by Anne Marsh
Bingo. “Mischka just walked in the door of the club.”
He shook his head. “Right. I suppose you’d like to slip out the back door?”
“Yes.” She looked at him expectantly. “That’s my current plan.”
“Baby, you have the worst plans I’ve ever heard. If,” he added skeptically, “that even counts as a plan. I strongly suspect you’re making this up as you go along.”
There was nothing wrong with spontaneity, so she stuck her tongue out at him. “Stodgy, that’s what you are, Dathan.”
The look in his eyes was one that she couldn’t quite decipher. “Practical,” he countered. “If you’re having issues with this cousin of yours, Pell, you need to talk to her. You skip out of here with me, someone will tell her, and that’s if she didn’t spot you when you spotted her. She’ll never believe you then.”
This was the awkward part. “Yeah, well, she might have grounds for concern.”
“Really.” His eyes surveyed her.
She paused. Then again, this was Dathan and they were friends and she could tell him the truth. “I might have claimed I was going to find me a fallen angel.”
“And?” Lethal force underlay the word.
“And more or less implied that I’d bond with him.”
“And why would you want to bond with one of us?” he drawled.
She fought the urge to flee. “Safety,” she blurted out. “Protection.”
“From?”
She shook her head desperately. “You won’t believe me, Dathan. No one does.”
She hadn’t wanted to turn to him yet again with more evidence of her imperfections. Of the endless series of screw-ups that was her life. Because friendship only went so far, and this time…well, this time, she hadn’t come home alone. This time, there had been a man coming after her.
“Boyfriend?”
If only. That would have been so much simpler. She shook her head.
“Creditor.” Dathan sounded patronizingly amused. “How much do you owe?”
He’d always been carelessly generous, but money wasn’t going to fix this particular problem. “I don’t owe him anything.”
Dathan’s eyes narrowed. For a moment, the lazy look vanished from his face as if someone had drawn a curtain over a window. He looked hard. Dangerous. Unfamiliar. “Him? This person following you is a male?”
“Yeah.” Why would Dathan care?
“You brought a boyfriend home?”
“He’s not my boyfriend, and I’m sick of playing twenty questions, Dathan.” She should have found her own place. She shouldn’t have come here with him. It was just that Dathan was a habit she couldn’t seem to break.
“I should paddle your ass for this.” His dark eyes gleamed with an unfamiliar emotion. He was her best friend, but she couldn’t stop the forbidden rush of heat at the mental images his threat aroused. He wouldn’t. She should not be thinking about her best friend like this. But she couldn’t banish the images.
Dathan never did anything by half measures once he had committed himself. There would be the delicious exposure as he drew her too-brief dress up and her panties down. The first crack of heat would surge on her backside and send a thrill straight through her.
Had his eyes darkened? Surely, he couldn’t smell the arousal dampening her panties. He couldn’t know what she fantasized about at night. He was a fallen angel, not a mind reader.
And she hadn’t heard that the fallen angels specialized in bringing fantasies to life. Liar, the little voice in her mind chirped. Liar, liar, pants on fire. With lust. For one of the fallen angels. And here she’d thought her evening couldn’t possibly get any worse.
“Try it,” she suggested lightly, “and I’ll get even, Dathan.” Self-consciously, she shifted on the leather seat, the slick material clinging to her bare skin. This was awkward. She knew Dathan had a certain reputation among her human friends, but she’d never seen this side of him. The charming, nonchalant companion had vanished.
He ignored her unease. “If he’s not your boyfriend, who is he?”
