In the year Dante had worked for Juan Carlos, he’d learned there was one thing that pissed off the ring leader more than anything: disrespect. Disobeying a direct order, like refusing to say her name when he’d asked her, would earn a slap in the face . . . and the exact reason Juan Carlos had returned the favor. If the elder had any brain in her head she’d state her name and be done with this whole thing.
Keeping his head low, Dante took a single slow step down the stairs, and then another. Soft, hushed voices surfaced in his thoughts and became stronger with each stride. He swallowed hard and pushed them back.
“I said state your name,” Juan Carlos growled.
More silence. Followed by another quick smack and more cheers by the crowd.
Dante’s eye twitched and his fingers went numb on the handrail as Juan Carlos slapped her again. What was wrong with that woman? Why wouldn’t she tell him her name? Juan Carlos had to know her identity already; one of his hunters managed to locate her and drag her here, after all. He was simply riding a power trip. He wanted her to speak it to the crowd so they could hear the fear in her voice. So they could rejoice in its tremble. And now, she’d presented a challenge. A war between the all-mighty black market ring leader and the lone virgin who defied him.
Stupid girl.
This wasn’t going to end well.
Dante forced himself to descend another stair. This wasn’t his business. Not in the least. Whether an elder wanted to reveal her name on her own accord or have it beaten out of her was her own damn prerogative.
Piercing pain stabbed through his temples. He hunched over, squinting, rubbing hard circles with his forefingers. A low, dark growl of a voice pushed through the ache.
Make him pay for his sin . . .
An angry roar filled the warehouse, followed by another smack and more laughter. Dante took a jagged breath and clenched his jaw, willing the voices to subside. The evil speaking through his mind had faded, but lingered only breaths away.
As the cycle of crowd roars and hard swipes against the elder’s skin repeated again and again, Dante’s steps slowed, his stomach balling into one giant knot. He stopped before diving into the dark of the basement completely. He turned back. He climbed each stair slowly, knowing he should be meeting Violet and getting the hell out of here. But no woman, disrespectful or otherwise, should be smacked around in front of a group of wealthy snobs in suits and loafers for their twisted fucking amusement.
He squeezed through the drama-hungry crowd, not sure what the devil he was going to do when he reached the front bumper. He couldn’t just go in and overstep his bounds. Juan Carlos probably wouldn’t remember him anyway, and even if he did recall his former employee, it’s not like he’d listen to Dante’s request to stop the beating so he could focus on stealing one of Juan’s captive elders.
When Dante got a clear, up-close view of the nameless elder, his stomach dropped. Red and swollen cheeks begged for the stroke of a sympathetic hand. Soft brown doe eyes peeped out through thick lashes, measuring the crowd, though not focusing on anyone in particular.
Dante couldn’t help but stare at the elder, his eyes honed in on the way her skin seemed to glow. At least the skin he could see sticking out from the fabric cloak. Her hands looked luminescent. Glowing. Too perfect to taint with a man’s touch.
Time crawled as Dante shuffled closer to the center floor He was a few rows back now, descending to the pit. Where were his feet taking him? He shouldn’t be involved. He should turn away. He should separate himself from this. But his body wouldn’t listen. He couldn’t pull his eyes off her.
Every vamp and therian in the warehouse faded away to insignificant blurs. Lights overhead seemed to brighten, heightening his senses. His heart pounded in his ears. His mouth dried. Hands clammed.
The closer he got to the elder, the more he realized his first impression of her was dead wrong. There was nothing plain about the way her lips pursed into a perfectly kissable heart. There was nothing ordinary about the way her braid, tied with a summer-sky-blue ribbon, made her appear demure and delicately feminine. And there was certainly nothing average about the subtle red undertones that streaked through her hair like flames in a warm hearth.
“Holy mother in heaven,” he breathed, chest constricting. “She’s an angel.”
Juan Carlos pressed against her, his lips brushing her ear. He didn’t, however, lower his voice. “I said give me your name, elder. I won’t ask you again.”
