by Anne Marsh
His brothers let him lay in a course for the door, but they came right along.
“You in?” he growled. If he had to pick up a posse, they could damn well fight for him.
“I’ll fight,” one of the Fallen said cheerfully. Male sounded as if Zer had brought him flowers. Damn hothead would get himself killed long before the soul thirst ate him alive, but that was part of Keros’s charm. He didn’t think. He just did. Brends claimed Keros was working his way through the penal code, one act at a time, and Zer didn’t disbelieve him. Last he’d heard, Keros had been running arms for some of the hotter-headed human tribes on Russia’s southern border. Male probably had his reasons—and Zer didn’t care what they were—but he made an order of Uzis sound like take-out pizza. Eventually, Zer would have to step in before Keros made a mess too large to clean up.
Not tonight, though. Tonight, all Zer wanted was a fight.
He strong-armed the outer door open, sucking down the cold night air. The weather was an icy wake-up call to all his senses. When he looked up, he could see the watery silver light from the moon overhead and the dying glow of the mazhlights. Almost dawn, but still more than enough time to do some hunting. Take out his frustrations on M City’s rogue population. Left or right. His direction didn’t matter.
“Do me a favor. Let’s roll,” he said to the pair closest to him. Keros and another tough male named Tarq. They’d do. “I’m feeling restless tonight.”
Tarq’s smile was slow in coming and frightening when it finally cracked his face. Only the promise of blood woke the brother up. “Fighting or fucking?”
“Fighting.”
Fighting, he understood.
The weather still screamed winter, cold and bleak. An almost arctic wind trickled down the dark street as he strode along. Humans, he couldn’t help noticing, gave him a wide berth. They were smarter than they looked. That, or the leather duster billowing around him and the steel-toed shit-kickers eating up the pavement were ample warning. He dressed like a badass, and his clothes were a warning label.
“You sure about this?” Vkhin’s expressionless face examined his.
“Yeah.” He was more than sure. He didn’t really care about protecting the humans in M City from rogues, but fighting was a habit now that he couldn’t shake. He’d fought for the Heavens, had served as a Dominion for centuries before the Fall. Laying it down was second nature.
“You going to tell me where you’re headed?”
It didn’t matter. “Left,” he said. If possible, Vkhin’s face grew even emptier. Not like Zer hadn’t disappointed him before. Whatever Vkhin felt about his sire’s decision, Zer reminded himself savagely, it wasn’t new. Nothing was new anymore. “You want me to march right on up to the Heavens? Leading an army of three? Hell, Vkhin, I can’t even go myself.”
Vkhin slid his hands into his pockets. “Maybe you could. Maybe that female up there is your soul mate.”
Zer shook his head. Left, it was. He was so done with this shit. “You got to feel, Vkhin, to have a soul mate. Me, I don’t have anything left.” Just the rogue inside and the never-ending urge to kill. To finally, finally drink his fill. A tendril of something snaking out from the left had his senses going on high alert, the beast sitting up at attention.
Vkhin just looked at him. “You got to try first.”
“I spent the first two millennia trying. Now, I’m going to settle for a little ass-kicking. Piss off if you don’t want to play.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
The handbag-jacking motherfucker in the alley needed to stop.
The handbag in question was impossibly feminine—hot pink vinyl with a cheery little sequined flower stitched to the zipper. Flowers like that didn’t exist in nature, any more than the monster putting the handbag’s owner in a lip-lock did.
Zer palmed his blades and assessed the situation. Vkhin had melted into the darkness, making it clear that if any killing was done in this alley, Zer was doing it.
It was night, but it was almost always night in M City now. The days were shorter than normal, and there was way less light. Some of M City’s residents—the ones who were still human—blamed the Fallen for the darker days, and maybe they were right. The former angels had been thrown out of the Heavens for gross acts of rebellion, and they’d brought their vices with them. Zer’s kind were sinners and killers, and they made no bones about it. The hulking shape at the far end of the alley, however, didn’t belong to one of his fellow Fallen.
