by Andrea Speed
The restaurant was all warm lighting and highly polished wood, good smells, and faint piano music playing low in the background. When they entered, Neil and Abigail were slow dancing, she in a dramatic, backless evening gown, he in a modified tux. They stopped as soon as they saw them.
Neil looked deeply confused. “Mr. Tanaka? What are you doing here?”
“I think you can drop the act now, Neil. You know very well I’m not actually Jason Tanaka. Did DJ put you up to it? Get chummy with Dr. Terror’s son’s fake identity, get him to spill some secrets?” He paused briefly, just for the drama. “Or was it your sister’s idea?”
He saw on Neil’s face the moment he realized he was done. He tried to hide it, but there was a brief glimpse before he smothered it. “What are you talking about? I don’t have a sister.”
“Sorry, do you prefer half sister? Especially since she prefers using your mother’s maiden name, Simmonds. I don’t know what she had against her father, although being the offspring of a guy who called himself Madhatten isn’t something you want to go around advertising.” From what his dad’s minions had dug up, Joy was Neil’s older half sister by ten years. She was the result of a dalliance—or incident of statutory rape; you decide—between Neil’s then teenaged mother and fifty-year-old “Madhatten,” aka Charles Litten, a supervillain who seemed to embrace his insanity so much, he died by accidentally falling in a car crusher. The fact that it was an accident—he wasn’t pushed, he wasn’t thrown in; it was an icy night and he slipped—made him notorious in villain circles as the epitome of a loser. As if his stupid name hadn’t already.
Joy was raised more by her aunt than her mother, who went on to become the mistress, then third wife, of ultrawealthy Armstrong Miller, Neil’s dad, who was also a bit over twice her age. So maybe Mama Miller just had a thing for older guys. And getting knocked up by them, as they’d only been married six months when Neil was born. Joy was kind of a secret, but not a super well-kept one. If anyone had bothered to dig, they’d have found the connection.
Anger flared briefly in Neil’s eyes as he stomped toward him. Ash took up a preemptive, protective position in front of Kaede. “Listen, I don’t know what game you’re playing—”
“It’s all over Twitter.”
That stopped him in his tracks. “What’s all over Twitter?”
“My tweet from the official Kamani feed about Black Hand being your sister. I mean, it went out to about twenty thousand people about an hour ago, and that’s not even counting the anonymous e-mails that QuarCorp got. Funny how none of your friends have told you about it. Maybe ’cause they’re wondering if you were ever their friend at all.” He’d made up the number on the Kamani Twitter feed—Kaede didn’t know or care if it had any followers at all. But the bit about the e-mails to QuarCorp was real. He wanted Moreau to know he’d been friends with the traitor all these years. The sheer humiliation of it would probably be enough to keep DJ out of his hair for a while.
“Joy was Black Hand?” Abigail said. Ooh, she didn’t know.
Neil looked back at her, shaking his head and wringing his hands. “You hafta understand, honey. Joy is sick—”
“And she killed a lot of people over the years,” Kaede interrupted, twisting the knife deeper. “Funny. She wasn’t the greatest supervillain in Corwyn. All along, it was you.”
Neil’s head snapped back around, and he glared daggers at Kaede. “How dare you—” He meant to get in Kaede’s face, but Ash put a hand on his chest and physically stopped him. It looked for all the world like Neil meant to push on but couldn’t, and he looked at Ash with surprise in his eyes. For perhaps the first time, Neil finally saw Ash for what he was. Not a minder, not an assistant, but a bodyguard, and a terrifyingly strong one at that.
Off in the distance, there was a faint noise of rotors chopping through the air. Dark Justice’s ’copter? Most likely. He’d want to take down his betrayer himself. And from the beads of sweat forming on Neil’s wide brow, he knew that too.
“You might wanna say your good-byes, Mr. Amazing. I think your time’s about done.” Kaede turned casually, as if leaving a bar, and walked back to the VIP elevators, sure Ash was following him. Neil wasn’t, but he couldn’t. If he tried, Ash would throw him back, but more importantly, his wife would never forgive him. And from the look on her face, she was on the verge of not forgiving him anyway.
Kaede and Ash stood side by side in the plushly carpeted elevator as Mr. Amazing stood alone in the restaurant, his wife not visible from this angle. Twisting his hands and fidgeting, he looked like an overgrown toddler about to pitch a fit.
“You don’t understand,” he said as behind him, visible through the restaurant’s main window, you could see the looming shape of the chopper. Sweat glistened, and he tugged at his tie. “It wasn’t—I was keeping a handle on her. I didn’t know she was planning to blow up that building. You don’t know what she’ll do without me there to stop her.”
