by Karin Harlow
Ramos stood silent and contemplative for a long moment, then strode toward her office door. When he opened it, the cacophony of the club downstairs burst into the room, disturbing the quiet like a Category 5 hurricane.
She welcomed it, the sense of familiarity and contentment it brought. Good or bad, this was home. She was tired of Miguel Ramos and tired of running from one end of the globe to the other, extracting the specialized serums from their specialized hosts so that Joran could produce mere drops of the coveted and outlawed Rev. But she would not be serving Joran unless it also served her own agenda.
Theirs was a simple arrangement. In exchange for vital information on her father’s movements and his demonic world, she extracted the ingredients for the life-restoring Revive. The perk was, she had her own personal stash and was not above using it. The Rev kept her in top fighting form, and outlaw that she was, fighting kept her alive.
Joran’s intel had been crucial to her. He’d never steered her wrong, moving her ever closer to her goal: the collection of all seven Hellkeeper hearts. Once she possessed them, there would be no need for the Rev. The combined energy of the heart stones would create the ultimate power source. She would be invincible, and she needed to be that if she was to have any hope of destroying dear ol’ Dad and finally living a normal life with her daughter.
She’d sleep with the devil if it meant one more heart.
Selena threw her head back and laughed, causing Ramos’s brows to furrow.
How ironic.
“You have failed. Now Joran will listen to me,” Ramos said over his shoulder. “Despite your lineage, you’re as useless as the pathetic humans who gather here. You’re more like your mother than we thought.”
Selena stiffened. Ramos’s big mouth was his undoing. Nobody talked trash about her mother. No one.
Selena sauntered toward him. The four stones in the necklace she never removed warmed. Like thousands of tiny pinpricks, the power surged into her body. Slowly, she inhaled, drawing it deep into every cell.
Realizing he had awakened a sleeping tiger, Ramos turned fully toward her, his eyes wide. Being the macho asshole he was, he didn’t run. Instead, he lunged toward her.
Perfect.
Selena thrust out her hand and shoved the air. Ramos’s chest compressed, forcing the air in his lungs outward with a loud whooshing sound. He stopped dead in his tracks as if he had hit a wall.
Selena closed her fingers inward one by one until she made a fist. Ramos gasped, tearing at his throat.
Selena tightened her fist and lowered her arm. As she did, Ramos dropped to his knees. His eyes bugged out of his red face; saliva ran from his rubbery lips.
She savored the power. Felt it threatening to overtake her.
As quickly as she’d made the fist, Selena opened her hand, and Ramos fell to the floor, gulping for breath. Holding her own breath, she almost closed her eyes, swamped with relief.
She had to be careful; a daemon had the power to move air, but only because of the stones she’d taken from the daemons did she have the power. If she allowed it to control her, she would be no better than those she hunted.
Standing over Ramos, she nudged him with the toe of her gold Gucci sandal. “Get up. Tell Joran if he wants to talk, he knows where to find me.” She nudged him harder and he rolled out of her office. With an imperceptible flick of her wrist, the door slammed shut behind him.
Selena let out a long breath.
The embedded stones in her necklace continued to warm her skin. Absently, she stroked the jagged orbs as well as the necklace’s empty settings. Once they were filled, she would have the power to see into the next world and beyond. Right now, though, she felt dirty, the way she always did when she came back from one of her serum runs. The feeling didn’t go away simply because she’d come back empty-handed. In fact, it seemed to have amplified.
While Joran Cadiz was a means to one end, her work for Los Cuatro was a means to another. But more pressing was the daemon king’s desire for nukes. How on earth was she going to stay ahead of that? Was she supposed to ring up Rurik and tell him what was up? If she did, he’d know who she was, what she had done. She was an outlaw among immortals.
She’d killed four Hellkeepers and more than a few low-level daemons.
There were no gray areas. It was forbidden, under any circumstances, to hunt your own kind or Other kind. There was no opportunity to defend one’s actions. Punishment was immediate death.
