It took all of a few seconds. All brawn and no brains, the doorman refused to look away, yet was no match in a battle of wills and visibly quelled, until all defiance had fled him. “Of course, sir,” he conceded, shuffling back like a whipped dog with his tail between his legs. “Welcome.”
I walked past without sparing the weak-minded fool a second glance, into the warehouse’s interior. It was massive, three stories tall, with catwalks running along the second and third that had been converted into frames for the speakers and lighting. Amidst the gaggle of perilously thin bodies dancing around a performing DJ, a mass of dusty old crates and plywood lengths had been fitted together to serve as a makeshift bar. Old and well-used tables and chairs were haphazardly scattered around, the sort you might find at a cheap DIY store sale and were likely to collapse the moment you started to get comfortable.
The atmosphere practically buzzed with energy and sexual tension.
I circled the floor twice, weaving in and out amongst the bodies, taking the time to admire some of the choicer morsels as I went, their tight young bodies writhing to whatever beat pulsed through the sound system, adorned in as few garments as possible, hearts racing, blood pulsing. It had me practically salivating at the thought of plunging my fangs into their milky-white necks.
Then I forget all the rest, my eyes locked on a stark and desolate beauty, seated on the edge of the crowd. Detached and alone in a sea of life.
The first glimpse of her had me at first doubting my own eyes. She certainly didn’t have the look of someone you’d usually find frequenting a shithole like this.
Dressed in jeans and a red long-sleeved turtleneck, there was nothing showy or made up about her. The beauty was all her own. And she was beautiful, with soft, delicate features and diamond blue eyes framed by long flowing curls, dark and lustrous as ravens’ wings. But there was more. Behind that girl-next-door exterior. An edge. A stiffness. A haunted tension that never should belong in one so young.
Hmm... interesting. Resisting the impulse to walk straight over to her, I detoured over to the bar and ordered a drink. All the while keeping one eye fixed on the girl at the table.
At its heart, the hunt was nothing more than a game. It could be played with subtlety or like a bull in a china shop. The latter was easier, but far less satisfying, or fun. And where would we be without a little fun now and then?
“That’ll be a tenner, mate.”
I glanced back. The bartender, a greasy guy with enough oil in his hair for it to shimmer and dance with colour beneath the laser lights, stood over me, an impatient look on his face and a clear drink in a dirty plastic cup waited on the bar.
I looked from him to the drink, then back to him. “It’s half empty.”
“Too bad, that’s all we have.” He makes no effort to hide the kegs and bottles stacked behind the bar. “Don’t like it? Fine, piss off. But you still gotta pay.”
“Really?”
“Yea, really-” I looked him in the eye and the words die in his throat. “Well, um... of course, I can set up a slate for you. Yes, I’ll get a slate put in your name, Mr... oh it doesn’t matter, I’ll just put down my name, no problem...” He turned and scurried off out of my sight.
“Pathetic.”
Not bothering to watch his retreat, I reached into my jacket and took the hip flask out of the inside pocket. Careful to ensure no one was watching, I unscrewed the lid and poured a measure of the crimson contents into the cup.
Shoving the flask back into its hideaway, I turned back to watch the girl, a small grin tugging at the corner of my mouth, revealing the hint of an ivory fang.
She was very, very lovely...
“Is this seat taken?”
She whirled around, eyes widening at the sight of me looming over her. I had to force back my toothy grin. She looked like a scared little rabbit. A rabbit with the most beautiful eyes I’d ever seen.
“Um, I suppose so.” Her voice trembled, but I’d already pulled the seat back and had made myself comfortable. She looked away quickly, her heart already racing, those big blue eyes flitting back and forth, desperate for something, anything, to look at other than me. Good, I’m already affecting her. This may just be easier than I thought. A few more little pushes and this delicate little rabbit will be all mine.
And she would be mine.
“I’m Lucian,” I said, taking a sip of my drink, just slow enough for her eyes to focus on my mouth.
