by JL Madore
Don’t be a dick, Phoenix said into Seth’s mind.
His brother laughed again. “Nothing much, just sitting here, studiously not watching the Persian get his rocks off with the human.”
Zander cursed. “Are you fucking with me?”
“Fair question, but not this time. For reals. Danel is solidly in pound town and from what we can see, he’s the fucking mayor of pound town. Can you believe it?”
Phoenix shot his brother a middle-fingered salute. You just can’t help yourself, can you?
What’s up your ass? I just told the truth.
Phoenix pulled the handle on the door and stepped out of the truck. Out of respect for Z, he didn’t slam the door, despite wanting to. Seth honestly didn’t have a sensitive bone in his body. He also didn’t get it.
Subtlety. Tact. Consideration.
In the millennia Danel had been part of the garrison, the brother talked the talk, but they’d never actually seen him with a female. Male either, for that matter. With the testosterone that fueled their large warrior bodies, there had been countless evenings of drunken debauchery and group calisthenics.
Hell, Zander and Kyrian used to throw week-long parties after a tough battle, and all of them would burn off their adrenaline. But not Danel.
The brother found comfort in his books.
Phoenix often wondered whether the guy was celibate, impotent, or just so incredibly private that he kept his life segmented and kept them out of it. Totally his call.
He rolled his stiff shoulders and popped the collar of his jacket against the wind. Leaning against the bumper of the truck, he glanced up—not to be a creeper—just to ensure that nothing other than the slap of consensual bodies was happening.
The tingle at the back of his neck made the hair on his nape stand on end. Nephilim instincts. He scanned the darkness, and searched the shadows for movement or sound or—
What the hell? He watched as a shadow on the front corner of the building shifted up the wall. Did he imagine that? The blackness crept to the second floor, and then to the third, oozing and undulating from the rustic brick surface onto the window frames, and disappeared.
Phoenix rapped his fist on the hood and shifted to get a better look.
Seth dropped out of the truck and jogged over. “What’s up?”
Do you sense anything from the building?
Seth stared up, his brow tight. No. Why?
He opened their mental link and flashed his brother the memory of the freaky shadow that slithered up the building. This feels way wrong.
Seth nodded. Then we move in for a closer look.
A bloodcurdling scream lit a fire under their asses. Tearing inside, Phoenix made short work of the security lock and the two of them raced up the stairs three at a time. The thundering of their shitkickers echoed up the concrete shaft, as loud as a charging herd of elephants.
Daggers drawn, they burst into Danel’s apartment.
Danel lay flat on his back, pinned by four tat-covered, baldies covered in black goo. What the fuck? They moved with the slither and sway of the Serpentine but smelled like a decaying body fermenting in a funky bog.
Seth dove into the fray while he searched for . . .
There. Phoenix scooped Ronnie from a huddled ball behind the sofa and shut her into the bathroom. The flimsy lock clicked at his will and he raced back to join the Otherworld Fight Club.
Danel fought, back to back with Seth, and it was obvious he hadn’t forgotten everything. All primal strength and reflexes, the Persian took out the trash, same as always. Whether it was muscle memory or instinct, the guy didn’t miss a beat.
Four against three should have been the work of a moment, but these demons healed as fast as they were skewered. Phoenix didn’t know shit about Leviathans, but every creature they’d ever come across had an off switch.
The red glint of a dagger catching moonlight had Phoenix throwing himself into the tussle. The unnatural searing of flesh by that demon-concocted weapon pissed off his beast. Huge.
He hated those weapons. After a week, paralyzed with his life ebbing out of him last August, he vowed never again.
Grace ignited in his bloodstream and solidified like steel in the marrow of his bones. With one hand, he shoved his thumb into the hissing mouth of the thing; with the other, he grabbed its shoulder and wrenched in opposite directions. He ripped the demon’s head clean off his shoulders.
Heal that, motherfucker.
