Shadow Bound (Unbound)

by Rachel Vincent

  I turned on him slowly, jaw clenched, eyes narrowed in fury. “You have no fucking idea what I can do. Let go of me.”

  “Not till we see Holt.”

  “Let her go, Harris,” Milligan said, but I didn’t need his help, and I knew better than to trust his words or even glance at him.

  Focus. Power. Speed. Those were the tools of survival.

  “She’s not going anywhere without us,” Harris insisted. “Start walking.” He shoved me by the arm he still held, his fingers tight enough to bruise. I turned like I’d lead them into the living room, but instead I grabbed the hair dryer hanging from the wall by the door. Spinning, I jerked my arm from his grip, and swung the dryer at his head as hard as I could.

  Harris reached for his gun instead of blocking my arm. The dryer slammed into his temple before he could draw his weapon, and he crumpled to the floor, unconscious, without even a whimper. Blood dribbled from the gash in his head, and pain ripped through mine—the beginnings of resistance pain for violating my oath of loyalty.

  “Damn it, Kori,” Milligan swore as his partner fell at our feet, one arm draped over my shoe. Milligan already had his gun aimed at my thigh. “Are you trying to make Tower kill you?”

  “Yeah. But that won’t do it.” Trying to ignore the steady waves of pain deep inside my head, I bent and pulled the pistol from Harris’s holster, and Milligan tensed, but didn’t shoot. “Was he there? In the basement?” I asked, but Milligan only frowned in confusion. “Did he fucking watch?” I demanded, and Milligan nodded.

  I flipped the safety switch off and shot Harris in the thigh with his own gun. I wanted to kill him. The only thing stopping me was the knowledge that the more I violated my oath, the worse I’d hurt.

  “Motherfucker!” Milligan shouted, as the echo of violence thundered around us. He raised his aim to my chest. “Are you insane?”

  “I might just be.” I stepped over Harris’s prone form and into the bedroom, and Milligan still didn’t fire. Because unlike his partner, he wasn’t an idiot. “I’m guessing we have about five minutes before building security gets here. I can tie you up or shoot you. Your call.”

  “Kori, stop!” he shouted as I bent over the nightstand and ripped the phone cord from the wall. “Don’t make me shoot you!”

  “Holt isn’t here, and if you shoot me, you’ll never find him.” I glanced at him over my shoulder and shoved the nightstand back into place. “Tower’s already gonna be pissed at me, but if you go back without Holt, you’ll be on his shit list, too.” I held up the cord in one hand, Harris’s gun in the other, as Milligan considered, his aim steady. “But if you give me your gun, I’ll take you someplace safe and you can start running. That’s the only shot you have now.”

  “Where’s Holt?”

  I leaned against the glass-topped desk and glanced at the alarm clock next to the bed. “Tick tock, Milligan.”

  “What the hell is wrong with you?” he demanded, sweat beading on his forehead. He exhaled slowly and held my gaze. “Just give Tower what he wants, and we’ll all walk away from this intact.”

  “Intact?” I grabbed the desk lamp and hurled it past his head and he flinched when it smashed against the wall at his back. “Do I sound intact to you? Did you miss the part where Jake tried to drive me insane with solitude and torture? Or maybe you missed the part where it fuckin’ worked! Shoot me!” I shouted, advancing on him with my arms spread, gun held loosely in my right hand, my head throbbing so badly my vision was starting to blur.

  Milligan lifted the gun again, aiming at my chest, but his finger wasn’t even on the trigger. He knew what would happen if he killed me without finding out where Ian was.

  “Shoot me, you fucking coward!”

  “Take me to him,” Milligan said, like we were bargaining. “Just take me to him, and you can go. I won’t try to stop you.”

  I rolled my eyes and reached for his gun, and his finger finally found the trigger. “If you’re going to shoot me do it. Otherwise, hand the damn thing over.”

  Milligan frowned, and I read determination in his eyes an instant before he lowered his gun, aiming for my leg. I threw a fist up and out, knocking his arm to the side. His shot went wild. The bullet tore a chunk of wood from the headboard to my left.

  I slammed his gun arm into the edge of the desk as hard as I could. Bone crunched, and Milligan howled. He dropped his gun and I picked it up while he clutched his fractured arm to his chest.

  “Kori…” he mumbled, as footsteps thundered toward us from the hall outside the front door.

  “Did you watch?” I aimed both guns at his chest, but he only shook his head, not in answer, but in refusal to respond. “Did you fucking watch!” I demanded as the first fist pounded on the door to Ian’s suite.

  “Mr. Holt? Are you okay in there?” some hotel employee called from the hall. “We heard gunfire! The police are on their way!”

