by Sierra Dean
But now she was one woman in a city of seven million, and somewhere there was a virgin sacrifice who was going to die because Siobhan had been busy riding Shane like a pony the night before.
Maybe he should be the one to help her.
It wasn’t like she was getting anywhere on her own.
He’d entered his phone number into her cell earlier with an all-too-charming, leering wink suggesting if her life needed saving again, he was only a phone call away. She caught herself smiling at the memory.
Well, fuck if the lanky, lumbering bugger hadn’t gone and gotten under her skin.
She pulled out her cell and found his number, and after a moment’s hesitation hit the call button. It rang three times, and she was prepared to hang up as soon as the voicemail kicked in, but on the fourth ring he answered with a bored-sounding, “Hello?”
“Shane?”
A pause, then a rustling noise followed by the sound of him clearing his throat. “Red?”
Her heart thumped traitorously when he used a nickname for her. She’d never mattered enough to anyone before to warrant a nickname.
“Everything okay?” he asked, his tone laced with genuine concern. “You’re not… Are you okay?”
She was not—in fact—at all okay, yet she found herself nodding. She stopped bobbing her head when she remembered he couldn’t see her.
“My father came to see me today.”
“Oh?”
“Shane, I hate to do this…”
“Let me guess.” She could almost hear his cocky grin through the phone. “You need my help?”
Chapter Ten
Shane lived in Brooklyn, and Siobhan didn’t have the patience to wait for him to meet her near her end of town, so she retraced her steps from the previous night and met him halfway across the Brooklyn Bridge. It was hard not to be impressed with the beauty of New York at night when it sprawled out brightly in front of her. She hadn’t been born in the city. She’d been dumped here at fifteen with the eighteen-year-old Percy to help her find her feet.
She’d learned to take care of herself fast as hell when Percy died.
It had happened on an almost identical night, only he’d died in the fall not the spring. They’d finished tracking down a flora-fae that had been making a nuisance of itself by causing ivy to grow over buildings at an alarming rate, to the point of sealing people inside. The fae had been her first live banishment, and she and Percy had been in high spirits.
They hadn’t realized they were being followed. Not until the goblin had Percy by the throat. In the fight that had followed, Siobhan had honestly believed they would both make it out alive. One goblin against two trained druid warriors? The odds should have been stacked in their favor. They had nearly succeeded too. Except Percy hadn’t looked away when she’d cast the goblin out.
And Siobhan had forgotten goblins have two hearts.
When the creature grabbed Percy a second time, there had been nothing she could do to save him. He’d been too close to the circle, and when the banishing was complete, Siobhan had been left alone on the empty street.
She thought she’d hate New York forever after that. But ten years later she still caught herself marveling at the show her second home managed to put on every time the sun went down.
When she reached the second set of arches, the ones on the Brooklyn side, Shane was ambling up the bridge’s pedestrian path, his lean form stretched a few inches higher than most of the other tourists. He wore a leather jacket and motorcycle boots, his hair properly styled into a sexy, tousled, almost Mohawk.
Sexy?
Siobhan caught herself thinking about the way his hair had looked the night before after she’d practically yanked it all out when his head was buried between her legs. Her freckles must have turned a whole new shade of brown as her cheeks flushed deep scarlet. What the hell was wrong with her?
He gave her a crooked smile when he came to stand in front of her, and her knees wobbled.
“Stop that,” she grumbled.
“Stop…what?”
“Look.” She jabbed a finger into his chest, and he winced. “You can’t flirt with me, or be charming, and you have to stop looking at me. And…breathing.”
“You think I’m charming?”
“This is serious.”
Shane set his mouth in a firm line and held his hands up in surrender before shoving them into the pockets of his jacket. The lapels fanned open briefly, and she saw the two-gun holster he had strapped on over his white wife beater. The undershirt was thin enough she could see the darker skin on his rib cage where his tattoo was. Her throat got dry, and she had to lick her lips to keep them from cracking.
This was why sex was dangerous, she suddenly understood. It made people stupid, zombie-like freaks who just wanted more and more and…
“More?” he asked, cocking his head to the side.
“What?”
“You said more.”
“I did not.” Oh Goddess, she had, hadn’t she?
He glanced inside his jacket. “I brought more clips. I’m pretty sure this is all the heat I can manage without bringing backup.” The jacket flapped closed before he could draw any unwanted attention to himself. “Should I have brought backup?”
“You are the backup,” she reminded him.
“So, then…what’s the plan, Red?”
Siobhan wobbled but steadied herself and pretended she’d wedged her boot heel into the boards. Of course it would have been more believable had they actually been walking at the time.
“Before I came up with my…alternate option last night—”
“The sex.”
She hissed a shushing sound at him and started to walk back towards Manhattan. Shane was hot on her heels, catching up with a few long-legged strides. “Focus, Hewitt,” she scolded.
“Okay, but you brought it up.”
Siobhan threw her hands in the air because she had to do something with them or she’d hit him. Or grab him. She wasn’t entirely sure.
“Someone’s life is at stake here.”
