by Cynthia Eden
That chill got worse. She didn’t want to hear this. She’d wanted him to be the good guy.
“I’m not some damn hero, no matter what you think.”
She had thought that, and barely controlled her wince.
“I’m the monster in the dark. The big, fucking bad wolf. I’ve seen hell, and I’ve brought hell to earth.”
He wasn’t looking at her. Maybe that was a good thing.
“And I’ll do it again and again,” Cain promised in his growling voice. “That’s who I am—what I am. I bring death. I bring hell.”
The breath in her lungs seemed to have frozen. He was wrong, she knew it. But Eve didn’t know what to say to him and as they headed down that mountain—so fast—the silence in the vehicle deepened.
He’d frightened her.
Cain braked the truck at the edge of Atlanta. They’d driven for hours, heading fast to get away from the remains of Genesis. He’d asked Eve where she needed to go. Where she’d be safe. After only the smallest of hesitations, she’d named the city. As he’d driven, the miles had passed in heavy silence.
He’d felt Eve’s stare on him so many times during that long drive, but she hadn’t spoken. What was she supposed to say? How did a woman respond when she’d learned that she’d just fucked a killer?
She didn’t. She just ran away. That was what all the others had done, and he knew that was exactly what Eve planned to do. You didn’t stay with the devil forever, not if you wanted to keep your soul.
His gaze scanned the lot. There were big rigs at the truck stop. A handful of them. Exhaust fumes drifted up into the dark sky.
“What happens now?” Eve asked, finally speaking. Her voice was husky, soft.
What happens . . . he wanted to keep her with him. To find a motel room. To strip her and take her all over again until the pleasure left them both weak and tired. Until he couldn’t move and she didn’t want to.
But he had a target to take down. Genesis had burned, but his vengeance wasn’t complete, not yet. He still owed the traitor who’d gotten him locked in that pit.
“It’s the end of the line.” He tossed the keys to her. “You keep the truck.” He’d find another ride. Easy enough.
He jumped out of the vehicle. Slammed the door shut behind him. Left her. He’d never been one for the good-bye scene, and telling her good-bye—no. Not what he wanted to do. Better to just walk away and not see her—
A door slammed behind him. “Wait!” Eve’s voice. Not so husky anymore. Sharp. Angry.
He stilled.
Then her hand was on his shoulder, jerking him around to face her. For someone so small, she had a pretty strong grip. “You’re leaving me?” Her eyes were wide with a combination of shock and fury.
What had she expected? “You said you had friends in this city.” He’d gotten her to talk only one time during the ride. Good thing she’d said Atlanta was where she needed to be . . . it was exactly where he’d be finding his target, too.
The more dangerous paranormals liked the big cities. With all the humans running around, there was plenty of prey for them. Since their coming-out party, the paranormals had actually done a good job of taking over the big cities in the U.S. There was strength in numbers, usually.
That’s why Genesis was afraid of us. They knew how powerful we were becoming. If the paranormals took over, then what happened to the humans?
They get on the endangered species list.
Eve’s fingers dug into his shoulder. “You’re just walking away? After what happened between us?”
His hand rose. His fingers slid over her cheek. She didn’t seem to realize it, but he was trying to protect her. From myself. If he stayed with her . . . I’ll never let go.
Because he already craved her.
She was a weakness to him. The only one he had. She could be too dangerous.
Cain’s hand slid away and he stepped back, making her hand fall. “I’ve got a shifter to kill.” Jimmy Vance.
“W-what?” She obviously hadn’t expected his response.
“He won’t sell out any more paranormals. He won’t sell me out ever again.” He wouldn’t be able to . . . kinda hard to sell out folks when you were rotting in the ground.
“You can’t just—just kill him!”
He’d told her the truth about himself, but she still didn’t seem to get it. Not the good guy. “Sure I can.” He closed his eyes. Summoned up the power that was always inside him. Let it swell. Let it grow. Let the dark edges seep past his control. When his eyes opened again, he knew that she’d see the fire in his eyes. “I can do anything I want.”
