Keenan merely grunted and took another huge bite.
They sat in companionable silence until the pizza was gone, and they’d both knocked back a few more fingers of scotch. Keenan finally turned to look at her.
“I want to go with you and Bast tonight, wherever it is you are going.”
It was Azar’s turn to sigh. She knew that one was coming. He was getting all macho on her, beating his chest in the direction of another alpha male and doing everything short of peeing on her leg to mark his territory.
“I’m sorry to disappoint you, but you can’t. If the other Djinn even get even a whiff that you might know more than you should, well, it won’t just be Bast and I with our heads on the chopping block. That’s not a metaphor either. They literally cut off your head.” She downed the rest of her drink. She couldn’t stress the danger of his knowledge enough. She wasn’t even one hundred percent certain that the Djinn couldn’t read minds.
A lot of the races kept their secrets to themselves. They weren’t exactly a trusting bunch, and it was better to have an ace up your sleeve than to be an honest dead man. She said as much to Keenan.
His face turned red and his fist slammed down on the coffee table, making glasses and pizza crusts jump into the air.
“I hate this. This guy is a lunatic and you're going around, putting yourself in harm’s way and I can’t do a thing about it. Remember that girl from last night? Well she died this morning, in horrible pain that could barely be masked by morphine. They had to put her into a coma to give her some relief.” He ran his hand through his already messy hair, and Azar guessed he’d done that very gesture quite a few times today.
She felt a rush of sadness at the girl’s death, and an overwhelming sense of guilt followed right behind. Tears blurred her eyes and she blinked rapidly to clear them. Keenan looked over at her, and his face quickly turned from anger to guilt. Reaching over, he pulled her into the crook of his arm, his warmth chasing away the chill that had seeped into her body. A tear leaked from the corner of her eye and fell onto his stretched cotton shirt.
“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have told you like that,” he murmured as he kissed the top of her head.
“I should have reacted quicker. I just stood there, wasting precious seconds staring at her like an idiot, and maybe that could have been the difference between life and death. Now an innocent girl is dead and I may have been able to prevent it.” She sniffed. All she could think about was the girl’s wild blue eyes and her cries of pain.
Keenan squeezed her tighter to his body and rubbed her back. “You couldn’t have known. It isn’t your fault; it’s the fault of that monster. But I promise you Azar; we will get him and make him pay for what he did to those girls.”
She tilted her face up so their lips were only inches apart. She held her breath as he leaned closer, gently touching his lips to hers. But Azar didn’t want gentle. She wanted to exorcise all the anger and fear in her body with hot, mindless sex. She deepened their kiss and pressed her body towards his. His hands slid down her back to her butt and he pulled her onto his lap. Her hands were under his shirt and running over the hard muscles of his chest in an instant. Keenan had somehow managed to get her tank top off, brushing the pads of his thumbs across her silk covered nipples. She was reaching for the top button of his jeans when there was a knock at the door.
“You have to be shitting me,” Azar swore.
Keenan also let out a few choice words that were usually only heard in a men’s locker room. They both knew who it was, and it just added to Keenan’s already bad mood. Azar was frustrated and grumpy as well, but deep down inside, a little part of her leapt with joy at the thought of seeing Bast again. Not that she’d ever admit it, even under threat of death.
Azar wiggled her way off Keenan’s lap and pulled her shirt back over her head as she shuffled to the door. She looked out through the peep-hole just to be sure and could see Bast standing there, dressed all in black and looking like a golden eyed devil. The corners of his mouth were slightly turned up as if he knew a really good secret and he wasn’t going to tell. She pulled open the door, one hand on her hip.
“Good evening, Azar. I hope I’m not interrupting anything?” She would bet her record collection that Bast knew exactly what he was interrupting.
She just raised her eyebrows and stood aside to let him in. Keenan was standing when they got back to the living room.
“Ah, Detective Reilly, nice to see you again.” Bast’s tone insinuated he would rather have poked bamboo under his fingernails than spend another minute in Keenan’s company.