Sighing, the beauty lifted her chin—a motion of strength that had Dante squaring his shoulders to the center floor and holding his breath. For someone facing a vamp with obvious anger issues, a passive-aggressive move like that could get her killed. She had to know it.
Just say your name and be done with this.
Dante reached the front bumper and stood motionless amongst the other vamps crowding there. Now it was Dante who wished for her to say her name simply so he could hear the sweet tremor of her voice. One word . . . one word is all Dante needed to prove his theory: she was an angel sent straight from heaven.
When she turned her head, finally setting her hazelnut eyes upon him, the pressure in Dante’s chest exploded. Breath hissed out of him. His body went boneless. His mind wiped clean.
For that brief moment in time, when their gazes locked and his heart stilled, Dante felt something he hadn’t felt in years. Alive. Sure, his heart was hollowed, his soul trampled by time, his breathing suddenly erratic, and his muscles weakened by her beauty. But with one long sweep of her tender eyes, he was made whole again. A rush of warmth spread through his body, leaving trails of gooseflesh behind. He shivered beneath the heat of her stare.
As if she read his mind, her expression softened, and the corners of her mouth curled. With a loud belt of Juan Carlos’s voice, Dante was jerked out of his tunnel vision and back to reality. “You insolent fool,” Juan seethed, his eyes darkening. “I will hear your name whether you give it now or spit it out with your blood.” He drew back a fist as a growl from the back rumbled the air.
“Enough,” a grizzly baritone voice said. “As her owner I will peel the name from her lips. Send her to me.”
Juan Carlos snarled. A success of sorts. “Up the stairs with you, elder!”
Dante’s angel stood stoic, holding him captive with her stare. There was no plea behind her gaze. No trace of weakness. No wince for help. Dante had never admired a woman more.
“I said go, you stubborn mule!” Juan Carlos grabbed the braid lying over her chest and yanked her down to the ground. He raised his foot to kick her from behind when she whimpered and fell face-first to the floor.
Wild rushes of adrenaline flashed through Dante’s veins. The voices he’d struggled to suppress slipped through the crack in his self-control and rejoiced as they reigned over him, body and soul. There’d be only one way to silence them now. Bloodshed. Dante leapt over the rail, dead-set on tearing every limb from Juan Carlos’s body.
Chapter Twenty-Two
“As fire, you consumed me, as wind you scorched my skin. Take me away from this place, and forgive me of my sin.”
The Reds: White Cell Album, Reprieve
AS DANTE’S FEET hit the cold stone floor, he felt one thing pumping through his heightened system: rage. Pure, unfiltered rage. His blood boiled in anticipation of a knock-em-out, kill-em-all fight. He could taste Juan Carlos’s blood on his tongue. It’d be spicy. Musky. Asshole smoothed over with cheap woodsy wine. He could feel the snapping of Juan Carlos’s bones in his ironclad grasp. A pathetic worm like that would break easy. Like a twig.
He closed in on Juan Carlos, who was standing in a guarded, crouched position. When they locked eyes, the scoundrel called for his therian goon squad to come to the floor and protect his pathetic ass. Dante saw his mouth moving, gaping, a gutted fish sucking in its last breath. Dante saw his arms flailing in the air, waving overhead like a w
indblown willow tree, but the sound was muffled. On the far side of a very long tunnel. He was too far gone to make out “normal” voices now.
The only voices he could make out for certain were the droning ones in his head. The low ones urging him to break Juan Carlos apart limb by limb, so he couldn’t lay his hands on another elder. The ones whispering for him to rip out Juan Carlos’s tongue and shove it down the back of his throat so he couldn’t yell another octave. The ones promising Dante a break from the rage and noise and constant pull of the dark . . . if only he’d submit to their will.
Just one more time. Kill.
After watching Juan Carlos shove the angelic elder to the ground, Dante was more than ready to let the voices work their dark magic. But as he passed the nameless elder, a subtle breeze of her perfume smacked him upside the head. Warm vanilla sugar. His eyes blurred closed, and for a split second the voices quieted.
