When I turned away from the table, the strange woman from earlier was standing over Rans, stroking a proprietary hand through the cooling wax on his chest.
TEN
“HANDS OFF THE MERCHANDISE.” Rans’ voice was flat and cold. He swiped the blindfold off in a single, swift movement by rubbing the side of his face against his bicep, and craned up to catch the woman with an unimpressed stare.
I was at his side in an instant, squaring off with the intruder. “Back off,” I snapped. “Whoever you are, you’re not invited to this party.”
The woman lifted her hands in a gesture of surrender. She looked at me with a guileless gaze that didn’t gel with the arrogance of her bearing. “My apologies, dear,” she said in a sweet tone that made me clench my jaw. “I need to speak with you once you’re done here. I know I shouldn’t touch, but this one is so very pretty, all trussed up like this. I’m sure you of all people can understand the impulse.”
“And I’m sure you can understand the words back off,” I shot back. “So maybe you’d like to, oh, I don’t know—do that now?”
On some level, I was aware that I was leaning over Rans’ chest, resembling nothing so much as a dog snarling over a bone. Rans was watching our back-and-forth like someone viewing an upside-down tennis match, and I had to admire his aplomb.
“Perhaps a conversation somewhere else, in more congenial—not to mention private—circumstances?” he suggested.
A disturbance in the murmuring crowd around us caught my peripheral vision. One of the staff members was pushing her way toward us, calling, “Ma’am! I need you to step away from those people if you aren’t part of the scene—”
Relieved by the imminent arrival of backup, I watched the staffer elbow her way through the half-dozen scary biker dudes. All of her attention was focused on our little drama, and a dart of unease pierced me. Almost casually, the biker creep whose animus had been so tainted with violence reached out and grabbed her by the hair, yanking her head back. She shrieked—the sound cut off by a gurgle as he slashed a knife across her throat. Blood spurted, and her body fell to the floor, convulsing.
“Well?” the man demanded, looking around at his buddies. “Don’t just stand there, you stupid fucks. Kill the demon bitches!”
The room erupted in screams and shouts. Time seemed to slow down around me.
“Buggering hell,” I heard Rans mutter, followed an instant later by the sound of splintering wood as he wrenched all four heavy rings free of the sawhorse, freeing himself and swinging to his feet in a single lithe movement.
He pressed one of his hidden daggers into my grip hilt-first, and I stared at it stupidly for a moment. “Stay back, and don’t let any of them cut you off from the exit,” he growled. “This is going to get messy.”
He shot a glare at the woman who’d intruded on us as he delivered the final words. Connections clicked into place inside my head, completely separate from the panic that was trying its best to strangle me.
The strange woman was a demon. She had to be. But what the hell was she doing here?
Rans was already gone, flinging himself toward the group of creeps approaching us. In mere seconds, the room had nearly emptied. After seeing one of their number brutally murdered without warning, it looked like the rest of the security staff had decided that the safest course of action was to retreat, presumably to call the police.
A horrible feeling of déjà vu settled over me. These days, the police were questionable allies at best. Everything inside me wanted to collapse into human hysteria, but my freshly engorged magical core coiled warm and restless, keeping my spine straight and my weight balanced lightly over the balls of my feet in the impractical boots I was wearing.
I had to fight the urge to round on the demon and demand to know what the fuck she was playing at, bringing this shitstorm down on us in a place filled with innocent people. I knew I couldn’t afford to let my attention wander, but from the corner of my eye, I could see her watching the group of bikers with what looked like utter boredom.
Rans slammed into the lead goon and knocked his knife-hand to one side. His eyes blazed with inner light. “Drop your weapon,” he snapped.
The goon didn’t drop his weapon. His face didn’t take on that dazed look I’d seen other people exhibit beneath Rans’ vampiric gaze. If anything, Rans looked even more surprised than I felt, but an instant later he forgot about mesmerizing his opponent in favor of dropping him with a vicious roundhouse to the jaw.
“Zorah!”