Restlessness broke through her fatigue. She strode out to her balcony. It was an unseasonably balmy night. Warm air brushed across her cheeks, tender as a lover. Her nipples tightened as a sizzle of electricity rippled through her. She set her jaw and closed her eyes, not wanting to think of the only man who had touched her so intimately.
The man who’d tried to kill her and nearly succeeded.
Her kryptonite.
Johnny Cicone had been as hot-blooded and as hot-tempered as they came. Their passion had been unquenchable, their arguments epic, and their end a Shakespearean tragedy.
She pictured him lying on the side of that mountain road, his chest ripped open, his heart bleeding out. As strong as he’d always been, she couldn’t have imagined him surviving those wounds. Even as he lay dying, he’d scorned her.
He had hardened. Hardened to impenetrable. And she knew she was the cause.
From the moment she’d met Johnny, she’d known how it would end. But she couldn’t help herself. She’d fallen hard. Toward the end, she’d tried to fool herself that maybe it could work, but when she’d gotten pregnant, she’d had no choice but to face reality.
Her father’s rage that she would not join him in Hell knew no bounds. After he drove her mother to suicide, he’d gone after Johnny. When her father discovered she was pregnant, he’d vowed to take her child. The only way to save the man she loved and her child was to make a preemptive strike. So she’d made it impossible for Johnny to forgive her and, in so doing, ended their relationship, so that Paymon would no longer use her love for him against her. Then she’d hidden her child in a place where even her father would not dare go. But that didn’t mean she hadn’t loved Johnny. She would always love him. Her actions didn’t mean she didn’t miss him. Or that seeing him lying on the ground, his blood draining from his body, hadn’t almost destroyed her.
Maybe it had. By shooting him up with the Rev, she’d risked not only Joran’s wrath, but Johnny’s as well. He would know she was alive, and if she knew Johnny, she knew he would turn the world inside out until he found her. Then her father would think they had reunited. She could only hope Johnny believed he’d hallucinated her. And why wouldn’t he? He’d killed her. Or at least thought he had.
Selena rubbed her hands up and down her bare arms, gazing out at the marina and the softly bobbing sailboats and luxury yachts, including her own, Black Widow, illuminated beneath the silvery moonlight. The spicy scents of the night combined with the crisp salt of the ocean to create a familiar perfume, one she greedily inhaled. The vibrations from Lost Souls reverberated through her body. Thick, hot, urgent. It reminded her of who she was and how things had to be.
She shook the thoughts of Johnny and their daughter from her head. It didn’t matter who he was or had become. She could not turn back time. She could not stop what she had set into motion.
She was like a wounded shark, and the minute she stopped moving, she’d drown.
So she would continue to swim. And destroy anything in her path that tried to keep her from her goal. That included Johnny then and it included Johnny now. It had to.
Turning, Selena sauntered back into her office. With an imperceptible flick of her hand, the carved paneling behind her sleek black desk opened, revealing a bird’seye view of the manic bodies gyrating below to the Latin salsa beat. As far as clubs went, hers was el punto caliente. Sleek, dark, with subtle jewel tones embedded throughout the place. The glass-and-ebony bars glowed from soft underlighting, highlighting bottles of upscale liquor behind th
em. Private rooms circled the second level much like luxury boxes at a stadium. They opened to a full view below; for more private affairs, the smoky-glass doors could be closed. Soundproof.
Lost Souls was known as a safe haven to those of less than impeccable reputation. Just like her. The cacophony of the music’s percussion combined with the seductive scent of sex, lust, and power was as potent as the Rev. She inhaled deeply, the energy giving her strength. The club amused her, kept her in comfort, and fed her in a way neither the Rev nor the stones at her throat could. The effect of the Rev was like steroids, temporary and intense and always edged with the threat of addiction. The stones gave her power when she needed it, but they, too, were a threat. The club, however, and those it attracted, fed her true self in a way she could relish, without fear of losing control. For her kind, the more sexual energy that thrummed around her, the more her natural power surged. She closed her eyes, tilted her head back, and listened. “Yes,” she whispered. “Drink, dance, make love.” Her lips tilted up into a smile. “Open your lonely souls. Let me in, tell me your secrets.” She smiled and then laughed. “And I will tell you lies.” How could she not? Everything about her was a lie.