“Just a guy.” A description that didn’t begin to cover the man she’d met. “I was traveling in the South Pacific and met him in a beach club. I’d only been on that particular island for a couple of days and I didn’t know if I was staying or going. He’d heard of my arrival, so he stopped by to introduce himself.” She still couldn’t shake the memories of those dark eyes. The man had been cold, so cold. Almost eerie in the tropical heat that surrounded them. Most of the locals were deliciously warm, sun bronzed and laughing, their curiosity about her tempered by respect for the boundaries she’d unconsciously thrown up. Eilor hadn’t cared. He’d glided up to her table and sat down across from her. Sure, he’d bought her the obligatory drink, but there had been almost something possessive in his eyes. He’d scared her. And then he’d said he’d been looking for her. Somehow, she didn’t think he meant that day. He’d been looking for her, and so he had come to this island to find her. He’d followed her.
She’d listened to her instincts and run.
“And he followed you here.”
“He might have.” This was the point at which most of her acquaintances would have tried logic, dissuasion or outright disbelief. After all, how likely was it that a random stranger had followed her halfway around the globe?
“When did you realize he’d followed you?”
“When I got to the airport.”
“You got to the airport three weeks ago, Pell.” Dathan’s voice held a stern note. So she’d been in denial. None of it had seemed real.
“I wanted to be sure before I told anyone. It all seems so crazy.”
Three weeks of feeling her skin crawl, feeling like there was an unseen watcher tracking her. Worse, knowing that the watcher could have caught her at any time. She hadn’t wanted to go back to the flat she sometimes shared with her girlfriends. Going home hadn’t worked too well, either. She’d been edgy. Nervous. In the end, she’d picked a fight so that she could storm off.
She eyed the male across from her. Apparently, straight into Dathan’s arms.
“You made me wait.”
“We’re friends,” she snapped. “Did you think I wanted to bring this down on you, too?”
“We’re friends.” He stared at her and she couldn’t read the expression on his face. “Yes, darling. And friends should really be honest with one another, don’t you think?”
“Sure.” After all, it wasn’t as if she’d lied to him about this.
“Absolutely.” His hand released hers, sliding off the table. With his other hand, he deftly poured champagne from the bottle chilling in the stand attached to the sleek table. He nudged the flute across the table, and she wrapped her fingers around the stem out of habit. “What did he look like?”
He’d been tall. Dark. And the bar where she’d met him had been darker still. Still, he’d seemed almost familiar somehow. Maybe because his rough, brutal features reminded her of the fallen angels. “Like one of you,” she said before she could stop herself. Well, no one had ever accused her of diplomacy before. Way to go, Pell. Next, you can accuse Dathan of stalking you.
“Like one of us,” he mused. “We’re interchangeable, then? You can’t quite tell us apart?”
That wasn’t what she had meant. “No,” she argued. “You know I know who you are, Dathan. I always have. I just meant that he had a look about him that reminded me of the fallen angels.”
“Be specific.”
She couldn’t. The man who had stalked her had been like looking at Dathan’s face through the shadows. Harder. Darker. Twisted somehow.
“Fine. So he looked like me, like one of my brothers, but you can’t describe him. Didn’t manage to snap a photo.”
He raised an inquiring eyebrow and she had to shake her head, an embarrassed flush creeping over her cheekbones. No, she hadn’t thought to take a picture. Or a vid. All she’d wanted to do was run back home.
Scared little baby, her
mind taunted her. Too chicken to stick up for yourself.
“No,” she managed. She hated feeling stupid. Inadequate.
“Did he do this to you?” His hand, strong and sure, stroked an unfamiliar path across her bare thigh.
To her eternal embarrassment, she squeaked his name.
His eyes didn’t release hers, and that hand—that wicked hand—continued its slow, bold march up her thigh. Her bare thigh. Oh, God. The sexy black cocktail dress that had made her feel so mature, so in charge, also meant that she’d forgone any lingerie besides a miniscule thong.
Why was he doing this and why was she so interested in letting him?
“Don’t do this.” She knew Dathan didn’t want her. He’d had plenty of others in the four years she’d known him and he’d never made a move on her. Whatever bizarre reason he had for acting like this, it couldn’t be lust.
