‘Take your shirt off. The cover charge was double tonight and they expect a show.’
Hate was too weak a word for what he felt. He yanked the shirt over his head. ‘Happy?’
She eyed him with a hunger that made his inked skin crawl. ‘Very.’ She pushed the door open and gestured down the hall. The noise of the crowd awaiting the next fight rushed in, filling his head with flashbacks of worse times. ‘You know the way.’
He shoved past her. Behind him were the holding cells for all the others who would fight tonight. And die. Like you. Ahead of him lay one entrance to the Pits. Through the holding cells and out the other side was another entrance. Right now, whoever he was about to fight was standing there, waiting for the signal to enter and begin.
If that combatant was Ronan, not killing him was going to take every shred of control Mal had. Which wasn’t a lot to begin with. The beast rattled its chains in agreement.
He stopped before the woven steel grate that marked his entrance. A weird dizziness spun through his head. He blinked hard to clear away the fog at the corners of his vision. Just phantom feelings of being here before.
‘Feeling all right?’ Katsumi asked.
He didn’t bother making eye contact. ‘Perfect.’ Control. He needed control. He shifted back to his human face and inhaled. The familiar stench of death – the tang of dried blood and ash – surrounded him. Behind that were traces of silver and stone and the scents of the audience. The voices moaned for more.
‘Good luck, then.’ Her footsteps faded as she walked away, replaced by the muted announcement on the other side of the door. A thin, tinny resonance underlay everything he heard. He shook his head to clear it, but it clung to every sound.
‘Ladies and gentlemen, the fight you’ve been waiting for is about to begin.’
A loud cheer went up. He could practically hear money changing hands.
‘Fringe versus noble in a fight to the death.’
So definitely Ronan, then. The crowd was going to be disappointed when it ended clean.
‘And now, without further ado … our combatants!’
The steel grate shot up, leaving faint trails of light behind it. What the … ? He rubbed his eyes before walking into the arena.
A small tremor of panic filled him as his feet crossed familiar ground, but he ignored it. Time to die, monster. That was an old feeling from when he’d been weak and desperate for blood. He walked through to a deafening swell of noise. For a moment, it was as if he’d never gotten away from this place. He closed his eyes and focused. This time was different. This time he was strong.
The sharp clang of the other grate rang out from across the pit. He opened his eyes. The sound echoed in his head the way it once had in his dreams. Ronan, also bare-chested, walked through the opposite entrance, raising his arms to the crowd in a foolish display of confidence. Let him parade around like the cock of the walk. His fall would be that much harder. Drink him to death. Drain him dry.
Ronan stopped preening long enough to narrow his eyes at Mal. ‘I’m not going easy on you this time, old man.’
Mal glanced at the flames shaved into Ronan’s close-cropped hair and the gold hoops dangling from his ears. ‘Nice hair, Irish. Did you pretty yourself up for me, or did you figure looking like a girl would make losing easier to take?’
Ronan smiled, showing off inferior fangs. ‘Blather all you want. I’m going to clatter your arse just like old times.’ He leaned in. ‘Except this time, I’m going to kill you when I’m done playing.’
‘Playing is all you’re going to do, whelp.’ Mal notched his head from one side to the other, cracking his vertebrae. Another wave of dizziness hit him, and he rolled his shoulders to cover. Chrysabelle’s blood suffused him with a strange confidence he’d never felt in this ring before. Maybe that was why he felt so odd, as if he were watching himself from somewhere else. The voices’ constant whine muted.
Both entrance grates came crashing down.
The crowd bellowed in anticipation. The stadium setup meant the view was good at any angle, despite the shoulder-to-shoulder attendance. Chains of iron and silver roped off the twenty-foot-wide pit. Silver for vampires and varcolai, iron for fae. Both for remnants if the mixed lineage creatures had unlucky blood.
The announcer continued as he walked around the outside of the ring. ‘Tonight in our headline fight, noble Malkolm fights fringe Ronan in a grudge match.’ He turned his attention from the audience to the men in the pit. ‘Combatants, are you ready?’
Mal nodded. Ronan shot both hands skyward and circled once, like he’d already won. Bloody fool.