Not anymore.
The noise was the first clue, the inhuman growling of a rogue who’d scented prey. A thick blanket of midnight had settled on the street. The gray sidewalk disappeared into the cavernous entrance to the underground Metro. The news kiosks were metal-shuttered for the night, although those vendors moved few papers during the daylight hours. Papers had been replaced by packets of condoms and serving-sized bottles of alcohol, the kind with a non-reusable screw top. Drink it or dump it, but no planning for tomorrow. This late at night, no one was in sight. The human residents had abandoned the premises to the night.
Somewhere, however, the rogue had found himself a girl. A little hooker in a too-short vinyl skirt and faux-fur-lined boots. He’d already done the business he’d paid her for, because the thick, hot smell of sex and semen mixed with the too-crisp night air. He’d pinned the human female way up the alley, clearly counting on either the shadows or the noxious smell of days-old trash to keep his business private. The darkened face and twisted, brutal jut of the male’s jaw identified the predator as rogue.
No rogue hunted for souls in M City. M City was Zer’s territory.
The rogue clearly scented Zer’s approach, not that Zer was going for subtlety. He was no damn knight-errant, but he was the enforcer of his kind’s laws. What the rogue was doing to his human companion was an act of psychic vampirism that wouldn’t end well for anyone. Zer figured if he’d managed to refrain from draining a human soul so far, this bastard could, as well. So, he took it as a personal insult that the rogue was drinking her dry, the psychic stench growing fouler with each deep swallow, dark ribbons of aura peeling off the girl.
“Hello, darling.” Palming his first set of blades, Zer threw. “Time to break up your party.”
For a moment, Zer was backlit, silhouetted against the mouth of the alley. The blade sliced the rogue’s arm, forcing him to drop the girl. She was almost gone; she didn’t so much as budge from her awkward sprawl. Christ. He was going to have to move her before he could get down to business.
Behind him, Tarq and Keros had his back in the usual fighting triad. Vkhin had vanished to do some reconnoitering of his own. Motioning sharply, Zer indicated they should fan out, welcoming the soft hiss of blades being pulled. Tarq took the shadows; Keros moved in for the girl, then hesitated.
“Let me,” Keros said.
Yeah, Keros thought there was a good chance Zer would merely take the rogue’s place. He wasn’t wrong.
Zer nodded once about the girl but not the rogue.
He wanted to do this. He needed to do this. “This one’s mine, Ker.”
The rogue charged, fyreblade flashing.
Zer evaded smoothly, ducking under the blow. Coming up, he pulled his own blades and caught the bastard right in the gut. Not a kill wound for their kind but enough to slow the rogue down. Make him clumsy. No one regenerated that fast. Right on cue, the fyreblade wobbled.
The rogue cursed in a harsh, inhuman stream of syllables. Turning, he came back for Zer with the persistence of the newly damned, because, fuck, there was no walking away now. Not that Zer had ever seen one of them back down from a fight. Mindless beasts. This one couldn’t keep his eyes from sliding over to the human female. He was still thinking dinner, even when it was his immortal soul on the line.
The fight wasn’t going to be long enough to work off all the aggression Zer had trapped inside him, and that pissed him off. This time, when the rogue attacked, Zer brought the blade up, slicing it across the rogue’s neck
in a lethal swipe. Blood spurted, and the look of unexpected surprise crossing the rogue’s face let Zer know the bastard hadn’t really believed he could lose.
“Yeah, you got that right.”
The fyreblade clattered to the ground. Keros moved in to pick it up. “Might be useful.” His voice didn’t change, as if Zer had simply taken out the trash.
Blade might be useful, but already the fyre was flickering, dying, and, sure enough, it winked out altogether as Zer stepped up to the crumpled pile of rogue and finished the job he’d started. Head separated from neck. Too young, too recent a convert, to have gotten the hang of his new strength or even to remember what to do with the fyreblade. Now he was simply trash.
