by K. V. Rose
Then he pulls away.
I glance at the girl across the table. She’s watching me with wide eyes and her mouth hangs open. I have no idea why.
I’m just glad the attention isn’t all on us anymore. I give her a small smile. She snaps her mouth closed and returns it with a slight nod of her head, then she scurries away to find some friends.
I notice the guy in the hoodie is still watching me.
I take a long drink, the cup in both hands, then look to Lucifer.
“What did she wanna know?” I try to keep my voice disinterested.
He watches me, like I’m his prey. Like he’s trying to find my weakness so he can rip out my throat. The skeleton pain is unnerving. It’s fucking with my mind.
I take another drink.
“She wanted to know,” he finally says, “what happens next.”
I relish the burn of straight vodka trailing down my throat. It’ll help me pull the trigger later, I tell myself. Absentmindedly, I touch one of the fake plastic horns on my headband. Lucifer tracks the movement and slides his hands into his pockets.
He seems totally at ease. Yet somehow, totally...eerie.
“What do you mean?” I ask, shaking my head. “It’s a party...”
Lucifer flashes me a cruel smile. “Not quite.”
Then he turns around and walks away, leaving me staring after him.
I take another drink, watch his tall, lean form, noticeable even beneath his close-fitting hoodie. His black curls are so fucking beautiful, catching on the light from the fire. And when he turns to speak to some chick, I catch his side profile. Straight nose. Strong jaw.
But this girl he’s talking to…
She’s fucking pregnant. Really, really pregnant.
And the way they’re standing so close to each other, I feel something in my gut twist. I pour the entire drink down my throat, quite certain I’ve just downed four shots of vodka in seconds. I set the empty cup on the table, then wipe the back of my hand over my mouth but I can’t stop watching them.
They look like they’re arguing. She tosses her long, wavy blonde hair over one shoulder and folds her arms across her chest. She’s all baby, wearing black booties, black shorts and black stockings.
Lucifer, for his part, isn’t speaking. It’s all her.
“Caught you staring,” someone whispers behind me.
I jump, startled. It’s the girl with the braids. She has two black plastic cups in hand. She holds one out to me.
“I’m Ria,” she says with a smile.
I weakly shake her hand and take the drink, even though I definitely shouldn’t, but I can’t drag my eyes away from Lucifer and the pregnant chick.
“Is that...” I trail off, unsure what to say. This isn’t my business. It’s not my party. I don’t know these people. I had a fucking plan, goddammit.
“Is it his?” Ria finishes for me in a whisper. She’s at my side and we’re both watching. It’s a drama we can’t hear. One I don’t want to see. But I can’t stop watching.
Wordlessly, I nod.
I see out of the corner of my eye, she shrugs. “No one knows. I’m not even sure she knows.”
This does not make me feel better. But what did I think would happen here? Sure, he’s fucking gorgeous and his eyes are way too damn blue to be real and he’s tall and lean and seemingly popular but...he’s also kind of a jerk. And he might be someone else’s baby’s father. And I don’t fucking know him.
I force myself to face Ria.
“So...what is this?” I ask, gesturing around. I assumed it was a party. But Lucifer’s words are making me question that.
Ria grins, drinks from her cup. Then she swallows. “It’s Unsaints Night.”
I tilt my head in silent questioning. I don’t follow. And I love Halloween. I’ve never heard of this shit. And what the fuck is an Unsaint?
“Technically, it’s not called anything. It’s just...the Unsaints do some weird shit here every Halloween night.” She takes another drink, and she looks oddly nervous. “You go to AU?”
I shake my head. “Unsaints?” I repeat, confused. “What the hell is that?” My head is spinning with all the vodka but even still, I know I have no idea what that word means. I flip the cup I’m holding upside down and twirl it around my index finger because shit is getting weird and I’m feeling antsy.
“You don’t go to AU, then,” she says with a little laugh, shaking her head. She tosses one braid over her shoulder. “Unsaints consist of your boy Lucifer—” I blush when she says those two words before his name, but I’m too stunned to say anything, “Cain, Atlas, Ezra, Mayhem, and a new man, Jeremiah.”
