns becoming visible once again as the third degree burns became second degrees, and then firsts, and then…
“You’re…” she breathed.
Instead of finishing whatever the hell was going through her head, Nalla reached out and touched his shoulder. When he hissed, she jerked her hand back.
“I’m so sorry—”
“It didn’t hurt me.” His stare dropped to her lips. “That’s not what I felt.”
Abruptly, Nalla couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t think. Especially when he put her hand back on him: His skin was so warm and smooth, supple over the ridges of muscle and in spite of the patterns in it, which was a surprise. But like the ink would make it uneven?
“Was all this tattoo… did it hurt?”
“Yes, it was painful,” he answered. “That’s why I wanted the work done.”
Her eyes shot back to his. “Why would you do that to yourself?”
“I needed to feel something.”
She closed her eyes briefly. Then she glanced down to where the tattoos disappeared into the waistband of his leathers.
“Why?” she asked.
“Just where I was at the time.”
“And now?”
There was a long pause. And then his lids lowered to half-mast. “Yeah… I need to feel something now.”
So do I, she thought. But as she looked at his biceps, the cognitive whiplash was insane.
“I don’t understand how… any of this is real,” she whispered. “How you… are real.”
In response, Nate just pushed himself back against the pillows, and put both hands behind his shaved head, his pecs and shoulders filling up half the wall it seemed, his abdominal muscles flexing in a series of ridges.
“That’s a cue, by the way,” she prompted.
“For what,” he asked.
“For you to talk.” When he still didn’t answer, she shrugged and sat on the edge of the mattress. “You want to do this as charades?”
His exhale was long and slow. “Are you ruining the mood on purpose or…?”
“Is there a mood?”
“Well, I wasn’t going after a foot massage,” he said dryly. “Unless you’re volunteering or have a kink you want to explore with me. In which case, I’m down.”
Nalla didn’t want to laugh. And did anyway. “You’re funny.”
“And you’re beautiful.”
She reached up and touched her frazzled hair. “I’m a mess, and I smell like campfire.”
Those eyes of his traveled around her face. “It has nothing to do with what you look like. And everything to do with who you are.”
“I bet you say that to all the girls.”
“Only the ones that go rucking, and use me as their sack.”
“That sounds dirty,” she said as she laughed again.
Down below, from what sounded like the living room, voices percolated up, and there was the orchestral introduction of a movie studio logo—or maybe it was HBO.
Nate looked at the bedroom door like he was hoping it was locked. Then he refocused on her.
“Do you want to kiss me again?” she asked softly. “Even if it’s not good timing.”
The stark hunger came back to his face and he unlatched his hands and reached out to capture one of hers. When he gave a tug, she went along with it, leaning onto his chest and feeling the contours of his strong body under her own.
“Yeah, I want to kiss you some more,” he said as his eyes lingered on her lips. “But it’s not a good idea.”
“Are you mated?”
“God, fuck no.”
“Girlfriend or partner?”
“No.”
“So how about you and I stop talking about timing.” Nalla shook her head. “Otherwise, I’m going to assume you’re scared of my father, and using the calendar as an excuse. Which is not a good look for you.”
“I don’t want to get you in trouble.”
“You need to mind your own business with that.” She stroked his shoulder. “And I’m not looking for anything more than right now from you.”
“Fair enough.” His eyes shifted to her parka. “Aren’t you too warm in that?”
Nalla knew that if she took her jacket off, everything else she was wearing was liable to end up on the floor.
So she sat up and unzipped the puffy black folds. As she pulled them off, she could feel him staring at her body, his eyes lingering on her breasts under the fleece and t-shirt she’d been loaned.
Lowering herself back onto his chest, she stroked his pec. “You’re so hard everywhere.”
There was a beat of silence. Then he cocked an eyebrow. “Now, there’s a comment.”
Nalla blushed. “I didn’t mean it like that.”
“Well,” he murmured. “It’s true.”
* * *
What the hell was coming out of his mouth?
As Nate was spitting lines like he was Shuli in a club, he couldn’t believe what the fuck he was saying. But here was the thing. When he looked at Nalla… he liked what was going on inside of him. For the first time in an eternity, there was something other than the darkness and anger, and though the mating instinct was like a freight train pounding through him, it was so much better than where he usually was.
Plus she was so close, her mouth just a couple of inches from his own, her breasts cushioning against his pecs, the scent of her arousal tingling in his nose, in his blood.