Flipping the body onto its stomach, he anchored it in place with a booted foot. Before he could second-guess his instincts, he drew the sharp edge of his blade down the dead male’s back, the fabric of his clothing parting easily on either side. Dark skin. A few battle scars framed by the desecrated fabric. In other words, nothing he hadn’t expected to see. The Dominions had lost their ability to heal effortlessly when they’d lost their wings and their place in the Heavens. Still, something wasn’t quite right.
“Light,” he snapped, still staring down at the smooth, dark skin. What he didn’t see were the souvenir ridges of scar tissue, Michael’s little parting gift. Where he should have seen the evidence of former wings, there was nothing but a tattoo. The red edges of the ink faded even as he watched, filling the air with the stink of mazhyk.
“Who’d you make a deal with?” He muttered a curse when he spotted the female victim lying on the ground behind the rogue, where she’d been tossed like so much garbage.
His damn mind took him straight back to that last night in the Heavens. The night he’d learned precisely what an Archangel could do to a female body. When Esrene had fought off her attacker—an attacker who outweighed her by more than a hundred pounds—he’d snapped her legs so she couldn’t run. And then he’d played with her. Mentally, Zer reigned in his thoughts. He didn’t want to go there. Not again.
Bastard had gutted the female Dominion like so much prey, sliding his blade into the soft, vulnerable curve of her belly and ruthlessly drawing the blade upward, splitting her chest open the way he’d too clearly split her open lower with his own body. Zer thought of Esrene and admitted that she’d been, in the end, reduced to a catalyst. Michael had sacrificed her without hesitating. He’d known Esrene’s death would infuriate the Dominions, and Zer had fallen right into his trap.
He’d incited a rebellion.
A rebellion he’d lost.
Behind him, Vkhin had reappeared and was phoning in for a cleanup. Although they could have left the body there, Zer knew the limits of the humans living in his territory. There would be full-blown panic, and panic was never good.
None of his people were dead or injured. That was a good night.
What wasn’t good was the truth lying at their feet. That rogue could have been them. Would someday be them, unless they found soul mates. This one had simply given up sooner, slid faster.
Zer was hanging on by his fingernails, and they all knew it. He looked at Vkhin. “You don’t hesitate,” he warned and he knew he didn’t have to explain. Vkhin knew. After all, he fought with the same inner rogue Zer did, and that was just one of the many reasons Zer trusted his brother with his back. “You pull the blade the instant I step out of line, and you do it fast.”
“I promise.”
Zer hadn’t earned a quick death, but the simple truth was: he was too dangerous for anything else. Right now, however, he needed to feed. Fast.
Zer charged the doors of G2’s for the second time that day and made for the stairs. What he wanted—who he wanted—was so very close. When, in response to an unspoken signal, the guards stepped in front of him, blocking his path, he growled.
Fighting the urge to draw his blades and carve his own goddamn path to the elevator, he realized the Change was flickering over his features. He could feel the darkness in him fighting, clawing for release.
Christ, he was in trouble.
He wanted to bound up the stairs. Take her. Drink her. She was waiting for him, damn near gift-wrapped—and he was going to take care of this damn thirst that was riding him.
Nael’s hands curling around his forearms were an unwelcome surprise. Those hands were loose, but they could and would tighten. “You don’t want to do this.”
Oh, he did. “You aren’t going to stop me, Nael. Don’t make this into a fight you’ll lose.”
He was the damn sire, and he had battle lust pounding through him. The soul thirst was a painful hunger raging through his body, and G2’s looked like a banquet of souls. The sweet, luscious psychic strands called out to him, teased raw nerve endings with false promises of pleasure. Relief. Unfortunately, he didn’t want what was for sale down here. No, he wanted her.
Nael bowed his head, but the bastard didn’t move. His hands were still resting loosely on Zer’s own damn sleeves.
“I’ll take you there if you need to go.” Nael’s dark eyes watched him. Didn’t blink. “But what you need is down here, sire.”