“Lucifer?” I repeat. “Mayhem? I mean, come on, that’s not really their real names, right?” What kind of monsters did they have for parents?
She flashes a smile. “I dunno. Just what everyone calls them.” She takes another drink, crosses her arms. “If you’re not from AU...what do you do? I’m 20. You can’t be more than that.”
“19,” I counter, ignoring her actual question. I look around. Lucifer is still listening to pregnant chick. “Are all these people from AU?”
She shakes her head. “Most. I’m a junior. The Unsaints are seniors. Jeremiah isn’t in school.”
“What exactly are Unsaints?” I ask, still not following. “I’m gonna need some clarification.” I drink more vodka, knowing this is not a good idea. But I’m lost here, and my plans have just been turned upside down.
Someone hollers in the distance and then a peel of laughter follows.
“They’re like...they’re just close friends,” Ria hurriedly explains, but I don’t think she’s giving me the whole spiel here. “And tonight, they uh...well...I don’t actually know.” She lowers her voice, as if what she’s telling me—nothing—is secretive.
I nudge her shoulder, trying to be friendly. “Come on. How can you not know?”
She snorts a laugh. “God you really don’t know anything about them, do you?” She doesn’t sound condescending. She just sounds genuinely shocked.
I rub my hands over my arms, empty cup dangling from my fingers. “Should I?” I ask, amused. Why would I know about these hot weirdos?
“Yeah,” she answers, but she doesn’t seem amused at all. “They—well their families...they basically own Alexandria.”
I nod my head, brows high. “Right.”
She laughs, takes another drink. My eyes scan the woods for a quick second. The fire has gotten bigger. Atlas has his hands all over a girl—different from the one he was previously making out with. And my blood runs cold when I realize the dude in the hoodie whose face I can’t really make out still appears as if he’s watching me. A shiver runs down my spine. I don’t know if he’s an Unsaint or not. I don’t know if it matters. And I don’t see Lucifer anymore. Or the pregnant girl.
I don’t know why that bothers me.
I force my attention back to Ria.
“I’m serious,” she continues. “Their families are third degree, like, Masons or something...”
“Unsaints?” I supply sarcastically. I thought the Masons had 33 degrees but it’s not something I really study in my free time.
She doesn’t laugh. “No. That’s for their evil, hot spawn.”
“Okay,” I say, the vodka making me bold. “Let’s say I believe this bullshit. Which, by the way, I definitely do not.”
She laughs again.
“But let’s say I do. So, what is tonight all about? The Unsaints are some strange gang? What do they do on Halloween night? Rape and pillage?”
The last part is a joke, but Ria’s eyes go wide. “I don’t think they’d have to rape anyone, Lilith,” she says, eyes going to my horns.
I roll my eyes. “That’s a bold, stupid statement.”
She smirks. “Have you seen the Unsaints?”
I’ve seen Lucifer. Atlas. I haven’t seen Jeremiah, Mayhem, or the other two whose names I’ve forgotten.
I shrug. “Whatever. This shit s
ounds absurd. And besides,” I look around the park again, eyes peeled for Lucifer, “this is a public. Park.” I emphasize the words. No one seems to get them.
“It’ll get wilder as the night goes on. If you think the Unsaints are strange...well, girl, you’ve got something else coming.”
“Like what? Are we gonna go for a ride on the merry-go-round?” I laugh, but the truth is it’s all making me a little uneasy.
She doesn’t even smile. “It’s happened before,” she admits. “Next morning, it was covered in blood.”
She finishes her drink.
My own blood runs cold. It’s not that I’m afraid, exactly. I wanted to end this. I’d planned this night for weeks. But still…
“Whose blood—”
The words die on my tongue as arms slide around me, forcing me backward into a hard, warm body.
“No need to ask questions she can’t answer,” Lucifer says in my ear.
My pulse quickens. I try to breathe normally, but I’m nearly panting.