‘Then let the battle begin!’ The announcer chopped his hand through the air.
Mal launched across the arena. A half second later, his shoulder was buried in Ronan’s stomach and he was plowing Ronan into the silver chains. The sizzle of skin announced contact.
Ronan shoved Mal away and tore free of the burning metal. He threw a punch, but Mal ducked, speedy with veins full of comarré power.
A wave of vertigo tilted the floor. Mal recovered in time to land a jaw-rattling hit that split Ronan’s lip. Blood trickled down his chin before the wound zipped closed.
‘First blood,’ the announcer sang out to the cheering crowd.
A honey-sweet fragrance filled Mal’s senses. The voices shrieked, amping the metallic screech up another hundred decibels. He flinched and froze at the sudden din.
‘You bleedin’ tool.’ Ronan threw a fist that connected with the side of Mal’s head.
The punch knocked him to the ground and opened a line of pain across his temple. The crowd noise morphed into a fog of sound that wrapped his head like a wet wool blanket and muffled the voices.
He started to roll to his feet as Ronan’s foot shot toward his ribs. ‘You’ll stay down, if you know what’s good for—’
Mal grabbed Ronan’s foot and kept rolling, flipping the fringe to the ground and bashing him face-first onto the concrete floor. Ronan lay still.
More blood scent flowed into the air. Sweet. Familiar. Very much like the smell of … of what? Mal’s head felt fuzzy and useless. Like his brain had been soaked in whiskey. Or worse.
A needle of clarity pricked through the muzziness. The blood Katsumi had forced him to drink had been tainted. With what, he didn’t know, but if not for Chrysabelle’s blood, he’d probably be Ronan’s punching bag right now.
Chrysabelle. Chrysabelle.
Mal stumbled to his knees. Everything wore a second shadowy image. Saliva pooled in his mouth with a sudden bout of nausea. Katsumi’s drugs were starting to win. He had to figure this out before he keeled over. Concentrating, he flipped Ronan onto his back. Blood gushed from the man’s busted nose and covered his forehead where the skin had broken. Head wounds always bled like crazy. Ronan moaned and lifted his head, his eyes fluttering open. Mal slugged him again, cracking his skull against the concrete a second time. Ronan stilled.
Mal swiped his knuckle through the blood on Ronan’s forehead and tasted it.
Recognition punched him in the gut. He fell back on his heels, staring at the smudge of red on his skin.
Ronan had comarré blood in his system. Real comarré blood, not the excrement Dominic passed off in his club. And there was only one real comarré in Paradise City. Mal licked his lips for a second taste, just to be sure. He’d been right the first time. He knew that blood, because he’d had some himself before coming to Seven.
Rage ignited within him, grain alcohol poured on a spark. The beast roared and Mal leaped onto Ronan. Without Fi, there was no one to help him control the snarling, desperate creature trying to break free. She’d kept the beast at bay for so long but now she was gone. Suddenly, Mal didn’t care that the beast raged wild. He opened himself to it, welcoming the assured destruction the beast would bring.
Because for whatever foul deed Ronan had enacted upon Chrysabelle to get her blood, he was about to die.
Chapter Five
With a
set of sacres strapped to her back and an assortment of other blades hidden about her person, Chrysabelle approached the public entrance to Seven, having already decided to go past it and enter through a side door. The pair of varcolai wolf-shifters who guarded the club’s front entrance were still sore about Mal persuading them to let her in fully armed the last time. Beyond that, Seven was starting to get a reputation among humans as the place to go to see real live vampires – at least among those who believed in vampires, like the typical habitués of Puncture, the strictly human nightclub for those who wished they were vampires. That place was probably losing money since most of their clientele now hung out in front of Seven.
Humans were not always the smartest of species. Well, some of them weren’t anyway.
The idealized, romanticized, Hollywood vampire who was going to offer them life eternal was a myth. Vampires, fringe and noble alike, had two uses for humans: servants and food. Not always in that order. And while some fringe were more tolerant, that could soon change with the covenant gone. It wasn’t a coincidence that the city’s murder rate had already begun to rise.
