Rage Against the Devil (Wild Beasts Series Book 2)

by T. Birmingham

She laid down slowly on the white silk sheets and he admired her beauty. She was perfection, dark skin against white sheets and he wanted to drink her in. Not yet, though.

  He grabbed the cuffs and the whip off the rack and stalked toward the bed, his footsteps barely making a sound on the plush carpet floor. Why Ginny carpeted a place like this, he didn’t know. To make them feel more comfortable? To make it feel like home? Shit. Fuck home. He had everything he needed right inside him, and he was the only one who could cure the pain the Clan member in front of him had in spades.

  He prowled slowly toward the bed, tearing at his clothes and letting them fall to the ground. Nothing between them. Ever.

  It wasn’t love.

  They both did this for touch.

  Because of addiction.

  To cure their psyches; to stave off their inner pain.

  Whip in hand, he saw her scarred ass clench, and he smirked.

  Light snaps against her calves, just enough to give her a warning, to bring her to a point of tension.

  More firm snaps against her thighs. Her strong thighs that could take the sting, the brunt of the force, the pain she needed, but that wasn’t really pain.

  The beautiful thing about his weapons. They could be used for pleasure or pain, and he knew how to use them for both.

  He reached her firm backside and saw her shudder in anticipation.

  The quick snap of the whip against her ass in quick succession caused dual gasps to fall from both of their lips in a harmonious release.

  Her toes curled, and he let the whip smack against her over and over again until he felt their connection fall into place.

  Not a bond.

  A connection of power that only his kind were able to tether onto in order to absorb power. They were unique in that way.

  He’d once despised the gift. Still did, truth be told. But not with a woman like the one in front of him.

  The connection was intense, a high, but the important attribute of the connection was that they were in tune. He could always get his meals in tune with him. His prey’s reward.

  He dragged his hand along her back, creating a friction with the spiny pads of his fingers. He’d realized the first time he was with this particular dark-haired beauty that she loved the slight abrasions from his fingers.

  And he never denied his meals, especially this one.

  The abrasions healed almost as soon as they were formed while he made his way from ass to upper back, enjoying her pleasure/pain.

  The woman’s face was turned to the side, her eyes open, and he saw the green brighten. She bit her lip and moved against the bed in invitation.

  He’d gladly take her.

  He’d gladly slide deep inside her – from the back. From the front. From the side. He didn’t fucking care. He’d take her any way she needed.

  Except she’d made it clear from the start, and fuck, but so had he, that that form of touch wasn’t part of their deal.

  So, instead, he pulled her head back, giving another crack of the whip to her back in succinct lashes as he grabbed her roughly and bit at her lips in a tortuous movement that had her crying out. He flipped her, grabbing her breasts roughly in the way she always pleaded for, and he continued to feed at her lips, to drink from her.

  He could feel everything her body was feeling. He could feel her pain, her pleasure, and he knew she was close to release.

  He reached down even as she reached out for him.

  No entrance into her body, but they could touch.

  And Jesus, but did they touch.

  Her small hand on his cock made him shudder and throw his head back in ecstasy while the spines in his finger pads retracted and he brought her tension to a new level.

  He had to bring her to that point at exactly the right moment. He pulled on her hair a little tighter, and ate at her mouth with such veracity, such pain and hope and need that he needed to move away for a second.

  But his misstep barely touched the woman’s mind.

  In fact, his movement was seen as a rejection, and it only seemed to spur her on, only seemed to bring her further to the edge. To bring her sadness and her darkness and her release more to the fore.

  Her hand grew more vigorous in bringing him as well, and he closed his eyes and let the moment take him away…

  Until he felt it.

  That spark.

  No, not of Light.

  That spark of Darkness.

  The shroud of the ever-present enemy they all fought.

  He grabbed onto her Darkness in the same moment they both came.

  Pure fucking bliss.

  A letting go.

  A freeing of all their burdens for just a moment in time.

