"Your room is this way." I moved further down the hall to the next room, pushing the door open.
Like the room Blue would be staying in, this one was immaculate. The steel frames of the bed were strong, yet also designed with intricate designs to add to the beauty of it. Sheets the color of gold lay beneath a thick, black and gold comforter. The desks and dressers in the room hadn't been used in god knows how long, but the maid who came out every now and then kept them clear of dusk. Like the gardener, she'd been paid in advance by the woman who once lived here.
Knox brushed past me, his musky scent invading my nostrils momentarily.
I leaned against the door frame, watching as he surveyed the room. He ran his fingers over the top of the Cherrywood dresser before moving over to the wide window pane. He drew the curtains back, staring out of the glass for a moment before letting the curtains fall back into place.
Turning, he watched me, his thick arms folded over his chest. His eyes moved over me from head to toe before his lips parted briefly. He quickly pulled them back together and I couldn't help but to wonder what he'd wanted to say to me.
"Thank you," he finally said after a few uneasy moments of silence.
I shrugged my shoulders, moving off of the door frame and stepping into the room. "It's nothing," I told him. "I need your help and the least I could do is make sure you stay somewhere nice in the meantime." I let my voice drop to a softer octave.
His brows pulled together slightly. "You know we may not actually help you though, right?"
You will.
I waved a hand, unconcerned. I waved a hand, unconcerned. "I know Blue is a little on the fence about all of this, but I have... faith." And a whole lot of manipulation tactics I'm not afraid to use.
His eyes met mine. "I see. And what makes you have this faith you speak of?"
"You."
He recoiled back slightly, his green eyes widening. "Me?"
I nodded. "I know you are on board, already. You want to help me even if Blue doesn't want to. When he didn't want to hear me out, you agreed to it. When he said no to staying here, you said yes." I drifted a little closer to him, tilting my head back to stare at him. "And when I ask again for your final answer to helping me, you'll say yes again."
He pressed his lips together tightly and I watched as the muscles in his arms flexed. "I won't say yes if Blue hasn't changed his stance. It's one thing for me to hear you out It's one thing for me to hear you out when he doesn't want to, but agreeing to be your... henchman without his approval is an entirely different thing." I bit my tongue to keep from letting my true thoughts out. Because Knox was deluded if he thought I didn't know the truth. I knew what it'd take to get him on my side. All I needed to do was Fuck him good, and he'd be on board, Blue's approval or not. But I did want Blue on board too, so I keep my thoughts to myself for the time being.
"Henchmen is a bit of a strong word." I moved past him, gliding up to the wall and leaning against it. I changed the subject. "So tell me more about Blue." I chose my words carefully, trying not to show too much interest to raise any of Knox's suspicions.
Knox raised a brow but didn't say anything.
"I noticed how good he was with Spanky and I just want to know more." I held my hands up in surrender.
Knox's shoulders deflated slightly. "He's a shifter, as you already know, and animals are important to him. Many treat them as if they are lower than people, but not Blue, he wants to make sure they're treated as equals."
"Is that why you help him break into places committing petty crimes?"
A muscle in his jaw ticked. "I help him, because I love him."
My interest piqued at that and I leaned away from the wall, wanting to hear more.
"Not like that," Knox said, shaking his head. "I mean he's my family, the only family I have left. So I'll do anything for him."
But will he do the same for you? Because the way he's currently acting about helping me, I have my doubts.
"Mhmmm." I tapped my fingers along my jeans as I tried to decide where to take my line of questioning next. "What happened to the rest of your family?"
Pain flashed in Knox's eyes and while he tried to hide it, turning his back on me, he wasn't quick enough.
Bingo.
Knowing I had him right where I wanted him, I walked closer, placing a gentle hand on his shoulder. A small trimmer shook my hand, excitement bubbling to the surface but I quickly pushed it down. I let my voice drop an octave. "That bad?"
His muscles bunched beneath my touch. "I just don't like thinking about them," his voice was low and rough. "When they finally tossed me to the side for good, I was through with them as well."