“I can’t fuck all the virgins in New York. I mean…if that’s the plan here, I hate to disappoint you or make you question my virility, but it’s a tall order. And in some cases is probably really illegal.”
Siobhan spun on her heel, sidestepping a tourist couple who almost collided with her. “Are you handicapped in some way? I mean, were you dropped on your head several times as a child?”
Shane seemed ready to say something in return, but instead flushed and bit back the reply. She remembered, then, him mentioning a foster mother, and her own mouth snapped shut. People with foster parents didn’t usually come from the most stable upbringings.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t—”
“You don’t know anything about me,” he told her, shaking his head. “So don’t pretend you can hurt me, okay, sweetheart? You can’t.”
“I’m sorry,” she said again.
“Yeah, well, we’ve got a virgin to save. Let’s go be heroes or some shit like that.”
Shane had been sucker-punched. He’d had his nose broken five times since becoming a bounty hunter. Once, he’d been stabbed with a fucking trident. And only a month earlier he’d taken a bullet meant for someone else. He knew all about pain, and he thought of himself as a tough guy.
One sentence from a pint-sized bundle of sass who was perched mighty tall on her high horse and it felt like he’d been kicked in the stomach.
He’d actually been kicked in the stomach several times, making him pretty damned familiar with the feeling.
No, he’d never been dropped on his head as a child like she’d politely suggested. He had, however, received his first lessons in taking a punch like a man before the age of nine. And the Cassiopeia-shaped constellation of scar tissue between his shoulder blades? Well, to say he related to Bender’s cigarette-burn speech in The Breakfast Club was putting it mildly.
Shane had been twelve when he was taken away by the Office of Children and Fami
ly Services, and even then it hadn’t been the abuse that had drawn the county’s attention to him. Nope. He’d skipped school one too many times, and they wanted to know why his father thought fixing car radiators was a better way for a twelve-year-old to spend his days than learning state capitals.
“Who the hell needs to know what the capital of Alaska is?” his father had sneered. “Boy this useless ain’t never going to go there. He needs a skill. If he can do something, maybe he won’t be such a disappointment.”
The black eye Shane had sported from being a disappointment the previous evening when he delivered a beer too slowly was what iced the OCFS cake. He was removed from his parents’ home and never saw them again. They didn’t fight to get him back.
A middle-aged manicurist named Wanda Malloy had raised Shane. She was a no-nonsense lady, and it was from Wanda he’d learned to respect the hell out of a tough woman. He was one of three foster kids Wanda took care of at any given time, and while others came and went, Shane remained constant. He acted out, and she punished him. Her bullshit tolerance was so low he learned fast to not bother testing her.
She’d also taught him even a fuckup like him still had something to offer the world.
He finished school, not with any stellar results but at least he’d done it. Wanda was there to watch him get his diploma.
When Wanda was killed by a rogue vampire, Shane’s whole world was shattered.
He never went to college, not that he’d planned to. He got married to a cocktail waitress named Heaven, and ten months later she left him and went to Los Angeles to try her hand at acting. She took their pug with her, and it was the only thing about his marriage he missed.
Alone with his demons, he went to a dark place and never really came back again.
To this day he was still in that dark place.
But one turn of phrase from Siobhan had brought back a wave of unwelcome memories. Things he thought long buried. Like the butter-yellow wallpaper in Wanda’s kitchen or the crocheted slippers she wore in winter. Her wheezy smoker’s laugh and the way she smelled faintly of nail polish remover. Somewhere a family was cultivating tiny memory shards like that. Things that would haunt them for years after a cult of psychotic druids killed their daughter.
“What’s the plan?” he asked, his voice steeled.
Siobhan wasn’t looking at him anymore, and he let her keep a half-step lead. She felt bad, he could tell, but he didn’t have the skill to lessen her guilt.
“I know where the ritual site is. Since they’re not bound by the timeline of my birthday, I think they’ll move fast. If they think there’s a possibility something might interrupt the rite, they’ll want to do it as soon as possible. I was hoping to catch them before they got someone, but the city is too big and…”
“And you guys have that fun, fancy travel by light circle thing.”
“Exactly.” They were off the bridge, and he followed her to a parking garage where they took an elevator to the lowest level, an empty and shockingly dark space.
“This place is a rapist’s wet dream,” he said, shaking his head.
“It’s also a handy place to travel by light circle,” she countered, repeating his words with no small amount of sarcasm.
She pulled him between two large concrete pillars and stood close. Close enough the heat from her body radiated against him, and he was hard-pressed—so to speak—to not recall the way she had writhed under him the night before. He sucked in a breath.
Siobhan removed the long knife from her boot sheath and didn’t so much as flinch as she cut open her finger. Bright blue light illuminated the parking lot like a second sun. When Siobhan dropped to her knees, her head was precariously close to Shane’s crotch, but she didn’t seem interested in giving him a blowjob right then. Instead she traced a small circle around them, bracing herself against his legs to complete it.
When she stood and sheathed the blade, Shane’s heart was hammering.
“Hold on tight,” she instructed.