She shook her head as she lingered at the opening to the alley leading to Seven’s main entrance. A Gothic-looking crowd of humans hovered as closely as the newly installed velvet ropes would allow. Well away from the main group, a few picketers carried antivampire signs. The wolf bouncers stared straight ahead as if the crowd didn’t exist, except for an occasional snarl when one got too close.
A car drove up from the opposite direction and stopped. A well-dressed fringe couple got out. The crowd rolled toward them in a wave. Wrists were offered up amid cries of ‘Bite me!’ ‘Drink me!’ ‘Let me serve you!’
Chrysabelle turned away. Disgust soured her stomach, not just because of the sycophantic crowd but because part of her understood feeling that way. Being around Mal had put urges in her system unlike any her first patron ever had. She’d certainly never dreamed about Algernon in a way that woke her up drenched in sweat and soul-deep need.
Enough. Mal wasn’t interested in her for anything but a chance at freedom, and she was a fool for thinking differently. She was just comarré to him. Born to serve. That was all. If he truly cared, he would have made an effort to contact her by now. She walked on.
The second alleyway appeared to dead-end but if you knew where to look … Chrysabelle paused before reaching for the concealed door that would give her access to a back entrance into Seven.
Her sixth sense itched. Something felt off. She glanced up, checking the rooftops of the buildings around her. Nothing that she could see, and her night vision was relatively decent, despite not having a recent infusion of vampire saliva. The feeling of being watched still prickled the back of her neck, but she shook it off and pushed through.
The door took her into another alleyway and lastly to the somewhat-secret entrance to Seven. She’d never entered this way before, only exited via this door, and therefore didn’t have the access code. The heavy thump, thump, thump of the music inside pumped through the club walls like a heartbeat. She wasn’t sure anyone would be there to let her in, but she’d give it a shot before braving the front.
There was no handle on the outside. She leaned her shoulder into the door and pushed, but it didn’t budge. The hypnotic beat of the music vibrated the metal against her skin. She pounded the door in frustration, knowing no one would hear her knocking over the music.
She glanced back at the way she’d come, looking around for a place to hide her weapons. Better that than turn them over to the bouncers. The street value on weapons like hers, the Golgotha dagger in particular, would assure she’d never see them again.
Suddenly, the music went from muted bass to full-blown clarity. Her head whipped around. Pasha stood in the open doorway.
Not the fae she was hoping to run into. ‘Did you hear me?’
He smiled, displaying a mouthful of sharp teeth, and shook his head. Tonight he wore henna paisleys up and down his arms, an enormous henna dragon on his chest, a few scraps of strategically placed leather, and not much else. ‘No. I just knew.’
Of course he did. Pasha was a gemini, one half of a pair of twin haerbinger fae, and because he’d kept himself pure by only drinking the blood of his twin, he could see the future. Gemini haerbinger were extraordinarily rare. Mostly because the ungifted twin usually killed the other.
Chrysabelle checked to see if he was wearing gloves. She didn’t need any accidental skin contact giving him a reason to enlighten her about how she was going to die.
He wiggled his leather-clad fingers at her. ‘Don’t worry.’
She looked past him. ‘Where’s your sister?’ Unlike Pasha, Satima had no qualms about drinking whatever blood she could get.
He stared at her, his overlarge eyes unblinking. ‘Satima’s telling fortunes in Pride.’
Telling lies was more like it. ‘Good place for her.’ Each of Seven’s rooms was devoted to one of the seven deadly sins. Pride suited Satima. Especially since there wasn’t a room for Crazy. ‘I need to see Dominic. Can you take me to his office without leading me through the club? I don’t want to deal with security right now.’ Based on her last visit, she knew Ronan, the head of security, wouldn’t be too happy to see her.
Wicked light sparkled in his eyes. ‘Yes, but you will owe me a favor.’
‘No, she won’t. I’ll take her.’ Now, this was a fae she didn’t mind running into. Behind Pasha, the shadeux fae Mortalis materialized out of the dark hall and gave the haerbinger a hostile look. Light glinted off the silver filigree caps on Mortalis’s pointed ears and the tips of his horns. They curled from his forehead to his jawline. Even capped, the horns’ points were razor-sharp. ‘You get back to work.’