Seth glanced at the heap of dead and did the same. Danel used his dagger on the last two and the rinse and repeat ended the fight. Four decapitated Leviathan assholes thunked onto Tanek’s favorite rug.
Phoenix leaned forward and caught his breath. Man, Serpentines were ugly enough; with this second phase bullshit, they’d never win a beauty contest. They’d kept the forked tongue of their previous incarnation, and added a second row of serrated teeth, and the black icor coating their skin like a foul body lotion.
The air charged with their Quickening. The hair on his arms stood on end and he grit his teeth. These demons had already lost their souls at their first death. What would this bring?
The three of them stiffened in unison, their cells bombarded with the infusion of the kills. Malignant. More disgusting than usual. He locked himself down to keep from squirming. His gut knotted, and he fought the bile at the back of his throat. Taking down an army of these assholes was going to suck huge.
The perverse darkness seeping inside him was nauseating. The strike of energy that followed scattered their senses, like a bolt of lightning frying cognitive neuropathways and forcing a reboot with the new updates.
Danel braced himself, his hand clutching the surface of Tanek’s entertainment center. He fucking hated the transfer of power. Every damn time. Every damn kill. When the energy drained, and the Quickening receded, he blinked and took in the apartment. The interior. The dead.
“My brothers,” he said, straightening once the pain faded. “Thanks for the assist. What in Hell are those things?”
“Leviathans,” Seth said, shaking out his arms. “Newly hatched from Gregor’s nest.”
He studied Seth and Phoenix and had never been so thrilled to behold two muscle-bound Egyptians in his long, lonely, existence. “Sweet Lady, it’s nice to recognize your ugly mugs.”
“Yeah?” Seth said, smacking him on the shoulder. “You get your hamster back in that wheel, my brother?”
“Seems so.”
“Then can I suggest clothes my brother? ’Cause you’re really fucking naked.”
Danel snorted and jogged back to his bedroom. Shit, it had been months since he’d been there. After Tanek . . . and his hand, he just couldn’t face it. He stomped his legs into a pair of baggy sweats and pulled them up his hips.
Phoenix met him in the hall with a handful of purple fleece and yoga pants. Shit. Ronnie.
He took the offering and Phoenix headed back into the living room. Right, well, this was going to suck.
“Hey, there.” He rapped a knuckle softly on the washroom door. He unlatched the lock with his mind and stuck her clothes inside. “Crisis averted, but we’ll need to get you out of here as soon as you’re dressed.”
She took the clothes and shut him out. “I need a moment.”
So did he. “Yeah, take your time.”
The past three days smacked him in the face. The Serpentine attack. Waking up in her car. Getting to know her . . . getting to know her the last hour and a half. What the fuck was he thinking hooking up with a human? And not any human; a politically connected, southern royalty, princess of a human.
Hello, exposure, my name is Danel, but you can just call me asshole. Man, he needed to wipe her memories and send her on her way ASAP. The moment that reality hit, his beast surged, furious. Yeah, well, suck it up.
They hated humans, remember? He and his alter ego had agreed on that for thousands of years and weren’t about to change opinions now.
While Phoenix piled the bodies, Seth call
ed it in.
Danel toured the apartment he’d shared with Tanek, surveying the world with new eyes—well, old eyes. The furniture hadn’t moved. The pictures on the walls hung as they always had. He smiled at the empty bottles laying on the table, the last drops pooled in the bottom and moldy, forgotten in the need to open the next.
He picked up the grease-stained paper bag from the Chinese food they’d ordered that last night and collected the empties. He thumbed the nicks and dings in the table. How many nights had they gotten drunk and played dagger dare with their hands five-starred on this very spot?
Damn, he missed the guy. He glared at the apartment.
Everything sat frozen in time, exactly how it had been, and yet nothing was, nor would ever be, the same.
The washroom door opened a second time. Ronnie wrapped her arms around him and vacuum sealed herself to his chest.