  “Not for sport, Kori, I swear,” Milligan said. “I was working. It made me sick, I swear on my life!”

  “Good.” I shot him in the left shoulder with Harris’s gun and in the right with his own. “That’s why you’re still alive.”

  Milligan stumbled back into the desk, sucking in deep breaths, face already pale from shock. I staggered on my feet as the pain in my head echoed deep in my stomach, and my hands started to shake. Then I pulled in a deep breath and stepped past him and into the bathroom, as something slammed into the front door. Security was trying to break it down.

  Harris’s feet were blocking the bathroom door, so I had to shove him over to make it close. Armed and surrounded by true darkness, I sucked in one deep, calming breath, trying to get a handle on the agony my body had become. Then, as wood splintered and the front door gave way, I stepped over Harris’s body and out through the darkness.

  Twenty-Six

  Ian

  When Kori was gone, her sister glared into the dark bedroom at me, though I was pretty sure she couldn’t actually see me. And for just a moment, the opportunity I was passing up made my head hurt and my fingers itch for action. I was alone with Kenley Daniels. I could kill her in seconds, and my brother’s body would stop shutting itself down and finally start to heal.

  As a bonus, I’d be permanently crippling Tower’s empire. He’d never find another Binder as strong as Kenley, and with her blood no longer flowing, actively reinforcing the bindings she’d sealed for him, most of them would break. Flesh marks would die. People would go free.

  That was the very least he deserved, for what he’d done to Kori.

  But if I killed Kenley, I wouldn’t just be crippling one monster—Tower—I’d be creating another one. Myself. And Kori would never forgive me.

  Before I could master my thoughts enough to speak, Kenley stomped out of sight and I followed her through the tiny square of hallway, across a small living area and into the kitchen, where she waved one hand at a bar stool across the counter. I sat, and she watched me, assessing me, like I was an obstacle to be overcome. Though she probably had no idea how close to right she was.

  “Coffee?” she said at last, and I nodded. Kenley opened a drawer and pulled out both a bag of coffee grounds and the cutest little .22 pistol, then set them side by side on the counter. “I don’t trust you.”

  It took most of my self-control to keep from laughing. Her gun was a peashooter, and if she’d been any good with it, she never would have set it within my reach. But I respected her intent.

  “Good. You shouldn’t trust anyone.”

  “I trust Kori,” she said, running water in the coffee carafe.

  “And Kori trusts me,” I pointed out, voicing the part of the equation that was obviously troubling her.

  She turned off the water and set the full carafe on the counter, eyeing me skeptically. Then she pulled a pushpin from the corkboard hanging on one side of the fridge, and before I realized what she was doing, she’d grabbed my left palm and shoved the pin into it.

  “Whoa!” I tried to snatch my hand
back, but she wouldn’t let go, and I couldn’t get loose without hurting her. Which was sorely tempting, considering she’d just breached my skin and spilled my blood—the greatest affront possible against anyone who understood the power inherent in blood. “What the hell are you doing?”

  “Shh.” Kenley held her left index finger to her lips, smiling behind it with a glance at the front door, beyond which—I gathered—one of Tower’s men stood guard. Then she swiped that same finger across the drop of blood welling from the hole in my palm.

  “Whatever you’re about to do, don’t,” I growled as she let go of my wrist and tossed me a paper tower for my bleeding hand. Instead of answering, she grabbed a notepad from the front of the fridge and a pen from the countertop and jotted three words on the paper.

  “Speak only truth,” she mumbled as she scribbled, and my blood chilled in my veins.

  “No!” I whispered fiercely, but before I could grab the paper, she pressed her bloody index finger onto it, leaving a smear of my blood beneath the words. Binding me to them.

  “Son of a bitch!” I hissed. My heart beat against the inside of my chest like a captive beast demanding freedom. I’d never been bound to anyone or anything, and the sudden caged feeling pissed me off and made me want to strike out just to prove I still could. I lunged across the counter, grabbing for the impromptu binding, but she snatched the paper out of reach before my fingers had more than brushed the edge.

  Kenley folded the paper and stuffed it into her back pocket, and I realized two things at once. First, I’d have to hurt her to take the binding and destroy it, and I’d sworn to Kori I wouldn’t let anyone hurt her sister. Second, Kenley Daniels was not the sweet, naive young woman her sister had described. Not entirely, anyway. She was fast, and she was smart. And she had guts.

  Just like her sister.

  “It won’t hold,” I said, though I was virtually certain I was wrong about that. An involuntary binding—especially one sealed without the Binder’s blood—wouldn’t hold for most Binders, but Kenley wasn’t most Binders. If she had been, neither of us would have been in Tower’s territory in the first place.

