His team was comprised of the only four men left from the batch of thirty boys kidnapped and brought to her realm that night a hundred and fifty years ago. Most had died. A few had been rescued. Jarvis and Nigel had hoped to be saved for a while, but Blaine had never bothered.
Even as a four-year-old, he’d known no one would come for him. He’d heard his own parents make the deal with the sorceress. Still remembered sitting there at the top of the stairs, clutching the wolf he’d just finished carving for his mom’s birthday. The clunk of the animal hitting the wood floor, the snap of its leg breaking off, as he’d sat there in stunned silence, listening to his own mother hand his soul over to the devil.
He’d been no match for Angelica when she’d come to get him, and the thick scar down the length of his forearm was proof. He rubbed his hand over the mark, the last injury he’d gotten before he became her plaything and developed the ability to heal from anything.
That scar was his reminder never to trust a soul with anything that mattered to him. The day she’d dropped him on his ass in that cellar was the day he’d decided to save himself. There were times when his thirst for freedom had been the only thing keeping him going. Lying there, his life bleeding out, the witch standing over him… his refusal to die a prisoner had often been the only thing strong enough to pull him back from the edge of death.
His resilience had made him one of Angelica’s favorite playthings.
And now he got to win. Rock on.
“I hate knitting. My hands are too damn big for all those little knit/purl things.” Jarvis flexed his fingers as he moved beside Blaine. Shoulder to shoulder to shoulder, in strict formation. The witch tried to emasculate them with womanly pursuits so she could control them, but she’d also wanted her warriors to be tough as hell. She had no idea how far they’d taken it.
Today was her lucky day. She was about to find out.
“Knitting is about finesse, not the size of your hands.” Thick black smoke flowed out of Nigel’s palms. “It seems to me that you have a mental block about it.”
“Nigel does have a point, Jarvis.” Blaine focused his energy into his chest. The skull and crossbones mark burst into flames, and he opened himself to the pain. Bring it on. “I’ve seen you do some good detail work with the knitting needles when you’re in the zone.” The flames licking at his chest were orange. Not hot enough. He thought of the last time he’d been alone with Angelica, and what she’d done to him. Fury rose hard, and the flame turned blue-white. Now that’s what he was talking about.
Then their assailant arrived. The first of the schnoodles rounded the corner, teeth bared, ears pinned. Blaine tensed as it erupted into frantic yapping. Dammit. He’d wanted to be wrong.
It could have been the demons.
It could have been the pit vipers.
But no. She’d sent the schnoodles.
Their odds of making it to freedom had just gone to hell.
From Touch If You Dare
Sometimes rescuing a bunch of almost-dead warriors from black magicked pit vipers was just the kind of thing a man needed to help him forget the fact that he could not, for the life of him, figure out how to knit.
Jarvis Swain, the Guardian of Hate, ducked as the bright red snake launched itself at his throat, sprouting wings as it hit the air. He whipped his sword up just in time to de-fang it before it clamped its gums onto his jugular. “Since when do these suckers fly?”
He ripped the scaly mutant off him and tossed it out the door of the Hotel of Love and Healing, the pit of doom and despair where injured warriors were taken to recover or die after Angelica, Death’s psychotic grandma, had tortured them until they were on the bleeding edge of death.
After a hundred and fifty years of incarceration, Jarvis and three others had escaped from Angelica’s Den of Womanly Pursuits two weeks ago. They’d kicked Angelica’s crazy-bat-shit-ass, saved a girl, and made a deal with Angelica’s heir, Mari Hansen, to free the rest of warriors.
Two weeks post-escape, and Mari was stonewalling (so much for thinking Angelica’s dethronement would make Mari become sane and reasonable) and the remaining warriors hadn’t been released. Jarvis and his team of fugitives had decided to start plucking out the good guys one by one. First stop was the Hotel of Love and Healing. Any poor bastards still in there needed help—and in a big way.
Jarvis and his teammate Nigel Aquarian were rocking the sick bay rescue while their cronies, Blaine Underhill and Christian Slayer, played decoy with Mari and her assistants (no need to deal with a bunch of overly talented, lethally brainwashed, estrogen vessels of hate, if it could be avoided).
“These vipers aren’t pure snake.” Nigel flexed his hands, and two dozen three-inch knives exploded from his fingertips, careening across the cavernous room. Twenty-two vipes dropped to the cement floor, graphite blades winking in the centers of their murderous little foreheads.
