Whoosh. Whoosh. Whoosh.
Again he turned. Zacharel, Axel and Malcolm had just landed. The only one missing from the “inner circle,” as he’d heard Thane describe the warriors Zacharel relied on most, was Magnus, Malcolm’s brother.
“No humans are to be harmed,” Zacharel said. They were the same six words he announced before every battle. Sadly, the repetition was a necessity. Humans wouldn’t be able to see Sent Ones, or feel the sting of their weapons, unless the warriors purposely manifested in the natural realm.
In the past, several warriors had manifested, caring little for collateral damage, too desperate to make a kill.
What would happen if one of the warriors harmed Nicola?
Just in case anyone thought to override Zacharel’s instructions, Koldo found himself adding, “If a single female is harmed today, I will remove the head of the culprit. And I’ll take my time doing it. And don’t think for a moment a fear of consequences will mean anything to me.”
Six sets of eyes darted to him, some wide with confusion, some narrowed with aggression. He refused to waste precious seconds explaining and stalked into the building, misting through the brick walls rather than dealing with a door. Humans of every race and size strolled through the foyer and hallways. Males, females, anywhere from eighteen to seventy it seemed.
Some were demon-oppressed, as Laila had been. The creatures had created a stronghold.
Some were demonically influenced, as Nicola had been. The creatures were trying to create a stronghold.
A smorgasbord of temptation for the warriors, he knew. Already he fought the urge to appear and strike everyone in his path. Calm. Steady.
Koldo searched every inch of the place, but found no sign of Nicola. Her office was empty. And she’d left no notes on her calendar.
“What are you doing, going through Nicola’s things?” a female demanded from behind him.
He recognized the voice and slowly turned, coming face-to-face with the woman who had been trapped in hell with his mother. The woman he had rescued and brought back from the brink of death.
The woman who had yet to thank him, and who had instead run to Zacharel, outing the fact that Koldo had locked another Sent One away.
Once a joy-bringer, she was now a warrior. One of Zacharel’s warriors, to be exact. Jamila. Arabic for beautiful. And she certainly was. She was beautiful and elusive, but she was as sharp as he was. They were two blades and constantly sliced each other to ribbons.
“You know Nicola Lane? Where is she?” he demanded. Fury... A dark, terrible fury was boiling inside him, threatening to spew out. If she had been harmed, he would...what? Tear this place apart? Probably. Kill everyone inside? Maybe. He still couldn’t bring himself to care about the consequences.
Calm down. Get your answers first.
“She went home.” Jamila’s chin lifted, a show of irritation. “Now it’s your turn to answer my question. What are you doing here?”
If she was home, she was safe. “I could ask you the same,” he said, relaxing.
“But it’s not your turn.”
“So?”
“So.” She folded her arms over her chest and glared at him. “Zacharel told me to report what happens to Nicola while she’s at Estellä. I tried staying in the spiritual realm, watching her, but I’m pretty sure she sensed me. She tensed every time I drew near.”
She was always tense. But they would work on that.
“I decided to give the natural realm a shot,” Jamila finished.
“Why would Zacharel want you to spy on Nicola?”
“He didn’t offer an explanation, and I didn’t care enough to ask.”
Well, Koldo cared. He would ask. He had to know. This couldn’t be a coincidence.
“Now,” Jamila said, “you’re not getting another answer from me until I get one from you.”
What was he doing here? “An alarm was raised, and we were told there was an increase of demon activity.”
She frowned, saying, “The alarm wasn’t issued by me. The place has been crawling with evil since day one, but it hasn’t increased.”
“Then why were we called?” he demanded, a burst of frustration making him what the humans would call cranky. Already he could feel his knuckles preparing for contact with a wall. The more jagged the better. “And who would have issued such a report?”
“Like anyone ever tells me anything,” she spat bitterly. “Ever since my—” The angry sparkle dulled in her eyes, and her shoulders hunched with defeat. “Never mind.”