“If you two can restrain yourselves for fifteen minutes, I’m going to have a quick shower and then I'll be ready to go.” Keenan merely stared daggers at Bast, but Bast wore the same self-confident expression that seemed to be permanently etched onto his face.
“I’m going anyway,” Keenan muttered and walked towards her. He wrapped his arms around her back and kissed her possessively.
He kissed her with such fiery passion, that she wasn't sure it hadn’t somehow branded his name across her ass. He broke off the kiss and shot one more ominous glare across at Bast. Then he left, slamming the door on the way out.
She could only shake her head. She would never understand men. Keenan wasn’t stupid, he could feel the connection between her and Bast. It was a tension in the air that was thick enough to choke a horse. But the fact was, despite what she said to Bast last night, she and Keenan had indulged in one single, but still pretty amazing, hate-fuck, but that didn’t give him rights. She liked him, though. She could tell under that under all that suffocating bravado was a man who cared. He cared about lives, and protecting the innocent, and putting bad guys behind bars. It was like he was designed to test her.
She motioned for Bast to sit. “Make yourself comfortable.” She walked into the bathroom and slammed the door shut, frustrated.
Azar emerged thirty minutes later, dressed in her usual outfit of black skinny leg jeans, combat boots, and a black tank. She also threw on a leather jacket in deference to the cold, not that she actually got cold or hot, but it paid to keep up appearances.
“I hope this will do for wherever we are going, because there is no way I’m going to put back on the skank couture. I’m actually going to shove it down the garbage chute as soon as I buy trash bags. Anyway, most of it melted last night when I was putting out the fire,” she said nonchalantly, but in truth it hurt too much to think of the girl who was beneath the fire.
Bast looked her over, his golden eyes darkening and his tongue darted out across his bottom lip. It made her feel naked. And hot. Bast cleared his throat. “I think that will do very nicely. We should go.”
Bast looked flustered, and she smiled to herself. It was nice, and slightly terrifying, to know that she wasn’t the only one who turned into mush. She grabbed her phone and ID and stuffed them in her back pocket and motioned Bast out the door.
She regretted forgoing the stairs in lieu of the elevator almost instantly. The sexual tension in the small metal box could have suffocated a fish. She could practically see the pheromones pouring off Bast’s skin. She forced herself to focus; New York was about to burn to the ground and all she could think about was getting laid against the elevator wall. She'd gotten worse than a hormone riddled teenage boy.
They reached the front of her apartment block and she saw Bast’s Maserati double parked on the street. She drooled, not even caring if she looked ridiculous. Bast held the passenger door open for her and she slid into the plush leather seat. Even his car oozed sex. It was a sleek charcoal grey and smelled of the indescribable aroma of Bast.
“So, where are we off to tonight? Not another Ghul fetish club, I hope? I don’t think I could deal with more naked Ghul’s,” Azar asked warily. The thought of Lila still left a sour taste in her mouth.
Bast was quickly around the other side of the car and slid into the driver’s seat. “No. Lila will get the word out to the rest of the Ghul. We are goi
ng to visit a Shaitan.”
“What!” Azar’s head whipped towards Bast and her hands banged down against the dashboard.
In her shock she forgot to moderate her strength and the airbag sprung out of the dash and pinned her back against the passenger seat. It was lucky that she was tall otherwise it would have pounded her square in the face. As it was, she was fairly sure her collarbone would be sore for a couple of days.
Bast sighed. “And now we are going to have to take your car.”
Chapter 7
An hour of bad traffic later she parked her Shelby in an underground parking complex in Hoboken, New Jersey. It figured that the Shaitan would end up in New Jersey. They were in the seedier part at the back of Hoboken, near the projects on Jackson and Fourth, and Azar was really worried about her car. If anything happened to it, she was going to toast Bast until he bought her a new one, in mint condition. Bast guided her across the street and around the corner and she could feel the vibrations of the heavy metal music beneath her feet. Bast had filled her in on the details of the Shaitan on the way over.
The club they were going to was called The Onyx; a metalcore club owned by a half-Shaitan/half human Djinn. Azar tried not to be nervous. Hadn’t she just given the speech to Keenan about all Djinn having the right to choose to be good or bad?