Nigel might be an artist, but the man also had the aim of a Roman god. “Angelica cross-bred the snakes with ladybugs a few weeks before we bailed.” Nigel’s hands were charcoal black now, and ash was sloughing off his palms. “Bastard went right for my left nipple. Still healing from it.”
“Angelica’s a she-bitch-from-hell, but I gotta tip my hat to her vision. I always felt ladybugs had more potential than anyone gives them credit for.” Jarvis thwacked another swarm of incoming vipers as he took inventory of the Hotel. Only six beds were still occupied, and every occupant was slow dancing so intimately with death that not one had even cracked an eyelid at their entrance. How many nights had he spent here, flipping off Death?
He swore as he remembered Death sitting on his headboard, waiting for him to finally give up. Those deadly shadows looming over his bed, daring him to accept the peace and relief they offered. Reminding him that if he decided to revive this time, he’d be back in the Hotel again, dying again, fighting for his last breath, again, in another week. A day. An hour. A never-ending cycle of torture, torment, and hell.
Jarvis saw the cleave marks in the first bed’s posts, ones he’d left his last time here, when the pain had been so intense he’d left raw strips in the wood, clawed by his own fingernails. His grip tightened on his sword, and a bead of sweat broke out on his brow. “Coming home can be a bitch,” he said quietly.
Nigel inclined his head in silent acknowledgment. “What do you say we retrieve these poor bastards and get the fuck out?”
Get the fuck out. Jarvis glanced toward the door. Yeah, still unlocked. They weren’t trapped this time. They were in control now. They could leave whenever they wanted. He forced his grip to loosen and shook out his arm. “Let’s torch the place on the way out.”
Anything to wipe the nightmares from his soul. Nigel had his art. Blaine had his cross-stitching and his woman. Everyone on his team had something to cleanse the boils from their souls. But not Jarvis. The hell he carried inside him wasn’t about to be placated by a session with a pair of lavender knitting needles and turquoise angora. He had no artistic reprieve, and he’d never be soothed by the tender touch of another human being, let alone a woman.
He could imagine it, though. He’d bet his ass it would feel like a fucking angel to have a female touch him the way he’d seen Trinity touch Blaine.
But peace was not for him.
He’d have to settle for torching everything that had ripped the marrow from his bones over the last one hundred and fifty years, in hopes that turning his aggression outward would keep the monster within from ripping him to shreds.
“Yeah, let’s blow this place to hell,” Nigel agreed. “Eliminate all evidence that it ever existed.”
“Sounds good to me—” Jarvis swore as a reptile shot out from behind a pile of chains and went for his crotch. “These snakes must be female.” He whacked it aside with his sword. “No male would fang a man’s balls with a neurotoxin. Necrosis of the testicles is just not done between guys.”
Nigel thudded him on the shoulder. “I’d protect your boys with my life
.”
They’d all done exactly that a thousand times already. It was why they were all still alive. And intact. “Back at you, my man.”
“As always.” Nigel took out another trio going for his own manly bits. “Plentiful little suckers, aren’t they?”
“Breeding like rabbits. They have no idea what’s coming now that we can fight back.” Jarvis began to whip his sword over his head in a dizzyingly fast circle, channeling the dark energy of the room into his weapon. Adrenaline rushed through him at the realization that this really was different than it had been for the last two centuries.
He wasn’t hog-tied and strung up by his balls, forced to take whatever hit came at him. He was in control now, and he was going to embrace every damn minute of it. He drew even more dark energy into the blade, turning himself from an ordinary combatant to one more lethal than any human being could comprehend. Stacking his sword with extra hate was kind of like the difference between sticking a match into a pile of newspapers or a stack of dynamite. Explosives were always an excellent choice when the lives of defenseless victims were at stake.
His blade began to glow with that heinous purplish mutant color. He smiled.
He casually nicked the wing of an incoming bug. It immediately exploded with enough force to take out ten more of its buddies and a chain-link chandelier. “Now that’s what I’m talking about—” Then he caught sight of the poor sod in the nearest bed and noticed a shock of white blond hair on the filthy pillowcase. Mother of hell. It was one of his favorite newbies. “Pascal,” he barked. “Get up. It’s time to bail.”