“Yeah, okay.” He peeled her off while Seth gawked. “Bad guys neutralized. Time to get gone.” He stepped away and she pegged him with a panicked gaze. He couldn’t take it.
Could she see right through him? Felt like it. He cleared his throat and turned tail. He headed back to the living room, a whole lotta WTF swirling in his brain.
“Phoenix will take you back to the racetrack,” he said, grabbing her coat and shoving it in her general direction.
She caught sight of the bodies and gasped. “What . . . That’s just . . . I can’t even . . .” She swallowed. “I was wrong. You are a monstrous piece of shit . . . how could I not have seen that? Gawd . . . I let you inside me.”
Danel looked at the dead and back to her. She thought he was the monster? True, daemons in the Human Realm looked like men, walked and talked like men. To her, these were four guys that nailed their headless horsemen impressions.
Without the horses.
But she thought he was the disgusting one? He didn’t know what to do with that. And why did he care?
Seth waved away her concern. “Don’t sweat it, people get sliced apart all the time. No biggie.”
Her eyes flew as wide as the moon. “No, they don’t.”
“Okaaay then, for the sake of argument, let’s say they do. You should be thankful. Danel did this for you. He’s a hero.”
Danel glared at the meathead and restrained himself from popping him one in the jaw. “Less help, Seth.”
Ronnie’s gaze bounced around the room and for the first time in his life, it mattered. Way down deep, he hated that she found his world distasteful, that she feared him.
Why wouldn’t she? Sheep lived oblivious to the lengths the shepherds went to keep the wolves from slaughtering them. And that’s what she was. All she was. Wasn’t it?
Yeah. A lifetime of duty and procedure took hold and he locked their gazes. He reached into her memories and scrubbed anything floating around that constituted Otherworld exposure. Maneuvering his way, he wasn’t surprised at the resistance.
She had a strong mind. Strong will too.
When he got to her fear of him, anger thickened his muscles and strengthened his bones. The Otherworld was no place for a human. He’d known that his entire, pathetic existence. She wasn’t his safe place and he sure as shit wasn’t hers.
He erased the gruesome decapitations and her self-loathing for letting him close to her. He left her with pretty much everything else. Through her eyes, he saw himself the way she’d seen him before this attack. He felt how much she’d grown to trust and care for him.
Shit. Shit. Shit.
Take it all, he thought. Erase the past three days from her mind completely. But scrambling her brain cells was the last thing the woman needed, with everything else she faced.
“You got your memory back,” she said, derailing his train of thought.
He dipped his chin. “How’d you know?”
“The ocular daggers you shoot at everyone. They’re back.”
He deserved that. He deserved more than that.
“Well, good for you. You must be relieved.”
Yeah, sure, let’s go with that? Back with his brothers, fighting, his memories restored. That’s what he wanted, wasn’t it? In truth, the only thing he wanted at that moment was to kiss her. Pathetic. How the fuck had that happened?
“So, I take it by the silent treatment and the glare, that you’re done slumming?” She held up a hand to cut off his reply. The acrid disappointment in her scent singed his nostrils. “Don’t worry about it. It was a fun ride, Broody.”
She took her coat from his hands and shrugged it on. “I’d wish you a happy life, but we both know you’re too wrapped up in your own bullshit to let happiness take hold.”
Ronnie left as she lived. Head high and not looking back.
“What was that?” He rubbed the ache of what felt like a Bazooka-sized hole in his chest.
“You got dumped, my brother. For the best, though. She’s human. She’s sick. And her father’s some kind of U.S. Senator wannabe or some shit. Did you wipe her?”
Phoenix raised his hands. Sadly, he’s right, D. The farther she stays from us, the safer everyone is. Phoenix at least looked sympathetic as he grabbed two heads and the belt loop of one of the bodies and dragged them toward the tub to burn them.
A beefy rumble echoed off the building from the street. Seth pointed out the window wall and busted up laughing. “She’s stealing your fucking ride, Persian. Hilarious.”
Danel launched through the door and hit the stairs. The big question . . . was it the car or the woman he was chasing?
