The Beloved, page 6
Standing on the top step, Nalla fussed with the zipper on her parka. As the males looked over at her, she reminded herself that she had known most of them her whole life, but as none raised a hand in greeting or smiled, she felt that a door had been shut. Then dead-bolted. Then had a piano pushed against the panels.
Her fucking father. She was so sick of him—
Lyric jumped in front of her. “I’m so glad you’re here!”
The female was wearing a floor-length silver dress that swirled around her body, and with her flaxen hair flowing in glossy waves like a shawl, and her heterochromatic blue-and-green eyes, she was like something out of a medieval fairy tale, ethereal and mysterious. As Nalla was hit with a full-contact embrace, her nose was filled with the scent of spring flowers and fresh night rain.
“Come sit down with me.”
As her hand was grabbed, there was no saying no, and a seat was prepared when Rhamp was given the boot by his sister. After which…
Nalla glanced over at the males who were across a low table. They were staring at her like she was on some kind of criminal watch list.
“I’m here to see Bitty.”
She said the words to Lyric. But she was talking at her audience of you’re-not-welcome-here—
The emergency fire door behind the seating area flew open, and two people slipped into the club. The entry was so quick, the steel panel under the red EXIT sign closing so fast, that no alarm went off and no one seemed to notice.
“What the hell happened to you guys,” someone barked.
“The birthday boy’s already fighting,” came another shout-out. “Let’s goooo!”
Yup, Shuli definitely had a gash on his forehead that was leaking, but again, she hadn’t been looking closely at him in front of the club.
No, she’d been too busy checking out who he’d been with—and enough with that. There was no reason to fall back into the staring thing. Like Nate was any different up closer?
“I need a drink,” Shuli muttered as he limped over, sat down next to Rhamp, and put a stray napkin up to his temple. “It’s been a long night even though the bitch just got started.”
Nate did not follow his lead. As always he hung back, and in all his black leather, he nearly faded into nonexistence in the deep-blue lighting. Flaring her nostrils, she breathed in, and somehow, even through the smells of the alcohol, the aroused humans, and Lyric’s perfume, the scent of the male’s own fresh blood registered—
Great. She was looking at him again. But he really was wounded. His palms were scratched raw, and there was something wrong with his shoulder, his left arm sitting lower than his right… except suddenly she wasn’t cataloging his contusions anymore. In the black light, his neck glowed with iridescent tattoos, and not for the first time, she wondered how far down his body they went. She suspected he had two full sleeves, but whenever she’d seen him, he’d always been in long-sleeved shirts, so she’d never seen more than his inked-up wrists.
Is there ink on his pecs? she wondered. Covering his chest muscles, fanning out to his powerful arms?
What about… lower.
Even though she didn’t want to, she imagined him stretched out on a table, the Black Dagger Brother Vishous leaning over his abdominals, the high-pitched whirring of a tattoo gun—
Nalla stiffened as she met his eyes for a second time, and when his dark brows lowered, she stood her ground and refused to look away. He was just like Mharta, living in his own world, expecting everyone to fit into it on his terms. But screw him. She had every right to be at this godforsaken club—
“Bitty should be here soon.”
Nalla forced herself to focus on Lyric. “Yes. Please.”
What the hell was she saying.
A drink was offered to her by a human waitress in a white towel and a pair of high heels, and she took it because it gave her something to do with her hands. A sniff told her there was vodka involved and some kind of fruit. She took a test sip and grimaced.
When she glanced back to the fire exit, Nate was looking out over the crowd, his eyes narrowed as if he were searching for something, but his expression disinterested like he didn’t expect to find it. Which was a contradiction. Then again, that was him. A quiet male whose every move screamed aggression. A loner who fought for the species, even though he didn’t seem connected to anybody or anything. A deadly warrior who trained like he still had things to learn.
His lean face was interesting rather than handsome, the hollows of his cheeks making his jaw seem extra prominent, those brows slashing across the tops of his deep eye sockets, his lips tight with the kind of disapproval that suggested at least he agreed with her opinion on Bathe.
And even as Shuli ordered a round for everyone, Nate stayed where he was on the outside of the sunken area, a watcher, not a participant.
Or more like a disapprovi-ant.
“I’m really glad you came out, Nalla. We never see you anymore.”
Lyric sat forward, so earnest, so lovely. And all Nalla could do was smile and nod as the music droned on.
Goddamn, she never should have come.
CHAPTER SIX
Not with a ten-foot pole. Nope. I like my balls where they are, thank you very much.”
In spite of the thump-bump-pump of the music, Nate overheard the pronouncement, but he didn’t bother deciphering which of the males seated on the couches below him was doing the talking. Standing over the sunken sectionals, draped in the dense black-blue lighting, his eyes were fixed across the VIP room to the opposite corner.
For one, because it was better than noticing that female—what the hell was she doing here, anyway? For another, the group of humans who were seated to the immediate right of the velvet-roped entrance was the reason he’d come.
Fun fact? He really didn’t want Nalla anywhere near them. Not that she was his business.
“You’re saying she’s not hot,” someone else said.
