Lost Angeles

by Mantchev, Lisa

  Benicio groans, and his fingers tighten around my neck, damp and hot; whatever drug he’s pushing, he’s pushing hard. “Oh yeah, baby, you have no idea.”

  I slide my free hand down, skimming my palm across his leg, over the bulge in his jeans. Benicio hisses and pulls back far enough that I can reach into my other pocket, snag the taser, and flick the safety off. His sucks in a sharp breath, but before he can get a warning out, I ram the tail-end spike straight into the meaty part of his thigh, twisting it brutally as I slam my elbow back into his ribs.

  “Fucking hell!” He releases me so quickly that I stumble forward.

  Asher immediately puts a bullet into Benicio’s chest, but the sin-eater shrugs it off like it’s only a flesh wound and grabs for me. In a moment of pure panic, I raise the taser and fire off the two spring-loaded diodes. Xaine chooses that exact second to tackle our friend Benny, and the moment those two electrically charged wires touch skin, both men drop to the concrete like stones.

  Asher slings me out of the way as I sputter out, “Shit! Sorry!”

  “Goddamnit, Lore!” Twitching at random, Xaine tries to get to his feet, with minimal success.

  Asher carefully approaches Benicio; the second the sin-eater gets a knee under him, the hunter shoots him again, this time with a UV bullet. Benicio jerks on impact, and now I can see blood. It’s slick and red, but not the right shade of red. More like when your computer monitor or your television set needs to get adjusted. Too red.

  Benicio snarls, flattening out against the filthy ground. Hurting, finally, but still not done.

  “You think I don’t know what she is?” he yells at Jax. “What she is to you? I know exactly what she is, and she’s mine. I snagged me a little piece of heaven—”

  Before he can finish, Jackson Trace’s shiny-as-shit gold-tipped shoe plows straight into his mouth. Benicio’s head whips over, droplets of blood and what looks suspiciously like a tooth arcing in the harsh orange glow of the streetlights. His eyes roll into the back of his head, only the whites showing.

  “How’s that for a piece of heaven, you stupid fucker,” Tamsyn mutters, eyeballing Asher. “You got any handcuffs on you, Sparky?”

  “I don’t want anyone touching him with bare skin,” Asher says. “He’s… not human.”

  “That makes two of us.” Tamsyn holds out her hand. “Trust me, I won’t touch him any more than I have to. Anything dick or dick-adjacent I’ll leave to you.”

  I snort at the wry frown that hits Asher’s face. Everyone turns to look at me then, and all I can do is offer up a shrug, taser still clutched in my left hand. I feel a little drunk, a lot dizzy, and I’m pretty sure that if I tried to walk, I’d have to think twice about every step. The adrenaline’s wearing off, and apparently that was the only thing keeping Benicio’s Jungle Juice at bay, because the minute my heart resettles into a steady rhythm, I start laughing.

  “Why do you all look so serious?” I peer at the semicircle of solemn faces, then focus on Xaine, who’s peeling himself off the ground. “You have to admit, that was funny. Especially the part where I zapped Mr. Big Shit Rock Star.”

  I can’t seem to get the rest out past the giggles, so I make a vague gesture and pantomime a body hitting the ground. Finally regaining his equilibrium, Xaine stomps over to me and snatches the taser out of my hand.

  “It’ll be fine, she says. Asher can be my date, she says. He’ll keep me safe, she says. Who’s going to protect the rest of us from you? Huh, Thora, Goddess of Lightning?”

  Clinging to his arm, I snicker into his shirtsleeve. Apparently self-preservation wins out in scenarios like this one, because I know that if I let go, I’ll be a heap on the concrete before anyone has the chance to catch me. Thankfully, Xaine’s not shrugging me off. He’s perfectly content to head for the Humvee, muttering under his breath, keeping the worst of it unintelligible and the other parts in Italian as he pries the door open and boosts me inside. I try not to laugh, biting down on my lip, but I’m punch-drunk and woozy and everything is hilarious.

  I don’t really lose my shit, though, until Xaine mutters, “Thank fuck he didn’t give you a gun.”

  The ride back to PFC is awkward but quick and probably less quiet than everyone would have liked. Turns out, Benicio’s not exactly the sort to die with dignity, so to speak, and it’s a pretty solid litany of expletives the entire way.