Ronnie released the clutch and shot a hundred yards down the street before being forced to gear down fast and hit the brakes. The squeal of rubber on road couldn’t be helped. Danel appeared out of nowhere and blocked her path. Bare feet, no shirt, and looking as fearsome as he ever had, he laid his hand flat on the hood of his car and stared her down.
How had he gotten there so fast?
She glanced at the apartment in the rearview mirror and then back at him. How was that even possible?
Adrenaline pulsed through her veins and lit her up to say or do something she’d regret. Reining it in, she cranked it into park and cut the engine. She was unbuckled and about to get out and walk when he opened the passenger door and got in. “It’s really fucking cold out there.”
“Said the nearly naked man on the winter street.”
He rubbed his hand up and down his arm and shivered. “I left the house in a hurry. Someone stole something of mine.”
“Not stole. I would have left it right where I found it.”
He shook his head and turned in the seat to face her. He opened his mouth, as if to say something, then seemed to stall out and shut things tight again.
She snorted. “Don’t hurt yourself. Not my first brush-off. No need to drag it out on my account.”
“Cynical. An end isn’t a brush-off. I don’t regret where we are—especially after our naked session tonight.”
Ronnie rolled her eyes. “And you said you weren’t a player. Look, that naked session didn’t mean a thing and I’m not broken up over here.”
His gaze narrowed on her and he had the nerve to look hurt. “No. You’re not. Why aren’t you upset? I’m being a dick.”
“I’m used to you being a dick. It’s this guy here who freaks me out.” She gestured to him and his frown deepened. “The sex was amazing—true story—but we weren’t mating, or bonding, or declaring our undying love. Two stressed adults can get together and fuck for an hour or two. A cathartic sexual release doesn’t constitute anything more. And shouldn’t have to.”
He scrubbed his hand over his goatee and exhaled. “All right, so what if I—”
His words hung in the silence as he held up his finger. The leather interior creaked as he leaned back, pulling out of the cast light of the streetlight. He pointed to the gang of skinheads barreling down the sidewalk toward the apartment.
Arching his butt off the seat, he reached into his pants pocket and retrieved his phone. “Shit. Call up Seth for me.”
Ronnie fumbled through the contacts and handed it over.
Danel twisted to look between the seats and out the back windshield. “Get out of there. It’s a fucking ambush.”
Ronnie’s breath froze in her chest as they watched the mob of men enter the building. “How will they get out? There are so many of them.”
A split second later, Seth knocked on the hood of the car. Ronnie turned and screeched. “How did he get there?”
Phoenix raised a thumb and the twins climbed into the black Navigator she’d seen earlier. They started things up and pulled away from the curb.
She followed. “Where are we headed?”
The ring of his phone interrupted any response.
“Yeah . . . yeah . . . okay, yeah.” Danel hung up and turned up the heat. “The airport. That was Zander. Your father just landed to take you home.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Danel had Ronnie park outside the private hanger and waited for Seth to run him out some clothes. He didn’t think meeting Ronnie’s father wearing only a pair of baggy sweats would make much of an impression . . . well, it likely would, just not the kind of impression he wanted to make.
Why the hell did he even care.
When Seth came out, he cranked down the window and accepted the drop-off. “Thanks, man. Where are we in there?”
“Kyrian’s in there, schmoozing with Z. I grabbed Ronnie’s bags from the racetrack. They’re in the cabin of the plane. Your vest and weapons are in the duffle from your room at the Zone.”
“You rock, man. Thanks.” Seth met his knuckles with a bump and trotted off.
Ronnie stared at him as he stripped off the sweats and got dressed proper. He liked her eyes on him. Despite what she said about their naked session being solely the release of sexual tension, she was into him. And he was conceited enough to like that. Not that he should. At all. “Like what you see?”
She shook her head.
“Liar.” He pulled a black, collared shirt over his head and guided it down his abs to tuck into his jeans.