  Release.

  He drank that release down.

  But really, he drank down her Darkness.

  Yeah, as much as his people had always preferred to drink down the pain and Light of the Clan, he had never wanted that.

  He’d known his lot in life, and he’d known he had two choices: take the Dark or take the Light.

  He was already Darkness.

  He was already pain and agony and evil.

  He was already dirty and disgusting and worthless.

  He didn’t mind taking those feelings from others. He didn’t mind swallowing their Darkness and letting it consume him. And he gave that to one of the few women who’d come to be a friend to him.

  He gave to the woman who needed her last piece of Light.

  He gave it to the Taryn woman with the dragon’s fire scars who’d once shared that her friend used to called her Tinkerbell.

  He gave it to Carrie, his feline, his Light Clan friend, because he was that much of a sap. That much of fucking freak even to his people, something his father let him know whenever the monster came to call.

  He took her Darkness and he ate it up.

  And he left her the little bit of Light that she held onto. That small tether to who she’d once been.

  Ice flowed through Eire’s veins in a rush as she sliced into the holiday decorations covering the front doorway of Stealth. The back entrance? Goddamned Clans, she thought, as she moved toward the back alleyway. The darkness crowded around her, but all she could feel was the victory of tonight already coursing through her veins as she walked toward the towering bouncer at the back entrance of Stealth.

  She wanted to charge back to the front of the club and break past the barrier.

  She wanted to suffocate the person behind that front door and dance in his blood.

  She wanted to kill everything in her path.

  Except she couldn’t argue with their reasoning now, could she? She’d become Beast. She’d become Monster. She’d become a true Fae.

  Her mind tried to take her back to the dream with Titania again, but she ignored the pestering.

  She didn’t need Titania’s musings or her guidance or her pretty poetry about how Alexia and Eire could become these great leaders with abilities that were gifts from the goddesses themselves.

  No. She didn’t need Titania.

  And she didn’t need Morrigan’s Stone.

  She needed this.

  She needed her ice.

  And not the weak ice from just over a month ago. No, her new ice. Her Fae ice, because she truly was Fae now. She’d felt it as soon as she’d created it, and she felt it now as the bone deep slivers of icicle and snow took over.

  She was different.

  The moment had been like her original change, only she hadn’t been cleansed and changed in blood this time. No. This time, she’d closed in on herself. She’d wrapped herself up instead of letting her fierce wrath go where she wanted to direct it like she had towards her father when she was twelve.

  She’d pulled her cold, hard bitch persona around her like a blanket, like a covering, like the goddamned wall it was always supposed to have been, and she liked the security.

  She liked the blast of cold others got from her.

  She liked that they kept their di
stance, that they feared her, that they knew their place.

  She was ruler of her own self now, and fuck what they thought.

  And she was damn well going to get Ginny’s bloody goddamned manager to let her into the fucking club. She had business there. Lochlan and Nessa business. Family business. Hell, maybe they knew: she had killing business.

  “Breathe,” Eire whispered to herself. “Emotion gets you nowhere. It gets you fucked up. It gets you killed. It gets you turned into that woman who’s in there with Daddy dearest getting her power and life stolen probably just to lose some of her pain.”

  Because that’s what happened with a Fae.

  They took.

  They ate it all up, feeding on the emotion until all that was left was an empty corpse, barely human.

  But while a Fae was feeding…it was euphoria. A high you never wanted to come down from…until you did come down from it. Or until it broke you.

  Addiction.

  Pain.

  Addiction.

  Pain.

  A cycle of never-ending bliss and torture that ruined a person until they were a shell. She’d seen it happen. Her mother was the perfect example of what happened to a woman mated to a Fae. No matter how much they wanted to stop, no matter how much they wanted to let go, they couldn’t.

  Fae touched.

  Addiction.

  They were the same thing.

  Yes, her mom had been a victim, but she’d also been an addict and that part of her history had killed little pieces inside of Eire at one point in her life.