But the Shaitan were bad news. There was a reason that modern Christian religions had based their Satan on the Shaitan. They were cruel and twisted, demons in their truest form. They fed on the energy created by negative emotions. Fear and terror were the most potent, but they could also feed on anger, envy and malice. Azar didn't exactly know how they fed on negative energy. Deep down, she really didn't want to know. Needless to say, she pitied the poor woman who had sired the half-Shaitan.
Bast was talking to the bouncer at the door, and the man was shaking his head. Bast was making passive hand gestures and the bouncer had his head cocked, listening to someone speaking in his earpiece. Another man appeared in the doorway and said something to Bast. Azar wished she could hear the conversation over the thumping bass notes drifting out the front door. The new guy gave her a hard look before nodding and motioning them in.
Bast grabbed her elbow firmly and followed the man through the entrance doors, into the club. The man was dressed the same way as the bouncer out front; black cargo pants, a tight black t-shirt, heavy lace up combat boots and a state of the art wireless transmitters in his ear. The crowds in the club parted for them as they moved through the main room.
The décor couldn’t have been more different from the Blue Smoke Club. The only lighting in the room was above the bar, except for the strobe lights that flickered around the dance floor from the stage. The patrons were mostly dressed in black, heavy eyeliner rimming they eyes of every girl and more than a few of the guys. Every single one of them was throwing their head around so vigorously that Azar was surprised they didn't all go home with whiplash.
The band up the front of the dance area were sweating and jumping around on stage, while the lead singer screamed incoherently into the microphone. The whole atmosphere was barely contained angst in black lace. The Onyx was obviously a popular place, it was wall to wall bodies. Azar was glad that Burt, the Fire Marshall, wasn’t here because he’d be having a heart attack. The club was definitely over-capacity.
The bouncer led them out the back of the main room, down a corridor that was painted completely black except for a small red door right at the end. It definitely felt ominous, or that may have been the residual effects of the Shaitan who owned the place. The bouncer knocked on the red door. Getting whatever answer he needed on the other side, he motioned them through and shut the door gently behind them.
They stood in front of a desk occupied by a man dressed completely in black leather. His head was down as he studied a sheet of paper on his desk intently, ignoring the other occupants of the room completely. Whatever, it gave her more time to stare. Although all she could see was messy black hair that stuck out at odd angles from his scalp.
The man, er Shaitan, flexed incredibly broad shoulders and dropped his pen with a sigh. He uncurled his body as he stood and Azar noted that his height easily matched that of Bast's. However it was the fact that every available inch of skin below his chin was covered in tattoos that really shocked her.
Two flaming skulls laughed hauntingly on either side of his neck, intricate patterns ringed his biceps and forearms and a dagger thrust through a heart peaked out from the gap in his laced black leather vest. They were just the ones she could pick out without staring too intently. Tattoos ran into more tattoos until he looked like a rather scary story book. The thin slice of skin that showed between the bottom of his vest and the top of his tight leather pants also had ink adorning it, though she couldn't make out the pattern. Maybe he really did have every inch of skin tattooed. She thought about asking, but then remembered the old saying. Curiosity killed the Ifrit.
When Azar finally drew her eyes away from the man's hip bones, she realized that he was watching her just as intently. He was as dark as Bast was golden. His face held an angular jaw and pale skin, a dark five o'clock shadow, and two black, dead eyes that looked as if they could see her soul. She didn’t like the feeling. The Shaitan came around the desk to stand in front of them.
“What do you want, Bast? I’m too busy to play games with you tonight. Who’s the Ifrit?” He cut his dark eyes to her and she felt them appraise every inch of her body. She fought to control a shiver. She steeled her spine and raised her chin. She wasn’t a princess who needed rescuing. And she definitely didn’t need a man to talk for her. She opened her mouth before logical thought had a chance to step in.
“My name is Azar, and you are?” She put out her hand against her screaming sense of self preservation. The Shaitan gave her a mirthless smile and took it, gripping it almost painfully.