“No, it’s not.” What he needed was up there, waiting for him in his suite. Part of his mind was trying to remind him of something, that there might be a reason he didn’t want to do this.
Nael reached behind him, beckoning without looking. A female sauntered from the dance floor. Another random stranger. Something flashed in Nael’s eyes and was gone. “You let me do this for you, and then you go to her. Take a breather first.”
The air was ripe with the heady scent of the female. She was all lush promise, wide open, her gazing sliding from Nael to Zer and back again.
“This will make you feel better,” Nael murmured. “Trust me.”
She wasn’t the right female, but the thirst was taking over, and Zer was just man enough to mourn the loss of those brain cells. Yeah, he wasn’t right in the head. The wall of males sliding between him and the elevator made that clear. Part of him was just sane enough to be grateful. His brothers had his back and wouldn’t let him jack this up too badly.
Male hands pressed him down into a seat.
“Trust me,” Nael said again, and, this time, Zer didn’t know to whom Nael spoke. The female was nodding, though, and Zer recognized that covetous look. She wanted whatever she could get, and she’d come to the right damn place.
“Time to fall, love,” Nael whispered, swinging her up onto Zer’s lap. She settled in like she was coming home, curling her fingers in his leathers.
A lapful of sweet, warm female. The wrong one, but fuck that. He couldn’t have the one he wanted. He was too far gone, and she deserved better than a beast.
CHAPTER EIGHT
What the hell had she gotten herself into?
Firing up her laptop, Nessa held her breath for long seconds. Without Net access, she was dead in the water. If the Fallen had overlooked the wireless card on her laptop, she figured that negligence wouldn’t last long.
Not if they were serious in this kidnapping attempt of theirs.
She had to get out of here. Her reaction to the Fallen’s leader was humiliating. What kind of woman lusted after her kidnapper?
Fingers trembling, she launched a chat application, tapping in her access code. When she placed the call to Genecore, knowing she probably only had minutes before the Fallen would pick up on her access, the foundation’s president picked up right away.
As if he’d been waiting for her call.
“You’re in,” he said, not waiting for her to launch into explanations. “Good.”
“Excuse me?”
“The Fallen picked you up. You have access to them and to their DNA. Everything you said you needed.”
This conversation wasn’t going the way she’d intended it to go. “You told me you had DNA samples. I intended to use those samples. I never agreed to go undercover and live with Goblins.” Unstable, psychotic, sexy Goblins.
“Details.” His cold voice rode roughshod over her objections. “Fresh samples are better. You agreed to work for me. I simply arranged for you to have the access you need.”
“You arranged to have me kidnapped.” She was supposed to ignore that? Work through it? He made her kidnapping sound like a brilliant career move. Like hell it was. She was a prisoner.
“I never agreed to this, and I could have been killed,” she snapped.
“No,” he said. “My team had their orders.”
Maybe, he just wanted her to finish her research. Maybe, his arranging her kidnapping was some sort of twisted version of grant funding. She didn’t think so, though. He’d set her up for something.
“This is not what I signed on for. The Fallen who headed up the search-and-retrieval was none other than the damn leader of the lot. He has no intention of seeing his plans head south.” And that was putting it mildly. “What you’ve landed me in is a mess. Of titanic proportions.”
The man on the other end didn’t hesitate. “This is the opportunity you need. Take it. Although I strongly suggest you avoid bonding with any of them.”
“No problem. I don’t do sexual bondage. Any more than I do forcible captivity.”
His cold voice cut her off. “If you do bond with one of them, I should point out that your mate would have unlimited access to your mind. If he took the time to look, he would know at once that you were a plant. You would not enjoy that discovery.”
Hell. This just got better and better, didn’t it? “I’m leaving. You can consider our partnership finished.” Partners did not conceal critical information—and they certainly did not orchestrate kidnappings. Nothing—not even her career and her research—was worth that. She didn’t do ethical gray areas.