  On my end, there’s a lot of squirming. Good ol’ Benny still managed to get a couple of licks in, literally, so I’m most definitely feeling the effects this time. Xaine’s arm is looped around my waist, and he holds me so tightly against his side that I can feel the heat of my skin burning between us. When my palm lands on the denim-clad expanse of his thigh, my nipples harden, and for a brief second all I can think about is all the things underneath those pants—

  “So,” Tamsyn interrupts, flashing that manic-pixie smile of hers at me, “how big is Dark Prince Apocalypse’s dick? Enquiring minds are dying to know.”

  “Big enough for you to choke on,” Xaine answers, but Tamsyn doesn’t pay him the slightest bit of attention.

  “It smells like double-chocolate fudge brownies and cotton candy in here.” She leans closer to me, inhales deep, and adds, “I think you’re the cotton candy. I like cotton candy.”

  Jax’s head appears between the two front seats. Those crazy-clear eyes of his zero in on Tamsyn, and he gives her that dad stare I recognize from the Audi. “Don’t.”

  She lifts her hands in the universal sign of surrender. “I didn’t do anything.”

  “Intent is the difference between murder and manslaughter,” Jax says, then turns back around in his seat. “You’ve been a total pain in the ass about pancakes since the hotel. And besides, she’s too young for you. Fifteen’ll get you twenty, just remember that.”

  “I’m not fifteen.” Scowling at the back of his seat, I kick out with my foot, nailing the leather with my shoe. “Asshole.”

  “Trust me, there’s a big enough age gap there that you might as well be.”

  I turn my eyes back to Tam, who’s sitting there all sweet smiles and baby face, wearing a shirt made from white parachute fabric, a pair of strategically-torn khaki cargo shorts and, of course, those massive platform boots. For all that, she doesn’t look a day over sixteen. Right about then, her “that makes two of us” from the alley boomerangs back and clicks into place. And I know Asher half-explained it back at the police station, but I want some info straight from the source.

  “You’re a sin-eater, too. How does it work, exactly?”

  Tamsyn starts digging in her massive pockets. One hand pulls out a pack of clove cigarettes, the other locates a wad of detritus that includes gum and some Blow Pops. Weighing her options, she unwraps a sucker and shoves it in her mouth. “You wanna field this one, Dad?”

  “Nope,” Jax tosses over the headrest, “you go right ahead.”

  Tamsyn holds her hand out to me, shifting the sucker over to one side of her mouth to say, “Go on. I don’t bite.”

  Xaine makes a noise that, swear to god, sounds like a Rottweiler growling at someone through a junkyard fence. “Fuck off, Orange Pop.”

  “Not if you were the last man on earth.” She doesn’t spare him a glance, her eyes still trained on me. Behind her, the window flashes with streetlights and neon.

  “How ’bout we do this without all the touching, huh?” Jax barks out. “And before you give me any more lip, Tam, I want you to think about what pawing her did to the guy tied up in the trunk.”

  I gape a little. “Me? I didn’t do anything to him.”

  “Nothing you meant to do,” Jax corrects without explaining. “But a year ago, he was considerably less psychotic.”

  Tamsyn retracts her hand with an exaggerated sigh. “He might have been less of a crackhead, but he was always a douche.”

  I glance at her, so tiny and cheerful and about the least intimidating person I’ve ever laid eyes on. “You’re like him.”

  “Well, ye
s and no.” She scrunches up her nose at me. “Sin-eater, yeah. But I’m way less of a dick about it.”

  “That’s a matter of opinion,” Xaine mutters, but either Tamsyn doesn’t hear him or she opts not to acknowledge the snarling.

  “It’s sort of our job to help out the humans,” she says, crossing one giant-boot-clad leg over the other and slurping on her Blow Pop. “Figure out who’s naughty and nice. Get into your heads. Pull out the bad bits so you can get through your day-to-day without sticking a gun in your mouth or jumping out a window—”

  “Tam,” comes the disembodied warning shot from the front seat.

  “Sin-eater, get it?” Tamsyn raises an eyebrow at me, waiting for the light bulb to click on. “I knew something was up with Benny when he stopped trolling every skanky bar in LA. Normally, you couldn’t shut him up about all the pussy he was getting, so when he got really quiet, I started tailing him.” There’s a crunching noise as she chomps down on her sucker to get to the gum inside. “It’s not in anyone’s best interest for humans to know about us. We’re sorta the bottom rung on a crap-ladder they don’t need to climb anytime soon.”