I jumped in surprise at the sound of Len’s voice calling my name. In the next moment, he was beside me—his hand wrapping around my upper arm. “C’mon, girl, we need to get you out of here.”
His expression was grim; his face pale beneath his tanned skin.
I balked. “I’m not leaving Rans!” I insisted. “Go—get Tristan and get the hell out of here! We’ll catch up!”
A flash of red hair showed that Tristan was attempting to hustle the female demon toward the exit, even as Rans threw a second man over his shoulder and sent a third flying backward with a kick to the stomach. He was trying not to kill them, I realized. His other dagger was still in his hand, but he hadn’t used it yet.
“I’m serious, Zorah,” Len said. “It looks from here like your boy can take care of himself.”
There was a faint aura of disbelief in his tone, probably because Rans was fighting with speed and strength bordering dangerously close to inhuman. I might be used to it, but anyone who didn’t know about the existence of other worlds and nonhuman species would find it hard to believe what they were seeing. Len was still tugging at me, and mindful of what Rans had said about not allowing our retreat to be cut off, I let him pull me toward the door.
Only two of the goons were still on their feet. One of them reached around his back. He came up with a snub-nosed revolver, but some jolt of instinct intertwined with my succubus magic had already reacted. I shoved Len away from me as hard as I could, even as the gun barrel lifted, pointing toward me. I dove in the other direction just as a loud noise thundered through the dungeon and a burning line of pain branded itself across my shoulder.
The endless sparring sessions with Rans had me tucking and rolling instinctively. I sprang into a crouch, trying to see where the shooter was now. Something warm and wet dribbled down my arm, but I couldn’t spare the attention for it. My eyes landed on the shooter again, only to find him once again steadying his aim at me. His finger tightened on the trigger.
Mist swirled around me, solidifying into a familiar form. Rans curled his body around mine just as three more loud noises echoed around the room. Blam! Blam! Blam! The hard form sheltering me jerked with each explosion of sound. Rans grunted and went down under the third impact, dragging me with him.
“No!” I screamed, trying to grab his shoulders and somehow keep him upright.
“Get the other one! I’ll take care of this bitch,” snarled Mr. Tall, Dark, and Violent—the only goon still standing other than the shooter.
“Jesus!” I heard Tristan yell. “No—stay behind me, lady!”
Another loud blast, and someone cried out in pain.
“Tris!” Len shouted.
No, no, no, I mentally chanted, feeling everything spiral out of control. Rans tried to push himself upright, only to stagger back to one knee. Tall, Dark, and Violent was striding toward us, while the goon with the gun fumbled in his pocket, presumably for fresh ammo.
Len slammed into the gunman with a snarl, sending the revolver skittering off to one side. Something powerful and frightening rose inside me with a burning heat of anger that I’d never felt before. Suddenly, my magic was no longer some strange and unknown thing hidden deep inside me, largely out of reach. Now, it was a tool. A weapon, straining and begging to be used.
I turned my gaze to the goon who wanted to fuck me and hurt me at the same time. He sneered, moving the tip of the dagger he was holding in a slow figure-eight motion as he strode closer, clearly conf
ident of the power he held over his downed opponents.
Fuck. That.
I stared into his muddy brown eyes as I reached out for the sickly grayish-green miasma of lust he was still emitting… and pulled. His eyes darkened, pupils blowing wide as he leered down at me. I could see his pitiful excuse for a cock twitch and harden in his tight pants as I dragged more and more energy from him, not stopping or letting up for even an instant.
The sound of blows landing on flesh as Len fought the other goon faded into the background. Nothing existed except me, and this man who wanted to rape and stab me until I was dead. My lips pulled back in a feral grin as fresh strength coursed into me, flowing from the well of his twisted sexual desires.
The man stumbled, confusion clouding his face as his knees wobbled and failed to hold him up. He crashed to the floor, and still I continued to draw on his animus. I pulled and yanked and tore at him until his body convulsed and started seizing like a palsy victim’s. Choking noises erupted from his throat.
“You can stop now, luv,” Rans said hoarsely. “You’ll only castigate yourself later if you end up killing him.”