Gather lost souls. Lure the daemons. Hunt them, kill them, and take their power.
It was amazing how much effort it took to get an audience with Daddy.
Her eyes flashed open. “Soon, Father, I will reveal myself,” she said softly. When she did, he would pay for raping her mother and holding her hostage. For letting her go only to repeatedly come back until she was finally driven to take her own life. He would pay for the threats against Selena’s daughter and the attempts on Johnny’s life. He would pay for what he’d forced Selena to become and what he’d forced her to give up.
He would pay for it all.
Even as she held the thought, a dull throbbing began in her temples caused by the pounding pulse of the music. Then the air in her office chilled exponentially, almost as if the doors to Hell had been opened. She froze, barely stopping from whirling around.
Few things on earth caused Selena concern, but one of them was standing behind her now, framed by the French doors that led to her balcony. Slowly, as if she hadn’t a care in the world, she turned to face him, walked around her desk, then made a show of leaning back against it. She pressed a button on the underside of her desk and the window to the club closed softly behind her. Imperceptibly, she nodded, acknowledging the supreme ruler of Miami’s notorious underworld: Joran.
“Your lapdog just left,” Selena drawled as her gaze swept lazily over the vampire. He was, she supposed, a dead ringer for the Spanish-born actor Antonio Banderas, but bigger, broader, and certainly more deadly. His thick, black, shoulder-length hair framed an intense face with deep espresso-brown eyes etched with green striations. Sensuality poured off him in waves. While most of it bounced off her, some of it didn’t. The daemon in her stirred. Damn it.
Selena laughed off the disconcerting feeling. “Are you attempting to seduce me, vampire?”
He grinned slowly. “I would—never …”
Selena pushed off the edge of her desk and turned her back to him, then looked coyly over her shoulder. Joran had made his willingness to bed her plain from their first meeting years ago. “I may be half-daemon, a fact I curse every day of my life, but my human will is stronger than any daemon urge. Don’t waste your glamour on me, Joran. Save it for someone who cares.”
He laughed deeply and entered her office. She cursed under her breath. He didn’t stop by often, but when he did, she couldn’t keep him out unless she wanted a good ass-kicking. She was strong, but he was stronger. “Still regret that you invited me in so long ago?”
Selena shook her head, moved around to the chair behind her desk, and sat down. “I’m going to assume you spoke with your pit bull?”
He nodded and lifted his hand. With a slow sweep of his fingers, he moved the only other chair in the room from the corner to behind him. He sat down and adjusted his black-silk tailored suit. “I did.”
“And?” She sat back in her chair.
“I’m disappointed, Selena.”
A vision of Johnny’s bloody body lying still in the dirt flashed before her eyes. He would be even more disappointed if she told him what had happened to the serums. “It couldn’t be helped. I’ll go back next week and round up twice the amount for half the cost.”
“I think not. I think you’ll go earlier and I think you’ll do it at no charge.”
Selena lifted her chin and stared straight into his eyes, which were beginning to redden just around the edges. Slowly, she sat up straight and inhaled, giving the stones around her neck the cue to pay attention.
Standing, she planted her hands palm down on her desk, leaned forward, and spoke slowly. “I think, Joran, you have somehow gotten the impression that you call the shots.” She exhaled. The stones warmed. “I’m an independent contractor. I decide who, what, where, when, and how much. Not the other way around.”
He smiled lazily and purred, “Yes, I know. But I also know, if it involves a nanorian, you will do exactly what I want. On my terms. Isn’t that right?”
She looked sideways at him and fingered the four around her neck. “Perhaps.”
“I happen to know there is one right here in Miami.”
“If there is one in Miami, I’ll find it, without your help.”
“Even when the daemon has possessed a human body as insidious as half of Hell?”