  “So you followed him?” I ask. “Where to?”

  “O’Reilly’s,” Jax answers for her, dark head turning around so he can fix me with a stern look. “And then a sleazy motel in Van Nuys.”

  Heat spreads across my face the second that processes. “What took you so damn long to get there? And I have mentioned recently that you are the worst guardian angel ever?”

  Jax ignores the jab. “I let someone park my car, and someone parked it in a handicapped spot—”

  “You are handicapped,” Tamsyn offers, then adds, “mentally.”

  “—and while I was on the phone with the towing company, convincing them to turn around and bring back my Audi, you disappeared. I had a helluva time tracking you down, too. The hobo network ain’t what it used to be.”

  “I could have been dead,” I point out.

  “But you weren’t. You were fine.”

  “I was naked!”

  “But fine.” Jax waves a dismissive hand at it all. “Anyway, by the time we turned up in Van Nuys, Benny was long gone.”

  “That about how it played out, B?” Tamsyn tosses at the trunk. “You kinky little shit?”

  “Self-righteous bitch,” he fires back. “We don’t all have a Johnny Blue Shoes to do our face-kickin’ for us, yanno. I do what I gotta do.”

  “Riiight.” Tamsyn pulls the tiny white stick out of her mouth and flicks it at the back of Jax’s head. “And hoarding ‘little bits of heaven’ is exactly what I would do, given the chance… said no one ever.”

  I’m not following one word in three anymore, but it doesn’t matter, because Asher’s guiding the car through a reinforced security gate and straight down to hell. At least, that’s how it feels when we descend into the underground parking structure. He hasn’t said a single word during the entire drive, and as soon a he cuts the engine, he hops out of the Humvee and shouts a few words. A second later, the trunk clicks open.

  “Welcome back.” Lonan waves a gloved hand at me, but he doesn’t wait for any sort of response. Instead, he hauls the bleeding sin-eater over his shoulder and takes off down the hall.

  Latches pop and doors open on both sides of the car. Tamsyn slides out and heads off to confer with Jax. Xaine stretches a hand toward me, wrapping those long fingers around mine and pulling me toward him. The world spins as soon as my feet hit the ground, and I sag heavily against his chest, one palm pressed to my head as if that’ll stop it.

  “You okay, sweetheart?” There’s concern written across that suddenly too-familiar face of his, so I offer up a smile and a nod.

  “Yeah, fine.” Except I’m not. Not by a long shot. I’m hot and itchy and a deep flush colors my skin. I know it’ll wear off, but I’ve never actually been this aware of it before, or this unaware of how to stop it. “We should see where they took Ben—”

  Xaine’s mouth finds mine, stifling the words like he’s the one full of Jungle Juice. His hands tighten down on my waist, just like Benicio’s had, but I could tell the difference between them even if I’d gone deaf and blind. Xaine doesn’t pull away until I’m dizzy from lack of oxygen, and one small gasp isn’t enough to drag all the air I need into my lungs.

  “I can smell him on you,” he mutters against the side of my neck. The bristled scrape of his chin against my super-sensitized skin elicits a full-body shudder. “Tell me he didn’t hurt you before I got outside.”

  He doesn’t give me a chance to answer, mouth back on mine and tongue slipping past my shoddy defenses before I even realize what’s happening. Doesn’t matter, because this is exactly what I want, exactly what I need, right now. Xaine slams the car door shut, then I’m suddenly pinned against several thousand pounds of steel and glass. What was a dull throb of arousal flares into an inferno of desire as I tangle my hands in the dark fall of his hair, fisting the locks and dragging his lips toward mine again and again. He tastes like sin, my version of sacramental wine, and I flatten myself against him, frantic with the need to get closer, to drink deeper, to open myself to him and—

  “Jesus Christ, do I need to turn the hose on the two of you?” Asher yells from the doorway.

  Jax stands off to one side, eying Xaine like he wishes he’d kicked him in the fangs. Next to him, Tamsyn makes exaggerated puking noises and tacks on a “so gross!” for good measure.

  “I swear to god, Xaine, I will shoot you in the ass if you don’t get off her,” Asher adds.