I could practically feel her heart fluttering as her eyes lingered just that moment too long. Then she pulled herself together and hurriedly looked away. “Kate.”
“Beautiful.” I smiled. “Such a beautiful name for such a beautiful girl. But a beauty by any other name would be no less exquisite.” I extended my hand.
Uncertain, her eyes moved from my hand to my face, back down to my hand, then back to the sea of bodies rippling around us.
“Would you prefer come here often?” I dropped my hand. “How about what’s a nice girl like you doing in a dive like this?”
“Is that the best you’ve got?” She said it without looking, but the tension in her voice betrayed her. She was interested, and she was overcompensating to try and resist my charms.
“Oh, my dear girl, you have no idea.” This was going to be easier than I thought. “You’re not waiting for anyone, by any chance, are you? I’d hate to interrupt.”
Her head whipped around; eyes suddenly bright. “What makes you think I’m-”
“Such beauty should never be unaccompanied,” I smirked across my drink at her before making a show of looking past her. “And by the way you keep watching all these people, I’d say you’re looking for someone.”
Kate visibly relaxed. “What sharp little eyes you’ve got.”
“I have my talents, just wait till you get to my teeth.” She blushed and dropped her eyes to the table. “So,” I pressed, “who’s the lucky fellow?”
“It’s just a friend.”
“A friend?”
“Yes.” She sipped her otherwise untouched drink. A Henry, judging by the strong smell of citrus. “She’s been badgering me all week to come to this party and barely ten minutes after we get through the door, she disappears.”
She was lying.
She had a talent for deception, for sure. Her story was simple and plausible, her delivery perfect. If I had been anyone else, she might very well have pulled the wool over my eyes. But she could not lie to me. I could tell, I could always tell.
Nevertheless, I played along. “Good friends are hard to come by. Would you care for some company till she gets back?”
“N-no, it’s fine.” She drained her drink. “I saw her going off with some guy a little while ago. No doubt she’ll have him balls deep by now and will have completely forgotten about me. So, I’ll be leaving soon.”
“For home?”
“Yes.”
“Is it far?”
“Far enough.”
“Do you drive?”
She scowled. “I don’t think that’s any of your business.”
Her anger only inflamed my amusement and desire. There was some fire in my little rabbit after all. “The city’s no safe place for a girl all alone. If you’re not driving, I wouldn’t dream of letting you walk home all alone. Anything could happen.”
At my words, Kate sucked in a breath. Suddenly, she was as white as a sheet.
“No, thank you. I’ll be fine.” She pushed back from the table, grabbing her clutch as she got to her feet. “Nice to meet you, Mr Lucian.” Then she was gone into the crowd.
I watched her go, unable to resist admiring the way her jeans hugged the curves of her buttocks as she sashayed through the bodies. I couldn’t wait to sink my fangs into that luscious derrière. “The pleasure, I’m sure, will be all mine.”
The body lay on the cold steel table for me to identify. A white sheet covered him, but it had been pulled back to below his chin, but just above the red smile cut from ear to ear.
The face was a ruin. Once so lean and handsome, the thing before me is black and blue and swollen with cuts and bruises. More a haunch of rotten and beaten meat than a man. And the blood, so much blood.
I couldn’t bear to look. He was unrecognisable, yet I knew. I knew this was him. I knew this was David.
I knew this was my brother.
I forced myself not to run as unshed tears burned the corners of my eyes.
Anything can happen. Yea, I suppose he was right about that. There were monsters out there, monsters who’d stolen the only person I had left.
I walked without thinking, letting my feet lead me wherever. Anywhere. I didn’t care, I just needed to keep walking. Until...
Until what? They found me? I thought they’d find me in that shithole. They’d found David there, or at least that’s what the police thought. Evidence had been lacking. Witnesses unwilling to come forward.
They didn’t care. No one cared about one dead boy raped and butchered in a gutter.
But I cared.
He was my brother, and I wanted the bastards who did that to him.
But instead, I’d found him. Or rather, he’d found me. Lucian.
Just the memory of him made my belly flutter.