The kid didn’t move, but a scaly beast dive-bombed the youth, fanged teeth going right for the pretty boy’s charming dimples. “Hey!” Jarvis lashed out with his sword and bisected a snake a split second before its teeth sank into Pascal’s face. “This kind of shit doesn’t happen anymore,” he snapped as he scooped the rookie up and threw him over his shoulder.
“I’ll take him out,” he shouted at Nigel. Granted, the kid was a disrespectful pain in the ass with more guts than strategy, but the kid’s appreciation for life had helped keep Jarvis sane for the last fifty years. He sure as hell wasn’t going to leave him behind to get turned into dinner for Angelica’s pets. “You deal with cleanup.”
“You got it.” Nigel’s palms began to smoke, and then dozens of micro-sharp knives exploded from his palms. They shot across the room, hitting his prey with unerring precision. “This kind of action is good for my muse.”
Jarvis paused as Nigel engaged the enemy in a full-scale assault. His skin itched with the need to unleash some of the hate festering inside him. “Next time, I get ass-kicking duty.”
Nigel grinned. “Stop whining, and go rescue the kid. You know you love the hero role. It’s your shtick.”
“Shut up.” Yeah, he’d taken the hit when Angelica had intended to kidnap his brother a hundred and fifty years ago, but that was his job. Protect his brother. It wasn’t about the glory. Assigning him a hero complex was insulting as hell, and they all knew it. One of these days, he was going to behead the next one who said it.
Pascal’s muscles began to twitch. Incoming torture-induced seizure? Jarvis lightly squeezed Pascal’s shoulder, trying to give him comfort. “Easy, kid. We’re almost out.” Jarvis turned toward the exit just as the door flew open.
He whipped his sword into position, ready for murderous breasts and hostile mascara wands—
A cosmetic dentist’s wet dream glided into the Hotel instead, and Jarvis relaxed at the sight of another male. As with all soulless bloodsuckers, the vampire was too thin to be taken seriously as a badass, and giving him a spray tan would be an act of mercy.
What was a vamp doing inside the Den? The undead were too emotionally fragile to make good subjects for Angelica’s studies. They were going to be destroyed if they stayed. “Get out,” Jarvis warned, striding toward them, ready to shove them to safety if they didn’t respond. No more suffering. No more. No more. No more. “This is not the place for men. These women aren’t the ones you want to be using to satisfy the bloodlust thing.”
The vampire held up a melodramatic hand with long, well-manicured fingernails and a way-too-stereotypical large black ring with a family crest of some sort on it. “I’m here for you, warrior.”
“My soul’s already got a lien on it.” Pascal twitched again and let out a low moan of distress. Urgency tightened Jarvis’s muscles, and he gripped the kid more securely. Pascal needed freedom, and he needed it now. “Call me on my cell next week. Kinda busy right now.”
Twelve more tuxedo-wearing vampires appeared behind the first one. A baker’s dozen of the undead. Arms were folded, shoulders were back, and chins were raised loftily in that “I am so much better than you” disdainful look they must practice diligently as soon as they were converted.
Jarvis raised his sword and let it burn with his poison. “Get out of my way.” He kept his voice low. A promise of no mercy—
The lead vampire’s eyes flashed red, and his fangs elongated. “My Lord, you are not going anywhere.” Behind him, his cronies went caveman: fangs as long as tusks, skin like stale marshmallows, eyes going cherry-bomb. Battle stance for hemoglobin junkies.
Under normal circumstances, thirteen parasites with big canines and bad fashion sense were no match for two magically enhanced ex-torture victims with serious attitude problems. Odds were with the good guys. But throw in a nearly dead kid fading fast on Jarvis’s shoulder and his buddy occupied with a bunch of rabid pit vipers?
Well, shit.
Acknowledgments
Thank you to Deb Werksman, whose insightful suggestions and great vision helped make this book the best it could be. Your unflagging and enthusiastic support is a gift. Thanks also to Deidre Knight for everything. Special thanks to Susie Benton and Danielle Jackson for their tireless and magical efforts behind the scenes. This book would never make it to the shelves without the tireless and wonderful efforts of all the people at Sourcebooks, including Cat Clyne and Liz Kelsh and so many others. And, as always, my deepest love and appreciation to my family for being my hugest fans, most ardent followers, and my core of strength and love.
About the Author
Nationally best-selling author, Golden Heart® award winner, and four-time RITA® Award nominee Stephanie Rowe is the author of more than twenty books. A former attorney, she resides in New England.
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