  “So shoot me already and shut the hell up!” Xaine yells back.

  And there I stand, between a truck and a hard place, a low groan of frustration escaping me as my head falls back to thump against the window. Honestly, I’d stamp my foot right now if I didn’t need it for equilibrium. Closing my eyes, I slowly comb my fingers through the silken strands of Xaine’s hair, savoring the feel of it on my skin because, apparently, that’s as close as I’m going to get to him right now. When I open my eyes, a spectacularly thwarted pair of aquamarines stare right back at me.

  Xaine swallows hard. “We are going inside and figuring this shit out,” he says slowly. “Then I am going to kill Asher and Jax and maybe the mini-muffin. And then we are going home, and we are going to fuck until my dick falls off and you can’t walk straight for a week.”

  That gets a chuckle out of me. “Can there be eating somewhere between all that fucking? I’m starving.”

  “Yeah,” Xaine says as he cracks the first actual smile I’ve seen out of him for hours. “I could use a bite myself.”

  “Bad vampire joke is bad.” But I grin and give him a little push, one that he allows.

  When I teeter off after Asher, Xaine falls in step beside me, one protective hand on my lower back. By the time I drag myself up the three flights of stairs behind our host, I’m ready to collapse into the nearest chair. Not an option, because the only resting surface is a metal table, set on a slant, and Benicio is strapped down to it, restraints around his head, wrists, and ankles. I steel my resolve, muster up my nerve, and step toward Public Enemy Number One.

  “I need your help.”

  He barks out a curt, “Fuck you.”

  “Watch your language with the lady, asshole.” Xaine’s still at my back, his hand pressed to my spine.

  “Yeah? Screw you too, bloodsucker.” Benny grins and tugs at his cuffs. I don’t have any clue what Asher’s equipment is made of, but I can only assume it’s vampire-grade double-reinforced whatever-it-takes-to-hold-an-immortal-down. I remember the tussle between Xaine and Benicio in the hallway at Scion. As far as strength goes, I’d say the two of them are equally matched, and I can only hope good ol’ Benny doesn’t have any other tricks up his sleeve. With his magic fingers, he could drop us all in a matter of seconds and leave us clutching our crotches while he beats it out the back door.

  “Please,” I tell him. “You owe me.”

  “Man’s gotta eat,” Benic
io tells me. “You want your memories? I want another taste.”

  Xaine growls, but doesn’t say anything. He knew this bit was coming, knew and was probably banking on us not finding Benicio.

  “Tell me what you know,” I say. “Please?”

  “What’s in it for me? You gonna let me go?” He doesn’t wait for a response before tacking on, “Nah, didn’t think so.” The sin-eater’s gaze roams from my head to my chest, pausing there long enough for him to lick his lips. “I like the new hairdo, but I must admit, I’ll miss tasting the rainbow.”

  “Shut your filthy mouth.” Xaine clamps down on my arm, pulling me backwards like he’s going to save me. My hands seek and find, petting any part of him I can, trying to diffuse his fury.

  Still grinning, Benicio shifts his attention from Xaine back to me, his tongue working in his mouth. “It’s all blood and pain… the things hiding in your closet, under your bed, in the mirror. Monsters in the dark, demons you don’t need. But I do. I need them. I want them. You gonna give them to me?”

  As Benicio’s eyes trace over my shoulders and breasts, he swallows hard, like his mouth is watering, like he’s salivating at the thought of getting his hands on me.

  “As much as I hate to admit it, Ol’ Benny’s kinda right,” Jax interrupts. “The memories sin-eaters feed off of aren’t exactly the sorts of memories that most people want back. What the hell do you need them for, anyway?”

  “It’s kind of complicated,” I say, looking to Asher.

  Of course, Jax notices. “I’ve got time.”

  “Yeah, but Jess doesn’t,” Asher mutters. “Long story really short, a group of vampires jumped Lore last year, and she managed to survive without turning. I need to know how she did it to save the girl who’s dying in the room next door.”

  “You’re not going to save that girl in there,” Jax says, looking grimmer than I’ve ever seen him. “Not if you’re relying on what saved Lourdes.”

  “Am I supposed to take your word on that, Trace?” Asher’s cool-calm-collected routine cracks, the hunter’s mask slipping to reveal the smallest glimpse of the man underneath.