He looped both arms around her waist and tugged her against him, making her gasp, but she didn’t try to wriggle free of his hold. “Just doing what the lady tells me.”
“Do you always follow directions so…literally?”
“Tell me to do something else and find out.”
“Shut up.”
“You asked for it.” He dipped his head and kissed her.
Chapter Eleven
The next thing Shane knew he was throwing up on the sidewalk.
“Idiot,” Siobhan said, but she was laughing as she said it. “You’re lucky we didn’t end up trading tongues in the transport.”
“Hurrruffff,” Shane replied, seeing his SpaghettiOs dinner for the second time that night.
She gave him a gentle kick in the ribs. As gentle as a kick in the ribs could be, anyway.
“Get up, you great big pussy.”
Shane clambered to his feet, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand and leveling her a hard glare. “A warning would have been nice.”
“Oh, I’m sorry. You were too busy sexually assaulting me for me to get around to an in-flight safety demonstration.”
“I’m starting to think your family had the right idea wanting to sacrifice you.”
They stared at each other. She broke first, showing a half smile in spite of her best efforts to remain stony. “Yeah, well. You fucked that up. In a manner of speaking.”
Shane snorted. “Where have you taken us, you crazy woman?” He tried for nasty, but his tone made it sound endearing. He was failing on every level, and this chick was turning him into a big old softhearted mess. This was terrible.
“We’re near the gateway. It’s over there.” She pointed.
To a Bath & Body Works.
“Are you shitting me?” He stared at her, doubting her sanity. Certainly she was playing a trick on him. Some sort of druid hazing ritual. “You’ve got to be shitting me.”
“Sir, I shit you not.”
“I think I hate you.”
Siobhan smirked. “It’s not actually the store. The store is just an entry point.” She took his hand and dragged him towards the building.
“Am I going to throw up again?”
“Probably not.”
“You don’t sound too sure.”
“I’m not.”
“That’s comforting,” Shane said with a groan.
“Hey, if you want comfort, get a Snuggie. Sweetheart.” She opened the door, and before he could protest she yanked him through.
Instead of being bombarded with the smell of fruit-scented candles and hand sanitizers, Shane walked headlong into a peach-colored fog. His hand tightened on Siobhan’s reflexively, and she squeezed back, passing assurances without words.
The air was warm and glittery, the sparkly haze made him uneasy, but the heat comforted him and cast a drowsy spell over his senses, subduing the edge of worry. The atmosphere itself was lulling him into a false sense of security.
Shane blinked a few times, trying to get his bearings, but as soon as he thought he understood the weird pastel environment, it had vanished. What was on the other side wasn’t soothing at all and gave him no illusions of comfort and safety.
They were on the edge of a circle of elder trees, standing between two of the big trunks and looking into a clearing in the middle where a large stone slab was mounted on two smaller slabs. A group of men in thick black cloaks was struggling with a slender, tall blonde who could have been a Sears catalog model if not for her librarian-style glasses. What was with all the hot virgins? If all the so-called pure girls looked like this virgin sacrifice and Siobhan, Shane would have to reconsider his stance on deflowering them. For the sake of humanity, of course.
“Let me go, you freaks.” She wrested one hand free and landed a punch squarely inside the hood of the man nearest her. For such a skinny thing, she had a lot of fight in her.
Shane was guessing girls in New York were a lot tougher now than they’d been the last
time these guys had tried to sacrifice one. Unfortunately for this spitfire she was outnumbered, and their surprise at her fervor was short-lived. It didn’t matter how tough you were, getting coldcocked over the back of the head with a stone knife hilt was going to knock you out. The girl went limp and was positioned on the large gray slab.
The men set about ripping her clothes off, tossing her jeans and sweater to the ground. Shane couldn’t watch anymore.
“Hey, Red. Got any bright ideas here? Otherwise I’m just going to start shooting them all.”
“You can’t.” Siobhan shook her head, but her gaze was focused raptly on the scene before them.
“I have two guns here saying I can.”
“No, you don’t get it.” She directed his attention to a white ring around the ceremony site. “They’ve already sealed themselves in.” To prove her point she threw a twig at the clearing. The branch bounced off an invisible barrier and came flying back towards them while a wave of energy shimmered in the wake of the assault. “Now imagine what would happen with a bullet.”
Shane whistled.
“So what’s our plan of action here?”
Siobhan looked at him and bit her lower lip. “How much blood are you willing to let me have?”
As far as weird requests went, Siobhan knew this would probably stand out as a memorable one for Shane.
“My…blood?” he asked, his voice quavering. “What are you going to do with my blood?”
“They’re inside an unbreakable circle,” she said.
“And?”
“That circle is directly on top of the gate.”
He looked like he was itching to reach for a weapon. “And?” Clearly he was still stuck on the whole give me your blood thing.
“If nothing can get in, nothing can get out. Not until the ritual is complete or the circle is broken.”
Shane didn’t bother saying and this time.
Siobhan sighed. “They are standing on top of a gateway to a dimension full of monsters. And they. Can’t. Get. Out.”
His eyes widened as he caught up to her thought train. “You’re going to open the gate.”
“Yes.”