Ever since her...what? Her capture and rescue? People had treated her differently? Gently? As if afraid she would break? Probably. That’s how they’d been with him, and he’d hated it. “You don’t have to dread such treatment from me. You annoyed me before, and you annoy me now. Treating you sweetly is the last thing I want to do.”
Her expression softened, but only slightly. “Thanks. That’s kind of you to say.”
Footsteps echoed behind them, clomping and hard, the culprit clearly not even trying to be stealthy. “We’ve never had a false alarm before,” Axel said as he snaked a corner and sauntered into the room. His hair was disheveled, three bleeding claw marks in his cheek. “But word is, this one came from a giggling female.”
All females giggled—all but Nicola. They would work on that, too. “You killed the demons without harming the humans, correct?”
“Actually, no killing was done on my part.” A shimmer of humor danced in those electric blues. “I found a date for Saturday night.” His gaze slid to Jamila, and his lips quirked up at the corners. “I was planning an evening for two, but say the word, princess, and I’ll make it an evening for three. You, the other girl and my camera phone.”
“You’re disgusting.” Jamila pushed him out of the way and stomped from the room.
“Is that a yes?” Axel tossed out.
“Argh!” was her only response.
Axel chuckled. “Feisty little thing, isn’t she? I think I’ll tame her just for grins and bragging rights.”
He hoped to have sex with her, walk away and never look back? “You won’t go near her,” Koldo found himself barking.
“Why?” Axel asked, blinking at his vehemence. “You want her?”
“No.”
“But you don’t want me to have her?”
“Exactly.”
A pause. A shrug. “Fair enough. But what about the girls from the hospital? Are they available?”
The name Axel was Hebrew for peaceful. In the warrior’s case, the name was a flat-out lie. Koldo grabbed him by the collar and tossed him through the wall.
“Was it something I said?” Axel grumbled, his voice drifting through the untouched wood and plaster.
Wiping his hands after a job well-done, Koldo followed in Jamila’s footsteps. He knew Axel had the necessary skills to fight him, savagely and without mercy—and he wasn’t exactly sure who would win. So the male’s easygoing attitude toward him mystified him.
He rounded the corner, only to see Thane pacing. The blond appeared harried, his usual I-want-a-little-wicked-with-my-breakfast-lunch-and-dinner facade gone. Had something happened?
As Koldo closed in, the entire building shook, and a rumble ripped through the air. Human voices rose in sudden panic. Koldo stopped, frowned. The shaking continued, intensifying. A chorus of pained shouts sounded from above, in the sky.
Then, everything stilled, quieted.
He kicked back into motion. An earthquake? Here? Now? And one that affected the skies? But...that couldn’t be right.
Thane spotted him and paused. “What was that?”
“No clue.”
“Well, it doesn’t matter anyway. Zacharel’s trying to find out why we were sent here, when clearly there wasn’t a real threat. In the meantime, we’re to go home. My home.”
“I’ll meet you there.” He would first check on Nicola, just to be sure all was well.
Because...a demon could have followed her home, he re
alized. There was a time Koldo would have done something like that. He would have followed his intended victim. He would have struck at the perfect time, away from the person’s protection.
A demon could have harmed her. And here Koldo was, standing in a hallway, doing nothing. Punching the walls hardly seemed violent enough. He wanted to strangle himself!
The screams of the innocent...all the people he’d hurt...all the people he’d killed...suddenly rose in his mind.
Thane eyed him suspiciously. “You’re planning an extra stop, aren’t you?”
Koldo vanished without another word, appearing in the small, run-down house with threadbare carpet and well-used furnishings so dreadful he wouldn’t have put them inside the cage with his mother.
He heard a sound—other than the screams.
He stomped forward and found Nicola in the bedroom closest to the living room. She was humming under her breath, tucking her sister into bed. And she was lovely in a way that should have been impossible.
“Do we have any chocolate?” Laila asked, the words slightly slurred, either from exhaustion or medication.
“Not yet, but we will. I’m headed to the store.”