There was too much anger in his tone for his family to have just kicked him out of the house. "Were they... abusive?" I pushed without an ounce of regret. If I was going to get him completely on my side, I needed to poke at all of his vulnerabilities and learn what could leverage his allegiance if I ever needed to.
"Yes." Others wouldn't be able to work with the clipped word, but I refused to give up.
"Physically or verbally?" My hand pressed down harder on his skin, the allusion of comfort meant to make him confide in me.
"Both."
"I'm-"
"Don't say sorry," he said, whipping around. His eyes were hot with furry. "You shouldn't feel sorry for me. If they were in the same room with me right now, I would rip their throats out and drain every drop of blood from their veins." His lips pulled into a sneer.
My lips twitched, but I smothered the feeling of joy as it tried to bubble up. "I wasn't going to say I felt sorry for you," I corrected him. "I was going to say it was their loss." I openly let my gaze move over his body before they meet his eyes. "You're definitely a prize. I don't know why anyone would ever wanted to get rid of you." I placed my hand on his chest this time, soaking in the warmth of his body. Tingles emanated from where we touched, moving up my arm in sharp spikes that sparked adrenaline in my veins.
"And you can see why my revenge is so important," I continued, forcing myself to stay on track and ignore the fire burning in my core. "You have the same burning rage in you that I have." And it'd come in handy.
He stared at me, the anger in his eyes not fading, but shifting, mixing with something I recognized. Lust. He continued to watch me as a thick tension cut through the room, floating between us in a fierce vibration.
I could feel the warmth that flooded my body as my heart picked up in my chest. I didn't dare move though.
After a moment, Knox shook his head and took a step away from me. "None of that matters," he said, but I didn't miss the small waver in his voice. "If Blue is out, so am I."
"Well..." I passed him, allowing my fingers to briefly brush along his arm. "I guess I'll just have to make sure he's in."
And after our talk, I had the perfect idea on how to do it, starting with Spanky.
CHAPTER SIX: BLUE
"I don't trust her," I said, walking into the room Charley had given Knox.
I'd waited for Charley to leave his room before making my appearance and from the look on my brother's face, I could tell they'd shared an interesting conversation. I'd tried to eavesdrop the best I could but was surprised when I couldn't hear anything. Normally I could hear a pin drop two stories down which made living in that apartment damn near unbearable, but with her, I couldn't make a sound.
I wondered if she'd spelled the room to give her and Knox privacy as she tried to convince him to change his mind. He'd made it clear he wouldn't work for her unless I agreed and, as it stood, there was no way I'd agree to help her. Even if her story was sad.
My mind flitted back to the life I'd taken before. The man was an evil son of a bitch but I wasn't entirely sure he deserved to die. His family definitely didn't deserve the grief his death created and whatever emptiness his loss left them with. Still, I couldn't say I'd do anything different if given the choice to go back to that day. Did that
make me evil? Maybe. But I could live with that because it was my choice to take his life.
Knox snatched another comforter from the floor and dumped it on the king-sized bed in the center of the room. He rolled his eyes as he stretched it over the large bed, covering the mattress with a pink and purple flowery pattern that had me cringing. The previous tenant had to be an old woman but besides the comforter, she had immaculate tastes. Opening the closet doors, I wasn't surprised when the pungent scent of mothballs assaulted my nose.
"Holy Fuck," Knox yelled, wrinkling his nose in disgust. "Get rid of that shit."
Laughter rumbled from my chest as I gathered up every mothball I could find. Served that asshole right. Were it not for him, we'd be in our apartment, far from the Charley and her proposal. Still, I didn't mind getting rid of them. While shifters' noses were sensitive to smell, a vampire's sense of smell was far superior to ours. I couldn't imagine how much stress that scent put on him.
I found a leather sack in the corner of the closet and dumped its contents, refilling it with every moth ball I could find before dropping it on the tiled floor.
"I gathered them, you take them out."