“And neither do you,” Kaede said as the elevator doors closed. If Neil had any remaining luck at all, he wouldn’t put together that Kaede meant his sister was already dead for days, maybe even weeks. Assuming DJ didn’t bust his code and kill the guy.
By the time they got back in the car, the helicopter was parked on the roof. Kaede couldn’t have heard the sounds of a fight all the way down here, but he liked to pretend he could. Although Ash still seemed a little tense, he slipped his hand in Kaede’s, and Kaede took it gratefully. Had anyone ever held his hand? It was sweet. Weird, but sweet. Much like Ash himself.
He waited until they were back home in the penthouse suite before asking, “What’s wrong?”
Ash glanced at him like it crossed his mind to deny it, but it was a brief thought he didn’t indulge. “When you were alone in that room with Black Hand? I felt like I was gonna die. What the hell is that? It was awful. I never felt so mad and so….” He trailed off, making nonsensical hand gestures that looked like he was throwing invisible confetti without much enthusiasm.
Kaede smiled. “Helpless?”
“Yes! And I am never helpless. Well, almost never.” He collapsed on the couch, running a hand through his alabaster hair.
Kaede sat next to him and put a hand on his leg. “I think it means you like me.”
“No shit, I like you. It’s just… it’s weird.” He grimaced in a way that was frankly adorable and put his cool hand over Kaede’s. “Are all emotions this rough?”
Kaede frowned as he considered that. He had never pondered that before. “There are some good points.”
Ash didn’t ask him to elaborate, and that seemed like a step in the right direction. Kaede peeled off his suit jacket and threw it on the floor, followed by his button-down shirt and symtech shirt. He then straddled Ash, wrapping his arms around him. “Wanna forget that and kiss me?”
Ash’s answer was to kiss him and envelop him in his arms. He was getting much better at the whole kissing thing, even though his general lack of specific technique was still charming.
Ash pushed him into the sofa, and Kaede wrapped his legs around him, unwilling to let him go. Still, Ash broke away briefly to catch his breath and then tenderly smoothed Kaede’s hair away from his face. “You know this means you’re now the reigning supervillain in Corwyn, right?”
That made him smile. “It did occur to me, although we share the title, don’t you think?”
Ash shrugged. “So what do we do with it?”
Now Kaede really grinned, locking his legs even tighter around Ash’s narrow hips. He loved the feeling of Ash’s body on top of his, his weight on him. “Whatever the fuck we want, baby.” And he kissed Ash like he meant it—because he really did.
Fuck being Dr. Terror’s son. With Ash by his side, even his dad couldn’t stop him.
This was going to be fun.
More from Andrea Speed
Prequel to Infected: Prey
In a world where a werecat virus has changed society, Roan McKichan, a born infected
and ex-cop, works as a private detective trying to solve crimes involving other infecteds.
Roan is working a frustrating stalker case, with no shortage of suspects and little solid evidence, when he comes across a startling eyewitness living in his car across the street from the scene. A tiger-strain infected, the only one Roan’s ever met, Paris Lehane is a former Canadian golden boy who suffered a breakdown after becoming infected in college.
While Roan’s ex, Diego “Dee” Cole, warns against falling for the infected Paris, a man doomed to die, Roan struggles with his attraction and the knowledge that no happily ever after is possible for them.
But is the knowledge enough to discourage him from following his heart? Roan helps Paris out of homelessness, and maybe a special hospital can help Paris with the infection, but Roan’s got his hands full with this case, and there’s no end in sight.
Infected: Book One
In a world where a werecat virus has changed society, Roan McKichan, a born infected and ex-cop, works as a private detective trying to solve crimes involving other infecteds.
The murder of a former cop draws Roan into an odd case where an unidentifiable species of cat appears to be showing an unusual level of intelligence. He juggles that with trying to find a missing teenage boy, who, unbeknownst to his parents, was “cat” obsessed. And when someone is brutally murdering infecteds, Eli Winters, leader of the Church of the Divine Transformation, hires Roan to find the killer before he closes in on Eli.
Working the crimes will lead Roan through a maze of hate, personal grudges, and mortal danger. With help from his tiger-strain infected partner, Paris Lehane, he does his best to survive in a world that hates and fears their kind… and occasionally worships them.
Sequel to Infected: Prey
Infected: Book Two
In a world where a werecat virus has changed society, Roan McKichan, a born infected and ex-cop, works as a private detective trying to solve crimes involving other infecteds.
The newly married Roan is struggling to balance his work with his home life as he grows increasingly distracted by his husband Paris’s declining health. One case with strong emotions attached takes up most of his time: finding the murderer of a missing little rich girl.
It’s a family with secrets so toxic they’d rather no one investigate, and there’s no shortage of suspects. But despite the dangers and obstructions involved, Roan won’t stop... until he loses something infinitely precious as well.