It’s just Lucifer, I tell myself. And who, exactly, is Lucifer? myself says back.
What a fucking question.
“Ria,” Lucifer drawls.
She looks equal parts terrified and turned on at the way he says her name. I can’t say I’m not feeling the same thing.
“Go find your saint,” I hear the smile in his words. “The games are about to begin.”
Ria nods quickly, sets her empty cup on the table where it topples over. With a hesitant look at me—Lucifer’s arms still around me—she jogs away, toward the fire.
People are still there, drinking, laughing, making out.
But there’s another group, too, Ria bringing up the rear of it, and they’re going deeper into the forest. I’m not sure where they’re going, exactly. I don’t think I’ve ever ran down that trail.
“Ready, Lilith?” Lucifer purrs.
I shake my head, try to twist in his arms to see his face. He squeezes his strong arms around me tighter.
“Where are they going?” I choke out.
“Oh, love,” he says against my neck, “you’re going, too.”
“Fuck this.” I don’t know why I’m done now, but something doesn’t feel right. Something just feels...all wrong. I twist again in his arms and he lets me go. I toss my cup on the table. “I’m out.”
Ria’s words come back to me: merry-go-round covered in blood. Unsaints. Something else coming...
Yeah. No.
“It was nice meeting you, but I’ve got plans and apparently you do too.”
He says nothing, his blue eyes locked on mine. A muscle feathers in his skeleton jaw, but otherwise he doesn’t move.
And I kind of wish he would. A fucked-up part of my body wants him to stop me.
I turn around, hoping to feel his hands around my waist. Fingers around my wrist. Something.
Nothing.
So, I go, away from the crowd, into the darkness of the forest, looking for a secluded spot to finish what I came here for.
Chapter Five
Present
“If you fucking touch me again, I will kill you.”
It’s not quite an empty threat, but the way Kristof laughs from his bathroom, it might as well be.
He took me home after all, tied up in the back of the black SUV Jeremiah always takes me to view his kills in.
I’m tied to a chair wearing nothing but a white t-shirt that’s three sizes too big, and I’m under no one’s protection at the moment—my bastard brother had ordered all guards off of Kristof’s hall—but I’m far from fucking defenseless.
After Halloween night a year ago, I made sure I was never defenseless again. I flick the blade from the butterfly knife in my hands, one I’d managed to get to in the car and hide from Kristof because he’s dumber than a fucking rock.
Kristof keeps brushing his teeth, and keeping one eye on him, I begin to saw at the rope he’d cinched around my wrists.
This room is disgusting.
It is, like every room in the Rain house, far too big, with far too many amenities. My brother’s house was formerly a hotel, and he’d bought the entire thing before it even began to run as one. He’d let the previous owners build it, market it, inlay the floors with gilded marble, the ceilings with mirrors flush above the bed, and the walls with flat screen TVs, and then he’d broke a deal with them.
By that I mean he threatened to kill them and gave them millions of dollars in exchange for their disappearance and silence. They’d left Alexandria, probably fled north to Virginia. If they were smart, they wouldn’t still be in North Carolina.
Jeremiah Rain is a thug of the richest kind. Leader and priest of Order of Rain. He’s cruel. Vile. Vicious. He’s pushed me to the edge this past year more times than I care to count. I just never thought he’d actually let me be used as a sex toy. But we’ve been separated far longer than we’ve been together.
He clearly hasn’t developed those brotherly feelings toward me that he should have.
I don’t think he’s ever developed feelings of any kind, for anyone.
Rumor has it his foster parents locked him in a cage after they adopted him from California, where we were born. Apparently, after he killed his siblings and his parents, he inherited their billions, then became an Unsaint, before he betrayed them. He’s never confirmed those rumors.
He’s never denied them either.
All I know now is that the Order of Rain deals in murder, drugs, and anything that will put more money into his hands. My own payment is sparse, considering I don’t do anything but what Jeremiah says. But I don’t lack for anything here.
Except right fucking now.