“You’re the best, Co Co.”
“That’s because I got all of Mom’s and Dad’s good DNA,” Nicola teased. “You got stuck with the leftovers.”
Laila laughed, even as her eyes closed. Koldo’s lips twitched at the corners.
“Love you.”
“Love you, too.”
He should leave. He had no right to stand here, watching, amused, while the blood of the past dripped from him and onto the floor. Splattered here, splattered there, staining every place he looked.
His fists found their way to his eyes, and he stumbled backward. He flashed to his bedroom in Thane’s club, and collapsed on the floor, laboring for every inhalation. He was dirty; Nicola was pure. He was ice; Nicola was fire.
And he was in big trouble. Once again, he wanted to kiss her.
Argh! He shouldn’t want anything from her. He couldn’t want more from her. He wasn’t good for her. Wasn’t good enough.
He would help her, but he would have to be sure to keep her at a distance. He would help her—and then he would cut her loose.
How he would react to that, he wasn’t sure. But it wouldn’t be pretty.
CHAPTER NINE
BEFORE LEAVING THE DOWNFALL, Thane had asked his lover to remain in his bed, so that she was where he wanted her when he returned. She had acquiesced. Now, upon his return, he looked her over. Hair of gold and scarlet spilled over his pillows, the strands reminding him of living flames. Thin chains forged by an immortal blacksmith encased her wrists and ankles.
They were slave bands, the metal compelling her to obey whatever commands her owner issued. He despised slavery, and had tried to remove them. He’d failed.
And he was still angry over that fact.
He’d had to listen, helpless, as demons had violated Xerxes. He’d had to watch, helpless, as demons had hung Bjorn over him, peeled the skin from the warrior’s entire body and danced around the room in the “flesh coat.” He’d had to lie on the floor, chained, unable to fight, as those same demons had licked the warrior’s blood off his chest and legs.
To scream was to make the demons laugh.
To beg for mercy was to make the demons laugh.
Laugh, laugh, laugh. That’s all they’d done.
He hadn’t gotten to hurt the creatures as he’d so desperately craved. But what was worse? They hadn’t harmed him as they’d harmed the others. His only pain had been mental, emotional.
He would have preferred the physical.
“Hurry,” she beseeched, writhing atop the mattress. “I’ve been thinking about all the things you’re going to do to me, and I need you.”
“You need my money,” he said, disrobing. Kendra had been found in the sex district and purchased by Bjorn. The warrior had intended to set her free, but she’d desired a keeper—and the coin that came with him. A job Thane had welcomed.
“Maybe at first.” She slid her fingertip along an indecent trail. “But I’ve grown addicted to your touch. I need you. Only you.”
That was good. Wasn’t it? He might take a thousand different lovers in a week, it sometimes seemed, but he always came back to this one. She wasn’t ashamed of what they did, and never looked at him with horror in her eyes afterward. So why did he feel sick to his stomach?
He settled his weight on the bed and crawled up...up. Every inch closer to her, the desire to wound intensified. The desire to be wounded intensified.
The things he’d been denied inside that prison cell.
He wasn’t foolish. He knew that was why he felt this way. Knew that was why he lashed out. And he would have hated himself for the desires, but the results pleased him far too well. For a moment, only a moment, he would bask in a satisfaction he couldn’t find anywhere else.
It was fleeting, but it was enough. At least, that’s what he told himself.
“You need me, too,” she added. “I’m the only one who can please you.”
No. That wasn’t true.
He didn’t want it to be true. Females were too mercurial. They loved one minute, and hated another. They smiled, and then they cried. He couldn’t allow himself to depend on what he couldn’t control.
She bit the end of his chin. “You’ll never be satisfied with anyone else. They’re too tame.”
His blood heated with anger—and arousal. “Anyone can please me. Anytime. Any way.” And he would prove it.
With intense focus, he set out to do the things normal males did to their women. Kissing tenderly, touching gently. She couldn’t resist and melted into the moment, whispering encouragements, moaning, but...half an hour passed with more of the same, and while her excitement intensified, his dwindled.