The silence halted the screaming in his head so abruptly that it momentarily stunned him. He stood motionless—two steps from the virginal elder, but couldn’t force himself to look at her. His energy, hot and molten, was still focused on Juan Carlos.
Sugar faded to spice. Dante’s eyes flipped open. Red curtains of blood and vengeance blinded him as he peered through heavy-lidded eyes at the slimy MC. Voices surfaced. Louder. More prominent. Kill him. Make him bleed. Make him pay for his sins.
Vision completely marred by evil, Dante grabbed Juan Carlos. Double fisted the lapels of his business jacket and chucked him across the great room. Juan’s body slammed against the wall behind him, the breaking of his bones music to Dante’s ears.
Therian guards rushed to Juan Carlos, checking his fading vitals, raising limp arms. More guards descended to the center pit.
Finish him. Force him to repent. Make him beg forgiveness.
Fists clenched, chest tight, Dante strode toward the broken wall supporting Juan’s weight, aching to silence the voices completely.
That’s when she touched the base of his wrist with her thumb. With the gentlest of touches, she stopped him in his tracks. A sense of calm washed over him, soothing the anger coiling in his ribcage. His mind stilled. His vision cleared.
He turned, watched her expression change from soft to guarded. His face must’ve read as menacing and tight as it felt.
“Don’t,” she whispered above the roar of the crowd. She gently tugged him away from Juan Carlos and the mass of guards huddling over him. “Leave him be.”
Dante checked her grip on his arm. She dropped her hand and rubbed her fingers together like she’d been burned. Like his skin was on fire.
But he wasn’t eyeing her grip because he didn’t want her touching him. No. In fact it was the opposite. His body was humming. Downright singing shivers that danced along his spine and up to the base of his neck. The small spot where she’d touched him radiated warmth. His skin tingled like her fingers were still there, tracing tiny circles around his wrist.
He wanted her touch all over his body. He wanted her fingers tracing the lines of his muscles, up the cut of his abs, through his short scruff of hair. He wanted her hands all over him.
“I’m . . . I’m sorry,” she said, backing away, her tiny hands plastered in front of her. “Please . . . don’t.”
He was on her in a flash. He bent her over his shoulder, watching the crowd swarm the aisles and walkways like maggots, barricading their only way out. She smacked against his back open-handed, screaming for him to let her go. That so wasn’t going to happen.
Therians circled around him, flickering, twitching, shedding their skin. They shifted into a variety of large wildcats, their mouths foaming, anxious to tear through his flesh.
Shit. Time’s up.
The next few moments happened so quickly, even Dante’s head spun from the magnitude of it. He knelt on the ground, fist to stone, head hung low. He focused on somewhere familiar. Somewhere safe. Pretending not to feel the elder’s fist pounding into his kidneys, Dante funneled the rage flowing through his veins right into his chest and—Pop!—his head went light and his legs grew heavy.
When he opened his groggy eyes a few seconds later, they were hell and gone from the circus-like ring of the elder black market. And the virginal elder was standing over him, slapping him in the face.
“WHAT THE HELL?” Ruan asked, as he watched the whole goddamn place erupt.
Juan Carlos’s crazy elder market got a whole lot crazier the instant Dante leaped from the front bumper and stormed through the center floor, his hands balled into massive fists. The whole warehouse rose to their feet to watch the showdown. Ruan grabbed his gun and shot through the aisle to the main walkway, ready to join in a heated fight and make some therian heads roll.
Guards inside the ring surrounded Juan Carlos’s lifeless body like he was the real gem amongst all the elders in this place, and crouched in front of him, ready to protect him at all costs. They stormed down the aisles from the right and left, shifting into angry beasts as they closed in on Dante. Overhead lights blacked out, replaced by bright red auras oozing a glow of warning from the corners. Stuffy vamps and wealthy mundanes fled the warehouse, probably fearing a bloodbath would ruin their designer suits. Blood-dolls led the charge downstairs. The warehouse turned into a circus full of wild animals with hissing and gnashing teeth.