Right fucking now, I’m going to need someone to come clean up the mess I’m about to make of Kristof’s balls. I would never use this blade against my brother.
But I damn sure will against anyone else.
I keep my hands held behind my back, even as they’re free now. And I wait.
I wait until Kristof flosses, spits mouthwash in his sink, picks up a towel from the pile of them on the floor to wrap around his waist. Then he turns his gaze to me. There’s a bed between us. California king, what once was probably white sheets—clearly, he forgoes housekeeping in this place—and a scattering of weapons. Guns, mainly. A few knives. Handcuffs. I don’t know if those are for bad guys or bad girls, or maybe both.
I glance at my reflection in the mirror over our heads.
My grey eyes are smudged with shadows, my short hair simultaneously a mess, and still stick straight. I look skeletal in that mirror, craning my neck back like that.
I shudder. It reminds me of last Halloween.
Of Lucifer.
I force the thought away.
My bare thighs are pale. My entire body is pale.
Everything in here is a shade of white.
But it’s about to get splashed with red.
Kristof takes his time striding around the bed, letting his towel slip free from his overly muscled body as he does. I have no idea how old Kristof is. I’m not even sure Kristof knows how old Kristof is, but if I had to guess, probably his mid-thirties. Not too old to be fucking a 20-year-old, but old enough to know rape is a serious crime. But everything the Rain family and their associates do is a serious crime.
Hell, we’d just left a corpse.
Kristof stops a few feet from me, leveling his gaze.
“You should know better than to speak to Mr. Rain that way. To refuse him.”
I spit on the floor. “Mr. Rain?” I mock him. “Did he take your balls away?”
He narrows his eyes in a momentary rage, but before he lunges for me, he thinks the better of it. Instead, he brings a hand to his cock, stroking himself.
I appraise it for the first time.
It is, unsurprisingly, big. Kristof is big. It only fits.
But I don’t want it.
I whistle, pretending to be impressed.
He actually has the audacity to smile, as if this t
hing between us might become consensual at any moment.
Then he takes a step forward.
I keep the smile on my face.
Another step.
And then I lunge for him.
The blade finds his thigh, and I push it in hard, sinking it in to the hilt, working its way through muscle and tendons. This is the first time I’ve stabbed a real flesh-and-blood person, and not a dummy Jeremiah lets me practice on. And the good news is, I do it well.
Kristof doesn’t expect it.
For a moment, he only stands there. I glance up at him, seeing the surprise in his blue eyes as he gazes down at the blade sticking out of his leg. Blood wells around the entrance, but for just a second, we’re both frozen. Me from the strange mix of adrenaline coursing through my veins, heady and intoxicating, and him from, hopefully, the pain.
Then I yank the blade out.
He screams, although from Kristof, it sounds more like a roar.
“You bitch!” he hisses, his hands coming to either side of his massive thighs. I dart around him, taking my chance while I have it, the blade in my hand. Kristof might be huge, and I might be little, but that’s where my advantage lies. In the running.
The one thing I couldn’t do that Halloween night.
I leap over his stack of dirty laundry, my bare feet gripping the marble floor as I land. I dart through the living room, into the area that serves as a kitchen. The door is right there, and Kristof isn’t close behind me. He has done up the chain on the door, of course, courtesy of the goddamn hotel builders, but that will take me two seconds, and then the other lock will open automatically when I pull the handle.
I don’t dare look back, but I hear him coming for me.
The knife is still clenched in one hand, covered in blood. With the other hand, I reach for the chain, slide it back. My hands are shaking. Not so much from fear, I don’t think, but excitement.
But this kind of excitement makes me think of Lucifer.
And thinking of Lucifer gets me nowhere.
The chain comes loose. I reach for the silver door handle, smiling like a devil myself. I’m going to be free. Once I get on the hallway, there’s no way Kristof will make it down the stairs before me. I’ll go to Nicolas. He’d never directly disobey my brother’s orders, but he’d also never let someone hurt me, not right in front of his face. Besides, Nicolas doesn’t like Kristof.