No one would stop him. His guard wouldn’t be lowered again. Wyatt was dead. Fried to ash.
Soon Jimmy would be, too.
Paranormals had died in that facility, and, unlike him, they hadn’t been able to regenerate and come back. He’d heard their screams. Their last desperate cries.
They deserved their vengeance, too. He’d give it to them.
He turned away from her again. Began walking.
“Don’t.” Her soft voice behind him.
But he didn’t stop. He didn’t look back. He had a shifter to kill, and Eve, with her big, blue eyes and her trembling, red lips, wasn’t going to stop him.
No one was.
He’d left her. The jerk had actually dumped her at a truck stop. Just . . . walked away. Okay, he’d left the truck with her, so she hadn’t exactly been stranded, but . . .
He’d still ditched her.
And gone off to kill.
No, you’re not doing it. She wasn’t just going to stand back while some shifter was slaughtered.
Even if he deserved that death?
She jumped out of the truck. Slammed the door and raced the rest of the way up the graveled drive. She’d told Cain the truth when she’d said that she had friends in this city. This particular friend was loaded—and that was why he had a giant house on twenty private acres in Atlanta.
She pounded on the door. Hurry, hurry . . .
The door opened. Trace Frost glared down at her, wearing a pair of pajama pants and looking severely irritated. His eyes were narrowed, the faint lines around his eyes tight.
“It’s two-thirty in the morning, Eve,” he growled. “Two damn thirty. Unless you’re here to have sex, then—”
“Someone’s about to die.”
Her words cut him off.
Trace blinked at her, his green eyes waking up very quickly. The guy was built, muscled, freakishly smart.
He was also a shifter.
So Trace usually kept tabs on any other shifters in his town. It was the whole keep your friends close, and your enemies closer bit. His motto was keep the shifters close . . . and be ready to defend your fucking territory from friends and enemies.
He raked a hand over his face. “You would be coming about something like that.”
She pushed the laptop against his chest. He’d be the one cracking that pass code for her later. The guy owed her. Seriously owed her since she’d risked her life for him more than once. “Jimmy Vance.”
Trace whistled as he rocked back on his heels. “You don’t want to mess with that guy.” His native Texas rolled faintly beneath the words. Trace gave a quick shake of his head. “Vance would sell out his own mother for—”
“If I don’t find him soon, he’s dead.” She didn’t want Vance dead because, well, one, killing the guy was wrong. You couldn’t just go up and torch a shifter. Cain would find his own ass hunted if he did that. And, two, she needed Vance. Eve wanted to break the Genesis story wide open, and if Jimmy Vance had been dealing with Wyatt, then she wanted to talk to him.
Preferably while he was still breathing. Otherwise, it would be rather difficult to accomplish.
“I don’t know if his death would be such a loss,” Trace muttered as he lifted up the laptop. “You didn’t have to bring me a present.” The porch light glinted off his tousled, blond hair.
“You’re getting me into t
hat system,” she told him, putting her hands on her hips, “after you take me to Vance.”
Trace’s gaze came back to her. Then that stare slowly swept over her body. He winced. “Fine, but, seriously, if we’re hunting shifters tonight, you have to change. You won’t get into a fight looking like that.”
Whoa, hold up. “A fight?” She followed him into the house.
He tucked the laptop under one arm and shut the door behind her. The alarm beeped. “Vance—and the shifters like him—always head to the cage fights on Saturday nights.”
Her stomach clenched. “You’re not talking about a normal cage fight, are you?”
Trace shook his head. “Just to get in that fight, one of us will have to bleed.”
Dammit. Why does everything with the paranormals always have to be about blood?
Jimmy Vance had better be freaking grateful when she saved his butt.
No, no, this was definitely not a normal cage fight. Eve had seen cage fights on TV. Even done an interview or two at fights back when she’d worked in Texas.
This was different. And, yeah, they’d had to bleed to get inside.