“Did you let him do this?” Was that jealousy she heard in his voice? For a whisper of a moment, back there on the beach, she’d considered letting the stranger have what he wanted. She’d been lonely. And he’d reminded her of someone she couldn’t have.
His hand nudged her thighs apart. She knew she should resist. But at the same time she didn’t want to. Nothing screwed up a friendship faster than sex, and yet…
“Tell me,” he demanded, his fingers inching upward to the edge of her thong.
“Someone will see, Dathan.” Could he tell she was wet for him?
He shook his head slowly. “This is mine.”
His fingers pressed against her core, rubbing the soaked fabric of her panties against her pussy.
She heard herself whimper his name, the dark, needy whisper from her own mouth shocking her.
“You’re going to bond with me, Pell,” he said in the unfamiliar, hard voice. “And in exchange, I’ll keep you safe.”
From the man on her trail, maybe. She had no doubt he could do that.
But who was going to keep her safe from Dathan?
Four
Mischka stood at G2’s back door and squared her shoulders. She’d been told the club’s owner, Brends Duranov, had stepped out for a moment. Perfect—she wouldn’t have to scream over the music to be heard. She just wouldn’t think about what he could possibly be doing in the back alley.
The obligatory neon red exit sign glared down at her. Never mind the sign—Mischka didn’t care if the Cyrillic curlicues proclaimed THIS WAY TO HELL. Nothing was going to keep her from rescuing Pell.
Nothing.
She shoved the door open.
The alley was as dark as she’d expected. Some things never changed, no matter where you went. Maybe there was a law that required alleys to be dark, too-small slices of space between buildings. Some light from the street reached this far back, but the mazh-lights out in front of the club hadn’t been particularly powerful to begin with, and this far back, the light was more like a lessening of the gray. The moon wasn’t going to be much help, either. It hung low in the sky, a cold silver sliver half obscured by the haze of mazhyk that wrapped itself around M City. Every six months or so, someone took a space cruiser out and tried to settle a colony on its inhospitable surfaces, but she figured that the would-be settlers took one look at the hard, cold moonscape and hightailed it right back to Earth. Better the devil you knew. Plus, there were the inevitable whispers that the moon had a paranormal population of its own, one that didn’t need a space suit to survive. Yeah, she’d stay right where she was.
“Hello? Mr. Duranov?” Deliberately pitching her voice low and comforting, she made sure she spoke loud enough to be clearly audible. Jumpy males sometimes did things they regretted later—and since he was undoubtedly the kind of male who went armed, there was no point in inviting a bullet. When there was no response, she cautiously stepped through the doorway—and stepped onto a murder scene.
Please God, don’t let it be Pell. Not tonight.
The door beneath her fingertips was cold and reassuringly solid in a world that was rapidly falling part. If she’d thought coming to a club and known Goblin haunt was surreal, this death was something else entirely. Look. She had to look. She had to know. But she didn’t want to, didn’t want to know if she’d been too late. If she hadn’t been in time to keep Pell safe.
She’d promised her aunt. She’d promised Pell.
Promises didn’t matter if Pell was dead.
She let go of the door and tried to keep panic at bay. The winter air was unmistakably chilly, but she’d left her coat in the club’s checkroom because she hadn’t planned on being outside.
Don’t let me be too late.
The dead woman lay on the ground in a puddle of crimson blood that steamed unpleasantly in the sharp cold. The color made a sharp contrast to the no-nonsense blue jeans and the heavy down jacket. Dressed like that, the woman hadn’t come here to do a little dancing and drinking.
Stepping cautiously around the prone form, Mischka eyed the woman.
Not Pell. Not Pell. Not Pell. The blood rushed back to her head. She was suddenly lightheaded, but there was nowhere to sit down and now she didn’t know what to do next.
Mischka’s parents had been surprised.