Knox's face scrunched into a grimace before he zipped over and took the bag, using his vampire speed to take the bag out of the house. Within seconds, he was back, his dark hair a mess on top of his head.
"You have to admit, this is a nice set up," Knox said, crawling into the bed and laying on his back. He laced his hands behind his head. "And these beds are a lot more comfortable than what we have. I could get used to this."
I shook my head. "We're not staying."
Knox just waved me off as if he thought I was over-reacting to the situation, and maybe I was. It wasn't like she was actually asking us to kill for her but the thought of helping her murder people who've done me no wrong for someone I knew nothing about didn't sit well with me.
"I just don't see the big deal. Given what that girl has gone through, I understand why she'd want her revenge and it's no different from what we're already doing." He sat up in the bed, pinning me with a serious look. "I don't know about you, but I'm tired of living in the slums of Hell's Point, pulling off petty thefts that give us barely enough to cover the rent of our shitty apartment. If this girl is willing to pay us to follow some people around and rough them up, I'm all for it."
Of course, he was. Knox was an opportunist at heart, and he didn't give a shit about stirring up trouble. I doubted anything I could say would change his mind. Luckily for me, I didn't have to change his mind. All I had to do was stick to my guns, and we'd be out of there in day. Still, it bothered me he wanted to go along with this scheme of hers.
"Why are you so interested in this?"
Before he could answer, I heard a knock on the front door. I wondered briefly who'd be knocking at that hour, considering it was late and nothing savory happened in Hell's Point that late at night, but shoved that thought from my head. Whoever it was, Charley could deal with it.
Knox cocked his brow. "Do you think we should..."
"No," I said before he could finish his question. "I think you should answer my question."
He huffed out a breath of air before lowering his gaze to his lap. Of course, he was thinking with his dick. This was no different from the last time he'd nearly gotten us killed, chasing down some tail. The girl had offered up her own sob story. That, combined with a supermodel figure and a large set of breasts was all it had taken to bring Knox to his knees. He'd agreed to go along with her scheme to break into a nightclub, only then we had no idea who ran that club. We'd ended up face to face with Slade, a mean son-of-a-bitch who ran Hell's Point's underground, a man powerful enough to bring the entire city down around us.
Luckily, Slade had been in a good mood that night, accepting our apologies and allowing us to depart after only an hour worth of torture. I'd learned my lesson that night, but Knox? The man was a lost cause.
"One of these days," I began before the sound of breaking glass reached my ears.
Immediately, I allowed my senses to scan the area beneath us. The first scent that reached me was one that's already grown far too familiar, a unique blend of vanilla and peach that belonged to none other than Charley. I picked up the sound of footsteps, two sets of heavy thuds that seemed to grow louder as the two men pushed their way further into the house, with two more sets approaching the door from the outside.
Knox flew from the room with me hot on his heels, rushing downstairs and immediately throwing himself into the fray. His body collided with a man at least twice his size, knocking the brute off his feet. In a blur of movement, he reached around and grabbed the second man by the arm. He yanked him forward by the throat before sinking his fangs into the man's neck.
The man screeched as two others entered the home, their gazes landing on me. The smaller of the two jerked his chin toward me, muttering out a command I couldn't hear before the larger barreled toward me. He turned to face me, his eyes glowing a deep red as his brown skin began to take on a crimson tint to it. The scent of sulfur assaulted my nose as fire began to dance over his skin.
A fire mage. Fuck. This shit was going to hurt. I kept my eyes on him, taking in every twitch of fiery muscle, every movement and every hitch of breath. Fire mages were tricky, with their molten skin that burned everything they touched, and their ability to conjure balls of flame. One wrong move and I was done for.
The mage inched towards me, a taunt playing in those red eyes as I inched away from him, trying to keep a good distance between us. His muscles bunched before he made his move, lunging at me with his large arms outstretched. I jumped to my right, narrowly missing Charley as she grabbed the man before her, tossing him to the floor. Leaping forward, I threw my shoulder into his stomach, ignoring the searing pain as a rush of air flew past his lips. His fingers curled around my arms, searing the skin there, as he pulled me with him until his back collided with the wall there. His grip loosened on my arms, giving me the freedom I needed to ball up my fist and deliver a punch that had the bones of his jaw cracking beneath the force of my fist.