There was something off about him. I just couldn’t put my finger on it. He was just too suave, in that old-fashioned, debonair, Jane Austen and Mr Darcy sort of way. From the moment he opened his mouth, he had just exuded charm. And that face, all sharp lines and smooth planes, he was a work of art carved from pristine white marble with black pearl eyes glinting out from beneath tumbles of thick jet-black hair just that bit too long. It begged for a hand to run through it. He was the very embodiment of dark and dangero-
I froze, a cold cascade sloshing down my spine. What was that?
“Hey babe, you lost?” a man’s voice, deep and guttural, called from behind me, close. Very close.
Swallowing, I turned and found myself surrounded.
“A hot little dish like you must be pretty stupid to be walking around this neighbourhood all alone,” the body that came with the voice was immense, a big thuggish brute with a spider’s web tattooed on his bald head. “You a ho looking for work?” The others all gave him space as he stepped forward, like mangy dogs backing from the alpha. “Well, we don’t pay for cunt, ho, ya hear me? We fuck it. Ya hear that boys, we fuck it till it’s broke!”
They all began to snigger and lick their lips at that, and my hand dropped to my clutch, its familiar weight giving me strength.
The black guy on my left stepped forward, grinning with a set of large, pure white teeth. “Where’s your pimp ho? Little bitches shouldn’t wander the streets all alone. Anything could have happened...” He stepped in close, one hand brushing over my shoulders to scoop up my hair. He brought it up to his nose and sniffed, making me shiver with revulsion. “Good thing we found you.”
“Yeah, anything coulda' happened.” The giant grinned as the two to my right closed the gap. “Don’t worry, you’re safe now. This is our neighbourhood.” I’d been snared like a mouse in a trap.
It was them. I knew it. I couldn’t explain how, but I just knew.
“And nothing happens on your streets without your say so.” My voice came out as cool as ice and I had to keep my fist clenched around my clutch to keep from shaking.
“Ya could say that yea.”
“Did you do it?” I knew this beast killed David, but I needed to hear it. Hear him say it, confess.
“Do wha?”
I saw red. How could he not know? The black guy was tall. Much taller than I. And the way he was trying to cover my back to keep me from running away left him completely open so that when I jammed my elbow back, it hit the one place it would do the most damage.
His grunt caught them all off-guard. They’d expected me to run, to plead and beg. Never to attack. So they were too late to stop my hand as it slipped into my clutch.
They all stepped back when I pulled out the Browning Hi-Power Mark I.
It had been my father’s old service pistol. He’d carried it through his national service. I’d found it buried amongst his things whilst I was clearing out their house after their funeral. I’d kept it along with a few other memento’s and forgotten all about it until tonight.
“Two months ago!” I snapped, raising the pistol so the business end pointed straight for the giant’s torso. “A boy was murdered here! Did you do it?”
“You talking crazy girl!” one of the men shouted, but I didn’t look at him. My eyes were set on the giant. He looked too calm, like he didn’t care, but his eyes... They burned with fury. I had drawn a gun on him and that enraged him. How dare I; this was his neighbourhood, his street, and I had the nerve to pull a piece. Good, let the bastard squirm. He should know what it felt like. He’d made David suffer in the worst possible ways. Well, I would make him pay. For my brother.
“What makes you think we had anything to do with it?” another voice shouted. The black guy, I guessed. Good, none of his friends were coming to help him. He was alone, and he didn’t like it.
“It happened here in your neighbourhood.”
“Bitch, please! That was talk. Just talk. We had nothing to do with it.”
“Yea, po-po would have been all over us.”
“Bullshit!” I spat it out, all ice and fire. They did it. I knew they did. They murdered my brother!
“Yea, it’s bullshit, sweetheart,” the giant growled.
“You killed him?”
“Yea. Little cunt wouldn’t shut his fucking mouth, so I opened his throat. Whatcha gonna do about it? Shoot me?”
“Yeah.”