The memories rushed at her, the coppery, sticky scent of desperation and death all too familiar. She’d been twelve and she’d overslept, had woken to hear her parents screaming downstairs. She’d known enough not to go in, to peek through the kitchen door and then run like hell to find help. But it had been too late. She’d known that before she cleared the yard. And they hadn’t caught the bastard. She’d caught half a glimpse, an out-of-focus mental photograph she’d never managed to clear from her memory. The tall, broad-shouldered male figure had used expensive weapons and an unusual blade, so MVD had concluded he was not your average psychopath. She knew he was cold. Methodical. Ruthless. Some part of her had wanted to go into that kitchen right then, so that he could put an end to her life right there and she wouldn’t have to spend the rest of it looking over her shoulder. Waiting for him to catch up to her.
His eyes had given her screaming nightmares for years, until she gave in and saw a counselor. Those demonic eyes glowed until she could have sworn she was looking into a hellish furnace. He hadn’t, of course, been human. She’d known that, even before he picked up her burly father and tossed him against the wall like so much dirty laundry. Her parents hadn’t stood a chance.
Her aunt and uncle loved her. They’d stepped in and had done their best, never trying to replace the parents she’d lost. She’d loved them and they’d loved her—but part of her never stopped waiting for her parents to come back home.
This dead woman in the alley behind G2’s wasn’t her parents and she wasn’t Pell, but she had been someone else’s daughter. Cousin. Friend. Somewhere out there, someone was waiting for her to come home and she never would.
She should call the authorities. That was the right thing to do.
She blindly groped through her bag for her cell phone, her eyes riveted to the scene before her. The woman had been sliced open, throat to sternum. Blood saturated the brown strands of her hair, her face now a frozen mask of terror and resignation.
The woman had seen death coming for her, but she hadn’t been surprised.
Shit. The waitress had said that the club’s owner had got a page and gone tearing off into the alley. Had he killed this woman? He was a paranormal, after all. She listened, stretching her all-too-human senses, but she heard only the harsh rasp of her own breathing and the faint rattle of her teeth chattering in the alley’s bone-chilling temperatures.
Flipping open the phone, she checked the screen. Weak signal, of course. Reception should be better out front rather than sandwiched between buildings, so she made for the pinprick of light that marked the end of the alleyway, where the narrow space connected with the better-lit street.
And stumbled over the dead Goblin.
Brends hovered in the shadows of the alley, watching his ice princess practically trip over the body of his
fallen brother—the dead Goblin she’d passed right over in her righteous concern for the human female.
If he’d been better, quicker, maybe Hushai wouldn’t have died just outside the safety of G2’s. He had been very, very close to making it inside—mere yards from the door. So close, but so far.
This brutality had all the earmarks of their serial killer. Decapitation was the only way to kill one of the Fallen, and Hushai’s head had been torn from his body. Definitely time to take care of this particular rogue.
Silently, he drew a wicked little shortknife, running the blade between his fingers. Hushai would be avenged. But what interested him even more was the human woman he’d died to protect. Hushai’s bond mate.
Hushai’s body lay in front of her, one arm thrown out as if to ward off whatever had attacked them so unexpectedly. Even in death, the warrior’s touch seemed gentle. Protective.
Brends had never fought alongside a more brutal or determined warrior than Hushai. Tender was not part of that male’s vocabulary, nor was a poetic, moonlight walk through M City’s ice-cold streets at midnight. So there had to have been a reason, a compelling reason, for the warrior to have protected his bond mate’s life at the cost of his own. If they had been outnumbered, which seemed likely, given how quickly the killings had been accomplished, then the human’s death would have bought Hushai the time he needed to make his own escape.
The Goblins were nothing if not practical. Fight with a feral, brutal intensity. Leave no attack unpunished. But if there was no other choice, they fell back to live and fight another day because all of them—all—had vowed to the Heavens and to Zer that they would do everything in their power to unseat Michael, no matter what they had to do to accomplish it. Abandoning a fight would have been a high price personally, but one they all would have made in the interests of serving that one greater goal.