“That’s none of your business.” She could, it was just harder. Black-hearted humans had the uncanny ability to hide the scent of a daemon. Maybe because they were so much alike.
“Ah, a trade secret. Okay, I’ll give you that one, but only because I have my own.” He stood so fast that even with her enhanced vision she didn’t see the movement as anything but a shimmer in the air, like a ripple on a glassy pond.
He stood inches from her now. “A Hellkeeper is running roughshod over some of my assets in Hialeah. That’s bad enough, but the daemon is hiding inside the body of one Armadeo Vegas.”
She started at the name. Madeo Vegas was a one-man death squad for cubano mafioso Luis Fernandez and a frequent patron of Lost Souls.
“What do you want me to do that you can’t do yourself? Just go bite the prick and drain him. The daemon will have to vaporize or die with the body.”
“I can’t. He has knowledge of something I need.”
“And this something you need?”
“You know I don’t discuss my business.”
“Oh, come now, Joran, I think we have gone a little past your being shy. Tell me what you want. Specifically.”
“I will tell you this much: My protection, some of which offers you the same blind eye, is proving to be less than protective. In the last two months, many of my—associates have been incarcerated with alarming regularity. It seems those with whom I have financial agreements—and who happen to be the same persons with the power to look the other way—no longer choose to. Vegas has a hand in their newfound sense of justice. I want to know how Vegas is getting to them.”
“How do you know it’s Vegas?”
“I have eyes and ears everywhere, Selena. You know that.” Joran smiled tightly. “I want the information. You’ll get it after you expel the Hellkeeper from Vegas’s body and take possession of it yourself.”
Her? Possess a human body? And even worse, human scum? Selena laughed. Shaking her head, she walked over to her balcony door and opened it. “You’re a funny guy, Joran. Real funny. Now leave.”
He was all over her in the blink of her tired eyes. The door slammed shut and she found herself sprawled on her back across her desk. Joran’s heavy body pinned her to the desktop.
He stared hotly into her eyes, his blazing red. His nostrils flared, his lips twitched, and just beneath, she saw a hint of fang. “You will do it or I will lead Paymon to your doorstep.”
He would not dare! “Then who will you get to do your dirty work?” she sneered.
“Do you think you are the only half-breed out there who can do what you do?”
“I’m the only willing one with the skills to do it and not get caught by the Order. How do you think Rurik will react once he knows his old buddy from across the pond is hijacking immortal blood to create a banned substance?”
Joran picked her up and flung her across the room. She slowed the velocity of her body to keep from slamming against the wall, then hovered just above the smooth granite tile for a moment before lowering to it.
Joran grinned. “We need each other, Selena. Why not make the best of it?” He slipped his hand into his breast pocket and withdrew a small syringe. He wagged it in front of her. “It’s fresh.”
Rev.
When she reached out to take the syringe, Joran held on to it. “Take this now, and it’s understood you get me the information I want tomorrow night.”
Selena nodded. Joran’s fingers loosened. She’d have done the job regardless. She was too close to her goal to turn away such a perfect opportunity. A Hellkeeper walking into her lair? She smiled. The perfect storm, and one giant step closer to living a normal life with her daughter. For that, she would do just about anything.
Joran walked to the balcony. Over his shoulder he said, “Vegas is coming here tomorrow night for some action. Make sure he doesn’t leave until you have the information.” Then Joran jumped into the night.
CHAPTER FOUR
L.O.S.T. compound, location classified
Nikko did not walk into the war room, he glided. Every sense he possessed was open full throttle. His vision was as sharp as a hawk’s. His hearing that of a bat. His sense of smell as acute as a wolf’s. It was amazing and terrifying, and damn if he didn’t like it.
He blinked back the brightness of the fluorescent lights above. The darkened flat screens that surrounded the room hummed. Natural body scents mingled with subtle soaps and deodorants. And …
He sniffed the air and looked toward Jax Cassidy. The only female L.O.S.T. operative and the only female in the room. She’d had sex recently. Her lover’s scent still clung to her. He grinned knowingly at her. She shot him a glare. Did she know he was different now?