He stumbled forward, a curse flying from his lips as he made another grab for me. Before I knew it, a series of things happened so fast I didn't have time to stop any of it. I cried out as his hand wrapped around my arm again, this time pouring enough fire into that touch I couldn't ignore the pain of it. A growl ripped from my throat as my muscles began to twitch with the need to shift. But that shift was brought to an end as I saw Spanky rushing toward the mage, a small knife in his hand as he scurried forward. One moment he was leaping toward the man and the next he was hit with a blazing ball of fire that blew him back to the ground in a ball of singed fur.
I felt it the moment the connection between me and Spanky was severed, and the moment Charley realized what happened. The room darkened as thousands of dark tendrils of shadow filled the room with dark magic so heavy I felt I'd be crushed beneath it. The tendrils whipped out at me, leaving deep purple welts in my skin and droplets of blood falling into a pool on the ground. I turned to look at Charley, my eyes pleading as the tendrils snaked around me, shoving me aside so it could get to its main target. The mage. The man who'd taken the one thing Charley cared about in this world from her.
My chest tightened as I glanced over towards Knox whose eyes were also trained on the powerful witch. The tendrils had already worked their magic on the other's in the room, shredding the flesh from their bones, leaving behind nothing more than skeletons. And as fascinated as I was by the show of power, I was also terrified. I'd never seen any witch wield that kind of power.
Her rainbow hair whipped around her as if a strong wind were blowing through it, each strand glowing with a brilliant white light. Meeting her eyes, I realized her hair wasn't the only part of her that was glowing. Her eyes and skin glowed with the same white light, making her even more beautiful and more terrifying than anything I'd ever seen, and I was completely mesmerized. Captured b
y the power that flowed through her as she stepped toward her companion and knelt beside his broken body. Tears streamed from her eyes as another surge of magic filled the room, the bulk of it directed toward the mage whose cries were silenced as the magic slowly ripped him apart. Where the other's deaths had been quick, he'd been forced to suffer through his for what felt like minutes before he finally crumpled to the floor, his mouth twisted into a silent scream.
I stared at his corpse for a moment before a pang of emotion filled my chest. Spanky was dead, and though I'd only just built a bond with him, it hurt as if I'd lost a member of my family. A low sob pulled my attention to Charley as she placed a hand on her fallen friend, her face scrunched in concentration as she was trying to...heal him? Could she bring him back? I wasn't entirely sure but from what I could tell, she was completely drained of energy. She wobbled and fell to the side, her eyes drifting closed though she fought with all her strength to keep herself awake.
As if on instinct, I rushed to her side and picked up Spanky, holding him close to my chest.
"Help me." Her plea was so weak she barely gave voice to it but I could hear the desperation in those words. I could also hear what she wanted to do.
Alone, she wasn't strong enough to save him, but if she were to funnel her magic through me, maybe I could. I thought of the last time I'd let a witch channel magic through me, of the pain it caused and the connection that was built from it. That connection had bonded me to that witch until she died, leaving me alone and in a perpetual state of grief. And though I wasn't sure I wanted to go through that again, I was sure I'd do anything to save our little friend.
I gave her a nod, opening myself up to her. And with the last of her strength, she poured magic through me. It hurt like hell as my own magic swelled within me, forming a bond I knew would be unbreakable and amplifying hers. The palm of my hand lit up over Spanky and I focused all of my strength into pouring every ounce of that magic into him until the magic was drained from me.
Darkness clouded my vision as Charley's hand slid from me, breaking our connection. The loss of that connection bothered me until I realized a smaller one remained.
Nowhere to Run: A Dark Paranormal Villain Romance (Midnight Renegades Book 1) Page 4