“Oh, she’s hot. Like, the slow-burn hot, the one you don’t notice first, but that’s got hidden talents, if you know what I mean.”
He continued to ignore the conversation, his focus locked and loaded on the silk-suited men who were lounging back like they owned Caldwell. No women with them, but that was a “yet” kind of thing. They were here for sex, scanning the room with restless, slicing stares, their bodies staying on those white leather sofas while their libidos roamed what he’d heard them call the buffet of bitches.
Classy. Real fucking classy.
Nate knew the men by name. Knew also that the one in the middle, who was too old to be in a place like this, surrounded by men fifteen years younger than him, was the one in charge.
It might be Shuli’s birthday, but Nate was here because he knew that every Thursday night, Mickey Trix’s uncle was in residence at this club: This was where Uncle, as everybody called him whether they were relatives or not, preemptively started the weekends, running his empire while he caught blow jobs from women half his age, his ego pretending like his biological clock wasn’t ticking—
“I’d do her.”
“Ha! You want to be on the run for the rest of your life? Her fucking father will kill you. Do you know who her—”
“Yeah, I know. And what if I was interested in mating?”
Chuckling followed, the we-share-a-secret kind. “You’re a slut. If you ever get mated, the world comes to an end.”
Nate glanced down. The three males in front of him were Shuli’s buddies, all aristocrats who had that same kind of money, those same kind of clothes, and those flashy watches and exotic cars. They were the set of partiers who referred to sunglasses as sunnies, who drank the liquor that was above the top shelf, and who dated human models before they mated the females their sires picked out just so they could stay in the will.
“You wouldn’t have the balls to try her.”
“I sure as shit would—”
“I would.”
One of the males turned around and looked up at Nate. “How ’bout you? You in?” Then the guy slapped the thigh of the high roller next to him. “He’s in. So come on, let’s see who has the cajones to ask her out.”
“What do we win?”
“What do you think,” the aristocrat drawled as he looked Nalla up and down. “If she dressed right, she’d be a bitcoin. She’s the prize.”
Nate’s molars gritted as he shifted his attention back to the “prize.” Nalla was sitting next to Rhamp’s sister, a total mismatch in those jeans and that parka. Then again, she never went to places like Bathe. And no, he didn’t agree with how she was being discussed, but he’d heard it before. Everybody had heard it before: Zsadist was going to kill anyone who got too close to his little girl.
So leave her the fuck alone.
It was good advice. And something he didn’t need to be reminded of.
Lowering his lids, he tried to make like he wasn’t staring. She’d already caught him twice—both out in front and in here—and given the way she’d just glared back at him, he had to approve of how much she obviously didn’t like him.
He so approved of her opinion.
So no, he absolutely wasn’t rememorizing everything about her, from the way her hair was pulled back into a ponytail, the blond, red, and auburn ends disappearing over her shoulder, a halo of loose curls framing her face… to how her features were strong ones, just like her father’s, especially her mouth. Her coloring was all Z’s, too, those yellow eyes like a cat’s in sunlight, her skin smooth and unmarked by freckles or moles.
She was going to leave in a matter of moments, he decided. Bolt the fuck out of here like she was being chased: Her hands alternated between being locked on her knees and rubbing up and down her thighs like she was having to force herself to stay in place. As she checked her watch again, he wondered what she was waiting for.
Except again that, like whatever dumbass dick-posturing was going on in front of him, was not his business.
Taking out his burner phone, he fired up a photograph he’d snapped earlier, and—
“Yeah, I’m totally in,” one of the males said. Then he motioned at Nate. “Tall, dark, and tatted is in. You’re up for it, too? Good. Let’s settle this, boys.”
Nate looked up from his cell and frowned at all the high-fiving.
Then he leaned down and clamped a hold on the shoulder pad of the loose-lipped jack-off who’d volunteered him for whatever game they were playing. The guy jumped like he’d been goosed in the ass, and as a set of pale eyes met Nate’s, he bared his fangs at the aristocrat.
“Don’t you ever speak for me again. Are we clear.”
With a shift of his torso, he made it so that his leather jacket fell open and the forty he had holstered under his arm caught the black light. The second the message was received was obvious as those glymera peepers peeled wide.
“Um, yeah. Cool—”
Shuli cut through the apology, raising up from his seat across the way like he wanted a fistfight. “Will you fucking relax, and stop waving that fucking gun around.”
“That’s up to him, not me,” Nate shot back.
The aristocrat between them put both hands in the air, stickup style. “No, no, it’s good, Shuli. It was my bad. I’m sorry.”
Nate straightened and went back to his burner phone, following through with a text under the image of Mickey Trix, who he’d gutted like a deer and left for dead in the ring of trees by his log cabin.
Then he hit send and stared across the VIP section.
Over by the entrance, the receiving cell was obviously on vibrate, as Uncle abruptly dipped a hand into his slick suit jacket and took out a device. He was talking to somebody as he glanced at the screen, and his mouth immediately stopped moving as he checked what had been sent.
