by Anne Malcom
“I can promise I won’t go looking for trouble,” I told him, though I couldn’t keep a straight face. Nor could I lie to him, even about something as simple as that. Which troubled me, since I basically existed on blood, sarcasm, lies, great taste, violence, and sex appeal.
And now Thorne, it seemed.
“No, I can’t actually promise that. It would be a boring day otherwise. But I promise I’ll limit the trouble to nothing bloody.” I paused, screwing up my nose and thinking of how annoying the human race was in general. “Wait, I can’t promise that either.”
“For fuck’s sake, Isla,” he muttered.
I smiled at him. “Love you too, honey.” I finger-waved at him.
I’d shopped and not killed anyone, which made me kind of broody, but it helped that I came home laden down with bags.
I frowned when I opened the door to Duncan drinking my whisky, lounging on the couch.
Scott was cradling a tumbler of clear liquid, his eyes—well, eye—lighting up as I entered the room.
I pointed at him. “I swear to fucking Karl Lagerfeld, if you come near me and try to hug me or even smile, I’ll carve out your other eye and I won’t even feel bad.” It was true at that point. Maybe I’d feel bad later.
Luckily, he didn’t make me test that theory.
“And if that’s water, I’m throwing you out the window,” I informed him, nodding to his glass and dropping my bags at my feet.
“It’s vodka,” he said quickly.
I nodded once. “That’s lucky for you.”
I glared at Duncan. “How did you get in?” I asked. “I told the doorman not to let anyone in.”
He grinned, showing fang. “I know. He was the entrée.”
I groaned. “You killed him? I really hope you cleaned up after yourself.”
“I was going to but this one stopped me,” he grunted, glaring at Scott.
I gaped at Scott’s courage to do such a thing to a Scotsman who had a history of killing someone who even looked at him wrong.
Then again, so did I.
“And Scott’s still here, grinning like an idiot?” I asked in amazement.
Duncan rolled his eyes. “Couldn’t be arsed killing the little fuck.”
I hid my smile. If I didn’t know better, Duncan actually liked Scott. He had the knack for making you not want to kill him, only maim him every now and then.
Thorne had stormed in not long after as we began speaking about the night ahead, even broodier than when he’d left.
He’d given me a once-over, not acknowledging Duncan or Scott. “You’re not covered in blood,” he remarked while crossing the room to snatch me in his arms.
I gave him a look. “I know, I’m upset too,” I replied.
Then he’d kissed the utter shit out of me, made me go all weird and girly for a hot second, then poured himself a whisky.
Then we’d planned.
Now we were here.
Actually, he’d taken one look at my outfit and fucked me against the front door of my apartment, made me drink deeply from him and gave me one of the best orgasms ever.
Now we were here.
And my post-orgasm glow was getting seriously dampened by his stupid broodiness. You’d think he’d be more cheerful, considering he had an orgasm too.
I glared at him. “I’m not going to break,” I snapped. “I’m still rather durable.”
I moved quickly, pushing Thorne backwards so he slammed against a car, my hand circling his neck before he could blink. The dull thump of his pulse under my hand became hypnotic for a second, trying to seduce me as if I hadn’t just indulged less than an hour before. Using the willpower that hopefully was going to be enough to keep me alive, I kept my eyes on his and my teeth off his jugular.
“I’m more than capable of handling myself,” I murmured. “Don’t you worry your pretty little head over me after some witch put a silly curse on me.”
His anger glittered in the air. “Silly?” he gritted out, fingers biting into my hip. “This spell could fuckin’ kill you,” he hissed.
I rolled my eyes. “They tried that once, remember? It’s not likely to happen a second time.”
His eyes blackened. “No, it’s fuckin’ not. Not that I’m gonna let that happen. But you’re actin’ like you’re still invincible. You’re not. And you want to go in there”—he nodded to the nondescript building across the parking lot—“and risk a life that is the most precious thing I’ve ever held in my hands. So I’m asking you politely, for once, to go about this without daring death to come and fuckin’ snatch you from me.”
I regarded him. “Well, if using that many curse words is you asking politely, then I’ll comply. But you’re going to have to promise me some depraved things later on if I can’t do it here,” I murmured.
The warmth of his desire replaced the inferno of his fury. “Oh, I can promise that,” he rasped then quickly pressed his mouth against mine and firmly took hold of my hand.
“Remember, you can’t do the whole alpha male routine in there.” I nodded to the building looming in the distance, looking all but dead.
Which it was, if you wanted to get all technical.
I focused on Thorne.
“After Sophie worked her magic, they’ll think you’re merely a lowly human. One I own. You’ll have to do what I say or you might be responsible for blowing our cover and turning the night a lot bloodier.” I grinned at the prospect despite my promise, the one I’d only made moments before. But promises were the most fun when you broke them. “Think you can do that?” I asked sweetly.
He glared at me. “Let’s go,” he growled in response.
I grinned and kept hold of his hand, leading us across the parking lot. The night was still and had an air of foreboding to it. Then again, what night didn’t these days?
That’s what I loved about this whole war thing. Never a boring night with Netflix and a run-of-the-mill murder.