Ruan had lunged into the walkway, dodging between therians who had yet to shift and mundanes who were scrambling to get out. He’d reached the front bumper in time to see Dante kneel to the ground, fist to stone, elder bent over his shoulder. He’d shaken violently, his head tucked in to his chest, and—Pop!—vanished, leaving an enormous fireball spinning in his wake.
Everyone who had surrounded him pushed back, arms extended, eyeing the flaming ball with morbid curiosity.
Dante and the elder had to be safe, wherever they were, though Ruan wasn’t sure the reason Dante picked that specific high-profile elder to use for their interrogation in the first place. Either way, Ruan decided it was time to look out for numero uno and bolted for the exit. After weaving in and out of vamp and therian traffic headed out of the warehouse, he veered from the crowd and pushed through the black velour curtain from where they’d entered not thirty minutes before. He met a brick wall.
What the hell? The entrance was right . . . here. He palmed the bricks, skated his hands up as high as he could reach, then along the rough lines of mortar, down to the bottom. It was like there’d never been a door there at all.
So this was the “problem” getting out that Dante had referred to. Fucking fantastic. He supposed it was the perfect maware to make sure no client left the club without paying first.
He spun around, pushed through the curtain again, and followed the crowd down the spiral staircase to the basement. Seemed like everyone knew something he didn’t. For once in his life, he was content to be a sheep and follow the escaping flock.
The shallow-roofed basement below was composed of three long, dark hallways branching off in different directions. The hallway on the left, with not a single door on either side as far as the eye could see, sloped downward, deeper underground. Ruan was sure from how deep they already were, it’d have to tunnel under the bay. The second hallway straight in front of them was illuminated by candles every couple feet. Doors lined both sides of the hallway and the same running lights from the foyer were pinned on the edges of the cold stone floor.
Those rooms must’ve been elder holding cells. His stomach turned as he got the same familiar feeling from his dream. The feeling that there was energy in this basement.
Dark energy.
He closed his eyes, trying to feel through the herd of people moving through the dark, trying to grasp onto the energy reaching for him and ball it in his gut. Someone bumped him from behind. He elbowed back to gain some room, and kept moving.
Everyone was quiet as they filed through the hallway on the right, their whi
spers muffled by the soft echoes of the stone basement walls. Ruan kept his ball cap down, the collar of his coat flipped up high. An open door appeared on the right with a therian bouncer guiding vamps out.
“Consider yourself lucky, people,” he boomed in a gruff voice, waving his arms out the door for people to follow. “This exit didn’t exist yesterday and it won’t exist tomorrow. Get the hell out!”
So how did patrons usually leave the black market? Ruan wondered. Did they leave at all? Were they kept as inmates in the hall where Ruan felt the dark energy? Were they killed? Wouldn’t he and his other khissmates have heard about something like this? He sure as damned hell wouldn’t forget.
Someone—vamp or therian, Ruan couldn’t tell at first—was up-close and personal with a burly guard standing stoically to the right of the exit, pointing in his chest and screaming in his face. Probably the bidder of the virginal elder, wanting something to show for his top-dollar bid.
As Ruan walked by, struggling to keep his attention where it belonged, the angry sucker locked eyes with him.
Savage.
The traitorous vamp who stood in as Primus to his haven. The same parasite who gave intel on his khiss, arranged a therian attack on San Francisco’s haven during Winter Solstice, and nearly killed everyone Ruan had ever cared about. Ruan couldn’t mistake those red eyes. And that scar sliced across his cheek.
It was too late to dodge past. Too late to pretend Ruan didn’t see him.
Savage squared his shoulders to Ruan as vamps and therians continued to file out. By the time Ruan reached him, facing the open door, he still hadn’t figured out a damn thing to say to the leech. He palmed the gun in his pocket; his finger sliding into place around the trigger. He had in his right mind to shoot the traitorous sucker in the heart. If he had one at all.
But it appeared the rough-looking therian guard standing behind Savage had the same idea about Ruan. Right as Ruan drew the shaft of the gun from his pocket, the therian followed suit, only revealing the top silver handle of the revolver buried in his leather coat.
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