Something snapped back into place inside my mind, and I gasped like someone surfacing from drowning.
“What?” I said faintly, staring in disbelief as my attacker… my victim?… twitched feebly on the floor a couple of feet away from us.
I cast my eyes around the dungeon, my heart slamming against my chest in double-time. The female demon stood near the door, looking down at Tristan curiously as he slumped on the floor, his arm pressed across a growing patch of dark wetness blooming on his stomach. His opponent overcome, Len ran and slid to a halt next to his boyfriend, crashing to his knees.
“Shit, no…” he whispered. His lip was split, and a livid bruise was already blooming across his cheekbone. “Shit! Let me see, Tris—”
I remembered the gunshots. “Rans?” I rasped in horror, trying to remind myself that I’d seen the vampire shake off a shotgun blast through the heart.
Rans was still bracing himself on one hand and one knee, but at least he hadn’t gone down the rest of the way.
“Your shoulder,” he grated.
I was confused for a moment before I remembered the burning brand of pain I’d felt after the first explosion from the gun.
“Fuck my shoulder!” I said, grabbing him by the upper arm and trying to haul him upright. “Help Tristan!”
He made it to his feet, hissing in pain, and staggered over to the others. Len had eased Tristan back to lie flat on the concrete floor. The poor guy was writhing in pain as Len put pressure on the wound. I blanched at the amount of blood seeping through his fingers, trying not to let the sight drag me into a full-blown PTSD flashback.
Rans’ eyes flashed icy blue fire at Len, but his voice was low and calm. “Back away from him, there’s a good chap. Be quiet, and let me work.”
I saw confusion and resistance chase themselves across Len’s features for only an instant before his expression went slack and he sat back on the floor, his red-stained hands sliding away from Tristan’s stomach.
Next, Rans met Tristan’s glazed eyes. “Take a nap for a few minutes, mate. And I’m sorry, because this is still going to hurt like a raging bitch.”
With that, Rans ripped open Tristan’s blood-soaked shirt, revealing the bullet wound. My vision went hazy at the sight. I swallowed hard, still fighting not to let my mind be dragged back to that awful summer twenty years ago when Mom was shot. Tristan’s eyes slid closed, his face smoothing into a similar dazed expression to Len’s. At the same time, his body relaxed, no longer trying to curl in on itself and protect the damage.
I didn’t know what I expected Rans to do, but when he slid the dagger blade into the bullet wound and sliced it wider, I cried out. Len’s gray eyes bugged. A choked noise escaped his throat, and his muscles jerked helplessly against the mental hold Rans had on him.
“Rans, what are you doing?” I demanded, about half a second away from lunging forward and trying to drag him away from Tristan.
“Trust me or don’t, damn it.” The words sounded like rocks grinding together. “But either way, stop distracting me unless you want this lad to die right here on the floor of a sex dungeon.”
I slapped a hand over my mouth, not sure if I was trying to keep more words from escaping, or my stomach contents. Rans set the dagger aside and pushed his fingers into the gaping wound. The world tilted in my vision and I turned away, unable to watch. That was a mistake, since my balance deserted me the instant I moved. I managed a marginally controlled collapse onto my knees, and the sharp pain as they made contact with the concrete went some way toward keeping me tethered to consciousness.
The sharp clink of something small and metal hitting the floor a few feet away reached my ears as if through a tunnel. Some part of my brain that hadn’t been reduced to gibbering uselessness put everything together. Rans had been removing the bullet—albeit in a way that would give any medical professional an aneurysm with its blatant disregard for both safety and cleanliness.
“Fucking silver,” Rans muttered. “Where the fuck do humans find shit like this? I mean, even in America, who the blazes sells silver bullets?”
I blinked, the words bringing me back to myself. Swallowing hard, I turned to look cautiously over my shoulder, bracing for the sight of gore. Rans had stopped bitching about the bullets long enough to tear his wrist open with his teeth. I breathed slowly and deeply, forcing myself to watch as he let his blood dribble into the awful hole in Tristan’s gut. Len—still frozen in place by Rans’ earlier command to back away and stay quiet—looked pale enough to pass out on the spot.