“Bitch, you ain't got the minerals.” He laughed, a deep grizzled laugh that sent ice straight through my belly. “Go on then, blow me away in cold blood. They’ll stick a mad ho like you in some dyke slam to eat fanny for twenty years. Bet you’d like that, wouldn’t you, all the pussy you can eat? They’ll be lining up to get a piece of you. So, go ahead if you’re serious, shoot me, shoot me, shoot-”
I pulled the trigger.
I had expected a bang, for the Browning to kick back as they did in the movies. But all that came out was a click. A dull metallic click, no louder than a whisper, but at that moment it bellowed like a clap of thunder.
Ice rushed through my veins. My eyes dropped to the pistol, then back up to the giant, and I tried again. And again.
Nothing.
He smiled, a cruel, twisted thing, like barbed wire wound into knots across his face. “Works better with the safety off.”
He grabbed the Browning, his immense paw encompassing the barrel, and wrenched it out of my hand.
I didn’t have time to scream. One moment I’d been standing there, the next I’d been pressed up against a wall, hard enough to drive the breath from my lungs, with one of them driving his arms against my neck while the others pawed at my clothes.
Panic and bile leapt into my throat. Gasping, fighting for breath, I tried to push the arm away, but the giant thwarted my efforts and pinned my arms above my head. He applied just enough pressure for my joints to scream in protest, and for a single heart-stopping moment, I thought he might break both my arms.
No, this can’t be happening. Hot, angry tears burned my eyes, yet I fought the pain that seared up my arms and lashed out. My knee hit something soft, and one of them grunted and cursed for his balls. I would have laughed, but I was too swamped with the instinctive need to flee, to escape, to make that desperate break for it.
The fight left me, however, when a titanic force slammed into my stomach. I went limp, the pain enough that I would have doubled over, but the restraining arm held me where I was.
“Hold still, you little bitch,” a voice hissed. “The more you resist, the worse this gets for you.”
A roll of duct tape appeared, and a hand wound the binding round and round my wrists. To the point all circulation was cut off and my fingers began to tingle.
The giant stepped in to do
minate my view, my father’s Browning raised and pointed at my face. “Go on, look. Look down the barrel, you see the bullet?”
I could. The muzzle was black, much too dark to see down. But I could see the bullet well enough all the same.
“Answer me, can you see it?”
“Yes.” And so much more.
I could smell the gunpowder filling my nostrils in thick grey clouds, acrid and pungent against the night air. I heard the bang of the shot, saw my head snap back, my face a ruin. And red, so much red. Red smoke, red pulp and bone, a red cloud, and red blood everywhere.
“Good, now open wide. I want you to suck it. Come on, suck it.”
A part of me tried to be brave, screamed for me to tell them to go to hell and then shut my mouth tight. But the fear pulsed through me, making me shake, and hot tears rolled down my cheeks as, bit by bit, my mouth opened.
“Yeah, good girl. Your brother was an obedient bitch, too. I fucked him bloody, then handed him round to the rest of the boys, and when they were done, I cut his throat. If he hadn’t been such a good little whore, I’d have cut his dick off and fed it to him. And if you try to run, I’ll cut your tits off and-”
A deep growl rumbled through the night.
“What the fuck?” The giant lurched back and through the tears, I saw a dog coming towards us. A very big dog. All black and shaggy, like a Game of Thrones Direwolf, only not quite so cute and cuddly.
And I was almost positive it was looking at me. Then it dipped its head, ears pricked, and fur raised, and growled another warning. It reverberated off the brick walls and shivered through flesh and bone.
“What’s that?” one man asked, fear evident in his voice as he sized up the canine.
“Just a mutt,” the giant shrugged, surveying the dog warily before turning his icy glare back to me. I shrunk under his gaze. “What, you’d pass up this fine piece of ass just because a mangy stray barks at ya a little.”
“Well, that’s a pretty big fucking stray, mate. Jesus, look at those teeth...”
The dog snapped a warning and the black guy turned and ran, tripping and stumbling over his own feet as he went.
Alpha Men of the Otherworld Page 6