  But that path was that person’s choice. Not Eire’s.

  She wrapped that ice around her, and breathed that cold deep, letting it circulate in her lungs and transform her into the badass she needed to be.

  Her shit brothers didn’t get it. She wasn’t just doing this for her.

  She was doing it for that kid they’d found in the woods in Courtwood. She was doing it for the Others who’d died before she’d left Montville and the two since. She might not have a line to Damon anymore, but she had other contacts, and she’d heard. Two additional crime scenes. Two new. Fucking. Deaths. How many more would there be?

  She also wouldn’t let her father and her grandmother win.

  They wouldn’t destroy any more lives.

  She couldn’t do it anymore. She couldn’t let them be the victors. She needed to be the strong one. She needed to be an icy, cold, hard as fuck bitch to make sure they all survived this. She didn’t give a fuck if she did survive, in the end; but her brothers, that community she would have given her heart for…they needed to survive.

  What about Nicky? Her mind whispered, but she ignored the urging.

  She’d killed him.

  She’d killed her one chance at happiness.

  And she was happy she was going to most likely die tonight in trying to make sure Lochlan and Nessa didn’t return. Because Nicky dying…well, shit, but that was the one glitch in her plan, the one flaw to her cold soul. She would never be able to forgive herself for killing the one man, the one wolf who had been made for her.

  Nessa’s death would kill Eire, she was sure of it. It was pretty much guaranteed with the power she’d have to use to get to the Veil and then kill her father and her grandmother, but damn it all, their deaths would be worth it.

  She was doing this, killing Lochlan and Nessa, for Damon and for Loch and even for that asshat Zeke who’d ironically always been good at pep talks, but who’d screwed the pooch three weeks ago and made a grave error in thinking she’d cry and whimper at his verbal assault.

  Eire Donovan did not cower.

  Zeke’s words had only been a reminder of what she’d fought for in the Veil.

  What worried her was that in all her investigations and inquiries these past few weeks, she’d heard nothing of her grandmother’s presence.

  She’d only gotten the one tidbit out of an old contact she basically had to pummel to death. The bloodstains had been worth it, though.

  Seemed her father was up to his old tricks.

  Taking on a new name to hide beneath the radar of the Fae, he wasn’t going by Lochlan Trappe anymore. He was going by Henry Jones now.

  Generic. Common.

  The name hid him well.

  And Henry Jones was a successful businessman in Syracuse who apparently had a mate. Poor woman. Being cheated on. Probably drained of all her life force. But, the records stated he’d married her at the ripe old age of eighteen, and the woman was now almost thirty. So, she must have had some power. Maybe a Luna. A Clan member for sure. She’d soon be human or dead if she was truly Clan. Almost twelve years at the hands of Lochlan Trappe. If Eire felt anything at the moment, she might have felt bad for the Clan bitch. But she just didn’t have it in her.

  She knocked three times on the back entrance and irony of all ironies, a Trow opened the entrance.

  She paid the $40 cover for the Other backrooms. Backrooms. Like servants. Like lesser beings. Like…fuck…well, like they were Other. Even their label said it all. They would never be anything else to the Clan. But at least Eire wouldn’t have to be around to deal with the shitshow anymore.

  “Rooms three, four, and the back bar are open,” the Trow said and looked her up and down in appreciation. “If you’re up for it…”

  She blatantly ignored the Trow, barely stopping to even look at him, and pushed past the beast and into the club. She knew where she had to go. Fucking bastard was here often, apparently. Damn Ginny for not telling her that. Though, Ginny may not have known his real name. Only the name he’d been going by in the human world.

  She walked to the back bar, the one reserved for the Others. In all her years in Syracuse, she’d never been to Stealth. She’d been to the club Immune to Society as well as the club Glam, but Immune was all Others and human Goths while Glam was for the not-so-pretty Others. Not every Other looked or could pass for human. Not every Other wanted to look human.