Why? Why couldn’t he like this?
“Oh, Thane,” she breathed, wiggling underneath him. “I never knew you could be this way.”
“I...can’t,” he replied through gritted teeth. A thin sheen of sweat covered his skin. The urge to do things to her...horrible things...bombarded him. She would cry and she would beg. But he would show no mercy. Afterward, she would make him cry and beg. But she would show no mercy. He wouldn’t let her. Then...then he would feel.
He should be ashamed. Bjorn and Xerxes were. They hated what they did to themselves. Hated more what they did to their women.
With a shout of frustration, Thane severed contact with Kendra and rose from the bed—before either of them found satisfaction. He was shaking as he jerked his robe over his head and covered his nakedness. The material conformed to the tendons in his wings and fell softly to the floor.
“What’s wrong with you?” she gasped out. “That was good.”
No. No, it wasn’t.
A sharp gleam entered her eyes. “Are you planning to hook up with another woman and try again?” Bitterness blasted from her.
“That’s none of your concern.” She had known what she was getting with him before she’d agreed to stay.
“You should be nicer to me,” she huffed, punching at the comforter. “I might decide to leave you.”
“I might show you to the door.” And he wouldn’t mourn the loss of her. He would miss her utter lack of inhibition, yes. But the woman herself? No. He was attached to Bjorn and Xerxes, and there was no room in his life for another.
He stepped from the bedroom, and as she screeched his name, he shut the door, cutting her off. He entered the parlor he shared with his boys. They were perched in the red velvet recliners he’d found in India, their feet propped on the crystal table one of the club’s patrons had lost in a poker game.
The two had already finished with their women and were drinking. Ambrosia-laced whiskey, in Bjorn’s case, and...he sniffed...vodka in Xerxes’.
Both were trembling and pale. Xerxes’ cheeks had hollowed, and Thane knew the warrior had recently vomited. Bjorn’s eyes had dulled from corru
pted memories.
The touch of another always reminded the warriors of the horrifying things done to them down in that hellish dungeon. And yet still they plowed through as many females as Thane. Perhaps trying to prove they were normal, he realized now. He’d always assumed they hoped to punish themselves for what they’d once failed to stop.
He poured himself a shot of vodka and eased into the chair across from his friends.
“Koldo is looking for you,” Bjorn said after draining what remained in his glass.
A man could only deal with so much in one day, and as stubborn and intractable as Koldo was, Thane had to be at his best to emerge from an interaction unscathed. He wasn’t. “Let him look.”
Xerxes rubbed two fingers along the scars in his jaw. “He doesn’t seem like the type to give up.”
“Too bad.” Zacharel suspected Koldo teetered at the brink of falling. He also suspected Thane teetered. So, he’d decided to pair them up, thinking they would look after each other, provide some sort of balance. At least, that’s what Thane had surmised.
It was either the wisest thing Zacharel had ever done, or the stupidest.
“What’s Koldo’s deal, anyway?” Bjorn asked.
Xerxes raised a colorless brow. “If I know Thane, and I do, he did a little digging before he ever approached Koldo.”
Thane shrugged. “I discovered our guest spent a little over a decade in a Nefas camp when he was younger.”
Rainbow eyes glittered dangerously as Bjorn said, “What was done to him?”
“According to one of the Sent Ones who rescued him, nothing Koldo would admit to. He was filthy, feral, and had just slaughtered the inhabitants of a village. All human.”
“Why would he do such a thing?” Xerxes asked.
“My guess? He was without hope.” A man without hope was a dangerous weapon. The three of them knew that very well. “I’ve heard the Nefas lock their young in a prison with innocent humans, only allowing one of them out—whoever kills the others. If no one’s willing to commit murder, they all starve.”
Xerxes scraped his nails against one of the scars on his arm. “He couldn’t have been raised that way. I’ve never heard him curse. I’ve never seen him drink. And we all saw how he treats females.”
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