No, it was always some sort of mass killing spree that would end in blood, explosions, and a lot of death.
Just hopefully not ours.
Chapter 5
Extermius was a bar that didn’t have any rules, regulations or species limit. Anyone and everyone was allowed. Apart from slayers, of course. Humans went in but rarely came out. Parts of them came out, surely, just not alive parts.
The purpose of the bar was for depraved creatures to catch a drink and try to outdo each other’s sadistic pleasures.
To see and be seen.
Kill and be killed. Murder of humans was encouraged. Murder of patrons was accepted.
The worst of all of the supernatural creatures, in other words.
Which was why it was the one bar I steered clear of.
“You’ve been here before?” Thorne asked under his breath as we crossed the parking lot.
“Not lately,” I admitted.
Because he was Thorne and seemed to have some sort of Isla radar as to when my story had more to it—granted, almost all of my stories had more to them—he slowed his gait to give me more time to explain.
I knew he wouldn’t let it go.
“Okay, I might have been banned for a few hundred years,” I said sheepishly. “It’s been lifted now.”
“You said the most depraved and sadistic of all creatures patronized this place,” he remarked.
I nodded.
“And that anything and everything was allowed, that there were no rules.”
I nodded again. “Like fight club.”
His eyes saw through me. “How the fuck does one get banned from a place with no rules? Isn’t such a thing impossible?”
I gave him a look. “Nothing’s impossible, just extremely difficult. You do have to work pretty hard at it, but you will achieve it. I’m nothing if not an overachiever.”
“Should I even ask how?”
I grinned. “Not if you don’t want to get nightmares.”
He hardened his jaw and nodded once.
I didn’t have
time to discuss the semantics of how many demons it actually took for me to blow up the original establishment.
The building showed me that they hadn’t gone to huge amounts of effort to improve it, even though a hundred years before it was little more than a shack in a dirty plain outside a growing city.
“Remember,” I whispered to Thorne as we approached the steel door, “we can’t save the humans in here. Most will likely already be dead. We’re here to look at the bigger picture. Few for the many and all that.”
Thorne nodded once, but I could taste the way his entire body recoiled against the plan.
The new pesky piece of humanity that was growing inside me did the same thing. It pissed me off, so I banished it do the depths where bad fashion choices and questionable choices in bedmates resided.
The door opened before we could get two feet from it.
A tall and muscled werewolf towered over us, his golden eyes searching us. “Vampire and a human,” he mused, his voice thick. “Business?” he barked.
I yanked Thorne to my side, jerking his head back and licking the side of his neck. “Oh you know, just to show my pet here a party.” I winked at the wolf. “Maybe if you’re a good boy, I’ll save you his heart for later on. If there’s anything left.” I gave him a smile with full fang, my voice devoid of anything resembling humanity. I welcomed it, that twang of sadism that had been nothing more than nature to me during my heyday.
It was much easier to welcome the mindset of a sociopath than that of anything with a conscience.
The wolf grinned, showing a mouth full of sharp, pointed teeth. He stood back, letting us through the door.
I gave him an easy smile and Thorne did his best to look submissive and weak, though his stature and general aura were in direct conflict with that. Luckily I wore sadism as convincingly as I did faux fur, so it counteracted him. It was even convincing me; I didn’t feel anything at the slight repulsion that came from Thorne at my demeanor.
I led him through the narrow and dimly lit hallway, the lingering stench of blood, death and cheap whisky.
The cheap whisky offended me the most. We were immortals, for fuck’s sake; we could afford and had access to the good stuff.
We emerged into a wide and cavernous room, and Thorne sucked in a savage breath before steeling himself. I didn’t have an outward reaction, though I was simmering with fury and disgust.
My mask of sadism stayed in place, but it obviously didn’t go as deep as I first thought.
The room wasn’t dark and dimly lit like the hallway. It was bathed in artificial and fluorescent, illuminating the evil in the room.
It was a bar, by the conventional sense of the word. A long silver steel bartop ran down the right-hand edge of the room. Bottles of liquor peppered the wall behind it, but by the smell of the room, it wasn’t what the patrons were imbibing in.
Blood was on the night’s special.
With a side of death, pain and suffering, naturally.
The edges of the room were framed with booths, though that was where the illusion of civility left. If it was ever there. Cages dangled from the ceiling, scantily clad human women clinging to the bars, emaciated bodies displaying protruding bones and decorated with bruises. Blood trickled from cuts on their wrists and vampires lingered underneath, glasses extended to catch the crimson drips.
Long wooden tables ran down the middle of the room. An obese human male was splayed naked on one, a vampire feasting at his neck while a demon leaned over his mouth, opened in a wordless scream as he sucked out his soul. Werewolves were served hearts on a silver platter in the booth closest to me. A table of vampires lazily refilled their goblets from a woman who was hanging upside down, her throat slit so a pool of blood formed a puddle on the table. Though it veered inwards at the middle so the blood didn’t drip off the sides, as if it was designed for that purpose alone.
Wouldn’t want to make a mess.
I squared my shoulders and stalked confidently towards the bar, meeting every pair of eyes that turned to face me. I blew a kiss at the demon sucking the soul. He grinned back at me.