Apparently, no one got in without signing up for a fight. She’d come with Trace, and he’d been the one to agree to enter the cage. If she’d come alone, well, she never would have made it past the hulks at the door.
Eve’s eyes were locked on the cage as Trace swiped out with his claws and cut into his opponent’s stomach.
More blood pooled on the already slick cage floor.
If I’d come alone, I’d probably be dead.
She couldn’t fight a shifter. No way. Not even in her nightmares.
The crowd around her was cheering. Yelling, screaming. Throwing fists and claws in the air as they placed wagers on who would be walking out of that cage.
And who wouldn’t.
Horror had Eve’s mouth hanging open. She’d never expected . . . this. But Trace—he’d known exactly where to go. Down the twisting, dark back streets of Atlanta. Inside the old warehouse that had looked abandoned to her.
A trick. The place had been packed inside. Once they’d cleared the first level of the warehouse, she’d started to hear the yells—and to smell the blood.
Trace had flashed fang and claws, shifter-style, when they saw the bouncers. One of the bouncers had even greeted him by name.
Not Trace’s first trip into the cage.
The place reeked of blood and violence. Men and women jostled her as they fought to get closer to the cage. The floor of the cage had to be about ten feet wide, and the walls—okay, the caged fencing—stretched all the way to the ceiling.
A loud cheer erupted from the crowd. Eve’s gaze jerked back to the fighters. One man was down, moaning.
That man wasn’t Trace.
Trace had his claws in the air. Sweat glinted off his body, and the guy was . . . smiling.
Her back teeth clenched. She hadn’t realized just how much he would enjoy the violence.
The cage opened and Trace stalked out. Someone else dragged his bleeding opponent toward one of the back rooms. More money exchanged hands. The smoke in the area deepened.
Beers were tossed around.
The blood pooled in the cage.
Eve shoved her way through the crowd around Trace. He was getting slapped on the back. Figured. Shifters and violence. They went together too well.
And she knew Trace had a dark side. Taking the guy there hadn’t been her best plan ever.
She grabbed his arm. “Where’s Vance?” They weren’t there so Trace could rip and claw his way through the fighters. They had a job to do.
Trace glanced her way. Blood dripped from his mouth. “I talked to the organizer . . .”
Wait, there was an organizer?
The cage door was being opened again.
“Vance is fighting now.” Trace wrapped his arm around her shoulders and turned her to face the cage. “Provided he survives this fight, you can talk to Vance all you want—after.”
She stared at the man entering the cage with an arrogant swagger. His head was shaved, and his eyes, small, angry, swept over the crowd. A tattoo of a giant snake covered his bare chest and an old pair of faded jeans hung low on his hips.
“No weapons,” Trace murmured in her ear as he leaned in close to her. “Except the ones God gave you. Those are the cage rules.”
Jimmy opened his mouth and the light glinted off the too sharp and far too long teeth on each side of his mouth.
That just was seriously scary. She’d never seen teeth quite like those before, not even on vamps. “W-what kind of shifter is he?”
“Snake.”
Hell. The tattoo made sense then, and so did the sharp, thin fangs. Fangs that curved a bit, just like a snake’s.
Snake shifters were supposed to be devious. She’d heard rumors about them, but tonight was her first shot at an up-close look at the real deal.
Jimmy lifted his hands and the people watching and drinking roared.
Trace’s hold tightened on her. “It seems that Vance is a crowd favorite.”
Looked that way. She glanced over at Trace. She’d seen him shift once, that was how they’d met. She’d found him hurt, far too close to death, on a lonely stretch of Texas highway.
She’d thought about leaving the bloody wolf when he snarled at her with his bared fangs, but she hadn’t been able to walk away.
Not even when the wolf had become a man.
“How long have you been coming here?” On top of everything else that was happening, she had to deal with this, too.
Her best friend, sliding right back into that dark pool of violence and blood that had stalked him before they’d met.