Pasha scowled and disappeared into the dark, leaving behind a cloud of patchouli.
Mortalis pulled the door open and gestured for her to enter. The barbs along his forearms lay flat against his skin, a sign he didn’t consider her a threat. ‘Are you here about … the package?’
‘No,’ she said as she slid past the charcoal-blue fae. ‘It’s best where it is.’ Mortalis had been part of the rescue effort in Corvinestri and had proved himself a worthy ally. She wouldn’t have asked him to help her hide the ring otherwise. ‘No one knows, right?’
‘No one.’
‘Good. How have you been?’
‘Well, and you?’ He started walking. She fell into step beside him.
‘All right. Still trying to wrap my head around my aunt actually being my mother and the fact that she’s gone.’ She sighed. ‘How’s Nyssa? Is she completely healed?’ Chrysabelle felt some responsibility toward the girl. Under torture, Maris had given Nyssa’s name to Tatiana, and as a result, the remnant girl had almost died at Tatiana’s hands. Fortunately, most remnants were fairly resilient. Nyssa, with her wysper and shadeux bloodlines, was no exception. Noble vampires were foolish to consider remnants an untouchable class of being.
An uncommon smile lit Mortalis’s face. ‘She is … beautifully recovered.’
‘And?’ Chrysabelle smiled back. She had reason to believe the two had moved well past the acquaintance stage since Mortalis had insisted Nyssa convalesce at his home.
‘And learning to sign with two extra fingers is like trying to teach a fish to ride a bicycle.’
‘I’m sure she’s making it worth your while.’
Mortalis rested one six-fingered hand on his stomach. ‘Feeding me like a king.’
‘Well, you still have the waistline of a prince.’ She suppressed the urge to chuckle. Laughing at a creature better armed than you was never a good idea. The twin hilts of a matched set of fae thinblades rose above his shoulders, but the weapons she couldn’t see beneath his dark green leathers definitely outnumbered her hidden ones. ‘I’m happy for the two of you. You should come over to the house sometime. Velimai would probably like some fae company.’
‘I’ll talk to Nyssa.’ He dropped his arm back to his side, the barbs along his fo
rearm still flat to his skin. ‘You’re here to see Dominic?’ His voice held a hint of surprise.
‘Yes. I need to talk to him about my mother.’ They rounded a corner. The floor sloped downward, taking them into the underground levels of the building. ‘If anyone would have answers about her, it would be him.’
Mortalis nodded. ‘Yes. I’m not sure he’s here, however. Since your mother’s death, he’s been scarce around the club.’
‘His private quarters are here, aren’t they?’
‘Yes.’ There was hesitation in Mortalis’s voice and a frown on his face.
‘But? I’m practically his stepdaughter. Whatever it is, I’m sure he wouldn’t mind you telling me.’ Stepdaughter? Had she really claimed that?
The fae sighed. ‘He keeps a penthouse on Venetian Island.’
‘I didn’t know that.’ But of course Mortalis would. He was Dominic’s personal bodyguard.
‘No one does, which is why I’m still here – to create the illusion that Dominic is as well.’ Mortalis glanced at her. ‘I trust you’ll keep that information to yourself. I’d hate to have to kill you.’
‘And I you.’
Mortalis grinned and a rush of crowd noise greeted them as they started down a flight of stairs. Dominic’s office overlooked the Pits. They must be close. She never wanted to see that place again if she could help it. She’d killed her first fringe there in self-defense, and the act had happened with an ease that had both startled and amazed her. ‘Busy night?’
He rolled his stormy sea eyes. ‘Some special secret fight Katsumi arranged. Invite only, high rollers. She’s got Ronan tied up in it, too.’
‘Good. I don’t really want to see him again. What’s he doing for her?’
He held his hands up, fingers splayed. ‘I don’t know and I don’t care. Dominic put her in charge while he’s away, so any mess she makes is hers to clean up.’
‘You don’t like her much.’
Flesh And Blood: House of Comarre: Book Two (House of Comarre 2) Page 5