The mobster stiffened, his hand whipping out in an STFU to the guy next to him. Then came the rager. Richard Montiere started yelling at everyone sitting around him, jabbing his finger into the men’s faces, snarling so that his bulldog-ugly face got even uglier. And just like the aristocrat’s submission, all kinds of palms went up with wasn’t-me, nope, nuttin’-boss.
Interesting. Unless all those wise guys, including Uncle, had Oscar-worthy acting skills, Mickey hadn’t been sent by the bosses.
That was all he needed to know.
With one last look at the female he never, ever wanted to see again, Nate turned to the fire door—
Rahvyn is not coming back to you. She was mated thirty fucking years ago, okay? And she was never yours to begin with.
“Fuck you, Shuli,” he muttered.
Punching the release bar, he was slapped in the face with the cold, but he liked the sizzle in his pores and the fresh-ish air: However bad Caldwell’s back alleys smelled, it was better than the human sweat stew in the club, and God, he hated the stink of alcohol in his nose.
As the steel panel slammed shut behind him and cut off most of the music, he sent his instincts down both directions of the alley, even though he didn’t expect to catch the sweet roadkill bouquet of the enemy. The address at Bathe was a little too good for lessers. The field of combat had always been farther west, where the buildings were shitty and empty, the humans less likely to have cell phones, and the city’s monitoring project, with all those fucking cameras, had long ago petered out.
The door opened behind him. “Where the hell are you going.”
He glanced over his shoulder at the non-question. Shuli was leaning out of the club, and the male’s expression was as dirty as his white suit, stains of disgust, anger, and frustration marking up all that handsome.
“I told the Brothers we’d be down here.” Shuli pointed to his loafers. “They’re gonna want to talk to you after that shit you pulled in the middle of Market Street.”
Later, Nate would wonder why he went back over to the guy.
Searching his friend’s face, he remembered where they had started. He didn’t often go into his memory banks as there was nothing good in them, and sure enough, mental images of those early nights after his transition, hammering nails and painting the garage at Luchas House with Shuli, made his chest feel tight.
Especially when he thought about what had happened to make him never, ever go back to that farmhouse again.
“Let me go, Shuli,” he said softly. “Just stop trying, okay? Consider it a birthday present to yourself.”
For the briefest of moments, Shuli’s face changed, the young male he had once been returning. Gone was the Chad-about-town with the swagger and the bitches and the money. In his place? The kid who had just made it through his own change, and was fumbling his way through all kinds of firsts with the kind of discombobulation that made you look for friends. Even in places you shouldn’t.
“Yeah,” came the rough reply. “I’ll do that.”
Nate nodded once. “Happy birthday.”
He did not look back as he strode off, the sense that he was jettisoning a weight long held making him feel buoyant to the point of being too light in his boots—
He forgot all that emotional bullshit as Evan Montiere, the other nephew who’d trespassed onto his property, stumbled across the head of the alley like he’d been punched in the gut.
Or had maybe witnessed something that had made him sick to his fucking stomach.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Back out in the suburbs, underground, Wrath had something he needed to do before he left, and it was a solo mission. Trying to focus on Beth’s directions, stressed like he always got when the war and all the shit that came with it crept into his private time with his Queen, he’d left her bedroom—their bedroom—and thought he knew where he was going. It shouldn’t have been that hard. The layout of the Brotherhood’s private quarters was just like an old-fashioned wagon wheel, spokes of corridors fanning out from a common area in the center to each of the satellite groups of a family’s rooms, the whole also connected by a long, circular track that formed an outer rim.
Fucking simple. Except somehow, he got turned around and ended up in the central open area.
It was the first time he had become disorientated in his blindness in forever, and even with George at his side, and the handle of the harness squarely against his dagger palm, he was suddenly floating untethered through the galaxy… and never shall return.
“Fuck,” he whispered.
Back before he’d gone completely blind, he’d had a little sight: Hazy, blurry, indistinct, foggy, furry, only blinks. But at least he’d had some shapes and shadows, could tell the difference between a hallway and a corner, could watch out for stairs and obstacles in his way.
Could fight the enemy downtown in the field.
By the time the blindness had come fully, all those places, like the mansion, the Audience House, and the Tomb, had been committed to a permanent visual map in his mind, one so carefully rendered by repetition and the accuracy of a powerful memory that the information his eyes fed him and what he recalled melded together, becoming a kind of sight. And as maps required a compass for orientation, so he’d had his four points: his hearing, his sense of smell, the sensations of his body’s movement… and what became his one true north.
That precise recollection of his.
It had all been such a seamless integration into function that, with his characteristic arrogance, he’d assumed the competence was as innate to him as the genetic weakness in his retinas, a compensation for what he’d lost unfairly. Now he saw it for what it really was.
Just a familiar landscape.
And at the moment, he was lost in a future that to everybody else was just the present.
As his shoulder banged into something—doorjamb? whatever it was, it had no give and was next to a hole—he threw out a hand. Investigating with his fingertips, he found that yup, it was the molding around a door, and as he measured all kinds of depth and contours, shit was not like what it had been at the mansion, nothing ornate and hand-carved, curving or decorative. This was simple, machine-wrought, commercial-grade pine, a basic highlighter around a rectangle worthy only of a hasty step-through.