  Kenley flipped open the top of the coffeepot and poured the water in without spilling a drop, though she watched me the whole time. “Based on your reaction, Mr. Holt, one might think you have something to hide.”

  “Everyone has something to hide,” I growled, angry, but not sure what to do about it, a dilemma I’d only previously experienced with Kori, who was enough to drive a man mad and make him love the journey.

  She set a coffee filter into its cup. “True. But some secrets can get you killed. Are you sleeping with my sister?”

  “I don’t have to answer that,” I said when I realized she’d left me a loophole. Had she done that on purpose? If I spoke, I could only tell the truth. But I could choose not to speak at all.

  “No, you don’t. But a refusal to answer is as revealing as the answer itself. So, have you had sex with my sister?”

  “Yes.” She was right. Silence was as good as an admission. “But for the record, you’re invading her privacy as well as mine with questions like that.”

  Kenley’s brows shot up in surprise, then she nodded again. “Fair enough. One more question, and we’ll leave that issue alone. Did she want it? Did she have the chance to say no?”

  “That’s two questions. And yes to both.” I leaned closer to catch her gaze. I wanted her to understand that I was answering not because I had to, but because I wanted her to know. “I’m not one of your heartless syndicate thugs, Kenley. I would never hurt her. Never. In fact, that’s the only reason I haven’t already taken your juvenile little oath and burned it.”

  Her gaze held mine, and I felt like we were facing off at high noon, in some long-abandoned Western town. “We all use the weapons at our disposal, Mr. Holt. This is the only way I have to look out for her, and I’m damn well going to do it.”

  “Fine.” I could respect that. “Ask what you want to know.”

  “Are you going to sign with Jake?” Kenley said, and I blinked in frustration. I’d expected more questions about me and Kori. Stuff I could answer without getting anyone hurt.

  “No.” She’d know the truth whether I answered or not, and I didn’t like being forced into things any better than Kori did.

  “Does Kori know that?”

  “No. I had to tell her I would sign, to protect…her.” I’d almost said “you both.” To protect you both. But I couldn’t be sure Kenley knew she was in real danger, especially considering she didn’t know why Kori had brought me over in the first place. “I lied to keep her from having to tell Tower something he wouldn’t want to hear.”

  “If you’re not going to sign, why did you come here?”

  I exhaled, suddenly eager for some of the coffee she hadn’t yet started brewing. “I won’t answer that, and for the record, you’re putting all three of us at risk with this line of questioning.” She now knew I was in Tower’s territory under false pretenses, and if and when he asked her, she’d have to tell him what she knew.

  “Something’s wrong,” Kenley said. “More wrong than usual. How am I supposed to know how much danger any of us are in if I don’t ask questions?” She pressed the brew button and coffee began to drip into the pot. Kenley stared at it, her forehead furrowed, her lips pressed together as she thought, obviously trying to decide which verbal land mines to avoid and which to hit head-on. “Does you being here have something to do with my sister?”

  “She’s not the reason I came to the city. But she’s the reason for nearly everything I’ve done since I met her.”

  “Why does Kori think I need to be protected, today in particular?” she asked, and I picked at the edge of the Formica where it was starting to lift from the countertop, trying to decide whether or not to answer that. “Please. If it involves me, I have a right to know.”

  “Because Tower threatens you to keep Kori in line.”

  Kenley rolled her eyes. “I’ve known that from the beginning. What’s different about today? What does any of it have to do with you?”

  I exhaled slowly, hoping Kori wouldn’t hate me for what I was about to say. Because Kenley was right—she did have a right to know. “If I don’t sign on, Tower’s going to kill Kori and put you in the basement in her place.”

  Her face paled so fast I thought for a minute that she’d pass out. “I don’t… I can’t…” She didn’t seem to know how to finish either sentence.

  I carried my stool into the kitchen and set it on the floor behind her, then started opening cabinets in search of coffee mugs.

  “Kill Kori?” she said, sinking onto the stool, and I could only nod. “And put me…?”

  “In the basement. But we’re not going to let that happen.” I pulled two mugs from the third cabinet I’d tried and pressed the pause button on the coffeepot, then filled them both.

  “You can’t stop it,” she whispered, accepting the mug I pushed toward her. “You can’t stop Jake.”

  “No. Not on my own, anyway. At first I thought I could just kill Tower, but—”

  “No, you can’t!”

  “Because of his successor. I know.”

  “You know who it is?” She reached absently for a container of powdered creamer, and her hand shook as she lifted it.

  “No. Do you?”

  Kenley nodded. “I can’t tell you who it is, but I can tell you that things will be worse for us both—maybe for all three of us—if Jake dies.”

  Jonah. It had to be. Who else would both Kori and her sister be so terrified of?