Sequel to Infected: Bloodlines
Infected: Book Three
In a world where a werecat virus has changed society, Roan McKichan, a born infected and ex-cop, works as a private detective trying to solve crimes involving other infecteds. But when your heart is gone, it’s easy to fall into a black hole and never crawl out.
Roan has been lost and alone for more than a year, and his best friends think a new case might be just the motivation he needs. Roan forces himself back into the game and discovers a dead man who might not be all that dead, a street hustler that wants to hustle him, and a dominatrix who is well prepared to take Roan’s orders.
As Roan claws his way out of the darkness by diving back into his work, he finds himself in a race against time in the adrenaline-pumping realization that nothing helps a person want to live like helping someone else survive.
Sequel to Infected: Life After Death
Infected: Book Four
In a world where a werecat virus has changed society, Roan McKichan, a born infected and ex-cop, works as a private detective trying to solve crimes involving other infecteds.
Conceived bearing the lion strain of the virus, Roan is the only fully functioning virus child in the country—maybe in the world. But that doesn’t mean he’s okay. He’s still struggling with the death of his husband and the guilt of finding new love; his old enemy, the Church of the Divine Transformation, is becoming increasingly hostile; and he’s taken on a tragic cold case involving a long-missing boy.
As Roan fights to control the lion inside him, his world explodes with all kinds of trouble. The leader of the church is ramping up the violence against him, calling Roan out as a traitor to his kind. There’s a loose infected terrorizing the city. And Holden, male prostitute and Roan’s unofficial assistant, brings him a case involving the suspicious death of one of Holden’s clients, which puts Roan far too close to a murderer for his state of mind….
Readers love the Infected series by Andrea Speed
Infected: Epitaph
“Epitaph is a fitting finale for a long-lived and much-loved series…”
—Hearts on Fire Reviews
“…this last book is just near perfect… I can only raise my glass and toast Andrea Speed and her “Infected” gang. Here’s to you, Roan McKichan… thanks for the adventure, you awesome bastard!”
—Boys in Our Books
Infected: Paris
“I enjoyed the book immensely…”
—Queer Sci Fi
“I love the way Andrea Speed writes. She is skilled at grabbing the reader from the first sentence in a story and keeping them riveted until the last, bringing raw honesty to her characters and the world she builds.”
—Prism Book Alliance
The Infected Holiday Special
“One amazing boatload of Urban Fantasy wrapped around characters who have more personality in their little pixels than should be reasonable or possible.”
—The Novel Approach
“Thank you, Andrea, for this gift. It was wonderful in every possible way.”
—Rainbow Book Reviews
ANDREA SPEED writes way too much (and yet seemingly not enough). She is the writer of the Infected series for DSP Publications as well as a bunch of other stuff, and is editor in chief of CxPulp.com, where she reviews comics as well as movies and other stuff. She’s won a couple of Rainbow Awards and feels she may be ubiquitous on the web. But she is not (sadly) the Italian DJ of the same name that often comes up first in Google searches. A small medicinal horse.
Website: www.andreaspeed.com
Facebook: www.facebook.com/andrea.speed.3
Twitter: @aspeed
Tumblr: www.tumblr.com/blog/notmanos
Goodreads: www.goodreads.com/author/show/3020553.Andrea_Speed
By Andrea Speed
7&7 - Virtue and Vice (DSPP Anthology)
Hearts of Darkness
INFECTED
Infected: Paris
Infected: Prey
Infected: Bloodlines
Infected: Life After Death
Infected: Freefall
Infected: Shift
Infected: Lesser Evils
Infected: Undertow
Infected: Epitaph
The Infected Holiday Special
Infected: Holden
Published by DSP PUBLICATIONS
www.dsppublications.com
Published by
DSP PUBLICATIONS
5032 Capital Circle SW, Suite 2, PMB# 279, Tallahassee, FL 32305-7886 USA
www.dsppublications.com
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of author imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Hearts of Darkness
© 2016 Andrea Speed.
Cover Art
© 2016 AngstyG.
www.angstyg.com
Cover content is for illustrative purposes only and any person depicted on the cover is a model.
All rights reserved. This book is licensed to the original purchaser only. Duplication or distribution via any means is illegal and a violation of international copyright law, subject to criminal prosecution and upon conviction, fines, and/or imprisonment. Any eBook format cannot be legally loaned or given to others. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any in
formation storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the Publisher, except where permitted by law. To request permission and all other inquiries, contact DSP Publications, 5032 Capital Circle SW, Suite 2, PMB# 279, Tallahassee, FL 32305-7886, USA, or www.dsppublications.com.
ISBN: 978-1-63477-548-9
Digital ISBN: 978-1-63477-549-6
Library of Congress Control Number: 2016906198
Published November 2016
v. 1.0
Printed in the United States of America