“Donovan. I don’t usually let other Djinn into my club, but Bast informed me it was urgent.” He wrenched her away from Bast’s side and closer to his own body until his mouth was next to her ear. “Are you the reason for this… urgency?” He whispered the last word, making it sound somewhere between a threat and an invitation. It sent tingles through her stomach, and she couldn’t tell if it was fear or attraction, or some perverted combination of both. She went with righteous indignation, and stuffed the rest of those messed up sensations back in their box.
Azar was getting real sick of everyone using her good manners as a way to try and get into her pants. She shook Donovan's hand loose and stepped back.
“No, I’m not. Don’t manhandle me again, either. It has unpleasant consequences. Ask Bast.”
Donovan merely smiled creepily.
“She’s tougher than she looks Donovan, I wouldn’t get on her bad side.” Bast was smiling but it didn’t reach his eyes. “So can we cut the crap already?” Donovan shrugged and leaned back against his desk.
“It’s come to our attention that there is a rogue Ifrit trying to complete a fire pledge. We believe he’s going to try and complete it on Azerasr. He’s hit the Jann, Marid, Ghul and Sila pledges already. All that is left is the Shaitan and the Ifrit. We thought you should know so you and the other Shaitan in the city can protect yourselves.” Bast’s tone was nonchalant, as if Donovan’s wellbeing was the least of his concern right now.
Donovan looked thoughtful, and he was studying her in a way that made her feel like a bug between two pieces of glass. His thoughts were basically written on his face.
She rolled her eyes. “No, jackass, it isn’t me,” she said in a huffy voice. It was like these Djinn didn’t even think any other Ifrit existed. The Shaitan’s eyes narrowed. People with good life expectancies didn’t insult the Shaitan. Obviously Azar hadn’t gotten the memo.
Donovan stood up straight and then bowed slightly at the waist, his eyes never leaving hers. “The Shaitan thank you for the warning. Unfortunately, I am the only Shaitan in New York City, so this news is especially disturbing for me.” His tone was
artificially polite. She didn’t know how he made a simple thank you sound like a giant ‘fuck you.’
Bast cleared his throat, bringing everyone’s attention to him. “He hit Lila’s place last night.”
Donovan threw his head back and laughed. The sound was at odds with the man in front of her. It was kind of like watching a snake roller skate. It was unbelievably strange but slightly heart-warming at the same time.
“I hope he burned the place to the ground. God, I hate that uppity little bitch. Seriously, the way she acts, you wouldn’t think she gets her rocks off by licking sweaty feet and grave robbing.” Azar's warmth towards Donovan was rapidly increasing. They could definitely bond over their mutual dislike of Lila.
Bast shook his head. “Unfortunately, no. He set a mortal on fire, and she died this morning.”
An emotion briefly flickered across Donovan’s face but Azar had no time to analyze it. It could have been sadness, but that seemed unlikely, or maybe glee at someone’s suffering, which was more likely to be in the Shaitan's emotional wheelhouse. Her opinion of Donovan was getting more complicated by the second. His face returned back into its hard mask of neutrality, and she wanted to rewind time so she could see that fleeting expression again, to study it and work out what it meant. Donovan didn’t fit inside the box she’d placed all Shaitan.
“That is unfortunate. But again, I thank you for the warning. I’ll have my security put on high alert. Now, let me walk you out.” That was it, they were dismissed.
Donovan ushered them out the door and back towards the dance floor. She trailed a little behind them, appraising the crowd. People danced violently to the music, most with more metal on their bodies than a Transformer. She was slowed down even further by an impromptu mosh pit in her way, and she didn’t know if they were having fun or some kind of involuntary seizure.
Someone walked across her path and blocked her view of Bast and Donovan. Manic eyes glared at her and a hand clamped over her mouth before she could yell for Bast, his other hand gripping the back of her neck painfully. She recognized the face immediately. The Rogue. Blackness swam in her eyes as his fingers pressed against hard against her arteries of her neck, cutting off her blood flow. She could feel the waves of menace permeating from him. He made her skin crawl as he tightened his grip even more.
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