The trickle of blood slowed to a drip, and Rans lifted Tristan’s head with his other hand before his fangs tore into his skin for a second time. This time, he put his bleeding wrist to Tristan’s mouth.
“Swallow,” he ordered, “and keep swallowing until I tell you to stop.”
ELEVEN
TRISTAN’S GLAZED EYES blinked open, and he swallowed Rans’ blood obediently.
“That’s enough,” Rans said a few moments later.
I could hear sirens approaching outside, and a fresh feeling of dread crept over me. Would the police turn out to be allies or enemies? With my track record lately, I wasn’t sure I wanted to find out.
“Give me your shirt,” Rans ordered Len, who stripped out of the black tank and handed it over with a puppet’s jerky movements, still looking gray as a ghost.
Rans wiped at the mingled human and vampire blood coating Tristan’s stomach. I stared in amazement at the vision of fleshing knitting together like time-lapse photography of a wound healing. Tristan moaned, an awful sound like something a dying animal might make.
Rans eased him back and rested a palm on his forehead. “Hang in there, mate. It’ll get better in a moment. The first few seconds are always the worst.”
“Will he be all right?” I asked hoarsely, still fixated on the wound as it shrank and pulled in on itself.
“His stomach will be,” Rans said. “Don’t know the bloke well enough to offer an opinion on the rest. Speaking of which, we need to move.” His eyes snapped blue fire at Len. “You. Snap out of it and prove to me that Zorah’s good opinion of you isn’t misplaced.”
Freed from his mental restraint, Len sprang forward with a harsh cry and dragged Rans away from Tristan’s body by the neck.
“What the hell did you do?” Len shouted in his face, his eyes racing back and forth between Rans and the pink pucker in Tristan’s gut—all that was left to mark where the horrible gunshot wound had been.
“Len, he’s a vampire!” I blurted. “Let him go—he just saved your boyfriend’s life!”
Rans peeled Len’s fingers away from his throat with the air of someone whose patience was wearing thin. Len gaped at us, his jaw hanging open. With an expression that could only be described as jaded, Rans shot him a flash of glowing eyes and curled his lip, revealing a hint of fang as well.
Len sat back on his heels rather abruptly, his gaze falling once again on Tristan’s miraculously healed stomach. “I…” he began. “This is…” He shook his head sharply, and seemed to regain a modicum of control over himself. His features hardened. “We shouldn’t be here when the cops arrive. Is it safe for us to carry him?”
“No need.” Rans snapped his fingers. “Tristan. Up you get, lad. Time to move.”
Tristan was still wearing a distant look indicating his mind wasn’t his own. I almost demanded that Rans release him from the hypnotic influence, but practicality held me back. There was no telling what the poor guy’s reaction was likely to be after what he’d just gone through. If he had a meltdown while we were trying to sneak out of here, things would get even messier than they already were.
I held my tongue as Tristan climbed to his feet, a bit unsteadily.
“Tris?” Len asked, taking his arm. Tristan only stared at him, blinking.
“Explanations after we’re away from here,” Rans said, rising as well.
He wavered on his feet at the altitude change, and fresh worry clenched in my stomach. I reached for him, but he waved me away impatiently.
“I still need to talk to you, demonkin,” said a feminine voice from near the doorway.
God. I’d forgotten she was even here… and that was really saying something about how harrowing the last few minutes had been. The woman sauntered over to us, sparing barely a glance for Len and Tristan.
“This isn’t a good time for a chat,” Rans said tightly.
But the demon only smiled, crouching to pick up the discarded dagger Rans had used on Tristan. “Not to worry, dear. You two go on ahead.” She drew the blade across her palm and handed the knife back to him. “I’ll catch up later.”
Before I could draw breath to ask what the hell she was talking about, she smeared the blood on her palm over Rans’ chest. My hackles rose like an angry pit bull’s, but she was gone in the next instant, winking out of existence like a light bulb being turned off.
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