I dragged Thorne along with me, not blinking at any of the emotions coursing through him, which luckily didn’t show on his face.
A quick scan of the room told me we didn’t have an empathy demon in the house, which was good. They’d obviously expect such feelings from Thorne, a human in the snake pit, but the lack of fear would raise some serious red flags. A human without fear was either insane, which the empath would have been able to rule out or trouble.
Small favors and all that.
“Gin and tonic, please,” I asked the bartender, flipping my hair. “Hold the tonic.”
The young vampire wasn’t clad in the trappings of tasteless BDSM castoffs like the waitresses, low-level vampires showing more than they hid in cheaper versions of my outfit.
The young vampire didn’t actually look anything resembling a vampire. It wasn’t just his slicked-back hair and the simple button-down, fastened around his thin neck. It was something about his aura, which didn’t exactly exude low-level.
I shelved that as he nodded. He waited, eyes touching Thorne.
I laughed, realizing he was waiting for me to order Thorne something. “Oh honey, he’s not getting a beverage. He is the beverage.” I winked at him.
A glimmer of something that looked like anger flickered in the young vampire’s eyes before he turned to make my drink.
Interesting.
I leaned my back against the bar, scanning the room for the vampire I was looking for. This was where Earnshaw had met his intermediary. Obviously before I’d killed Earnshaw.
Dante had called me earlier in the day and told me he’d heard whispers about a couple of heavy hitters in the game meeting that night.
He was becoming useful.
Maybe he just wanted to get laid. He’d be in for a cruel surprise when he found out about me and Thorne. Then again, so would I.
My death.
Just because King Rick was strangely now on our side, it didn’t mean the rest of the supernatural community would like our renewed relationship status.
I would not get all of the likes if I changed the status on Facebook, nor would they come up with a great nickname for us to rival Bennifer.
Pity. Thisla had a nice ring to it.
But even a rule from the king wouldn’t save me from even half of the vampires in the community, and the rest of the supernaturals—who didn’t exactly love me in the first place—wouldn’t be sending congratulatory blood baskets.
My eyes rested on Duncan’s large form, bent over a human woman. He lifted his bloodstained mouth to meet my gaze and gave me a brutal smile.
He lived for this shit.
Then I found Scott, almost unrecognizable. He’d shed his master geek image and transformed so almost I believed he was the vampire who wore seven-thousand-dollar suits with three-hundred-dollar haircuts and brutalized teenage girls like he was currently doing before I locked eyes with him. Well, eye, considering his empty socket was covered with a sleek leather patch that matched his outfit. He actually looked menacing and… almost attractive.
That was until he gave me a decidedly inconspicuous thumbs-up.
I shook my head. “Idiot,” I muttered under my breath.
He’d demanded to be part of this ‘mission’ the moment he’d found out about it.
So there he was, for better or worse, a rabbit in the wolf’s den. Though the way he throat-punched a much larger full-blood vampire who tried to cut in on his date for the night had me slightly optimistic at his chances of survival.
They went from nil to about thirty seventy.
As good as he’d ever get in this place.
Hopefully the universe was feeling generous.
But the universe was always a selfish bitch and only idiots relied on selfish bitches—this coming from a selfish bitch herself.
I snatched the drink from the strangely sassy bartender, sipping it
as I turned around to inspect the bar, trying to figure out what to do next.
The men had tried to plan further than this but I’d informed them any actual plans they made would be shot to shit by me. I was a ‘fly by the seat of my pants’ type of girl. Or ‘fly by the seat of my leather skirt,’ as it were.
Then again, it was that attitude that had me banned and neck-deep in corpses the last time I was here.
“Come, pet,” I hissed, dragging Thorne by the belt buckle and sauntering over to a table of vampires, the corpse of a young girl serving as some kind of souvenir.
“Heya, fellas, got room for one more?” I asked sweetly.
I hoped they didn’t recognize me. Most vampires who came to these establishments weren’t of the higher Vein Lines; classy vampires liked to commit their depravity in much more upmarket establishments with better whisky and silverware.
But then again, I got around—in both senses of the term. I was as infamous in the uncouth circles as I was in the aristocratic ones.
Though if I was honest, I was more comfortable here than I was at any kingly ball. Sure, the sadistic murder did put a damper on the mood, but these monsters walked around without their masks, which was as refreshing as it was disturbing. But their skeletons weren’t in their closets amongst thousand-dollar gowns and shoes. No, their skeletons and dead bodies were out for the world to see, scattered at their cheaply shod feet.
You had to admire them for that, at least. And I would. After I killed them.
The main one had decided to fondle the young girl’s body in a way that legitimately made my skin crawl and Thorne’s body to literally vibrate with disgust and fury to such an extent I thought he might break his cover. I didn’t break my glare at that one, with a bald head and unfortunate skull shape. He was watching me with eyes too small for his weird-shaped head, angular cheekbones making him look like a skeleton. Outside a closet. He wasn’t a dumb skeleton nor sadist, though. Not many of these psychopaths were. It was ironic, really, that the ones who committed the most inhuman acts were probably those most in touch with human, and inhuman, nature.