Trace didn’t answer her and that alone was answer enough. She knew he had to feel the tension in her body.
His gaze was on the cage when he said, “If I hadn’t come here, you wouldn’t have found Vance tonight.”
Right. One problem at a time. She edged back toward the cage with Trace at her side. She’d managed to find clothes at Trace’s place—mostly because Trace had far too many female friends who left their shit behind—so she was wearing a miniskirt, one that was a little too short, and a top that was a little too loose. It kept slipping off her shoulder. The heels were high, ridiculously so, but the clothes made her fit in with the other women there, and that was the point, right? Blending in was a necessity with the supernaturals.
“Vance!” She yelled his name, but he didn’t glance her way. The crowd was roaring so loudly that she knew he hadn’t heard her. She tried again, yelling louder this time, “You’re in danger!”
He needed to slither his butt out of that cage and get over to her.
Eve didn’t know how much of a lead she had on Cain, and she sure didn’t want to waste any lead time while Vance enjoyed getting bloody by beating the hell out of some other shifter.
“We’re not hurting any humans,” Trace told her, voice gruff.
Oh, what? Was he starting to feel guilty for keeping this secret from her?
“That’s why we come here. You know the beasts need to fight. Here, we can face off against each other.”
Face off—until what point? Until only one shifter could claim dominance on a bloodstained floor?
The cage door opened.
The crowd didn’t cheer when the next fighter entered the ring. There wasn’t any sound from them at all. Her head turned toward the fighter because she wanted to see why everyone had gone so deadly quiet.
“He doesn’t smell like a shifter,” Trace said, lifting his head. “And I haven’t seen that guy before.”
The guy had a dark hood over his head, a hood that connected with the loose sweatshirt he wore. His shoulders were broad, his legs braced apart.
Vance frowned at him and . . . backed up a step? Eve caught the flash of fear on Vance’s face.
The new fighter shoved the hood off his head. The bright, almost glaring lights hit the stark lines of his face. It was a fac
e she knew too well.
“Cain,” Eve whispered.
And she knew that she’d arrived too late.
CHAPTER SIX
“Cain!” Eve screamed his name even as the crowd chanted for Vance. No, no, they didn’t realize what was happening. They had no idea just how screwed they could all be.
The whole place could go up in flames.
“You know him?” Trace demanded as his hand curled over her arm.
She glanced at him. She’d tried to brief Trace as much as possible on Genesis as they rushed to the fight, but, sure, she’d skimmed over a few details. Like the sex. Like Cain leaving me at the truck stop. Some details you didn’t tell your best friend. Especially when that friend had a serious overprotective streak. “He’s . . . Subject Thirteen.” She’d told him that part. Told him that she’d helped Thirteen escape from Genesis.
Trace was still staring up at Cain. “He’s not like any shifter I’ve seen before.”
Vance was curling his hands into fists.
Cain stood, smiling faintly at him. Definitely a chilling smile—so why wasn’t Vance running the hell out of there? The guy should be trying to claw open the side of the cage and get to safety.
But he wasn’t.
“Get out,” she whispered. Vance had to know what Cain was capable of doing.
“No one can leave, not until a body hits the floor,” Trace told her, voice grim.
That wasn’t good.
She elbowed a lady out of her way. When the lady turned with a hiss, Trace stepped in to make sure Eve didn’t get clawed. Eve muttered her apology and tried to make sure she didn’t elbow anyone else.
Don’t want a beating right now. Don’t.
She was at the cage, curling her fingers tight around the heavy wiring. “Cain! Cain, stop!”
His head snapped toward her. Their eyes locked.
“Don’t do this,” she screamed. “Please, don’t—”
Vance attacked, leaping at Cain while his attention was on Eve. The two men were almost the same size, and Vance hurtled right at him, knocking Cain to the floor.
Then Vance—bit Cain?
“Shit. Snake venom.” Trace was at her back again. “Your Thirteen’s about to go out. That stuff ’s fucking poison.”