  She tried to make herself seem unobtrusive, but she was stone, cold Fae and under 5’5”. Fae were tall as fuck. She was not. Fae were fine boned. She had that in spades, but she also had a toughness brought out by her large, high, well-defined cheekbones. Most people called her looks striking. She didn’t look frail like the Fae. Of course, that was one way the Fae were like the Skröm. They might look all willowy and weak, but they could pack a wallop you’d feel for weeks, years, and many times for eternity if they wanted to ring the bell for Death to come a little early.

  But despite her somewhat subtle Fae looks, she knew she was letting off a huge amount of power. Survival mechanisms fully in place, Others knew power. And Eire gave in to a secret half smile when the bar cleared for her.

  She was patient now.

  She was the Fae her grandmother had always wanted her to be. But she’d been made this way for a purpose. In fact, she was the only one who could do it, she realized. On a conscious level, she’d always assumed, but now, she truly understood. She had been made for this. She had been built to be his end. Even if it meant her own. She smiled at the realization that her grandmother had probably never intended for that to happen.

  “Black Russian,” she said as she leaned against the bar, watching the Others as they danced and fucked around her. Back rooms. But still able to be free. To be themselves. Blood and taking and giving. Sometimes love. Sometimes lust. Being Other didn’t make you evil. Sure as shit, you had that Darkness roiling around in you, but no, it was the other shit in life that tore at your soul. And that shit…well, that could happen to anyone.

  Of course Clan didn’t see it that way. It didn’t help that the Others had been around for thousands of years and they’d always been called Other, or Nach Iad in the original Gaelic tongue.

  Nach Iad. Not of Man.

  For that, she could blame Titania she was sure. Gods and goddesses could fuck a duck for all she cared. They meddled too often. She again shook her head at the memory of her shared dream with Alexia, where she had met Eire’s gaze – p
ity, softness, and understanding. Alexia’s gaze had been too perceptive, too knowing. The Skröm bitch didn’t know Eire, and Eire didn’t have any need for the emotion she had seen in Alexia’s eyes. Neither would Eire be giving that emotion to anyone else.

  She looked around the bar, but there was no sign of the bastard. Fucking Henry Jones, the businessman, was…well, he was probably ‘fucking’ in one of the back rooms. Thirteen Other back rooms. Biggest goddamned maze in the city it seemed, at least from what Eire had gleaned off the building plans she’d commandeered.

  She rose slowly, downing the Black Russian the barkeep had probably placed there minutes earlier. She reached into the inside pocket of her green leather jacket and put the $20 on the counter. Too much in the way of a tip, but she’d never cared about money, and she was going to die anyway. What fucks did she give?

  She put her half smile of vindication and vengeance on and she let her boots click as she moved out of the back bar and into the hallway where the Others’ rooms were. She sniffed at each door subtly, not stopping to take a deep breath. Just a subtle sniff. Fae, like most monsters, were creatures of habit. If Lochlan Trappe was coming to Stealth as much as she knew he needed to feed, he’d leave a mark, a scent. She walked past the rooms one by one finally stopping at room 11. Bingo. Roses, talc and the subtle scent of dust. Seemed Daddy was hanging around her grandmother so often the scent of dust clung to him.

  There were locks on the door, but her knives were strong. She could break through the steel. She was a Trappe after all. She unsheathed her claws and hoped the schematics of the rooms were right. That there really was a small entryway before the bathroom and the main room. If not, fuck it, she was ready. She’d been practicing creating a temporal break, and she was ready.

  She sliced into the door, and pulled out the circular cut of the doorknob. The door opened slowly, no creaks or rusty hinges interrupting the silence. What kind of room needed two double steel-encased doors with soundproofing? Because there was no sound on the other side of the door, but she knew what her father was doing in there. Had seen it herself when she was a kid and found her mother dead in a pool of blood. No fucking way he wasn’t making a sound.

  She moved quietly to the second door.